Arrived at Summit!

Well, there you have it. The summit flight this morning went off without a hitch. We carried a massive triple-length pallet onboard, stacked with construction materials for the camp, with my Green Logging Box perched jauntily on top. We also carried 7 additional passengers who were on a "turnaround" flight, folks who work with the program in different roles who would get a tour of camp and then take the same flight back to Kangerlussuaq.

Once in camp, after greeting old friends and being introduced to some new faces, I started parsing my cargo into the various locations it needed to be: computer and tools in my lab, sleeping bag and clothes in the tent, toiletries in the Bighouse. I've been hydrating to help me acclimatize- although the actual elevation here is around 10,000 feet, the thinning of the atmosphere near the poles makes the altitude feel more like 13,000.

The best surprise of the day was to see the Pod. This is a new sled/portable survival hut which was brought in for the winter crew to take on the monthly 10 km traverse to measure snow accumulation and surface elevation:



Even better for me, we'll be able to mount GPS equipment on the Pod, which means that the science techs will only have to haul one sled with them on the traverse, and better still, I don't have to build a custom sled to carry the GPS, a task which I'd given myself several months ago. One item almost checked off my list already, and I haven't even been here a full day yet!