Summit - First Day

Well, here we are at Summit Camp - at the summit of the Greenland Ice Cap (see the following website for more information http://www.summitcamp.org). It is a high altitude camp, physical altitude of just over 10,500 feet. The physiological altitude bounces as high as 11,000 feet if a good strong low comes over. There is 24 hour a day sunlight now, so we won't get to see the night time sky again until we head south in June.

I will answer some of the questions I have been getting from everybody:

1) How am I doing? I am doing ok, I felt the altitude sickness headache and decrease in appetite yesterday afternoon, but after 4 bottles of water, 8 advil and a good night sleep, I feel much better today.

2) How is the tent? It is a two layer tent called an Arctic Oven. I can say that it is a good tent, it kept me 30-40 deg warmer than it was outside. That means it was above 0 F in my tent. Good for sleeping and not good for electronics or drinks. When I got up this morning my water bottle was frozen solid.

3) How is the weather? Well, when we got here it was -15 F with wind chill of -37 F. It has been up and down since then. Today is warmer with -5 F temps and 10 knot winds. We have some clouds and some weather coming towards us with colder temps and high winds. It should be fun in the near future around here.

4) How do you sleep if the sun is up all the time? First of all the tent I am sleeping in is not dark inside. So if I want to sleep, I will be putting something over my head to make it dark. As long as I have some cold air to breathe, I will be fine. I just don't want to wake up in the middle of the night and see the bright sunshine, that just makes it harder for me to get back to sleep.

We did get started on our new building today. We had the help of the station personnel in putting in the window for our laser. It was a lot of work, but it is in. We might have the building ready to occupy in the next day or so. Then the real work starts.

I'll write more later.

Cheers.