After failing to get it started, they came back for a while to warm up and then departed to decommission Camp Crickett and bring it all back here to be packed, ready for our departure. They reported exceedingly high winds on our side of Patriot Hills and, indeed, looking across the several km between the hills and us, one could see rolling clouds of snow. The wind reached us soon enough and brought blasts of ice crystals to make life miserable again. We worked in this environment, digging out our packing crates and moving them to higher levels so that they are now sitting on the new level established by the last storm. The talk was a good one, of course, but I was struck this time as I have been impressed at other talks we have given, by the rapt attention and great curiosity of the Chilean personnel in this camp.
Questions afterward are many, and discussions often are generated.
This is a great group. After Pascal's talk the wind had mysteriously died again and we actually established Inmarsat contact again with the rest of the world. We have yet to get Nomad back to the landing strip, but Matt, Mike and Sib have hopes of accomplishing that tonight or tomorrow. Pascal had been cutting rocks on a saw he brought with him, and was horrified to discover that a small pebble he had just cut was a meteorite. Well, we'll have to straighten it all out with the Meteorite Working Group when we get back.