Eleventifact

(This is from a "travelogue" e-mail sent out on April 3, 2008)

Hi All,

Happy Thursnesday Mornternoon!*
I found some cool pictures from my adventure to the top of 1882 the other day. It is so windy there that the windblown sand and ice sandblasts the stone into crazy shapes, called ventifacts (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ventifact). This particular one looks like the head of a crazed elephant, and it had the sun behind it when I spotted it, shining through its eye hole. In the last one I walked around to the other side of it. The view in the background is of our helo landing site and the peak of 1882 and the repeater site there, with the Transantarctic Mountains in back. The red bag is a survival bag-- we are required to bring one along. It contains a couple of sleeping bags, a stove, gas, and a bar of lard to eat if we get really bad off. Luckily it was a very nice day (about 4F, wind about 20mph), so I didn't have to break into the lard bars.

Cheers,

Lee

*Thursday morning here, Wednesday afternoon there.