Grey, Grey, Grey

First off, to answer some questions that I've gotten from some previous posts:

Kayla: You have to hold your breath so that when you open the evacuated flask and it sucks in 5L of air it doesn't pull in your CO2 laden wind :) Hell, if you're going to sample WAAY up here, put the lab 7km away from the base, and THEN sample 200m away from THAT, makes sense to not screw it up by breathing into the sample :)

Mere: Yes, Kimwipes. I go through more than my fair share of them. Plastic gloves too.

I was just going to put up a quick post about a phenomenon that I experienced for the first time the other day. I've called it a "Grey Out." It's not a blackout, where you can't see due to dark, and it's not a white out, where you can't see due to blowing snow. We were going out to the lab on an overcast day, and with the amount of sun coming through the clouds and the snow colour, everything disappeared. Sure, you can see a building or something, but every drift and mountain was gone. The road to the lab is covered with drifts that you have to slow down to go over, and I couldn't see anything. There was no contrast. I took a picture off the roof of the lab towards the same hills that I've been capturing before for my sunrise shots. I made sure that there was a sampler in the foreground so that you could see that I didn't just take a picture of the inside of a grey bag :) And just to clarify, this shot has the horizon in it!Also, last Sunday we went on a Rec trip to the "Love Shack", an old ice fishing hut an hour and a half away from station. It was a fun BV trip, up and down the hills, and over the lakes. When we finally got there, there was a group of like 9 hares all sitting around eating. They pound a little hole through the concrete-hard snow with their front paws "dog at the beach" style to get down to the grasses. I got lots of good pictures, but while I was taking a video I also captured something that not many people ever see, nonetheless get on film. When the hares are really scared, or trying to run fast, they actually get up on only their two back legs and bounce along like that. I thought people were just joking, but I actually have about 3 seconds of it on film :) I went to see the tracks afterwards, and it's about 7 or 8 feet between the bounces...these hares can move!
Graham