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FANG: The Camp

Five of us left the comfort of McMurdo to spend two nights at Fang on Thursday, November 28: Phil Kyle, Bill Macintosh, Mario Ruiz, Rich Karstens, and myself. One of these days, I'll introduce the team members properly. For now, suffice to say that we survived. There was a short period where Phil and Bill were placing bets on how long we would be stuck at Fang, thinking there was a storm moving in, but we ended up getting in and out of camp on time.

The time spent at Fang was nice, and uneventful. We slept, we read, we took short walks, we crammed into tents for communal dinners. I've included a journal entry from Fang (cheating?) to describe the experience.

Pictures to be posted shortly!

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Fang Camp. The world is yellow--except for yellow things, which are now white. Phil lies on his side of the tent reading "Caravan," a Mitchner book set in Afganistan. I lie on my side writing, and before that reading "Volcano Cowboys." The food boxes and stove separate us so that, lying down, we can't see each other's heads.
I've adjusted well to the altitude, so far, although I can tell I'm dehydrated. It will be nice to get up to the hut tomorrow and start hydrating comfortably. We've mostly done nothing today, with skank passing through so that the weather's never horrible but we have periods where we can see Fang clearly and periods where the world beyond the shitter is white. I've been quite content to lounge and sleep and read. We slept probably 10 hours last night, and several this afternoon. I've been out only three times: to pee, to root around for dinner food, to walk out towards Fang to get a picture of the crater and the plume. Throughout the day, we had a couple visitors--Bill at 8:30 AM to check on us and chat, Mario in for breakfast--and Phil and I made dinner for the group. The five of us crowded into our tent, as we had in Bill's last night for Rich's birthday dinner of spaghetti and veggies. Phil made goulash out of the leftover veggies, sauteed chicken breast, and three packages of dehydrated terriaki turkey dinner.
I like doing nothing.
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