3 November, 1999

The first thing I was told about travel in Antarctica was "stay flexible". Well, the weather cleared today and I just got word that I will be flying out to the drill site at Cape Roberts tonight. This means I get my first helo ride and a real good look at the coast of Antarctica. I am pretty excited. I will also be seeing how the drilling operation works and be able to see the drill cores coming out of the hole and observing them for the first time.

Because of this change in plans, I have a few things to do. We will postpone the discussion of "Why is it so cold in Antarctica?' to a later time. I hope you were doing some research on it. One thing I would like you to do is find a city in the northern hemisphere which is as close to the North Pole as McMurdo is to the South Pole (about 77 degrees N latitude). If you can find some information about the climate of that city in the next day or so, we can compare it to the climate in McMurdo. I think you will be surprised. Also, see if you can find Cape Roberts (on the Scott Coast of the Ross Sea about 50 miles north-northwest of McMurdo) on a map.

I will not be writing a journal tomorrow, as I will be back late. I will next write on Friday and tell you about my trip to Cape Roberts.

Later.

Here is a close up of a section of the core from 243.47 meters below the bottom of the Ross Sea.

Here are the scientists examining the half core in the Crary Lab. Tonight I will see were this drill core comes from and how it is processed.