Today Theo Goda, Ann Hill, Matt Pesce, and I flew on Bald Mountain’s single Otter (A) to floes Golf and Tango. Ann and Theo identified Tango as a possible camp floe on their recon flight the day before. Golf had been previously visited and an ice ball tracker left there, so it was easy to find. Ann and I ran the EM31 over the MY floe and adjacent FY ice (B). Most of the MY floe ranged between a little less than 1.5m and about 3m thick. One section of the floe that was about 250m in diameter was between 2.5m and 3.3m thick consistently. ASL leadership deems this section of the floe suitable for camp as long as the FY runway ice holds up (as well as the MY floe) with the coming windstorm that is supposed to last 2 or 3 days. The METOC team, ASL, and myself will keep an eye on the incoming satellite imagery over the next few days to monitor the situation at Golf. Tango did not look suitable once we were on the ice. The FY ice had about 15cm to 20cm of snow, with ~4cm crust on top. This isn’t a deal breaker really, but since the camp has been delayed ASL doesn’t want to spend the time it would take to make a suitable runway on this ice. Also, the MY/SY ice was pretty rough and a possible camp site would be some ways away from the runway area (C). There were some pretty cool snow features around Tango(D).
