HORSE saddled

The traverse went very well... weather held (now it is raining), Pascal performed well in the spacesuit, and Hamilton-Sundstrand provided great support. Sam Burbank was there to film it for National Geographic.

So that covers the suit-geology evaluations for this field season. Yay! Some more gravity stations, a visit to the '98 boreholes and I'm completely done here. If I left tomorrow, I'd still consider the trip a success.

Thanks to those folks who chatted tonight... I've been lonely, and that helped greatly.

heading out for unvisited parts

Weather has improved -- rain has stopped -- and four of us are about to head out to the area of the western magnetic anomaly, to the west. It looks relatively flat on airphotos, but the route and site are unexplored. It should be fun -- we're taking the Humvee with an ATV. Back by late today if it goes well, tomorrow otherwise...

Some photos from yesterday, quickly:



at the end of yesterday's test, and for mactavish:



Our camp dog ;-)

Back too soon

Well, that scraped.

We went out, got about a third of the way there, then were stopped by a "medical emergency"... it seems that one of the student assistants was on anti-anxiety medications, but hadn't been taking them. She had a panic attack, rushed outside and fell down or fainted. She then took her meds... my group of four happened to have Jeff Jones with us, the only MD in camp. He consulted with the folks with her, with the nurse in Resolute who had treated her previously, and advised rest, familiar faces, and taking her stuff.

And we were going to continue, problem resolved.... but it wasn't. It became symbolic ("why haven't you returned to camp already? We have a medical problem here!") and emotional. The two leads back in camp became agitated, even emotional. We contemplated calling Polar Shelf for a medevac flight... if the student was *that* bad off, she needed to be in a place with facilities.

We stood there beside a beautiful, unnamed river, arguing over radio and satphone with camp for three hours. We could have probably been to our objective and been on the way home in that time. Driving back, finally, only took 40 minutes (!). I got two more gravity stations, before the so-called emergency happened. Once again, my plans and goals are thwarted by someone else's mental health issues and lack of self-care... sigh.

Problem is IMO that with John Schutt gone to Greenland, once Pascal leaves camp, there's no one with operations experience left to run the camp. Even today's minor issue flustered Steve and Charlie, neither of whom have a desire or inclination to run the camp. Pascal needs a sergeant, a competent operations person or camp manager.