Mo' foto

What ya'll have been waiting for, right? Good up close penguin pics. Yes they are cute, no I don't get to see them all the time. I have had three penguin sightings in the time I have been here, and two of those were on the some day with the same animals. Ya want National Geographic Antarctica, go to Palmer Station on the other side of the continent. They have penguins and seals and orcas coming out of their ears. Round here we have ice and rock and skua's.



This is a skua. Does the pictue make it look gigantic? Good, because it is! A wingspan of about 5 feet or so feels like 12 when it is bearing down on you, intent on investigating if you have anything edible on your person. A huge hooked beak, and overall fierce attidue make them one of the hazards of Antarctic life and the subject of many safety meetings.



Mistletoe, naturally. One of many decorations at the holiday party we had in the heavy equipment barn. No, it didn't work...



Me nearing the top, yes I did beat the guy behind me, by all of 7 seconds. Notice the ice forming on the beard; it was cold, well below zero windchill. As for the beard, I entered a beard growing contest and judging is New Years Eve. Yes there will be photos of that.



A view from near the top of Observation Hill as the race began.

Penguins for Christmas

I awoke this Christmas morning in a snow cave on the Ice Shelf about 5 miles from the station. I had led a camping trip out for the evening and we enjoyed beatiful weather that night, though this morning when I crawled out of my cave, the clouds had rolled in and created a flat white light that allowed for aproximatly zero depth perception. Walking into snow pits and stumbling around in the powder, we got underway back to station in time for the Ob Hill Up Hill, a race from the road up to the top of Observation Hill. I am ashamed to say I did not win, as the winning time was 7:44 to make the climb and I did only a respectable 9:20 to take 5th place. Photos to come. The real excitement however came yesterday afternoon when word ran through the galley that 10 penguins were down at Hut Point. I grabbed my jacket and camera and headed down there, where there were not only penguns, but three seals as well. So I got to hang out and watch the penguins hop and waddle around for awhile, and then on the hike out to the camp site, saw one of them at close range, about 20 feet away and sqwaking at as when we sqwaked at him.





LC-130 at Williams Field, so named for a Sea-Bee in the 50's that plunged through the sea ice while driving a D-8 Catapillar.



The row of 11 20,000 gallon fuel tanks at the ski-way.



Beneath the wing of an LC-130 Hercules, the planes that, ski equiped, make the run between McMurdo Station and South Pole with personel, equipment, food, and fuel. During peak operations up to 7 flights a day make the run, as well as inumerable flights of DC-3's and Twin Otters and helicopters and the odd C-17 Globemaster. This means lots of air operations and lots of fuel needed, so last week I went out and volunteered a few hours with the fuel operators and got to learn how one of these big beasts gets gassed up.

More later, Blogger is being finicky right now...

The fuzz

So Gurg asks a good question: what sort of weapons do we have on station and how are we policed? Well, contrary to the movie "The Thing", which insinuates that we have flame throwers and machine guns hidden away somewhere, we have only one gun. Or rather, the station manager for the National Science Foundation has the gun. But no bullets. Those are held by his deputy in a seperate location. The director has been deputized as a special US Marshal, or so he informed us upon our arrival briefing. In reality I think he has just seen the movie "Tombstone" a few dozen times to many. But I know a guy who knows a guy who has actually seen the gun, and just sitting in a desk drawer in the guy's office amongst paper clips and ballpoint pens. Apparently it is some sort of standard issue side arm, not the gold plated revolver we had imagined. So that is how we are "policed", oficially. It is rare for such measures to be needed though, the only story I can think of is the winter-over who went skipping through the Galley singing Mary Had a Little Lamb and hitting coworkers on the head with a hammer. Then there is the one about the dinning attendant who showed up to work naked but for her apron. She was promptly fired, but then she suprised them by hiding out on Observation Hill outside of town and then sneaking around between friends rooms being sheltered so as to miss the flight that was to take her off the ice. Naturally she was eventually caught, as is bound to happen in such a small community, but these are the stuff of legends. Although with only one gun and it with ammon stored elsewhere, we may be in dire straights if the Kiwis at the New Zealand base ever invade. At least we have them out numbered: 1094 to 97.

Pegasus

So because the sea ice is rapidly melting (it is a seasonal thing, not so much the global warming thing, that is apparent else where), the trail out to the historic hut at Cape Evans is closed to recreational travel, therefor the rec department has been offering trips onto the permanant ice shelf where a C-121 Super Constellation (largish cargo plane) crashed in 1970. Coming in on final approach past the point of safe return for fuel to get back to New Zealand, the crew could see the storm coming from across the sound and lost visual of the runway moments before landing. They circled, hoping for a break in the weather until fuel forced them down on an instrument approach. They might have landed well in spite of all that had not snow drifted across the runway during the storm, breaking off their front landing gear and causing the plane to skid and slide and shear off one wing and both propellers. But no fatalities and only minor injuries. If course they were now in a wrecked plane in the middle of the ice shelf in a white out storm, but eventually theu were found and rescued. Later the plane was drug about a mile away from the airfield, as the commander on site thought it bad for morale to have a wrecked plane sitting at the edge of the runway. Now the recreation department offers trips out to the plane where people can crawl about on the wreckage and slide down the snow banks on the fuselage.

Incidentally, the name of the plane was Pegasus.

Wedge

That is, a simple tool. AKA this guy. Here from MSNBC to do a piece on environmental studies and global warming (yes, it is very real) he is also doing a travelogue and his first piece a few days ago got him in hot water around station, and very nearly his ass kicked and then properly shunned. But he has more or less come around and stopped publishing crap, so I guess he's alright. That and he bought me a beer at Scott Base the other day after I chewed his ass for awhile. Anyway, his current update is on recreation on station, with a description and photos of the rugby team and Skirt Party. And there is a good slideshow that shows a fair bit of station life.