Ops 05/23

David Ortigoza and I drove into Crested Butte last night. Cottonwood pass was said to be open by multiple news sources... But unfortunately it was not. On the plus side, we got to see a herd of Big Horn Sheep before we had to turn around. We took Monarch pass into the Gunnison Valley. 

We left this morning around 07:30 and were on the trail by 08:00. We were able to make it into Gothic within an hour. The road in was dry and an easy hike. We dropped off our gear and headed to the site after picking up some spare mote cables and wipes from the Salamander Room. The trail going to Kettle Ponds is pretty muddy with one 20ft section of 11" snow. The snowmelt/runoff flowed over the trail on at least two accounts. The actual Kettle Ponds were filled and looked very beautiful reflecting Gothic Mountain. 

We were very busy and successful while out at the site. We stood up the barrel, checked guy tensions, moved booms/sensors, switched LiDAR USB sticks, reset UE Pi 1, troubleshot the D 9m radiometer, cleaned both sets of radiometers, cleaned gas analyzer lenses on C, and finally collected flags. 

Rumor is that the road will be open tomorrow, 5/24. Also, we have not heard back from Ben nor the other caretakers to coordinate moving the sensor cases from the tent to the Salamander room. I will add another blog post giving the specifics of what the guy tensions were and what we adjusted them to, along with times the sensors were moved, replaced, or cleaned.