3 December, 1997

Hi everyone,

Using this ond uncorrectable computer again today, sorry. Today was the first "bummer" of the trip so far. Woke up to light snow and just knew that the helos would not fly. I was correct. to make it worse we were on hold all day which means that they might fly so stay close. If they had totally canceled it would have been better. What are you going to do in the hut all day. We read, napped and played cards, after lunch Emily and I decided to clean up the cupboards( you can see that we were really disperate) We took all the pots and pans out and put them into the right places., There have been 56 people through the camp so far and really aonly a few know where everything goes so we just straighned up[. The other Keith ( not my partner) and Camella were going to drill through the lake ice and I volunteered to help them. After putting on the 6th one meter ice auger I realized why they they readly accepted. We finally went through then. The ice is approximately 20 foot thick right where we are. Its save for the ATV if you were worried. Come back in and Rich( the SCIENCE reporter ) and I went for another walk. We climbed for a long was up the 4,000 foot mountain 50 yds. from my tent. Its really pretty steep and I wanted to be sure that we did not start a rock slide and destroy the camp. They told us that it was not a problem so we really went pretty high. Rich is more bored than the rest of us. He is on a very tight schedule and certainly did not plan to spend two days here at lake Hoare. He knows our names now and possibly we will get printed up in his magazine. Its getting close to supper time now, we are still on stand by, I think that the Helos will fly any time it is good because remember it is 24 hour sunlight. You can really tell no difference between day or night. Hope things straighten up before tomorrow. Glad I'm not at the real small camp though. There would be nothing to do then. With the streams frozen again I'm sorta out of work anyway. Better go. Starting to ramble. I'm Ok and doing fine. See ya Paul