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!