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Published: December 15th 2007
Mt. Erebus
Our active volcano and incredible backdropLife has settled into a habitatual pattern here in McMurdo but it is anything but boring. In the last few weeks I proudly
walked to the continent of Antarctica (McMurdo is located on Ross Island, about 60 miles away from the continent) and geared up to fly to East Antarctica to establish AGAP, a brand new field camp that is currently flat, white and empty. In between, life has settled into a normal busy routine. For example, here was my last week's schedule:
Monday- I accompanied my coworker on his weekly run to deliver propane to the various field camps set up on the sea ice. We drove down in the piston bulley to the sea ice transition, picked up a sled loaded with a cage of full propane tanks, and drove about an hour northward to the Penguin Ranch. There was a really low ceiling that morning so we could barely see anything beyond the next flag in front of us marking the "road" ahead. After lots of jolting and bumping (the vehicle has huge tracks and no shock absorbers) we made it there and low and behold, I got to check out my first penguins in Antarctica! Granted,
they were sorta captive but they were emperor penguins nonetheless. The researchers at the Penguin Ranch want to study them in their normal habitat so they break a hole in the ice that is too far from any other hole for the penguins to hold their breath under water to escape. Apparently, the emperors can dive deeper than 1800 feet and can stay underwater on a single breath of air for as long as 22 minutes so it's pretty far away. The researchers put a fence around the hole and as such can study things like food sources, time spent under water, and interaction with other species. Speaking of which, as we were standing outside checking the levels of propane in each of the tanks, we could hear lots of eerie noises and shaking coming from under the ice. The scientists invited me inside the main observation hut and lifted a plank out of the floor. Directly underneath it was a huge air hole with a seal emerging in my face! They explained that there was an intense battle going on between the seals over "ownership" to each air hole. One of them had claimed this one and that was
Happy Birthday to me!
I treated myself to an incredible birthday hike up Observation Hill on the clearest, sunniest, windless day we've had so far. Wild! forcing the other to come up for air inside the penguin pen which was messing with their observations. While the researchers went outside to scare the seal out of the penguin ranch (?!?!?!), I continued to have a face-to-face with a huge seal in all his freezing cold, fish-breath glory! It was quite a transformative moment in my life.
After work I visited the library for some quiet computer time and a little literary interaction. It was a great escape from the social scene that usually absorbs my days until I ran into a few friends who were hoping to do the same and we got into a great discussion about what we're planning to do with the rest of our lives. Although I've met countless Antarctic career people, there are even more of us globe trotters who come to Antarctica seeking adventure and spend most of our time here plotting the next steps around the world... at least we have lots of company from which to seek adventuresome advice!
Tuesday- I ran a few work orders around town. First, I went to the VMF (Vehicle Maintenance Facility/ Heavy Shop) to fix a door latch that was missing screws.
Birthday Nachos!
My suitemates supplied a healthy round of microwaved nachos- complete with a fresh avacado- as a pre-Thanksgiving feast... quite possibly the tastiest I've ever had. While there I visited a few friends and scoped out all the crazy huge machines that we use around here to move snow around and groom the land for human activity. Sometimes living here feels like walking around in a construction zone but without the hardhats and safety vests. If the vastness of the continent doesn't make you feel small, the size of the tires will. Then I went to the Crary Lab, the fancy new building that is the headquarters of all of the scientific activity. I checked out the rock artifacts, stuffed penguin, and geophysical maps hanging all around and then got to work. There was a step outside that was "too slippery" so I scraped off all the old nonskid tape and reapplied a new covering. It was actually pretty hard because there were melting icicles falling on my head and I had to pick up every piece I chipped off (no littering in Antarctica!) but I consoled myself with the realization that I was literally "supporting science" by keeping the scientists on their feet. Although we often joke about how indirectly a lot of our jobs are in relation to the scientific endeavors that McMurdo is
intended to "support" (Recreation coordinators? Newspaper editors? Radio DJs?), I can fairly often draw a direct lineage between my work and the science that will be supported by its execution. Well, most of the time…
That evening I checked out the ceramics studio and handbuilt a few things to decorate my room. After they're bisque fired I'll go back to glaze them. Next week I think I'll retackle throwing on the wheel…
Wednesday and Thursday- I worked on building shelves for the inside of a conex box (shipping container) so that the BFC (the Berg Field Center, ie the supplier of all field camp and outdoor gear) could store the kitchen supplies for the field camps during the winters. My coworker and I planned out the entire shelving unit and after a lot of trial-and-error (more trial than error, I assure you) we finally ended up with a pretty snazzy set of U-shaped shelves that were wedged into the box so tightly that they'd have to use a chainsaw to remove them! Our boss was so impressed with them that he motioned to the other 3 empty conex boxes waiting for some lovin too… sometimes you don't want to
Seal at a breathing hole
We spotted this guy while driving out to Cape Evans and stopped to take photos be TOO good at something…
Since the weather was so warm and beautiful, I decided to do another trek up Ob(servation) Hill to try to do a 360* photo of the surrounding mountains. It was a beautiful hike up but got pretty windy at the top so I descended soon after my photo rampage. On my way back into town I decided to snoop around a little to check out some of the buildings I haven't yet visited. It can be rather overwhelming (I keep finding more buildings, seemingly hidden, in this small frontier town) but I'm starting to connect all the dots and realize who works where, who has been coming back here for more years than they can count, who is dating who, and how much Big Brother, the NSF, is watching and dictating our movements. Plus, our weather is now warmer than back at home so I can't complain at all!
Friday- We learned that all of the Carps would be going to set up a brand new deep field camp called AGAP located at 11,700ft above sea level in the boonies of East Antarctica. In preparation, we staged a "dress rehearsal" where we wore all
of our ECW gear (or as much as we could stand in the balmy 35*F McMurdo weather) and practiced putting up and taking down the Arctic Chief tents so many times that we lost the “I” in team and began to read each other’s minds. This will be important when we’re at such high altitudes and we begin to get loopy from the lack of oxygen in our bloodstreams… We’re only allowed to work for an hour at such an altitude so we have to plan everything so we accomplish everything with no variables left to chance. I can’t wait… 10 hours of flying, 1 hour of work, JATO rockets to relaunch, and a trip to the South Pole to refuel… what an adventure…
That afternoon I learned how to set up, fire, and clean (ugh!) a Preway and Perfection heater in preparation for shipping them out to the AGAP camp. It was nasty to reach inside the diesel soot-clogged stovepipes to vacuum them out but it was a neat learning experience to watch the fuel catch on fire and then learn how to adjust the carburetors to make the stoves burn “clean.” My coworkers also taught me how to
use a lighter (yeah, I don’t smoke anything) so I would be able to cut rope and melt it so it doesn’t fray. Ah, the life skills I’m learning in Antarctica…
Saturday- We began the workday (yeah, we work 6 days/week!) with an electric precaution lecture (don't touch downed cables, don't cut into walls that might have live lines behind them, etc) which was followed by a knot-tying workshop led by one of my coworkers. More life skills there. I learned the trucker hitch, figure eight and lots of other useful knots and even mastered the art of “throwing” a bowline knot (a good party trick… see below). I then learned how to build sets of staircases that will survive this "harsh" climate (and the recklessness of some forklift operators) and got to work filling a work order cutting conduit pipe for a science project at WAIS (the West Antarctic Ice Sheet) Divide. About 25 pieces later I was told that they needed another 50 cut to size and banded to dunnage to be forklift to the airplane, so it took most of the afternoon to finish the job. On Saturdays we finish early so we can do a
thorough cleaning of the shop (any sawdust traces are lethal here because the fire hazard is very high in such a dry climate) and this Saturday we had even more cleaning to do because we were hosting a Carp Shop party as an appreciation for the DAs (Dining Attendants) who are paid the least and work the hardest (and most thankless) job on station. We all rushed out to eat dinner and shower, and then headed back up to work for an evening of field camp games- horseshoes, butt ratchet, table transverse, nagel block, homemade ping-pong, and lots of other games that involve physical dexterity and/or luck but get the crowd going regardless of "winning" or "losing." We also had live entertainment from some of our fellow guitar players/carps and our beverages were chilled with ice mined from a mind-bogglingly-old frozen lake at a field camp that some carps had visited the week before. It was fairly warm so we grilled hamburgers out on the back deck and totally lost track of time basking in the post-midnight sunshine...
Sunday- I slept in waaay too late for my single day off but managed to make it to brunch (the best
meal of the week!) before catching up on the BBC news (one of the few channels we get here) and writing a few postcards (check the mail soon if you asked for one, otherwise email me your address and I'll send you some Antarctic love too!). At 2PM I checked out the annual McMurdo Craft Fair in the galley where lots of my fellow townies were selling their art just in time for the holiday gift-giving rush. I picked up a cool pair of earrings and a great photograph taken by my new friend among other things. It was really crowded (the social event of the season!) but overall it was a great way to begin the holidays without the overarching pressures of cheesiness and consumerism. Around here it's the thought that counts, even if that means "skua-ing" (finding something in the used clothing swap bins) or creating a new piece of artwork from found objects as a gift. It's quite refreshing and I plan to continue this tradition long after leaving "The Ice." That evening I checked out the weekly science lecture which was about the ice core drilling currently being conducted at WAIS Divide. It was way more
Scott's posessions
And I complained about our 75lb weight limit... interesting than previous lectures I've attended (is an inability to do public speaking a requirement for attaining one's PhD?!?) and I got to learn a lot about the science that I am helping to support on a daily basis. After a quick load of laundry, I was off to sleep to prepare for another week of Carp Shop chaos and adventures galore!
Random money facts about Antarctica:
*The annual budget of the support side of the US Antarctic Program is $240 million, not counting science grants and such
*It costs $100,000 for each round-trip C-17 flight down here from Christchurch- if you calculate that for approx. 100 people/flight that's a $1000 ticket per person. Factoring in all of the weather delays ($), flight boomerangs ($$), and heavy cargo they transport ($$$) at current gas prices I'm sure the figures are now even higher!
*The water we drink/shower/use costs about $0.50 per gallon to pump out of the Ross Sea and desalinate. Afterwards, it passes through the water filtration plant before being dumped back out to sea, supposidly "cleaner" than before. At the South Pole it's even more costly and precious because they must melt snow (which is clean and salt-free, at least)...
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