The sea ice conditions were good enough to allow all of our heavy equipment to be offloaded from the S.A. Agulhas II. Photo: Jon Harbor

The ice shelf surface is about 40m above the ship’s deck. Photo: Jon Harbor

Two of the living modules are now on the ice. Photo: Jon Harbor

The snowmobiles and living modules. Photo: Jon Harbor

The logistics team is unpacking the equipment, testing it, and getting everything ready for us to be able to travel and camp safely on the ice. Photo: Jon Harbor

Today the sea ice conditions were good enough to allow all of our heavy equipment to be offloaded from the S.A. Agulhas II to the ice shelf. The ice shelf surface is about 40m above the ship’s deck, so everything has to be lifted up by crane. Our logistics team is unpacking the equipment, testing it, and getting everything ready for us to be able to travel and camp safely on the ice. Our next step is to travel over the ice shelf to the edge of the ice sheet, and then on to SANAE (the South African research station).

On the 24th we had our first helicopter-based reconnaissance of nunataks (mountains that stick up through the ice sheet) in the northern part of our field area. We are excited about visiting some of these sites we saw to take samples in the near future.