Dry Valleys, Here We Come!

So it is 9:00 PM on Thursday night (Jan 7th) and the latest helicopter schedule has us on a flight to our first field location (near Lake Brownworth) tomorrow morning at 9:50AM...all helos have made it in from the field and forecast looks good! (However, forecasts around here don't often have much meaning). We basically spent the day "lounging" around McMurdo; I guess the only real work completed was re-packing our sleep kits (they were soaking wet after returning from Happy Camper) and dragging them to the passenger terminal...the one not fun thing around here is "bag drag"... McMurdo Station buildings are built upon a series of hills more or less, so you spend a lot of time dragging luggage and gear uphill, downhill, through the wind and snow, etc, etc. Returning from the helo pad, we were distracted by some neat basalt samples which had large phenocrysts of olivine and pyroxene entrained in them...of course we took some to bag and ship back to the States. While in the field, the ice breaker ship Oden will arrive in McMurdo at Winter Quarters Bay. Will definitely be neat to see. We also tried to attend a talk that we assumed was about penguins, but ended up being a video about aliens, so left that one in a hurry :). Am now preparing for some sleep and a hopefully exciting day tomorrow...