Al Ca-Pole’s Vault

I enjoy working out in the field. It often poses some challenges, but it’s rewarding to overcome them. Sometimes it is just small things you can do to make the job easier. Sometimes you have to enlist the assistance of other, skilled folks to help renovate your infrastructure (pay attention America). In this case, the vault for our Lucent Fluxgate Magnetometer had been gradually getting buried deeper and deeper beneath the surface of the snow. It was finally agreed upon that our science carpenters would extend the vault back to/closer to the surface, so that entry did not require first digging down roughly 4 feet to the hatch. Over the couple weeks since I arrived, this construction project has been in the works, and it was put to its first use today when I did the biannual leveling of the magnetometer down in the bottom of the vault.

The exterior of the new vault lid:

Looking down the new exterior hatch to the original hatch:

Looking back up the new, upper ladder from the original hatch:

Original hatch open in the new antechamber:

The sacred relic in the Holiest of Holies (a.k.a. the magnetometer):

Of course, the drifting will eventually catch up to the entry hatch again, but for at least a few years the Research Associate supporting this project should have an easier and safer time accessing the instrument.

Sadly, Geraldo and his mustache were unable to attend the opening of the new vault.

"Science is a first-rate piece of furniture for a man's upper chamber, if he has common sense on the ground floor."
~Oliver Wendell Holmes