More preparations

Today was a day filled with more training and preparations. Kelly and I went to our Dry Valleys Environmental Protection briefing and our Communications briefing and Kelly went to ATV training school while I worked in the lab. We also picked up our radios and camping gear. It was a busy day. It's so great to be here and we are very excited to go to the field on Wednesday.

It must have been a snowy winter because the snowdrifts seems very big. Here is a picture of the outside of the medical clinic. It still surprizes me how much snow we have here. Well it is Antarctica, right? But it is also considered to be a polar desert, which means that evaporation is greater than precipitation. It also means that I keep lip balm around at all times.

Here is another snowdrift outside of one of the buildings. I know that the General Assistants (GA's) must be working very hard to shovel all this snow to keep all of our steps and paths clear enough to get where we need to go. Thanks to the GA's!
It looks as though the "snow drift" contains almost as much volcanic grit and dust as snow. When the winds blow here, it is hard not to eat grit. It gets everywhere. We are living on the flanks of an active volcano, Mt. Erebus. It sits above us, venting away every day. It is not visible from McMurdo Station because we don't have a good vantage point, but it is only about 25 miles away from here.