Antarctica Blog

I passed the motorcycle safety course, got my permit and got the motorcycle endorsement on my international drivers license. Now I’m more legal than usual to drive my ageing 1991 Honda Transalp xl600vm. I have been spending quite a bit of time at my friends shop working on it. In addition to replacing parts that have reached the end of their operational lifetimes, I have been doing a bit of customizing all in preparation for our trip to Sardinia.

I have been having problems with bearings. The steering stem bearings were completely shot; rusted and pitted to the point that I’m amazed I could still steer. The rear wheel bearings were also starting to go so I changed them preemptively while changing the rear brake pads and tires (it was all apart anyway). The brakes turned out to be the most difficult project. The pads are held in place by a pin that goes through a loop in the pad. The pin is stainless and the housing is aluminum and the corrosion that forms between the two has incredibly adhesive properties. We spent the better part of a day trying everything to free the pin with no luck. Ultimately we had to drill it out and tap a new hole for a custom-made pin. I also changed the spark plugs and made some long-overdue and very successful carburetor adjustments as well as an oil change in the forks and the crankcase to top it off.

When we were in Christchurch, NZ after our season at Siple was over, we ordered a new seat for the Transalp from the American saddle manufacturer Corbin. We had it shipped to my parent’s in Lebanon, Maine where we hand carried it to Italy. It took a bit of tweaking of the top-box to make it comfortable for Luci. Now it is really starting to take on a look of its own. Not many Transalps with Corbin seats around. It was a bit hard a first but, with a passenger, the difference is incredible.

At this point we were more-or-less ready to embark for Sardinia. We had a bit of a problem with the new front tire and the front wheel bearings still hadn’t arrived from the dealer. After messing around with the front tire a bit, we determined that it must be a flaw. The hard part was convincing the tire people (gummists as I call them). Italian companies have not all discovered the benefit of customer service and would rather have you pay for a new tire. If I hadn’t had my mechanic friend Cristiano with me that is probably what I would have wound up with. But he put up a good argument and got me a warranty replacement. The same goes for tools here. Tool makers would rather make cheap tools that break so people buy more. Even top-end tools like Beta are crap with poor warranty service. We broke more than one Beta tool just working on my bike. My friends tell me that they do have a warranty but it takes months to get a replacement. They still don’t believe me that you can just pop by Sears with your broken Craftsman tool and they give you a new one or that Snap-on will deliver to your shop.

The Honda dealer kept telling us, “the bearings will be in tomorrow”. This went on for two weeks so we just decided to go a head and leave for our trip. We left on Friday, May 11th for the Cinque Terre. When I talk to Americans who have been to Italy they always talk about how great the Cinque Terre are but in the 10 years I’ve been coming to Italy I have never been. It is not a big destination for Italian tourists. A friend of mine from Antarctica’s parents have a gestalt meditation center nearby and he recommended that we stay in the town of Levanto. Since we were going to be exploring the Cinque Terre on a weekend we convinced Luci’s parents to drive down and meet us there on Saturday.

What an amazing place to go on a motorcycle. The roads are beautifully curvy and variable enough that I can really put to good use my multi-terrain motorcycle. On Saturday morning, my birthday, we rode and walked to the town of Vernazza, before meeting Luci’s parents. We didn’t have too much time to mess around because we had to meet them in Porto Venere at the bottom end of the Cinque Terre for lunch. After lunch, Luci’s parents took the coastal route to Lucca while we took the inland Via Francigena along a medieval pilgrimage route between Rome and Paris. In Lucca we fell victim to poor dining. Because Tuscany is so full of foreign tourists who don’t know how truly good real Italian dining can be, there are tons of restaurants that serve a sub-par dining experience. Not the first time we have eaten poorly there. In the morning, Luci and I had to be up a the crack of dawn to drive to Livorno to catch our ferry to Olbia in Sardinia.

We have been planning this trip since January at Siple when I discovered that the Italian GP of the World Rally Competition was happening there in a favorable time slot for us. A great excuse to take a road trip to an area known for its off-road. Being much farther south than Lombardy it was also much warmer and perfect weather for camping. It is also off-season there so it was pretty tranquil even in big tourist areas. But someone who goes to Sardinia for the tourist areas is an idiot. It is one of the wildest areas of Italy. Very old-west in most areas more than 10 miles from the beach; no fences and bullet holes in all the road signs. About 80% of this, the second largest island in the Mediterranean, is mountainous with great roads for an enduro bike.

We spend the first week on Sardinia around the Gennargentu National Park. We did many kilometers of off-road riding and stayed in an argitourismo (essentially a homestead who have an extra room for guests). The Rally was scheduled to start that weekend and we had scoped out a campsite that sat right on part of the track. We spent some time running the special stages sections on the Transalp with no bags. Great fun! The way a rally works is the teams base out of a town (in this case Olbia) where they set up their mechanics and media circius. Then, during the race days they do two rounds of a circuit cobbled together out of private and public roads; a different loop each day of the weekend. On certain sections of the loop the road is closed and on others it is not. On the closed section the cars are timed for a standing in the overall. The cars MUST make it back to the service park in the host city even if they make it through the timed special stages. Otherwise they are disqualified. This means they have to do their own repairs on the road with tools they bring along with them or face disqualification. Yesterday, in the Acropolis Rally in Athens, Greece one of the leaders, Sebastian Loeb lost his whole rear end and dragged his Citroen into the Olympic Stadium using only the front wheels.

What Luci and I tried to do on our motorcycle was catch each of the two laps from a different perspective; one on a closed, timed special stage and the other on a public road from a street-side café. A good combination for our multi-terrain bike. The best combinations were the ones where we were riding against the race flow on a public road to get from one viewing point to the other. This way we could pass all the cars head-on and watch them from the bike.

After three intense days of off-roading and race chasing we were read for a couple of days of relaxation. We got a bungalow at a campground right on the water in the town of Palau on the channel between Sardinia and Corsica so we could clean off all the dust we had accumulated over the weekend. At lunch we made friends with the owners of the restaurant. They recommended that we get a zodiac and cruise around the Maddalena Islands National Park for a day. In the morning we went down to the port with our picnic and picked up a gommone with a 30 HP motor. We spent the day swimming and island hopping. We spent most of the rest of our time in Sardinia around Palau until it was time to take the ferry back to the mainland.

On the first day of our trip the speedometer gear broke so we had no speedometer or odometer the whole trip. I called my friend Cristiano to have him order me the part so it would be there when we got back. Knowing the history of our neighborhood Honda dealer (Tresoldi Honda Pessano) I knew I would have to order it far in advance because they keep nothing in house and it take forever for them to get anything out-of-house. When we got back two weeks later, not only had the speedo gear not arrived but the front wheel bearings still hadn’t arrived. I could have got the stuff quicker from Japan. To make matters worse, Cristiano said the guy told him he forgot to place the order in the first place. I sat down and called every Honda dealer in Milan looking for these parts and found one with a speedo gear. I went and picked it up and I asked Cristiano to cancel the order from Tresoldi but he said it was “too late”. They really don’t make it easy. And Italian companies can’t figure out why other European countries don’t want to do business with them.
This morning Luci and her parents went to Egypt for the week. Resort life is not for me so I stayed behind. This weekend I am meeting up with a bunch of friends from the States. We are all going up to open Boccalatte together and dig it out of the snow.

After meeting up with Luci at Auckland International we boarded the plane for LAX and then on to Denver where we met up with our friends Amy and Eric. It was a bit of a shock being back in the states after being out for almost a year. But Amy and Eric are gracious host and, having worked in the Antarctic, could understand where we were coming from.

While we spent a few days at their house getting re-adjusted we got our contracts for next season on the Ice and shopped for lift tickets for our approaching trip to Summit County. The Spelman’s once again courteously opened their condo in Silverthorne to us. We bought a couple of 4-day passes to Copper on the Boulder Craig’s List for well under cost. It was vacation week so the mountain was packed with kids. The conditions were good, though. We had two days of snow and two days of sun. I even got Luci to go off-piste and into the trees.

After another week at Amy and Eric’s, we flew back to Boston and took the Downeaster train up to Dover to my parents. We had a huge stack of mail from our year-long absence and spent the better part of two days reading it all. We had only a couple of days at my parents before going up to Conway to take a Wilderness First Responder with SOLO. What a LONG week! I have taken a WFR before but it was about 12 years ago when I worked for the AMC at Pinkham Notch. Coincidently, the instructor was my boss when I worked there, Bill Otten. Another guy I worked for at the AMC is the cook at SOLO. Having taken the course before, it got a bit redundant after a while. Good to get the practice though.

Now we are back at my parents. I have spent the past couple of days getting my little laptop back in order, and trying to slim down our pile of stuff in my parents attic. This weekend we are headed up to my brother Isaac’s house to see our new nephew, Eben. I also signed up to take the Maine Motorcycle Safety Course, finally. I am hoping I can get the motorcycle endorsement on my international drivers license.

OK. I guess I need to catch up a little. We have been super-busy and I have been having all sorts of computer problems. I finally broke down and bought a junker Sony Vaio PictureBook C1VN (my notebook of choice). I tore them both apart and made one super-computer. After a week of tuning, I’m up and running.

So, backing up to when Luci and I left Matteo. Luci went up to the North Island to do Yoga, get massages, and relax on the beach while my brother Jesse and I took off in his rickety Mitsubishi Chariot to the Nelson Lakes and the Kahurangi. When I met up with him back in Christchurch he had a seriously ailing clutch. He was seriously stressing. We decided to call the guy we bought it from only a week before. He runs a backpacker hostel and sells cars on the side. We were hoping that he could point us in the direction of a good (cheap) mechanic. Instead of offering us a good mechanic he offered to have it fixed for us: no charge. I love NZ! With the car fixed we headed out of town to Arthur’s Pass. About an hour out of town, the car started pulling to the left. Upon inspection it became obvious that the mechanic had forgotten to tighten the bolt on the ball joint when he was putting it all back together. We managed to tighten it down in a storm of sandflies (NZ’s premier biting insect) but it left us with an uneasy feeling.

Jesse and I were planning on doing a bit of hut to hut hiking. When I was traveling with Matteo I scoped out a couple of places. The first place we were planning on hiking was a circuit that would take us over Traver’s Saddle. We were traveling with a friend who wasn’t much of a hiker and decided to stay behind on the lake shore in the town of St. Arnaud. We arranged to meet up with him two days later. Over the next two days and a half we cranked out the most intense hike I have ever done. The terrain was not that steep and we were able to average 26 miles a day. It was sunrise to sunset hiking. Not much time to smell the roses but we didn’t want to miss our meeting time with our friend. We were incredibly sore when we finally met up with Ryan but nothing a couple of days of rest couldn’t fix.

Our next stop was in Takaka. A fellow Antarctican was playing his guitar at a local restaurant, the Mussel Inn. Another good friend of mine and Luci’s was having a birthday party at his parents in nearby Motueka. The plan was to go to the show in Takaka and hike the Salisbury Track to our friend Bodie’s. There is a campsite near the Mussel Inn and it was swamped with Antarcticans. We decided to stay at a campsite on the other side of town near a local climbing spot. It was a pretty unorganized affair called Hang Dog. Super cheap and very relaxing and relatively Antarctican free. Don’t get me wrong, I love my co-workers but enough is enough.

The show was fun and after a day on the beach flying my kite (and watching Jesse break my kite) we had Ryan drop us off at the trail head of the Salisbury Track in the Kahurangi. We spent the night there in a small shelter and set out the next day. Once again, this was a track with rather small elevation gain so we were able to make time. There are some very nice huts on this track but our second night we stayed at the most interesting shelter I have ever stayed in. It was made out of a limestone overhang. It was one of four similar shelters. The third night we stayed at a higher elevation on the flanks of Mt. Arthur with the idea of climbing it the next day. In the morning the weather wasn’t great so we decided to just hike down and meet our friends. Of course, the weather was better when we got to the trailhead and I insisted on walking all the way to Bodie’s.

I had been inspecting my topo map and saw that there was a direct route down a creek that lead directly to our friend’s house. The only thing is that there was no trail down it. I went for it anyway and had a wild ride. At one point the stream just disappeared. There is a tremendous network of caves under Mt. Arthur and in places rivers and streams just slip underground. After about a quarter mile I found myself at the top of a 30-foot waterfall with no obvious way down. Lucky for me I had been following a pair of goats who also got cliffed-out and slipped by me to run back up stream. I followed them up an incline and over a little ridge which successfully by-passed the would-be waterfall.

I eventually made it the bottom of Whiskey Creek where it meets up with a river that literally resurges out of Mt Arthur from its network of caves. But, not with out injury. No only did I slice a nice slab out of my hand but I learned about the New Zealand stinging nettles the hard way. I grabbed one to stabilize myself on the steep stream-bed on my descent. I could decide which one hurt most. In the end the nettles won out. When I finally arrive on foot at my friend Bodie’s house, his family was happy to see me. When Jesse arrived after being picked up by friends at the trailhead he told Bodie and his parents that I was arriving on foot via Whisky Creek. I think his mother almost fainted. Apparently the last guy that tried the hike down Whiskey Creek didn’t make it. They pulled his body out a couple of months before.

Bodie’s party was a great success. It was the last hurrah for before heading back to the States. Jesse sold his car to Ryan and we were on a plane back to the States.

I am just about to check in for my flight back to the US. Jesse and I have been doing some mad hiking over the past couple of weeks together. Luci, out of fear of being trapped in a small car with my brother and I, decided to spend a relaxing couple of weeks on the North Island on the beach. There are a bunch of Antarcticans on the flight back to LAX tonight, including Jesse. Jesse and I are on different flights up to Auckland from Christchurch but we’ll meet up with Luci in Auckland before we board our 13Hr flight to LAX. The good thing is that, on account of the International Date Line, we actually arrive a couple of hours before we left. I think Jesse finally has all his stuff togehter. He has managed to lose both his wallet and camera in the past 12 hrs. Both have been found and I am eager to get out of here before he loses something else.

With McMurdo behind us we face the long spring pause between jobs. We are here in NZ for a month from the 3rd of Feb to the 6th of March. Jesse also, coincidently, is flying back to the states on the same day we are.
We arrived in CHC according to schedule and immediately got a message on our phone from our friend Matteo from Valle d’Aosta, Italy who is here in NZ traveling. He is on a Round the World trip and is here for a couple of months. He bought a van and offered to let us travel with him for a while. We got out of Christchurch as soon as possible as we know well the power of that City to suck you in. After sorting out our visas and storing excess baggage at the Antarctic Center we took off south to the Dunedin area. We had a good time hiking to remote beaches,watching seals surfing, and seeing the Moreaki boulders.
After a couple of days around Dunedin we went west to Wanaka. Wanaka is the base-town for access to Mount Aspiring. Matteo is a mountain guide in Courmayer and has a client coming to climb next week and he wanted to have a look at the area beforehand.
After a very brief stop in Wanaka the magnet pull drew us back into the Christchurchmosphere. Jesse was scheduled to arrive and I had lined up a car for him. It is a little 4 door job that suits him well. We spent the day helping him sort out the details and showing him around the city before heading North the Marlborough Sounds for our boat charter.
We arrived late in Portage, the town where the charter began. So we paid up and got down to the boat to start loading up our provisions. We quickly realized that the boat was going to be far too small for the three of us. We spent the evening trying to figure out what we were going to do. IN the morning we decided to talk to the owner and see if he could work something out for us. We had to wait most of the morning for him to come in to work but in the end he set us up on a bigger boat for the same price and only one day less. So we left Portage just before lunch and headed out into the Kennepuru Sound.
It was a pretty dismal day (typical of NZ). It was raining and not very windy. We did a little sailing, took a long lunch and dropped anchor early. The next day was sunnier but the morning didn’t offer up any winds. We went for a hike instead until the sea breeze picked up in the afternoon. We dropped anchor in a beautiful bay surrounded by reserve land that night. The weather for the next couple of days forecast strong winds. In the morning the winds were moderate inside but when we rounded the point into Pelorous Sound, the bow was blasted by winds and chop. While rounding Tawero Point the windlass that was being held on by a thread came tumbling to the deck. From that point on we were sailing by feel. We motored for a time until we could shoot down the sound on a beam-reach. That evening we picked up a mooring. Some fisherman gave us Blue Cod for dinner and we saw rays and seals before the full moon rose. The next day was the best of the whole trip. We had 20 knot winds on a sunny stern and we went wing-in-wing the whole way down Pelorous Sound to Tennyson Inlet. That night we met some kayakers who shared some mutual friends with us from the Ice. But, the weather was destined to go bad again. We had a great morning sail. The shifting wind allowed us to run back down the Sound in the opposite direction with both the current and chop on our tails, dodging rain all morning. We had a sunny lunch while watching the scattered storms pass all around us. The next day we had to have the boat back to Portage so we needed to cover ground which meant sailing into the bad weather. We sailed on a close haul with a reefed main until flukey winds forced us to drop sail and motor into a safe harbor. Moments after we dropped sail, the torrents of wind-whipped rain started up. The effect of the winds ripping down the hills was causing little waterspouts to pop up all around us. To make matters worse we were working against the current as well. We were barely making headway into the storm but, ultimately made it to a welcomed mooring and hot dinner. For our final day in the Sounds we had light, mostly head winds. We were able to put up the main which helped us along a little but for the most part we motored back to Portage.
So now Luci and I are in Nelson and Matteo is working with a friend for a few days. Tomorrow we are going to meet him and get a ride back down to CHC to meet Jesse. We plan to do some traveling with him for a while. We are looking at maybe getting another sailboat, do some kayaking, and/or go for a hike.

Today we fly back to NZ. The pace in McMurdo has reached fever pitch and we are getting out just in the nick of time. We have spent the week polishing up our end-of-season reports, putting away our gear and trying to stay out of sight. We also made it out to the new long duration balloon facility with Tina, Don’s partner. Yesterday was the big fanfare of end-of-season performance evaluations. Luci did very well and received the highest level of performance. I did well, too, though a notch below Luci’s rating. We have had some time to spend with my brother, Jesse. He is scheduled to depart on the 7th. Today he had an interview for a job on Alaska’s North Slope. Best of luck to him.
There has been quite a bit of confusion about the ship offload this season, as is becoming the habit in the Program. This season the NSF leased the Russian Icebreaker Krasin for icebreaking operations. This is the same vessel that came down to assist the USCG Polar Star last season. There was some strange politics concerning the payment for the use of the Polar Star. As far as I can understand, the DOD told the NSF that they would have to absorb the cost of icebreaking from their own budget this season (close to $50,000 a day). They decided to go offshore and lease the cheaper and more efficient Krasin from the shipping company FESCO. About halfway into their contract, the ship broke a prop. The Polar Star was quickly mustered and left its home port of Seattle for the Antarctic assuming the worst (it is not scheduled to arrive until sometime near the end of March, I think). Divers were flown down to assess damage to the Krasin. They declared the problem non-field rectifiable. They decided to continue breaking ice at partial capacity.
In the meantime, a former icebreaker-turned-cruise ship was in the area and spent some time breaking ice while its tourist cargo came ashore and wandered around McMurdo in their yellow parkas with that look of awe and confusion that the first-timer to McMurdo is often seen wearing. At the same time the NSF research vessel NBP came into port to unload passengers and cargo while the tanker Gianella and cargo vessel America Tern sat at the ice-edge awaiting their turn to steam down the 100mile channel to the ice-pier. There was doubt about which Vessel would be the first to dock after the NBP left the channel. In the end it was the re-supply vessel that came in first yesterday morning. Upon docking they bumped the pier unusually hard knocking the bridge from land to the pier out of whack. Offload had to be postponed until they could get it re-situated to allow trucks alongside the ship.
Last night “Offload” began in full. Big trucks, billowing dust, and odd hours are the rule during this part of the season. Offload usually lasts a week or less. All the bars close and half the population shift to a schedule that allows 24hr attention to the evolution of the cargo. Navy Cargo Handling Personnel (Navchaps) also come into town swelling the population another 100 head.
Needless to say, we are quite content to be leaving when we are. This is one of the highest-stress times of year in the whole program. In a matter of hours we’ll be in Christchurch, New Zealand where the grass is green, it rains, and there is that long-forgotten phenomenon where the sun disappears below the horizon and everything goes dark. What is it called again? It looks like we are going to be getting a sailboat (Nolex 25) in the Marlborough Sounds area in the North of the South Island for a week or so. What we will do with the rest of the month we have in NZ is anyone guess. We’ll try to keep you updated.

Back in Town. I am sitting in the coffeehouse writing this. As it turns out someone made a mistake and realized that we needed to pulled out before the twin Otters leave the continent on the 7th of February. We arrived at Williams Field last night around 8 PM on the Twin Otter SJB after a bit of an ordeal during our pullout.

Phase two of I-205 got settled in after their arrival on the Herc that took out our old Tucker. Then SJB arrived to take them out to their GPS sites so that they could retrieve all of them and begin processing the data. But soon after their arrival the weather went down for ten days. So the three I-205 guys and the three Twin Otter crew were hanging around with nothing to do. Because of our anticipated pullout we were busy trying to get the camp ready for closure. We spent the week doing final maintenance on the machinery and making inventory lists. Our final Herc was scheduled to fly out all of I-205’s gear and whatever was and retro we had to fly out from the camp. They were scheduled for Monday but because of the Twin Otter weather delay their arrival kept getting pushed forward later in the week. On Wednesday They finally got out to their GPS sites and retrieved their equipment. They worked through the night backing up their data and tearing down their work-tent. The next morning we started building their air force palettes of equipment to be loaded on the Herc. By late afternoon, the Herc was finally on the ground and we had them turned around in an hour.

Now that the camp was mostly empty of people other than the three of us and a carpenter who flew in to help us close up the structures we had to dedicate all our time to closing up the camp an putting everything up on berms so they don’t get buried during the winter. It was really difficult to build berms with the tiny blade of the tucker but somehow we managed.

SJB was scheduled to turn back around and pick us up on Friday to fly us back to McMurdo. Friday morning we woke up to sun and calm winds; perfect weather for tying up all the loose ends. We spent the morning closing up the fueling system and cleaning out the Jamesway. SJB arrived on schedule and we got it all loaded with our remaining gear and took off for Mactown. About an not even an hour into the flight they picked up so traffic on the radio. Apparently the weather a McMurdo had gone down and they heard a Herc returning from the South Pole request a weather observation from Siple Dome for a potential divert for fuel. SJB chimed in saying that they had the camp staff onboard enroute for McMrudo at the moment and the camp had officially closed for the season. But, the Herc was already en route to Siple and could not make it back to McMurdo without fuel. So we had to turn around and go back to Siple where we unpacked the whole fueling system and got prepared to fuel the Herc. What a hassle. Everything went smoothly though and we got up in time and torn back down in a couple of hours. There was a bonus though. On the flight back to McMurdo I got to fly the plane for a bit. Exciting. I guess I did a good job of it because the captain asked if I had flown before. I have never even been in the cockpit of a plane before. For some reason I was reminded of the time I took my brother Joel driving for the first time when he was about 13. When I finally got him out of first gear he found driving so amusing that he began to laugh uncontrollably. So much so that he stopped paying attention to the driving and we almost wound up in the ditch. It didn’t happen to us in the air though, thank god. I was able to control my laughter and we made it safely back to Willy Field.

So here we are back in Mactown. We have our own room this time which is nice. It is kind of overwhelming having so many people around. Today we are showering, doing laundry and getting ourselves presentable for the general public. Tomorrow is Sunday and we are off. On Monday we’ll start putting everything away, finish our inventories and start getting ready for NZ. We are scheduled for the C-17 flight North on the 3rd.

Oops. I guess I missed a Sunday. The past two have not really been days-off as usual. The Twin Otter crews aren’t bound by a weekly schedule as their counterparts in the LC-130s are. So they fly when the weather is good and don’t fly when it isn’t. When the weather got better here they got out to Fosdick and pulled out the camp there. The plan was to get G-088 in here at Siple Dome during the day and have them spend 1 night. The next day we would build palettes of their gear to go out on a Herc in the afternoon. The whole thing went like clockwork until 10 minutes before the plane arrived and the infamous Siple Doom fog set in. It was too thick to land so they circled for two hours waiting for it to clear. It finally cleared at about midnight and they got in and out with all of G-088 and their gear and were able to leave us some fuel in the bladder. They didn’t lift off until 1am taking advantage of their full flight-day hours.

The next chore on the schedule was to fly our old broken Tucker out. The task has been on and off the schedule for a couple of months. Its main problem is that it has a cracked cylinder head where all the coolant sprays out so it can’t be run with coolant risking a seizure if the engine gets too hot. Since it has been sitting here for almost a year we have been using it for parts for the good Tucker. But, we have been careful not to take parts that would render it immobile. We did take a universal joint off the forward drive shaft making it a 2TD.

There was a technical disagreement as to the best way to get it on the plane. It is hard enough to get it on the plane when it is running and it becomes a huge project when it has to be winched. One camp wanted to start the Tucker and drive it the 100ft onto the Herc and then use the winch if necessary. The other camp wanted to tow it to the back of the plane with the good tucker and winch it on hence “saving” the engine. When they first had it on the schedule to be flown out we actually had it running to the point that it could be moved under its own power making the former proposal entirely feasible. But, in the end, it was decided to go with the latter proposal. No preparations were made to insure the engine would start prior to towing it to the ramp in the back of the plane (aside from a vigorous Herman Nelsoning). As a result, when we found ourselves in a bind getting it in the cargo hold and badly needed steering, the motor wouldn’t start because it had a dead battery. Ultimately, the Herc shut down (something that they never do at a remote site) and we spent two hours towing it this way and that and winching it ever-so-slowly into the belly of the beast. We heard from the Twin Otter guys that they saw it broken down on the ice road to the Willy Field Runway at McMurdo. Apparently, someone jumped it and tried to drive it back to town without much luck.

The same flight brought in the second phase of the I-205 group, our last science group of the season. Their job is to pick up all the GPS units the first phase placed out in the ice streams around Siple Dome. The same Twin Otter crew that pulled out G-088 are here again supporting I-205. Our last scheduled Herc flight it to pull out I-205 and all their gear. The schedule is ALWAYS subject to change. We will most likely be here until around the 7th of February. They are trying to keep us here as long as possible as a potential divert landing site for WAIS Divide and South Pole. Once again: subject to change.

This week might as well not have happened. We have been on the flight schedule to receive a Herc and a Twin Otter all week but the weather has not cooperated. We have been getting up early every morning to do weather only to have the flights canceled by afternoon. Friday was looking promising and the Twin Otter arrived but the Herc never made it off the ground. Fosdick Mountain Camp (the one that has the bad weather and not-so-great runway) has been having bad weather too and it looks like it is going to keep up into next week. So the Twin Otter crew is waiting here for their weather to clear up in order to pull out their camp.

We still have a cargo yard full of palettes waiting to be flown out by Herc and our situation has changed little from this time last week. The weather has been eerie. At times the light has been so flat with the overcast sky and the horizon so undefined that when you walk away from the camp to get snow for water it kind of feels like your floating in a white mist. The temperatures have been hovering around freezing and we have been getting snowfall. Not just blowing around but actually precipitating. Mid-week it got windy and I had to put up our snow fences to keep the doorway from filling in. When the wind finally let up we had four-foot drifts around them. That’s the idea, by the way; that the snow drifts around the fence and not around the door. We spent Friday grooming out the drifts and clearing snow off the palettes only to have it snow most of the day yesterday again.

I have been having a depressing computer problem this week. It been an ongoing problem that comes and goes. But, this time it looked like it had come to stay. The computer has simply not be starting. I press the button and nothing happens. It the past it seems to rectify itself after I disconnect the battery and power cord and let it sit for 24 hrs or so. That stopped working this week so I was convinced that my little PictureBook had finally gone the way of the Millennium Edition. After a couple of days spent getting our camp computer on-line, I looked into what it would cost to have Sony fix it. $700! That’s more than I paid for it so I commenced sulking while trying to figure out what I was going to do all spring with no computer. I had absolutely no intention of paying that kind of money for a repair so I figured I had nothing to lose by cracking the thing open to see if I could find any obvious damage to the innards. Not the first time I have donned the latex gloves to perform open-keyboard surgery on this thing. In fact, it was opening it up to change the HD that was most likely the root of my problems. When I detached the ribbon cable that connects the power control board to the mother board I noticed a little nick in the end that was preventing it from seating correctly. After trimming the burr of with my pocket knife and making sure it seated well in the harness, I tried restarting the computer. And, much to my joy and surprise, it started!

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.