Day 80, January 12, 2013 -- Leaving on a turboprop plane

This morning, Kyle, Kevin, Kate, and Franky departed McMurdo for their respective homes. Actually, they were on two different LC-130 flights; one left early and one left this afternoon after some sort of weather delay. Bon voyage!

There were a few things that happened yesterday that I forgot to mention. The first is that BLAST has come back around and terminated their flight. They have landed on the ice shelf near the South Pole Traverse line (the tractor 'highway' used to get supplies [mostly fuel] to the Pole from McMurdo). Elio, the only remaining BLAST-er left, will be starting recovery operations with CSBF on Monday.

Second, last night Hannes, a former EBEX grad student who is now working at NIST, came in to McMurdo on his way to the Pole to work on the South Pole Telescope. We had been expecting his arrival but hadn't gotten any word from him; I randomly ran into him as I was heading back to bed and we stayed up and hung out for a while. We ended up talking a lot at lunch today while he waited to see if his flight to Pole (which was scheduled for the morning but had been delayed) would actually go out today or would be cancelled. It was cancelled in the end, so he's going to stick around at least until Monday.

Aside from that, most of today has consisted of sitting around and talking, so no pictures.