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First UAV Flight in East Antarctica

By Zoe Courville · September 25, 2009 · comments 1 comment
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE-- Andreas Tollefsen of Norut (Northern Research Institute) in Norway, was in charge of flying the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) we had along with us on the traverse. The UAV carried a payload of...
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Visitors on the Antarctic Plateau

By Zoe Courville · September 16, 2009 · comments 1 comment
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE-- In the middle of our traverse, we had the rather surreal experience of being visited by a French film crew making a documentary about research work in Antarctica. The crew flew in on a Basler...
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Meet Ole, Our Doctor

By Zoe Courville · September 14, 2009 · comments No comments yet
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE-- Our traverse doctor, Ole Tveiten, luckily did not have much to do as a doctor, so he was put to work logging the cores, measuring and weighing them...
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Meet Lou, Our Driller

By Zoe Courville · September 11, 2009 · comments No comments yet
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE-- Lou is our amazing driller for the traverse. Luckily for us, she is one of the best drillers in the business, having worked both in Greenland and Antarctica...
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Meet Svein, Our Mechanic

By Zoe Courville · September 9, 2009 · comments No comments yet
HANOVER, NEW HAMPSHIRE-- On a 4 month trip across Antarctica with 12 people, everyone has a pretty crucial job to perform. But some of us are more essential...
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The Stuck Drill Story

By Zoe Courville · February 6, 2009 · comments 10 comments
RECOVERY LAKES, ANTARCTICA-- Leaving site 5! Today we are finally on the move again, after a prolonged stay at our science stop at site 5 in the middle of the Recovery Lakes area. We were delayed after our ice core drill was stuck 90m down in the hole Lou was drilling...
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Devil Snow

By Zoe Courville · February 4, 2009 · comments 3 comments
RECOVERY LAKES, ANTARCTICA-- We've spent the last 3 weeks, the majority of our science days, in a region known as Recovery Lakes, or the Lake District as we affectionately call it. This system of several lakes, recently discovered, are subglacial-- that is, they are below...
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Pits

By Zoe Courville · February 2, 2009 · comments 1 comment
RECOVERY LAKES, ANTARCTICA-- The last month has been a blur of flying snow from my shovel and endless white vistas seen from the windscreen of Jack, the finicky TL6 Berco I take turns driving. Even now, as Ole, our traverse doctor, drives Jack, I am typing in the back seat...
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Ripple in Still Water…

By Zoe Courville · January 30, 2009 · comments No comments yet
RECOVERY LAKE ‘B’, ANTARCTICA– We are currently camped out in the Recovery Lakes region, and one of the main features of the snow surface is that it is flat, flat, flat...
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It’s the Snow, Stupid!

By Zoe Courville · January 26, 2009 · comments No comments yet
RECOVERY LAKE 'B', ANTARCTICA-- It's the snow, stupid! …that determines many factors for this traverse, that is. For instance, the changing snow surface impacts our fuel consumption quite a bit. In softer snow, the four vehicles use much more fuel...
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