Dogs, Frogs, and Spidermobiles

As I sit still digesting the feast from thanksgiving, I hallucinate. To begin, yesterday was a typical American thanksgiving. By this I mean I ate 3 plates full of turkey, stuffing, pie, pecan things and stuff. And enough wine to replenish Jesus. The problem started with being satiated halfway through plate 1. The rest was just to prove to the "Lameno" team that the EXSTREAM team will never falter with food, sled races, or information gathering. After this tangent I rewind to the hallucinations. I go to bed at midnight and my tent is lit up like the rebirth of Mufasa in a blaze orange zoo. I try to imagine the last 50 pages of stranger in a strange land, but I myself am a stranger in a strange land. To be stranger though may be a stretch because stranger to the veterans may be true, but to this landscape I am not. So Stranger in a local valley is more appropriate. The land here contrasts the sky and the zenith is always bright blue. In my tent as I am off in Steven land, aside from the glacier creaking and knocking at my tent door, I occasionally here dogs panting. I wake to see a shadow crawling between my tent and its fly. A Spider! Being here will quell any and all forms of arachnophobia. To see a creepy crawly eight baby blued shadow crawling over you at first excites fear, but at this moment there was nothing more than exciting excitement. Another living creature! This eight legged freak however was a freak of my imagination and subconscious projecting a desire although desire may be too strong a word. Of course there is algae, single celled diatoms, and bacteria everywhere. Something you can perceive to react to your poking it is something forlorn and strange.
For Thanksgiving we had about 15 people gather around and write a sentence down on separate pieces of paper. Passing the paper to the person next to you they draw a picture of their interpretation of the sentence then fold the sentence over so it is hidden. Passing the paper again, the next tries to decipher the picture, and write a sentence describing it. This goes on and on until both sides of the paper are full. The majority of the sentences/pictures were related to dogs. I saw a stick figure and I thought it was a person thinking about a dog. A sentence read the not so quick brown fox attempted to jump the fence, and I drew a picture of a dog biting its tail. A house was on fire, and below was written the dogs escaped from the burning house.
Back at the Kiwi base they had pictures of every winter over group since the 70's. Until the late 80's every picture included a dog handler encompassed by canines. Thats right! There were 10 people that wintered over and about 8 dogs to play frisbee with. In the movie "The Thing" However the dogs are the reason for the groups demise. This movie is false and should never be taken literally. If this were based on a true story, it would be more similar to "To build a fire". The man would try to eat the dog, but then the dog would be like "WTF Mate!" and run away and live with the wolves.
"Daugs" is the the punch line of this telling. Dogs. The internet is a hindrance on all productivity when images of dogs are displayed. It should be banned and we should learn to live without. Ignorance is bliss and if there are no dogs on this planet (At least for the next 3 months) I will sleep much better. I steal away when people start talking about their puppies, but then like a moth to light, I am struck by the shrapnel of sight.
Beauty is everywhere. This place is everything. Yet the slight lack of movement aside from clouds can sometimes remind you of dogs left behind.

And this is only week 2

Noodle Bomber

On a random Sunday, as Sunday still means the weekend, but rather a weekend on a ranch. See there are still chores to be done. There are still samples to filter. There are still streams to guage. Nothing stops for you. In fact I just found out the other day that revolutions of the universe don't actually occur around myself. Actually the universe doesn't even revolve anywhere near me, if at all. Regardless of meaningful tasks designated to keep me sane, clean, and busy I found time to take a walk about with Matt who came out the the Dry Valleys to assist in ExxStream Team Work! We found ourselves overzealous at first to attempt a mountain that is over 8 hours away in looking back would have put me down for a couple of days, but hey in the words of some famous person. I got shit ta do! Noodle Bomber, or NussBaum as the people who inhabit these valleys actually refer to it as was a long ridge a couple of miles long? Distance means nothing here. Time has some weight behind it, but essentially that is only to determine meeting times, and occasional sanity checks. Although the time differential felt in the valleys may also make one insane. As I am going slightly. This is only week 1. Ha. Where was I? Noodle Bomber! Oh and I took this video.

The little ice chunk that could

BrAiNs!

The little seal that could, then didn't half way up the hill

The Moon of Noodle Bomber

Matt on Noodle Bomber

Taylor Glacier with Frris hills above. Beautiful plateaus

Fryxell on the bottom left with the ocean and Ross island

1882 and the matterhorn

Ventifacts

In a cavernous ventifact

Yep.

Top of Nosebaum ridge.

Dry Valleys

Before I start make a mental picture of this map, or just understand what I am talking about. It will make much more sense.
Or become acquainted with this website. It will just help me.

Been quite busy lately. A good deal of my time here at the camps is spent preparing meals, cleaning, gathering water, and just keeping things together. At McMurdo it was spent running around frolicking in the volcanic goodness of Ross island. The last 7 days I have been here have shown me more than I have ever hoped to see. We started at lake Hoare camp. This camp is run by Rae Spain. She has been here for a while and knows all the ins and outs. Hoare camp is run by three large solar panels built by NASA and fully power the station. There are 3 labs outside the main building, and a couple of Rocket toilets. Rocket toilets are exactly what they sound like. You poop in them and they produce a lovely aroma filling the air around camp that reminds me of burnt hair and Middle Eastern Oil refineries. Thats right! It smokes your waste to reduce the weight to bring back to the States for processing.
I have written about the valleys somewhere, but have been too busy to transcribe it right now. So instead I am just rambling about the valleys. And since this is Mu'rka, I will just add a lot of pretty pictures so no thinking will be required.

Lake Hoare Hilton. Balloons = Amy's Bday

Granite walls above Hoare Hilton

You can kind of glimpse the moon between the rocks. Difficult when it is bright out.

Lake Hoare ablation (sand melting ice in amazing shapes) below peak 1882

Nick and I killing Jenga during our Sat night 80's party!

The Hoare Hilton and its modest accomadations

The mountains surrounding Lake Hoare which is around 150 ft, rise 6000 ft to precipitous points smeared with granite walls that are cut into pieces by the quartz veins and other minerals. There is something surreal here.
We started out after setting up camp by opening up Andersen H1 stream guage. Pretty simple. You switch the empty N2 tank with a full one and swap the storage modules that have been recording stream data since the stream team was here last summer. We then took an ATV up lake Hoare to the Suess glacier and eventually arrived at House H2 stream after passing a number of mummified seals. Opened that guage with a few problems but we will fix those soon.

1882 in the clouds. 1882 is the height in meters. Brilliant name.

My tent at Hoare below Canada glacier

Doing what I do best!

Typical Flume on stream. This is Andersen stream about 40 m above Lake Hoare

House Stream, flume, and guage box below suess glacier

That night we hiked to Canada glacier and checked out some wicked ice falls. Beautiful. Simply beautiful.
Since I am by myself I was able to get my very own GA! (General assistant). Matt Herron. He has been very helpful in opening up stream guages and is super chill. Sandra Liu also accompanied us to F6 camp.

Canada glacier ice falls and ice tongue to the right(about 1500 ft high)

Mt Erebus above McMurdo from Canada glacier

Me on top of Canada glacier looking South

Nothing to say but sun doggin it.

Hike down from Canada along a natural moraine ridge

Canada glacier cascade?

The Kiwi's "Porsche of the sky"

All electronic controls

Lake Fryxell and my future home for the majority of 3 months

At F6 the first day we stole Fryxell camps ATV and opened up a number of guages on the South end of lake Fryxell, and the next day we opened up the guages on the North side. That night we all went looking for some scandalous stream guages up in the hills. We found one of the two and then played Scooby Doo and split our own ways on to enlightening vision quests. While I did not gain any great overpowering perspective, I was overpowered by my perspective. The hike was great.

Not a bad view to wake up to every morning

A seal that made it pretty far. But not far enough to the ocean on the other side of the continent

Typical guage box with Nitrogen and stuff and stuff

Sandra and Matt. Not a bad gig.

Hard at work on a frozen stream.

This seal made it about 4 miles up stream away from the ocean to lay frozen in this desert.

Life under the ice in form of algae

Canada glacier and ice falls from Fryxell

The Matterhorn. No picture in the world can do this mountain justice.

side of a random snow patch

Commonwealth glacier through a ventifact

Beauty is everywhere even if it is a rock in a desert

Another glimpse of Canada glacier and ice falls from the top of my hike

Commonwealth glacier from the hike

Lake Fryxell from the hike. Our camp is at the bottom right of the lake. Or SouthEast corner. Canada to the West and Commonwealth to the East

And to the far East is the ocean and New Harbor.Water in the far background

One more shot of Canada

A stunning Cobra Ventifact!

Balanced rock in a different desert

Balanced Rock.....s

I guess one more shot up valley towards Hoare wouldn't hurt

Typical moss found in the stream bed that grows everywhere when wet

Today we flew over the hills to the Wright valley and the Onyx river. The Onyx river is the longest river in Antarctica and looks kayakable at high water! How do I bring my kayak down to Antarctica? Science cargo? It also flows away from the ocean?!?!?! WTF.
The Helo was stunning as we dropped through beautiful territory to the Kiwi huts at Lake Brownworth, then to Lake Vanda. The valleys here are all the same, and yet as different as night and day. Taylor valley has crumbly rock surrounding jagged peaks, while Wright valley is composed of similar rock, but is all sand with more plateaus than points. Flew back to F6, Sandra took off for Hoare, and Matt and I are here waiting until tomorrow when we will be whisked away to lake Bonney.

Mt. Erebus from the flight to Wright valley

Landing in the wright valley

Onyx river below lake brownworth and some glacier?

Every valley is exactly the same and totally different...

The Kiwi hut at Lake Vanda at the end of the Onyx river

Lake Vanda

Crystalline snake patterns of ice and bubbles. At the head is algae frozen at the end of the crystals

Lake Vanda with amazing mountains in the background

cool glaciers

More wright valley

1500ft wall?

Cockpit

Had to sneak one more Vanda in there with the mountains that remind me of Ridgeway Colorado

some 12,000 ft mountain above Taylor valley that we can't see from the ground

Looking upvalley from a helo above commonwealth glacier

This is where I have caught up to. Nothing poetic, pretentious, or blasphemous here. Just good ole' Picture talkin. Enjoy, Cheers.