Antarctic Trip #2!

Enjoy my packing list, pictures from the week of vacation I took before heading out, and a brief description of the project I'm supporting.

I am all prepared for my second trip down to the ice. I'm feeling much more relaxed than I was last year because I've done it before and know what to expect. Also, there's no quarantine like there was last season! Instead of nearly 3 weeks of quarantine in the US and New Zealand, I'm supposed to have a mere 2 days in Christchurch before flying down to McMurdo Station.

I made a packing list last year and kept detailed notes about what I did and didn't use, so I combined that into a high-quality (in my opinion) packing list for this season. My bags definitely aren't as full as they were last year, and I feel very prepared. In case you (a future reader) are jetting off on your own Antarctic adventure soon, or if you're just curious, you can see my packing list here. This is what I'm bringing for 3.5 months away from home, with a few days in New Zealand summertime, a few weeks at McMurdo, and (a planned) 2 months in the deep field (with no shower -- hence the baby wipes).

Last week, I took a few days of vacation before I left to hang out with Matt and finish packing -- I'm so glad I did because I feel much less stressed. We carved pumpkins, went hiking, and decorated for Christmas (yes, I am aware that it's not even Halloween, but there's only so much festivity I'll be able to fit in my tent).

It's a pumpkin with a cowboy hat.

View of Ladron peak while hiking at Sevilleta Wildlife Refuge.

A giant inflatable Santa. I am not sure if I love it or if I'm scared.

Matt made me many fantastic omelets for breakfast last week.

Speaking of tents... this season, I'll be supporting the TIME (Thwaites Interdisciplinary Margin Evolution) project. The plan is to camp out on the Thwaites Glacier for 2 months, installing geophones and performing active source surveys to study the shear margin. That sentence was a mouthful, so let's break it down:

• Thwaites Glacier = The Glacier. If you have heard about a glacier melting in Antarctica in the news, the story was probably about Thwaites. It's a large glacier on the west coast of Antarctica that is rapidly melting and will lead to significant sea level rise once it does melt.
  
• Geophone = small, simple seismometer. Think of broadband seismometers (like I installed last year) as giving high quality, high resolution images. Geophones give low-res images (they might miss some tiny details), but they are much easier to install. We are planning on installing 1000 of them on Thwaites.
• Active source survey = creating our own "earthquakes". In passive source experiments, like the sensors I worked with on Erebus last season, you install a seismometer and wait for an earthquake to show up and tell you about what's under the ground. In active source, you create your own signals. This can be hitting the ground really hard with a large hammer (yes, people do that and it is good science), or in our case, using small amounts of explosives. No, we are not blowing up the glacier! We are using small amounts of explosives that we set in different areas to get a better idea of the layers of ice in the glacier.
• Shear margin = separates fast-flowing ice from slow-flowing ice on a glacier. The way that ice moves at a shear margin has a major impact on how stable the glacier will be in the future.

You'll read more about the science throughout the season, and about the other cool science groups I meet in McMurdo. I am super excited! Fingers crossed I actually make it to the deep field this year!!