4 December, 1997

Hi Everyone,

Today was much better than yesterday. Awoke to a ugly cold (5 above) windy day. Would the helos fly? Yes I thought they would. I packed up my material, I told you I would not comment on that again and headed for the helo pad. Everything was ready, are they coming. Paula, the camp manager said that yes they were leaving McMurdo right then. Grabbed a quick cup of oatmeal and was ready. A big helicopter arrived carrying some important visitors from National Science Foundation touring our camp. I did not have time to even meet them as I loaded up my stuff as they were unloading theirs. We took the 20 minute ride to Lake Bonney and unloaded our material. Met Craig, Scott and Amanda from another group, the Limnology team, who were working there. Keith and I loaded our material on the snowmobile with trailing sled and after a quick sandwich took off for the far end. The weather had not improved, ugly, cold, cutting wind.

We took the one hour ride to the glacier and did the necessary surveying. Really cold holding the measuring rod for Keith. There was barely enough water moving for me to sample but I collected my samples and we headed back to the small Lake Bonney camp. We found it was better if I rode in the sled and I climbed in and hung on. With the rough lake ice it was similar to riding a rubber raft through the Grand Canyon. High mountains on each side of me. The wind was so bad that I could only look straight up. I now know how an Olympic luge rider feels. We made it back to camp and wow, Amanda and Craig had fixed a great spaghetti supper. After supper I filtered my samples and hit the sleeping bad. Hope it is tough enough for this cold night. We need some warm weather for my project to work out very well. Better go, Doing OK, I'm fine. See ya