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15 November 2003
Stacy writing
Today we returned to McMurdo from New Harbor. Like Dan, most of us had mixed feelings about this. We miss the friends we have in town, but we have enjoyed our time in this peaceful place.
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Dan working out a monkey's fist while Jim peruses some fine literature. |
Having spent parts of the last 2 days packing, we are in pretty good shape, and are leisurely doing the final chores before our scheduled flight at 11:45. At 9:30, the radio crackled to life "New Harbor camp, New Harbor camp, this is zero-eight-hilo. We have an unscheduled pick up, we'll be there in 5 minutes. I'll leave a tech with you to set up later loads." My reply was that we had hot apple turnovers fresh out of the oven, and I would wrap one up for the pilot. Then - ack! - we ran around, piling gear next to the flag near the helo landing area, trying to get the first priority items on the top of the heap of 2500 lbs of gear.
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Stacy and Phil hold down some of the lighter baggage items as the helo leaves with the first load. |
The scrambling paid off, we filled a sling load and away it went to McMurdo. Having rushed, we then had some leisure to sign our farewell on the wall of the camp, a tradition. Jim had composed a limerick to our time, having decided that that style of poetry was more fitting to our character than a more distinguished sonnet or haiku.
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Wall poetry celebrating B010's fabulous time at New Harbor. |
We had time for one final game of hot box, the teams being composed of those wearing their bunny boots, and those not. My vertical leap, never great, is substantially reduced when wearing 10 lb boots. After 5 minutes we were all panting and wondering why we were so exhausted; New Harbor work does wonders for your strength but is not very aerobic. We finally stopped when Dan scraped his knee during a particularly aggressive save, not that we were looking for ANY excuse to rest or anything.
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Dan tries to remove the gravel from his knee. |
It was a quick turnover of the camp, Sam Bowser and his team came in on the flight that took us out. We had barely a moment to say hi and exchange hugs before we had to load up. Sam studies Foramnifera, single celled organisms, and we hope that his season at New Harbor is as productive as ours was
(see http://www.bowserlab.org/antarctica/antarcticapage2.htm for more details on Dr. Bowser's Antarctic work).
Our flight back was beautiful - we could see the ice edge and open water on one side and glaciers flowing to the seaice on the other. From high up, you get an amazing sense for the slow motion of the ice, you can see the currents and eddies of its flow. But too soon we were landing.
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A dramatic view of the sea ice from the helo. |
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McMurdo from above. |
Our first priority was our first real showers in 2 weeks! But of course, we had to eat first, subjecting the other people at lunch to our field stench. Despite that, our welcome was warm. An afternoon of laundry, and we reconvened to deal with that 2500 lbs of gear. In remarkably short order, it was organized and we were off for our evening activities. In New Harbor, these had consisted of cooking dinner, reading, tying decorative and complex sailors knots, playing cards, watching movies, and going for hikes. Since we had returned on a Saturday, the one night off at McMurdo, the social choices were many. We ate excellent Mexican food at the Crary Lab fiesta, and got a chance to catch up with friends and with some of the scientists who have come into town since we have been gone. Then, finally, a nights rest in a real bed! Though I do have to say I prefer my tent most of the time.
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| Farewell to New Harbor camp. |