Nighttime Fun

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Hello from Antarctic!

The last few weeks have been action packed and very competitive. I have started getting into the proper mindset for winter down here - I have accepted that I will not be able to do the stuff I want to do and, though I feel like a kid chained to a bench in a playground, I have decided to have fun. The sun is spending less time with us every day and there have been quite a few great sunsets and sunrises. The stars are getting more brilliant every night and the search for auroras has begun. We have had a few days of stormy weather with fairly strong winds and blowing snow, but, despite promising forecasts of 70-knot winds, we haven’t had a storm outside of the ‘normal’ condition 3-type weather yet. The temperature has not been that cold, hovering right around 0°F, but the wind-chill has been brutal at times reaching as low as -60°F. I have been spending many of my nights at the coffee house reading or playing games with my friends. A few of us have resurrected the McMurdo Historical Society - we spent our first meeting going through the room that houses all of the old trinkets and memorabilia from the town's past. It was a lot of fun, but, due to the state condition of the building that all of the stuff is in, a lot of things in the collection have been damaged by water from the yearly thaw - We hope to get the stuff properly cataloged and moved to a more suitable location until the McMurdo Museum can be built in the future.

I made it out to Scott Base, New Zealand’s lime green and well planned out Ross Island outpost, for my first of hopefully many visits. A group of friends and I went there for trivia night under the team name of Gingko Biloba. We had an excellent team and we were able to answer almost all of the questions, which ranged from history & science to popular songs, correctly. We took the lead early and, after a few hours of tense competition, we stood victorious with a 2-point margin of victory over our closest competitor. We decided to share our winnings with all of the other participants, so out came the spoons as the lids came off of four tubs of delicious ice cream - boysenberry, jelly tips, mint chocolate chip and chocolate. After I had my fill of ice cream I went around looking at all of the pictures on the walls - There were many pictures ranging from some of the first expeditions in Antarctica to present day and many of them were signed. Scott Base has a cozy, home-like atmosphere that I like a lot - It’s a major contrast from the city-like McMurdo Station that I currently call home.

The night after trivia night I went bowling with a few friends - It was Cosmic Bowling Night! Cosmic bowling is like normal bowling except they turn off the normal lights, turn on black lights and exchange the white pins with florescent colored pins that glow in the black light - It makes for an enjoyable ‘Cosmic’ bowling experience. The McMurdo bowling alley consists of two lanes that are slightly shorter that ‘normal’ lanes and, to the best of my knowledge, the only Brunswick manual pin setting machines still in operation - I have been told that Brunswick has tried to purchase the equipment back for a museum, but McMurdo is too attached to the current, maintenance free setup. I was excited when I discovered a twelve pound ball with finger holes that my fingers fit in, because normally I am forced to bowl with the much too heavy 16 pound ball - I was certain that the lighter ball would make this game the game of my life. The balls screamed down the warped lanes and smashed into the glowing pins at the end, the pinsetters gathered the pins that fell and rolled the ball down the track in the middle of the lanes back to us. Since the ball return uses gravity as the driving force the balls would occasionally jump off of the track and bounce toward our feet or just roll back to the pinsetter at the other end - a very funny thing to see! Frame after frame, strike after strike the games came to an end, two games in all. To the admiration of my fellow bowlers, I had bowled the game of my life - It was the ‘worst’ game of my life with a score of 57, but I did have a lot of fun and that’s all that matters. I had so many gutter balls that the pinsetters thanked me after the game for not making them work too hard. I was disappointed to find out that later in the week someone else bowled a worse score than me, booting me from the esteemed position of worst bowler on station - Oh well.

I have started doing nighttime hikes out to Discovery Hut and Vince’s Cross during the week. Leaving the lights of town behind me is very relaxing and when the wind is blowing and the powdery snow is spinning and flowing across the trail in wispy streams, the hikes become a lot of fun. It is somewhat eerie being by the hut at night - Looking into the dark, snow bound windows, expecting to see a lamp lit face from nearly a century ago smiling back at me from the hut’s gloomy interior. On the way back to town one evening a gust of wind picked up a lot of the freshly fallen snow and gave me a five second glimpse of a white out - It was very cool! Last night there was a full moon, so several of my friends and I went on a trip out to Castle Rock that was organized through the Recreation Department. We loaded up two piston bullies, which are small tracked vehicles with an amazing turning radius, and drove out there stopping to take pictures on two different occasions along the way. We climbed up the snow slope leading to the base of Castle Rock and stopped at a ledge, just before the steep part of the climb, to take some pictures and look at the stars. We could still see open water to the North as well as the ever-present plume of smoke from the top of Erebus. We took a few group photos and then went back down the hill to the piston bullies. We spent the next half hour running up the hill and sliding down on our back several times - We had a lot of fun, but I was exhausted afterwards. From Castle Rock, we drove down the hill, over a few crevasses and onto the Ross Ice Shelf. We stopped at the Silver City Hut and got out for a while to see the large icefall and the green apple hut. The round hut was plastered with snow and one of the round windows had snowdrift in it that looked like a ‘ying yang’ symbol, which was cool looking. We looked for auroras and watched the stars and the moon until it was time to go back to town. When we got back to McMurdo there were two faint auroras in the sky. They didn’t have the brilliant colors they are famous for since the sky was still too bright, but it was still my first aurora sighting and a very good way to end the evening.

The next few weeks have a lot to offer with the coming of my second two day weekend and the anniversary of Scott’s death after an ill fated journey to the South Pole, but I will write about that next time.

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Photos

Full Moon Over Ross Island
This is a picture of the full moon from a ledge on Castle Rock with Mt. Terror and the Ross Ice Shelf in the Distance.

Gingko Biloba Rules!
Here is the scoreboard from trivia night at Scott Base. Yes it is a stuffed Kiwi bird in the case on top of the piano.

Another Strike!
This is a picture of my friend Bill rolling yet another strike at Cosmic Bowling.

The McMurdo Bowling Alley
This is the only bowling alley still in operation with a manual pen setting machine and Brunswick wants it back. This is Cosmic bowling night.

Sunrise on the Royal Society Range
This is a typical morning view here right now. Soon the typical morning view will be darkness.

A Firey Sunset
Here is an interesting sunset over the Royal Societies during a storm in McMurdo.

Nighttime at Discovery Hut
Discovery Hut becomes a bit spooky during nighttime hikes - I expect to see a lamp lit face looking back at me from the windows.

Radioactive!
Look what I found during our first McMurdo Historical Society meeting - Is it remnants from McMurdo's ill-fated nuclear reactor?

The Coffee House
This is where I spend a lot of time in the evenings. This building was the officer's club back in the Navy days and is a cozy place to sit and read or play games.

A Piston Bully and Friends
This is our first stop on the full moon trip to Castle Rock. Here we watched the sunset and the moonrise.

Ross Island from the Castle Rock Ledge
Looking down Hut Peninsula toward Mt. Erebus.

My Friends Out on a Ledge
This is a picture of my friends on the ledge at Castle Rock. Notice the blur of my friend trying to get out of the way.

The Path to Castle Rock
Here is a picture of one of the piston bullies at our second stop on the trail to Castle Rock.