Wright Valley

I had a great day in the field with Kelly. We went to the lower Wright Valley and I was her field assistant for the day. Now that Kelly is looking for wind deposited sediments around the dry valleys, I am training my eye to look for these features. We spent a couple of hours hiking around to look for good sample locations. We saw this hillside covered with sand and hiked over to it. The grains were pretty big sand size particles, but they seemed to be rounded like little ball bearings. Kelly walked up the slope to sample and I waited at the bottom of the hill so that I would not disturb the slope any more than necessary. Kelly looks like just a speck in the picture.

Looking back down the hill, the sand looked like snakes moving across the surface. It was only blowing about 10 knots while we were there, so there was not much movement of material.

We also came across a large ventifact that had collected sand inside, so Kelly sampled the sand there too.
The dry valleys are windy and there are signs of wind everywhere. This box belongs to the LTER stream team and it houses the equipment used to measure flow at the stream gauge on the Onyx River. I noticed that all of the paint on the west side of the box had been sand-blasted away. The other sides of the box looked almost freshly painted. The biggest wind storms in the dry valleys come from the west, although most of the sand features that we found appear to be deposited from the east.

When we arrived, we landed near the Onyx River at the helicopter landing site that the stream team uses when they visit the site. So after we finished our work, we waited by the river for the helicopter to come and pick us up. The Onyx River is the longest river in Antarctica and it flows away from the coast and drains into Lake Vanda. It is not very big compared to rivers at home, but it was flowing pretty well that day. It was still a few degrees below freezing, so I'm sure the flow will pick up as the sun gets higher in the sky and it warms up over the next couple of weeks. The water looked fresh and clear, but I didn't have a chance to drink it.