Day 11 in Antarctica

December 7, 2013
Snow!  We had flurries all afternoon.  It was amazingly beautiful.

We also had an amazing thing happen: The Onyx River started flowing.  The Onyx is the largest river on the continent of Antarctica, and it ends in Lake Vanda, right next to our camp.  It "usually" remains frozen until late December, but it started flowing on a cold snowy day, early this year.  It is true that the sun was shining up valley, so snow and ice were probably melting there.
The Onyx River - the largest river in Antarctica.  It's really only a babbling brook...
The Onyx River flowing into Lake Vanda past our camp and the Vanda huts.  The stick in the water is part of a system to measure the river flow.
In the morning, we cleared out some of our holes in the ice to take video of the lake floor.  Ian did his third dive, retrieving the thermisters so we could see if they were working.  Anne and I talked about sampling protocols for genomics, lipids, and photographs.  Everyone worked on data processing.  Devin worked on his DTS data, trying to figure out the best sampling protocol (see day 5).
Devin, struggling with data next to our diesel heater.
Devin, with a deeper understanding a couple of hours later.
In the afternoon, I worked on the dive tracker some more, doing some careful experiments walking in a square around the science tent.  I concluded it is likely working, although the data are not interpretable by me.  Without e-mail and with limited satellite phone use, we couldn't contact the students who made it to see if the data made sense.  We decided to use it just in case.

We fell asleep the sound of a gurgling stream, a sound that became very familiar in a pleasant way.

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