Our field housing design is low on the luxury scale. We’ve split up into two camps—Rhone and Pearse, with Jay, Mari, and I at Rhone. The Rhone camp has two small tents sleeping one person each, and a larger, pyramidal Scott tent measuring 6 ft x 6 ft x 8 ft (max). That’s where I sleep, and where we do our cooking, warming up, and chatting.

The Scott tent is a constant source of hilarity, because it is nearly impossible to pass through the tent door with any sense of grace or dignity. We usually just get stuck and kind of trip our way in and out.

Jay in a hopeless attempt to smoothly exit the Scott tent.

We anchored the Scott tent down with all our gear, mostly the wooden rock boxes we constructed last week. It’s in a super lovely location, sandwiched on a gentle slope between Rhone Glacier and Taylor Glacier. I can look out of the Scott tent door (once I manage to get it open) and see Blood Falls. Ridiculous.

Mari walking to her tent, with Rhone Glacier in the background.

View from my tent.

Jay checking in after we set up camp, in front of Taylor Glacier.

We finished setting up pretty late, and were thoroughly starving and cold. We decided on a simple meal of frozen burritos, fried in butter, of course. Our water supply is a snow bank in a nearby gulley, which means that we have to melt snow anytime we want water. Basically, if we’re in the Scott tent, we’re melting snow. I don’t mind, though, because it keeps my tent at least moderately warm. Or, rather, it keeps the upper part of the tent warm. The lower part of the tent is still frozen, as in, we keep the bag of snow in my tent and it doesn’t melt. As in, if I put lukewarm water in a thermos and then put the thermos on the floor over night, the thermos is frozen solid. As is, it’s really bloody cold on the floor of the tent.

First field dinner, first melting pot of snow.