On the Way to Cone Ridge: Geology Station A

Geology at Cone Crater

 

Climbing Cone Ridge - Where Are We?

Corrected Transcript and Commentary Copyright © 1995-2021 by Eric M. Jones.
All rights reserved.
Scan credits in the Image Library.
Video credits in the Video Library.
Except where noted, MP3 audio clips by Thomas Schwagmeier and video clips by Ken Glover.
Last revised 13 May 2021.

RealVideo Clip (15 min 02 sec)

MP3 Audio Clip (Glover) (8 min 05 sec)

MP3 Audio Clip (Schwagmeier) (57 min 55 sec)

132:26:12 Shepard: Okay. I'm going to head on up the hill to (Station) B.

132:26:16 Mitchell: Okay.

[The planned location of Station B is CU.1/77.1 ( 0.6 Mb ) at a 20-meter crater, about 240 meters east of the planned Station A location (CU.4/72.3). Because they aren't where they think they are and because they are overestimating their rate of progress by as much as a factor of two, they will actually make their next stop about 75 meters south of the planned Station A site. East of the actual Station A, they drop down into another valley and then up the far side. This modest climb may be the "hill" to which Al is referring and is the 100-meter wide dark swath which extends from the planned site ( 0.6 Mb ) of Station G to the planned site of A (CU.4/72.3). See, also, Thomas Schwagmeier's annotated A-to-B map based on LROC image M114064206 and showing the actual station locations. The crater numbering follows the post-flightUSGS map.]

[Brian McInall has produced a planimetric map of both EVAs using LRO imagery.]

132:26:24 Mitchell: (Either still bagging the sample or taking his "after" photos) Okay, Fred. I'll give it to you in a minute.

132:26:31 Shepard: Can you catch up with me all right?

132:26:32 Mitchell: Yeah, I'll catch up. Go ahead.

132:26:34 Shepard: Okay. Al's heading up with the MET. From A, we go down into a valley. We drop down on a fairly consistent slope of approximately, oh, 8 to 10 degrees. The texture, here again, is pretty much the same on the surface. The basic regolith, of course, is the fine material which is now, at this particular Sun angle, kind of a grayish brown, with the small pebbles on the surface making the raindrop pattern.

[On this part of the USGS map, the downslope into the valley is the lighter colored area around the crater labeled '618'. See, also, a Schwagmeier map (1.2 Mb) that includes portions of multiple LROC images taken under different lighting conditions.]

[Jones - "Conventional wisdom ascribes the raindrop pattern to micrometeorite impacts, with visibility depending on regolith properties, sun angle, and surface age. Association with pebbles suggests association with secondary impacts. Perhaps, as usual, it's both and, with practice, one could learn to detect differences."]

[Mitchell - "I'm not sure. Al made an assumption...He made a causal determination which I'm not sure is valid. I don't recall making that association (of the raindrop pattern) with pebbles from secondary impacts."]

[Jones - "I think Al's the only one that makes that association. I'm pretty sure that, when other people have seen it, they haven't made that association. And it's often been out in places that are just a lot of fine-grained stuff and nothing much over millimeter size."]

[The following is taken from the Apollo 14 Preliminary Science Report. "The Apollo 14 crew briefly described a raindrop pattern, similar to that previously described by the Apollo 12 crew, in the vicinity of Station A. This pattern is readily seen in all the panoramas, except B3 and C-Prime, and in some of the sample documentation photographs. The patterns are best illustrated by NASA photographs AS14-67- 9390 to 9393, which were taken at low sun angle during the first EVA (to document the football-sized rocks). The raindrop pattern on the fine-grained surface material appears to consist of small craterlets up to 4 cm in diameter. Shadows from very small fragments on the surface tend to enhance falsely the raindrop appearance in some of the photographs. The raindrop patterns are probably formed by impact of small meteorites and by secondary particles from these impacts. A raindrop craterlet 1 cm deep would be destroyed by subsequent impacts in about 3 million years, so that a fresh surface should become more or less saturated by 4-cm craterlets in this time span." The Apollo 14 geology team goes on to speculate on why the raindrop pattern is not so evident at the stops close to Cone Crater and cite possible destruction by downslope soil movement, the effect of a coarser ground surface that might impede formation of the pattern, and the effect of a different Sun angle on the slopes of the Cone ridge relative to the flatter surfaces closer to the LM.]

132:28:00 Haise: Roger, Ed.

132:28:10 Mitchell: It leaves gaps every now and then as it bounces.

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I thought the MET worked very well. We had been living with it for some time during the training cycle, and it had been modified a few times to take care of some of the problems. I thought it was generally worthwhile. It enabled us to operate more efficiently than we would have otherwise."]

[NASA photo S70-29540 shows Al at the MET during a February 1970 training exercise in the Pinacate volcanic area in northwestern Sonora, Mexico.]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "We would have been in real trouble trying to move all that stuff out with just a hand tool carrier, and still get the same amount of work done. I think that the MET stability was good at reasonable speeds. It was not hard to pull. It did make you change your gait a little bit. I didn't feel like I balanced quite the same way with the MET as I could without it. You could pull it up to fairly good speeds without any stability problems. It did bounce and hop and try to turn over if you hit rocks with the wheel or if you hit a crater with the wheel. It was not too hard to stabilize it with that triangular handle. Al seemed to be able to move faster with it than I did. That's because I didn't feel comfortable with the stability of it. When we hit rocks and things, I was worried about it tipping over, and I really didn't want to see all that equipment spread out over the lunar landscape. So, I think I probably tended to be a bit more cautious. When Al was pulling it rapidly, he was controlling it well, and it didn't tend to turn over."]

[NASA photo S70-27169 shows astronaut Bruce McCandless testing MET stability on an uneven surface created in the 1/6th-g airplane by taping chunks of foam rubber to the floor.]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I really expected more dust to be collected by the tires and thrown up on the MET. That didn't turn out to be the case at all. We dragged it through some fine-grained stuff near the edges of the smaller craters and, although the tires sunk in more in that fluffy, less-dense regolith, it still didn't throw up an awful lot of dust."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Dust didn't adhere in any appreciable amount to the rolling surface of the tires. The MET seemed to mash it down, but it didn't adhere. It didn't throw out a rooster tail as we might have expected."]

[The wire-mesh wheels of the Lunar Rover flown on the later missions did throw up a rooster tail, albeit with the vehicle moving at speeds of up to 10-12 km/hr, compared with the far more modest 2 km/hr of the MET. On both Apollos 16 and 17, a rear fender was accidentally torn off and both crews were subsequently sprayed with dust. Because that dust reduced the amount of sunlight being reflected off the battery covers, various mirrored radiators, and other surfaces, it created thermal problems and had to be brushed off at regular intervals.]

132:28:20 Shepard: It (Station B)'s way up the hill.

132:28:21 Mitchell: Pardon?

132:28:23 Shepard: I think it's up the hill.

[Jones - "When you and Al are talking about way up the hill, are you up above the break in slope of the Cone Crater Ridge?"]

[Mitchell - "No, I think we're coming out of that swale, that valley. As a matter of fact, it's on this map ( 0.6 Mb ). This darkness in here (east of the crater labeled '720' in the USGS map) is what we were calling (the eastern wall of) that valley. That was a very good depression. And that's where Al's saying it's up the hill. See, there's another one over here, and then we really started up the flank of Cone Crater."]

[Jones - "As indicated by the post-mission cross-section view ( 1.3 Mb ) at about B1."]

[As indicated in Thomas Schwagmeier's map for the traverse from Station A to Station B, theyÕre average speed while on the move from A to B was 33 meters per minute. Al left Station A about two minutes and thirteen seconds ago and, at 33 meters per minute, would have covered about 73 meters. He has passed north of crater '618', with Ed trailing behind. Ed probably thinks they are passing the crater at CU.0/74.9 ( 0.6 Mb ), crater '701' on the USGS map, which is about 130 meters from the planned Station A.]

132:29:11 Haise: Roger, Al.

[Al and Ed landed about 1.3 kilometers west of Cone Crater. Pre-mission orbital photography suggested they would reach the edge of the Cone ejecta blanket somewhere in the vicinity of Station B, which is at about CU.1/77.1 ( 0.6 Mb ) and about 610 meters ENE of the LM. Al is looking for evidence of a sharp transition - or 'contact' - at the edge of the ejecta blanket, not realizing that he is still about 400 meters west of the supposed contact.]

132:29:37 Haise: Roger, Ed.

132:29:39 Mitchell: And continuing the description a little bit, Houston. Trying to think of an adequate description or comparison to something we've already seen, but I don't think there is one. Incidentally, I see a string of craters down to the south - (correcting himself) a string of boulders - to the south of us that may prove to be a ray pattern from Cone. And I observe, as we get closer to Cone, the number of large boulders is increasing. We're going to go past some here in a couple of minutes near about a 20-foot-wide, fairly fresh crater. The boulders - a dozen of them or so - are 4 or 5 feet in diameter.

132:30:35 Haise: Roger, Ed.

132:30:36 Mitchell: (Garbled under Haise) thing around them.

132:30:41 Shepard: Okay. Let's see if we can find us...

[Ed has the map, but the dialog suggests that they are looking at it together, trying to figure out where they are. Since leaving Station A, they have been on the move for 4 minutes 30 seconds and, at 33 meters per minute, they are in the vicinity of CT.1/71.3 ( 0.6 Mb ). This point is labeled '132:30:41 (STOP)' in Schwagmeier's A-B map.]

[As discussed in the comment after 132:28:25, Ed is thinking that the crater they passed at that time, USGS 618, is actually the crater, USGS 701, midway between the planned Station A and B locations. Because they are climbing out of the valley, USGS 618 should be plainly visible on the downslope they recently descended. See Schwagmeier's A-B map.]

132:31:01 Mitchell: Can you see the boulders off to the side there on the map?

132:31:03 Shepard: Well, they don't show very well. (Pause) I think...

[It isn't clear just what boulders Ed is thinking about. In the Lunar Orbiter photographs, on the north side of their planned track, three boulders were tentatively identified just beyond the planned Station B location and are indicated on the geology version of the traverse map ( 0.3 Mb ) by white Xs at CV.3/79.1, CV.8/81.0, and CW.7/80.7. The first of these is also labeled on the USGS map as '804' and was picked out in the Station B1 pan. It is possible that these are the boulders Ed is looking for.]

[There are a variety of candidates for a three-member "chain of craters" south of the planned traverse route. One possibility is the NNE-SSW line of three about one-quarter of the way from crater 720 to Weird. Another possibility is the set of craters labeled Ô3-chÕ immediately northwest of Weird.]

132:31:31 Mitchell: Kind of small.

[Thinking that they are near the planned Station B location, they may be looking on the traverse map ( 0.6 Mb ) at a line of three craters at CU.1/76.5, CT.7/76.4, and CT.4/76.4.]

132:31:34 Mitchell: Pardon?

132:31:36 Shepard: There's no big one to go with it. No sharp one to go with it. (Pause) (Garbled) one right up there. How about that?

132:31:50 Mitchell: Well, let's take a look.

[Jones - "I gather from this that you two were standing together, consulting the map."]

[Mitchell - "Yeah, and as you can tell, we had a disagreement...We have different interpretations...We were really having trouble, on that terrain, figuring out where the heck we were. We knew where we were within a hundred meters, but not the micronavigation that those characters (the geologists) wanted us to do. It was frustrating. We wasted time. And that continued. That's what slowed us down the whole rest of this thing, trying to be a little more precise about where the heck we were. In retrospect, it would have been much better, frankly, had we worked basically on time and let us select our own sites, looking for interesting things. Plan on two or three stops on the way up there. Let us select them. And take pans that let them, afterwards, find out exactly where we stopped. But they tried to prejudge and send us to where they thought they were going to find something. And us trying to find it. We ended up wasting a lot of time."]

[Jones - "In thinking about the J-missions, those crews had a lot more flexibility. That sounds like that might have been a result of your experiences."]

[Mitchell - "It could very well have been. But there's no question, we tried much too hard to satisfy getting to where the geologists said they wanted us to be. And it proved to be an inefficient and a very difficult and odious thing to try to do. We could have done a lot more work had we had the flexibility where we could just pick and choose, because we were darn well trained. We knew what we were looking for. With that flexibility, I think we would have done a lot better."]

[According to post-mission analysis, they will do Station B near CT.1/72.3, about 75 meters south of the planned Station A location and about 90m north of Weird. If we make the likely inference that Al thinks they are north of Weird, he is correct. Ed thinks they are 200 meters farther east, near the planned Station B.]

[In photos AS14-64-9066 and 67, both from Al's Station B pan, the fresh component (USGS 1202) of Weird is beyond and to the right of the largest foreground boulders. See, also, a detail from Plate 4 in the USGS Apollo 14 Professional Paper.]

[Al may be indicating the fresh crater at CU.0/74.9 ( 0.6 Mb ), which is about midway between their present location and the planned Station B site.]

132:32:15 Shepard: Yep.

132:32:17 Mitchell: I think this is the crater that...that's B. I think this boulder field, we can see it here if we look.

132:32:29 Shepard: This crater right here?

132:32:31 Mitchell: Yep. (Pause) We have to be considerably past Weird.

132:32:41 Shepard: Not even halfway to the rim of Cone yet.

[They think they have completed a little under half their journey and in reality, have done only about a third.]

132:32:54 Mitchell: (Garbled under Haise).

132:32:55 Shepard: Let's go on ahead.

132:32:57 Haise: Yeah, I don't think you have to worry too much about the exact position of site B. If... It appears you're getting close to the general area, and that should be good enough on B.

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I felt that we had a navigation problem on EVA-2. I don't know why we didn't worry a little bit more about that pre-flight. We did discuss the fact that points A and B were not very well defined. They said, 'Well, it wasn't too important to get exactly to those two points from a geological point of view.' This may be true, because we're supposed to be in contact with nondescript material. But it sure made it tough to figure out exactly where we were as far as the progress of the EVA was concerned."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Yes."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Until we really get a feel for navigation on the surface, there should be some strong (that is, well-defined) checkpoints to follow. First of all, it gives you a feeling of security to know where you are. You know where you are distancewise and what you have left to cover. Second, there's no question in my mind that it's easy to misjudge distances, not only high above the surface (that is, during the landing or from the LM windows) - that we discussed before - but also distances along the surface. It's crystal clear up there (on the Moon) - there's no closeness that you try to associate with it in Earth terms - it just looks a lot closer than it is."]

[The lack of an atmosphere means that there is no haze, no obscuration which, on Earth, helps us distinguish distant objects from close objects.]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I certainly agree with that. I think there are two problems that affect your distance measurements. One, as Al described, and the second is there has to be a little bit of distortion in the bubble (helmet). I don't know how much that contributed to it, but I think it contributed some. I believe that our primary problem in navigation was the surprise brought about by the roughness and the undulation of the terrain. We couldn't see one set of landmarks, the prominent landmarks - our next set of landmarks - from our present positions. Large craters which we expected to be able to see standing out on a reasonably flat plane were not on a flat plane. They were hidden behind other craters, ridges, and old, worn-down mounds. You'd say 'Well, this next big crater ought to be a couple of hundred meters away, or 100 or 150.' It just wasn't anywhere in sight. So you'd press on to another ridge, and you still didn't see it. All you would see would be another ridge. Finally, you'd get over to it, and there it was. You could not get enough perspective from any one spot to pin down precisely where you were. The undulations over the neighborhood were probably 10 to 15 feet (high). Some of the big craters up to the north and to the south looked 50 to 100 feet below our level. It looked like we were in a large group of sand dunes. The wavelength of the sand dunes would be much greater here (on Earth), but that was kind of the feeling I had. I never knew what to expect when I went over the ridge on the sand dune, or what I was going to see on the other side of it."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I think that complicated our problem. I don't know what to suggest on that. I think that we talked about navigation problems before. We always felt that you'd see these craters out there. We planned for them and they're very well defined and we ought to be able to locate them easily, but that just isn't the case. There has to be more thought given to some better way of positioning oneself on the chart."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Maybe this thought would help. We could put some work into a manual method of distance estimation better than your thumb up against the LM. We need a better manual method of estimating distance."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I think we did come pretty close to point A, and you and I were still arguing about where the hell point B was."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Yes, we were. And I still don't know. It is probably still there."]

[The later crews also had difficulty figuring out where they were, at first, but, once they knew exactly where they had landed, they could use the Rover navigation system to get them close to their planned stops and then could use the mobility of the Rover in any final search that might be necessary. In instances where they didn't know exactly where they had landed, the uncertainty was never enough to keep them from finding one or more large, prominent features in the area and, once they visited one of those, readings from the Rover navigation system - bearing and range to the LM - immediately told them where they had landed.]

132:33:10 Mitchell: Okay. I think we're very close to it. I think this crater we just went by is probably it, but it's very hard to tell, Fredo. I don't see anything else that might be it, unless it's the next crater up. Ah; Al, I've spotted it. That next crater up is this one right here.

132:33:29 Shepard: Where are you pointing?

132:33:31 Mitchell: Pardon?

[It is all but impossible to figure out which craters are being discussed in this section. Ed may be concentrating so hard on the map problem that he doesn't realize Al had his back to Ed and couldn't see where he was pointing. Hence, Ed's question.]

132:33:33 Mitchell: Right behind you. That crater is that crater right up there. That crater is the crater over to the left of it.

132:33:41 Shepard: Where do you think B is?

132:33:42 Mitchell: I think B's the one we just passed; back there where we were talking.

132:33:47 Shepard: (Sounding a little impatient) All right.

132:33:48 Mitchell: And here's the little...Ah hah, it is! Here's the little double crater right beside it. Look here. See, there's that crater; see, there's the little double crater; it's right there in front of you.

132:34:01 Shepard: Okay, let's go sample B.

132:34:02 Mitchell: Let's sample B.

[Comparing the post-mission map (229k) with the pre-flight map (0.6 Mb), we can determine that they did Station B at about CT.1/72.3, rather than the planned location of about CU.1/77.1. If they made the map stop near CT.1/71.3, they have gone about 80 meters. One reading of the transcript is that, after stopping to examine the map with Ed at 132:30:41, Al started moving again at 132:31:50. If Al actually reaches B at, say, 132:34:15, he had 2 minutes 25 seconds to cover the 80 meters. That implies an average speed of 33 meters per minute (2 km/hr), which is a little faster than their overall progress to this point in the traverse. A longer map stop by Al would imply a greater travel speed over the 80 meters. A USGS shaded relief map of the immediate area around Station B gives the relative positions of the MET, the various craters, and the sample locations. Scan by Brian McInall. See, also, a detail (0.3 Mb) for the 28 November 2009 LROC image, which has a resolution of 0.5 meters.]

132:34:22 Shepard: I'll get a pan, Ed.

Al's Station B Pan ( frames AS14-64- 9049 to 9072 )

132:34:23 Mitchell: Okay. And while Al takes the pan, I'll go ahead and give you a site description. The area here is in an area of considerably more boulders, a larger boulder field, more numerous boulders than we've seen in the past. We've just come into it as we approached B from A. Now there were boulders to the north of us; we previously talked of boulders to the north, and doggone it, they may turn out to be a ray pattern. It looks suspiciously like one. However, where we are now, we're about on the edge of a general boulder population lining the flank of Cone Crater. Now they're not too numerous at this point. They're somewhat patchy. There's a lot of them buried, half buried, a few of the smaller ones sitting on the surface. These boulders are filleted, and we'll have to sample that filleting later. The surface texture - the fine - appears very much the same as what we've been walking on all along. And about the only difference we could see is probably a larger number of smaller craters. I say 'probably'; they're so numerous that unless you really make a population count, you can't tell. I'm guessing a larger number of craters - probably secondaries from Cone perhaps - and certainly a larger number of boulders lying around. Now, most of these boulders are rounded. There are a few angular ones. There are a few rocks with angularities; but, by and large, you can see edges that have been chipped off indicating the beginning of a smoothing process. And some of them are far beyond the beginning of smoothing; they're worn down pretty well. And most of the rough edges are where they have fractured and perhaps turned over. Most of them appear to be along fractures of where other rocks are sitting near them that might have once been a part of that boulder.

[This is a very thorough description. Ed is noticing and describing important details of the scene. His descriptions are comparable in quality to those provided by the later crews, who had the advantage of training as backups to landing missions and were, therefore, able to devote a far larger proportion of their prime-crew training to geology.]

132:36:55 Mitchell: He's...

132:36:56 Shepard: I'm grabbing it now.

132:36:57 Mitchell: ...grabbing it now.

132:37:00 Shepard: I'm just going to give you a quick stereo on it.

[Al's stereopair is AS14-64- 9073 and 9074. He was a little too "quick" in taking both images. They are blurred because he moved while he was taking them. The locations and aiming directions of these pictures are shown in the shaded relief map.]

132:37:17 Mitchell: Okay. Fredo, we expect that you're (means "we're") going to fall behind here; there's no way we can help it. We'll pick it up later.

132:37:23 Haise: Roger.

132:37:26 Shepard: Well, we'll see about that. (Pause)

132:37:35 Shepard: Okay. Grab sample from the west rim of Bravo Crater, bag 5 November.

[Here, Al's "Bravo Crater" means "the crater at Station B".]

132:37:43 Mitchell: Now, Fredo, to complete this description. We are standing on a fairly high point...Well, not really on a high point, about halfway up the slope. To our north and slightly to the west of us seems to be the low point in this area. It's surrounded by a rim that's reminiscent of a very, very old crater. The topography doesn't show up on the map, but it, indeed, is there. About 500 yards to the north and west is the lowest point that I can see in this area. Okay, we ready to press on?

132:38:27 Shepard: Yeah, as soon as I get my handle screwed back on here.

[Al's camera handle may have come loose. Several other crews experienced similar problems.]

132:38:37 Haise: Okay. And we'd like the frame count before you depart.

132:38:38 Shepard: Okay, Houston - (Listens) Yeah; yeah. You've got a frame count of 34 from Al. (Pause)

132:38:53 Mitchell: And 29 from Ed.

132:38:57 Haise: Roger; 34 and 29.

132:39:02 Shepard: Handle was loose.

132:39:05 Mitchell: Handle work loose for you?

132:39:07 Shepard: Yep.

132:39:10 Mitchell: Okay. I've got the MET.

132:39:13 Shepard: Okay. You want to go first and I'll follow.

132:39:15 Mitchell: Okay. To the top of Cone Crater.

132:39:19 Shepard: Yeah. Now let's...

132:39:22 Haise: Okay, we're starting the clock.

132:39:23 Shepard: (Garbled).

132:39:27 Mitchell: (Responding to Haise) Okay.

[Jones - "Was Fred's "we're starting the clock" a spur-of-the-moment comment, or had there been some discussion about how long it was going to take you to get up there?"]

[Mitchell - "No, there hadn't been any discussion. He was merely keeping elapsed time from point-to-point. We hadn't discussed that a lot. But I think they, in the Control Center, with the Backroom and Fred, they were playing games with watches, just to keep a projection of some sort going, to help us manage time better."]

[Flank Crater is at CV.5/84.0 ( 0.8 Mb ), about 675 meters ENE of the actual Station B location (CT.2/72.3). See, also, the USGS map and the labeled frame from the landing film. As can be seen in the latter, it is possible that Flank Crater is not visible from their current location, being hidden by an intervening ridge.]

132:39:33 Shepard: See, there's Flank up there. [Al may be looking at the crater at CS.3/78.4 (0.6 Mb).] 132:39:36 Mitchell: Uh...Yeah, right up...I can just barely see the rim of it on the far side of it.

132:39:39 Shepard: Right, so we probably ought to head directly for Flank and on up from there.

132:39:43 Mitchell: Okay. (Pause)

132:39:52 Shepard: Okay, and...(Pause)

132:39:59 Mitchell: Houston, as we go across here, this ground is - Al's probably previously described it - but it's very undulating. I would suspect that there is not 10 yards at the most between what were once old craters. They are most of them worn down, but the surface is continuously undulating. There's hardly a level spot anywhere.

132:40:30 Haise: Roger, Ed.

132:40:35 Mitchell: Lots of...As we come on up toward Cone, we're getting to see lots more buried rocks, bigger rocks. (Pause)

RealVideo Clip (25 min 55 sec)

[Note that, until Al and Ed get back to the LM, the TV picture shows an unchanging scene - except for very minor changes in shadow length as the Sun rises 0.5 degrees per hour.)]

132:41:06 Mitchell: I have to shift hands. I'm good.

[Jones - "Sounds to me like you two are breathing a little harder than you were previously. You're up on the break of the slope now."]

[Mitchell - "Well, what are we looking at here (on the traverse cross-section )? We're looking at 700 meters (horizontal) and we're going up about 80 meters. So that's ten percent slope. That's a pretty tough climb."]

[Jones - "And with the soft surface..."]

[Mitchell - "And pulling the MET. No question that we started breathing harder. We were laboring. And trying to make time, too."]

[Jones - "Would you have been using the skip-step?"]

[Mitchell - "Yeah, except it was very difficult to do with the MET. I'm pulling it at this stage. And, if you shake the MET too much, you're afraid you're going to shake things out. So, trying to do that loping gait, that I liked, was very difficult to do with the MET behind you. You had to more use the (foot-to-foot) stride like Al used and, even then, the MET was rolling from side to side."]

[Jones - "And you would, of course, have swapped map and MET, because he mentions something here about the crater opposite E. Was it any particular difficulty reading the map and moving along?"]

[Mitchell - "Yeah, you had to stop to read it and get in the right Sun-angle."]

132:41:38 Haise: Roger, Al. (Pause)

132:41:46 Mitchell: Fredo, I'm trying to find something distinctive to say about some of these craters we're going by, and it's very hard to do so. They're all smooth-walled except the very freshest ones; and we're coming by a very fresh one now, which is rubblely on the in(side)...Hey! It may even...That has some pretty good chunks of rubble on the inside. This is about the freshest crater this size we've seen, Al.

132:42:16 Shepard: That's correct. This is a very fresh crater. It's about (garbled)- it's about opposite to the crater at stop E. It's a crater about 20 meters in diameter and about 2 meters deep, and I'll get a quick (pause) rock from the side.

132:42:42 Haise: Roger.

132:42:43 Mitchell: (Garbled). Al just dropped down on a knee to pick up a rock, and he (meaning his knee) went in 3 or 4 inches (into the soft soil). Need some help (getting up), Al?

[The USGS map puts Al's grab sample (14049,050) at about (CT.1/72.6). However, Al and Ed have been on the move for about 3.5 minutes since leaving Station B. The B-to-B1 traverse map for this segment indicates that their average speed while on the move from B to B1 is 32 m/minute. That speed would put them about 110 meters from Station B near the two points labelled "132:42:34" and "132:42:43" and just beyond the very fresh, 7-m crater labelled "freshest crater", which is probably the one Ed described just before 132:42:16. In another 30 seconds, Ed will report that they have started uphill and this suggests that they are east of the slope change indicated by the blue contour that touches both the "freshest crater" and USGS 701 and are near CT.2/74.3. Al probably misspoke when he described the "freshest crater" as having a 20-meter diameter and a 2-meter depth. He may have meant a "20-foot" diameter because, in feet, the diameter of the "freshest crater" is 22 feet. As is discussed on page 66 in the Lunar Sourcebook, it would have a depth of roughly 4 feet.]

[The following dialog indicates that Ed goes back to help Al, probably without bringing the MET.]

132:42:55 Mitchell: Okay. Come on, give me your hand.

132:42:56 Shepard: Wait a minute, I got it now. (Pause) Okay.

132:43:01 Mitchell: Okay. Come on up.

132:43:02 Shepard: (Grunts) Okay. Thank you.

132:43:05 Mitchell: You're on your feet.

[The J-mission crews had suits with waist convolute so that they could sit on the Rover with relative ease. An additional benefit of the waist convolute was that, even though they still had some trouble kneeling, they were able to do it with some regularity and to get up without any particular trouble.]

132:43:11 Mitchell: Do you think you're following us and know about where we are, Fredo?

132:43:17 Haise: Well, the board...

132:43:19 Shepard: (Garbled).

132:43:20 Haise: ...I think, has reading for you just past the position abeam of (Station) E. (Pause) Looking about halfway between D and B...

[In this case, 'abeam' is used in the sense of 'left of their direction of travel' of, roughly, north. Haise thinks they are near CT.5/80.0 ( 0.8 Mb ). See, also, the USGS map. See, also, a detail ( 0.4 Mb ) for the 28 November 2009 LROC image, which has a resolution of 0.5 meters.]

132:43:32 Mitchell: Yeah. And we're starting uphill now. Climb's fairly gentle at this point but it's definitely uphill.

[The site interpretation presented in the USGS map shows the uphill slope - represented by the darker shading - starting at about CS.9/74.2 ( 0.8 Mb ). If this is where they are, their average speed since leaving Station B - subtracting 28 seconds for the grab sample - is 122 meters in 3 minutes 51 seconds or 32 meters/minute. See, also, Schwagmeier's ( B-B1 map ).]

132:43:44 Mitchell: Almost turned, didn't it.

[The MET almost turned over.]

[Jones - "It was bouncing pretty regularly from the small stuff. Was it a tipping hazard?"]

[Mitchell - "Yeah, there was a tipping hazard. We couldn't move too fast because the wheels hit rocks or dropped into a crater. It was a pretty unstable beast in one-sixth g. Much more so than we would have thought. And we were moving faster. On Earth, we didn't try to cover this much territory, so we moved at more of an Earth pace. And we trained in the suit, so we had to move slower. The MET trailed along pretty nicely in one g. But if you tried to move at the speeds we moved in one-sixth g, and the MET as light as it was, it was bouncing all over the place. Every time we'd hit a rock, it come up in the air and one wheel would hit and it would kind of flop and bounce. (Chuckles) I'm glad we had it, so that we could carry all the equipment; but we could have done better."]

[Jones - "And Al's 'Okay, Baby'..."]

[Mitchell - "I was on the handle and could feel it turning my wrist but he caught it in the back."]

[NASA photo S70-27169 shows a Astronaut Bruce McCandless testing Met stability in the 1/6th-g aircraft.]

132:43:53 Haise: Roger, Al. Bag 6. (Pause)

132:44:04 Shepard: Okay. The going is still very smooth as far as the area that we're able to pick out. Of course, we're tracing a kind of sinuous course here, staying out of the craters. (Pause)

132:44:29 Mitchell: And, Fredo, to help further locate us, if you can, we're going by two very...Well, (two) fairly fresh craters. I don't think quite as fresh as the one we were just talking about. The eastmost one is fresher than...(Correcting himself) The westmost one is the freshest. They're separated about 75 to 100 feet, and they're about 25 to 30 feet across and 5 or 6 feet deep; 5 feet deep, I guess. The westmost one has got small blocks in it. The eastmost one is very smooth.

[One or both of them is breathing heavily. Unfortunately, Ed does not mention whether they are passing north or south of this pair of craters. There are a number of possible identifications in the area. The undulating terrain makes it difficult for Al and Ed to give us sufficient information to pick out specific pairs of 9m craters. See, also, a detail for the 28 November 2009 LROC image, which has a resolution of 0.5 meters.]

132:45:26 Mitchell: I'm not sure that's quite true, Fred. Some of it looked like stuff that belonged there, that had not fallen there.

132:45:35 Shepard: There's a lot of glass in that rock, Ed.

132:45:36 Mitchell: Yeah. Ooh, there sure is. It looked like some of that so-called rubble looked like it might be the residual of an impact just lying in the bottom. And, Houston, we're passing a rock much too big to pick up. There's a whale of a lot of glass in it.

[Jones - "'Residual lying in the bottom' is presumably pieces of a secondary projectile?"]

[Mitchell - "Yes. As opposed to something that rolled down the side of the crater into it."]

[Jones - "Had you done much work during training on secondaries."]

[Mitchell - "Not a lot."]

132:45:56 Shepard: (Garbled) like it was splattered with glass.

132:45:57 Mitchell: Yeah. It looks...(Listens) It's about foot and a half, 2-footer...Yeah, about a foot and a half across.

132:46:07 Haise: Roger, Ed. And we copy the glass...

132:46:08 Shepard: That was a glass splatter, Fred. (Long Pause)

132:46:30 Mitchell: And, I'm going on Medium cooling for a minute.

[Fairly heavy breathing is occasionally audible.]

[Jones - "I gather from Gene, I think it was, that the sound of one's breathing often depended on whether your chin was forward."]

[Mitchell - "It depended on exactly where the mike was positioned or how you were turned or looked up, because the mike did not stay precisely with your lips at all times. If you turned a little bit, the tension in the cord might pull it. It was only moving a little way, but it was enough to change the quality of the sound. But you're right, we were beginning to puff a little bit here."]

[According to the heart-rate records reproduced in the Mission Report, neither of them is much above 100 beats per minute at this point. Readers should note that the times given on the heart-rate graphs are the same as the times used in the Journal.]

132:46:46 Mitchell: Like a what? We haven't taken any pictures since the last ones, I don't think.

132:46:52 Haise: Okay, Ed.

132:46:56 Shepard: Okay. We'll slow down the traverse here. (Pause) Okay. Should be Flank right here, Ed.

132:47:12 Mitchell: Pardon?

132:47:13 Shepard: Should be Flank right over here.

132:47:15 Mitchell: Just out of sight, you mean.

132:47:16 Shepard: Right...Yeah, right there.

132:47:19 Mitchell: Let's go. Let's go over and see. (Long Pause)

[The pan Al will take at Station B1 suggests that the ground around that station is somewhat elevated, which may be giving them the impression they are approaching a large crater, possibly Flank. In reality, they are still 350 meters short of Flank.]

[Ed has been pulling the MET and sounds a little winded; Al does not sound winded. I asked Ed if he agreed with that statement.]

[Mitchell - "Oh, I think so. I've been pulling the MET. I think I was fairly consistently running 5 to 6 beats higher heart rate than he was. Baseline and everything else. Now, I wasn't really out of breath, nor was I really tired, but I was starting to perspire in Minimum cooling. My metabolism was burning at a little higher rate."]

[Mitchell - "I didn't have a cold or anything, didn't have the sniffles or anything. But I always had a feeling of fullness in the sinuses. You can tell that in the sound of my voice. And Al didn't seem to be affected quite as badly."]

[Jones - "Which reminds me, did you have any kind of a reaction to the dust in the spacecraft after the 1st EVA? Jack Schmitt clogged up pretty badly."]

[Mitchell - "We were pretty darn clean. Really surprising. There was a little bit in there, but we were surprised at how clean we were."]

[Jones - "You spent a pretty good period cleaning each other, although I don't think you spent a lot more time dusting each other than the other guys."]

132:47:47 Mitchell: That's correct. Heading toward where we think Flank is.

132:47:52 Mitchell: I'll pull for a while, Al.

132:47:53 Shepard: (Taking the handcart, again) That's okay. I got it for a while. (Long Pause)

[Mitchell - "At about what speed, in feet per second, were we moving? I think that's part of what Fred was trying to get with timing us."]

[Jones - "The distance from B to B1 is about 300 meters. You started out from B at about 132:39:15, and you'll stop here in another few seconds at 132:48:30. That's nine minutes and, if we take a minute out for the grab sample and other things, that would give you an average speed of 38 meters per minute or 2.3 km/hr. The top speed I've clocked anybody at on level terrain is 5.4 km/hr. Jack Schmitt did that twice but, of course, that was over shorter distances - and he wasn't pulling the MET or trying to read a map."]

[Readers should note that Ed's speed pulling the MET from B to B1 was much faster than Al's 25 meters/minute during the prior segments.]

132:48:12 Shepard: Okay.

132:48:13 Mitchell: Take a break, get the map, and see if we can find out exactly where we are. Press on from there. This one should be distinctive enough.

[This is Station B1. They are about 625 meters from the LM and still about 345 meters from Flank Crater. They are near CT.5/77.7 (0.6 Mb) and are only about 45 meters southeast of the planned Station B site. See, also, the B-to-B1 traverse map.]

132:48:28 Mitchell: Yeah, going to suggest that. (Pause) If you'll take the pan, Al, I'll grab the map and get over here and see if we can find...

132:48:38 Shepard: Okay. Let me pull it up on a little more level ground.

132:48:40 Mitchell: Okay. Give you a push.

132:48:44 Shepard: Okay, there we are. Level?

132:48:48 Mitchell: That looks good. (Pause)

132:48:56 Shepard: Okay. (Long Pause)

132:49:41 Mitchell: That old LM looks like it's got a flat (tire) over there, the way it's leaning.

132:49:47 Haise: Say that last again, Ed.

132:49:52 Mitchell: We're just talking. Never mind. (Long Pause)

132:50:10 Haise: Ed and Al, we're going to have a site handover here. (Long Pause; light static)

132:50:31 Shepard: Okay, Houston. The pan is complete on magazine (pause) magazine Lima-Lima. Frame count is five-seven.

132:50:45 Haise: Roger. 57, Al.

Al's Station B1 Pan ( frames AS14-64- 9075 to 9097 ).

Frames 9088 and 9089 show Ed with the map, trying to figure out where they are.

132:50:52 Shepard: You're breaking up, Fred.

132:50:55 Haise: Copied 57. How's that? (Pause)

132:51:06 Shepard: Reading him? Ed, are you reading?

132:51:08 Haise: Okay...

132:51:09 Mitchell: Yeah, I read.

132:51:11 Haise: Ed. Do you read Houston?...

132:51:13 Mitchell: I can't read Fred, no. Fredo, you're breaking up completely. (Pause)

132:51:25 Shepard: Okay. (Pause) Ah. Start on up toward the rim?

132:51:37 Mitchell: Yeah. Just one second, though. I think I got us (located).

132:51:42 Shepard: Okay, I'll head on out. (Pause)

[Jones - "It sounds to me like stopping for a couple of minutes while Al took the pan did wonders for you. A nice little rest. Your breathing's back to normal."]

[Mitchell - "It did help."]

[See Lennie Waugh's sketch of the traverse segment from B1 to B2 ( 34k ). See, also, a detail ( 0.4 Mb ) for the 28 November 2009 LROC image, which has a resolution of 0.5 meters.]

132:51:54 Haise: Go ahead, Ed.

132:51:55 Mitchell: (To Al) All I'm getting is the feedback on my own voice. (Pause)

132:52:03 Shepard: Okay. Ed, I'm coming through.

132:52:04 Mitchell: Okay. Do you want me to pull awhile, Al?

132:52:05 Shepard: No, that's all right.

132:52:09 Mitchell: (Garbled) hand with it. (Pause) I can't really spot this crater (on the map), but I think I know where we are. We're pretty close to where you said we were. (Pause)

132:52:28 Shepard: Houston, your transmissions are still unreadable.

132:52:31 Haise: Roger, Al. I hadn't been talking. How do you read me now?

132:52:33 Shepard: Is that Flank over there?

132:52:35 Mitchell: I think it's dead ahead of you, Al. Oh, wait a minute. This is probably it, right here. Yeah.

132:52:43 Shepard: To my right?

132:52:44 Mitchell: Yeah. Let's just double check and see.

132:52:49 Shepard: It's got about a 4-meter-radius crater in the south wall. (Pause)

132:53:01 Mitchell: That has to be it.

[The crater to Al's right (south) is at CS.3/78.4, which has a diameter of about 42 meters and has a 7-m crater just inside the rim on the south wall. The diameter of Flank Crater is slightly smaller at about 37 meters and has two 5-m craters near its center. In the 2-LS-1 panel on the B1-B2 traverse map, southwall crater is discernable in the CS.3/78.4 crater, as is the westernmost of the pair near the center of Flank Crater. However, given the poor quality of the map (2-LS-1) they are using and the fact that they think they are a lot farther along than they really are, it is understandable that they think they are passing Flank rather than CS.3/78.4.]

132:53:13 Haise: Roger, Al. Copy.

132:53:20 Shepard: Fred, you're still unreadable.

132:53:27 Mitchell: Let me pull awhile, Al. (Pause) You're having all the fun!

[The Flight Surgeon reports that, while they are moving, their heart rates are about 120 beats per minute. Figure 10-5 in the Apollo 14 Mission Report shows representations of the crew's heart rates during EVA-2.]

132:53:38 Mitchell: Yes. We sure do. Putting the map away.

132:53:45 Shepard: Huh?

132:53:46 Mitchell: I'm just putting the map away.

132:53:48 Shepard: All right. (Long Pause)

[They may be switching positions here, with Ed taking a turn pulling the MET.]

132:54:20 Haise: Okay, I'll try again. How do you read, Ed?

132:54:25 Mitchell: Okay. That's much better. You got a background squeal.

132:54:30 Haise: Okay. Evidently, that station switch gave us some problems. I've been copying both of you all the way though. We have you now just passing Flank. (Pause)

[The Moon is setting at Goldstone near Barstow in California and has risen at Honeysuckle Creek near Canberra in Australia.]

132:55:02 Mitchell: That's affirmative. And the grade is getting pretty steep.

132:55:10 Haise: Have you got any estimate? (Pause)

132:55:20 Mitchell: (Breathing more heavily) And the soil here is a bit firmer, I think, than we've been on before. Except around the mounds in between craters where it's been thrown out. But, by and large, it seems to have a little firmer footing. We're not sinking in as deep.

132:55:47 Haise: That should help you with the climb there.

132:55:55 Mitchell: Yeah. It helps a little bit. Al's picked up the...Al's got the back of the MET now, and we're carrying it up. I think it seems easier.

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Ed was in the front of it (the MET) one time, and I was in the rear. We lifted it up and carried it."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "One time when Al was pulling it, I picked up the back, and we carried it. We could move at a fairly rapid clip that way. It was not as free a pace, as fast a pace, or as relaxed a movement as you could make without it."]

132:56:09 Haise: There are two guys here (Cernan and Engle) that figured you'd carry it up.

132:56:15 Mitchell: Say again.

132:56:17 Haise: Said there's two guys sitting next to me here that kind of figured you'd end up carrying it up.

132:56:25 Mitchell: Well, it'll roll along here, except we just move faster carrying it.

132:56:33 Shepard: Okay. You want to rest here by this rock?

132:56:34 Mitchell: Okay.

132:56:36 Shepard: This is the first big boulder we've seen, Houston. I think it's worthwhile taking a picture of it with the close-up. Go ahead and keep going.

132:56:45 Mitchell: I'll pull on up. We probably ought to take a pan to locate everything here, while you're taking a close-up (with the Gold Camera).

[Ed is breathing heavily and Al sounds a little winded. This is Station B2. As indicated in the B1-to-B2 traverse map, they are near CT.6/80.1. In the Apollo 14 Preliminary Science Report, the Station B2 boulder is referred to as Big Rock and is labeled "901" on the USGS panel in the B1-to-B2 map. The straight-line distance from B1 to B2 is about 130 meters but, as suggested by the B1-to-B2 map, they traveled about 140 meters. The trip from B1 to B2 took about 4 minutes 44 seconds, giving an average speed of 30 meters/minute. Despite the slope, they are still moving about the same speed as in the early stages of the traverse. See, also, a detail (0.4 Mb) from the 28 November 2009 LROC image, which has a resolution of 0.5 meters.]

132:57:09 Shepard: Okay. The shot's been taken on the close-up counter number 317. Sun angle was 8 o'clock. This particular one is only about 12-feet long by about 4-feet wide. It's about one-third buried. It's old, very weathered. There are some evidences of some crystal shining through some of the fractures.

[Journal Contributor David Harland notes that Al probably doesn't have a firm basis for his estimate that the boulder is one-third buried. The only way to be sure is to get the rock out of the ground. Harland notes that there is a numerical "burial factor" described on pages 72, 73 and 74 in NASA SP-184 "Surveyor Program Results" ( 31Mb PDF ) and it is possible that Al was exposed to such a concept during training. Except for this instance and two when Dave Scott estimated that fist-sized rocks were 20 percent buried, the astronauts did not try to estimate how much of a rock was buried but, instead, described rocks as appearing to be 'on the surface', 'partially buried', or 'buried'.]

132:57:52 Haise: Roger. Copy.

[Ed's breathing is rapidly returning to normal. His Hasselblad close-up of Big Rock is AS14-68- 9414.]

[Comm Break]

132:58:53 Mitchell: (Probably taking a pan frame toward the south) And I can look right across into the breach in the north rim of Old Nameless. We're about even with it now.

[Jones - "Is this large crater off to the south of you (in frame 9425) Old Nameless?"]

[Mitchell - "I think that's it. I don't know how far that is away. It looks like that could be two or three hundred yards and yet 200 or 300 yards would put it on the traverse map."]

[Mitchell - "The Sun's position is almost due east. It's not any significant variation from that. So, it's the Sun line that's giving us, really, our directions. And that (meaning Old Nameless)'s a lot more than 200 or 300 yards away. That's clear off of the (traverse) map. That's a mile away."]

[A 1:25,000 scale map of the area shows Old Nameless about 2 kilometers SSE of them near coordinates BA/100.]

[Mitchell - "And that may be part of the ambiguity here; your angle (meaning the bearing to something like Old Nameless) is changing very slowly, but if you look at this as we were doing a moment ago, you could easily say that's a couple of hundred yards away. Just enough to drive you crazy trying to figure out where you are. Your distance perception was just totally off."]

132:59:10 Mitchell: That was frame...(Listens)

132:59:11 Haise: ...dust on the large boulder?

132:59:19 Shepard: Not where I took the picture (with the close-up stereo camera), but some fillets around the bottom.

132:59:24 Haise: Okay; copy, Al.

132:59:30 Mitchell: Okay. And 44, Fred, was my frame count.

132:59:34 Haise: Roger, Ed.

[By the time Ed finishes his pan, Al has already headed off with the MET. In AS14-68- 9422 he is all but lost in the sun glare. Ed started the pan at about 132:57:45 and had complete about three fourths of it by the time he mentioned Old Nameless at 132:58:53. Consequently, we can estimate that Al was moving by about 132:58:30.]

[Jones - "Your standard procedure seems to be that whoever has the MET goes on ahead so that the other guy can watch for things falling off. Had you worked that out in training?"]

[Mitchell - "I don't remember whether we worked that out in training; but, if we didn't, we sure worked it out in a hurry here. In training we weren't terribly concerned about it, because we're moving slowly and the MET wasn't bouncing. But as soon as we saw how it was just flopping around, it was pretty evident that somebody had to be trailing along behind, and I think that was a real-time decision that we made."]

[Ed made the decision at 115:47:54, as they were going out to the ALSEP deployment site.]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Didn't something come off the MET one time? It was that little SESC (Special Environmental Sample Container) can. One of those popped off."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "Yes, that was on the way back (from Cone Crater to the LM). I stopped and picked it up. Other than that, things did not bounce off of it. Anything that was tied down well stayed in place. The 16-mm camera started oscillating. It came out of its hold-down and was just sitting in those two retaining rings. Coming down Cone Crater, it was swinging around very wildly. The magazine that we had on there didn't have any film worth looking at, although it would have been darn interesting to see it."]

[Ed is making a reference to the fact that this magazine (HH or Hotel-Hotel) was accidentally left on the Moon. See, also, the discussion following 135:11:51 and 135:23:03.]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The camera was whipping around from side to side making 360-degree pivots. It would swing halfway and swing back very rapidly, and it had come out of the tension fitting that held it in position."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "That was really held in only by gravity."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "It kind of brushed up against one side of the MET."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "The close-up stereo camera had a slight flange fitting on the other side, and that baby never bounced up."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "It stayed in very well."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "It stayed in there just as solid as a rock. In summary, we had very little trouble with things bouncing off."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "I think that's due in large to the fact that we insisted that everything have a good retaining clip on it. All the bags had covers to help hold them in."]

133:00:52 Haise: Roger, Al.

133:00:53 Mitchell: (Breathing heavily, again) There's small rocks and smaller, fresher craters, as well. Well, wait a minute, maybe I'm being deceived. With this slope, the Sun angle is entirely different than it is on the flat land. The craters look sharper in these shadows.

[The Sun's elevation is 22 degrees, which is it's distance above a flat horizon. In the Station B2 up-Sun view, the Sun is approximately 1.5 fiducial spacings above the local horizon. Averaged across the image, one fiducial spacing is about 8.6 degrees, indicating that the Sun's apparent elevation is about 13 degrees.]

133:01:20 Mitchell: Okay. Let me pull a while

133:01:21 Shepard: I'd like to stop and rest here for a minute, Ed.

133:01:24 Mitchell: Okay. (Pause)

[Since leaving Station B2, they have been moving for about 2 minutes 43 seconds. According to the B2-to-B3 traverse map, their speed while moving during this part of the traverse is about 38 meters/minute, suggesting that they are about 105 meters beyond B2.]

[Here, Al is referring to the LM ground track.]

[In reading the following, note that Ed and Al think they passed Flank Crater (CV.5/84.0) at 132:52:33 but really passed the unnamed crater at CS.3/78.4. Consequently, they are not only farther west from Cone Crater than they think they are, but are also 170 meters farther south.]

[Mitchell - "We're still way short of where Al thinks we are, and where I think we are. We're pretty much in agreement up until this point, I mean, we've come into agreement as to where we are. But it would appear that we're still both deceived and Al thinks we're much further along that it turns out we really are. So right in here is where I think...As we go down here, Al's going to go further on to the east.]

133:02:09 Shepard: Well, I don't know. I'd say it's probably the lowest spot right...

133:02:12 Mitchell: Oh, right in that particular local area.

133:02:14 Shepard: Right there; yeah.

133:02:15 Mitchell: But that's the lowest spot over to the right (north) that I was talking about. And there's a low spot...

133:02:21 Shepard: Well, there's a crater over there, it's true...

133:02:22 Mitchell: Yeah.

133:02:23 Shepard: Yeah. (Pause)

133:02:28 Mitchell: Doggone it, you can sure be deceived by slopes here. The Sun angle is very deceiving.

133:02:30 Shepard: Yep.

133:02:31 Mitchell: Okay, let me pull a while. (They trade off) You ready to go?

133:02:32 Shepard: Yeah. All set.

133:02:38 Mitchell: Okay, let me go back to Min cool...Minimum cool first. (Pause)

133:02:53 Shepard: I guess right straight up is the best way to go.

133:02:55 Mitchell: Beg your pardon?

133:02:56 Shepard: Right straight up is the best way to go.

133:02:57 Mitchell: Yeah, I think so.

[I have combined frames AS14-68-9421 and 9422 from Ed's Station B2 pan to create an up-Sun view ( 2.0Mb ). It shows Al pulling the MET and, to the left of the Sun, the high-point he has been moving toward. In a labeled version ( 2.0Mb ), I have indicated the approximate directions of (1) a tangent to the south rim - marked 'South Rim' - and (2) the center of Cone Crater. If Al and Ed want to reach the crater rim, they have to head at least slightly leftward of the 'South Rim' direction. By heading toward the high point to the right of the 'South Rim' direction, they will end up passing south of the rim.]

133:03:04 Mitchell: Okay. Get a little momentum going. (Pause)

133:03:19 Shepard: Okay, Houston. We're proceeding onward now.

133:03:22 Haise: Roger, Al.

133:03:27 Mitchell: And the boulder fields that Al pointed out, the rocks and boulders are getting more numerous toward the top here. However, it's nothing like the rubble and the large boulders that we saw at the Nevada Test Site. Now, this is surprising to me. I expected it to be more like that. But it is not, at least not where we're looking now.

[Ed is breathing quite heavily. During training, they did a two-day geology field trip at the Nevada Test Site. On day one, September 10, 1970, Shepard and Mitchell did "a 2.7 km traverse around Schooner Crater planned entirely from photogeology and plotted on a data pack of the crater. Schooner (the product of a buried nuclear explosion in a hard-rock, volcanic setting) is about the same size as Cone crater which was one of the objectives of the 14 mission. The prime and backup crews followed the same procedures for sample collection, documentation, photography, and descriptions as they were to follow on the actual mission. They were also to determine the underlying stratigraphic sequence from what they could determine from their overall observations. For the Schooner traverse there were backrooms set up near the crater with astronauts (McCandless and Fullerton) as CapComs and geologists as support personnel." On day two, the astronauts had a 'show and tell' session at Sedan Crater (the result of a buried nuclear explosion in an alluvial setting).]

[At this point, they have climbed high enough to see past 'Flank Ridge' and get a view farther ahead.]

133:04:02 Mitchell: Oh boy, we got fooled on that one. I'm not sure that was Flank we were at a minute ago, either.

133:04:20 Mitchell: Wait a minute. Yes, it is. The rim's right here. That's the...That's the east (ridge)...(That's the) little shoulder running down from the Cone. That's Flank over there. We're going to hit it (perhaps meaning Flank Crater) on the south side. We'll have to move on around of it. This looks like easy going right here. See, there's the boulder field that shows in the photograph; it's right up ahead of us.

[Ed now seems to have a good idea about where they are. He recognizes that they have not yet reached Flank Crater but are high enough on ridge they have been climbing - labeled 'Flank Ridge' on the B2-to-B3 traverse map - to see another, higher ridge line - labeled 'east' ridge - beyond. The boulder field Ed mentions is undoubtedly the one on the south rim of Cone, generally in the area between coordinates 87 and 89 and CY and CZ on the traverse map (0.8 Mb).]

[Although the frame from the landing film shows the view Ed had of Cone during the descent, readers should note Ed was just able sneak glances and did not have time to study the traverse route. See the discussion at 108:12:32. Nonetheless, Ed did have a navigational advantage because Al did not have a view of Cone from his own window.]

[In considering the following, readers should note that Ed and I had only the traverse map during our review of the traverse.]

[Mitchell - "It's probably this ridge where Flank actually is (that they have been climbing). And we were thinking that was probably the rim of the crater or right close to the rim of the crater. And now we're discovering...Okay, let's go ahead and listen to this conversation."]

[Mitchell - "Just from the shadows (on the traverse map), where Flank is marked, we're at the relatively high point, because where I say 'Boy, we got fooled on that one' is because we've come over a ridge and we see there's another ridge ahead of us, not the crater (Cone) like we thought. And I recognize at that point that the angle that we're going toward...We're going toward the south...See, Al keeps thinking we're further north than we are, and so he's angling to the east to hit the edge of the crater. But, in actuality, we're further south and further west than we thought we were. As you can see on the map ( 0.8 Mb ), he's tending to head toward this ('east') ridge right here."]

[Jones - "The one that extends southward from the rim.]

[Mitchell - "Right. And I think he believes that what he's seeing is this rim of Cone right here, where, on the normal traverse, we would be coming up on this edge right here, and he thinks this is it. And we see in here, shortly, I keep urging us to turn north. And we start to get a little confused as to exactly where the heck we are. This is where we start to get our ambiguity and we're deceiving ourselves or we're being deceived and it starts to get confusing in here."]

[Jones - "And part of the problem is that Cone is sitting up on that ridge of Imbrium ejecta, and so there are more things that look like rims than just the rim."]

133:04:55 Mitchell: Yeah. Pardon?

133:04:57 Shepard: Crater up here. (Pause)

[Ed is now breathing very heavily, although not enough to change his speech cadence. According to the heart-rate charts reproduced in the Apollo 14 Mission Report, Al's heart rate is hitting peaks of 150 beats per minute. Ed's peaks are shown as less than 115. Indeed, in a few moments, the NASA Public Affairs commentator will report that Ed's peak heart rate is about 128 beats per minute. In his next transmission, Haise passes along a request from the Flight Surgeon that they take a rest.]

133:05:14 Mitchell: Okay. We're really going up a pretty steep slope here.

133:05:20 Haise: Yeah. We kind of figured that from listening to you.

[Since leaving the previous rest stop at about 133:03:04, they have been traveling for about 2 minutes 10 seconds and have covered another 80 meters, as indicated on the B2-to-B3 traverse map.]

133:05:48 Haise: Okay. We're showing 1:57 and a half now, Al.

133:05:56 Shepard: Okay. (Pause) That's at least 30 minutes up there.

133:06:06 Mitchell: Yup.

[They will reach their farthest point east - and highest elevation - in the traverse at Station C-Prime about 133:22. However, as indicated on the USGS map, that point is actually well past the southernmost point on the Cone Crater rim.]

133:06:22 Mitchell: Yup. It's going to take longer than we expected. Our positions are all in doubt now, Fredo. What we were looking at was a flank, but it wasn't really...The top of it wasn't the rim of Cone. We've got a ways to go yet.

133:06:37 Haise: Okay, Ed. And...

RealVideo Clip (13 min 39 sec)

[Note that, until Al and Ed get back to the LM, the TV picture shows an unchanging scene - except for very minor changes in shadow length as the Sun rises 0.5 degrees per hour.]

[The approximate location of this second rest stop beyond Station B2 is indicated on B2-to-B3 traverse map and is labeled with the time "133:05:14". It is near the break in slope just west of Flank Crater. Farther east, they see some relatively level ground and then another slope up to what Al think is the rim. They will reach the top of that slope at about 133:19:57, just before they make their final stop at Station C-Prime. Here, Al is overestimating the time it will take them to reach the top of the slope, which is probably not surprising given the effort they have put in since leaving Station B2. In fact, it took them just about 6 minutes and 44 seconds, including one intermediate stop, to travel about 185 meters from B2 to their present location. The top of the slope they can see to the east is about 385 meters away and, once they leave here, the trip will take about 12 minutes 20 seconds, including a brief stop at Station B3 for a panorama and another short rest stop just before the get to the top of the slope. It is not clear if they are overestimating the distance or the effort that will be required. Their frustration may be contributing.]

133:06:58 Shepard: And what I'm proposing is perhaps we use that as the turnaround point. It seems to me that we spend a lot more time in traverse if we don't, and we don't get very many samples.

133:07:10 Haise: Roger, Al. And, just a couple of questions they have up now. They'd like you to note if you do see any dust, particularly on the top surfaces of boulders in the area. And, any comparisons between the boulders you see distributed around. Are they all the same or do some types appear different?

133:07:38 Mitchell: It's too early to make that sort of judgment, but we'll tell you when we get there. We're not really in that boulder territory yet.

133:07:44 Shepard: I think, Fredo, if you'll keep those questions in mind, the best thing for us to do is to get up here and document samples of what I feel is pretty sure Cone ejecta. And then, when we head down-Sun, we'll be able to see these subtle variations and rock types a lot better than we are right now.

[This is a good observation. The NASA Public Affairs commentator reports that Al's peak heart rate before this stop was 150 and Ed's was 128. Nonetheless, it sounds like Ed is breathing more heavily. Figure 10-5 in the Apollo 14 Mission Report shows representations of the crew's heart rates during EVA-2.]

[Jones - "I presume that what Al's saying there is that going to the east you're basically seeing the shadowed side of boulders."]

[Mitchell - "Yes. And that the sun glare is causing your eyes to iris down and you're just not seeing as much detail. You don't have discrimination."]

133:08:10 Shepard: Well, let's head for these two babies up here. (Long Pause)

133:08:40 Mitchell: Hey, Al?

133:08:41 Shepard: Yeah.

133:08:42 Mitchell: I'd...(Pause) No, let's keep going around this crater (probably Flank), but...(Pause) Think that's right here.

133:08:59 Shepard: Well, maybe. I thought we'd get those boulders up there, Ed.

133:09:03 Mitchell: Yeah.

133:09:04 Shepard: They undoubtedly came from...

133:09:05 Mitchell: Yeah. Let's head right for that boulder field at the top. I think we'll be where we want to be.

133:09:09 Shepard: Right here.

133:09:10 Mitchell: Pardon.

133:09:11 Shepard: Right here.

133:09:12 Mitchell: Yeah, right...Clear on up at the top, you mean.

133:09:13 Shepard: No.

133:09:14 Mitchell: Huh?

133:09:15 Shepard: I don't think we'll have time to go up there.

133:09:16 Mitchell: Oh, let's give it a whirl. Gee whiz. We can't stop without looking into Cone Crater. (Garbled) everything if we don't get there.

133:09:28 Shepard: I think we'll waste an awful lot of time traveling and not much documenting.

133:09:33 Mitchell: Well, the information we're going to find, I think, is going to be right on top.

[From evidence gained in terrestrial experiments with craters formed by explosives and impacts, the closer one gets to the rim, the greater the depth from which the ejecta was derived. A climb to the very rim would, then, offer the best chance of getting samples of the underlying bedrock - not to mention the view into the crater and the fact that the rim was a readily defined goal, akin to the summit of a mountain.]

[Mitchell - "We're not really in a pissing contest but what I'm trying to do is angle us...If this is where we turned out to be (a little short of B3), Al's trying to get us to this boulder field here (at C-Prime) and I'm trying to get us to go this way (north). Because I'm pretty sure we're angling too far to the east here. I am now pretty confident of where the edge of the Cone is, and to get to the boulder field Al is talking about, which is kind of where we ended up, it would have been shorter to go right on straight up the hill, because the bigger boulders and everything are right there. So it's all of this confusion that got into where the heck we were, in here...Al had one (mental) picture; I had another. So we got into a little disagreement here, but I'm becoming pretty certain that we should go this way, we end up going here and, of course, as it turns out, when we stop here at C1, we're only 50 feet from looking into that damn thing."]

[Jones - "Hindsight's a wonderful thing."]

133:09:43 Shepard: Okay, Ed. Look at this; you're going through...(We) just kicked up a layer of some very light gray fine underneath the...

133:09:51 Mitchell: Yep. As you look back along your path, there's quite a bit of it.

133:09:55 Shepard: Get out of this crater...(Long Pause)

133:10:10 Mitchell: Fredo, how far behind our timeline are we?

133:10:17 Haise: Okay. As best I can tell right now (pause) about 25 minutes down now.

133:10:32 Mitchell: Okay.

133:10:33 Shepard: We'll be an hour down by the time we get to the top of that thing. (Pause) You got six samples.

[Al is urging that they stop and sample.]

133:10:51 Haise: Okay, Al and Ed. In view of your assay of where your location is and how long it's going to take to get to Cone, the word from the Backroom is they'd like you to consider where you are the edge of Cone Crater.

133:11:13 Mitchell: (I) think you're finks! (Pause)

[Ed is using 'finks' in the sense of 'spoilsports' than than 'informers/strikebreakers/contemptible people'.]

133:11:42 Mitchell: Well, we're three-quarters there. (Pause) Why don't we lose our bet, Al, and leave the MET and get on up there? We could make it a lot faster without it.

133:12:05 Shepard: Well...I think what we're looking at right here in this boulder field, Ed, is the stuff that's ejected from Cone.

133:12:15 Mitchell: But not the lowermost part, which is what we're interested in.

133:12:20 Shepard: Okay. We'll press on a little farther, Houston. And keep your eye on the time.

133:12:26 Haise: Okay. And, as of right now, we have a 30-minute extension. (Pause)

133:12:46 Haise: And Al, did you copy 30-minute extension?

133:12:52 Mitchell: We got it.

133:12:53 Shepard: Yeah. That's affirmative, Fred. Thank you.

[Comm Break]

133:14:06 Mitchell: Okay. (Long Pause)

133:14:25 Shepard: (Probably having stopped) Okay, Al's going to Medium flow.

133:14:30 Mitchell: And I'll take a pan from here.

133:14:34 Haise: Roger, Ed. (Pause)

[This is Station B3. They are near CW.8/86.6 (0.8 Mb). They have traveled about 420 meters since leaving Station B2 at 132:58:30. Along the way, they spent a total of about 4 minutes 47 seconds at two rest stops: one starting at 133:01:13 and the other at about 133:05:14. Consequently, they were on the move for about 11 minutes 8 seconds and had an average speed of 38 meters/minute when moving and a net speed of about 26 meters/minute. A USGS shaded relief map of the immediate area around Station B3 gives the relative positions of the MET, the various craters, and the sample locations. Scan by Brian McInall. See, also, the B2-to-B3 traverse map.]

133:14:40 Shepard: Well, I'll tell you, it's a fantastic view from here. (Pause) (Breathing heavily) As this pan will show. (Long Pause) We're approaching the edge of the rugged boulder field to the west rim. It appears as though the best for us to do will be go to the west rim and document from there even though the Sun angle may not be quite as good. Well, we're pushing on in that direction.

[Mitchell - "He thinks we're further north than where we are and that we're going to the west rim."]

[A labeled version ( 250k ) of the northern portion of the Station B3 pan shows the approximate directions of the center of Cone Crater and a tangent to the south rim. If they had move at least slightly northward of the latter direction, they would have encountered the rim. Shepard intends to continue in a more easterly direction.]

133:15:36 Shepard: Al's back to Min flow.

133:15:37 Haise: (Confused by Al's statement) You're moving to the west then. (Pause)

133:15:49 Shepard: Al is back to Min flow, and we're moving again. (Pause)

133:16:03 Haise: And, Al and Ed, Deke says he'll cover the bet if you'll drop the MET.

133:16:14 Mitchell: Well, it's not that hard with the MET. We need those tools.

133:16:21 Shepard: No, the MET's not slowing us down, Houston. It's just a question of time. We'll get there.

133:16:30 Haise: Roger, Al. (Pause)

133:16:39 Mitchell: Give you a hand, Al.

133:16:40 Shepard: It's all right.

133:16:45 Mitchell: You caught a boulder with your wheel when you went around that corner.

MP3 Audio Clip by Ken Glover (8 min 10 sec)

133:17:02 Mitchell: Al?

133:17:03 Shepard: Yeah.

133:17:04 Mitchell: Head left. It's right up there.

[Ed realizes that they are south of the rim, while Al is headed for a cluster of boulders east of their present position.]

133:17:57 Mitchell: Just bear a little more left. Go right up through there. (Pause) I'll give you a hand. (Long Pause)

133:18:15 Shepard: Okay. We're now right in middle of the boulder field on the west rim. We haven't quite reached the rim yet. (Long Pause) Okay. Want to rest here a minute?

133:18:52 Mitchell: Yeah. (Breathing very heavily; speech labored) Let's take a look at the map. I think we're closer than that. (Pause)

133:19:09 Shepard: I'll just go ahead slowly with this. (Pause)

[At the time of Al's next ransmission, they will have been traveling for 3 minutes 36 seconds since leaving Station B3 and, at 35 meters/minute, would be near CX.1/89.0 in the B-3-to-Cp map.]

133:19:29 Mitchell: Yeah. The rim's right up here. (Pause) Let's see if we can spot this one, Al.

133:19:42 Shepard: Okay.

133:19:43 Mitchell: On the map.

133:19:45 Haise: Okay. And, Al, it looks like you'd be a little more comfortable there if you're on Intermediate.

133:19:56 Mitchell: Yeah.

133:19:57 Shepard: Okay. We're resting now.

133:19:59 Mitchell: Look. Let me show you something.

133:20:02 Shepard: Okay.

133:20:05 Mitchell: Here's that crater. We're down here. We got to go there.

133:20:11 Shepard: What crater?

133:20:13 Mitchell: That crater right there (on the lunar surface in front of them) is that one right there (on the map).

[Ed may be discussing the crater at CX.4/90.2 (0.8 Mb). This is crater 1101 on the USGS map and they will stop just beyond it at the location marked Station C-Prime. They are currently near the location marked '133:19:57 (STOP)' on the B3-to-C' traverse map and have almost reached the top of 'east ridgeÕ.]

133:20:28 Mitchell: Yup.

[A short rest works wonders.]

[Note that, until Al and Ed get back to the LM, the TV picture shows an unchanging scene - except for very minor changes in shadow length as the Sun rises 0.5 degrees per hour.]

133:20:46 Haise: Roger, Al. And you can leave the dial in Intermediate. We're fat on the feedwater.

133:20:56 Shepard: Okay. Thank you.

133:21:01 Mitchell: Let me set mine. If we're in that good a shape, let me set mine, Houston, if I'm okay, too.

133:21:07 Haise: That's affirm, Ed. I guess the low item is the battery.

133:21:15 Mitchell: Okay. (Pause) Oops! It (the MET)'s going over. No, got it. (Long Pause) Fantastic stabilization; Al, it's going to turn over. (Pause)

133:21:50 Shepard: Okay. We better reconnoiter here. I don't see the crater yet.

133:21:57 Mitchell: I agree. Rock under my wheels. (Long Pause)

133:22:28 Shepard: See this boulder pattern and all that we're in here right now? This boulder field and all?

[Al is asking if the boulder field they are in is on the map. A significant problem is that Al thinks they are farther north than they really are and still west of the Cone rim. He may be looking at the boulder field outside the southwest rim in the area immediately north of boulder 1033 on the USGS map. This boulder field is not as obvious on the traverse map ( 0.8 Mb ). See, also, a detail ( 0.5 Mb ) from the 28 November 2009, 0.5m/pixel LRO image.]

[They have reached Station C-Prime. They are near CX.9/90.5 ( 0.8 Mb ), about 90 meters SE of the nearest point on the Cone Crater rim. Since leaving B3, they traveled about 215 meters. If they stopped at about 133:22:30, they were on the move for about six minutes and 12 seconds at an average speed of about 35 meters/minute. They are about 1345 meters from the LM. See, also, the B3-to-Cp traverse map.]

[Ed has a reasonable idea where they are and, in the area south of Cone, several of the largest boulders - such as the one at CY.6/89.0 ( 0.8 Mb ) - are visible, even on a photocopy of the map. As it turns out, the boulder at CY.6/89.0 - now known as Saddle Rock - is at Station C1.]

133:22:45 Mitchell: Oh, yeah.

133:22:46 Shepard: It's affirmative. It's down in the valley.

[They heard 'LM' instead of 'rim'.]

133:22:58 Shepard: Oh, the rim. That is negative. We haven't found that yet. (Pause)

133:23:10 Mitchell: This big boulder right here (on the traverse map), Al, which stands out bigger than anything else (undoubtedly Saddle Rock) ought...We ought to be able to see it.

[Because he has no references to help him judge size and distance, Ed does not recognize that the large boulder on the map ( 0.8 Mb ) is in sight. Al will first call attention to the "white boulder" at 133:25:40. Later, they will go over to Saddle Rock and collect samples.]

133:23:23 Haise: And, Ed and Al, we've already eaten in our 30-minute extension and we're past that now. I think we'd better proceed with the sampling and continue with the EVA.

133:23:37 Mitchell: Okay, Fredo.

133:23:40 Shepard: Okay. We'll start with a pan from here. I'll take that.

133:23:47 Mitchell: All right, I'll start sampling. (Long Pause)

[Mitchell - "Right now, as I listen to this, I feel an enormous sense of frustration, just like I did then. It was terribly, terribly frustrating; coming up over that ridge that we were going up, and thinking, finally, that was it; and it wasn't - suddenly recognizing that, really, you just don't know where the hell you are. You know you're close. You can't be very far away. You know you got to quit and go back. It was probably one of the most frustrating periods I've ever experienced. There's no feeling of being lost. I mean, the LM is there; we can get back to the LM. It's not reaching and looking down into that bloody crater. It's terribly frustrating."]

[Jones - "Still, twenty years later."]

[Mitchell - "Still, twenty years later. Well, I'm tapping back into those same feelings. The only thing that really makes it palatable is that six weeks later, after the flight, when we realized that we really were there and, from point C1, another ten or twenty feet it would have been obvious. That really is distressing."]

[Shepard, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "If we'd gotten to the point where we'd been willing to do away with the rest of the traverse (that is, do their work at the Cone rim and then proceed directly back to the LM without stopping), we could have made the rim all right. But I personally wasn't willing to do that. I felt that gathering more samples was the better of the two choices. We looked at the map again today and described two boulder fields that indicate that we were probably within 150 to 300 feet - depending on these two boulder fields - of the rim and still were not able to see it. That was a pretty good-sized lunar feature, to be that close to the top of the thing and not see it. That is just part of the navigation problem."]

[Mitchell, from the 1971 Technical Debrief - "At this point, in spite of personal frustration - and I know Al felt frustrated in the same way - to have us stop at that point and turn around and come back was the proper decision."]