Blogs from McMurdo Station, Antarctica, Antarctica - page 5

November 5, we were bussed to the Christchurch airport and the Antarctic Departure Terminal. There we were made to suit up in all of our cold weather gear (including boots, parka, goggles, hats, gloves and everything) and greeted by Kiwi military and customs officers and dogs who thoroughly checked our kit. We were then shuttled onboard a C-17 military cargo aircraft operated by the New York National Guard. Seating consisted of fold down webbing seats along the inner sides of the aircraft and rows of traditional airline seating mounted in the cargo area. Behind the seats were large pallets of cargo netted and secured in place. I took one of the seats along the side because I’d been briefed by an insider that - though they looked less comfortable - the netting seats offered a ... read more

Since I have gotten many requests for what it's "really" like here in town and I'm a little too lazy (and I'll admit it, bashful) to go around taking photos of all the normal and abmnormal stuff, I'll instead reference my friend Kevin's blog (he's a Red Sox fan, but we've agreed to disagree that the Yankees are the greatest baseball team ever) who has done a much better (and funnier) version of what I would do: http://riceonice.blogspot.com/2008/02/welcome-to-mcmurdo.html. His next blog posting, Funny Signs Around Town, http://riceonice.blogspot.com/2008/01/funny-signs-around-town.html, is equally amusing. On to my own writing... I am currently out of work for a few days due to a nasty bout of the "crud." It's almost mandatory to get ... read more

This year in Antarctica the buzzword (well, acronym) seems to be "AGAP" (Antarctic GAmbertsev (Mountain) Province) due to the incredible logistics involved in establishing a brand new deep field camp at a 12,400ft elevation (which feels more like 14,000ft at the polar latitudes due to the extreme cold conditions) in -40*F temperatures. The point of the science is to explore the Gambertsev Mountain range that is completely submerged below the snow and ice to decode how a huge mountain range came to be in the middle of the continent, what the climate past was like in this region, and how this could all be effected by rising temperatures and carbon dioxide concentrations (notice a pattern?!?). For more about the science, here's a good article: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6145642.stm Judy, thi... read more

I was chosen as one of the four carpenters to go out to Granite Harbor to pull out the field camp that had been established there for ANDRILL (www.andrill.org). Granite Harbor (~100 miles north along the mainland coastline) that had been established for the ANDRILL team to do test drilling (of sea ice and sediment cores) for a few weeks after which we were called in to take it down. It was AMAZING- the 50 minute helicopter ride each way was the craziest thing! We flew really low at one point to ride parallel to the glaciers stuck in the sea ice and actually touched down on a chunk of B-15 (the infamous glacier that broke off of West Antarctica in 2001 that was a wake-up call about global warming- it's featured in An Inconvenient Truth) ... read more

Cape Evans (77°38′S, 166°24′E) is a rocky cape on the west side of Ross Island, forming the north side of the entrance to Erebus Bay. It was discovered by the Discovery expedition (1901-04) under Scott, who named it the Skuary. Scott's second expedition, the British Antarctic Expedition (1910-13), built its headquarters here, renaming the cape for Lieutenant Edward R.G.R. Evans, Royal Navy, second in command of the expedition. Scott's headquarters building still exists and is known as Scott's Hut. Located about fourteen miles from McMurdo, The hut at Cape Evans is known as the Terra Nova hut, named after Captain Scott's ship and was used on Scott's last Antarctic Expedition from 1910-1913. Shackleton later used the hut on his attempt to cross Antarctica in 1917. It's amazing how well preserved the hut and its contents are, ... read more