Camp Pull-out From Frxyell

I am a bit behind in my entries, since our Camp Pull-out from Frxyell actually occurred just before the new year, but I realized I have one more video (sorry I didn't take more Jeevan!) and a few more pics from our last day at Frxyell. 

At Frxyell, since the ice cover never completely disappears, we often traveled across the lake ice on four wheelers.  We travel across the moat (where the lake ice melts at the edge of the lake), by a small boat to our four wheeler.  It can be quite an adventure to get across the lake!  Contrary to what I initially thought, the lake ice surface is anything but flat!  Solar irradation, sublimation, refreezing of the ice causes the formation of trenches and piles of ice.  Much of the lake ice is composed of a particular ice known as penitentes.  These long blades of ice form with their long axis generally oriented to point toward the sun.  They make a beautiful tinkling noise when stepped on and sound a little like wind chimes!  You can kinda hear it in the video I took of Heidi walking in circles around me ;-).

We left Frxyell in a whorl wind of packing up labs, tents, and personal gear.  We have so much science equiptment (in addition to our personal gear), it took 3 helicopters to get us and all of our stuff out of camp!  The helo pilot of the last helicopter that came to pick us and our last load of gear up took one look at our giant pile of bags, shook his head, and said, "Wow, you can really tell that your group is all women!"  (We did have Mike with us as well, but we had managed to convince him to paint his fingernails with us for Christmas -- so I think he was including Mike in this assessment!).

 AStar-B2 Helicopter with one of 3 of our giant white boxes taking off with the sling load.

However, with 3 giant white boxes slung under 2 helicopters (2 stacked and then 1 single sling load), and a VERY full Bell 212 helicopter, we managed to pull out from Frxyell -- only forgetting a pair of hiking boots (not mine, I promise!).

Lake Frxyell from inside the Helicopter

Say goodbye to Lake Frxyell Camp!

Beautiful frost-heave pentagons

The frost-heave pentagons form due to the freezing and thawing of the permafrost.  I don't fully understand the actual mechanisms behind the formation of frost-heave wedges since there seems to be several different hypotheses and many important little details.  However, in short these often form in permafrost and are the result of the expansion of water as it freezes in a constrained setting.

The volcano, Mt. Erabus, taken from the Helo as we fly back to McMurdo

Since leaving Frxyell, we have been doing tons of lab work -- trying to process all of our samples, unpack from the field, and repack for our upcoming departure!  Two days after we returned to McMurdo, we headed out to the Cotton Glacier for our second to last field day out at the Cotton Glacier!  It was a blast to do --- I'll get the pics and more posted soon!