A second, yet-fiercer wind storm battered camp over the past two days. Our Green House berthing was completely captured by the dunes, and we climbed in and out of the building through a roof hatch. Our living quarters started to seem like a rabbit warren: we live in an underground network of once-separate buildings, now interconnected by low, narrow hallways and accessed through a hole in the roof.
Under today's bright skies, we dug out from under the snow. The heavy equipment was beset by some major drifts--really pretty wind-sculpted forms, all packed in hard against the equipment. Shovels in hand, we spent the first hours of the day getting these machines free. Having worked pretty hard to get this done, it felt great to look out all afternoon and watch Guy and Paul moving masses of snow in the big D6 dozer we had liberated.
Though one of the normal Green House entrances is now free, the rest of our berthing is still deeply drifted in. The buried windows glow with the strange layered textures of the wind-blown snow. The light entering the dark chamber of our balloon-preparation lab is particularly captivating.
