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