048InlandFort

At Camp 3 I set up my six weather stations again. This picture was taken from the location of one of them, on a topographic feature known as the East Groin. This is just about my favorite place in the world. I took a panorama from this spot. To my knowledge, only one other person in the world has been there: Eric our mountaineer for the last bit of the season. He helped me carry the station down on one of the last days we were there. It is possible though that someone could have landed a helo on the East Groin for geologic reconnaissance, though I didn't see any evidence for that. It is one of the few places in the world where I think I'd be able to go back years from now and find one of my own footprints - both because of the lack of other people who would trample them and because of the slowness of the geomorphic action there. Extending from the lower left corner, you can see a ridge of rock that has been pushed up above the surrounding rock by frost wedging. As far as I could tell, this rock was bedrock. The darker rocks on the surface are pitted in a way similar to that seen on some Martian rocks. See this article comparing Martian rocks with rocks from the Mojave Desert.