Weekly snapshot #53

The day was beautiful! The weather was PERFECT for incoming planes! And so we were supposed to get our first two Hercs (carrying a total of 55 summer people and taking away six more winter-overs) in today. Everything felt so hopeful for things getting back on schedule with flights and summer ramping-up. And then both flights were cancelled due to mechanical. Wah-wah.

So they will try again tomorrow. There is still hope for me getting back to the outside world as scheduled at the end of this week, though it's by NO means guaranteed. So this will just have to be a cliff-hanger. Maybe there will be another Friday post from Pole. (Though if I'm still at Pole on Friday I may be too bummed out to want to post!) Or maybe I will be stuck in McMurdo...or maybe I will be in Christchurch, taking long showers and sleeping 10-11 hours/night. Only time will tell. And only time will tell when I end up posting next. If this is indeed the last message from South Pole, big thanks for following along this year, and I promise there will be something other than snow in the pictures next time I post any.

Those summer crew people who have made it here are very busy operating equipment and ramping up for summer projects.

And this is just a bonus shot of me with my great co-workers, one last time.

Last Friday post?

I can't quite believe this, but unless things go very wrong in the coming week (always a possibility, and I don't want to jinx it--hence the question mark in the subject heading), this should be my last Friday post from the South Pole. This is such a bittersweet time, I can't completely put words to it. I'm so grateful to have had this experience and there are some friends here that I'm going to be so sad not to see anymore in my everyday life. And this is the first place I've ever lived where it's not an option to just buy a plane ticket and come back to visit whenever I feel like it. That's a strange and sad knowledge. On the other hand, it has been an entire year now that I've been in the same two-mile radius and unable to venture outside without being covered head-to-toe in the thickest possible clothing. I'm pretty ready to get back out into the non-frozen world and resume traveling and see my family and friends--and greenery!

At this point it looks like there will probably be one more Tuesday weekly snapshot. But as this may be my last variety post, I figured I'd do it up.

I just raided my boss/friend K's camera and got a bunch of shots from her that represent kind of a review of the last month. First, she got some amazing pictures of the sunrise in mid-September:

Then there was the exciting time a couple weeks ago when we decided it was time to open the doors of the Materials/Logistics arch permanently for the summer, which involved getting them dug out by machine-with-bucket from the outside....

...and finishing the job by shovel from the inside. Let there be light!

We took a field trip out to "the berms"--the storage rows  in the backyard of the station--to knock a winter's worth of drift off the bottoms of the food crates that needed to be forklifted onto a big sled and pulled closer to the station so we could bring them into the arch and add them to our more easily accessible food shelves.

And our weekly food pulls have been getting much bigger as the summer season approaches. This is me after a particularly annoying food delivery where it seemed like if everything wasn't falling off the carts on the way to the elevator, the carts themselves were getting stuck on the flooring and taking two or all three of us to get free and moving again. So while K called the elevator, I took a little -70-degree nap on the ground. Plus the shaking of the big freight elevator as it descended the beer can felt pretty cool from this vantage.

Now we're getting more current. Yesterday, people who happened to be outside mid-morning got quite a shock when an unexpected aircraft was spotted over the South Pole skies. This is not a place where you see any air traffic that isn't headed directly for us, so this plane caused quite a bit of panic among those who spotted it. If it was about to land here with no notice, that would be pretty much unprecedented. BUT it turned out to be a fly-over by the NASA Airborn Science program.

And it took this picture of us from above, which I think is pretty cool. The biggest structure in the lower left side of the picture is the main station. The smaller buildings in the lower right of the frame is the dark sector and the telescopes. And then the long lines of stuff on the left side heading up toward the top of the frame are the berms, pointing to the area we call "the end of the world" in the top left. Finally, I'm pretty sure the structures in the top right of the frame are SPICECore.

Later that day, we got a plane that we WERE expecting. That Basler with the first eight summer people FINALLY made it to Pole, after a week's worth of cancellations. And while it brought us eight new people, it carried away six members of our winter crew, most of them leaving kind of unexpectedly since the much bigger LC-130s (Hercs) that were supposed to start making trips to and from Pole this week are also going to be delayed and the powers that be wanted to start getting some of the winter-overs out of here and onto their off-continent flights as originally scheduled. It was pretty sad to see this plane go along with a big handful of our crew members (minus, of course, the three that were medevac'd before now) and have the 2016 South Pole winter feel very officially over.

So, there you go. Like I said, at this point I'm still anticipating that I'll be posting one more weekly snapshot from the South Pole on Tuesday, but if plane schedules get back on track, I'll be gone from here by this time next week. Kind of blows my mind. We'll see how this crazy transition continues to play out....

Weekly snapshot #52

It is windy out! This matters because it's killing visibility, which is the reason the Basler that was supposed to bring the first 8 summer people to the station on Friday still has not been able to make the trip to Pole. We're living in a kind of weird limbo, knowing they're supposed to be here but they aren't and the first real plane (Herc) of the season, bringing 40 summer folk, was scheduled for Thursday but won't make it here till Friday at the earliest. It kind of feels at the moment like it's all a big joke and no planes are ever going to come and we're going to just keep doing what we're doing indefinitely...when in reality major stuff is about to start happening. Stay tuned!

More hodge-podge

We're all getting pretty antsy to go and see the outside world and smell flowers and feel humidity in the air and start the travel plans we've been making! Small planes have started coming through, including bringing the first of the summer people to the station. This is a picture someone took of me as a group of us were standing outside watching the Basler that stopped here on its way to McMurdo last week--the first plane that's been here since the medevac in June.

Last weekend, we had a "leftovers" party were everyone brought all their extra beverages and treats from home to share, which was a cozy, fun time.

And I went to yet ANOTHER balloon launch (can't stop--it's just so fun!). If you're paying freakishly close attention, you'll notice that it's now warm enough that NOAA has switched back to the latex balloons from the more hearty (but much more expensive) plastic balloons that they used in the winter. The peak of early spring ozone depletion (I guess that's an oxymoronic way to say that...) has passed, as well, and it's kind of just back to business as usual with the balloons.

(That's me in the green and black jacket getting ready to clip a piece of equipment onto the balloon just before it's released. Seems like I know what I'm doing. Really, I just know how to work a clip.)

And my boss/friend K, watching the balloon head up into the sky. Or marshaling in a very strange looking airplane. You can decide.

Weekly snapshot #51

This is the first time I feel like the weekly snapshot is really reflecting the BROAD DAYLIGHT that has returned to South Pole!

The temps are consistently warmer, and if the wind doesn't get in the way, we're expecting the first 8 summer folks to land here in a Basler on Friday (with two more of our winter crew leaving on that Basler for various reasons). I can't quite wrap my brain around that, but it's really happening. Here comes summer!

Hodge-podge

Just a few random shots for you this week, of some of the general silliness that sometimes goes on around here....

...of the AMAZINGLY huge pretzels that our two German stationmates made for the Oktoberfest they staged for us at the beginning of the month...

...and the NOAA weather/atmospheric balloon launch I participated in during the heart of the ozone depletion season. The balloon is that jellyfish-like object in the sky. I've posted balloon-launch pics before, but now that it's actually light out you can see the balloon as it heads away from us, about 20 second after I let go of it. Long after the launch, you can sometimes still see the balloons looking like stars in the sky.

Here's the balloon flight profile from our trusty NOAA rep, which he sent to us with the following info: "The flight was great: didn't get quite as high as the last few flights because the balloon popped and came back down quickly instead of leaking and floating, but that was actually the goal, so all good.  The profile was fairly similar to the last one (which was so far, and will likely end up being, the season's low) up until about 24 km, at which point there was a bunch more ozone all the way up to the burst, so the total ended up significantly higher."



Weekly snapshot #50

It's kind of hazy out today, but if the snapshot's brightness doesn't convince you summer is nigh, the rising temps of the weather report should! I don't remember it ever getting colder than -45F or so when I was here during the summertime, so the fact that we're starting to get close to that ballpark is very promising.

Plus, today is a big day: I took this week's pic a few hours after a Basler came through en route from Canada to McMurdo--the first plane we've seen since the emergency medevac in June! And in another couple hours, a Twin Otter will also be passing through en route to McMurdo. So the outside world has not completely forsaken us, and stuff is happening....

Tie-dye

There's been all kinds of craftiness going on down here this winter. One fun thing is that the station management left a mid-winter care package for us all to open and enjoy in June, and it contained a whole bunch of white t-shirts with tie-dye supplies. So it's been a tie-dying extravaganza down here. Recently most of us who have been making shirts gathered together (a dizzying proposition)...

...and took a group photo donning our creations. Such fun, and more than half the station is represented here!

I totally failed to take pictures of the tie-dying process--or of the screen-printing free-for-all that followed, but I'll be bringing samples home with me, for sure.

Weekly snapshot #49

Over the winter, the way it felt to be outside wasn't anything I had any sort of comparison for. But stepping outside to take today's snapshot, with the sun shining, I had the feeling that I could be outside on a cold Wisconsin day. Kind of a strange, but soothing, feeling.

It's sure not warming up any too quickly. We're way behind on getting the runway groomed for the arrival of Baslers bound for McMurdo as early as this weekend, because temps have been below standard equipment operating thresholds for too long...so now the thresholds are having to be ignored and rotating grooming shifts established to make sure we're ready for the outside world that is headed our way.

Sunrise dinner

Last weekend was the final major event of our winter before the planes with summer crew start arriving next month: Sunrise dinner! The covers are off the windows of the galley (and everywhere else on station) and even though the week of sunrise was very blowy and overcast and we didn't actually see the sun coming up, you can still tell there is ambient light in the building again, finally! And the luau-themed dinner was mighty delicious (complete with salad from our still-functioning greenhouse--hoo-ray!).

Weekly snapshot #48

The sun is up! I keep gazing at it in amazement and then immediately remembering that it is inadvisable to stare directly at the sun. Have to work on retraining myself on that. But the sun is up!

Scott tent

Like last week's post, I have some pictures from you from awhile ago--these from the end of August, when sunrise was just beginning. Our winter carp put up the tent we have down here that is supposedly very similar to the tents that Robert Scott and company used on their fateful trip to the South Pole in 1911-12. So my Materials girls and I went out one afternoon to check it out, against a pretty amazing backdrop...

...including going inside, where the small space immediately filled up with steam from our breath.

Nothing like crawling inside one of these things to marvel anew at how hard-core all those Antarctic exploration guys really were.

Weekly snapshot #47

It's probably likely that that last cold snap will be our final one for the season and the temps will continue to rise from here. The winter crew has officially started with the procedures for preparing the station to open for summer personnel in just about 6 weeks.



It's kind of blowy today and very overcast particularly in the direction of the telescopes, so this week's snapshot makes it look darker out than it actually looks on the ground...

...as does this shot off to the side where the sky is clearer. I'm actually kind of surprised at how dark these pics look. To my eye it looks like broad daylight, and the sun might actually be peeking above the horizon for real, but we just can't see it because of the clouds. In any case, our sunrise dinner is this coming weekend, so the sun is morally obliged to be risen by next week's snapshot.

Flashback...

...to the days of dark! Pretty soon you're not going to remember that all of my photos were in blackness for so long. But in August during the last full moon of darkness, I got to take a trip out to the SPICECore facility (which I've written about during summertime posts when the project was active) with a couple people who were charged with taking some pictures to send back to Denver so the project supervisors there can assess the state of the infrastructure, drifts, etc. It was an amazing time to visit, as not only was the moon full, but there was an enormous "moondog" surrounding it.

Weekly snapshot #46

Nice gust of frigid wind in my face when I ducked outside to take this week's weekly snapshot.

But it is getting so lovely out, who cares?

And I stayed out long enough to take a second shot in the direction of where the sun is now just a few degrees below the horizon, and the sky is even more amazing.

We're expecting some early-summer-like temps later this week (around -40F) which will be nice for folks who need to get equipment outside and start prepping for station opening, which is just 6 weeks away, now. And by this time next week, it's possible the edge of the sun itself will be visible above the horizon (depending on unpredictable, fluctuating atmospheric effects). In the meantime, this has got to be one of the better sunrises of my life....

Suturing

Another really fun emergency response team training recently: suturing! We also got to play with the staple gun, and the suturing itself was just like sewing. Luckily I have plenty to keep me busy in the crafting department or I would be tempted to spend the last couple months down here just sewing (suturing) station residents together.