So from the lush green grass of Marsh Benham in early spring, back to the Libyan Desert once more.
This photo, again taken with my olympus xa camera (which I still have, by the way) was another shot from the northern end of Concession 20 taken while I was assigned to Party 205.
This wadi had obviously seen some reliable moister over the years judging by the palm tree. There's also some scrubby bushes around. The surface also looks ‘caked' rather than sandy or gravelly. Not as extreme as the salt pan in Death Valley, but the same concept of moisture evaporating leaving behind a salt laden crust.
One of the constant headaches, perhaps not surprisingly, was bringing in water for drilling. The three drill tankers in this shot held 2,500, 1,500, and 750 gallons of water. Often we'd need refills. But drill water could be brackish so drinking water and drill water tankers were kept separate.
Although the trucks look the same, this was a different drill crew from the one pictured in ‘Dune Drilling‘. We had two of the MOL mounted Mayhew 1000 units on Party 205.
In the background, a weathered limestone jebel rises above the floor of the wadi, the layers of rock plainly visible. The different hardness of the layers has led to differential erosion leading to overhangs that eventually collapse spilling boulders down the slope.
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