Boondoogle to Cape Evans, pee before you leave!

Boondoggle here is a special trip or assignment outside of one's normal work to visit and witness cool and unusual things in order to build moral. I got my first one, a field trip to Cape Evans, the site of Scott's Antarctic headquarters. (FYI He died on the 1912 trip to the pole on his way. He was attempting to be the first there but missed by about a week, Amundsen from Norway beat him to it and then he (Scott,) and all his men perished in a blizzard on the way back to this hut. They died of starvation and exposure, his last entry into his diary was on March 12, 1912. ) Shackleton also used this site for 2 of his trips as well. Several folks wintered over here, I can't even imagine it.

We rode in the delta, an old Navy tracked vehicle, that is repaired with duct tape! Not exactly the comfort ride! It takes about 1 hour to get out there if one does not stop for any reason. They stop for wild life. And there was some.

As mentioned earlier, there is far more life under the ice than above. But there on the ice were ice slugs, Weddell seals that look like slugs. You can see one in the pix with me in it. They are pretty boring on the ice. The cool thing is to see them coming out of the seal holes, many of which have been bored by scientists to encourage them to come up and get tagged for study. I attended a talk on seal research here and in other places around the world. They were looking into the huge decline in the seal population a few years back. Under the water, they are far cooler to watch.

So after taking shots of that and of Mount Erebus, one of the most active volcanoes in the world and only 1 of three of that particular type, we climbed back in and rode on out to Cape Evans where Scott's Terra Nova hut is. It is run by the kiwis historical society and they were excavating and removing snow drifts from around the hut. It still smells like seal blubber, the main source of food and heat, yum. There was also an old bicycle there and a dead penguin on the table, desert anyone? The shelves are stocked with food presumably brought in about 1916. There were things like Heinz ketchup, anchovy paste, canned cheese and rhubarb. The shoes left here had wooden strips nailed to the bottom to increase traction. The4re were some room dividers but for the most part it was one large open room. They even had horses here at one point, the stable being attached to the living quarters. They also had dogs. In the 1990’s a new treaty was signed that forbid the bringing of any non native species to the continent, save humans. That was a very controversial thing, there are people who left and vowed to never come back because of that.

This boondoggle is not for the faint of heart tourist; once we leave McMurdo, there is no place to pee, never on the snow, it is a violation of the Antarctic treaty! There are some places it's allowed but not there. The kiwis live in camps and the human and hazardous waste is choppered out. In the delta we took to get there, driving on the sea ice about 7 feet thick and 500-800 feet deep under that, there was a plastic lidded bucket and it was rolling around. Someone picked it up and it said HUMAN WASTE. That was the toilet, no one wanted to use it or do that to the rest of us in the delta, there is no privacy so one just holds it. You should have seen the rush to the bathrooms when we returned! It was a 5 hour trip and it was worth it. When we started out it was actually hot, for Antarctica, +26 sunny and no wind. We all have to take all our special issued survival gear in case we were stuck out there. It is too damn much to wear, I would have been sweating profusely! So I wore my own clothes and carried my ECW. (extreme weather gear). Also got up really close to an Adelie penguin that had strayed from the colony. We are not allowed to touch or approach it, but we sat or stood very still and it came right over to us, it was about a foot away! They are the little penguins, about 2 ½ feet tall. Besides the skua, this was the first real wildlife I had seen up close.

This was a big week, I got out on my first ski trip from Scott Base to McMurdo with my new skis and it was great, the wind was at our backs. I got a tour of the South Pole Traverse set-up. They are dragging fuel to the Pole for the year on these giant plastic sleds with huge fuel bladders. To fly in the 130's it take 4,000 lbs of fuel to deliver 3500 lbs. This trip is semi historic for the US. Its the most that is being attempted to be pulled such a distance in such conditions by the USA. Others have already used this method to refuel and supply inland camps. It will take them about 45 days to get 1,000 miles. It's not quite that far but the road isn't a straight line. I got to befriend one of the guys going, Bill McCormick, who gave us a tour last Sunday before we went skiing. They have some pretty nice accommodations for such a trip which gets pulled on gigantic tractors. The lead tractor uses radar and sonar to find crevasses and the others fill in the crevasse to build the road as they go.

Also climbed Observation Hill for the first time. It rises up taller than the IDS tower and it was a crystal clear evening, at 9PM bright sun, very little wind. I could see open water 20 miles away. And I bowled a phenomenal 163 at the world’s most unique bowling alley!

In the continuing story of the Snafu/catch 22, an Airbus was to fly in from NZ today, but suddenly it was realized that there was no ramp to fit it. The jet may have landed, the door open and someone says, oh shit, we forgot the stairs. Yes they could use the slide but getting back in would be a bitch, especially with the survival gear everyone has to have in order to fly in here just in case. This is a test of feasibility to determine if it would be more cost affective to fly the humans down in a regular jet rather than the C- 17 as addendums to cargo.

Actually they may have figured on a staircase for the occasion, but there does look to be a possible Herbie (storms that move in from the southeast and carry drifting snow, the kind that kept hitting when I was first here, you know those first 2 weeks when the WC here was colder than the South Pole! ) It feels more like summer now, one can venture out without the tons of gear, thankfully.

This was a good week, I even got my broom closet room redesigned with the help of the head carpenter down here, for the price of a bottle of rum. For next week, the powers that be have decided that our Thanksgiving will be on Saturday to coincide with the weekend, thus we get off early on Friday, AND have Sat. and Sunday off. Tomorrow is the Andrill open house, the biggee research on coring down into the actual land, through the 2 miles of snow and ice to check out the distant past of the continent, the climatic shifts and geology. It appears there are many lakes, a rival perhaps to the 10,000 of Minnesota. After all this continent is bigger than all the of lower 48 by some piece. There should be lots of things here! It's just they're so hard to find. Would make ice fishing a real challenge!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

Audrey in Antarctica

McMurdo Speak, Antarctic culture!?

As with every subculture (and this is one) there is a language that is unique to that subculture, and that is true of McMurdo Station. (i.e.: Mactown, town, station, base). When one arrives here for the first time it is almost as if a foreign language is being spoken. There are lots of acronyms and strange phraseology, "when did you PQ?, I just skuaed my boots, that's been retroed, did you get some freshies?, are you winfly or mainbody? oh she's a winter over polie", etc...Part of the arrival exhaustion/culture shock is due to this, and folks who have been here a while just think you know what it all means. After all, they do. So what does it mean?

Well, silly, if you PQed then you are physically qualified to deploy to Antarctica. Skua is actually a bird, a rather annoying one at that, and if one gets close enough it is said that they stink, they are the "pigeons" of Antartica! These become more prevalent as the season progresses and feed on penguin eggs and penguin chicks. They eat dead seals and penguins, and would eat dead people if they could. They are very aggressive and actually dive bomb people walking about outside with food. I actually saw a guy walk out of the galley with a sandwich and two were waiting on the roof of the door way. The guy was attacked from above. I couldn’t get my camera out of my pocket until after the birds moved in for the kill on the sandwich as seen above. (One always carries a camera lest great pictures are missed. One can achieve temporary fame by posting the most bizarre pictures on the I drive, the common drive) Skua are protected so no one can bat them away or take a swipe at them, and after all these years, they know they have the upper hand.

Skua is not a nice term. Things that people no longer want or have to dump when redeploying(leaving) to make the weight limitations and get left behind for other folks are skuaed; there is a small building filled with stuff like a free store in the states, it is skua central. I got here late mainbody, so all the good stuff that had been skuaed was gone, I did skua a shirt though. Ah, yes mainbody, that's when the big bunch of people arrive starting in early October and throughout the month. By end of October, mainbody is here. Windfly are the folks who arrive on the first flight into base mid-August. There is a sort of season hierarchy, at the top are winterovers, those souls who stay here through the Antarctic winter, something I KNOW I will not do! Windfly are next and the mainbodies, well we are just too common to be special. Polies are the people who stay at the South Pole, they are in a class of their own.

Freshies are not people who would get slapped on the face for being rude or crude or out of line, they are a really good thing, fresh fruit and veggies newly arrived on the C17 or the C130's. And it is a treat, although as long as I have been here, we've only had about a week of withdrawal from freshies. During the winter over, they go for a long time, no flights come in for about 6 months. This year that is rumored to be shortened to 4 months. They will be adding a new term, extended season. This is to accommodate ongoing research that will go into the first part of April.
Retroed? Stuff that is here and is considered too much to store or has outlived its usefulness is retroed back to New Zealand or the states. There is a whole department dedicated to reducing the human footprint on the continent. This place is so ugly and filled with stuff, they have a long way to go. Once something is retroed, it’s as good as gone. Some electrician needed some piece of equipment, two of which had been retroed, stuck in a milvan in the retro yard, but he was not allowed to break into the milvan and get the piece of equipment, he was told to order one and wait until in arrived either on ship in late January or, if he’s lucky, on the C17. After much back and forthing for weeks, he was allowed to get one out but not without all the bureaucratic paperwork and angst associated with such an unspeakable move. In a way we are all eventually retroed (or are we skuaed?). And a milvan? It’s a container the size of a small room (it is about the size of my prison cell, oops I mean room) There are many others words and phrases, but I am still in the learning phase, although I do not stare at people with that "I really have no idea what the hell you are talking about any more" look, I am learning McMurdo speak! Question: does that mean I am being assimilated? Let's not go there!

I have been bowling of late. I had my first cosmic bowl game, bowling under black lights with luminescent balls! There is one guy who's really into it and proudly wears the shirt reading "no split is too big if you have the balls". It too glows under the black lights. And they have human pinsetters. This is a really tough job, to do this a time or two a week is a rough workout good weight loss plan. Each pin weighs something over 2 lbs and then the balls are picked up, placed on the roll back gully and sent careening back at the bowlers. This can be a bit dangerous, the lanes are not super flat and the ball return is warped. Occasionally the ball hops off the return and comes back at you at a good speed. Then someone yells "incoming" and stops it with their foot if it doesn't bounce and take out a kneecap first. God, it's a harsh continent--to quote Robert Falcon Scott who knew how harsh it is, he died here in 1912 just a short distance from the food his party needed to survive.

The pin setters (seen above) wear special brightly stripped socks so the bowlers can see if they are still right behind the pins, don't want to send a 15lb ball rolling at top speed into their legs. After they pick up or set the pins they have to jump up on a ledge with their legs pulled up to keep from getting hit by flying pins or balls. These are the only human pin setter lanes known to exist in the world, all others are extinct. Brunswick offered to replace it for free, but it just won't be the same. A vestige of the past hangs on despite all odds. People sign up to do this for free, but we all leave them nice tips. There are only two lanes so this is considered a big deal to do.

Last week a couple of us took a stroll, just a wee Sunday walk. Nothing is wee about it here. I found myself walking on a ledge about a foot wide with vertical inclines up and down, down a long ways, like 200 feet. Walking is actually difficult, this place is all volcanic rock and ash, very slippery and it is way too easy to turn an ankle. This little walk was more like amateur rock climbing. I have acrophobia so the stomach turns easily. It is breathtakingly beautiful, the frozen sea, the mountains and islands all angular and harsh looking, majestic and bathed in every hue of blue. So I had to just get over it, stand there and take it all in. The half moon was rising over Observation Hill and the surface half way up this old volcano looks like Mars, it is reddish brown and black.

When the sun is out and the rocks are exposed, it is actually hot. I wear tons of sunscreen owing to the lack of ozone layer and the reflection, but I always come back with red cheeks. I am beginning to think it's the exertion of climbing up steep, slippery slopes and the almost always present wind. As I was praying that I didn't take a wrong step and slide down hundreds of feet over sharp rocks, over the hill comes an extreme biker! The path is not big enough for us to be on at the same time, we managed to let him pass and I just had to take his picture. I thought we had seen the worse of the path, but no it got steeper and smaller over the top of the next slope! I am always grateful for making it back alive with no sprains or breaks after my strolls!

Yesterday I thought it would be nice to go for a quick ski out the ice runway road. I went by myself. It was looking ominous to the south, where the worse weather seems to come from. It's not a big distance, maybe 3/4 of a mile one way and the roads are all lined with flags to guide one back to the base if the visibility should drop precipitously. I could see that a blizzard was coming, the sight lines are incredible on the ice. So I turned around and hightailed towards the shore. I got back just as it hit, high winds and blowing, blinding snow. Of course to get to my dorm I have to trudge uphill 200 feet on, you guessed, more volcanic ash and rock while hanging on to the skis in high winds. No lack of adventure when one is outside! By the time I returned to my room visibility had dropped to about 10 feet and the wc was -10 or so. That's not as bad as when I first arrived, but I wasn't really dressed for it, the winds howl and whistled around the buildings. The blowing snow subsided, but when I went to bed I tried to open the window a smidgeon, the wind caught it and it almost hit me in the head! Dorothy, this isn't Kansas any more!

Last Saturday at Gallagher's, one of the bars here, they had live music, and it was pretty good. Early on they had a reggae band which I missed, but then they moved into bluegrass. They were playing jugband music, and quite well. We all had a blast. After that there was another band, I had to wear earplugs and it gets so unbelievably hot, like a sauna! The walls actually drip with moisture- ah sweat, that's weird to see because it is so dry here. This band was good too and the dancing got crazy complete with mosh pit. I am just a bit too old for that, but I stood on the sidelines and took pictures. My friend Karen got in there (see above) and mixed it up with the best of 'em, she is a good deal younger than me and in far better shape, she works in FSTP a survival safety instructor (pronounced F-stop) and SAR, search and rescue (--just more McMurdo speak, don't mind me).

It is strange to be so far away from home on this upcoming Thanksgiving holiday but I am making lots of friends. I will be having the turkey dinner with all the makings on Saturday with lots of folks from the power, water and waste treatment plants, my co-workers. Our motto is--"we send you heat, light and clean water, all you send back is shit!" We will have a huge table and they have all the fixins'. They do try to make it special.

That's things, it's a long weekend for us, a rare thing. I plan to sleep, ski, eat and socialize. It will be fun! Hope you all had too much to eat and can be thankful for all the good things we have in life. Until next time,

Good wishes,
Audrey