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Some camp notes
As a kind of field wrap-up, here are some notes and photos regarding day-to-day life at the Haughton-Mars Project camp...
Beginning with my workspace in the white tent (not the webcam-equipped area ;). I spend lots of time here, particularly in bad weather. It is unheated so my fingers get cold. At least I don't need ice in my drinks...
Note the coiled temperature probes, the pieces of gear, the various bottles that past tent occupants have bequeathed...
Then there's "my" ATV, actually one that my project bought and shipped 2 years ago for our exclusive use (we kept losing out in the competition for the common pool of ATVs). It has NASA plates... which looks a bit funny in the wilderness. But it's my day-to-day means of transportation, my trusted steed ;-).
Note that in this picture, given my imminent departure it is now being used to anchor a tent against high winds...
My birthday journal last week showed the mess tent... outside of it is our shower and washroom:
The shower (right booth) is a hose nozzle through the wooden booth, which gets some warm water from the kitchen heater. For a few minutes at a time... The washroom is the booth on the left, consisting of a plastic basin sitting on a counter with two faucets (hot and cold). The basin is then taken out and emptied into the open grey-water sump, shown on the right. Kitchen and shower drains go there, too.
"black water" stuff is treated differently... there are two tents, each with 10 gal plastic paint buckets with toilet seats. One places a trash bag in the bucket, attends to bodily functions, then carefully ties and seals the bag before placing it in the center box (between the tents) for later collection and incineration. The ashes are bagged and hauled back to Resolute. The 55 gal. drum with a funnel is for urine collection...one stands up on the cooler, aims, and hopes that the wind doesn't gust in an unexpected direction. Standing on a pedestal in the open to handle that function isn't recommended for those with bashful kidneys.
Over on the next hill, individuals set up their own tents for sleeping and storing personal gear. I have a new orange pyramidal tent, this year:
dusted with snow this morning. Inside, it's spacious -- enough to put in a cot and still be able to sit up. I can stand up inside if I bend my head.
Everything was pushed under my cot yesterday during heavy rains because of the unsealed-seams problem -- I then draped a tarp over the cot. Note the copy of Harry Potter, wshich I've been reading every night before falling asleep.
So, those are the day-to-day sights, when I'm not on windswept peaks or running spacesuited tests... sometimes *this* seems like the "real world", and the culture of media and lots of people and noise and money and meetings all seems like some fanciful imagining.
Beginning with my workspace in the white tent (not the webcam-equipped area ;). I spend lots of time here, particularly in bad weather. It is unheated so my fingers get cold. At least I don't need ice in my drinks...
Note the coiled temperature probes, the pieces of gear, the various bottles that past tent occupants have bequeathed...
Then there's "my" ATV, actually one that my project bought and shipped 2 years ago for our exclusive use (we kept losing out in the competition for the common pool of ATVs). It has NASA plates... which looks a bit funny in the wilderness. But it's my day-to-day means of transportation, my trusted steed ;-).
Note that in this picture, given my imminent departure it is now being used to anchor a tent against high winds...
My birthday journal last week showed the mess tent... outside of it is our shower and washroom:
The shower (right booth) is a hose nozzle through the wooden booth, which gets some warm water from the kitchen heater. For a few minutes at a time... The washroom is the booth on the left, consisting of a plastic basin sitting on a counter with two faucets (hot and cold). The basin is then taken out and emptied into the open grey-water sump, shown on the right. Kitchen and shower drains go there, too.
"black water" stuff is treated differently... there are two tents, each with 10 gal plastic paint buckets with toilet seats. One places a trash bag in the bucket, attends to bodily functions, then carefully ties and seals the bag before placing it in the center box (between the tents) for later collection and incineration. The ashes are bagged and hauled back to Resolute. The 55 gal. drum with a funnel is for urine collection...one stands up on the cooler, aims, and hopes that the wind doesn't gust in an unexpected direction. Standing on a pedestal in the open to handle that function isn't recommended for those with bashful kidneys.
Over on the next hill, individuals set up their own tents for sleeping and storing personal gear. I have a new orange pyramidal tent, this year:
dusted with snow this morning. Inside, it's spacious -- enough to put in a cot and still be able to sit up. I can stand up inside if I bend my head.
Everything was pushed under my cot yesterday during heavy rains because of the unsealed-seams problem -- I then draped a tarp over the cot. Note the copy of Harry Potter, wshich I've been reading every night before falling asleep.
So, those are the day-to-day sights, when I'm not on windswept peaks or running spacesuited tests... sometimes *this* seems like the "real world", and the culture of media and lots of people and noise and money and meetings all seems like some fanciful imagining.