The D Team

It is HOT here at the moment. The snow is melting. The rivers are
flowing (as they tend to do when it gets warm...) and the clothes are
getting removed more and more as the temperature soars. On the
Wednesday flight that took out Christine, Mike and Danny was a team of 3
highly trained individuals.

This wasn't the A team, as there was only 3 of them and they all wanted
to get on a plane (a joke for the 80's kids out there...) This was the D
team. The Dig Team. Their mission, should they choose to accept it,
was to dig out the depot (mentioned in an earlier post) The hole they
dig will self destruct during the next storm so the clock was ticking.
(That and they were hoping to get back to McMurdo for the new years
weekend for Icestock, drinking, dancing and visits to the Chapel/dorm
lounge/sauna)

On arrival at the site, all evidence of the previous Digging a la G097
had disappeared. The last storm had buried it and the warm temperatures
had set the snow hard. The D Team got straight into it - Solomon, Ken
and Cory dived straight in with shovels and sledge and got to the cave
that afternoon. The next day was the day of what is known in McMurdo as
"hot blocking" - the weather is too warm to cut snow fully clothed so
you take your clothes off, wield your weapon of choice (photo attached
of unnamed dig team "member") and cut & remove snow blocks. The plan
worked and after that day they had 80% done. By 2pm on Day 3 everything
was out. Phew. If only there was a massage therapist on the team. They
spent the afternoon doing runs back to camp with all the stuff and
finished around 7pm before the weather could close the hole again. Phew
and a big fat well done all round.

The sting in the tail though was that after three days of absolutely
gorgeous, sunny, warm, and still weather they were ready to fly back to
town, ready to tell heroic stories of hardship and endeavour and to show
off their new beards to get lucky with the girls in town. But. When
Chris awoke at 4am this morning to give the first weather ob the cloud
had arrived, and it proceeded to get lower and lower until the chance of
a flight was off. Instead of spending NYE in town with all the luxuries
and women and booze, the 3 guys will be spending it with the Twotter
boys, 1/6th of a bottle of Gin, 7 beers and 37 cans of tonic. Watch out
for the next post, "Quinnine Poisoning in the Fosdicks" and a very Happy
New Year to all.

PS The unnamed "member" of the D team in the photo (who has years of
Antarctic Digging Experience) says he has seen many holes in his time,
but nothing this big.