First Friday

Here we are, Friday June 5th.  I have been at Summit for 5 days, away from home for over a week and settling in at 10500 feet.  The past few days have been hectic and exhausting.  The first two nights I was here I didn't sleep all that well.  I felt like I had the minimal amount of sleep necessary to function.  The third night was much better and last night better still, I hope this continues.  The weather has been incredible, highs around 5 F and light winds.  Today in fact I ran around most of the day with my light gloves and ski cap on.  I didn't need my heavy jacket at all.  Everybody is commenting on how warm it is right now.

As of Wednesday, I have been working on my 2nd project, the calibrating, maintenance and repositioning of all the Meteorological equipment for NOAA.  This work is taking me out to the Temporary Atmospheric Watch Observatory, or as we call it TAWO.  It is 0.6 km outside the camp and a nice quiet walk.  I am averaging about 5 km a day right now, going between the Big House, MSF and TAWO.

My work has been going well, frustrating at times, but well.  I managed to get the equipment that is lowest on the tower calibrated today.  It seems silly to say that it took me 10 hours to get three instruments calibrated, but it did.  Tomorrow I will take all of that equipment off the tower and raise them about a meter.  They are too close to the snow surface now and I want them to stay snow free for at least a year.

Since I mentioned the tower, I had my climbing check out yesterday and it didn't go exactly as planned.  I am not as acclimated as I need to be, before climbing towers that is.  While I was up at the 8 meter level, my arms and hands gave out.  I couldn't close my hands and that is not a good thing while you are up in the air like that.  I managed to slowly climb down, but it is something I don't want to happen again.  I probably won't do any more climbing until middle of next week to give myself a chance to get used to the altitude.

I hope all is well with everybody,

Cheers