Patriot Hills

At long last, some pictures from Patriot Hills! More coming soon.

Our mode of transportation to and from the Patriot Hills was an LC-130 Hercules. It's equiped with skis that allow it to land it land in the deep field. The skis are proprietary technology and is what allows the US and no other countries to have a major presence in the interior of the continent.

Inside the air frame. It's pretty cramped inside with all of our equipment. Note that the seats are merely cargo nets strapped to the walls of the plane. Beats the heck out of flying commercial!

Here's a shot of our twin otter at the Patriot Hills camp. This is the air frame we used to get to our station sites from the camp. It can land in some pretty tight spaces. Our pilot, Jim, was a pro and getting in and out of some very tricky sites. At one place we had to land, slow our momentum so we didn't crash into an escarpment, then take off and land again on some blue ice, then taxi over to the edge of another escarpment where we installed our seismic station.

This is a shot of our science tent where we worked on prepping the equipment to go to the field. This type of tent is called a weather haven.

Here are some shots of the galley where we ate all of our meals. The cooks were incredible. We ate sushi, currys, steak, chili, pasta, and all kinds of good stuff. All of the food came from Chile.

Audrey and myself hauling some equipment to the science tent.

Here are some shots of the scenery from camp. It was a truly beautiful and majestic place.

The science tent.

Some more shots from camp. I really like these because you get a sense of the blowing snow and the high winds.

These little tents are called clam shells. This is were we slept when we weren't working. They were pretty nice. There were mattresses and a small table inside and just enough room to stand up and change your clothes.