B and G Do More Ice

More WAIS for Ben

2008-11-30T22:37:00.000-08:00

So they sent the green foreman (me) to put up the big camp out at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Fact is, they had no one else. So out I went with a crew of 13 total. We had decent enough weather to work so we worked . . . . and worked . . . . . and worked. This is what it looked like when we started:

This is what it looked like 7 days of work and 1 storm day later:

These structures are the galley, washroom, recreation area, offices, medical, and berthing tents. Its enough for about 50-60 scientists, drillers, and camp staff.

The Purpose? Science! In particular there is a drilling operation that is housed in this arch. It doesn't get taken down and so the drifts looks like this from the outside:

Inside this fine 200 foot-long snow-buried arch is a drill rig that will provide a more sensitive look at climate data from the last 100,000 years. Carbon dioxide levels, temperature, dust and pollen samples are some of items to be studied. And here's the ironic factoid of the day. They have to cool the inside of the arch below its natural -20 degrees farenheight to about -50 degrees. This is because the drill cores come out of the glacier much colder and will pop and split themselves if they warm up too fast and the gases inside expand too quickly. Chilling the Antartic continent--its a wacky funny world.

If you remember last year's blog, you might be asking why we are putting up the camp again after it was just put and then taken down last year. Well, the reason is the 8 feet of snow this area gets. Camp would be buried if we didn't take it down at the end of summer, and bring it to the top of the new surface at the beginning of the next summer.

All right loved ones, this is all for now. It was good to build the camp, it was good to come back to McMurdo, and it was good to have a couple days off afterwards. Good to sleep in a warm bed.

That's all for WAIS. That's all for the flat white polar plateau.

Cheers,

Ben

Store Life

2008-11-11T15:00:00.000-08:00

My day to day life is a fair bit structured & routine. I no longer have to stock the bars in the afternoons, which is great. The only benefit doing that was that I could play music really, really loud because I was in a building no one else was in all by myself! So, now I am in the store full time.
I get to work at 0630 to open the doors at 0700. There are usually people lined up at the door so it's pretty busy until about 0730 when everyone has to be at work. It's fun working in the morning because I can see the night shift workers & chat with them.
We've been working on designing apparel for the 2010 vessel. Things need to be ordered now to make the vessel which will arrive in February 2010,. Things will be offloaded at the end of the summer season, then the winterovers go through everything & put on the shelves for the summer season 2010-11.

In the afternoons I stock the floor. It's crazy how quickly we run out of things. There are over 1000 people on station so things can go quickly.

Tuesdays is our warehouse day. We go down to another building called 157 cold storage & hunt through the huge boxes of things to re-stock the store room in the store. It is cold in there, often colder than outside. We usually grab at least 30 boxes of chips. The fun part is throwing them down 2 flights of stairs!

Thursday is booze delivery day. 5-6 pallets of beer, wine, & soda show up on our dock to be unloaded & stocked in the store. It's a good workout & I actually look forward to it.

Here's me in a tri-wall of soda. You can see the other 2 pallets of wine next to me.

This is what the store looks like partially stocked with beer. mmmm, beer...

So, things are good in the store. It's actually pretty busy trying to keep up with demand & being social all the time. I do cherish my day off & tend to stay away from 155 just to have some quiet time!

Hope you all are well.

Gretchen

Dive Tending Boondoggle!

2008-10-30T15:38:00.000-07:00

My first true boondoggle happened yesterday. Dan, the retail manager, called the store at 8am and asked if I wanted to go on a boondoggle (do you have to ask?) and could I be ready in 15 minutes (of course). I raced out of the store, took a taxi to my room for warm clothes, then down to the dive shack. Once there I was introduced to Neil Lucas whom I later found out is a producer for the BBC currently working on a new show called “Life”. It’s a follow up to his other shows, “Blue Planet” and “Planet Earth”. Also along were Rob Robbins, famed Antarctic diver who has been diving here for over 30 years. Ben went out with him last year & blogged about it. John, a grantee with a $22,000 underwater camera seeking amazing underwater photos, primarily of seals. Steve, also an Antarctic diver, and Andrew, a cargo handler and fellow dive tender.
We drove out in a piston bully and arrived by Little Razorback to find 4 fat seals and 1 baby. The baby was born the day before, weighed 55 pounds and is every bit as cute as the pictures. Near Big Razorback there is an 1100 pound seal with an 80 pound baby! We chatted up the seals researches, that’s how I have these facts & figures.

After watching the baby for a while, the divers were ready to suit up. Our job, as dive tenders, is to help them with their gear and once in the water put the kettle on. 2 of them were down for 50 minutes, and the other 2 for 30 for their first dives. We used this time to take some pictures & hang out in the warm hut. The inside of the fish hut

The view out one of the windows.

We help the divers get ready & we also help them when they surface by grabbing their tanks, weight belts, and fins, just as you do in every other dive situation. The difference here is that we have to stand on the 1 foot wide ice with the hole one step down and the wooden floor 1 step above. The goal is to grab their gear & not fall in the hole. Also of note is that their weight belts are up to 50 pounds. I wont go into the details of their gear as Ben did that last year, instead I can focus on the projects these folks were working on and the scenery.

This is the fish hut & piston bully we rode out on.
After the first dive Doug Allen and Hugh Miller, both from the BBC, drove up on their snowmachines. As you can tell from the shots of the interior of the fish hut, they are not that large, so now we were 8 in the hut. Doug has been diving since 1968, has worked with polar bears, and is featured in the BBC programs mentioned above. Doug & Hugh were there setting up a time lapse camera focusing on a rock with star fish. The camera takes one picture every 10 seconds and they were leaving it down there for 3 hours in hopes of getting about 30 seconds of decent footage.
It was a busy day at the hut. The seal researches were in the area, Doug & Hugh came out unexpectedly, then 2 carps came out to check on the propane tanks. I came outside to see who it was and there stood Jesus – aka Michael McCracken fresh back from a winter at Pole. It was our first time seeing each other since February and it was great to meet again outside of town & really rather randomly!

After the 4 divers were back from the second dive (I want to mention here that the water was about 45’ deep at the hole and so clear we could see a star fish from the hut). We loaded the gear and headed home. But our adventure was not over! we had a....

Boondoggle within a boondoggle! We stopped off at the ice caves! They haven’t been able to open any ice caves in years and this was a special treat. It was a little like being underwater with respect to lighting because according to John the ice looks more like cumulus clouds underwater.

All in all it was an amazing day. It is really easy to get wrapped up in town life & our jobs and to be able to get out of town and see Antarctica not only helps lift the spirits, but reminds us all why we’re here.

Snow

2008-10-28T15:31:00.000-07:00

During winfly, while still working at the BFC, a few of us went out with one of the field instructors to organize the I hut where the instructors stay during the Happy Camper School. You may recall from last year that Happy Camper is where people who will be in the field, or potentially stranded outside of town limits, go to learn winter camping & survival skills. We arrived in fairly decent weather, windy, cloudy, pretty cold, but manageable. Our first stop was a small connex where the sleds, tents, shovels, etc… are kept. We opened the doors and this is what we found

We thought it may just be a front layer of snow. Solomon (pictured above) started shoveling, then I took a turn, then the group left us to work on another project after we realized the snow penetrated more than just a front layer. A couple of hours later with 2 of us shoveling this is the end result:

Because the doors were not properly sealed a teeny gap was left and the result was a connex completely compacted with snow.

After shoveling we went to the I hut and helped arrange things for classes. Meanwhile the winds picked up and the visibility turned so that when we were ready to leave we couldn’t even see a flag. The condition was about to change to a 1, but luckily for us Karen, the FSTP instructor whom we were assisting, was able to make out a flag and we drove flag to flag all the way back to town. Had they called a condition 1 we would have been spending some quality time either in the piston bully, or the I hut.

Happy Anniversary October 6, 2007

2008-10-06T11:28:00.000-07:00

One year ago today I stepped off the plane onto the frozen sea ice of the Ross Sea. That day I realized a life goal of 17 years of coming to Antarctica. You've seen this picture before, but I wanted to post it again because I don't think I've ever smiled this big, or been this happy, before.

As you all know, I've come to love this place. The lifestyle is simple, the people are like minded, the scenery is incredible, and the opportunities are great.

This year is different, I've not taken as many photos, I know more people, and I know the routines. I am anxiously waiting for my friends from last year to arrive & am looking forward to new memories. Sometimes I feel like I am walking along memory lane with occasional stops at "crime scenes" where especially interesting events took place. The first week or two were filled with these thoughts and now I am beginning to add to those memories. Not erase or replace them, but enhance them with new events and feelings.

I came back to McMurdo because I wasn't done making changes to my life. I want to be a positive person, a relaxed person who is confident everything will turn out just fine no matter the pressure. I made steps in the right direction last year and I want to use this season to cement those changes so when faced with "real world" situations & life in general I will be capable of being the person I want to be in whatever situation arises.

I hope you are all well and if I could say anything to you all it would be, go after your dreams. Don't wait.

Much love to you all, Gretchen

Life back on the Ice

2008-10-03T21:18:00.000-07:00

I’ve been waiting to write until I had some news about a full season contract. I have a job! Hurray! I’ll be working in the store which should be a lot of fun. Our little general store is full of souvenir gifts, food/snacky items, toiletries, movies for rent, alcohol, etc… It's a pretty social place with great people and despite not being outside, except for moving inventory about town, I’m looking forward to it. Not much time to spare before this offer came through and honestly my standards started getting lower. I adjusted after the first week & decided I really did want to stay for another full season.

Working in the BFC was awesome. Most of the time we pulled gear for the science groups, as Ben already explained. The other part of that was "tetrisizing" it all into the smallest space possible, and going vertical. There was a lot of climbing shelves stuffing sleeping bags into the little spaces between tents and 5 gallon buckets used for human waste. I definitely got my workout over the last few weeks. Here's a shot of the BFC springfly army.

In my short time here I've trained at the store, before I knew I had a job there I signed up to work part time, trained people on driving the airporters, and had a Delta refresher course. I've volunteered to pick up the first 3 flights of mainbody, which were scheduled to start on Tuesday and have yet to make it here. There are about 300+ people stuck, if you can call it "stuck" in Christchurch, and everyday the flights are delayed and then cancelled. We did have one make it within an hour of the runway only to boomerang back to NZ. There are mixed feelings here, those folks who are ready to leave after a year here are frustrated, as are those who are waiting for friends, spouses, significant others. Then, there are those who are psyched to have the station population kept small at 300 people for another week. As with most things, they'll get here when they get here.

Here is a nice photo I took out the window on my flight down this year. We had beautiful weather and it actually was really warm when we landed. It was great to walk off the plane and be greeted by friends.

I spent hours watching the sunsets, they literally last 5 hours here. Here are a couple of photos from Hut Point.

That's Ben...
This is me & my BFC friends, Lisa and Quinn. Very windy that evening.

More adventures to come...

James Ways and Houses on Big Sleds

2008-09-23T02:49:00.000-07:00

Hi to Friends and Family,
So we are in swing of work here. Gretchen continues at the Berg Field Center getting equipment and food ready for science groups going out in the field. I'm figuring out what it means to be a foreman at the carp shop--getting little done on my own but facilitating others. It is keeping my mind active--definitely.
Last week we put in a Jamesway hut--a "fine" vintage Korean war quansit hut. We cobble them together with bits of playwood to patch the fabric, and many extra nails. This one is being used for seal research. It came complete with custom divisions to keep the seal away from racks of scientific instruments, cargo rollers to roll a 1000 pound sedated seal into the building, a tripod to weigh the seal from, and a dive hole to release the poor critter into. A group is working on the question of how much activity changes when the daylight increases. This involves critter cams to view activities but more importantly they have a chamber that the seal is placed in so they can measure its oxygen use. I think our Jamesway will soon smell like seal poop--think fishy feces. Maybe I will be gone before we take the hut down. Anyway, here we are at the end of getting the basic strucure up. Observation hill is in the background. Temp was -20 f with 20 knot winds. One of the new carps frost-nipped his arse--or at least he said he did--I didn't look.

Another interesting task we have been given is to mount a small structure (9 foot by 11 foot by 10 foot tall) on top of a sled. Sounds reasonable but the hut is rigid and the sled is basically a flexible sheet of plastic (16 feet by 68 feet) that will be drug to the South Pole--800 miles away across a glacier or two or three. This sled, one of many, will also have a bulldozer, and 6 or 8 large aircraft pallets on it. The mounting of the hut is all experimental so we are working with reused tires and a very overengineered platform. More pictures in a while, I promise. You can google "South Pole Traverse" and get some history. It's basically a project to take fuel and other cargo to the pole by land instead of by inefficient and old military turboprop C-130 airplanes. The technology for sleds has evolved to something similar to what mountaineers use to pull loads across unpacked snow--big, flat, and light plastic that distributes weight and give flotation. Of course, they are using huge 4-track articulated tractors to pull the sleds.

Enough for now, gotta go to bed.

Enjoy yourselves out there across the divide up there.

Love and Cheers,

Ben

Has it been that long?

2008-09-13T23:14:00.000-07:00

Apologies to all those that checked our blog and found the same old stuff. We didn't realize so many of you were following us. We can do better now that we are back on the ice and a little more stable.
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So does this look familiar from last year. Here we are again in Antartica.

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Yep. We got hooked a little. Plus it was so convenient after returning home only 1 month ago. We never completely unpacked and could just head back to the ice for one more dance with the ice. Although it is not as novel or exciting as last time, it still has its draw. The people--I should say characters-- are fun and have much to share. The land is still stark, surreal, and magnificent. On the down side the cold is still cold, and the wind is still strong. I do have better clothing. Covering the whole face without fogging your own googles is an achievement down here.

Anyway, I thought this little video was fun. I think the Terrabus (remember the 40 ton, 60 person monster vehicle that Gretchen drove) had sat all winter and the tires were flat on one side. The following video is the result.

OK, more later this evening. The blog program is not being cooperative with moving pictures so I will post a few different blogs.

Cheers,

Ben and Gretchen

Adventures with Darrin & Suzy

2008-03-29T14:12:00.000-07:00

We picked Darrin & Suzy up in Auckland on 17 March and just spent the past 2 weeks traveling and backpacking with them. We managed 7 major hikes in 12 days and I can tell you I am ready for some water sports now, give my legs & knees a break!

Our first hike was Tongariro Crossing. A through hike of 18.5K which we managed in 6 hours. It climbs passes between 3 inactive volcanoes and several green & blue lakes.

After finishing the hike we continued the drive to Wellington to catch the ferry across Cook Straight to Picton where we hiked the Queen Charlotte track in 3 days. 27K the first day, 24.5 the second (with loads of hills) and only 20K the last day. It was like hiking 3 half marathons each day with full packs. The weather was perfect and the scenery was pretty as well.

Typical view along the trail.

We drove further south to Arthur’s Pass where we spent 3 days. One day on a few hour hike on the Aicken track – straight up the side of a hill, really, straight up!

Intrepid hikers

On this next picture, note road & river below. This is where we started & just walked straight up. Kiwi trails kick ass.

Then we hiked the Cass River to Lagoon saddle hike as a one overnight, treating ourselves to a stay in the hut rather than tenting it.

We are back in Christchurch staying in a hotel, taking care of business, watching TV in bed (a real bed!) and taking a break from traveling.

Ben and I have our doctor & dentist appointments on Monday to physically qualify for our jobs next season in Antarctica and we will get back on the road on Tuesday and head for the beach. Time for some water sports!

Hope you are all well.

Let the travels begin

2008-03-16T14:36:00.000-07:00

Wiki Wiki, (what we named the van after paddling to Cape Wiki Wiki in the Bay of Islands because we like to say it) is in fine working condition, for the most part, and we’ve been all over the Northland – that’s the north of the north island. The weather changed from rainy to sunny & things have been great. Here are just a few photos for you. (I am just now posting this - it's been about 2.5 weeks since we were in the Bay of Islands).

Cheers & love to you all,

Gretchen & Ben

This is one of our favorite camping spots.

Here is Cape Reinga, the very tip of the North Island, you can’t go any further north in New Zealand. The Pacific Ocean is on the right side and the Tasman sea on the left. This is their meeting point.

Bay of Islands looking out towards the Pacific Ocean

Bay of Islands - Urupukapuka Bay
- - We slept amoungst sheep on this island.

Wiki Wiki fully loaded after our 5 day paddling trip through the Bay of Islands.

Muriwa seastacks with gannet colonies above.

Boosting the Kamo economy, or, Vacationing in fits & starts

2008-03-16T12:31:00.000-07:00

Grab your coffee, this is a long one. Ben and I got off the Ice on the 21st. We were scheduled to leave on the 19th, but leaving Antarctica is like leaving the Bush in winter – you’ll leave when the weather & plane are ready. Our first night in Christchurch was awesome! Even though I was not anxious to leave McMurdo, when I stepped off the plane, smelled and felt the humid air I jumped up and down with excitement. So green, so beautiful, so alive!! We settled into our hotel – this deserves its own story - - it’s a new place called the Hotel So and it’s very modern. We had our own bathroom in the room, wake up light, flat screen TV at the end of the bed, very nice. The only drawback was that it was smaller than our dorm room on the Ice!! With 2 adults and 4 large bags we couldn’t move around too much. But, it was clean and we had a bed with a full mattress, rather than 2 twins cargo strapped together. (end of side story) - - After settling in (i.e. shoving our bags under the bed & changing into “real world” clothes) we met up with friends at a local bar for a beer. Then we proceeded to dance and party the night away. It was such a time for celebration and we seized the moment. I tried to start a mosh pit, but the Kiwis are too nice and just shied away. So, we had our own mini McMurdo mosh pit. Good times.

Next day I had my favorite Kiwi breakfast that I’d been dreaming about since October, French toast with bacon and banana on it, and a tall black (double espresso). Otherwise just did errands and such and a little bit of going out on the town. Christchurch is a neat city, but we were ready to get out of town. Our friends who were suppose to come off the ice the day after us were delayed 2 days as well so Ben and I decided to head out of town to Maruia hot springs. We arrived there, found a nice place just off the road next to a river and set up our tent. Then the rain started. It continued to rain for 2 days, except for the few hours we spent on our first hike. We went up the side of a mountain on Lewis Pass and it was beautiful.

After 2 days and nights in the rain we headed back to Christchurch into the sun. That night we met up with our friends who were delayed and had a last night together. In an effort to save money Ben and I slept in a park by the airport. Hip Patagonia Dirtbags, or derelict vagabonds – you decide. We caught an early flight to Auckland where we proceeded to spend 3 days looking for a campervan. We also sorted out a bank account, cell phone service, visited with Mark Flanum, and checked out the Auckland Sky Tower (highest tower in the world).

We found a 1987 4 wheel drive diesel Mitsubishi Delica and paid $2700 for it. Plus $175 to have the seats taken out and a bed frame built. We would have done all of this ourselves but the lack of tools made it impossible. So, at 5pm on February 29th (leap day) we drove out of Auckland. Here is where the real adventure begins. – refill the coffee mug…

We’re headed to the Bay of Islands in the north of the North island and we pull off onto a road that ends at the Waipu Bird Refuge. Cool. We take a look at the cool birds photo and decide to camp somewhere else. Car wont start. Nothing, just a click when you turn the key. Ben spends about an hour, in the dark mind you, trying to trouble shoot and then we decide just to wait until morning to deal further.

We wake up in the morning and there’s another campervan there, lucky us, we’ll ask them for a jump (even though the battery is most likely not the issue). We wait around until they get up and that’s how we meet Nick and Fran. A Brit & German who live in Auckland and are out for the weekend kitesurfing. Despite the vehicle not running Nick wants to buy it from us right then. While Ben goes off to find a kind neighbor who can jump us, or bump us so we can do a pop the clutch start Nick details on our map all the cool places to go in the Northland.

Later on here comes Vic in his F350 who eventually pulls us up to speed and Ben pops the clutch and we’re started. We say our goodbyes and thank you’s and head to a neighbors house to return a cargo strap Ben borrowed. We pull into the drive and Ben turns the key off!! Did I mention that it’s about 10:45 and all the shops close around noon and we have a 40 minute drive to Whangarei to get the car repaired? So, we’re stuck again and eventually get another pull start from a young kid with a lowered truck.

Now we’re off to Whangarei, biggest city we’ll hit on our way north. Get to Whangarei at 11:50, pull into a car repair shop that looks closed but we want to check it out and Ben turns the key off, again!! He walks down to a Midas shop and they are closing and can’t help. So, eventually (all these eventuallys are to spare you from the total frustration/arguing/just about ready to cry/pleads for help from stranger moments) a guy helps us push it down the road and we’re able to pop the clutch that way, ala Little Miss Sunshine.

Ok, on our way again to a repair place who is open, and this is how we meet Robbie and Selwyn,

and this is the start of our supporting the Kamo economy. We all think it might be the starter so Ben and I head to town for some lunch and let Selwyn have a look. After some lunch we head back and have some luck – it’s an electrical issue that was fixed for $100. On the road again, only back to Whangarei to buy supplies, we run into Nick & Fran. So we go have a beer to thank them for all their help earlier that day and then we head out to camp at Ocean Beach. Nice place and we had a great hike that day photos.

That evening we head off the track again and end up in Whangaumu. The road to the beaches in this area go over little mountains and they are narrow winding steep roads. We’re headed down the last steep section, it’s dark and we’re not sure where the road goes when the stereo turns itself off and the lights start to dim. This time we’re sure it’s the battery, maybe, and start to panic just a bit as, again, we’re at the top of a steep hill, it’s dark and there is no pull out. We make it down to a car park and just have to realize that once we turn off the van it wont start without a jump. So, we settle in for another night knowing we need help from strangers again in the morning. When I turn around in the van the bed has come apart. Yeah, that $140 number, piece of sh*t, which we knew but didn’t have a choice, buckled and ripped out the screws. I figure that’s 3 things now, once we get this issue fixed we should be good to go, except it’s raining and the old sun roof is leaking and we are using our trash bucket to catch the drip.

Morning comes, we get that help and here I sit, back with Robbie & Selwyn. We’ve been here since 10:30 (it’s now 3:00) and are expecting to be here until 5:00. This time they’re looking at the alternator, but not entirely sure if that’s the problem. I really hope it is because we just have not had a vacation yet. We’ve gone on 2 hikes and had lots of car worries and troubles. I can say at least when it decides not to start we’re at a place we can sleep for the night. Oh, did I mention it’s been raining since we left Auckland? Luckily when we’ve been hiking it’s not been raining, but every other moment it has been. We’ve been spending buckets of money and just feel low. I’ve been fighting a sinus/cough issue so we’ve not been sleeping very well either. I know things will get better, it’s just getting harder and harder to keep our spirits up and we’re starting to wonder what the heck a “vacation” feels like??

So Robbie & Selwyn are part of our story now. These guys are crusty old Kiwis who’ve been working together for years. They act a bit like a married couple, have the requisite German shepherd, (Monty) and lots of old cars and car parts hanging around. We’ve been given lessons on cars and car repair, (Robbie could be a Car Talk host down here), been all through their medical history, talked about local politics, Maori politics, places to see on the North Island, etc…This is to say that things happen here very slowly. There is a bit of sitting around shooting the breeze that is required before one starts a job, during the job, and after the job.

We’ve spent some more money in Kamo and are shoring up the bed, adding curtains and bug screen to the van so we’ve been using the time wisely. At least we’re not missing a gorgeous sunny beach day.

I have to say I sometimes wonder what we did to be on this bad Karma trip. It’s probably just the time for the van to need repairs and we happen to be the next owners in line who’ll have to pay for them. Regardless, I’m sure you all know how we feel – vacationing in fits and starts.

Saving the Best for Last

2008-03-16T02:42:00.000-07:00

Last Day of Work in Antarctica--I'm on a helicopter heading to the best simulation we have of Mars. Except for the the oxygen, and the warm day, and the wild life on the way home.

I had my world rocked by this stange and beautiful landscape. We flew, put up a tent for scientists to use in the next two months, and then went for a hike. Here you go.

Volcanic Dikes crosscutting the original rock.

Ice and then desert--transition in about 1 yard.

Another favorite shot. That's a frozen (11 months out of the year) freshwater lake in the foreground, a glacier in the midground, and a mountain with a dramatic mafic intrusion in the background.

Here is your intrepid carhart-wearing carpenter/hiker. The upcoming shots are from a human perspective instead of a helicopter view. When you see the shots think wind--cold dry wind with bits of rock flying about in it. That's what storms do to the dry valleys.

This boulder (maybe with a 2-yard original diameter) is nearly worn through now.

Check out these ventifacts.

On the way home 2 emperor penguins thought the helicopter was interesting (up to a point). I only got a glimpse from my side of the helicopter.

Well, this is it for the 2007-2008 season. After a 2-day weather delay Gretchen and I flew of the Antarctic continent and headed for warmer adventures to the north, yes north.

Stay tuned for greener pictures. Green is a nice color. Very lively.

Love and Peace,

Ben

CATCHING UP! Cape Royds

2008-03-15T21:16:00.000-07:00

Hey Family and Friends,

Here are a few shots of Penguins! Everybody's favorite when you think of Antarctica. I was sent out to Cape Royds where some penguin studies are done. It was Summer's end and we took down the large tent that was shelter for the scientists.

Royds is a smaller colony of about 1000 Adelie Penguins. This is where they meet to mate, incubate their egg, and then fish for food for their young chicks. The location is a rocky outcrop that is more snow free where the sea ice opens up earlier.

These guys are less than half the height of Emperor Penguins, but they make up for it with more personality.

I found finally seeing penguins to be anticlimatic until I sat down to watch for at least an hour. The social hierarchy, the demanding adolescent chicks chasing the adults around, and the bold chicks chasing off marauding skua seagulls were worth the patience.

And later I was able to see them swim in groups as they fished. They shift from foolish characters to graceful torpedos. When they dive, penguins are able to go without oxygen more than seals or any other known diving predator. They store oxygen in their muscle tissues and shunt blood away from organs that we humans would not dare to deprive (brain, heart, lungs). They would not survive at the high latitudes of Antarctica (about 80 degrees South) without these awesome adaptations.

Penguins!

This Adelie was about a quarter mile from the colony. Young adult penguins wander on land and by water for great distances (100 miles or more). Many do not survive the exploration, but a few find new areas for fishing or breeding. It's an evolutionary force that works for the whole but not all the individuals. Most young adults of birds and mammals species do the same. Especially us young humans--just look at all the vagabonds working in McMurdo.

As we walked the coast line I noticed a BIG iceberg (probably a 1000 ft thick and a half mile in diameter.) It was a remant chunk of B15 that had blocked McMurdo Sound, and it was now drifting free like a mountain on the move. It made for a nice backdrop for the gratuitious self portrait.

These are the days that make the work worthwhile.

Cheers,
Ben

Leaving the Ice

2008-02-19T15:20:00.000-08:00

We're delayed in McMurdo for the second day. It's like trying to leave the bush in winter, you just never know when the flight will actually go so you just get ready and wait. It's a beautiful day today so we're hoping to get out for a hike and just enjoy the down time while we're still getting paid and eating free food.
I have a lot of mixed feelings leaving McMurdo. I've been lucky to have bonded with my fellow shuttle drivers and we're all going to miss each other. I'll miss the ease of life here, walking to work, no dishes or cooking, no errands, no grocery shopping... I am looking forward to our travels though, and am hoping to come back for one more season to continue the fun and hopefully see some of the continent.

I saw an Emperor the other day at Pegasus, the white ice runway, and have a few photos.

It is a younger one and was molting. You could still see the downy hair on the top part of the breast and back.
Now that I've seen Emperors and Adelies I can say I like to watch Adelies better. They walk with a funny waddle, while an Emperor's walk reminds me of Frankenstein, slow and slightly ackward. Emperors are much larger than Adelies though and are quite majestic.

With that I will sign off. We hope to continue the blog while we're travelling so stay tuned for more!
With love,
Gretchen

Antarctic Gamburtsev Report

2008-01-21T20:46:00.000-08:00

As Gretchen said, I got back from AGAP on Tuesday at 7 am--a little strung out from the red eye flight.

So what's to say about AGAP? First and foremost, I survived it; my lungs dealt with the dry rarified air; we set up a small camp for next year; and we took good care of each other.

I think I'll keep it short and show more photos. We spent about 6 days acclimitizing at the South Pole and at AGAP. Here's a few shots from the South Pole.

First, here the carpenter crew reflected in the orb of the ceremonial south pole.

And here is the same crew at the actual geographical pole marker--the earth is spinning around my hand. The friction was incredible.

And here is the new south pole station--still under construction on the outside. The pole was a bit anticlimatic overall. It felt like a construction site complete with the messy yard full of ingoing and outgoing materials, and with a drunken brawl resulting in some south pole worker breaking another worker's jaw. They both got a flight home the next day. Of course, the high altitude never improves one's disposition.

AGAP was a nice change of pace. Organization and supply troubles continued to plague the project so we received supplies sporadically. We worked when we had shelters and other materials and then . . . . . . . . I read 4 1/2 books and played some mean cribbage, evening movies on the laptop were the norm. We cooked for ourselves which was a nice change from the galley. The altitude was the biggest challege, as all physical effort is followed by a spate of panting and sleep was sporadic with gasping for air. (Most people behave like they have mild sleep apnea when at altitude.)

We also had some more direct contact with actual research being done when we helped bury a geophysical seismic sensor and a magnetometer. It was good to work on solar panels and such again. But, eventually we ran out of things to do and then our return flight was delayed by 3-4 days by a storm in McMurdo. It was reeeeealy nice to get out when we finally did. Diversion was becoming hard to come by.

Here is the one photo that sums up AGAP well. Flat snow in all directions for at least 300 miles, 340 miles to the nearest station, 11,300 feet, physiological elevation of 13,000 feet, temperature of minus 30 f, wind 5-10 mph, no clouds in the dry air.

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Its good to be warm, and its good to not be an early polar explorer dragging a sled for hundreds of miles across the polar plateau.
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Love and Peace and Warmth to you all.
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PS--less than one more month here in Antarctica. The travels are coming up quickly.

Oden, Penguins, Rugby, Sunshine

2008-01-13T10:54:00.000-08:00

Hello All from Sunny Antarctica!

Yesterday was our first sunny day in a long stretch and it came at a great time as it was the annual US vs New Zealand rugby match. We performed quite well, and it was a gorgeous day. We still have not scored, but we came close!

I went to take a tour of the Oden, but was unable to wait. Here are some photos of the outside of the ship at least. This is the ice breaker I wrote about.

This one was taken the day it docked.

Since I was unable to wait for the tour I went to Hut Ridge and watched a penguin. It was so bright and sunny and with the reflection off the snow it was hard to see to take pictures so that's
why they seem grainy. There have been several groups of them the past two nights, but I've not been lucky enough to be there at the right time. No matter, one is better than none!

I was up on a ridge looking down at him, and every once in a while he would look up at me and squawk. I wonder if he was looking for his group? He eventually waddled & slid around the ridge and off onto the sea ice. It was pretty fun watching him move around, they are faster than you would think!

Ben is scheduled to come back early tomorrow morning (really late tonight) and I am looking very forward to his return.

Hope you all are well.
Gretchen

New Years in Antarctica & Other Misc Things

2008-01-08T20:27:00.000-08:00

Started off the day before New Year’s Eve with an outdoor concert and chili cook-off called Ice Stock. There are so many artistic people here, music being only one of the art forms, that we had bands and individuals playing all afternoon. It was a typical Antarctic summer day, 10-15 knot winds, snow blowing sideways, but not too chilly as long as you were either dancing or wearing big red!

Actual New Year’s Eve started out pretty low key. People were a little tired from Ice Stock so we started in the coffee house playing wholesome games. I'll leave out the details, suffice to say the whole evening deteriorated but was saved by ringing in the New Year at Hut Point during a snow/wind storm. There was a big group of us out there and it was just amazing to be in Antarctica ushering a new year. I think we were the first time zone in the world too!

That is Laura Schue’s friend, Thai, just back from the South Pole and a stop at AGAP where he was able to pass on hugs to Ben from me and back to me from Ben! Also of note in this picture is Discovery hut in the background on the right. It is one of Scott’s huts and is an historical site.

This is part of our shuttles crew. We have a great group and are really bonding.

I’ve talked with Ben a few times via Iridium satellite phone. He sounded in good spirits and is dealing fairly well with the altitude despite some labored breathing that wakes him up throughout the night. He is scheduled to come home this Friday, a week earlier than planned due to flights being backed up getting into the pole. He is looking forward to the comforts of McMurdo.

Here are some pictures of the Adelie penguin I saw yesterday!

The Swedish ice breaker, Oden, is in the area and will be docking soon. It took 45 days to sail from Chile. Hopefully we will see more wildlife now that there are channels in the sea ice. The container ship will be here soon and then our town will be very busy with 24/7 operations working hard to offload all the cargo for the next 2 seasons and load things that need to go out, like trash. We may have some cruise boats in the area in the next couple of weeks and I have signed up to be a guide for those folks coming ashore.

We played ultimate outside this past Sunday! Was so much fun. Mt. Discovery and a Delta are in the background. I definitely thought about Fur Grande. Two of the guys who are down here with the robot that will go to Mars played with us. Goes to show you scientist types have lots of skills other than science!

Our season is rapidly ending. Our re-deployment date is February 19th and I know that will come very quickly. There are a lot of end of season gatherings and talk about travel plans. We will see if we come back next year…

Cheers & love to you all,

Gretchen

Merry Christmas from the Ice

2007-12-25T03:57:00.000-08:00

It’s December 25th here and my Christmas has been split up into 2 days. The big Christmas meal was on the 24th which I attended with friends at 7:00 pm. It was my morning so I just drank coffee and visited. I went for a nice hike before our midnight Christmas meal and took breaks to watch the seals laze about in an open lead.

Midrats (this is what the midnight meal for night workers is called. I think it may stand for “midnight rations”) was great. There were only a few people and we let the sun light the room so it was really mellow. We lingered for a few hours, grazed and visited. The food was wonderful, as were all the desserts. It was sad not to have Ben with me and I hope he enjoyed his Christmas at the South Pole.

I went to bed on the 25th around 11:00 am and woke up about 7:00 pm which seemed like a real Christmas morning to me. Some friends came over and we opened a box from Jim & Zoe filled with all kinds of homemade goodies. It was fun to have something to open on Christmas “morning”.

Here is a picture of me and my fellow night shift shuttle drivers Jim and Sarah. Sarah and her roommates made this “tree” and it’s right outside their dorm room.

Some random pictures follow – not related to Christmas!
This one reminded me of a golf hole, water obstacle Antarctica style. Those are the pressure ridges in the background. This is for Karen & Sue especially.

This one I was trying to be arty thinking of Tim Remick. This is the view out my side mirror in the Delta.

We will have a big outdoor music festival next week, then a New Year’s party at the Kiwi base, then it’ll be January and time to start talking to people about places to travel. Then, before you know it, it will be February and time to prepare for redeployment back to New Zealand and begin our travels!

I hope you all are having a great holiday season and that you are all healthy and happy.
Cheers & love,
Gretchen

Nightshift Routines

2007-12-22T04:55:00.000-08:00

Ben thinks my nightshift routines are different and interesting enough to share with you, so here’s what I do on my nights off. Usually I sleep in until Ben comes home, about 5:45 pm. I eat my breakfast about 6:15 pm in our room because the crowds and noise in the dining hall are a little more than I want to participate in during my morning, which is their evening (I do this on my workdays as well). I’ve been attending some talks in the evening put on by fellow McMurdo residents on such things as hitchhiking, and floating a river in Madagascar. After the talks, about 10pm, Ben and I spend time together until he is ready for sleep. Then I pack my backpack with computer, movies, workout clothes, books, journals, food, etc… and head over to the galley. There is a nice back room where I take over a table for 4 and spread out. There is no one in this room during the night and it’s spaced apart from the main room by glass block so it lets in a little light, but not a lot. I eat lunch from midnight to 1 am with the other nightshift workers, and visit with the drunken people who wander in for food. Then I workout from 2-3 (or thereabouts) and then set up camp and watch a movie. I usually hang in the back until 7am when Ben comes over for his breakfast and we visit for 20 minutes until he has to leave for work. It’s a good thing I love breakfast foods because, while the galley puts out breakfast foods for us in the evenings when everyone else is eating dinner, they don’t put out dinner type foods in the mornings so I end up eating 2 breakfasts a day. I usually head to bed between 8 & 9 am. I only have 2 more weeks on the night shift and while it will be great to spend time with my day shift friends, and much better for spending quality time with Ben, I will miss the quiet evenings of nights, and the special things we see at night that don’t happen during the days.

One of those special things is watching the C-130’s do “combat offloads”. Another term for this is a “drift offload” as they use this technique in the field to let the cargo loose onto snow drifts. They are encouraged to use the “drift offload” term as this is a non-combat zone, but the techniques are the same. The plane taxis on the ground and while it’s still moving they open the back, speed up and release the pallets. The pallets just spit out and the plane keeps on moving. It’s pretty cool to watch. As you can guess from the terminology this technique is used frequently in combat zones to offload cargo as quickly as possible without shutting down the plane so it can take off immediately. In McMurdo they use this technique to make things easier for the cargo people, as well as quicker for the flight crew. They use it in the field because there are often no loaders or other ways to get the cargo off the plane.

The runway moved at the beginning of the month to the continental ice shelf. We have one for C-17’s called Pegasus, the one Ben flew into with the downed plane (see earliest blog entry) and another one for the C-130’s called William’s Field, or just Willy Field. We can no longer go out on the sea ice, where the old runway was, as the ice is melting rapidly. Our temperatures have been quite warm, above freezing, for over a week now with full on sun 24 hours a day. Day or night all our drives to the runway are done in Delta’s and people really like to complain about it. Granted, it’s not the smoothest or fastest ride, but we all try our best to make the journey fast and smooth. It’s 7 miles and takes about 30 minutes. The main reason we have to use Delta’s, as opposed to vans, is due to the transition area between the sea ice and the continental ice shelf. It’s a 4-wheeler’s dream complete with ice, snow, water, slush pools, dips, holes…
The water comes up over the Delta tires and if you go too fast it’ll splash up onto the passenger cab. I like going through it, it’s like a Disney Land ride when you go down and don’t really know when you’ll hit bottom. Keep in mind, the “bottom” in this case is ice. Under that is the ocean.

I like watching the way the sun hits the pressure ridges and how every time I drive by they change. There is more water, just melt pools not open water but water non-the-less, and the pressure ridges are becoming less pronounced as the tension eases off.

The clouds, too, are just incredible. Doesn’t this one look like the Starship Enterprise?

There are lenticular clouds that sit on top of one another, halo clouds around Erebus and Mt. Terror, ribbon clouds that look like a rhythmic gymnast’s ribbon, swirly clouds that are in constant motion moving and changing by the minute. They are just incredible.

Ben is scheduled to leave for the South Pole (locally referred to as "Pole") tomorrow. Flights are often cancelled, for a variety of reasons, so we'll see what actually happens.

Hope you all have a wonderful, snowy Christmas.
Gretchen

Merry Christmas from the Great White of AGAP

2007-12-18T00:27:00.000-08:00

Hi Friends and Family,

So it looks like I might leave for the South Pole on Thursday (plans change all the time here--3 to 4 times today--so we will see what actually happens). There are 7 carpenters that will be acclimatizing at the pole for about 3 days and then moving on to the AGAP field camp. The Pole sits at 9500 ft and AGAP is at 11700 feet. It's a process to get there safely. Unfortunately, the season is very short so the holidays are taking a back seat. I'm willing--I'm feeling engaged in this project.

We have already gone to AGAP once. We are doing 3 trips there to put up shelters that staff can come and rest in. We go for 1 hour of work and then leave to heal up our bodies from the edema etc from the altitude. It is like choreographed kung fu high-adrenaline but slow motion carpentry. We have practiced in McMurdo the set up of 3 shelters 3-4 times each. It is a strange endeavour but it will provide a restful space for us to come into when we actually arrive at AGAP to stay. The opinion of our high-altitude consultant is that it is the combination of high altitude, cold, and hard work that make people sick. From my experiences I have to agree. So the result is that we spend too much time on old military transport planes.

Here's the story, in brief, from the last one hour strike at AGAP. We went there, set up the tents and exceeded our expectations for what we could accomplish--we were feeling quite jubilant. Then the next adventure began--getting the plane off the glacier. The plane weighs over 100,000 pounds. It rests on skis that were punching through the wind crust and into the sugar snow below. It took 7 traverses-- 3 tries and 4 taxis--before the fourth try was successful. The crew went as far as to have 8 of us sitting up on the back ramp of the cargo plane, safety belted with cargo straps. This was to encourage the nose of the plane to rise. When they finally achieved the 65 to 70 knots necessary and the nose rose almost imperceptibly, they fired 8 dry rockets attached to the side of the fuselage. For 15 seconds the plane accelerated and became airborne, free of the friction of old cold snow. I stopped calculating were we would all sleep, and wondering if they could pressurize the plane all night.

Good adventure, but like most adventure it comes with some need for patience and tolerance for boredom. The next flight went all the way there and then turned around without landing because of poor weather at our refueling depot. If we land we have to be able to reach the depot because if we have enough fuel to get all the way back to McMurdo then we are too heavy to get off the snows at AGAP. So we sat in the plane for 6 plus hours and came home.

Well, I have to go and spend some time with my sweet wife before I go. Here is a picture of her at the pressure ridges on the sea ice at the New Zealand Scott base. We are calling this big red solo love.

Cheery Solstice to You All. Love and Peace,

Ben and Gretchen

P.S. Sorry for the lack of pictures but I took none during our work and my pack was out of reach during the take off. More later. Gretchen will be your entertainment provider for the next 3-4 weeks.

Granite Harbor Wonder

2007-12-09T02:06:00.000-08:00

Hi, well I got a little behind with the blog. See my excuse at the bottom of the last entry.

Summer as arrived here in McMurdo. There is water on the ground much of the time. This has me surprised still. I get hints of the Christmas season as I listen to media from the outside. But I am seriously seasonally disoriented. The sun shines 24 hours a day--no Christmas lights, the snow is turning to mud, and it keeps getting warmer. "Not Christmas Time", says my northern latitude head.

It's getting more pleasant to work and play here. I was lucky enough to do a trip that was a combo of the two. We were taking out a camp that had finished its purpose out on the sea ice. We went out of the McMurdo Sound about an hour by helicopter. The ride out was in flat gray light, but the ride back was spectacular. The four of us felt lucky to have this job--makes up for the times we dig holes in snow and other fine tasks.

Anyway, we were at Granite Harbor at the north end of the Dry Valleys. After work, we walked other to some beautiful solid granite that was the first solid grippy rock I have stood on since I came in August. Everything else has been volcanic ejecta or some form of snow. The rock is sculpted by wind and frost to form the shapes below.

There were mother seals and their pups at a crack at the base of the cliff. An awe-inspiring scene. There was a sad tinge about the seals. There were pups in all states of health. I found out later that mortality rate for weddel seal pups is as high as 80%. Tough harsh continent. It was nice to see the healthy fat ones with their mothers after that.

So one of my jobs (OK, I volunteered) was to hook up sling loads to the bottom of a helicopter. I stand steady, the pilot flies over me making me feel like I being hit by an invisible man (wind). And then I hook the cable onto the mechanism on the bottom of the helicopter while trying to control the urge to run roadrunner-fashion out from underneath the skids of the aircraft. Googles and hearing protection were useful. It's a good adrealine rush. Actually the pilots are VERY skilled and can nearly run the hook through the metal ring that I held up--usually. They do this while looking at a rounded mirror through a window in the floor. They go on my list of people I'm impressed with.

And here are three shots from the ride back. Wish I could share them all, but its past my bedtime.

By the way, these icebergs frozen in the thinner sea ice are remants from B15--the iceberg the size of a small state that shut off McMurdo Sound. The vertical face of the iceberg is 120 above the water line. This means there is about one thousand feet of ice beneath sea level.

The pilot gave us a close up view of one of these remnants.

On the way we saw the ocean breaking its way up towards McMurdo Station. I hope it opens up all the way before we leave Antarctica.

Up next for me is another trip to the great white. This time it is off to AGAP field camp at 11,700 feet and about 88 degrees south latitude. Wish me luck acclimitizing.

Six of us carpenters will leave on December 19 to set up the semi-permanent shelters. Next summer season about 30 staff and scientists will occupy the site.

AGAP is in a yet unstudied part of Antarctica. The project will eventually involve mapping the land forms under the ice sheet. The glacier in that area covers an entire mountain range.

Up next for Gretchen is the fun social scene of Christmas and New Years in McMurdo. By all indications, she likes it here--a lot.

Good to share the joys with you all.

Love and Peace,

Ben

Return from WAIS, But Not Wasted

2007-11-23T18:26:00.000-08:00

Happy Thanksgiving to you all. Glad you stopped by the blog.

The big bird came and plucked us back to McMurdo. The great white of WAIS camp was starting to feel like my new temporary home--strange. The camp staff there was swell and the smaller community was nice. But it was also nice to come home to Gretchen and hot showers and mountains and warmer air that now faintly smells of the sea. I was out there for 16 days.

The first 10 days of our stay there was mildly to moderately stormy which meant wind from 10 to 35 knots. The up side of that is that the temperatures were up to about -10 f to 0 f instead of the expected -25 f.

We put up RAC tents, Jamesways, and Polar Havens--all variations of quansit huts. We made bed frames and shelves galore. And at the end we has a small town. Here is the video from the same spot. I started from a different angle but the blue arctic chief is the common reference point. It is amazing how fast the set up can be considering we end up with a 16 by 70 ft galley, a rec room and wash room area, a science office, a communications office hut, and medical tent, 4 modular buildings on skis, and 5 more tents for sleeping and resting.

The deal is that if you leave buildings in a permanent location then they get buried by snow drifts in this high deposition location. The arch (where the snow core drilling takes place) is a testament to this.

It started at 30 feet above the snow and the top of the drifts it is creating are almost reaching the top of it. It was built there 2 years ago. The group is importing a D4 caterpillar (by cargo plane) to push snow away from the arch. They will use it for 2-3 months this year just for this purpose. In the end the process is futile because the basin created around the arch will fill in with more drifts, but the project hopefully will be done by then.

Enjoy for now, more later.

Ben and Gretchen

PS. So, for you close observers, I took the before video off the blog after I couldn't upload the after video. Apparently, there is not enough bandwidth here in McMurdo to upload without errors. Back to still pictures.

Another Great Sunday

2007-11-19T17:09:00.000-08:00

This Sunday may rival last week’s as best Sunday so far. I had a lot of plans at the beginning of the day and they were all dropped in order to join a trip out to Cape Evans, which is 15 miles outside of town. Despite the fact I was there only a few hours before with our shuttles crew this was a chance to go back out to walk / run back. We had some skiers, runners and walkers on this trip so it was easy for me to join in at the very last minute. One minute we’re eating brunch and the next we’re running back to our rooms gathering ECW gear and exercise clothes. The we are Lindsay, her husband, Travis, and myself. They are the real troopers as they’d not ever skate skied before and decided their first try should be 15 miles from town with no instruction. I got them set up in the skis and poles, and then I didn’t see them again until the Delta picked us up.
So, one of the highlights of this trip was spending lots of time at the seal hole watching them surface to breathe. We saw one the night before but there were 20 of us gathered around not being as quiet as we could have been, so the seal only barely stuck his nose out of the water. The next day was much quieter with just me and another person so I got some good shots, and a video even.

There were seals everywhere on the ice. From afar they look like giant black slugs.
The weather was perfect, not a breath of wind – which is highly unusual. I made it walking/running a lot further down the trail than I had expected.
The other highlight was just being away from town. I stopped a couple of times just to listen to the quiet. I’ve never been in a place as quiet. My ears were ringing with silence. It was incredible.
At one point I just realized, this is Antarctica and I am actually here. Those realizations are so fun to have. You can’t help but smile.

For the history buffs – our Shuttles trip the day before was a trip all the way to Scott’s Hut. It is open to visitors so it was neat to walk inside a structure that is perfectly preserved. Because it is so cold and dry things are just as they were left 100 years ago, including a penguin and a massive store of seal blubber. 19 men lived in this “hut” for 18 months. I was surprised at the size, high ceilings and separated spaces. I suppose when you put 19 men in there it may seem smaller.

last photo to sign off with – on top of the hill above the hut there is a cross, I thought this picture

came out pretty well. Note the closest land mass to the left on the sea ice – that’s actually an ice

burg. I had it cropped nicely, but have to upload it from my camera, so this is the original version.

Ben came back last night and it's nice to have him back in town.

Happy Thanksgiving to you all!

Gretchen

Condition 2

2007-11-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

Hi All,

Last week I drove Ivan out to the LDB (long distance balloon) site in a Condition 2 with 40 people on board. A condition 2 is one step away from a Condition 1, which halts all travel. in condition 2's we have to check out with the firehouse, and then check back in once we reach our destination. It's all based on wind speed, visibility, and temperatures - which I don't have in front of me at the moment. Suffice to say, it's hard to see in a Condition 2 and the wind really whips.

All of our roads are flagged, since they are on the sea ice, or Continental Ice Shelf, and it's all a big white expanse. I could see the flags no problem, but even with orange lenses in my sunglasses I couldn't see the actual road. It hadn't been plowed yet so I just powered through the snow drifts and we made it without getting stuck.

Bill was with me because it had been 3 weeks since I had driven Ivan and he took this photo - without me even knowing. Things to note are the one flag to the left, and Ob Hill in front. Normally you can see the Scott Base as well.

The last few days have been considerably nicer; warmer with less wind, so it's been fun to get back outside and run and hike. On Sunday I walked over to the Scott Base with some friends and we ended up there for 3 hours. We got a tour of the base, had some wonderful espresso and hung out in their brand new lounge. Their lounge has windows that look out over the pressure ridges and a gas fireplace. it was pretty nice. For those of you who know my coffee addiction, the espresso was the highlight of my day!

Here's to good coffee and good friends,

Cheers,

Gretchen

Just Pictures

2007-11-05T22:26:00.000-08:00

These are some pictures that were taken when I was with the tour mentioned in my previous entry.

This is a view from the golf ball of McMurdo. The closest hill is Observation Hill. We live at the base of the hill on the right side.
All the white on the right side of the pictures is sea ice and it will go out in a couple of months leaving us with water. I hear there will be lots of seals and penguins in the area. It's fun to think about how we are now using the sea ice for roads and landing strips and in a while it will all be unfrozen water!

The area behind this sign is protected and you have to have a permit to enter. Arrival Heights is designated an Antarctic Specially Protected Area (ASPA) because it is “an electromagnetically and natural ‘quiet site’ offering ideal conditions for the installation of sensitive instruments for recording minute signals associated with upper atmosphere programs”.

That's me waiting in the van for the tour.

Enjoy!

Penguins and Seals and Winds oh my….

2007-11-05T15:35:00.000-08:00

Saw my first penguin on Halloween. It was an Adelie penguin all alone. At first it looked like a black blob on the ice, but then it stood up for me and I got a few photos. I couldn’t get closer than I was so you can see the penguin just to the right of the ladder in front of the second fuel tank from the left.

I saw my first seal on the pressure ridges at Scott Base that same day. Looking through the binoculars it still just looked like a big black blob so there are no pictures of the seal, but here is a shot of the base with the pressure ridges in the background. The sign used to say “Population 20 plus Sam” and they must have cleaned it up only days before I took the picture. There are about 40 Kiwis at Scott Base during the summer.

The winds are back. Yesterday and today the winds have picked up bringing our temperatures right back down to -60F. We were getting pretty comfortable in -4F with no winds so this reminds us where we are currently living. Our night shift crew were working in -51F.

While the wind speed is only around 30 MPH, because there isn’t much relief, and no trees, in this land the wind feels stronger. It blows snow around creating ground blizzards, blows your feet around when you pick them up to walk, blows any unrestrained debris around, and drops the temperatures rapidly. I drove through my first condition 1 yesterday. The roads on the sea ice are flagged and I could still see one flag in front of me so I kept going towards my destination. Once the flags ran out I sat there until there was a break and then quickly made it to a building. During Condition 1’s we are suppose to stay inside, or wherever we are in our vehicle. I could see how it would be freaky if you were an explorer in the middle of nowhere, or on an un-flagged route, but from where I was it wasn’t so bad.

Also on Halloween – a big day for me – I drove a project group around and was able to join their tours of otherwise restricted areas. The T-Site (tower site) where all of the communications towers are located, the golf ball where a satellite dish resides in a giant golf ball shaped dome, and the building that houses what look like 80’s style super computers to monitor what the satellite dish picks up. The golf ball site is a NASA site and it is for scientific research purposes. It monitors about 30 satellites which travel from pole to pole in about 90 minutes. The group was really fun and there are a lot of photos – and a movie – of our tour.

Golf Ball

Exiting the Golf Ball

That evening we had a “Get to Know You Gathering” in our dorm. We had a great turn out and people had treats in their rooms as we went through meeting everyone and checking out their rooms.

Ben left yesterday for 3 weeks at WAIS Divide, a remote field camp site. He’s out there with other carpenters setting up the camp which will eventually have a population of about 70 people.

Off to the great white.

2007-11-01T01:27:00.000-07:00

Hello,

I'm scheduled tomorrow to go into the deep field about 800 miles east of McMurdo. The site is called WAIS. The purpose is to drill through 3 miles of ice and get samples and climate data from the millions of years of ice that have been deposited there. I'll be gone for about 18 days setting up a small temporary town for about 70 people. I'm looking forward to the experience but not the cold. It is typically -30 or -40 there right now. The horizon is blank white in all directions.

Talk to you all in a few weeks.

Gretchen will keep you posted.

Ben

Halloween in McMurdo

2007-10-29T17:29:00.000-07:00

Is all it’s cracked up to be. People go all out for this party and it showed. The costumes were great and the few folks who didn’t dress up were definitely in the minority. I went as “under the sea” complete with a sea-scape shower curtain, fish hat, and bubbles.

My date was the mighty Viking warrior, Ben.

My favorite costumes were Bert & Ernie, (from Sesame Street) and the Cardinal Penguin.
There was great music spun out by our dormmate Ben (aka escaped convict) and we danced until the doors closed. Beers were a dollar, and had the alcohol content of something that costs a dollar. It was nice to be able to walk home after, even though it was well below zero and the wind was whipping. Shower curtains don't offer much in the way of leg protection.
Brunch was noticeably less crowded and noisy the next morning.
Happy Halloween to you all!
Gretchen

4 Month Long Day

2007-10-25T09:50:00.000-07:00

The days run into each other here as the sun is always up now. Our last sunset was October 22nd. Our next sunset will be February 20th.

The sun at 10pm is so much higher than it was only 2 1/2 weeks ago. The other interesting thing is that we view the sun moving from right to left. (Yes, I know the earth is the one that's rotating, but at 6am I couldn't think of a way to say that).

I'm working 5 12 hour days with Sundays and Tuesdays off. It's only been 4 days, but I like it so far. There is usually time to wake up in the office before things really get going - at least for now. We 5:30 am-ers run into the 5:30 pm-ers on their way home and it's just a quick hello before they go to bed and we start our day.

I went for a run outside last night and was just taken away by the fact that I was running in Antarctica. The wind subsided and the mountains came out and I saw a faint shadow of myself as the sun made a brief, hazy appearance.

No photos today, just sun related information.
Gretchen

Close the Door!

2007-10-20T16:58:00.000-07:00

Hello all,

Here are some pictures I’ve wanted to share with you all for about a month. These are courtesy of Casey Cosper in the carpenter shop. Thanks Casey.

This is one of the 3 galley buildings down on the ice runway. They have 24-hour firefighters and other crew on duty so they need a kitchen to feed them. Funny that it is only 2 miles from town.

Anyway, the door was left ajar while this building was unoccupied in the process of being moved from the winter runway. The door destroyed itself by bashing against the wall during a wind storm. At the same time snow filled the room. Here is why you always close the door.

Anyone want some cool tropical juice?

How about some ketchup?

We shoveled out the room and then swept it up. The next step was to fire up the heaters and have a little steam. I was back in the galley after a couple weeks and it was like nothing ever happened.

A few thoughts from the last few days:

I’ve been reading A Race to the Pole about Scott’s 2 attempts at reaching the pole. He made it the second time but died a few miles shy of his food depot during the return. It has been illuminating to sit inside a heated building while reading about these adventures from the “heroic age” At one point I was looking out the window to the exact location where 3 of Scott’s men and 3 of his ponies where swept out to sea on an ice floe. The men and 1 pony survived by running across the crushed and moving sea ice as the wind pushed it in various directions. Killer Whales (Orcas) spy hopped around the floe during the entire episode. The whales used the chaos of the ice break up to feed on seals (or ponies). This took place less than 100 years ago. It is somewhat easy to distance oneself from the harshness of the continent, but much of the adventures that took place during the initial exploration happened within 15 miles of McMurdo.

A parting scene from the that era. During one winter expedition a man had his teeth split from the cold. Another came out of a humid tent and had his jacket freeze with his hood/head turned to the side. With his head turned 90 degrees he had to hike to make heat until his hood thawed.

Shit—that’s cold. So why were they doing a winter outing? For Science!—they were getting live penguin eggs in mid-incubation. They thought that it would show the link between dinosaurs and birds.

Well here we are, still pursuing science.

More later. Good night all.

Ben

Happy Camper

2007-10-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

I was lucky, (if you want to call camping outside at about -15F lucky), enough to go to snow craft school I, commonly referred to here as “Happy Camper”. We spent 2 days and one night outside with “lectures” in between. There were 20 students and 2 instructors and we students built snow blocks and walls, set up Scott tents, (specific tee pee like tents for the Antarctic built to withstand 80 knot winds), regular Sierra Designs mountain tents, and a quinsy. I

This is the Scott tent.

I spent the night in the quinsy with 2 other women and we were quite toasty.

The next day dawned bright and sunny with hardly any wind.

We broke camp and ran a couple scenarios. One was the bucket head scenario where we went out looking for a member who never came back from the outhouse in a simulated white out - hence the buckets.

That's me in the middle with the girl head, to the left of the guy all in black.

The other was just a regular safety scenario – set up a tent, boil a quart of water, set up and call town on the HF radio and build a snow wall. Something to use all of the skills we learned.
It helped that we had good weather because I was missing my down pants, jacket, and
-40F sleeping bag. We also had a lot of upbeat people who kept our spirits high.

The day before I left for Happy Camper I took a bunch of Polies, those folks going to the South Pole, to the air field for a tour of the Kiwi Herc, the New Zealand C-130, and I got to tour along. That was pretty cool. I felt like a 5 year old because that night I had a private tour of the firehouse and trucks. Trucks and airplanes – woo hoo!

Tomorrow I start my 5:30am – 5:30pm schedule for 6 weeks. I wanted to see what it would be like to get up and start my day very early. I also didn’t want to work too late into the evening because dinner ends at 7:30 and most activities start at 6:30. We’ll see about activities after a 12 hour day.

Last week I did make it up Ob Hill. There were several occasions where I had to stop and hold on to a rock for fear of getting blown over. I was the only one on the hill until the bottom when I ran into several other folks coming up. I am anxious for the snow to melt so I can go up in tennis shoes. 2 pairs of long johns, wind pants, 2 shirts, 2 jackets, hat, goggles, neck gaitor, and hiking boots are cumbersome. Today I am going to Scott Hut and maybe the loop around Ob Hill. It’s a pretty mild temperature day, -2F, but it’s that wind again bringing the temps down to -22F.

If you all want to see current weather conditions etc check out the McMurdo home page at http://www.mcmurdo.usap.gov/.

Thinking of you all and missing you.

Cheers,
Gretchen

The Wheels on the Bus

2007-10-13T16:36:00.000-07:00

Training here happens fast. Within 4 working days I drove all the vehicles. The vans, equipped with large balloon type tires, duely air porters, Deltas, and Ivan the Terra bus. I wake up everyday thinking I’m going sightseeing! What will I see? Who will I meet? We took the fleet out a couple of days ago to meet a flight and it was a gorgeous day so we seized to opportunity for photos. First year excitement must be captured!

We are at the Ice Runway lined up in size order waiting for the C-17 to arrive with 118 pax.

Ivan the Terra Bus is a 60 foot long, 67,000 pound bus with 6 forward gears and 3 reverse gears that holds 56 passengers. There are only 7 in existence, 1 here and the other 6 in the Canadian Arctic. With the help of Shuttle Bill, the best trainer this side of the earth, I’ve made U turns, 3 point turns and short left hand turns (almost). I was wishing I could take it home and show the Hummer drivers they’re not the biggest vehicle on the road anymore.

Driving to the IR with Ice town and Mt Discovery in the background.

The other unusual vehicle I drive is the Delta. Delta’s are military vehicles made in the 80’s that have 2 boxes separated by an articulated waist. One cab holds 3 people and a rear cab holds about 20 people. Surprisingly easy to drive. After it warms up the roads start to deteriorate so we’ll be driving Ivan and the Delta’s only.

My scientific involvement so far has been to take the Penguin Ranch folks out to their snowmachines to scout a new place for the ranch. Ben’s contribution will be more significant when he goes out to help them set up the actual ranch. See either the National Geographic special or the DVD extras from March of the Penguins for more information on the ranch.

Last night we went to the bar and listened and danced to live music. There are a lot of talented musicians here and it’s pretty fun. The bar tenders are all folks who work here and tend bar in their off time for extra travel funds. They rake it in from what I hear.

Another note of interest is that our dorm, Mammoth Mountain Inn, or the Suites at MMI as we like to call it, is 1700 SF and we have 36 people living in there. That would make our dorm smaller than our house – yikes!

Temperatures are still pretty chilly and the wind continues to blow. The other day it was +3F with no wind and it was downright balmy. 2 hours later the wind started up again to take up back down to -20F. We’ve had a lot of sunny days though and in the vehicles it gets nice and toasty.

This is me at T Site (Tower) with Observation Hill and Mt. Discovery in the background.

Time for either a nap or a hike up Ob hill – wind depending.
Cheers & love,
Gretchen

Hi Connor!

2007-10-12T01:53:00.000-07:00

So I was in the galley at lunch yesterday, and Gretchen and I were approached by a nice lady who asked us to take a postcard that had been sent from an Eighth Grade class from . . . . . Central Middle School--Anchorage, AK. Small World. The card had a couple questions for us to answer. Connor asked how long I had been down here and how long it has taken me to get used to Antarctica. I hope I got most of that right.

So here goes. I left Anchorage on August 16. I got here on the 25th after training, travel, and a weather delay. August 25th is about like Barrow, AK on February 25th (since the seasons in the southern hemisphere are opposite ours in the north.)

And I don't really think that I am used to it or that my body has adjusted significantly. Maybe, if a person were outside 24/7 then his/her metabolism would speed up some--creating a little more warmth. But, mostly we all find our ways to adapt and deal. Some people stay indoors most of the time. As a carpenter I have to work outside so I wear goofy amounts of layers--3 hats and bunny boots really work well. And mentally, we start to expect the cold and wind so we aren't surprised by it as much.

Here's a picture for you all.

The clouds are particularly beautiful here. Did I mention I like lenticular clouds? This was taken from our dorm room window. The room is small, but the view is the best on station.

FYI, all are welcome to post comments on the blog. They can be questions or thoughts. Click on the word comments at the end of a post and that will take you were you need to go.

Cheers to all,

Ben

Big Red Love

2007-10-08T00:36:00.000-07:00

Wow, I was so excited on Saturday, the day I flew to Antarctica, I was just smiling and telling everyone around me how excited I was whether they wanted to hear it or not! Even trying to sleep on the C-17 I was smiling. Now I’m just trying to take it all in, learn people’s names, where things are, what they’re called – all that stuff. It’s overwhelming at first, but I’m sure it’ll come together pretty quickly.

Everything went very smoothly, 2 days in Denver for orientation, 2 days in Christchurch, New Zealand, and then we came down to the Ice on October 6th. We had a lot of cargo on our flight so there were only 2 rows of regular airplane seats and the rest were seats on the sides. Luckily not cargo mesh seats but sort of canvas fold down seats. It was actually fairly comfortable.

We landed in -29 degree temperatures with a fair bit of wind and clouds. Ben was waiting for me at the main building where they took us for, yet another, orientation. It was a wonderful thing to see him again.

Yesterday I took a tour of the Crary Lab, the main research facility, played some ping pong in the carp shop and attended a lecture by Paul Ponganis on the penguin ranch research. Today was my first day of work and it was pretty fun. I drove a van and the airporter. It cleared up today so I’m seeing some of the mountains around here. No photos yet since I’m still training, and also the wind has yet to let up so it’s still about -30.

I will fill you all in on the details you’ve been asking about soon. Also, as soon as we’re done fixing up our room I will post a photo. We started remodeling pretty much right after I got here on Saturday. Ben did a lot of work on it, but we want to build some shelves to round it out. We have a nice view so even though the room is small, it’ll be fine.

It’s all pretty overwhelming right now, but pretty darn neat!

Much love to you all.
Gretchen

Gretchen Is On The Ice

2007-10-05T19:02:00.000-07:00

A quick update. Gretchen has arrived safe and sound. The plane came in with a low ceiling and some blowing snow on the ground. Impressive they can land in those conditions but they have many of the same communications as modern airports do. Even more impressive when you remember that they landing a large jet on 6 or 7 feet of ice over water.

Anyway, Gretchen came in with the battery charger for my camera so there will be more pictures. She will also be able to post now that she is here.

Needless to say, I'm happy that she is here. It's been 7-8 weeks.

More later.

Ben and Gretchen

2007-09-26T00:53:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Thought I'd add some pictures from work. Here is most of the carpenter crew after we assembled a Jamesway hut--16 feet by 40 feet. This will be the "terminal" for people as they wait to fly out in small planes.

These huts take 5-6 hours for 6-10 people on a nice day. And we had a nice day. It was a wind chill of -40 f in the morning and then the winds died and I was working in a couple light shirts. A nice feeling after a month of being the Michelin Man.

A man and his mobile home. It's a beautiful thing.

And this mobile home comes with a car--Antarctica style.

Here's the neighbors. An Antarctic pirate named Christian Hardwick.

But the view is nice--Here is Erebus with about 12 lenticular clouds--depending on how you count. Lenticulars mean high winds at least in their vicinity.

So the hut building was yesterday. We all enjoyed the team project and the sun. It doesn't last, of course. Today, I was jack hammering frozen dirt so we can connect an electrical system to the helicopter fueling stations. The weather started nice and then within 30 minutes we had enough wind to blow sand in our faces. Back to wind chill of -30 or -40 f. I just checked the weather summary and realized I don't have much reason to bitch. The South Pole station has a temp of -83 f today. OUCHY MAMA FROSTBITE. There are people there, and they don't get relieved or receive fresh supplies until late October.

So recently, I've moved into the room that Gretchen and I will share. Let's call it "the closet" for short. It is 7.5 feet by 13 feet. About the same square footage as our craft room at home. I sure I will learn something from this. Probably to move very carefully so I don't bruise Gretchen. About 900 more people are coming to the station during the main body of the summer. It's about to get crowded.

It's good to write the blog as it reminds me of the adventure that unfolds here daily.

I hope you all are warm and enjoying your endevours.

Wishing you all Love,

Ben

Sea Ice School

2007-09-19T02:24:00.000-07:00

Hi people out there,

Last week, I went out on sea ice training for an afternoon, I was able to take a few good scenery shots.

McMurdo sits very near to the junction of land (a volcanic island consisting of black pumice and scoria); sea (seasonally covered with 6-8 feet of sea ice and then open for a few months); and an ice shelf (the 200 to 300 foot thick outflow of a continental glacier that flows off land and over the ocean, resisting the influence of waves and tide by being attached to islands and land.) As the sea, covered in sea ice, pushes against the land and ice shelf, it makes for pressure ridges with compression and cracks with extention. Cracks are rare, but cracks and vehicles are bad so hence, we have safety classes.

Here's some pretty pictures, on a pretty day.

Mount Erebus, elevation 12,000 feet plus. Constantly erupting but not explosively.

Hagland type vehicle--one bumpy ride.

Small island made of the remants of the rim on an old volcano.

Step one: dig trench

Step two: Drill with noisy 2 cycle auger to find ice depth

Answer: 2.5 feet to 8 feet. Good for Haglands, not good for bulldozers.

By the way, we were very lucky with the weather. Blue sky like this is a rare commodity.

Next up for me is happy camper school and a night in a snow trench. Yeeeah!

Love and Peace to you all,

Ben

Freaky Diving

2007-09-12T01:57:00.000-07:00

So Sean and I landed a gig as dive tenders for Monday morning. Our Supervisor was kind enough to let us off our usual duties.

Here is Rob Robbins, Antarctic Dive Master, getting ready for his first dive of the 2007-2008 year.

28 was the number of the day. He has been diving here 28 years. And the water under the 14 feet of frozen salt water and snow was 28 degrees. And he was 28 times more mellow about diving into a slushy frozen hole than I would be.

He said every degree below 32 degrees is like 10 degrees on the other side of the freezing point.
Here is the science. The saltwater stays at 28 degrees--its freezing point. It is in contact with his face which has fresh water in it--that freezes at 32 degrees. Cold air tries to freeze your face too, but water conducts 23 times faster than air. He said his head goes numb.

He stays down for about 1/2 hour. His max depth was 84 feet. In this location it is absolutely dark underneath the ice and snow since it is old ice with many layers of snow and dirt in it. He uses a light for himself and a strobe to return to his 3 ft diameter hole.

He wears long underwear, a pile layer, an insulating layer like a snow suit, and then a seriously thick drysuit. His feet and hands are part of the drysuit. But his head can only be covered in neoprene or wetsuit style hoods while scuba diving. He uses 40 lbs of lead weight to counteract the bouyancy of his clothing.

Here's me helping with the gloves.

And here I am battling the dreaded frogman as we dangle precariously near the slushy hole of death-- I couldn't resist.

Yes, that is the inside of a temporary building you are seeing. A strange setting for diving. The divers use them to have shelter and warmth when they work. They go through a hole in the floor. Unfortunately, the heat was out in this building when we got there. That's why you can see our breath. We had it warmed up when Rob came out.

And now some shots from the end of the dive. He caught a few fish. One with his hand. They are a slow moving and slow metabolism kind of fish. Researchers also catch Arctic Cod that are several feet long. Seals often use the dive holes for air. Life is happening under the barren surface. Hard to believe from our McMurdo perspective.

That's his light as he does his safety stop on the bottom of the ice.

Ben: So how ya' doing?
Rob: I'm cold.
Ben: Here, let me take your picture.

The fish. They are about 4 inches long.

All right, that's all for now. Rob Robbins is my hero. That is some freaky diving.

Signing out from the carpenters shop.

Hugs and sawdust to you all,

Ben

Settling In

2007-09-09T01:34:00.000-07:00

So the week consisted of making boxes and shelves, and then painting and installing them. At the end of the week I was assigned to a small team of 3 to make a large sledge. This will carry a mobile shelter about 20 feet long that will have a hole cut in it for a diver to go into the sea ice. The sledges are made with an old technology involving lashing with cord. This makes them more flexible as they bang along the hard snow and ice. I'm glad to be doing something new. I promise to take some pictures as it develops.

High spirits dominated the station as the sun shone 2 days this week. We saw our shadows for the first time on Friday.

Last night I climbed Ob hill with a friend named Sean. That's the hill with the moon next to it from earlier in the blog. It was nighttime but the view was still discerable in the polar half light. It was a short hike but very good for perspective. The 500 meter diameter town becomes your whole world perspective down here. I was able to see the New Zealand base, Mount Erebus (benignly active volcano). I continue to try to orient myself. The sun is in the North and rotates the other direction in the sky. Map reading here has me back at the beginner level. Apparently this is normal for us from the Northern Hemisphere. Anyway, my world got bigger.

Later that night it was off to the coffee house where 4 singers were performing. I one I caught was creative and incorporated Antarctic themes into his songs. It's a creative bunch of people on the whole.

The Carpenter Shop has become very friendly. Several of us migrated back there today on our day off. Ping Pong was ferocious and Nagel was hilarious. Nagel involves driving a sturdy nail with a chisel shaped hammer. Here's a photo.

Safety glasses are required for participants of Nagel. Beer is often drunk during the driving of nails. Yes, it is as hard as it looks.

For further foolishness, Sean, Jane, and I went and flew a stunt kite. It is a trainer similar to larger kites used for travel or recreation with skis or boards. I got a few shots before my hands went numb and the camera battery died a cold death.

Temp: -03 f Wind speed: 10-20 kts

Future:
I'm looking forward to a few things. Building the sledge that I mentioned before. And tomorrow I will be "tending" a diver as he takes the plunge through the sea ice. We will be helping with getting his dry suit on and assisting him in and out of the hole. FYI--there is slush on top of the 3 foot diameter hole and several feet of snow covers the sea ice. I imagine it is rather dark down there. Yikes. Finally, we are gaining an hour of daylight every 4 days. Warmer days are coming.

Warmth and Laughter to you all,

Ben

And on Sunday We Rest

2007-09-02T00:35:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

So today is my day off. There were thoughts of going out and hiking up observation hill or hiking the trail to castle rock, but . . . The wind chill is -30 or -40, and I spent yesterday out in the wind, and next week we are slated to put up mobile shelters, and there was a movie on Ann Bancroft and 3 other women going to the South Pole, and its so fun taking 3 1/2 hours for brunch, and did I mention it was cold out.

Sundays go quickly here, it is hard to pack in the reading, visiting, exercising, and blogging I want to do.

So my birthday was on the 31st which was the 30th for Gretchen. We got the phone card to work and talked in spite of a 2 second delay. We now end our sentences with "over".

The Carpenter shop and a few others made it to the bar, and actually, it was a rocking good time. People in the shop and others bought many rounds. I never bought a drink. I was reminded of stories of miners coming in from the hills and buying round after round for the entire bar.

Proud to say I drug my 41 year-old butt to the carp shop at 7:27 (I woke up at 5:30 with the whole hangover thing). The safety talk of the morning was on how to drink responsibly (2 beers and 1 water to avoid dehydration) and how to work with a hangover. We also talked about how it was OK to refuse work if you are not coffeed up yet. This was appropriate since my supervisor was one of the people to buy a round. They have a moderation instead of abstinence attitude here. Probably reasonable. I was able to work decently today thanks to a lighter day. It was a little painful but worth it to laugh and be with friends in the making.

Here are the pictures of the week. Not too many because it has consistently had wind chill outdoors of -30 to -50. Hard to take pictures. Also, it would just be the inside of a carpenter shop the majority of the time. We did help the electricians for a couple days out on the Pegasus runway. This is the runway used for winter time. Due to a combination of several factors (sunlight melting to ice and black soot from older planes facilitating that melting) They switch runways seasonally. Anyway, our job was to unplug and load the lights so they can be moved to the new summer runway. This got us out of town and into the weather. It is good to do because I'm starting to feel acclimatized and capable of managing the cold and wind. Here's a picture of me sunning on the sea in Antarctica.

My bathing suit consists of a midweight long johns, pile farmerjohn, pile jacket with hood, insulated carhardt bibs, puffball jacket, and a LARGE down jacket from the program. On my head I have a thick balaclava with a mesh mouth hole, the hood of my jacket, and a wool hat. Over this goes goggles that slowly fog as your breath sneaks up and into them. Footwear are moonboots from Cabella . The hands are taken care of with insulated work gloves with 1 or 2 hard warmers assisting. When moving the big jacket comes off. When standing it all comes back on.

Oh, here is a goggle shot.

The vehicles are highly funky down here. I still have sorted out the Piston Bullies from the Haglunds from the Rockies or something like that. I've been trained (briefly) on driving the Piston Bully (a ski area snow cat), and on Mat Trax trucks. Check out the Mat Trax below.

Here are a few more images of the work on the runway lights.

Pegasus runway is named for an aircraft that landed a little hard. Everyone survived but the aircraft looks like a beached whale in the sea ice.

And here is the only indication that I have had of the sun since I arrived. We are at about 7 hours of sun up time with about 12 hours of light, but McMurdo sits in a bowl and we don't actually get the sun over the hill yet. We are gaining 18 minutes of daylight each day now. That means almost an hour every 3 days. It will be lighter and warmer soon.

Last shot. There was a lunar eclipse that then was framed by southern lights. Quite the show.

It hit me yesterday, "My God, I'm in Antarctica" I was glad.

Love and Peace to you all,

Ben

On the Ice

2007-08-26T02:24:00.000-07:00

I'm at the McMurdo Base--Antarctica. After a one day delay for weather we flew out on the 25th of August. So after much preparation and dreaming--it has happened. I'm there.

That's the inside of the plane- a cargo plane known as a C-17

First steps on the ice

Get on the bus

We are on Ross Island looking out at the Ross Sea, part of which is covered by the Ross Shelf. The shelf is several hundred feet of glacial ice that is still attached to the Antarctic Ice Sheet. The rest is covered by about 6 feet of sea ice that will turn to slush around Christmas time.MrMurdo could be described as a college campus that met a mining town. The culture is similar as well.

This is known as Operations hill. It is a few hundred feet of volcanic pumice and lava. I'm not eligible to climb it yet--have to attend a class.
This is the Scott hut area--named after the explorer Scott.

So my news is that I start work tomorrow and I'm somewhat ready to go to work as it's been somewhat relaxed for the last week or so.

I'm finding people to laugh and play with. It's a smallish crowd down here for this early season. Most people have several stories beyond their job title of carpenter or janitor or cook. Many have been here for 10 or more seasons. Today, I met a Czech who sea kayaked around Ellesmeare Islard in the Arctic Ocean.

I think I have now enabled comments so you will be able to post thoughts or questions. Or you can email Gretchen or I directly.

Bye for now. Peace,

Ben

Christchurch--tomorrow minus 4 hours

2007-08-22T15:50:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I'm at the pack out stage of deployment in Christchurch. This is were I get my Extreme Coldweather (ECW) gear. This means parkas, insulated carhardts, previously worn long underwear and socks. YUM. Actually, we can bring our own and can reject the funky stuff if we do not want it. And, I am glad to abuse the company gear instead of mine.

But, to back up.

It's been pretty easy going so far. Darrin Masters and I went to a concert at Red Rocks near Denver. G-Love and Special Sauce were great performers and Ozomatli was fun, wild, and inclusive. Red Rocks amphitheatre had a a double rainbow and then stars overhead--so many reasons to be happy.

The Anchorage--Denver connection continued as I was able to have dinners with Ashley, Lisa, Darrin, Suzy, Chris, and Annie. Thanks guys--it was fun. Oh yeah--there was some training in there on how not to fall off buildings and other sh___.

Next was a small trip from Denver to LA to Aukland to Christchurch. The flight from LA to Aukand was almost 13 hours, but it was easier than some flights from Anchorage to Seattle--thanks to FOUR seats to myself and some ambien from a new friend/drug pusher. In Aukland, Mark Flanum showed up at 6 am for breakfast and a drive to one tree hill. Mark is still high on Aukland and New Zealand after being there for a month. Mark--send me the pictures and I'll put our mugs on the blog.

On to Christchurch, New Zealand. It's an easy country to like, and an easy city to like as well. Every few blocks are parks--and every park seems to have at least 2 fountains. The flowers are blooming despite it being late winter here. It is warmer here than I would expect for 46 degrees South latitude--equal to the lower part of Canada. I'm doing my best to soak up the sun and the

greenness of it all.

Christchurch is built around a town square--modeled after Oxford. There are walking promenades comparable to the one in Santa Monica. Very civic minded.

The coworkers I'm meeting are great and so are their stories. It's a diverse crowd with diverse resumes. Few of them are just carpenters. Their recent trips have included 4 weeks of biking the West Coast, 2 months on the Northern Coast and Rivers of Canada by Canoe, guiding in the Chugach, Alaska. Others have worked at summer jobs before returning.

Enough verbal for now. Here's some pictures. I'd love to hear from you all--what do you want to hear about?

Love and Peace,

Ben

P.S. Tomorrow we attempt to fly to the ice.

Stone Buildings everywhere, --------------------->
Christchurch

Botanical Gardens-Christchurch

Promenade- Christchurch

Damnation on the rotation--can't get it to work
Mauri totem, Christchurch

Willows grow sideways here in New Zealand.

And he's off - or - What does one pack for such an adventure?

2007-08-16T21:43:00.000-07:00

Ben started his adventure today. He has arrived safely in Denver for 4 days of training and orientation and will be off to New Zealand on the 20th. After 2 days there, and weather depending, he will then fly on to McMurdo.

I'm still in Anchorage until early October. We had a more emotional good-bye than normal and we're both a little sad about being apart. I think it was more difficult this time because even though we'll only be apart for 2 months, he will be away from Alaska for a year. He'll miss skiing with Tim, he'll miss Zorra, and he'll miss being in our home.

As for the packing part, we both will have 2 bags to check and 1 carry on. We bought a pack scale to make sure we don't go over the 50lb limit. Ben's bags were 47 and 49 pounds. In one bag he has gear to take to the Ice. We are issued a lot of clothing so he didn't have very many clothes - toiletries and vitamins can weigh a lot! In the other bag he has the snorkel gear, and his backpacking gear for our after travels which will be stored in Christchurch.

It all fit pretty nicely!

I will come down with the tent, stove, pots and my personal backpacking gear (along with the requisite summer wear!) and my other bag will be gear for the Ice.

That's all from me for now. I'll update when I hear from Ben again.

Check back after August 16th

2007-07-21T21:54:00.000-07:00

Hello Friends and Family and welcome to our blog!
I'm still learning how it all works and hope to have it figured out before Ben leaves on August 16th. He will have about a week before he actually gets to the ice, and then will need some time to acclimate, but hopefully he'll start to post soon after.
I'll arrive in early October so look for stories from both of us after that.
For now, thank you all for your support and good wishes.
Gretchen & Ben