Eight years ago today, we reopened camp at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica. That season, a NZ-led
team recovered a 764 meter long ice core to bedrock.
What are we looking at in this satellite image?

What are we looking at in this satellite image?


What you see at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica 1) Large living tents and long, partly buried drill trench (with flags on top)
What you see at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica 2) Personal mountain tents for sleeping. Bonus picture: what I look(ed) like after several months in the field... sunburnt, fuzzy, gross.
What you see at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica 3) ELEPHANTS!
... Seriously, we overwinter cargo on top of four empty fuel drums... looks like an elephant; you can see snowdrifts that accumulated overwinter.

What you see at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica 4) Sastrugi. The uneven "dunes" of snow that cover much of the Antarctic surface, centimeters to several meters high.
What you see at Roosevelt Island, #Antarctica 5) airplane ski tracks. The Basler aircraft cut deep troughs when they land, and circles are from taxiing before takeoff.
6) As is the fun end of any #Antarctic project, we had to dig all this stuff out and get it home in the end. Here's digging out a drill trench that is mostly buried.
End: Ideally, in the end, all that we leave at an #Antarctic ice core drill site is a borehole, cased and covered for future temperature measurements.