On Saturday, myself, Liz, Jill, and Glenn volunteered to go off-station via snowmobiles by 20 km to measure snow stake lenghths and angles. The snow stakes are placed every .5 km away from the station on 6 different lines. We were doing LIne B.
The purpose of the project is to characterize snow accumulation near the Pole. Since the stakes are spread out over a wide area, the data gives a better statistical picture of snow accumulation than if measurements were only taken near the station itself (structures and activity cause unnatural drifting and mess up the measurements).
The project is not actually funded anymore, and hasn't been for at least a couple years. Special permission had to be gained from the NSF to do these runs, and for most projects this would be too much trouble to go through, but in this case the South Pole Science Support and Meteorology think it's an interesting project. It's also a great project to get non-science crew directly involved in some science.
Driving the snowmobile out over the sea of snow and ice was lots of fun. We were following the line on a perpendicular route to the way the snow blows. This forced us to go a little slower as we were riding over the sustrugis (snow drifts) as if they were waves. The other best part of the day was that we got far enough out to not see the station anymore. It was just us and Antarctica. Also, I saw the moon for the first time in months as it's now hanging out over the horizon with the sun.
Click here for some photos
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