A large part of what we've been doing the past few days is collecting, packing, and shipping our science equipment to WAIS Divide camp, where we'll be working. This involves pallets, triwall cardboard boxes, pallet jacks, and a very useful vehicle known as the "Pickle".
We have seismic equipment with lithium batteries as well as generators, jerry cans for fuel, and other equipment that requires special shipping handling. Thankfully, the science cargo team took care of ensuring proper packaging and placarding for all shipments. Environmental regulations are very serious in Antarctica, and we have to vigilantly protect against any spills of even the smallest amount of fuel.
In addition, we have to make sure all of our safety gear is assembled including the survival bags mentioned in a previous post and our "sleep kits", duffle bags containing our sleeping bags, tents, pee bottles (leave no trace in Antarctica includes human urine, so we are required to use bottles to collect and ship off the continent), and other evening essentials.
Everything except our personal luggage is packed and ready to head to WAIS Divide, and we just received our official notice that we are scheduled to depart McMurdo on January 2nd... As with all flights in Antarctica, this flight could be delayed anywhere from a half an hour to weeks, so hopefully we will be on the shorter end of that spectrum!