jay | 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...

Looking back, here's our traverse lined up... Pascal was in front of me.

Mike McCluskey, a flight surgeon from JSC and a newbie to ATVs, got stuck in the mud in the Haughton River valley... lesson is that in mud, (a) go fast, before you sink, and (b) don't drive in someone's ruts if they're already struggling... it took two ATVs to pull it out with ropes.

Most of the gravity stations around Anomaly Hill were gentle slopes devoid of much except scattered rocks, like this one. Not scenic, but the data will help define the "signature" of the crater.

The middle of the conference call between our Arctic camp and the space station... as an amusing side note, notice the astronaut pen next to the phone (a past gift to me from

dawnd, I brought it here).