The Crary Lab

The Crary Lab is the science building at McMurdo Station. This is where I spend much of my time during the day when not outside. At the moment we are still gathering equipment from various locations; we will be going into the field next week. Tomorrow (Friday) and Saturday I will be doing my "deep field shake-down" training - it's an overnight class where we end up camping in the snow as though we were stuck.

The Crary Lab building, with Observation Hill in the background

The front entrance to Crary, with display cabinets full of interesting biological exhibits.

A small detail, but one that is quite interesting, is the doors to the Crary Lab (and to many buildings in Antarctica). They are like industrial freezer doors with huge latches that you can operate while wearing mitts.

The front doors to Crary Lab

The huge door latches. I put a US quarter dollar coin on it for scale; an Australian 20c coin is just a little larger than a quarter.

Lee Welhouse, from University of Wisconsin (who I'm working with for the summer) digging out the equipment shed. Shoveling snow is hard work, so no need for a big parka.