SPRESSO

I'm trying to always, in my free time, take advantage of opportunities to go out and visit the various science projects going on at Pole. In early December, there were two USGS contractors here for a few days to install new electronics at the seismic station that's about 5 km away from the elevated station. I was lucky enough to happen to sit down with them at lunch and snagged myself an invite to go with them that afternoon to see that seismic station (which has the acronym SPRESSO, though I'm not totally sure what-all that stands for). 

So the two of them, plus one of the two research assistants here this year, plus another lucky interloper and I got in a piston bully and drove 5 km away from the station. It's by far the farthest away from the station I've been since I got here. And I got to try driving the piston bully!

SPRESSO is a couple of rooms that are actually underground, and get deeper underground each year as the snow drifts bury it more and more. So the first thing we had to do was dig out the "door" from the drifts that had accumulated in the few weeks since anyone else had been out there.

We paused to appreciate the multiple ladder extensions that have been installed as the snow builds higher and higher, and then had to tie the two computer-filled boxes that the USGS people had brought with them up with a piece of rope and lower them down the tunnel...

...before climbing on down ourselves!

The rooms where the electronics are kept are pretty tiny, but we stayed down there in that nice (heated!) space for awhile asking questions of the USGS folks, who were so generous and have what might be one of the coolest jobs on the planet, traveling around the world to the 100+ seismic stations maintained by USGS contractors.

Also, since so few people ever get out to SPRESSO, those who do write their names and the date on the wall. So I got to add mine to the list!

Then took our now-empty sled back to the piston bully and then back to the station. The piston bully is so slow that it takes 40 minutes to cover 5 km, so I had plenty of time to process the great adventure on the way back.

Fun experiments at -60F

I got a tip from an old hand at Pole about two fun things to try here in the extreme cold.

 

This would all be way better if I could show you the videos, but never mind. Let me explain.

 

First, blowing bubbles: rather than popping, they freeze in the air, and sometime shatter like glass and sometimes crumple like plastic beach balls under pressure and otherwise just sit on the ground indefinitely, waiting for someone to come along and step on them. So strange!

 

Even more, I liked the experiment of throwing a cup of hot (nearly boiling) water into the air. It makes this amazing ripping sound and immediately turns to snow and vapor! That cloud of snow you see in this picture was, seconds before, hot water in a thermos. So fun.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!!!

Every year on New Year's Day (New Zealand time that is), South Pole celebrates by moving the geographic pole marker to it's newly accurate position, which is reliably about 33 feet away from where it was the year before. The geographic pole marker has to be moved because the station sits on a 2-mile-thick ice sheet that is drifting toward the Weddell Sea. (Strange fact: this ice sheet is moving over a mountain range, but it's so massive that the mountains don't really affect its rate of movement.)

So the afternoon of January 1, we all said goodbye to the pole marker that was designed by the 2013 winter-overs and placed on January 1, 2014...

...gathered around the still-veiled new marker (and the South Pole sign, which had already been moved to be next to the new marker, plus a hole drilled to place the flag next to the new marker)...

...formed a semi-circle to pass the flag around to its new location at the current pole spot...

...planted the flag, and unveiled the new marker, which was designed by the 2014 winter-over crew. I love that at South Pole, this is the kind of thing that inspires a paparazzi frenzy.

The 2015 marker is a beaut!

The rest of the New Year's celebrations mostly involved people drinking a lot, plus a spontaneous rash of mohawk-making. As of the evening of January 1 (which was a work-day for the community, so things had not even really gotten going yet), at least 9 of the 140-ish station residents had gotten mohawks.

By the same time the next night, that number had at least doubled. Not sure where this craze is going to end, but pretty sure I can resist. As was announced in a drunken, station all-call on the night of the 1st, we're feeling confident that Antarctica now has the highest number of mohawks per capita of any continent. Dubious distinction? But very entertaining.

Again, Happy New Year!

Jase & airdrop

I have such a hard time even logging into my blog from here that I'm not going to dare to try to upload any videos. But Jase, one of our fantastic chefs in the galley here and a new friend of mine, manages to regularly upload videos onto his blog via Facebook. So for a new dimension if you're following this blog, I recommend checking out Jase's blog. 

The picture for this post is a C-17 aircraft--the kind that flew us from Christchurch to McMurdo, doing a fly-by of Pole back in November during a test run in which they were experimenting with making emergency rations drops here. In 2015, for the first time, there are going to be winter passenger flights in and out of McMurdo Station. But landing a plane at Pole the dark and cold of winter at 90 degrees south is still not a possibility. So just in case, it's comforting that they have now successfully experimented with a cargo drop (via parachute) that was retrieved from the far "backyard" of the station. And it was really impressive to see this plane make several passes over teh station one night.

Christmas at South Pole

Despite all of my vagabonding, this is actually the first time I've ever spent Christmas away from my family--a definite drawback to what would otherwise be a pretty flawlessly great adventure. For me, the holidays are pretty meaningless without my family around.

But there are definite efforts made at Pole to make the holiday season festive, and it ended up being as nice a Christmas as it possibly could have far from home. There is, for example, a tree made of "junk" out on the berms (storage area).

And, inexplicably, a cardboard cut-out Elvis in one of the lounges that someone added a Santa Hat to.

At the beginning of Christmas week, they set up a "mall Santa" display in front of the station store and recruited a good Santa and a bad Santa to pose for pictures. I had to run down during my dish pit shift so you get to see me in my dish-washing attire.

The next night, there was cookie-decorating in the galley, which was great fun, and satisfyingly colorful.

J. the Baker is a prize-winning gingerbread house maker, and usually at her bakery in Vermont they make enormous, elaborate gingerbread houses at holiday time. This year, without her back in Vermont, they made a South Pole station gingerbread house in her honor. And down here, she made a smaller but extremely intricate and gorgeous gingerbread house for us to appreciate.

And then on Christmas Day, most of the station had a day off and there were lots of festivities. In the morning was the "Race Around the World," a less-than-two-mile loop around the station area that went around the geographic pole so that technically, the racers went through all the time zones on the planet. People were encouraged to wear silly costumes, and they did.

I had to work for the day so couldn't participate but but to see everyone gathering to start from the window of the dining area. There was even a snowmobile pulling a couch. Sounds cushy, but it's better to be running than riding at these temps.

And then in the evening we had a really nice Christmas dinner.

There was lots of great volunteer help in the dish pit all day and especially in the evening, so it was fun rather than a hardship to be working on the holiday. If I couldn't be home, spending Christmas with the South Pole community was a pretty great alternative!