Well it has been a few days again since I have blogged. We have been quite busy but now with getting ready to leave. On December 2nd we conducted measurements at our final two sites. We have completed 23 sites with the second half of our team conducted 15, so very good all around. The second team consisted of Pat Langhorne (Professor at University of Otago in Dunedin, New Zealand), Alex Gough (PhD student of Pat's), Greg Leonard (researcher at University of Otago) and Ken Hughes (a soon to be Master's student of Pat's). They were also doing similar sea ice and snow measurements as our team but were also doing oceanographic measurements of temperature, salinity, pressure and other things. They camped out on the ice for 10 days while we had the luxury of being in Scott Base.
On December 3rd, I packed away the HEM bird and readied it for shipping, a process that only takes half as long as putting it together.Dan and I walked over to McMurdo Station (on of the USA's bases in Antarctica) to have a look around. It is a nice place but has a much more big city and industrial feel to it than cozy Scott Base. The population at McMurdo is over 1000 people compared to Scott Base's 80 or so.
December 4th consisted of a day off, so data processing and organization. And then on December 5th, I stayed back to help Pat and their team demobilize their campaign (cleaning up) while the others in our team retrieved our GPS stations from the ice.
Today we finished packing our stuff and have completed our bag-drag. A process of collecting your checked luggage and doing weigh-ins for your onboard stuff and yourself. We are scheduled to depart sometime tomorrow morning, so we will see if the weather is good, the forecast is for snow.
Well the next time I write will be when I am in New Zealand. I promise to post more pictures and some videos from my trip.
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