Chazd's (Charles Dowdell's) News Burps

Today is Sunday again. I got up early and walked up oberservatio hill before 7 AM today. The cross at the top has a great inscription. From Wikipedia: Observation Hill is a large hill (750 ft/230m) adjacent to McMurdo Station in Antarctica and commonly called "Ob Hill" (prononuced Obie). It is frequently climbed in order to get good viewing points across the continent. Regular clear skies give excellent visibility. Robert Falcon Scott's party was found by a search party led by the surgeon, Dr. Edward Atkinson. They were found dead by the members of the base camp, who took their photographic film, scientific specimens, and other materials. They had to leave Scott and his men in their tent, and later parties could not locate the campsite, since that area had been covered in snow. So Scott's party eventually ended up drifting out to sea as part of an iceberg as the ice shelf made its way to the sea. The search party then returned to what is now known as McMurdo an...

The ANITA payload launched the other day. The next payload (BLAST) may launch tomorrow. You can check out ANITA tracking here: http://www.csbf.nasa.gov/map/balloon8/balloon8.htm Looks like we are going to try for Mt. Terror again Monday. It may take weeks to get up there waiting for weather and willing souls. The first picture is an area we have been blasting at to get ready for an addition to the building there. At 4:30 PM almost everyday we get the "kaboom". Blasting is also used to hunt for fossils. The fossil hunters look in very particular strata. Dynamite makes the job practical. The second picture is observation hill here at McMurdo. I will walk up there tommorow for fun. There is a running race up and down "ob" hill on Christmas day. I may participate if my ankle feels up to it.

Today was an exciting day. I seem to have a lot of those here. We flew up to Mt. Terror (12,000 feet) today. We tried to land three times... and it was time to go home. Mt. Terror is named after an early exploring ship. It was not named after any modern-day attribute. We remind ourselves of that fact frequently. My high altitude training comes into play in very practical ways. I learned a lot in that class and other classes in a short amount of time. Me and my co-workers often do the helo flight pre-briefs as a group discussion kind of thing now, each of us sharing and being moderated by the helo techs who really do the briefs. I took about 300 pictures today. I will post some close ups of Mt. Erebus since I got a bunch as we flew by. I went to a great science lecture the other night by Allan Allsworth. He is a very experienced explorer whom I met early in the season. He has been out in the field fossil hunting and just returned to town. He brought the latest fossils from the dry val...

The skua gets a bad rap. This bird is somehow considered to be of poor moral character because it eats penguin chicks and eggs. It is a lot better than what humans do. The skua is really quite amazing. They live 30 to 40 years and of course they are pretty tough birds. They get lighter in color as they get older. There was a skua about 30 feet away from the helo when we took off the other day. I thought for sure he was going to get blown away. Somehow this bird (only very slightly ruffled)stayed on the nest. Today I am off to the top of Mt. Terror. It can get cold up there of course. The weather really needs to be watched. None of the helo pilots like to fly up there. I think they really do like it, but they make it a bigger deal as sort of a self-created drama. Dave Infantine retires from work today from Raymond and before that, IBM. Congratulations Dave.

It was kind of a gray day for being out in the field. They all can't be brilliant. We went up to Cape Bird which is a very large penguin rookery. I didn't get the time I hoped with the penguins since we were having problems with the equipment, but I still got some really nice shots. I took 219 photos and movies today. The penguins are definately fun to watch. They walk around and they look like they have some place to go and others follow only to all turn around and decide there wasn't anything to see there after all. I am told the population is approximately 40,000 birds this year. That's a lot of guano no matter what the breed of bird.

The trip to Cape Bird was cancelled yesterday due to weather (visability). I just checked the helo schedule and we are planning a launch in 2 hrs. Cape Bird has one of the largest Penguin rookeries around. We are setting up some internet access for the scientists today. The picture of the seal was taken the other day at Hutton Cliffs. I picked the photo off the common drive here on station.