Yes, more logistics and many opinions. But it’s important. All heads must contribute so that every eventuality is covered. The results are clear priorities on what is to go on flight 1, 2 and 3.
Safety first of course; heart-starter, oxygen and satellite phones are some of the items brought along on the first flight.

More work: Svein and Kjetil fires up the new diesel heater and we were able to get hold of a nice hot-air hose for it! This is great, now we can direct the heat much better when thawing up the vehicles. Good things! Me, I keep going through the TL6 parts, splitting up and removing another pallet while locating a couple more items needed by the first group going out.

Good news:
In total, the group has now removed wrapping and crates worth several hundred pounds, which is good! We have had this little shadow hanging over us since details on air-transport started reaching us.

The needle’s eye we have to pass through is cargo capacity of the airplane.
Everything we do down here is for science, but for the traverse as a whole to get moving again the vehicle repairs must come first. The nitty-gritty work the last couple of weeks; removing wrapping, re-packing, calculating fuel, discussions about priority vs. needs. It is all done in an effort to keep science onboard at Camp winter. And it will be!

These 3 flights with the Twin-Otter before the Basler flights have actually increased our total capacity. That in addition to our weight-savings did the trick, but with close margin.
There was still equipment we really wanted to bring along, not for comfort, but because of potential problems.

Anyway, in the evening Tom brings some good news. Increased capacity on both twin-Otter and Basler! Now we have the science with us AND we won’t go out there feeling we left equipment that might save the day, a very good end to this day!

The needle’s eye we have to pass through is cargo capacity of the airplane. Photo: Zoe Courville