Video: Astrobiologist Base Camp at Lake Untersee, Antarctica, December 2011

Dale Andersen: My tent (also the dive tent) in the video was about 300 m from this site. It was a bit hard locating spots suitable for tents on the shore so I had to move down shore a bit. The large Mountain Hardware Stronghold tent served as our communal tent for cooking, warming up etc. The two Mountain Hardware Satellite 6 tents on the left were lab tents and the pyramid tents were for sleeping.

I am seen with my American flag, and Valery Galchenko and Vladimir Akimov of the Winogradsky Institute of Microbiology are with the Russian flag. Valery and I had these same two flags with us in the Bunger Hills 20 years ago – it was the first time the American and Russian flags had flown together on the continent after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, so this was a bit of a reunion for us!

While camped in the mountains of Antarctica at Lake Untersee, we did have a few storms move through bringing high winds and blowing snow. Our winds topped out at 50 m/s (110 mph) at the lake. This short video shows a small example (Best watched in HD, full screen @ 1080p with sound.) Working and diving beneath the ice at Lake Untersee does have its challenges!

Dale T. Andersen, Explorers Club FN87