So I spent the last two weeks in Antarctica, near the US station of McMurdo. Our camp was at a location called Windless Bight with a beautiful view of the Earth's southernmost active volcano: Mt. Erebus.
Our goal was to drill a hole through the ice shelf, which is about 180 m thick. Here is a picture of all of our equipment as it is being transported out to the field site on two trailers.
Here is how it looked like when it was all set up:
A hole that goes straight to the bottom of the ice into the ocean:
And here is a picture of the profiler that went down the hole. It monitors ocean properties under the ice shelf and communicates to its designers (Tim Stanton standing, and Jim Stockel) at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey via Iridium:
All in all a very nice and successful field season. Finally a parting shot of Mt. Erebus, peacefully puffing away:
