Antarctica Blog

Here is a transcript to our friend Rob who is working on a project in West Antarctica with the British Antarctic Survey. We met Rob coincidently last summer at Rifugio Boccalatte.

Hey Rob,
How’s life on the Ice slab? Hows the project going? Randy (from the Herc crew) said you guys seem to be doing well when they flew in last week. Is Martin still around?

Say Hi to Ben and Dave for us. Keep in touch when you can. -Luke and Luci

Today we have Hut 10. When McMurdo was a Navy base Hut 10 was the home of the commander. It is the closest thing to a normal house on the base. Now it is used for special functions like departmental parties and Distinguished Visitors. In addition, anyone can sign up to have the hut as long as they do it a month in advance. So, today we have the hut but never found the time to organize a party. We are just relaxing and trying to catch up on things we have been putting off.

To say we have been too busy working to blog would be a lie. We have been busy, just doing other things. I have been taking multiple trips out to Cape Evans volunteering for the recreation department; though today they finished for the season. A few weeks ago I drove a trip for my department. The trip went really well and everyone had a great time but a couple days after we had a somewhat odd brush with Antarctic authority. It was out of the ordinary for us but would probably seem downright bizarre for someone outside the Program.

Halfway into the drive on the way out, we stopped and watched a couple of researchers checking the fin tags of Weddel seals and weighing a newborn. There were 20 of us on the trip many of which had never seen a seal in the Antarctic and were eager to get as close to them as possible. But, as we all have it drilled into our heads from the moment we arrive on the ice that we are not supposed to approach the wildlife as stated in the Antarctic Treaty, everyone in our group remained a good distance from the seals. Many of us did, however take pictures of the researchers near the seals.

There was one new guy in our shop who, without thinking it through, put his pictures of our trip on the infamous I: drive. This is a network drive, accessible to everyone in the Program, with a temporary folder where people share their pictures and other files. He labeled the pictures he put there, “Ut Shop Trip to Cape Evans”. Among his pictures was a couple of the researchers handling the seals but with no clear sign that they were studying them.

When the National Science Foundation Representative saw these pictures he flipped his lid and immediately called a meeting off all responsible parties which included my boss, the head of recreation, the Rec person who organizes Cape Evans trips, and even the Base Manager. When my boss told me about the pictures and that we were going to have to go on the defensive against two of the most powerful people on the base because he thought we were touching seals, I was legitimately concerned. I had not seen the pictures and Libor had not been on the trip so there was an overlapping grey area that left us both worried.

My fears were set to rest when I saw the pictures and realized that they were not of any of our group but indeed of the scientists. My boss still seemed concerned as we walked to the Chalet (the NSF building). The girls from Rec also seemed worried when we all met in the common room of the Chalet and were looking to Dan (the GA who posted the pictures) and I to calm their own anxieties. But, we had the truth on our side and other supporting photos showing the researchers with scales and equipment. The meeting was anticlimactic and we quickly let the wind from the NSF reps sails. He spent a half-hour giving a lecture about the fragile Antarctic ecosystem and the treaty put in place to preserve it, blah blah blah, but his argument against us had no foundation so we adjourned and went back to work. In the end, as one of the Rec girls put it, “it seemed a little like getting called to the principle’s office”.

It has been warm and most of the snow we had on the hills in the area has melted off. The roads in town are muddy and where it has dried it makes for a vicious volcanic dust. The ice on the Ice Runway has started to melt and pool. They decided yesterday that it was no longer safe to land aircraft on it and today they started to pack it up to make the annual move to Willey Field on the Ross Ice Shelf.

Not much snow for snowboarding this year so we have been doing a lot more skiing on the ice-shelf. I went out to Castle Rock one day with a couple friends with my snowboard on my back. It is mostly flat on the 2+ miles out with a bit of a hill at the end. Since I am not much of a skier, I brought the board for the downhill parts. It was kind of tedious learning to x-country ski with a snowboard on my back. The ski out was nice because we had the wind on our backs and were able to sail most of the way out but I had to walk back with both the board and skis in my pack because I couldn’t make headway.

Luci and I have been spending more time than usual at Scott Base, the NZ base located about tree miles from the US base. We skied back to MacTown from the base the other day on the Armitage loop and had some great views of the base. Every other Tuesday they had a trivia night there. There are about 10 teams of 4 who answer 3 rounds of 25 questions. Our team has been coming in second every time but last week we were the winners. Over the past couple for weeks Edmund Hillary has been staying there and was there for the trivia night, albeit on the periphery. Hillary was the leader of the team who first climbed Mt Everest and was the first leader of the NZ Antarctic Program. He was here dedicating the NZ Program’s new research building named after him. He also participated in a memorial service for NZ’s worse plane crash. Air New Zealand used to do scenic Antarctic flights in rather large jet planes. 25 years ago, one of these flights crashed into mount Erebus killing all 250+ people on board; a flight that Hillary was supposed be on but canceled at the last minute.

The Cape Evans Delta trips began today. Last Wednesday, all the other Delta drivers and I went out on the 1 ½+ hr drive out as a training trip to the hut that Scott built as his support base for his South Pole bid. The inside of the hut is preserved almost exactly as Scott’s men left it c.90 years ago with the shelves still stocked with supplies. It was beautiful weather and the road was in the best condition it has been in years and there were great views of smoking Erebus and the Barne Glacier. The road conditions are bound to change as the season progresses. The first trip I lead is on the 18th of November. There

Today is Sunday which means a day off, brunch and the second issue of the Antarctic Sun. Despite the fact that it is my day off I spent some time n the shop. I had to rebuild our humidifier; an essential apparatus for Antarctic life. I am still enjoying work though last week there were some ups and downs, mostly involving paperwork. The paperwork involved in our job is unbearable. Every moment of our day has to be documented with a number. We have a handful of papers listing the numbers for various activities that one may encounter during the day. S109zz for example is the number for all hands meetings. Yesterday I only got in about 4 hours of actual work because of safety meetings trainings and other such business. In order to attract people to all-hands-meetings they have started having trivia and other such games with prizes. Yesterday they had this musical chairs type game involving yoga balls. The idea was to bounce this ball around the Galley until the music stopped and the last person holding the ball won a prize. They were about two minutes into the game when the Safety Guy came over and whispered into the Station Manager’s ear and the game promptly stopped. But that is just life here at McMurdo and no one really expected the game to go on very long.

My biggest disappointment of the week though was when I was told that I couldn’t try-out for the Search and Rescue team because I was not wintering over. It was a real bummer because I had already been chosen to try out and had a date set. But things got better yesterday at our morning safety meeting when our foreman declared that a “new directive has come down from Denver”, which is a phrase that usually strikes fear into the hearts of most USAP workers. Usually directives from Denver mean a new policy that makes perfect sense to office workers at the Denver HQ but are quite often not suited to the Antarctic environment. But this directive was welcomed my me because it said that all those wishing to try out for the SAR team should be allowed to do so. The day got better when I received written commendations from both my foreman and his boss for my part in saving base operations by fixing the Gasboy. The Gasboy is a fuel pump used to fill up all out vehicles. The one I fixed was the only one we have to pump gasoline and without it many operations cease.

Here is luci at her new part time job. She is the bartender at the “Coffeehouse”, our local wine cafe’. It is one of the oldest (if not the oldest) building on base. I know now, on account of the fact that I now work for maintenance, that it is also the most costly building in the program to maintain. It has one of the best ambiences on the base: dim lighting (nice when there is 24hr sunlight), wooden walls, a movie room, and LAN ports so you can connect your laptop and update your blog like I am doing at this very moment.

We both really like our new jobs. I have been able to see much more of the base than I have ever seen before since my department usually works behind the scenes to keep the base operational. Over the past couple of days I have been working on juice machines, primarily. With over 900 people currently on base and four meals a day served they see a lot of action. They are very compact and hard to work on but I have had two of them completely apart. Since the fresh water here is produced using reverse osmosis, it is very lacking in minerals and therefore, “very aggressive” and will corrode pipes. So, to help alleviate this problem they add calcium carbonate (I think) which, over time, accumulates in the line eventually breaking loose to clog up the screens and filters of juice machines and other appliances that either cool or heat water. The calcium deposits also help to coat the lead welds in some of the plumbing, reducing our heavy metal exposure. Luci is also enjoying her full time job, the greenhouse tech. She works on her own and gets to spend more time with plant life than anyone else on base.

We have both been busy with extra-vocational activities. Luci has been going to Yoga three times a week and has been training as bar tender. I spent the beginning of the week training as a Delta-Driver. Deltas a very large wheeled Naval land transport vehicles. The recreation department takes trips out to the historic monument of “Scott’s Cape Evans Hut”. They train volunteer drivers to make the two hour Delta drive there. We do our first trip on Wednesday. I also went to soccer yesterday. I don’t know if I am going to stick with it though; too tiring after a 10 hr workday. This weekend my friend Rob, who we met at the Boccalatte this summer, and I hiked the Castle Rock loop. It is a 7 mile loop that can be skied or hiked. He used cross country skis and I had a pair of snowblades that I was able to use in a couple of places. There is a lot less snow than there was last year. I thought about bringing my own snowboard but I am glad I didn’t as there is not much to be had nearby. When we arrived it was quite warm by Antarctic standards but the temperatures have become a bit more seasonable lately. Here are the current conditions at Mcmurdo from the weather underground. Pay particular attention to the sunrise and sunset times.

Mactown keeps getting busier and busier. On Monday, the South Pole workers arrived on their way south. The first two flights of the season left for the pole this morning and the relief for the people who wintered there will continue over the next couple of weeks. Tomorrow, I am sure we’ll start to see the pale Polies who wintered on their way back to the lands of warmth.

Wednesday, October 13, 2004
…and the tide washes us back on the shores of Antarctica. It has been a hectic week but, once again, the trip was smooth. We left from Portland, ME on the 7th of October and flew to Christchurch, NZ via Chicago>Los Angeles>Auckland. We started seeing our first Antarctican in Chicago. We knew he was going to be working down here because he had one of the bright green tags that are sent to us along with our tickets. Once at our gate at LAX it was almost like being back at McMurdo already. About a quarter of the 747-400 was of people bound for the Ice. It was a family reunion of sorts and the rumor mill was already churning about flight delays from NZ to McMurdo and major screw-ups in the housing department concerning room assignments. There was lots of talk about friends past and present while everyone was trying to put together a picture of who was going to be playing the USAP 2004-2005 game on the ice this season.
As the story goes…the second flight of Mainbody (a C-17) tore a 1 foot deep, 5000 foot long gouge out of the Ice runway. A C-141 was hot on the heels of the C-17 but had to boomerang because of the damage to the runway. The passengers got to spend almost a week in Christchurch while the runway got repaired. This bit of news made us hopeful that we, too, might get a few days in NZ before dipping below the Antarctic Circle. But, our hopes were dashed while we were trying on our Extreme Cold Weather gear at the Clothing Distribution Center in Christchurch and they came out with the next days flight manifest and our names were on it. I had really hoped to get a day of snowboarding in at Mt Hutt but I guess it wasn’t meant to be. The bonus was that were going to be on a C-17; one of the newest cargo planes in the American fleet and decidedly more comfortable than the cramped fuselage of the C-141. It is also faster than the 141 and we arrived at McMurdo in about 5 hours. We were greeted rudely when we arrived with Raytheon Policy rhetoric. The MC1 (airfield coordinator) entered the plane and announced [paraphrased], “Welcome back. We are interested in getting this aircraft unloaded and turned around as soon as possible. Please exit the aircraft rapidly and in an orderly fashion. Do not turn around and take pictures of the aircraft or linger outside the bus. People not obeying this request will have their names taken down [everyone has a nametag on their parka] by people outside watching and it will affect your performance evaluation [bonus]”. Welcome back indeed!
There are a lot of returnees this year in the program. Some departments had 100% return rates and openings were at a premium. In our first 12 hours we saw many familiar faces that we hadn’t seen since we left in February, but many, like Luci and I, in different positions. There has been a lot of catching up and people chatting about their summers if they were in the northern hemisphere or their winters if they had been part of the crew keeping the base open during the long Antarctic night. But, it doesn’t take long to slip back into routine and I’m sure the excitement of re-entry won’t be as sustained as last year.
It is true that things will become routine but, with different jobs, it will certainly be a different experience. This year I am working for the FEMC, another one of those omnipresent acronyms that I believe stands for Facilities, Electrical, Maintenance and Construction. I work in the UT (Utilities Mechanic) shop. Ours is a catchall shop and all Work Orders that don’t fit the job description of any of the other trade shops winds up in ours. My first day on the job (yesterday) I was a little nervous because I don’t have any particular skills or training. I was also a bit concerned about being judged for my move from foodservice to the FEMC (an unlikely and unusual switch). But, as it turns out my eclectic skills are becoming a valued asset. Today, with no other merit other than I worked in the kitchen last year, I was dubbed the “Appliance Expert”. Without hesitation I went to work on a washing machine, which had been stumping the best of the shop for many man-hours. I had it fixed by lunch and earned my title.
Today was the annual arrival of the Italians bound for Terra Nova Bay. A group of about 20 of them arrive at McMurdo and are flown to their base at TNB to open and groom the runway for their supply planes (c-130s leased from the south African Air force). Last year Luci was conscripted to be their interpreter and was once again asked to serve in this capacity this year. Their plane was scheduled to arrive a half hour ago and people with orange duffel bags keep walking by; a tell-tale sign that a plane just arrived.

Hot off the press… a couple of photos of Asa and Errin’s wedding and our neice Abby. Plus…how many clowns does it take to fix Sarah’s car?

Almost a month since my last entry. It has been a transition month for us as we begin our move from one hemisphere to another. Before leaving Italy I was frantically trying to upgrade Luci’s laptop to XP while we had her parents DSL connection to use. I was for the most part successful but it took up a lot of my time. After returning to the States, I had my laptop sent in to be serviced which also inhibited my blogging.

Our re-entry to the US was, for the most part, uneventful. We were hassled somewhat at immigration because of Luci’s status. After 2 years of having a green-card, an alien resident who’s status is gained by virtue of marriage must submit proof that said marriage was made “in good faith”. When we submitted the paperwork (including the green-card itself) they told us it would be between 6 months and 2 years before we would receive the extended green-card. In the meantime, they put a really simple, red-ink stamp with some pen scribbles in her passport which was supposed to mean she could travel in and out of the US. Well, it wasn’t large and sparkly enough and didn’t contain the fingerprints and photos (1.25 inches by 1.25 inches showing the right ear with no jewelry) that the immigration officer was looking for so we got held up while he checked on it. When we arrive at my parents and began looking through our mail we found that the card had just arrived. The expiration date on her new green-card is May of 2014. We should have no more border problems for the next 10 years.

On the weekends while still in Italy, we made some nice trips around Lombardia with Luci’s parents. We went one Saturday to Lago Maggiore and another we took a drive around the Massiccio di Bernina. A couple of days before leaving Italy we finally got our itinerary for this season’s Antarctic deployment. We leave from Portland, Maine on the 7th of October (Thursday) and arrive on the Ice on the 11th. This has given us a little over two weeks to spend in New England before leaving again. We have been taking full advantage of our time to visit friends we haven’t seen in a long time. Last week we made a trip up to the White Mountains and hiked out to Zealand hut; one of my old haunts from my days working with the Appalachian Mountain Club. We didn’t spend nearly enough time in NH as we would have liked but we wanted to make sure to have enough time to go to Bar Harbor where we haven’t been in almost two years. Despite the short time we were there, we did manage to see some good friends. After leaving New Hampshire we drove to the Commonground Fair (an annual event in the state of Maine) where we met up with friends from all over the region, most of which we hadn’t seen in quite a while. After the fair, we went to my brother Isaac’s where I helped him do some painting before going down to Mount Desert Island. We spent two days on the island catching up with old friends and visiting our favorite places around the park. The town of Bar Harbor was packed with people from the cruise ships moored in the harbor so we tried to spend as much time as we could out of town.

Now we are back at my parents in Lebanon. Asa’s wedding was yesterday so all my other brothers and their significant others are staying here as well as us. The wedding was nice but, since I was in the ceremony, I don’t have any pictures to show of it. The weekend has been crazy but now, as the brothers trickle home, we have to start thinking about our imminent departure for Antarctica. We have begun to make piles of stuff in our room. The is the pile of stuff that is definately going with us to McMurdo; then there is the pile of stuff that is definately staying here or going back to Italy next spring; finally there is the pile of stuff that is currently in use that might either stay here or go with us to the Ice.

I hope to post another entry before leaving but it is hard to say for sure whether I will be able to or not. I will definitely be blogging from the Ice so keep checking up with us.

Back in Milan. In many ways it is very nice. We had a very gradual increase in city size before returning to this metropolis. After leaving the hut we spent the night in a nice hotel in the valley. We were determined not to sleep in the tent and not to have to cook for ourselves. We walked up to the nicest hotel in Planpincieux and ran into the owner as soon as we stepped in the door. Luci said immediately, “Hi, we are the managers of Rifugio Boccalatte. Do you have any room for the night?” in hopes of getting some kind of discount. As it turns out, as usually happens with locals from the valley, he has some connection to the hut; his grandfather packed the 140kg woodstove (that is still up there but no longer in use) up to the hut on his back in the 1930s. I offered to let him pack it back down and he gave us a discount.
The next larger city was Chamonix where we went to look up our friend Stewart who we met earlier in the summer and I stayed with when I went to pick up Amy and Eric. We couldn’t find him so we got a hotel and walked around.
Next was Geneva where we went to see Jesse’s friend Aska and her grandparents. I got to show Luci some of the places Jesse and I saw back in the spring when we were there together. We did a lot of walking and I did some skateboarding on Aska’s board. Unfortunately, I took a spill on the board which made walking difficult. I was skating in a bike lane and lost a chicken game with a biker going in the wrong direction. I shredded my right hand and knocked my knee really hard on the pavement. It was kind of stressful at first having to find a pharmacy and bandage my hands, but here at sea-level wounds heal much quicker than at altitude.
After about 36hrs in Geneva, we took a flight to Amsterdam. Easy-Jet has cheap flights there from Geneva so, since we were in the area, we decided to take advantage of it. We were going to Amsterdam to visit friends we knew and ones we had yet to meet. Our housing for the three days we were to be there was being taken care of by the sister of a good friend from Antarctica. Lorraine and her husband have an apartment and a houseboat. They offered us the houseboat for the weekend. It was really sweet; complete with waterbed and hammock. It was located right on the Prinsengracht, one of the major cruising canals in the city. We must have had a hundred pictures taken of us on the houseboat in the three days were there buy tourists in boats navigating the canal. Given that my knee was still giving me pain we had to come up with an alternative to aimlessly walking around the city like we usually do. Luci’s solution was to lie in the water bed and watch the boat traffic. Mine was to take out one of Gustavo’s kayaks
around the city. Loads of fun but it was a racing kayak so it was a little hard maneuver but, really fast.
It had been bad weather all summer in Holland but people said we brought the good weather with us. We met up with our friend Tracy and his girlfriend for a couple of meals. When he came over to the boat he brought a friend of his whom he thought we’d like to meet, Sherry. Her fiancé is Dutch and she lives in Amsterdam. As it turns out she worked in Antarctica at McMurdo in 2001-2002 and was really good friends with Amy and Eric. It was nice to meet someone who knows our friends and our life but has never met us. All in all, we did a lot of sitting around doing nothing and watching the boats float by which was a nice change but the three days went by too quickly.
Now back in Milan we are finishing up the paperwork for the hut and preparing for next year. We are also getting ready for our return to Antarctica. We still haven’t been issued tickets but the travel department told me we are scheduled to arrive on the ice on the 11th of October. This gives us much more time in the US than we had last year; time to go to one brother’s wedding and paint another one’s house.

This is going to be my last entry from the hut for the season. The snow continued throughout the week, most of which will likely remain on the ridge for the winter. Day before yesterday we received about a foot of snow here at the hut and there were significant accumulations even 500m below the hut. We have had a couple of surprise un-reserved overnighters trying to climb the route unsuccessfully.
Yesterday and today have been nice. Yesterday there was still a foot of snow covering everything and I spent the day shoveling off the roof and the porch. The snow scared most day visitors away but a few arrived (and ate their own lunch on the porch). Today, Saturday, the snow below is almost entirely melted and the people are coming in droves. There are about ten at the hut and I counted at least sixteen on the part of the trail I can see. Today is the last blast of summer for most people. In Italy, most of the country takes their vacation in August. Some very strange herd instinct is ingrained in the Italian psyche and the august vacation is a perfect example of it. But, august is over next week after which everyone will go back to work. There is actually a term for it in Italian: “Il Grande Rientro”. The Big Return when everyone flocks back to the cities from the beach and the mountains. Traffic is such a huge problem on the Sunday afternoon at the end of August that a whole system of national traffic forecasting has been developed. There is actually a radio station dedicated solely to traffic reporting. I am listening to it now. We find it strangely entertaining to listen to reports of 18km of traffic getting back into Milan when the closest car is 1200m below us in the valley.
All in all the summer has been good. Despite the bad weather we still had roughly the same number of visitors as past years. Luci has been up here for the whole two months straight without going down and is eager to get out of here. We have been slowly packing up the hut; a bit everyday. We have no more reservations and are thinking about hiking down on Monday morning. We already have a flight to Amsterdam for next weekend from Geneva. We are going to go through the Mont Blanc tunnel to Chamonix, France to see Stewart (a guy we met up here this summer) and then on to Geneva to stay with Jesse’s friend Aska and her grandparents. We leave for Amsterdam on Thursday. The sister of an Antarctican friend lives there and has a houseboat that she rents out. So, we’ll be staying there for the weekend and going to visit our friend Tracy. At the beginning of next week we start our own “Grande Rientro” to Milan. We’ll let you know how the trip went in our next entry.

Slow, slow. Our numbers have dropped off drastically since our last airlift. This was somewhat foreseen but was helped along by bad weather. Our numbers would have been steadily good if the weather reports had been correct. We have had people reserved who canceled due to bad weather. There is an organization in the valley that calls all the huts every night to give the weather. They analyze the weather reports from France, Italy and Switzerland and give us a summary. Yesterday the weather was forecast to be clear and sunny. We awoke to snow and freezing temperatures that persisted throughout the day leaving significant accumulations on the climbing route, which makes for difficult climbing on the rock sections of the mixed route.
Last week was dark and rainy and we spent most days alone. Fortunately there are the Olympics and we have a small color TV this year. We have been conserving our energy by going without lights on these dark days so we can watch the Olympics with the precious battery power we have. Since we are watching the Olympics on Italian national TV it is decidedly italo-centered. They are doing very well with over 20 medals (5 Gold) in this first week. Today the weather is clear but cold. We have taken advantage of the clear, sunny weather to get showers and wash clothes. I just heard on the radio that it is 47°C (in the 100sF) in Athens for the Women’s Marathon. It is hard to imagine when we have just gone over 10°C (about 45°F) for the first time in three days.
The end is near though and we have started our list of closing tasks. If the weather holds out we will do some lunches for day-visitors but, with the tough climbing, our overnight reservations with continue to be meager. The good thing about the cold weather is that it looks like we might finish the season without having to lay the 150m of black tubing for the alternate water system. Which means I won’t be in as good a shape as I would like for the Ob Hill Uphill race at McMurdo this year.