Morale Cruise

Due to favorable sea ice conditions, it was decided that there would be an opportunity for a "morale cruise" for up to 400 people on station to board the "Polar Sea" for a 3 hour cruise along the channel that they broke through the ice from the open sea to the station. So last Sunday afternoon I was one of the lucky ones aboard the afternoon cruise as we steamed down and back through the ice. We saw Minke whales and Emporer penguins and of course hordes of Weddell seals. We even got to smash some ice just for fun, although the engines were hardly running at full throttle.

It has been an extrodinarly year for such things; last year the sea ice road to Cape Evans was never opened to recreational travel due to ice conditions, this year we ran nearly 10 trips. Some years penguin sightings are infrequent and distant, this year we have had several occasions where they wander right up close, once through the cargo yard and down the street. And we haven't gotten a morale cruise in years, as the mega-ice-berg B-15 has played havoc with the sea ice. Back in '03 the supply vessel couldn't even reach the station and off load took place over 3 miles of ice away from town. But this year we have been lucky, and it pays dividends. Even though we are all warned not to expect anything resembling a good time or adventure by taking a job here, most of us still hold out some hope, and by giving those of us working mind numbing jobs for slave wages, getting to see a penguin or get out of town and see the real Antarctic for a few hours once in awhile is not only a season highlight, but the experiance of a lifetime for many, and the reward in station morale and retention of employees is huge. And for an outfit facing 60% turnover every year, that means something.

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The season is winding down. Conversations are fewer round the tables in the galley and more meals eaten silence. When conversations do take place, something previously unthinkable sometimes happens: they end. Earlier in the season it was habit to not ever conclude a conversation, but instead allow them to carry on, drifting lazily over weeks and months, out of simple nessecity. Better to not exhaust the supply of topics to talk about over dinner. Better to enjoy the same subjects for weeks. Now things wrap up a bit more. People are leaving, and most everyone has the far away look in their eye of places and people that are not here. And there is fatigue. As the long hours, cold dry air, and repetative work slowly wear away at a person, and the parties and late nights take their toll, exhaustion becomes the watch word. Rather than participate in the oodles of things always going on around station, more and more people hide in their rooms or lounges watching movies and sleeping. The parties are a good thing however, as they are the common means for keeping track of time in a place where the sun never sets, shifts operate 24 hours a day, lunch may be at noon or midnight with little differance observable, and the exact same time every day finds many of us doing the exact same thing as the day before in the exact same place. This de-a-vu Twilight Zone effect is only broken by major events and parties. Did that happen before Icestock or after? Was that between the Christmas party and Block Party?

I had written a blog entry the other day, before Blogger ate it and pooped it into the ether of the internet. It was about Sir Edmund Hillary and all the other V.D.'s (I mean D.V.'s, Distinguished Visitors) like the Prime Minister of New Zealand and the direcor of the National Science Foundation and various congressional and cabinet staff members who come down here and wander all over the place making life difficult for us. Actually Ed Hillary isn't so bad, we like him, since he was the first man with Tenzing Norgay to climb Everest and he worked down on the Ice for many seasons back in the olden days, leading the first motorized traverse of the polar plateau to the South Pole. So he's a badass, even at 80-something.

Been cleaning, still, and teaching salsa lessons. Led an overnight camping trip and climb of Castle Rock last weekend, may do the same this weekend. There us talk of being allowed to board the Polar Sea for a few hours as it works the channel; there are whales out there and a morale cruise ranks as one of the best boondoggles a person can get. Saw a penguin last night at Hut Point as I was leading a tour of the historic hut. And I have only 25 days left. That's right, I got my redeployment date: 20 Febuary. I asked for the 24th, the last flight off the ice before winter, ut lots of folks wanted that day, so I got my third choice. Still better than the folks who are leaving this week and next, and every week from here till the end. But there is one last hurah on the horizon. Supply vessel and tanker are on their way, and when they bring the suppleis for the station for the next year we will all work rotating shifts round the clock until the ships are unloaded. Then it is a rapid transition to winter and we are out.

Rugby

Last Sunday was the All Continent Rugby Championship Game. Sadly, the McMurdo Station Mt. Terror Rugby Club lost 22-0 against the Scott Base Rugby Club in an exciting game held in beatiful weather on the ice field on the Ross Ice Shelf. I played fullback for the first half, and although we fielded a better than average team, the Kiwi's really stepped it up this year, it being their 50th aniversary and also hosting a visit by their Prime Minister and also Sir Edmound Hillary this week. That and if they had lost, it is quite likely that they wouldn't be allowed to go back home. So they made sure to step up their game, and history repeated itself as they took home the title once again. Actually, in the entire history of rugby on the continent, Scott Base has always won. But one of these days, we'll take them...

Polar Sea

The Polar Sea rounding Hut Point on its' way into McMurdo Station, with the Trans-Antarctic Mountains in the background



The Polar Sea approaching the ice pier.



The view from amidships on the Polar Sea, looking into the brash ice.

So the Swedish ice breaker Oden arrived alost a week ago after cutting a channel through the sea ice for the tanker and supply vessel to pass through so we can take on supplies for the coming year. Then yesterday the US Coast Guard Cutter Polar Sea arrived; together with the Oden they will work to keep the channel open and free of bergie bits for the next few weeks. There is even hope that if we get a good strong storm with high winds, that all the sea ice will blow out into the Sound all the way up to the ice shelf. If that is the case, then the 35-100 orcas that are swimiming behind the ice breakers will be playing in our front yard. Or so goes the hope.

Anyway, I had volunteered to be a line handler for when ships do arrive, so when Polar Sea came in, I was on the ice pier standing by to take her lines and tie her up. That evening we were invited aboard to take a tour and see their vessel, and then raid their ship's store, just as their crew was then raiding outr store. I think they got the better deal, as ours sell beer. That night at the bar the place was choked with Coasties enjoying thier first shore leave in awhile. So we'll play host to them for a few more days while they take on fuel and then they'll be back to work in the channel.

LDB and airdrop

A disclaimer, I did not personally take these particular photo's, but they are illustrative of life and operations here on the Ice.



The LDB inflated and on its' way, taller than the Washington monument.



Long Duration Balloon being inflated to hoist aloft the ANITA nuetrino detection array for a few laps around the continent's upper atmosphere.



A few weeks ago there was an airdrop of cargo at the South Pole. The USAP is constantly looking for a better way to supply the Pole, as everything from fuel to people to freshies must be flown in on C-130's, hundreds of flights every season. This makes even the paper clips extremly expensive, to say nothing of the diesel fuel and apples. In an effort to find cheaper/better ways of getting material to the Pole, a traverse across the continent is underway to explore the possability of an ice road. In the meantime, an airdrop using the larger C-17 Globe Master was done for the first time, rather than the C-130 Hercules or the older C-121 Super Consetellation. BTW, I love the names of these huge cargo planes, don't you?



Pallets slidding out the rear of a C-17 over the south pole.



Cargo for the pole.

Science

It is what we are all here to support, the reason for our very existence on this Harsh Continent. Yep, Science. Soooo, wazzat?

Lots of folks have asked about the science that is going on down here, why we have a research station in this inhospitable place. One of the nice things about living here is that I might eat dinner with an internationaly renouned film director, a leader in neutrino and sub atomic particle physics, seal biologists, sub-glacial geologists, vulcanoligists, and more. So, some about the specific projects?

Well, the marquee project this year was ANDRILL, a project drilling through the Ross Ice Shelf, sinking a shaft into the sea floor bed 1300 meters deep. That in addition to 80 meters or ice and 800 meters of ocean. They brought up sediment cores and analyzed them for all sorts of data, especially that which would describe the extent and behavior of the ice shelf and glaciers during different climactic periods in the earths history over the past 12 million or so years. About 80 folks here at McMurdo and another 2 dozen or so over at the Kiwi base worked on this project.

Other big ticket items: there were 3 Long Duration Balloon flights. These bad boys are filled with helium and sent into the upper atmosphere, standing taller than the Washington Monument when inflated. One of them carried ANITA, a neutrino detection array. One carried BLAST, a most amazing device that will survey star formation and new galaxy development in the outer universe. The third carried, ummm, I'm not sure actually, I think it carries some climate measuring equipment, but don't quote me on that.

Lots of different oceanic studies looking a life forms in the cold waters of the southern ocean, in particular how they respond to temperature change and are adapted to cold climates. Actually a lot of the science here is related to climate change and trying to create models that will predict how the world will look as it heats up. Global warming is accepted here as a reality well under way, not as a matter of political debate as in some other circles. Actually the implications and ramifications are pretty amazing, from increases in Alaskan storms and how that influences the birth of super-icebergs like B-15, to the collapse of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, as happened the last time the world got warm. B-15 you might recall was that ginormous berg that was several times the size of Rhode Island. It hung around McMurdo Sound for awhile and made life difficult here for several years, not letting the sea ice blow out and the ships in to station, or the penguins to open water for feeding. Thankfully B-15 has drifted away a bit this year and we all hope the sea ice will blow out for the first time in 6 years.

Anyway, there is lots more science about all sorts of things, much of it simple base line data stuff about critters and land (or ice) forms and weather that would be common knowledge or easily found in any encyclopedia anywhere else in the world, but is still unknown here in Antarctica. Ohh, and meteorites, there are meteorite hunters who scour the ice all over the continent looking for rocks. Because when 98% of the continent is covered with ice, if you find a lonely rock just sitting there with nothing else around, it is probably a meteorite, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. A sore thumb surrounded by a thousand kilometers of blank whiteness.

The main lab here at Mac Town is called Crary Lab; at the time it was built about 15 years ago it was the most expensive building in the world per square foot. I don't know what has since past it, but it is a cool place. There is an aquarium where several unique species of fish are held, a seismographer for measuring earth quakes that jiggles when a large truck drives by or someone slams a door too hard, there is a room for slicing rock samples and analyzing them microscopically, there are neutrino whatcha-gizmos and sediment squishers and super-magno-radio-gramographer-saurases and all kinds of stuff too sophisticated for the like of me. And a real time camera focused on the lava dome of Mt. Erebus, which is cool to watch.

So like I said, you never know who the person sitting across the table eating beef stoganoff might be. (We eat lots of beef stroganoff here) Most beakers (our name for science grantees) are unpretentious and hard working and excited to talk about their research. And most folks here are keen to hear about it, lot of nerds that we are. And with at least 2 or 3 science lectures per week offered either in Crary or in the Galley, we are fortunate to get the low-down straight from the horses mouth, so to speak. And it helps to feel connected to the science and hear the thanks of the grantees who come down for a week or a month or 3 months for their projects and leave. There time is so limited and the expense of their time and research so great and the season so short, not a moment is lost to cooking or doing dishes or cleaning or fixing stuff or anything else that might take away from their focus on research. That is why we are here, and while I never thought I'd need the praise of those scientists to feel gratified about my work (I take pride in my clean toilets without needing anyone else to say so, thank you very much), it does help keep morale up, to feel more connected to the greater mission and less connected to mop buckets and garbage bins.