Merry New Year
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Merry New Year! We have had a busy holiday week. Christmas was pretty uneventful. We had flights up to Christmas but we didn’t get any mail. While we were grooming the runway for a flight on Christmas Eve we blew a universal joint on the Tucker. The weather was nice so we decided to just spend the day fixing it so we could relax as much as possible on Christmas Eve. We pulled the driveshaft off the old broken Tucker and popped it on the newer broken one; no problems. The next day the weather was crap. We less than 300m of visibility in all direction for both Eve and Day. We baked a ham (“pork ham” as it said on the package) but it turned out to not, in fact, be a ham but a pork roast. If I had known I would have cooked it differently. Luci made a Panettone which made up for the not-so-great roast.
During the week I-345 came back into camp. They had been out on the Ice Streams for the past month on skidoos. A Twin Otter came into camp to bring their camp equipment into town while they traversed the 300+ miles back to Siple Dome. We spent the week building Air Force pallets of their stuff to be taken out by Hercules. Bad weather canceled flights and the 6 of them were delayed for a couple of days. An interesting group made up of a Pole, a Dane, a Swede, a Frenchwoman, a Chinese, and a Canadian-born American. We watched movies, talked politics, and drank coffee to kill time. They finally got out yesterday on Skier 94 with 4 pallets of their gear. The plane brought us 4000 gallons of fuel for the bladder (which I spent the week digging out) and 2 cruise boxes of fresh food and Christmas presents. So we combined our Christmas and New Year’s celebrations into one party last night.
It sounds like the season is starting to reach fever pitch at McMurdo with the arrival for the Icebreaker Krasin. Of course, we only get rumors and residual information from McMurdo but we are starting to feel it here, too. It looks like we are going to be pretty busy until we pull out of camp. There is geology group to the north of us who have their own camp based out of McMurdo. They put in with a Herc and have been operating with an Otter. But, apparently they don’t have the greatest runway due to a lack of grooming equipment and the fact that they are plagued by poor weather. So the Air Guard has decided that they are not going to pull them out from their present location. Twin Otters are going to shuttle all their personnel and equipment here to be palletized and be picked up by Herc. The Air Guard love Siple Dome.
A couple of people from I-205 will be back out here to pick up their GPS sensors and pack up their equipment near the end of the month. By then it will be time for us to start closing up the camp for the season. We still don’t have a firm pull-out date but it is looking like the beginning of February.
Luke
Hi there! I planned an early night tonight … but spent my first hour of 2006 reading through your pages.
I’m doing a bit of web research, (for some writing projects I’m starting soon) trying to get a flavour of what living/working in Antarctica might be like. I did a search and found these pages. So there you go – just thought I’d let you know … not that you’ll be bothered!! Anyway, I send you best wishes for 2006 from UK.
nice blog – SD is a ghost town compared to 96-99 seasons with PICO and SOAR folks making it one of the biggest camps on the continent. Does the area still smell like bananas? Butyl acetate was the drilling fluid (a variation of it is food grade imitation banana flavoring). Happy whatever Don, I bet I havent seen you since our first season back in 1996.
safe travels, stay warm, drink lots,
Nancy
Hi there
Sorry to post this msg here but just wanted to know..how do I mail you?
regards,
Dhaval
I like your blog, I’ve been reading a bunch on bootnsall in an effort to make mine better and yours is #1 so far. It’s different, not the same ‘I went to Thailand, drank Tiger beer and was bitten by a monkey.’ Good job.