The Whole Wide World

After the excitement of finding my missing sock on Friday morning, I bundled back up and headed back over to the Berg Field Center (BFC) at the proper meetup time. I’m not going to lie, I ventured across town with much more enthusiasm the second time around, the found lost sock was seriously a BFD.

This trip was originally presented as a morale trip otherwise known as a boondoggle down here. It definitely boosted my morale, but I have a hard time calling it a boondoggle. It’s a trip that the BFC worker bees have to make…for work and as the old saying goes, many hands make light work. All I am saying is that historically, summer boondoggles have been known to include a trip in a helicopter. I am not complaining, so don’t get me wrong. It was definitely a treat to get out of town via a Hagglund. I didn’t even touch a shovel either, other than for a photo. I also was lucky enough to ride shotgun in the Hagglund for the entire journey with boss bish, Pepper, behind the wheel of the tracked ice mobile.

We stopped at all three emergency shelters (apples) to dig out any snow accumulation near the doors and to remove any snow that had blown inside. Since I managed to avoid shoveling, I used those three stops as photo ops. As with all the dark sky photos taken this winter, it is not light out as the photos would lead you to believe. There is definitely light on the horizon as we tilt back towards the sun, but nothing like the photos make out.

All in all the trip lasted about two and a half hours and while bundled up including my bunny boots and two pairs of socks, my toes were still numb upon returning to town. When we left in the morning, it was -35F without the windchill and that is in town. It is always much much colder out on the ice shelf/out of town so I imagine it was more like -50F+ without the windchill when we were up at Castle Rock. My fingers would agree. It is near impossible to have your gloves off to snap more than one ten-second exposure photo. Hop on over to my Instagram to see the few pics I did manage to capture of the trip.