Beaver Lake, Thursday, 3rd January 2002

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After a fitful couple of hours nap it was time to check if the DSCC clicked over and called at the scheduled time of 1130hrs local. By this time the katabatics had picked up to 30 knots or so, with gusts blowing drifts of fine snow right at the warm box like a sand blasting gun. The DSCC booted but the phone connected only temporarily, leading me to question the modem settings. I called Herb at RSES with some difficulty due to the highly inclement weather and asked him whether there was any activity on the RSES laptop, the other end of the data line for Beaver Lake GPS data. There had been no calls from here. I discovered that all the modem settings had been reset for another modem and I reconfigured PCAnywhere to the correct settings and tried another time. Eventually it did try calling but the line was shocking with lots of static. The sun was almost in line with the IOR satellite so I told Herb I would run the override again later when the sun was further west. Besides the wind conditions were shocking at the moment and I was seriously concerned that snow drift would get inside the electronics of the cardframe. I waited a few hours in the tent, checking other configurations and tried later in the evening and the transfer seemed to work at last. Several times during the day, swarms of snow petrels would flit by on their way to Pagodroma gorge no doubt. It wouldn't surprise me if they were using the radome as some sort of landmark. An interesting thought, birds navigating by GPS ! Tom and I packed up in the evening, and headed back to camp, feeling a little jaded after the day's work. We noticed a few old quad tracks on the ledge above the gorge. Arrived back at 1200 midnight, and crashed out.

Beaver Lake (BVLK) Technical Inspection

Beaver Lake, Base Camp S 70°48'11" E 68°10'46"

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