Back to the Frozen Wastes

So, I'm sitting in my office, waiting for my crew. 

As the frequent readers know, I have been routinely getting sent up into the mountains to do boundary testing on sites near a linear project.  This project should have been done no later than the fall, when there was no snow on the ground and the ground itself wasn't frozen.  Now, it's difficult to get to the sites due to snow and ice covered roads, and the ground is frozen making digging difficult and screening soils very difficult - to the point of being occasionally impossible.  As a result, each time we have gone up, there has been at least one site that we have been unable to reach, and we have one left.  I had figured that it would wait until Spring, as there is no practical reason to go after it now - it will cost more than is necessary to get to it and to dig into it.

However, my client is a large corporation, and the archaeologist that works for my client is under pressure to get things done even when impractical.  And so, on Monday, I received instructions to go back into the mountains  to try to reach the last site, even though impractical.  It is very cold up there right now, so I am decked out in my cold weather clothes, and there is a fair chance that we won't be able to get to the site at all, so this trip might be a waste anyway. 

So, here I am, up earlier than normal, very tired, very grumpy, and possibly not even going to be able to get to the site to which we are headed. 

Joy!