Food delivery

As I think I've mentioned before, part of my job as a Materialsperson at South Pole for the winter is the weekly food pull for the galley. We usually end up with three or four carts such as these:

And when luck and weather is on our side, one of us climbs the 92 stairs of the "beer can" stairwell up to the station to receive the carts and roll them into the station to the waiting galley staff while the other two of us stay at the bottom get the carts into the beer can elevator.

However, when temps outside are below -85F, the temperature in the beer can is almost as low and the elevator can't be safely run. So when that happens, we make a call for all hands on station to position themselves all the way up the stairwell and we daisy-chain all the food up the stairs. This happened in May when we had that streak of -100 weather and it was quite a sight to have nearly the entire, 48- person winter crew in the beer can at the same time, steaming up the air with our breath. It's pretty great, though: the whole operation takes less than 20 minutes and since everyone likes to eat, they tend to show up to help!