Thanksgiving

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving Stateside, South Pole celebrates Thanksgiving. Most of the station had the day off, and it was quite the festive weekend. A few days in advance, everyone who wanted was welcome to participate in making a couple dozen pies, which definitely helped to set the mood.

 

 

Then, the day of, a gaggle of other volunteers got the galley transformed with shocking speed. My favorite part is that all of the windows were blocked out so that we could pretend it was not broad daylight as always, and a video of a roaring fire was played on the info scroll screens.

 

With so many people to feed and the need for volunteers to serve wine and pie and bus dishes, there were two seatings.

And the food was pretty darn yummy.

That night, some of the rec volunteers even organized a dance in the gym, South Pole-style.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The South Pole...S

Did you know that there are multiple "South Poles"? It's kind of confusing. First, there is the ceremonial South Pole, which can be seen from the windows of the galley (dining hall) in South Pole Station.

Then there is the geographic South Pole, which can be seen out a different window from the galley. This pole shifts slightly each year since we are on a moving ice sheet. Each New Year's Day, as I understand it (I will post about it when the time comes!), there is a ceremony that everyone here participates in wherein the new geographic pole is marked with a new marker that was designed by the previous year's winter-over crew. (About 40 people spend the winter at South Pole each year; fewer people have done this than have climbed Mount Everest. Seems like it would be an amazing experience.)

There's also a geomagnetic South Pole, which is hundreds of miles away and all wonky. I don't even understand that.

So on my first day off (I have Sundays off this month; things will shift as my job responsibilities rotate; more on that later) a bunch of us bundled up (it was about -40F, with a windchill of about -60...so, cold!) and went out to visit the two poles that are right here at the station. The pole in the ground is the actual geographic South Pole as it was on January 1, 2014.

This shows the Pole marker with the elevated station that we all live in in the background.

And then we walked over to the ceremonial Pole. I don't have any pictures other than this because at this point my camera froze. It started working again about an hour after I came back inside and it thawed out! Will have to keep my outdoor photo opps short and sweet, I guess!

My room

Oh my goodness. I have been trying for a WEEK to log in and make a blog post, but the internet here is severely troubled and this is the first time I've actually been able to access the blog. Miracle! When we arrived at the beginning of the season, we had 14 hours of satellite internet coverage per day thanks to three satellites that are in range at various times. But there have been technical issues with one of them, making it not an option for the past week, which gives us 10 hours of very very bad, slow internet per day, half of which is in the dead of the night anyway. Sheesh! We're also losing the best satellite at the end of this month. A couple other fun telecommunication facts about life at South Pole:

 

- We have satellite phone access, and can call as if it is a free, local call to Denver area codes...but only when one of the satellites is in range and actually working.

- The vast majority of bandwidth available here is used to send the scientific data collected here off the continent; this is only fair, since the science is the whole reason for being of the USAP; but as a consequence, there is no type of streaming--so no Skype or YouTube or Netflix--allowed for casual use.

 

Anyway, before we lose coverage again, let me make this quick and just post a picture for you. This is my room in the station. Such a treat to have my own little cave to retreat to whenever I want to.

 

 

More soon, satellites willing!

 

South Pole Station

I am having great fun exploring this amazing, $150 million facility where the 150 summer residents of South Pole all live (and most work). If you're curious about the station, I really recommend the virtual tour of the station provided by this video on YouTube. It does a way better job than I could through pictures of giving you a sense of what the station I'm currently calling home is like.

I did, on my first weekend here, enjoy both a casual visit to and a formal tour of the "beer can" (see the video for context) which stinks horribly of the human waste that is buried not too far away. We also walked outside via the tunnels (where vehicle maintenance and all kinds of other work goes on) and explored the -60F (it was warmer outside!) gasoline storage area, which was completely covered in intimidating frost. No worries about a gasoline explosion, at least!--at those temps, there can be no gasoline fumes, which is the part of fuel that actually burns. And my final picture here is of one of the typically inexplicably weird things you might find down here. I don't know how or why people put pigs heads down in the storage areas under the elevated stations, and I'm learning not to bother to ask about the crazy things like this that tend to happen here when people get bored due to the isolation.

To South Pole

The summer season at South Pole was supposed to have started November 1. When we got delayed in Christchurch for three extra days, that schedule was already thrown off. So by the time I got to McMurdo on Nov. 1, there were already other Pole people there anxiously awaiting our arrival so that the first flight of summer personnel could get down there as quickly as possible. Instead, I got to learn first hand how very difficult it can be to reach the bottom of the planet. I guess that's appropriate, but holy moly! It was a Saturday when we arrived at McMurdo, and no flights are scheduled for Sundays. So first flight into Pole was on deck for Monday, and all day Sunday we were checking the flight monitors outside the galley as rumors about mechanical problems with the planes that fly to Pole were flying.

Monday morning our flight was still on the scroll, so the 35 of us who would fit on the plane with all of the cargo (including a snow melter, as the water system at Pole had been malfunctioning, plus many boxes of "freshies"--fresh produce--for the winter-overs who were probably desperate for it) got on a bus that headed away from McMurdo...

...and past Scott Base (which belongs to the Kiwis)...

Only to get a radio call saying the flight had been canceled. So the bus turned around and took us, dejected, 20 minutes back to McMurdo.

On Tuesday we tried again, and this time all the stars seemed to be aligned. We made it out to the airstrip (note Mt. Erebus, an active volcano, as the backdrop--and note that this plane is outfitted with skis, as it cannot land on the snow at Pole on wheels!)...

...onto the plane (significantly less comfy than the one to McMurdo)...

...and flew three hours to Pole, over this unspeakably magical, beautiful landscape. Sigh.

 Through our ear plugs, we finally heard the loadmasters tell us to get buckled in for landing at Pole, and we could feel the plane descending, descending...and then suddenly pull back up and circle around. And then again, descent, only to pull back up. After that second try, the decision was made: though we were only 300 feet off the ground, there was not enough visibility to land and the flight (as they say) "boomeranged" back to McMurdo. I guess I have nothing to complain about, as there are people who pay tens of thousands of dollars for the kind of flight-seeing tour I got that day! But it was a weary-ing six hours in the air. Mostly I was getting tired at the routine of every morning stripping my bed at McMurdo, lugging all my stuff up to the transport spot, and then in the evening going back to remake my bed and do it all over again the next day.

Wednesday we were scheduled to fly and then canceled and scheduled and canceled again without ever even getting on the bus to the airstrip. Not good weather at Pole, apparently.

But finally, on Thursday, with almost 50 passengers (room for more since the water situation at Pole had been fixed and the bulky snow melter could be left behind), we got back on the bus to the airstrip, back onto the plane, headed back over the vast whiteness of the continent...

...and this time, after three hours, the wheels touched down! There was cheering. I might have been involved. They opened up the back cargo door and shoved all our luggage and other cargo out as we taxied across the snow...

..and then we all stepped off the plane at South Pole.

The thermometers read -32F as we walked from the plane to South Pole station.

Incredible. Incredible to be here.

So that is the end of the story of my journey TO South Pole. Now, for the next 3.5 months, I'll be sitting still here and will make regular posts sharing glimpses into life at the bottom (ha, ha).

In the meantime, mail takes awhile--and definitely don't send boxes, which can take months--but I would love to hear from you if you'd like to test the APO mail system (will be US domestic rates for you) and am happy to send postcards in return with the South Pole cancellation stamp on them! The address is:

(My name), ASC
South Pole Station
PSC 768 Box 400
APO AP 96598

Also, though I will keep posting my own pictures here, it's totally worth checking out the USAP's free on-line collection of Antarctic photography at www.usap.gov.

'Till soon!

McMurdo

One thing I didn't realize is that Pegasus airfield, which serves McMurdo and other nearby Antarctic bases run by other countries, is 30-45 minute drive from McMurdo base itself. So once we landed, they loaded as many people as they could into "Ivan the Terra Bus" and the rest of us piled into these old Deltas for the ride into MacTown.

I've never lived in a coal mining town, but I mostly hear people describe McMurdo as having a coal-mining town vibe, and that seems as good a description as any.

This picture was taken at about 1 a.m. There is no such thing as darkness in an Antarctic summer.

Everybody seems to have an opinion about McMurdo. Mine is that it was fun place to hang out for a few days. The scene at Gallagher's bar was more than I could handle the night that we arrived...

...but on our last night there, they had a trivia night at Gallagher's that was great fun. And the rest of the time, the town coffee shop was more up my alley.

Of course, the official and primary purpose of the three American bases on Antarctica is scientific research. It was very cool to check out Crary Lab in McMurdo, and see some of the sea life, geological, and other research being conducted there.

I also spent a lot of time in the "galley" (cafeteria) at McMurdo, where they have 24-hour pizza, space for orientations galore (I had to go to three during the five days I was there), and where, when our flight on to South Pole was repeatedly delayed, I started putting in some hours helping out the McMurdo galley staff so as to start training for my job in the Pole galley. (E.H.: recognize D.Z. in this pic? Thanks for connecting us!)

Probably my favorite thing I did at McMurdo was take a walk out to Hut Point, which is often a good place for seeing wildlife, such as the seal in the picture below...

...and has gorgeous views across the frozen bay (which will not be so frozen by the end of the summer! In the far distance, you can see the water that will creep closer and closer to McMurdo as summer temps that can get as high as 40F start to melt the ice cover)...

...and a nice view back on McMurdo itself. The mountainous setting of the base is definitely one of my favorite things about it.

And, thankfully, since there will be no wildlife in the even more extreme cold temps of the South Pole, I'm glad I got to see a skua bird--kind of the signature scavenger bird of the base. They say it's not safe to walk from the galley back to your housing with food in your hand, as the skuas will try to steal it. This one looks pretty well-fed.

It sounds like sometimes, at the end of their seasons at Pole, people don't even transit through McMurdo base on the way home--instead just getting off the plane from Pole at Pegasus and right onto another one to Christchurch. So I'm not sure when/if I'll get to visit McMurdo again, but I'm really glad I got the chance to check it out, and I'd welcome another few days to do more walking around the area and enjoy more card nights at the coffee house with the very great people I've met so far and am excited to be working with for the next several months.

Flying--and landing!

Three days after we were originally supposed to depart Christchurch for McMurdo base on the coast of Antarctica, the gods of weather and mechanical wellbeing finally harmonized and the great circus of flying 103 people with 10 Air Force crew members to the southernmost continent began.

We were all shuttled from hotels scattered around the Christchurch area back to the Antarctic Center, where we picked up all of the cold weather gear we had tried on 4 days earlier, got our bags together, joined the line to flight check-in...

...gathered for a briefing and a "you're going to Antarctica!" video...

...before finally, at long last, they shuttled us to the C-17 aircraft that was to fly us south, south, south.

It was actually a far more comfortable situation than I was expecting when I heard "military transport." Most of us had normal plane seats, albeit more crammed together and certainly no beverage and snack cart--though we were given ample bag lunches as we boarded to tide us over for the five-hour flight.

Sometime close to the end of the trip, I glanced out a window and got my first glimpse of the frozen continent. So, so beautiful.

And then we were there! It was like a dream. It's so unbelievable that I'm actually here, I had to laugh out loud as I took my first steps on the snow covering the ice runway at Pegasus airfield. (The "white ice" in the runway area is thick enough and solid enough to support these big C-17s landing on very wide, cushy wheels.) That's me in my "big red" issue jacket. Glad I had it, as it was about -10F degrees when we landed. And thank goodness they put our names on the jackets for the season, or you would never be able to tell who it is approaching you at any given moment (everyone looks exactly the same), or to find your jacket when you hang it on a coat hook along with 50 other big reds.

But more on all that later. For now, just appreciating this great moment of first stepping foot on Antarctica and so excited for all that is to come.