Thanksgiving day! November 23, 2006. A day earlier than in the USA.

We had been invited by Rae at Lake Hoare camp to come have a Thanksgiving meal along with anyone else doing research in Taylor Valley. We were told that morning the meal would be at noon. We were expecting it to be later, so we had to get ourselves in gear. We were told it was a two and a half hour walk from our camp, and we wanted to do some looking around and perhaps some sampling on our way there.


We loaded up our packs and headed out. We walked along the top of several moraines noting whether there were kenytes or sandstones, noting the shapes and orientations, and generally just taking mental notes trying to put a story together.



Looking down from the moraines, we noticed some other people at the edge of Canada Glacier, probably from Lake Fryxell camp and also headed for Thanksgiving "dinner". They were walking on the frozen water forming at the glacier edge, and making pretty good time. It was then that we realized we probably needed to speed up our pace. So, we headed down towards Canada glacier while still heading West in the general direction towards Lake Hoare. We walked on or next to the ice.



Canada Glacier's edge was right next to us - a big wall of ice. It varied in height as we went along and there seemed to be quite a bit of melting on the surface and in the ice we were walking on.


After having walked for over two hours, we finally got to Lake Hoare. It is a long, narrow lake wrapping around the Nussbaum Riegel. The surface of the lake ice has melted and refrozen over and over creating a very rough surface as seen in this photo. Some of those ice "pinnacles" are as tall as me - 5 feet.



Slowly, we walked along the edge of the rough ice, but the ice closest to the glacier was melting, so it was a bit dicey. It was fun though. All the while, we could see the Lake Hoare camp off in the distance, blending in with the mountains behind it. Finally, we arrived at the camp and were greeted by Rae.

I started my first day in Taylor Valley ready to go. Actually, the first night was much warmer than I expected. I had prepared to be cold and so slept in the issued minus 30 or something bag with the fleece liner in it. Whew! I woke up at 3AM with the sun shining in through my little vestibule window and started trying to free myself from my bag. It was way too hot. Not a bad thing, mind you, because I definitely didn't want to be cold! Thus, I left my tent that morning with a big smile on my face.


These first two days were spent getting the camp a little more organized and walking around the area to familiarize ourselves with the environment. We came across the inevitable mummified seal. Seals wander into the Dry Valleys, lost, and keep going further in until they simply expire from exhaustion and lack of sustenance. It is so dry and cold, they are preserved for a long time. Wind erosion begins to take away the flesh (as do Skuas). We saw one our first day wandering around.






We walked down to Lake Fryxell in search of a GPS base station that was supposed to be on the edge of the lake. We later found that the station (a "bolt in a rock") was on the other side of the lake, too far to travel to everyday to collect data. We did walk around on the frozen lake, though. The ice has beautiful patterns in it. I could spend hours looking at all the different ones.



That day, the weather was very nice, lots of sunshine and a bit cool in the wind. We found a really nice spot to have lunch with a view of Canada Glacier and Lake Frxyell. Lunch typically consisted of bagels, peanut butter, cheese, sandwich meat, Pringles and hot water for cocoa, coffee or apple cider. There were other things too, such as Tang, trail mix, chocolate bars, fig bars, and Mike's favorite - Chips Ahoy!


Jon decided to take one last look around for the base station. He is very quick on the rocks, so he was all over the place in no time. I went to look for the station with him, but we still couldn't find anything fitting the description of it. We had also plugged the coordinates into Ron and Jon's GPS receiver, and it was showing the station to be across the lake, but it hadn't quite sunk in yet that the GPS was telling the truth.


We continued walking towards the edge of Canada Glacier and took an obligatory photo of ourselves in front of the glacier wall. We sure picked a nice campsite!

Going back in time now... Our first day in the Dry Valleys. We were supposed to head to Taylor Valley on November 18, but the weather did not cooperate. It was snowing that day, and because they do not fly on Sundays, we could not get out until November 20. That Monday turned out to be fairly nice with only a little bit of turbulent air in the sound. Once we were in the mouth of Taylor Valley, it was smooth.


After flying around a bit, we landed in a spot where we thought we might like to put the camp. However, after the helicopter unloaded and left to get our next load, we walked around and then up and over a huge moraine. On the other side, we saw incredible views and rocky terrain and even more moraines.


After a bit of discussion, we decided we would be more likely to take the GPR to the moraines on this side of the really big one, so we moved all the gear would could carry over and had the helicopter move the rest after it came with our sling load.

We decided to pitch all our tents on the snow patch - to have less of an impact on the environment. It wasn't too long before a Skua paid us a visit. It didn't bother us at all. It seemed to be watching us, taking note of what we were doing, what kind of stuff we had. It roosted on our generator for a while and then disappeared.


Read more about this day and see pictures here on my website.

Hello everyone. I am back in Colorado now. It's funny that the temperatures here are well below what I experienced in the Dry Valleys where the average temperature was probably around 30 degrees F! It has been an average of about 5 degrees in Fort Collins.

I have been thinking that it would be nice to add some commentary to the 500-something photos I put on my website, so I will gradually be adding more posts and links to updated and improved web pages - so please keep checking back.

Thanks to all my friends and family that commented on my previous posts. The few times I was able to check email while in the Dry Valleys were precious. However, I was the only one in our group that was able to connect, so I felt at times as though I were being a bit greedy. Ron and Jon did go to Lake Fryxell camp to check email and Jon went to F6 camp once, so they did get online.

Well, I better get to work! One more thing - if anyone wants higher resolution versions of any of the images, please email me!