Getting to Summer? Traverse to the Pole and more!

It's getting close to summer now! The snow is melting and there are little rivulets everywhere. And the dust is getting stirred up. This is a dry place, this area on Ross Island is one of the few places that melts off big time under the hot summer sun. This is a very dusty and noisy place, it really resembles an ugly mining town that is constantly under construction and big tractors, weird looking tracked vehicles called Tuckers, cranes, piston bullies and deltas are everywhere. It's noisy all the time, sometimes even in that night. I stood by that rivulet and listened to the water babble down the rocks, trying to ignore all the other sounds. It was refreshing. Ah, the sounds of summer. I miss those chirping birdies though.

One of the rites of summer here is to move the ice runway that is out in front of my office, to other fields on snow and ice further up the sea on glaciers. I saw the last C17 come and go yesterday. It no sooner took off than the tractors and other vehicles wheeled in to move all the buildings of to the next place, Willy Field is about three or so miles and Pegasus runway which is primarily for the C17 is about 20 miles across the sea. These will be used for the next 5 months until the last flight out in April. That usually occurs late March but they are extending the season for a few folks as I mentioned before. The ice is expected to break up and it is rumored that whales are pretty close in this year, so I will be on the look-out for those, another sign of summer at the bottom of the earth.

The pictures I am sending this week are of the South Pole Traverse Group. One of the biggest tasks here is supplying the South Pole with food and fuel for the year. The regular practice was to fly 3,800 lbs of fuel on a C130 and the trip took 4,000 lbs of fuel, so it was always a big loss. Some other nations have figured out how to pull large quantities to their sites some time ago, but the US was a little behind the curve on this. This was tried years ago with only modest success. But 4 or 5 years ago they began construction of a 1,000 mile road to the pole. The biggest impediment is the unseen crevasses that form where glaciers interact with land and snow. Many people have died here falling into crevasses so it is a real and present danger.

Road construction is taking large bulldozers out behind a truck that moves very slowly with radar that picks up crevasses about 10 feet ahead of the lead truck. My friend Bill McCormick, a heavy vehicle operator, is driving the lead truck this year. After years of trial and error, someone designed these flexible plastic sleds with fuel bladders that can haul more than a C130. The whole expedition is hauling 1.2 million lbs of stuff, most of it fuel. They are supposedly "leak-proof" because a spill would mean a huge expensive clean-up and it would take a lot of people power to do that. Each year they have to re-check the route and refill any new crevasses. The going is slow and they left later than anticipated so they may not even make pole before they have to turn around, so I am not sure what they would do with the bladders. But they have a shot at making it by Christmas or New Years. The temps are warming at the pole, -23 today and expected to hit about 0 by late December. Here it is almost steady at about 30 for a high and 15 for a low. The variations are that the wind picks up from time to time and the clouds sock in.

This crew consists of 7 guys and a woman. They also pull their living quarters and a generator room with bathroom. They can take showers as long as they want, but first they have to shovel snow into the heater. The toilet has specially designed seats made of insulation as show below. The kitchen is fairly well stocked, but they have to do all their own cooking. Many of these size camps include a cook but not these guys. The tractors have a full around view and are heated, but it could get a bit monotonous out there. The landscape must be incredible though. Having been here for over a month I can say that getting out of town is the only was to really enjoy the beauty and magnificence of this strange continent. I am hoping for another boondoggle in the near future, lest I go nuts in the town here.

And now I am off on another ski trip. Last week we went out and found that the route that was snow covered year round just a few years ago is now largely rocks and ice. Global warming or human footprint? Hard to say, the jury is out on that one. But if it gets much warmer I think I have found the best place for the luxury condos and mall, it could be called Castle Rocks Height. Had a good Thanksgiving dinner and of course ate too much! I need that exercise today for sure!
Hope all is well, see that winter has set in there in Minnesota. Well I have to wear sunscreen and sunglasses at 1:30 am, and put aluminum foil over my window to keep the heat out of the room at night when the sun shines directly in my room!

Tootles,
Audrey

Stormy Weather

This week was marked by stormy weather, some really unusual stuff for the time of year. It wasn't too cold, rather it was balmy by the standards here, but the winds were wicked. It went to condition 2 here on station and condition 1 several times in outlying areas. This means the winds are exceeding 55 knots and visibility is extremely limited to 0. The wind chills can exceed -50. There were three low pressure systems that just hung off the station and caused winds like a hurricane with calm followed by blinding blowing and drifting snow. Very little new snow ever falls here, but the snow that is here just blows around and around. It was very misleading, one would dress for a regular windy, overcast day and two hours later there would be an all out blizzard, the kind that would shut down Minnesota for sure! Walking up the hill from the power plant where I work to the galley was tough.

A few days I bummed a ride in a pickup truck with some of the guys trying to get the new generators up and running. They are only 2-3 years behind schedule, and are hoping to achieve power up around Thanksgiving, and have the old generators off line by mid December. We will see. The snafu thing, it's a reality like no where else I have ever witnessed!

And I finally witnessed sublimation happening, when solids snow skips the water phase of evaporation and goes right to vapor or gas. The weather prevented planes from coming in, many lucky folks were stuck at Christchurch for a week. And there were the winter over Polies trying to get out of pole, they too were stuck. A C17 got in yesterday. The C17 lands, refuels, loads and leaves, turn around time is about 1 1/2 hours. My office overlooks the ice runway so I see all the action, the DC3, the Bassler and various helicopters plus the weirdest looking all terrain vehicles you can imagine, truly like something out of an old space movie. Most of the vehicles are at least 10 years and older. They have a shop that maintains them all, not too much extra cash around for such frivolities, much more important stuff to spend it on, like war. I think that’s one thing that really separates us from the kiwis. They take great national pride in their Antarctic program and research. Many Americans don’t even know where Antarctica is.

I took the tour of the Crary Science lab, a really cool science facility here, last week. Lots of cool stuff happening there. I heard much more about the volcanic activity of Erebus, the Andrill ice coring project and much more. I also got into the aquarium filled with tanks of seawater at 28 degrees and odd looking and feeling creatures. There are several divers here, and according to them there is a lot more life below the ice than above. At the aquarium folks can stick their hands in frigid water and hold some of the weird stuff. Can't grab the fish though, but they are so curious and almost blind, they swim to the surface and pop their heads right out of the tank. One actually bumped into my camera! The water is too cold to leave one's hand in for long, but the allure of the tactile experience, touching some of the strangest looking creatures on earth is too much to overcome. My hand stopped aching after about fifteen minutes.

Lots of folks walk out to Hut point, a place built by Scott in 1902. There is a dead seal there, has been there for over a hundred years. God forbid if it gets really warm here! Shackleton also used this structure. It is a pleasant and short walk. There are always things one comes upon. I found this "Biodiversity" garden planted (?) by researchers at the University of Minnesota. Looks like it's been a bad year for tomatoes! I should apply for a grant to plant a rock garden and see how it grows.

I tried like hell to get another room, I never really give up, even came close to moving, but missed by one point. There is a point system here and seniority is everything. So I am still in the closet with a view. But a real nice guy, Ken, a carpenter, does modifications to stuff , or rather add ons to things and is building a different support structure for the room so the beds can be arranged different thus allowing for more open space and better use of the miniscule berthing. The pay, a bottle of rum. He is the top carpenter here, it is worth it!

I have 4 packages on route, the folks on station are getting restless and want their mail and packages. Might lead to a mutiny some day! Rumor has it that because so many flights were cancelled, they will be flying in one and maybe 2 flights a day for the rest of the week so stuff will arrive soon. The natives are getting restless! The weather has cleared and it is much, much better. Everyone is getting excited about the prospect of fresh fruit called freshies. Maybe at Sunday brunch this morning!

Last night was Freak Train, or more aptly stated, desperate people at the bottom of the earth in search of entertainment. It was a lot of weird acts, having nothing what so ever to do with talent, of folks getting up and doing things like pulling small chains through their nose and up out of their throats. It was janitors reading poetry about cleaning up after slobs and some of it was quite graphic, so I won't even try to repeat it! I even got up and played the tin whistle. Had my fortune told by the foul mouth fortune teller; seems I am going to grow up and be a cheerleader.

Today Karen, Charlie and I are going out to the ice runway staging ground for the South Pole Traverse. We sat at dinner with a guy, Bill, who is an old mountain climber. He is driving the lead vehicle with the radar to find crevasses. This is an ambitious undertaking, they are trying to do away with flying fuel into the pole. This traverse has happened before but never at this level of payload. It's a fairly big thing here. More on that later. He’s personally invited us out to the ice runway for the complete tour.

It's another week coming up so I will try to find more interesting and odd things to send along to you all. Having my first official work station barbeque on Tuesday. I do miss my loved ones very much and I miss trees and seeing stars. I wear sunglasses at midnight, very odd.