Igloo Building and Sridhar's Return...

A lot of news here at camp. Yesterday we were down for an entire day of drilling. I guessed right when I said that our day off would probably get shifted so that yesterday was our new day off and we would again be working Sunday. This upset a few people, but with only 2 weeks of drilling left, most of them figured it will be over soon enough anyway.

I spent the day continuing to clean up snow pits and digging to find previous year's boreholes. I also helped Anais take her temperature measurements of for her research at UCSD.

The two big news stories of yesterday were that we finished the igloo we were building AND Sridhar and the Cresis guys returned! At about 6pm I saw a couple of lights way off on the horizon and I immediately knew it was snowmobiles coming in from Cresis. Leo and Huw drove for 10 hours straight on snowmobiles and Sridhar drove for 12 in a Tucker. It is surreal being 9000 miles from home and seeing a member of my Masters committee and other grad students that work on the same floor of the same building as me. From what they tell me, they will all be here for a week or so as well, so we'll have plenty of time to catch up.

As far as the igloo....well we started one as a half-assed joke a few days ago, and it turned into a real science experiment. I still can't believe Eskimos can build these things in a few hours. It took us 4 days and several hours of precision snow block cutting.

Standing in the 3 walled snow pit

Inside roof of the igloo
Outside the igloo

Sridhar's Tucker and the sleds full of gear

And just because some people have asked me about my new Arctic Oven tent....here is what it looks like....

Inside my Artic Oven

Outside of my Artic Oven