It appears as though there has been a slight change in travel plans for the latter part of this week and although I was very excited about going out to the plateau to find the ITASE traverse crew and help them get closed down for the winter, I'm not at all disappointed to be going to up Mt. Erebus for a week instead.

I'll be going with a team of two others; Burmy (a senior carpenter) and Deborah (works at the Berg Field Center and is a climbing and mountaineering guide off the ice). There are no scientists up there now so we'll be the only ones in the neighborhood and we plan to spend 3 days at the Fang Glacier camp (8,000 feet) to acclimatize and four to five days at the top doing our work. The summit is at 12,442 feet so there it will pretty cold. Apparently this year has not been very windy or stormy, but it has been a cold year for sure. I wouldn't be surprised if we saw some 25 below weather.

We've got some maintenance on the hut to do (inlcuding some serious ice removal) and a few stairs with a landing need to be installed. In our spare time, we'll be able to hike around a bit and even take snowmobiles up to the crater to have a peak at the lava lake. I recommend checking out http://www.ees.nmt.edu/Geop/mevo/mevo.html for some great photos, facts and videos if you're curious.

I feel pretty darn lucky to have been chosen, not many people get to go up there and especially after all the great trips I've somehow found my way onto, I almost feel like this is just too much. But oh well, I'll take whatever comes my way.

~G