I feel like my real Antarctic experience began today. I knew today was different the minute I walked out of my tent. The sky was pretty overcast, and there was a crazy wind whipping in my face. For the past few days, I'd been able to see out to the horizon in all directions. Today, the wind was blowing up so much snow and ice that you couldn't see very far at all. I mentioned before that the weather felt a lot like a nasty Chicago winter day. Well, I was wrong about that. Today was actually much worse. At times, it felt like the wind was just blowing straight through my clothes (now I understand why they gave us so many layers. I'll have to add a few more tomorrow...)
And of course today was the first day that I got stuck doing manual labor outside all day. First I spent six hours taping two 200 foot stainless steel hoses together, methodically going inch by inch as my fingers were freezing solid. Then Justin and I had to haul a bunch of boxes. Twelve hours outside. Lovin' it. When do I get to sit on the beach in Australia again? :) I posted a video of what it was like to work outside today here .
There are a few nice features of all this wind though. It kicks up snow crystals pretty high into the sky. In addition to making really cool sparkles, a lot of times rainbow haloes will form around the sun. A normal rainbow is formed from small raindrops in the sky. These haloes are formed from small snow crystals instead. I tried to get a good photo, but this one was the best I could get. It doesn't really do it justice.
As promised, here's a photo of home, sweet home , and another of me in all my gear .
Finally, I thought I'd say a quick bit more about what we're actually doing down here in the first place. You can see it in this photo . Basically, we have a team of drillers that works for us drilling holes 2500 meters (or 1.5 miles) down into the ice sheet. The way they do it is conceptually really simple-they just shoot a jet of boiling water into the snow. Anyway, once they finish drilling this hole, we lower our instruments down on a big cable. In the photo, the hole is being protected by that stainless steel lip so that nobody falls into it (that's the one thing nobody down here talks about. It's pretty insane to look down, and nobody likes to think what would happen if someone went down. I'll try to get a photo of the hole tomorrow...). You can see the two people in the photo lowering one of our instruments down.
Okay, that's it for now. I'm so nice and warm, and I can hear the wind howling outside. Time to get my coat back on and head back out to the tent...
Oh, did I forget to mention that I haven't showered in a week? Water is tightly rationed down here, and you only get two two-minute showers a week. Plus I have to go outside to the shower. Maybe tomorrow. Nobody can smell me under all those clothes anyway. :)
Friday, January 12, 2007
Thursday, January 11, 2007
Fun Facts On the Pole
So I thought I'd share some fun facts I've come across down here.
Fun Fact #1
I mentioned before that we're at a pretty high altitude where the oxygen and air pressure are much, much lower. This has some pretty funny effects. I brought some medications in sealed packages down from Chicago. When I got them out of my bag, they had blown up like those silver balloons you give people when they're in the hospital. My favorite though has to do with contact solution. We were deploying some of our instruments, and one of the guys on our team took a break to wet his contacts. All of the sudden we hear screaming--the bottle of solution had basically exploded and squirted high pressure saline solution right into his face. Pretty hilarious.
Fun Fact #2
There's no dirt at the South Pole. Well, there is, technically, but it's 9,000 feet down under the ice, so you don't see it. For someone who grew up in Chicago or Boston or some other place where it snows, you're used to a beautiful, fresh snowfall which then gets nasty and black and slushy in a day or two. But since there's no dirt down here, the snow is like a brand new snowfall everyday. I think it's the whitest substance I've ever seen, and it glistens like it's got diamonds in it when you're walking along, your boots crunching with each step you take.
Fun Fact #3
The South Pole is a lot like Wisconsin. It seems like half the people I meet down here are from Wisconsin, and they're right at home. A lot of drinking, a lot of snow, and a lot of snowmobiling. I learned how to drive a snowmobile today. Flying over the snow on a snowmobile at the South Pole. Pretty unbelievable. Of course, I almost flipped it my first time. I went the wrong way and ended up driving over a trench. To get out, I had to get off and guide it from the side. It was at a pretty steep angle, but it made it without flipping. (Don't worry Mom, I won't make that mistake again).
Fun Fact #4
The South Pole is technically a desert. It's basically the driest place on Earth. It snows a tiny, tiny bit each winter, but not much at all. It's only because it's been snowing for 40,000 years, and since it never gets warm enough for it to melt, that it builds up into this 9,000 foot tall ice sheet.
Okay, enough of the fun facts. Time to get some sleep... Oh, one of my co-workers put up some more photos and videos of the penguins we saw here . His camera had a crazy zoom lens, so some of them are amazing.
Fun Fact #1
I mentioned before that we're at a pretty high altitude where the oxygen and air pressure are much, much lower. This has some pretty funny effects. I brought some medications in sealed packages down from Chicago. When I got them out of my bag, they had blown up like those silver balloons you give people when they're in the hospital. My favorite though has to do with contact solution. We were deploying some of our instruments, and one of the guys on our team took a break to wet his contacts. All of the sudden we hear screaming--the bottle of solution had basically exploded and squirted high pressure saline solution right into his face. Pretty hilarious.
Fun Fact #2
There's no dirt at the South Pole. Well, there is, technically, but it's 9,000 feet down under the ice, so you don't see it. For someone who grew up in Chicago or Boston or some other place where it snows, you're used to a beautiful, fresh snowfall which then gets nasty and black and slushy in a day or two. But since there's no dirt down here, the snow is like a brand new snowfall everyday. I think it's the whitest substance I've ever seen, and it glistens like it's got diamonds in it when you're walking along, your boots crunching with each step you take.
Fun Fact #3
The South Pole is a lot like Wisconsin. It seems like half the people I meet down here are from Wisconsin, and they're right at home. A lot of drinking, a lot of snow, and a lot of snowmobiling. I learned how to drive a snowmobile today. Flying over the snow on a snowmobile at the South Pole. Pretty unbelievable. Of course, I almost flipped it my first time. I went the wrong way and ended up driving over a trench. To get out, I had to get off and guide it from the side. It was at a pretty steep angle, but it made it without flipping. (Don't worry Mom, I won't make that mistake again).
Fun Fact #4
The South Pole is technically a desert. It's basically the driest place on Earth. It snows a tiny, tiny bit each winter, but not much at all. It's only because it's been snowing for 40,000 years, and since it never gets warm enough for it to melt, that it builds up into this 9,000 foot tall ice sheet.
Okay, enough of the fun facts. Time to get some sleep... Oh, one of my co-workers put up some more photos and videos of the penguins we saw here . His camera had a crazy zoom lens, so some of them are amazing.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
A Real Post From the Pole
Well, I've gotten a few complaints about not posting more regularly. Now that I'm better rested and coming back from a nice midnight lunch, I figured I'd fill in some details about the last week or so. I've been working the night shift, which sorta sucks, but it's not terrible, considering that it's always daytime outside...
My flight for Antarctica left New Zealand five or so days ago. I actually started a post while I was on the flight, so I'll just copy it here:
As we got closer and closer to Antarctica, looking out one of the emergency exits we saw more and more sea ice and icebergs. It also got a lot colder on the plane, so I had to put on some of my cold weather gear. I think that's when it really settled in where I was heading. At some point, the pilot announced we were going to land (which in some sense was a relief, since at least we weren't going to boomerang). It was pretty turbulent coming down, and even weirder since there were no windows to look out of to tell how low we were. But then we just landed, out of the blue, and everything was fine. It took awhile to slow down, of course, since we were on a runway of ice. (You can see McMurdo down on the lower right corner of the Ross Ice Shelf on this map .)
I'm not sure how best to describe getting off of that plane. Justin described it last year as one of the best moments of his life. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it was pretty amazing. They open the door of the plane, and you get hit with this blast of cold air. They keep the engines running (I think so that they don't freeze up) as you get off, so it's still loud as hell. I walked down the stairs, and there were people, ice, blowing snow, an overcast sky, and huge mountains on three sides. The runway on the ice is a few kilometers out on the ice from the station, so you can't see any buildings or structures. It's like you've been let off in the middle of nowhere. It's both exhilirating and terrifying at the same time. Here's a photo which doesn't really do it justice...
After a 30 minute shuttle bus ride to the station, we got some food and got oriented. There are about a thousand people at McMurdo during the summer, and the station is really nice. It's like a nice college dorm, basically. The whole area is volcanic, so the dirt is black volcanic rock, forming sheer cliffs down to the white sea ice. There are huge mountains and volcanoes on three sides and the the sea ice to the other.
We heard rumors that there were penguins in town, so even though it was 2 AM, we headed out to see if we could find them. Lo and behold, we found a group of 10 or so. There were pretty tired and just sort of sitting there sunning themselves. We took some photos and hung out and were just generally stoked that we had gotten to see them. Little did we know...
The next morning, I went to mass (yes, there's a church in Antarctica...) and then wandered around town for a bit. Later in the afternoon, we walked out to Hut Point where Scott set up this tiny wooden hut, the first structure in Antarctica. I have no idea how those guys spent an entire winter there. Anyway, when we got there, there were all sorts of people taking photos. It turns out that there were several different penguin colonies that had come in from the sea. Hundreds and hundreds of Adelie penguins. I guess the sea ice has melted more than usual this year, so there has been an unprecedented number of penguins coming into McMurdo (as a side note, everyone on our experiment hates us now, since, literally, nobody else has gotten to see penguins down here). I've got a lot of great photos, but I had to pick just a couple to send over the satellite. Here's one of a line of penguins heading out single file towards a Swedish icebreaker which was cutting a path in the ice for a resupply ship to come in. They made it all the way out there, and then got scared when the icebreaker got too close, so they all ran frantically back to shore.
I always knew penguins were hilarious on TV and in movies, but I always thought that was rare and possibly even staged. But they actually are just as hilarious in person. They're constantly running in all directions, tripping and falling and sliding around. At one point, we saw the lead penguin in a pack slip and fall into a huge crack in the ice. The next three or four walked up carefully and stood at the edge peering over to look for him. And then, all of a sudden, the ledge they were on cracked off and they all plunged into the crack too. Everyone was dying laughing (don't worry, they all made it back out eventually...)
It's also amazing how curious and unafraid they are. A penguin will just walk up to within a foot or two of you and just stand there starting at you. It's like they're just as interesed in checking you out as you are them. I was taking some video, and this penguin ran up to me, to the point where I had to take a few steps back (it's a crime punishable by expulsion from Antarctica to touch a penguin, or any other animal life, for that matter). Here's the video I took, though I haven't had time to edit it, so I think it's still sideways...
We headed for the South Pole the next morning. The plane was much smaller, a military C-130 prop plane with skis. This one had no seats, just cargo netting on the side. I think it's designed to make you want to jump out of it. Anyway, it was three hours to the Pole from McMurdo (it's surprising, but Antarctica is actually bigger than the U.S.). We crossed over the Transantarctic Mountains and some pretty big peaks, and then onto the Polar Plateu: just white in all directions, as far as the eye can see. You're basically standing on 9,000 feet of ice. It's high, and it's extremely dry, which is why a lot of people come down here to do astrophysics experiments.
Anyway, we landed and got off the plane. They warned us we'd notice the altitude immediately (the Pole is at about 10,300 feet, but it fluctuates because of the pressure. The daily weather report has the altitude for the day). Right away, my left ear felt like it needed to pop but just couldn't. So I walked around for the rest of the day feeling a little woozy and like I had an earmuff on my left ear. I decided to take the diamox pills they encouraged us to take at McMurdo (I guess they've had to medevac 7 people from the Pole this year for altitude sickness). I think the pills helped. I didn't have headaches or nosebleeds or trouble sleeping, but it's amazing how winded I got doing even the most basic things. It's still a bit of a struggle to walk up a flight of stairs, though things are getting better.
Home sweet home down here is a Korean War-era tent about 10 minutes from the brand-spanking new South Pole station. I feel a little ripped off, as the new station is like a really nice hotel. People have single rooms with desks and phones and internet. A lot of people walk around all day in shorts and sandals and never even go outside. You could go weeks without even realizing where you are. I, on the other hand, have a little bed cordoned off with some blankets from the rest of the tent. At least it's warm though.
As for the weather, it's not all that bad. It's -25 or so, -30 or -35 with the windchill. It's like a nasty, nasty Chicago winter day, except that you're dressed for it. I've got these amazing boots and boot liners and wool socks, so my feet are never cold. On top, there's long undewear and overalls and fleeces and then the huge red parka on top of it all. So you can walk around outside, and the only thing that gets cold is the tip of your nose. It's blindingly bright with the sun and the reflections off the snow, so I have these ski goggles which I wear whenever I'm outside.
I've got photos of my tent and the Pole and the experiment and whatnot, but they're all on my camera in the tent 10 minutes away, so I'll upload some when I get a chance. I guess this monster post will have to do for now. Hope you're all doing well...
My flight for Antarctica left New Zealand five or so days ago. I actually started a post while I was on the flight, so I'll just copy it here:
As I write this, I'm 30,000 or so feet above the Southern Ocean chilling in the cargo bay of a C-17 (of course, I won't be able to post this until we land, so if you're reading this, that means things must have gone alright. I'm either in McMurdo or boomeranged back to Christchurch...) Here's a photo of me literally shaking in my boots before we boarded the plane. We reported to our flight at 9:30 this morning. First we got dressed in our cold weather gear and repacked all our check-in and carry-on bags. Again, I have no idea what a real military experience is like. But sitting in a large warehouse with a bunch of other dudes getting suited up in gear made me think about going out on a mission. Given how freaked out I already was, I can't even imagine what it must be like heading off to a war zone.
After checking in and getting our boarding passes, we were free to mill around for awhile before our flight briefing. Justin and I had a quick orange juice, and I had some time to collect my thoughts and try to psych myself up for the flight. As I'm sure most of you know, I haven't been a huge fan of flying lately. The thought of flying on a military plane that's going to land on sea ice was making me even more uncomfortable. Getting geared up made me feel a little better and more excited, but in general I just tried to take some deep breaths and tell myself that many, many people have made this exact same trip that I'm about to make. I just thought, "What would Will Bain do right now?" :)
And then this Kiwi military woman in fatigues gets up there and tells us that our flight has been delayed due to bad weather at McMurdo. But the good news is that they're forecasting an open window if we take off later that afternoon, at 5 instead of noon. (Nobody was quite sure what to make of their weather forecasting after they had just shown us a video emphasizing how unpredictable and fast-changing the Antarctic weather can be...) I'd be lying if I said that it wasn't a huge relief to know the flight had been delayed. In fact, I was sort of hoping it would be cancelled altogether. As much as I try to prepare, the hours before a flight are always the most miserable, and I'll do almost anything to get out of it.
Anyway, we headed back into the city for some Thai food for lunch. I had a good few hours to sit in the sun in a cafe and try to relax myself. Instead, I started doing a lot of thinking about this flying business. There's the surge of relief when I find out the flight is cancelled or delayed, but in reality it just prolongs the anxiety. I get all worked up and then relieved, over and over. That can't be very healthy. So I made up my mind that just getting it over with was the best thing to do. When we got back to the airport, we got the okay to take off. Riding out to the plane and then boarding was pretty damn insane. I couldn't believe that I was actually getting on that plane.
The plane is actually pretty comfortable. There's a ton of cargo on pallets secured with cargo netting in the back. In the middle, they roll in standard airline seating, just like the middle row of a 747. There are seats that fold down along the side aisle, and Justin and I got a pair of those. There's a great amount of legroom, and I was able to doze for awhile. It's deafeningly loud. The give you earplugs, but you still have to shout to hear the person next to you. Ironically enough, military flights are pretty chill. They let you mill around almost right after takeoff, and they let us all up into the cockpit to take photos (there are only a couple of windows elsewhere on the plane).
As we got closer and closer to Antarctica, looking out one of the emergency exits we saw more and more sea ice and icebergs. It also got a lot colder on the plane, so I had to put on some of my cold weather gear. I think that's when it really settled in where I was heading. At some point, the pilot announced we were going to land (which in some sense was a relief, since at least we weren't going to boomerang). It was pretty turbulent coming down, and even weirder since there were no windows to look out of to tell how low we were. But then we just landed, out of the blue, and everything was fine. It took awhile to slow down, of course, since we were on a runway of ice. (You can see McMurdo down on the lower right corner of the Ross Ice Shelf on this map .)
I'm not sure how best to describe getting off of that plane. Justin described it last year as one of the best moments of his life. I wouldn't go quite that far, but it was pretty amazing. They open the door of the plane, and you get hit with this blast of cold air. They keep the engines running (I think so that they don't freeze up) as you get off, so it's still loud as hell. I walked down the stairs, and there were people, ice, blowing snow, an overcast sky, and huge mountains on three sides. The runway on the ice is a few kilometers out on the ice from the station, so you can't see any buildings or structures. It's like you've been let off in the middle of nowhere. It's both exhilirating and terrifying at the same time. Here's a photo which doesn't really do it justice...
After a 30 minute shuttle bus ride to the station, we got some food and got oriented. There are about a thousand people at McMurdo during the summer, and the station is really nice. It's like a nice college dorm, basically. The whole area is volcanic, so the dirt is black volcanic rock, forming sheer cliffs down to the white sea ice. There are huge mountains and volcanoes on three sides and the the sea ice to the other.
We heard rumors that there were penguins in town, so even though it was 2 AM, we headed out to see if we could find them. Lo and behold, we found a group of 10 or so. There were pretty tired and just sort of sitting there sunning themselves. We took some photos and hung out and were just generally stoked that we had gotten to see them. Little did we know...
The next morning, I went to mass (yes, there's a church in Antarctica...) and then wandered around town for a bit. Later in the afternoon, we walked out to Hut Point where Scott set up this tiny wooden hut, the first structure in Antarctica. I have no idea how those guys spent an entire winter there. Anyway, when we got there, there were all sorts of people taking photos. It turns out that there were several different penguin colonies that had come in from the sea. Hundreds and hundreds of Adelie penguins. I guess the sea ice has melted more than usual this year, so there has been an unprecedented number of penguins coming into McMurdo (as a side note, everyone on our experiment hates us now, since, literally, nobody else has gotten to see penguins down here). I've got a lot of great photos, but I had to pick just a couple to send over the satellite. Here's one of a line of penguins heading out single file towards a Swedish icebreaker which was cutting a path in the ice for a resupply ship to come in. They made it all the way out there, and then got scared when the icebreaker got too close, so they all ran frantically back to shore.
I always knew penguins were hilarious on TV and in movies, but I always thought that was rare and possibly even staged. But they actually are just as hilarious in person. They're constantly running in all directions, tripping and falling and sliding around. At one point, we saw the lead penguin in a pack slip and fall into a huge crack in the ice. The next three or four walked up carefully and stood at the edge peering over to look for him. And then, all of a sudden, the ledge they were on cracked off and they all plunged into the crack too. Everyone was dying laughing (don't worry, they all made it back out eventually...)
It's also amazing how curious and unafraid they are. A penguin will just walk up to within a foot or two of you and just stand there starting at you. It's like they're just as interesed in checking you out as you are them. I was taking some video, and this penguin ran up to me, to the point where I had to take a few steps back (it's a crime punishable by expulsion from Antarctica to touch a penguin, or any other animal life, for that matter). Here's the video I took, though I haven't had time to edit it, so I think it's still sideways...
We headed for the South Pole the next morning. The plane was much smaller, a military C-130 prop plane with skis. This one had no seats, just cargo netting on the side. I think it's designed to make you want to jump out of it. Anyway, it was three hours to the Pole from McMurdo (it's surprising, but Antarctica is actually bigger than the U.S.). We crossed over the Transantarctic Mountains and some pretty big peaks, and then onto the Polar Plateu: just white in all directions, as far as the eye can see. You're basically standing on 9,000 feet of ice. It's high, and it's extremely dry, which is why a lot of people come down here to do astrophysics experiments.
Anyway, we landed and got off the plane. They warned us we'd notice the altitude immediately (the Pole is at about 10,300 feet, but it fluctuates because of the pressure. The daily weather report has the altitude for the day). Right away, my left ear felt like it needed to pop but just couldn't. So I walked around for the rest of the day feeling a little woozy and like I had an earmuff on my left ear. I decided to take the diamox pills they encouraged us to take at McMurdo (I guess they've had to medevac 7 people from the Pole this year for altitude sickness). I think the pills helped. I didn't have headaches or nosebleeds or trouble sleeping, but it's amazing how winded I got doing even the most basic things. It's still a bit of a struggle to walk up a flight of stairs, though things are getting better.
Home sweet home down here is a Korean War-era tent about 10 minutes from the brand-spanking new South Pole station. I feel a little ripped off, as the new station is like a really nice hotel. People have single rooms with desks and phones and internet. A lot of people walk around all day in shorts and sandals and never even go outside. You could go weeks without even realizing where you are. I, on the other hand, have a little bed cordoned off with some blankets from the rest of the tent. At least it's warm though.
As for the weather, it's not all that bad. It's -25 or so, -30 or -35 with the windchill. It's like a nasty, nasty Chicago winter day, except that you're dressed for it. I've got these amazing boots and boot liners and wool socks, so my feet are never cold. On top, there's long undewear and overalls and fleeces and then the huge red parka on top of it all. So you can walk around outside, and the only thing that gets cold is the tip of your nose. It's blindingly bright with the sun and the reflections off the snow, so I have these ski goggles which I wear whenever I'm outside.
I've got photos of my tent and the Pole and the experiment and whatnot, but they're all on my camera in the tent 10 minutes away, so I'll upload some when I get a chance. I guess this monster post will have to do for now. Hope you're all doing well...
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Shocked and Awed
Well, I arrived at the South Pole about 48 hours ago. The plane ride was one of the smoothest I've ever been on. I didn't even notice when we took off from the ice sheet, and when we landed on the ski's, I wasn't even sure we had touched down.
I'm really, really sorry that I'm not writing more. I'm complete, utterly exhausted. I've been up for over 24 hours. We deployed the first string of instruments for my experiment last night, and I got stuck on the night shift. But since I was up already, I just had to stay up through the night. So I'm going to go and get some sleep before I pass out.
I'll write some more detailed posts about what's been happening when I get a chance tomorrow. In the meantime, you can look here for some photos and videos that I've taken. While the satellite is up (we only have internet for several hours a day while some satellite is visible from the station), I'll try to upload them so you can take a look. Uploading them to the blog is a little bit slow.
Hope you're all doing well...
I'm really, really sorry that I'm not writing more. I'm complete, utterly exhausted. I've been up for over 24 hours. We deployed the first string of instruments for my experiment last night, and I got stuck on the night shift. But since I was up already, I just had to stay up through the night. So I'm going to go and get some sleep before I pass out.
I'll write some more detailed posts about what's been happening when I get a chance tomorrow. In the meantime, you can look here for some photos and videos that I've taken. While the satellite is up (we only have internet for several hours a day while some satellite is visible from the station), I'll try to upload them so you can take a look. Uploading them to the blog is a little bit slow.
Hope you're all doing well...
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