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End of Antarctic Season and Travels

Sunday, May 4th, 2008

Mt Paterson Summit

Italy. Friends and family keep asking about my blog and why I haven’t posted lately so here is a brief explanation.  We had an immensely busy Antarctic season during which we had very poor communications. After we finished the ITASE Traverse to South Pole Luci and I packed up all the equipment to ship back to McMurdo and eventually we ourselves hopped on a LC130H back to Town. But not before taking victory in the annual South Pole round the world race in the heavy equipment division with our Cat Challenger55 forks.   No sooner did we arrive back at McMurdo were we swept up in the excitement and confusion of an aircraft recovery mission. About the same time we were driving the last few KMs to the South Pole on the other side of the continent, a Basler DC-3 had just finished a botched take-off procedure which rendered the plane useless but with no injury to the plane-load of scientist and crew on board. It was decided to send down a team of mechanics to try to get the plane to fly north before the end of the summer season.  In order to accomplish this task they needed to have someone organize a camp to work out of. This, of course, is where Luci and I come in.    

Since, at the time, it was semi-secret I didn’t want to publish anything about it and when we finally got camp set up we were plagued by the same Iridium data problems that have dogged me at other camps. By the time we got back to McMurdo it was old news and my mind was already in NZ. Luci and I bought a van in NZ back in September and were looking forward to enjoying the last days of summer. We bought little inflatable pack-rafts and were eagerly awaiting spending some time on a couple of NZ’s amazing rivers. But, as luck would have it there were problems with shipping and the boats arrived only a few days before we were scheduled to fly to Australia. Just enough time to give them a go on the Rakaia River and the scare the pants off of Luci and on Lake Rotoroa where she had a painful encounter with a wasp…make that five wasps. So now she gets anxiety just thinking about them.

At this point I had already gotten out of the habit of writing blog entries.  I have never properly learned to use the software that my host site uses as a blogging platform and uploading photos was becoming very time consuming.  Luci loses patience with me immediately at public internet cafes and since I was still trying to sooth her frazzled nerves from the Rakaia trip, I let her have her wish.  While she went up to the North Island to hang out with some of  her Yoga friends I stayed south and spent my time boating, kiting and climbing on my own. I had one of my most memorable times in NZ in a campsite frequented by a very diverse group of on-the-cheap, world-traveler, outdoors people near Aurthur’s pass.

After getting the van stored and our NZ affairs sorted out I met Luci at the Auckland airport and we flew to Australia where we were hosted by a good friend of ours from our days at the WAIS Divide camp in Antarctica and his wife. He is an American and she a Kiwi. They met in Antarctica and now live in Launceston, Tasmania.  She is a world class chef and he is working on a career in commercial diving.  We had the most relaxing time during our stay which consisted mostly of visiting local sites, doing a bit of boating and diving, and talking about the future.  We also spent a considerable amount of time sorting out some of our travel details for our up coming trip to Thailand.

Our next stop was a long weekend in Hong Kong to visit another couple of friends. She was a high school classmate of Luci’s who we coincidently ran into in the queue to board the daily LHR LIN city hopper that has become the staple of our jet-set lifestyle. Apparently it has become a part of hers as well.  She was returning from HKG on an apartment hunting mission and was preparing for marriage in the coming months. He husband is another Italian who is in the petro-chemical industry. They moved permanently to HKG after they got married last May. We had a great weekend of dining and absorbing the massivity of Hong Kong.  They were excellent hosts and by some miracle I was able to speak the most fluent Italian right-off the plane (sometimes it takes me a bit to get back into the habit).

After these friendly visits we were on our own in SE Asia.  The original idea was to do a bunch of floating on the Mekong river but after Luci’s adverse reaction to moving bodies of water, this plan was later modified.  The new plan found Luci studying more placid forms of art in the discipline of Thai Massage.  I, on the other hand, rented a motorcycle and tore off across the northern Thai landscape in search of good rivers and good times. Being the end of the dry season the rivers were not at their best and, since I am crazy but not stupid, I decided not to brave what I did find solo.  I did have a couple of genuine village experiences after getting lost about 70kms down a dirt road on what I though would be a short-cut. We had a very enjoyable time around Chiang Mai in which we made many friends and which culminated in a two-day float down the Mae Kok river in our pack-rafts which did nothing to boost Luci’s confidence in moving bodies of water but floating past bathing elephants definitely has its allure.

After very long deliberation we chose to go south to Thailand’s southern beaches instead of to Laos and the Mekong river.  We went to Railey Beach near Krabi. As usual, the beach didn’t do much for me, but the rock formations and the islands were stunning.  We spent a week in a bungalow with another diverse community of on-the-cheap, world-traveler, outdoors people. In fact it was the ones in NZ who recommended this place to me. Luci got to try some flat water in her Yak after a few days of coaxing and I think she realized that it is a lot more work than floating down river.

So now that vacation is over, it is back to work…oh, right we quit our jobs here last summer.  Last summer we opened Rifugio Boccalatte and then turned it over to a friend/colleague for the indefinite future.  I can’t say that I don’t miss it but Luci certainly doesn’t. And, since I am on a “make-Luci-happy-and-you’ll-be-happy” campaign, I feel great about dropping seven summers of my life in the lap of someone else…I guess.  Anyway, last summer I spent my spare time working on my motorcycle which somehow blossomed into getting paid to work on other people’s motorcycles and to lend clout by virtue of my Americaness to Milan’s only custom Harley Davidson shop. I found myself spending my days elbow deep in Softtails and Fatbobs contemplating the many meanings of the words “Golden Rod”  through a line of acquaintances which ultimately finish once again at an old high school friend of Luci’s. The job didn’t pay well but I enjoyed the come and go as you wish schedule they allowed me and the opportunity to learn a more colloquial Italian language. I was looking forward getting my mind off of my alpine days under the fairings of iron horses only to discover upon our grand reentry to Milan that there had been chaos in the shop culminating in the departure of the head mechanic. Ironically, I was offered to come back at a better pay-rate even though the lead mechanic was my guide to the world of motorcycle mechanics.

I still go in to work most days but the shop feels about as guided as a headless horseman. I enjoy the work but there is an air of impending crisis and I don’t feel great about getting too tied to the business end of this muzzleloader. So what do we see on our horizon? Well here are the certainties: we are going back to the Antarctic as usual in October.  We will be working directly with a research grant associated with the ANDRILL project in McMurdo Sound. This contract will only take us to the beginning of December but we are presently trying to link up another contract with Raytheon to finish the season.  At the moment we are making all of our medical and dental visits in order to physically qualify for deployment. A couple of very good friends of ours are getting married in the middle of July and we have been invited so we are planning on being in the States at the beginning of July. It could be my first 4th in the USA in over 10 years and it would be Luci’s first in her lifetime. As my grand-pap might remind me, I could soon be enjoying my first fifth on the fourth in ten.

And what of our immediate future…? In lieu of our current employment situation we are considering doing what we do best: keep moving.  I recently bought the Lonely Planet-Western Balkans Guide with the idea of riding the motorcycle down to Greece to the WRC race.  If this pans out I will try to keep you posted. 

Building Camp

Saturday, November 11th, 2006

Downtown WAIS Divide Camp

Now that our put-in is nearly over and we have slid into the standard Antarctic work schedule (six days of work; Sunday off) I can keep updated more regularly. The Carps are still here but have finished putting up structures. We now have twelve structures in the camp. Most of them are RAC tents. They are arched tents that replace the Korean War surplus Jamesway that we used at Siple Dome. Both styles are made up of standard size sections of frame covered by insulated blankets. Thus, the size of a tent is determined by its length an amount of “sections”.

Going down the line: there is the generator building that houses our 40K generator which at the moment is not operational because of a faulty injector maladjusted valve. Next is the Mechanic shop where Dave, our mechanic not only works but lives. Both are hard-walled structures. These are followed by the “science tent” which is an eight-section RAC where the grantees will set up their work stations when they get here. In the meantime one of our equipment operators and a carpenter are squatting there because they can’t handle the sub-zero temps in their tents. The carpenters have their own meeting tent set up in the middle of camp which with come down when they leave in a couple of weeks. It is a Polarchief (or simply “the Chief” which is essentially a type of Yurt.

At the moment I am writing in the communications tent; a little five-section RAC where my little office shelf is. My informal role as the hazardous cargo handler (I got a US military certification back at McMurdo) demands a certain amount of paperwork from me and gives me the perfect excuse to have a sort of office of my own.

The massive eighteen-section RAC tent and hard-walled module hybrid that constituted the dining room/galley building is next. This is where Luci and John spend most of their day. John, the other cook, is also from Downeast Maine and works at the Jordan Pond House in Acadia NP. Put-in for the cooks can be a daunting task. In the first couple of days they have to improvise a kitchen from racks of frozen goods and equipment. Most of their time is occupied by gathering and melting snow for water. They have spent the week organizing all our foodstuffs and putting up shelving inside and out to house it. Next to the Galley is the washroom/recreation tent. With a similar setup as the galley, this hybrid’s RAC tent extension has only eight sections. These two buildings will be equipped with snow-melting devices once the 40K generator gets put on-line. In the meantime, the Rec RAC is still a work in progress. One of the Carps has recently reconnected the shower outfalls and we put a big pot on the heater to melt snow for showers from a solar-shower bag (just like at Rifugio Boccalatte).

The five-section Medical RAC tent is next. Our “Medic” is a former Texas republican spin-doctor turn Wilderness Medicine Instructor. Considering the current size of the camp, a dedicated medic seems a bit of overkill to me but “safety first”, you know. In theory, when there aren’t people bleeding profusely or suffering a cardiac arrest he is supposed to do weather observations. But we also have a person whose sole responsibility is to do weather obs so the medic’s job becomes doubly redundant.

The last three tents in the row are berthing tents (not to be confused with birthing tents which would be a violation of USAP policy). The first is a Weatherhaven. Very similar to the Polarhaven we had at Siple (only twice the size) and serves the same purpose; to house the Twin Otter crews when they are working out of WAIS. The other two are grantee berthing and are both eight section Jamesways, identical to the one at Siple right down to the year of manufacture, 1951.

The last structure is the most important and the sole reason for the existence of this camp, the Arch. This is where the gigantic ice-core drilling apparatus will be housed. Architecturally, this structure is very similar to the tents but their walls are made of steel and therefore rigid. Next week, a crew of construction workers are coming out to finish work on the Arch. Since the drill is being put on the re-supply vessel that won’t make it to McMurdo until January, the drill won’t be installed and put into operation until next year some time.

All but three of these buildings (the generator shack, the shop, and the Arches) are heated but semi-archaic drip-fuel stoves that we run on the same jet fuel that runs the heavy equipment and all the aircraft: AN-8. My primary role is to keep all these buildings and the equipment fueled. We have two 10K bladders with a central pumping station that can either fuel or take fuel from a variety of aircraft. Because the pump has to be warmed ahead of time, I organize the heavy equipment operators so that I can fuel all of them once every-other-day. At the same time I fill up out “day-tank” which is an 170-gallon tank on a sled which I tow around to all the buildings to fuel them on a regular basis. In addition to the AN-8 fueling infrastructure we also have little hand pump (hurdy-gurdy) stations to fuel Herman Nelsons (aerospace heaters) and snowmobiles from drums of gasoline and pre-mix.

Next week our numbers are slated to double with the arrival of electricians (to set up the power to the buildings) an antenna rigger (to set up our sat-coms) and the Arch construction crew who will be excavating a hole under the Arch to make room for the drill. Things are changing everyday out here.

Boulder

Thursday, October 5th, 2006

 

Luke Mtnbkng

This is the first entry in a new category.  BootsnAll have been making all kinds of changes to their blog interface and I have been playing around with it.  I have moved a bunch ... [Continue reading this entry]