Food, Blood, and Bag Drag

Today I pulled food in the galley again. That means that I unloaded pallets and placed items where they belong in the galley. It also means I tested bread, cookies, and frosting all day. It also means I assembled lunches for work centers who are going out to field.

I left at 4:30 for a 2.5 hour training for the medical auxiliary team. I volunteered to be available in the event of a mass casualty incident. This is the first time my WFR training may be used. I was nervous, but did fine. I like wilderness medicine and I think I might get my WEMT. The tactical paramedic slant that my instructors gave the WFR class is very useful. I don't know the hospital protocol; I puzzled at the device to clear vomit from a patient. I wasn't trained to use anything except what was at my disposal, so I have some catch up to do. I hadn't seen the femur traction device; I already knew how to rig it from a stick and duct tape, though.

An hour after that let out I had "bag drag." My flight to Siple dome is scheduled for tomorrow at 0715. I am excited. It is on a LC-130, which is a C-130 equipped with skis for landing gear.

My return is scheduled for November 5. Weather may delay that. There will be no updates for a few days. Over.

Monday Bloody Monday

No blood today. This morning I fixed shovels with fellow GA Erik. We took about 20 shovels and pounded all the rivets tight. Erik sharpened them with the angle grinder while I investigated my "sleep kit" for the Siple Dome trip. My kit consists of a pee bottle, a pillow, 2 ensolite pads, a thermarest, an "arctic storm" sleeping bag rated to -50, and a Sierra Designs 4 season mountain tent. I set the tent up to be certain that I can quickly do so in the field. I also got in the sleeping bag to check the zipper, draw strings, and bag length. That was warm.

In the afternoon I had a meeting with the carpenters about our trip to Siple.
Apparently the climate there is more humid, so the cold will bite more. I am told to expect air temps around -30 and wind chills near triple digits below. That will be exciting camping. Siple Dome is 550 miles west northwest of McMurdo on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The camp there is manned by 3 folks. The principal science performed there is study of the ice rivers and their outflow into the Ross Sea. We are flying (most likely) on a C130 (possibly a twin otter). We expect to depart on Wednesday. Tomorrow we hand in our personal gear for the fleet guys to palletize. We fly wearing our ECW gear. Our job is to set up a 7 section Jamesway, as the current one is buried deeper every year. The old one will be dismantled after the summer weather gets a grip on the continent.

Ah! wunderground.com has a Siple Dome forecast. Currently -60 with windchill of -90.

Bloody balmy.

Here is the Siple Dome forecast.

Here is a map.

A Day Off Part 2

Sunday is the day off. I went hiking on the Castle Rock Loop, which is about 7 miles. Hikes require a buddy, so I could not get an early start as all others seem to imbibe too much on Saturday evening.

Joe and I finally got out the door and checked out of the base. Here are pictures.

He Who Brings Gas

Today I took the pisten bully and the bowser out to the sea ice. Ben and I delivered diesel (JP5) to the instuctor's hut. Gas is treated very carefully here. A single drop cannot touch the ground. Both times I've fueled vehicles I have not let a drop touch. If that does occur, the spill team must be notified and a clean up performed. Failure to report a spill is a federal offense. Serious stuff. And today I was driving around the wild with a trailer full of gas.

After filling those tanks, we were to drive the roads and record waypoints on the GPS so that navigation can occur in poor visibility conditions. Every year the roads move a little, as it is not possible to reconstruct precisely. Hence, every year the roads must be located via GPS. This is what we did in the afternoon.

This is the silver city icefall. The entire hillside is crevasses; only this section is exposed.

When we returned to town we had several videos to watch on the dry valleys.
At the end of the day the illusory cliffs were apparent. Note the cliffs that seems to rise from the sea in front of Mount Discovery. That is an illusion. There are no cliffs at all.

He Gives Water

LDB is the acronym for Long Duration Balloon. The LDB is the name of the camp, a few miles from McMurdo, where the balloons are launched. They carry payloads of instruments such as neutrino detectors and telescopes into the upper atmosphere (~129,000 feet).

The camp runs low on water. Today I brought water to the camp. Delivering water in Antarctica is not trivial. Everything freezes quickly. I worked with a woman named Anne. We took the Delta to the water plant and thawed the tank valves. Then we filled it with 500 gallons of water. On the way to the LDB we passed by the New Zealand base:



By the time we reached the LDB, the output spigot was frozen. We took care of that with a Hermann-Nelson, and then found out that the hose (stored inside an LDB jamesway) was also frozen.



So we bundled everything under a wool blanked, put the HN on it, and had lunch. Afterwards, water flowed. The excess water that we transported was sprayed on the snow. It didn't form ice. Rather, it simply soaked right through. Interesting. Dry snow capillary action.

The cooks out there have an interesting freezer. I shoveled off the doors so they could access it again.



At the end of the day we had a meeting. I found out that I'm heading to west Antarctica - to Siple Dome, to help carpenters set up jamesways.

Pisten Bully / Mattrack training

The highlight of the day was being trained to drive the Pisten Bully and Mattrack. The mattrack is a F350 with the tires replaced with treads (see the pictures from flagging). The pisten bully is a snow machine with tank treads. Here are two of my coworkers in the back compartment of the pisten bully. Joe and Tracy:

Crane Lake Connection

Today I did "the galley pull." This means that I unloaded pallets on a loading dock all day. I did this with two other guys - one from materials and one from the galley. We took the items into freezers and dry storage, and pulled those things that needed to thaw for the next week of use. I think we pulled over 2 tons of meat to thaw. The quantity of food here is astronomical. It is absolutely crazy. I learned many things about running a kitchen in the middle of nowhere. This seems like a good knowledge.

The guy from materials, Ron, wore a La Croix BWCA shirt. Turns out he lives on Crane Lake Road and runs an outfitter there. Odd. I don't know why we chose Anderson's Outfitters so many years ago; random chance I suppose. We could have just as randomly selected Ron's outfitter. Then he would have been a very familiar face today. We talked about some of the lakes. I told him of our last trip. He visits those lakes in winter and says that the wolves in those parts are very active after September.

Being in the vicinity of the galley enabled me to check on the progress of the baked goods during the course of the day.

Downright Balmy!

+5 fahrenheit today! When I saw that on the monitor this morning I chose to put on my light Carhartt jacket. Sure it was -13 with convection (aka wind chill), but hey, we're tough.

I wasn't the only one who made this folly. To repeat what my coworker Rob stated so eloquently, "this is still Antartica." I was trained on the bowser this morning, and I was cold. The bowser is a tracked trailer with large gas tank and 24 volt pump attached. It gets pulled behind a pisten bully:



After that, I sharpened shovels and mattocks until lunch. I sharpened some more after lunch, and then went to a 3 hour GPS class.

After dinner, I walked to the greenhouse with Nic from Bow, who is waiting to get to the Pole. A side note: no flights have left for the pole, as the temperature there is too low for the hydraulics on the C-130. So, flights arrive here at McMurdo, full of Polies, and no one leaves. This place is bursting at the seams. Anyhow, the greenhouse: I had no idea that this was in McMurdo. The greenhouse is all hydroponic and run by volunteers. I volunteered.







After, Nic went to the lab and I walked down the ice runway. In Sea Ice class, we learned how tides affect the pack ice. The ice freezes fast to the land, and the tides create a crack some distance off shore. Here, the tides are only around 3', so the crack isn't too large. Low and behold, the theory taught in class proves correct. I found the tidal crack while walking out the road.



I also watched a C17 make a pass at the runway:

A Day Off

Today I did not have to work. Instead, I checked out some of the sights around town. On sundays there is not a normal breakfast. At 6:30 there is a continental breakfast. I ate this and read a book. Then I went to the aquarium in the basement of the Crary lab and checked out some of the specimens. Behold, mysteries of the cold, hyper-oxygenated deep:







Afterwards I had "brunch." Brunch is served from 10:30 until 1. A little later and I had brunch again. Then I hiked up Observation hill and viewed the cross that honors Captain Scott's death. Here I shot some video, but I cannot post this correctly yet.

I then visited Discovery Hut. You may recognize the husky from my Mt. Rainier ascent. The penguin is new, however:



Captain Scott and his crew ate lots of seals. They didn't eat this one, however, before their ill-fated attempt on the pole:



The C17s in the background demonstrate something; I'm not certain it is called progress. Men died here a few years ago:

Gone Camping

I just completed a two day class called Snowcraft 1, offered by the Field Safety Training Program (FSToP). This is a requirement for those who will be spending time in field camps or in the Antarctic wilderness. It began with a few hours of classroom instruction on hazards in the Antarctic field, and then we headed out onto the sea ice for further instruction and camping. There were about 20 folks in the class; some Raytheon employees and very many NSF grantees. We set up Scott tents, 4 season tents, cut blocks for a windwall, built a quince, built snow trenches, melted snow, tried to eat, tried to stay warm, and went to bed. I slept in a Scott tent, which is named for an early Antarctic explorer who happened to die in a shelter of similar style. It was a little chilly. The air temperature was -13, with 31 knot winds pushing the wind chill to -45. Our ECW gear works really well. I learned a couple of new tricks for setting up camp and staying warm.




We hit condition 2 for the first time since I arrived. That indicates a severity of weather defined by 30+ knot winds and restricted visibility. Condition 1 means that all travel ceases. If you are in the field then you must prepare to survive until weather changes; if you are in town then you may not leave the building you presently occupy.




Some of the grantees I spoke with have interesting projects. One group is studying sea slugs (and other invertebrate species), another penguins on Cape Crozier, and another is modeling petro spills in the Dry Valleys. He has to gather information on the permeability and porosity of ice in the glacial meltwater lakes to accurately model the spread of contaminants.

After camping we had camp broken down and packed up by 9:00am, as if to practice for a fictitious helicopter rendevouz. We went back to the outdoor classroom for a debriefing. Here we learned about various types of radio communication to use in the field. We set up the military HF radios outside and I attempted to contact Palmer Station and the South Pole Station. We only noticed too late that our antennae had become brittle and broke in the cold. This forced us onto a wavelength too short (and a correspondingly too high of frequency) to achieve communication at that distance.

We were back in McMurdo by 3:30 and were given background (i.e. had to watch a video) on safety procedures and protocols for loading and unloading helicopters. On the way back to town, we got to see a Bell 212 take off from the New Zealand base.

This is a strange world.



Last night the Banff film festival showed. It seemed the whole town was there. It was sort of interesting; I was able to stomach watching about 10 minutes of it. At home it is difficult to watch images. Doing so in Antarctica, of all places, seems like borderline insanity.

Sea Ice Map

This will help understand some of the area described in my posts.

Flagging Roads

Today I had a good assignment. I went out in the mattrack (an F350 with tracks) with two other GAs. We traveled out past Scott Base (the NZ base) and onto the permanent ice shelf. Many of the flags that marked the roads were tattered, and we were tasked to replace them. We used a hand drill (brace) and a large titanium bit to auger holes. At lunch, we breaked in the hut used by the instructors at snow school. We rigged up the solar panels to charge the HF radios, and then continued our flagging. It's amazing to be sitting on the back of the mattrack, driving across the ice, in Antarctica. I'd hop off the tailgate with a dozen flags, pace off 75' intervals, and drill them all in. The mattrack would go on up the line, and the others would flag out in front of where it parked. Repeat. So fun. The mind doesn't wander. It felt warm and I ended up shedding layers. There wasn't much breeze. Temperatures were a balmy -5, and I was sweating. If not for the icicles in my hair and eyelashes, I would have thought it was warm.

Sea Ice Training

Today I had Sea Ice training.
That means that I was trained to understand and assess the risks involved with vehicle travel on the pack ice surrounding the continent. This is similar to studying crevasses on a glacier.

After an hour of powerpoint slides, we suited up in our ECW gear and headed out in the Hagglund - a tracked people moving vehicle. It was clear and windy today; the air temperature was -13 and wind chills hovered around -38 with 20 knot breezes. Views were very good.

We headed south and passed the 4 Delbridge Islands. These islands, named Inaccessible, Tent, Big Razorback, and Little Razorback, are the above water remains of an ancient volcano cone. We then turned east and traveled adjacent to the Erebus ice tongue, which is the floating portion of the Erebus glacier. It juts out into the sound and has a significant effect on the ice. The glacier floats, and localized tensions and stresses manifest as pressure ridges, stress cracks, rollers, and other linear features.

We stopped occasionally to look around, and after 2 hours of travel we arrived at a known seal hole near a cliff called Turks Head. Here we profiled the ice. This involves drilling holes with an auger in the vicinity of the open crack to determine the depth of the surrounding pack ice.

Seals came out. We could hear them under the ice. A mother and pup flopped out 100 yards away.

Meanwhile, Mount Erebus spewed out smoke and ash. The wind whipped spindrift across the sound.

I got back to town around 6:00, called Lisa, and had a huge dinner. I slept well and long.

Working for Money

In Antarctica there is a hillside trail called "goat path." A sign reads as much, and the path is flagged. Goats would probably slip and fall. Humans have done so, and one slid down the hill and broke an ankle. The path trended steeply uphill and sloped outward.

This is bad. Hence, I made steps in the ice up the hill. Behold part of my creation:



I was actually paid to do this.

In the evening, about 2130, I took a walk down to the sea ice to look out towards the runway.



Then I had a cocoa and went to bed.

Ice Impressions

Around 1730 today I landed in Antarctica. The flight was on a C-17 and was delayed about 3 hours. The C-17 is great. The military is a far better carrier than any airline in America. The food is copious and tasty. The bag lunch weighed at least 5 pounds. The inside of the C-17 is like a stadium, and I estimate the floor at around 24 feet wide. Leg room was no problem.

Stepping off the plane was exciting. I felt like an owl, rotating my head. Dinner was great (lots of fresh veggies, go figure).

I start work tomorrow.