Brimstone Peak

Hey friends,

Here are some shots of my trip to Brimstone Peak. It was by far the best flight I've ever been on in my life. I can't describe how truly awesome it was, but I'll do my best with these pictures. And just so everyone knows, all of the pictures from Antarctica that appear on this blog were taken by other people. I'm hoping my film shots turn out a lot better, but I really need to get a digital camera...

The view from Brimstone Peak. Unfortunately the lighting was not very good the day we were there and the pictures do not show how truly breathtaking the scenery was.

Here is Abel and myself hanging out at the GPS site. There was not a seismic station here, I just went along to help the GPS guys out. It was really easy and they didn't really need my help. I was mostly along for the ride.

Here is me standing next to our mode of transportation, a Bell-212 helicopter or huey. These things are a lot of fun to ride in.

Here is me at my seat in the helicopter. Check out that view!

On the way back we stopped at this sandstone near the fuel cache to play around for a bit. It was really neat, we collected ventifacts (wind eroded rocks) and petrified wood. The petrified wood could be found laying around as logs in situ! I wish I had some better shots of these two things...

On the way home we flew along the edge of the sea ice and spotted numerous whales and penguins. This is a shot of two orcas or killer whales. They are magnificent creatures and a whole lot bigger than the ones you see at Sea World. The ones we saw were roughly the size of a school bus. The water is so clear and blue and green that you could see them just cruising around. And of course they would surface frequently to breath and look for penguins. This was a really cool sight because they would come up vertically and stick their head out of the water and hover and look around for a bit. We also saw a couple of Minke whales and loads of Adelie penguins.