You may have noticed there was no email or web postings for the entire time at Beardmore and Afies Elbow. The system tey were going to use would have given us a few hours of conectivity each day. Unfortunately, they used west longitude instead of east when planning things and so did not take into account the mountains that blocked the camp from theh low satellite orbit.
After we left McMurdo for Beardmore we spent one night there and then got put in to Alfie's Elbow locality by Twin Otter. This place is at about 85 south and 8,600 feet altitude. We were able to labd within 100 feet of the outcrop. When we landed it was about -30 with a slight breeze. By the following day it had begun to warm up, so we managed to collect without our coats for much of the time. We really had good weather. We collected 16 boxes of fossils and left after five days.
We knew there would be some down time at Beardmore since the helos were not due until Dec. 1 We managed to have Thanksgiving with the camp staff and the one other group in camp at the time. Quite nice - traditional turkey dinner with all the fixings. This was followed by a couple of days of condition 1 weather at McMurdo (zero visibility at ground level, strong winds, stay in the building, all aircraft grounded), so the helos were delayed by three days. We got in one good day at Skaar Ridge, but then one of the helos had a hard landing (aka crashed) on top of Mt. Falla. This spooked the pilots and we lost more time. We finally did get some nice weather and collecetd at the base of Mt. Falla and at Fremow Peak. All three of these localities were for silicified peat. We got a lot.
More later.