Shackelton's Hut in the shadow of a misty Mt. Erebus.

with no water to sample...stand around with GPS unit and look busy (Co-workers Chris and Rose)

Don't seem to be many turkey around these parts....I guess you'll have to do.

Fat-ass Adeli having a little fun on the ice

view of penguinpoop hill from Shackleton's hut

Rookery from surface of Pony Lake...not looking very wet to me

View of Pony Lake from adjacent to the helo pad. Shakleton's hut to the left, adeli penguin rookery in the back.

accident waiting to happen

Scott Hut, Emperor Penguin project(?)

Scott Hut, Terra Nova expedition rations

Scott Hut Rations, preserved since approx 1913

...mmmm

Two snowmobiles crossing sea ice en route to Cape Royds

Commute to Cape Royds across sea ice

R.F. Scott's Hut at Cape Evans

Two Scuas at Cape Evans, next to Scott's hut

Dreaming of a place where water is not solid

I admit upfront that I am primarily (theoretically and hypothetically) here for work. Although my essays have literally nothing to do with work, the job I was hired to do has taken a somewhat unexpected delay. When I was first asked if I’d like to study the biogeochemistry of nutrient cycling in coastal Antarctic lakes, my first response was – There are lakes in Antarctica? Well, as it turns out I wasn’t too far off. We have been unable to obtain any water samples yet because, like all other signs of water on this continent, it is totally frozen from top to bottom.

Our field site is called Pony Lake, a small coastal pond, which is north of McMurdo about a 1hr ride by snow mobile or a quick 15min by helicopter. Pony Lake was named by Ernest Shackleton during his 1907 expedition aboard the Nimrod, as it was the nearest fresh water for his horses. Of course, no signs of thawing has not stopped us from making a couple trips out there. From McMurdo we head north past Cape Evans, home of the Robert Falcon Scott shelter built during his Terra Nova expedition of 1910-1913, past the huge Barnes Glacier, and into Cape Royds. On a good day, my commute may take about 1hr by snowmobile, assuming the weather is good and cracks in the sea ice are few and far between. The trip is gorgeous with great views of Mt Erebus, the TransAntarctics across the sea ice, and frequently running across Weddell Seals and their pups.

My research crew was well aware even before I arrived to the ice that there was no liquid water in Pony Lake and didn’t look good anytime soon. That all changed last Monday when a field biologist studying the Adeli Penguin rookery at Cape Royds called our lab with the exciting news that Pony Lake had begun to thaw, specifically that he saw a 3ft. moat around the circumference of the lake. Excitedly, we scheduled the first helicopter available and gathered our gear. We left first thing Thursday morning and arrived at Pony Lake to find the same damn ice-cube of a pond that we witnessed previously. Chalk it up to faulty intelligence and crackpot reconnaissance and I suppose this is what you get. On the bright side of things, I had my first helo trip and the views were spectacular. Also, we had the chance to tour both Scott’s shelter in Cape Evans and Shackleton’s hut during our two trips out to Pony Lake. Who knows, maybe I’ll actually see some liquid water on my next trip out there…I doubt it.

Qunizee Hut...courtesy of the National Science Foundation

Igloo, complete with cable TV and X-box

A Hutson Hut...need I say more

Doctor Rock doing the Mt. Erebus air-guitar

Two Skua birds in front of a smokin' Mt Erebus

Cold weather survival training. A Scott Tent to the left, my Quinzee Hut to on the right. About 10 people total

Sign in front of Scott Base

McMurdo Dorms. Mine is the first light-brown dorm pictured here (5th one from the left, after the 4 dk brown dorms)

Royal Society Range of the TransAntarctics. This is the view from the lab window

Vista of the TransAntarctic Mountains from Ob Hill (approx 50mi from McMurdo, across the sea-ice). This photo is taken at around midnight, about as low as the sun ever sets.

Scott Base from Ob Hill, just below and to the right. McMurdo is below and to the left, only about 2km away from Scott

View of McMurdo from Ob Hill

Erebus Air Guitar

<> It’s hard to believe that I’ve been on the ice for an entire week already. McMurdo is a surprisingly active little town, with probably around 1,000 summer inhabitants. McMurdo station is one of two permanent stations on Ross Island, the other being the kiwi station on the other side of the island (about 2km away) called Scott Base. There’s a very nice little hike to the top of the nearest hill, called Observation Hill (or Ob Hill for short), from where you can see both McMurdo and Scott. In the photos above you can easily recognize Scott because for some reason the kiwis insist upon painting everything chartreuse. Go figure. Taking a step back, I think it will just take some time to get settled and used to this place, which so far has a funny resemblance to summer camp… a bowling alley and 3 bars with 1$ MGD's - and no supervision. Oh yea, did I mention the 24hrs of sun…that is definitely weird.
Tuesday November 16^th and the 17^th I participated in the USAP (U.S. Antarctic Program) cold-weather survival training. We left McMurdo first thing in the morning, fully dressed in our ECW (extreme cold weather) gear, and since it wasn’t –40 in the vehicles, it goes without saying I was sweating my ass off. That’s a great way to start off a couple of days outside in Antarctica – overheated and wet. The training was fairly basic with respect to the classroom skills – mostly about hypothermia and frost bite – but was also extremely useful from the perspective of learning how to use the old WWII-era HAM radio (with antennae which unfolded to lengths of several meters), comm. protocols, and, most importantly, where to watch out for crevasses. After classroom training, it was time to be dropped off in the field, although we were still in the near vicinity of Ross Island and could actually see over to Scott Base (the nearby Kiwi base). This is where the real fun began.
Ice time began with hauling our equipment (snow shovels, ice saws, ice axes, a Scott tent, stoves and a box of Korean War ear food rations – no shitting here, most food was expired by at least several years) out to the McMurdo Ice Sheet where we would spend the night and most of the next day. Here we learned to construct two different types of ice&show shelters, a Qunizee Hut and a more typical igloo. The quinzee is essentially a large snow mound constructed by piling up most of your gear (sleeping bags, clothes, etc…) and shoveling 3ft of snow on the sides of top of the equipment. Pack it down, pull out the gear from a small hole on one side, and there you have a small hollowed out snow mound. To keep warm, fill in the small hole where you removed your gear, and dig a separate entrance from outside the hut and enters the cavity of the mound from the bottom. Remember, heat rises, so the entrance from the bottom doesn’t allow much of the heat to escape, keeps the wind out, and also keeps it relatively dark inside so we could get a little shuteye. The only problem, after building this frickken snow cave, which isn’t easy, the last thing I felt like doing was finishing it off by tunneling into it by digging a 4-ft hole to come in from the bottom of the hut. As tho anyone in their right mind would take the time to build a Quinzee hut in the middle of a blizzard…well, at least it’s one way to stay warm. Nonetheless, others choose to build the more traditional igloo by carving out blocks of ice, which was honestly a lot easier. As you can see from the photos above, they even had the time to build a front porch and television. Fortunately going to the bathroom wasn’t too difficult out here due to the nice little outhouse on the ice shelf. Speaking of… we all felt we needed to come up with a more interesting name for the shitter on the ice, so I began telling the group about this guy I knew back in NC, and after a couple anecdotes…well, to make it short, these structures - lonely, isolated, and totally lacking in character - are now known as HutsonHuts, after this UNC grad student (who used to be a cool Duke student and now wears brightly colored tights during his pilates and yoga classes and is an avid women's college basketball fan) shares these very same qualities. I'm so glad that guy is about 17 time-zones away.
The rest of the evening went very smoothly, with great temps (in the 20’s!) full sun and no wind. We had the time and energy left to take a walk around the area and take a couple pics in front of Mt. Erebus, the big-ass volcano (12,000ft) that is wholly responsible for the existence of Ross Island. That’s pretty much all for now, next week I’m off for some exploring up the coast to Cape Evans, home to the famous Scott Expedition Shelter of 1910. So tune in next weekend for some pictures of tongue lunch, canned cabbage and anchovy paste from last century.

First view of McMurdo station upon arrival

giving the pilot a couple pointers

en route...

Boarding the C-17 in Christchurch

View of sea ice and mountain range from cockpit of C17

view of Antarctica from the cockpit of the C-17

McMurdo Bound

Leaving the US now seems like a month ago, although it was only this past Monday (5 days ago)! The trip from my hometown of Columbus to New Zealand was uneventful although the flight from LAX (left Monday evening at 11pm) to Auckland (13hrs, arriving Wednesday 6am) was nothing short of exhausting. It was a quick trip through customs and onward and forward to the largest city of the south island, Christchurch! By the time we arrived I was ready for bed, but the excitement of being in NZ for the first time got the better of me and I was off to explore downtown chich. After taking in a few cultural stops I somehow ended up in an Irish bar called Bailey’s, drinking Guinness with a couple guys from Wisconsin. Did I really just fly for about 24hrs and end up spending my evening drinking Irish beer in an Irish pub with a two dudes from Kenosha and Sun Prairie. Apparently I did.

The next day, Thursday, was filled with preparations for the trip down to McMurdo Station, on Ross Island, Antarctica. First stop was for flu shots and next thing we were all in the CDC for our ECW issue. Yes it became immediately apparent that in working with military contractors, everything and everywhere was going to have a three letter name that makes no damn sense and the hell if anyone is going to take the time to explain what it all means. If they did, then what would be the point of having the abbreviations in the first place?!? Well, for those individuals not in the ‘know’, we were issued our Extreme Cold Weather gear at the Central Distribution Center… where there were more bib-overalls and ill-fitting boots than anywhere else, I’m certain. Our orders as of 15:00 Thursday afternoon: to report back at 5:45 Friday morning with no more than 40lbs of checked baggage and wearing our full complement of ECW and to sitting patiently on a military runway in southern NZ, staring up at our C-17 taxi-ride to the south pole… and presumably to sweat our asses off, as well.

Even though I’ve been informed by reputable sources (ok, just one source. And it’s my Dad, so not exactly a reputable source after all) that the C-17 is a piece of shit compared to the old C-130 Hercules, we still made the 5.5hour trip from chich to McMurdo in one piece… that amounts to about half the time that slow-ass, 4-prop, over-crowded bucket of bolts, C-130 ever could. The trip down to the ice was as spectacular and breathtaking as any other I’ve ever taken, owing greatly to the clear skies we enjoyed for a majority of the journey. As we approached the continent and the transatlantic range was visible on the horizon, the captain allowed a few of us up to the cockpit where the vista of the mountains, glaciers and sea ice was nothing short of gorgeous.

Arriving to McMurdo, the weather at the station was about 30F, clear skies and almost no wind. I couldn’t believe it; is this really the weather on Antarctica? While it was a prefect way to be greeted, it was short lived to be sure. As I hammer out my first blog from the ice, the runway is closed (Condition 1 white out) the wind chill is back down to a balmy –40F and I’m holed up in the Crary lab, where I’ll call home for the next 10 weeks. For what it’s worth, when the view across the runway is clear, I have a clear view of the mountains surrounding McMurdo from my office window. Unbelievable.

Once I adjust to the 24hrs of daylight, perhaps I’ll actually be able to sleep for more than a couple hrs at a time and these blogs will become more coherent…. Yea right. Afterall, if you think about it, by the time some of you read these words, I won’t have written them yet.