a substantial day ;-)

The traverse today went well... weather was overcast, drizzle or snow, but I got my data. We started off at the drill site, then drove across the crater to Tripod Hill where we had lunch and Pascal took annual photos of mass flow on the facing slope. Then into the Haughton River valley... shades of 1998-99. Two people stuck their ATVs in the mud. Old base camp could be recognized by the rings of rocks left where tents were. Then up to Bruno Escarpment, looking out over the valley... then to Anomaly Hill, where I ran a grid of gravity stations over a 2km x 1 km rectangle covering the known magnetic field anomaly.

Then back to camp... took seven hours total, probably 20 miles. After I arrived, I went in to check email and got a call from the space station (last entry). Then dinner, then a small discussion about future project plans, then watched the evening movie "Apollo 13".

Tomorrow... weather should improve, maybe a long traverse to the west...

( today's photos... )

starting to close out the field season

Looks like a long traverse to the west won't happen this year... the weather forecast has changed, with Resolute now due for rain Wednesday and Thursday, with high winds Tuesday night. This may cause the midweek flights to be delayed a day or two, so I might not get out until Friday or Saturday. It also means that any field work has to pretty much be finished by mid-Tuesday, to fly out late Tuesday or Wednesday for my Thursday flight. If they can even safely get Twin Otters here and back, that is... the Mars Society hab folks left this morning in two flights, buzzing our camp.

So, I'll try to do one more gravity traverse to get some stations on the west side of the crater, and repeat a highly anomalous measurement from Tripod Hill yesterday. If all goes well, I'll be done no later than lunchtime Tuesday.

Otherwise, this is probably my last entry this year from Devon Island, as the satellite dish goes off this afternoon and is disassembled for winter storage... camp is shutting down this week, and everyone is supposed to be out by Friday. I'll try to update whenever I make it to Resolute.

[update - the dish will stay up until tomorrow morning, so I may have access tonight still.]