Geology Reference
In-Depth Information
Next came graduate students in meteoritics or allied
fields, and if there still was any room he would consider
specialists who could contribute to the well-being of the
field teams: first aid, communications, snowmobile main-
tenance, and such. When I learned about his list, I was
glad to note that I would have fitted into his Category 2,
even without a recommendation from Mort Turner.
In 1978, I had been invited to serve as a visiting pro-
fessor for the fall semester at Arizona State University in
Tempe. Both my husband and I were Arizonans by
preference, if not by birth, so we found a comfortable
motel near the campus and Tom led me through a fitness
program for going to Antarctica. It began by running
together several times around the university track early
each morning and then performing exercises for improving
my balance. To our delight, we soon found that I was
sharing the office of Dr. Robert S. Dietz, in his absence,
with Dr. James F. Hays of Harvard, who often had gone
running with Tom and had led both of us on birding expe-
ditions. Hays is a master birder, so we sometimes had late
afternoon forays into the desert followed by dinners
with Jim and his wife, Diane, at the French cafeteria Le
Café Cazino in Phoenix. (I wrote to the manager from
Antarctica urging him to open a branch in Harvard
Square. He responded with thanks, but without a word
about expanding his restaurant chain.)
In Tempe, I took the opportunity to examine meteor-
ites in the new Center for Meteorite Studies. And I
searched through the archives of the Meteoritical Society
that were stored in file cabinets in the basement. I found
interesting old letters discussing the need for a society
devoted to meteorite research.
In Christchurch a young marine biologist named Susan
Patla and I quickly discovered our common interest in
birding, so we explored the incredibly beautiful botanical
garden. Then we hired a taxi to take us birding in the
countryside and along the shore. The driver, who owned
her vehicle, was so pleased by such a mission that she
charged us very little.
When the time came to leave, we assembled our
Antarctic clothing at the CDC and took off for McMurdo.
Shortly after we arrived there, Bill Cassidy came in from
the Darwin Camp and arranged for Dean Clauter and me
to replace him there while he set off in a helicopter for the
Allan Hills. Counting Cassidy, there were seven active
participants in three major ANSMET projects during
that season. The projects were (l) the design and erection
of a geodetic network across the meteorite-rich portion
of the Allan Hills Main Icefield, (2) meteorite searches
from the Darwin camp near the head of the Darwin
Glacier, and (3) searches for more meteorite concentra-
tions in the Allan Hills.
1.9.1. The Geodetic Network at the Allan Hills
John Annexstad of the Johnson Space Center in
Houston, who had wintered over in Antarctica during the
International Geophysical Year of 1957-1958, took the
responsibility for laying out a geodetic network across the
meteorite concentration on the Allan Hills Main Icefield.
He was joined by Minoru Funaki and Fumihiko Nishio,
both of the National Institute for Polar Research in
Tokyo. They set up their camp at the Allan Hills on 7
December and stayed there for 26 days, through one
4-day blizzard and several other storms that kept them
tent bound. Their net consisted of 20 stations stretching
westward across the icefield for 15 kilometers. They
anchored Stations 1 and 2 to the bedrock of the Allan
Hills. For the rest, they bored auger holes 50 to 100 cm
deep into the ice. They filled the holes with bamboo or
aluminum flag poles and established the position of each
station by means of a Wild-2 theodolite (Figure 1.5).
Their plan was to come back in future years and remea-
sure the station locations to determine the direction and
rates of ice motion and ablation. While they were con-
structing the network, the three of them picked up 103
meteorites, which they added to the season's collections.
1.9. ANSMET SEASON III: 1978-1979
When the semester ended, Tom and I drove to San
Diego and took a birding cruise to San Clemente Island.
Then, on to Port Hueneme to catch my cargo plane for
the flight to Christchurch. Dean Clauter, one of Cassidy's
students, boarded the plane too, as did three graduate
students from Tempe, bound for a different project. I
found the flight to be much more comfortable than the
one Cassidy had described. There was a padded pallet of
cargo at center front of the cabin, with seats filling the
rest of the floor. The five of us rushed for the middle of
the front row of seats where we could rest our feet on the
pallet. Shortly before takeoff, it was announced that due
to the nature of the cargo there would be no smoking on
the flight. That was wonderful news to us! It would be a
long trip with the same box lunches and two refueling
stops that Cassidy reported: at Honolulu and Pago-Pago.
I had been to Honolulu before, and have been there since,
but that was the only stroll of my lifetime under the
tropical trees at Pago-Pago.
1.9.2. The Darwin Camp
At the beginning of the season, Cassidy and Kazuyuki
Shiraishi of the National Institute of Polar Research in
Japan went to a temporary camp the NSF had erected at
the head of the Darwin Glacier for use by several pro-
jects. The camp consisted of Jamesway huts linked
together for sleeping, dining, working space, laundry,
