Dawn in Antarctica

Slide Show for Science in the River City Teachers

2012-02-01T19:37:00.000+02:00

These slides provide an overview of my trip. A tiny bit of vicarious adventure!

The Southernmost Banya in the World

2011-12-28T08:13:00.000+02:00

Written Nov 10 and 12

The banya!

This morning, I woke to the sound of Ian and Dale washing dishes from the VIPs the day before. It was an amazing number of dishes. I helped. Velodia, who runs the guest house, came in while we were doing dishes, and thanked us profusely. He was overcome with gratitude and expressed it continuously for an hour. We then ate excellent leftovers for breakfast, including beef rolled with greens and cheese and then roasted. It was accompanies by excellent bread, specially baked for us by the Russian base cook as well as fresh fruit. Velodia promised us an extra special evening in the banya tonight. I’ll write more about that after it happens.

After breakfast, we looked at the clothes from Woolrich. I snagged some nice long underwear. The shirts and vest were too big for me.

I then helped Ian with generators and a jiffy drill, and spent the rest of the morning going through freeze dried food from the expedition 3 years ago. I pulled out some veggies that I can use to make curry, as well as some sweets. Here is one of our storage areas:

Gear from 2008 in a shipping container.

The banya in the evening was excellent. Galia (who works for ALCI) and I went together. It’s a high humidity sauna that has a large number of traditions and variants. You wear a special wool hat. The first time in the sauna (about 85°C), you spend 5 minutes and then cool off by splashing slightly warm water over your body. Then it’s time for tea. The second time, you can stay longer, and there are oak and ash branches that you can hit yourself with to increase circulation. It feels great. After cooling off again with cold water this time and drinking tea, it’s time for the other person to “massage” you with the branches. After this last one, I used the outdoor cold water bucket to cool off. It’s really neat, and cold. However, I was warm enough that I didn’t stay cold for more than a minute or two. We were then out of time because the men needed a turn. Thus, we showered, dried off and then headed back to the guest house.

Me with my hat and a cup of tea.

The bucket...

Galia & Velodia

Galia made bellini (crepes) for dinner, which are traditional to eat after a banya. The head of the Russian base came to dinner, which started at 9:30 or 10. It went long with Velodia playing the Russian version of acordian.

Novolazarevskaya

2011-12-28T06:17:00.000+02:00

Written Nov 10

My first day at Novo, yesterday, we had to spend most of the day away from the Oasis Guest House and our gear because of the VIP visitors. We spent a lot of time in the dining room of the Russian station.

We’ve been eating there, too. The food is very Russian, not surprisingly. The kaska for breakfast was good. For lunch, there were noodles with white sauce, boiled liver in sauce, boiled chicken in sauce, and soup. The bread was excellent. For dinner, there were leftovers from lunch plus boiled fish steaks (some medium sized firm white fish), fried fish fillets, and heavy mashed potatoes. The bread was excellent. There was fruit compote for both lunch and dinner as well. Our food was in sharp contrast to the lunch and dinner for the VIPs, which were prepared by Georgio who owns and is chef at the restaurant 95 in Cape Town. We’ve been eating leftovers today.

In addition to eating, we talked, read, and worked on computers. There was a constant background soundtrack of Russian TV. To break up the time from 1:30 to 9 pm, I took several long walks. It is really beautiful here.

The almost-full moon was an unexpected delight.

Oasis Guest House

2011-12-27T03:53:00.000+02:00

Written Nov. 9

We boarded our IL76 at Cape Town by expedition. There was a group of VIPs on the flight, who paid a great deal each for one day in Antarctica. (I’m smelling their delicious lunch right now, being prepared by an Italian chef, also brought in for the day.)

The plane is mostly a cargo plane, with 78 passengers on this flight, which is about the maximum it can hold. It has port-a-potty type bathrooms (visible in the dark corner on the left in the image below).

There were no window seats, but the plane was much brighter once we flew south into continuous daylight from the two windows available. Here, people are putting on their Antarctic clothing in preparation for landing.

We walked down the stairs onto the bright ice. We’re in Antarctica!

The VIPs got whisked away, whereas we hung out on the ice for a while as they started to unload the plane.

And I admired the Basslers.

Then Vladimir and I took all our carry on bags to the airbase dinning room while Valery and Chris got our checked baggage.

Once Chris and Valery tracked down Valery’s missing bag, they picked us up and we drove in an Arctic Trucks outfitted Toyota Hilux to the Oasis Guest Lodge.

(This truck is from the Indian base, and not the one we took.) This will be our home for the next few days.

Back in Cape Town!

2011-12-26T07:30:00.000+02:00

I'm back to civilization! Due to very limited internet access, I didn't manage to post anything from Antarctica. However, I do have some things to post. I still need to organize them, so stay tuned!

It was an amazing trip!

This is a self portrait from the middle of the peninsula below, looking ESE.

View Larger Map

And we're off...

2011-11-08T22:01:00.000+02:00

I'm on wireless at the International Departures Terminal in the Cape Town Airport. We board the IL76-D2 in an hour or so, and we'll be on our way to Antarctica!

Our flight is listed 4th from the top! It's the only flight I've seen that lists a continent as the destination.

Here are the team members flying with me:

Valery, Vladimir, and Chris from left to right.

And here is the check in line:

It's a great mix of people (mostly men).

When I went through passport control, the officer was more interested in learning about our flight than in my passport. He asked how many countries were represented by my group, and I explained that there were actually quite a few different groups on the flight. My group only represents 3 countries, and only 2 on our flight. He was also interested in why there were so many Russians. I explained that the company organizing the flights was mostly Russian and that we will be landing very close to the Russian and Indian bases. I think he had a particularly large number of Russians in his line.

There are also people headed to Europe in the terminal. And just now, I got asked by a tourism survey-taker where I was headed. When I said "Antarctica", she said, "You're not on our list. We just noticed the flight once we got here." The survey is about the airport shops. I guess those of us headed to Antarctica probably aren't big shoppers for carved giraffes!

Tripod Update

2011-11-08T09:46:00.001+02:00

I made quite a few modifications to the tripod for Ian. The most important change was taking apart the micromanipulator to reduce its mass. I kept only two adjustments: a coarse adjustment and a fine adjustment, both parallel to the axis of the micromanipulator.

Then I bought some nice Ikelite ball joints that are designed for underwater lighting systems. I mounted one of them on the slider that moves up and down one of the tripod legs and one on the mini-micromanipulator. They can be clamped directly to each other or a 6 inch bar can be clamped between them.

The manipulator is significantly less stable with the 6 inch bar, but it can reach almost anywhere within the tripod. Without the bar, the microelectrodes can still reach a wide range of angles and mats. In addition, I added disks (plastic electrical covers) for feet to help the tripod settle nicely on the mat.

If we want spikes as well, I can put long screws through them. It will be exciting to see how well the tripod works!

Briefing

2011-11-07T18:23:00.000+02:00

We had our pre-flight briefing from ALCI at 11 this morning. Our flight was delayed because there has been a bottleneck of people at the ALCI Airbase, several kilometers from the Russian Novo station (see map below). ALCI uses Bassler Turbo 67 airplanes to take people from the Novo area to other bases and into the field (see DOMLAN flight network map below). However, their planes were grounded elsewhere, so the people on the first flight (IL76-D1) were stuck at the airbase. There are more than 70 people scheduled for IL76-D2, my flight, and there wasn't a place for them/us to stay. Thus the delay. The Basslers (or at least one of them) is in action now, so people are leaving the ALCI airbase and there should be room for more people. My group is staying in a recently renovated previously abandoned building half a kilometer from the Russian base, and our gear is stored in another old building and a shipping container nearby. Thus, the "Oasis" is more convenient for us.

Anyway, our flight is currently scheduled to leave tomorrow evening. We'll find out tomorrow after 6 pm for sure. Unfortunately, though, our hotel is fully booked tomorrow night, so we'll have to check out before 11 am. Our plan is to take our things to ALCI in the morning and meet back there at 6 pm. If we don't leave, we'll find another place to stay. The weather report is good through Friday at least.

In any case, we don't have much luggage any more. ALCI picked all the remaining gear up this afternoon except one small carryon and a bag with our cold-weather clothes. The Iljushin doesn't have overhead bins, so all our carryon has to fit under the seat in front of us. We "check" our cold-weather gear, so that bag doesn't have to meet security regulations and can have more than 100 ml of liquids, sharp objects, etc. However, we need access to those bags before the end of the flight. Thus, we go through airport security without it, but then pick it up on the runway when we board our flight. We then stack those bags behind the passenger area (blue area in upper plane diagram on IL78 figure below) and retrieve them an hour before we land. With so many people on the plane, there won't be any private changing space, so I'll be wearing my base layer before boarding.

We can leave a bag of things at ALCI until we return. I'll leave some books, warm weather clothes and my sandals.

Delay...

2011-11-06T21:02:00.002+02:00

I had a good day at the Cape Town waterfront - lots of tourists. This evening, I saw the rest of our team: Chris McKay, Valery Galchenko, and Vladimir Akimov. I've known Chris for years, but was pleased to finally meet Valery and Vladimir. We had a pleasant dinner after a stressful day for the others. Chris just flew in from California today, so he is very jet lagged. Valery and Vladimir flew in from Moscow yesterday, but their bags (including all their science gear) didn't make it with them. They spent most of the day tracking down their bags, successfully. Thus, the day ended well.

Valery and Vladimir talked with the ALCI folks, and our departure for Antarctica is likely to be delayed by a day or two. We'll meet at 11 tomorrow morning at the ALCI offices to get the latest updates. It looks like I need to plan an afternoon adventure.

I have a software problem with my computer, and I can no longer download images from any of my SC cards with my computer's internal card reader, either camera, or my external card reader. However, if I reboot my computer off a Carbon Copy Clone that I made last week on an external drive, I can read them no problem. The fact that I can't read them at all through any method booting off my internal drive and can read them no problem booting off a clone made before this problem arose suggests a software rather than a hardware issue. Any ideas? What this means for readers of my blog: I won't put in photos every time, but I might add them later in batches. None tonight...

University of Johannesburg

2011-11-05T09:37:00.000+02:00

On Wednesday, I flew up to Johannesburg to see my friend and colleague of more than 20 years, Nic Beukes. His Paleoproterozoic Mineralization Research Group had its annual presentation of their research on Thursday, and Nic invited me to give a short talk on our Antarctic research. It was great to catch up with Nic and his family, Elsa who has been working in the UJ geology department for 27 years, and various other member of the department I've interacted with over the years. As an additional benefit, Sharad Masters, now a professor of geology at the University of the Witswatersrand, was also there. It was great to see him again.

When I first came to South Africa in 1990, Nelson Mandela had just been released from prison. The University of Johannesburg was then Rand Afrikaans University, and I interacted with a number of the students in geology then. Most Afrikaner students had been raised in a culture of fear and prejudice, and many could not imagine living in a country where people of different backgrounds could intermix freely. I came back every year for the next three years, working on a geology project, watching the country change. Then I moved on to other things, and didn't return until 2002. Rand Afrikaans University was transitioning into the University of Johannesburg, the economy was booming (but still wrestling with unemployment), and attitudes were changing. Each time I come back, I see the struggles to repair the damage done by Apartheid and the centuries of repression before it. Some of the issues, particularly economic ones, are similar to those we are struggling with in the US. Others are unique to South Africa, due to individual peoples and circumstances from history. In both countries, many people work to repair historical damage to cultures and peoples, and others prefer to destroy or build for their own selfish purposes at the expense of others. For me, respect for every individual person is the place to start. Societies are better places to live when everyone has the opportunity to make the best of their life without taking from others.

The last photo in my talk at UJ:

Lake Unteresee, 2008, photo by Dale Andersen. The PAM fluorometer in the background is about 50 cm long.

Going back in time to when only bacteria were competing and cooperating with each other... Ian and Dale flew to Novo last night. I haven't heard from them, but I'm sure all is fine. I'm scheduled to leave on Monday with the rest of our team.

Table Mountain

2011-11-02T07:14:00.001+02:00

Yesterday was mostly clear, so Ian and I decided to go up Table Mountain. We left in the morning, and the cable car wasn't running because of wind at the top. Thus, we walk up. It was a beautiful trip, with lots of interesting plants and plenty of exercise. The cable car was running by the time we were ready to head down, but we decided to walk anyway. I'm stiff today, and it sure feels good to have gotten the exercise!

The fluvial sandstones making up the cliffs are impressive!

The top of Table Mountain is marsh with almost no soil. However, it is wet enough to support a low nitrogen community including the tiny carnivorous plant below.

And plants that don't need many roots.

Others grow where soil accumulates.

Sea Point Tidal Pools

2011-11-01T08:05:00.001+02:00

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time exploring. In addition to shopping for dried fruit and spices for Antarctica, I went to Sea Point and spent an hour exploring tidal pools. There are so many organisms that I don't know anything about!

Highrise apartments and hotels with the backdrop of mountains frame one side of the beach, with metamorphosed sandstones framing the ocean side.

Large swells lift kelp and are broken by the rocks at low tide. The rocks hold the water for the pools.

The orange is a sponge, the same color as chert veins in the sandstone. What are the deep red slime domes?

The large limpets, like the one above which is about 7 cm in diameter, host many other organisms, in this case mini green starfish.

Other, smaller limpets are iridescent, but other small ones host sea weed.

The purple ridge on this organism overlies a muscle that lifts the gas-filled bag of its body up out of the water, or relaxes to let it lie flat. It has scalloped tentacles, in mixed dark blue and turquoise. It must be related to jellyfish. The dried ones on the beach pop when you step on them.

Addition: Neil gave me their name (see comments): Physalia physalis or Portuguese man-of-war or bluebottle. They are colonial hydrozoan, which means that each "organism" is actually made up of many individuals that take on special roles in the colony. This is a form of "multicellularity" that we don't often consider. How do the individuals "decide" what role to play in the "organism"? It must be communicated through chemical signals, but without a controller. Their bodies strike me as a wonderful emergent pattern!

The base of this organism looks like a shell, which supports the translucent "sail". However, it might be just organics. Most of these mysterious organisms (mysterious because I'm ignorant as to what they are) were upright on rocks, like this one. A few were floating on the surface of the pools. How to they reorient themselves after the waves?

Addition: Neil gave me the name (see comments): Velella Velella or By-The-Wind Sailors. They are also colonial hydrozoans, with a different emergent pattern. Life is amazing.

Permian Beasts

2011-10-30T21:02:00.001+02:00

In honor of Halloween, I've decided to post my photos of Permian-aged fossils from the Karoo dressed up as real beasts. I love these creatures from the Iziko South Africa Museum.

The skin knobs on the cadaver are amazing. The vegetarian is a really sloppy eater, although I guess the carnivore is worse. The gore puts any haunted house I've seen to shame.

Why do the top two beasties have glassy, cat-like eyes, but the vegetarian has cloudy brown eyes? That difference can't be preserved in the fossils. The cadaver's eyes are out of sight, but his tongue is hanging out. He's dead.

Rain in Cape Town

2011-10-30T11:12:00.001+02:00

It's Sunday in Cape Town and raining. Table Mountain is socked in, and most museums are closed. Thus, I'm spending the day inside working. I've caught up on some back e-mails, worked on a form for recording observations of bacteria in the field, and am about to tackle a paper on microbial communities in Lake Vanda that needs some serious rewriting. It's a good use of time.

The view out my window toward Devil's Peak:

This was also a test of posting a blog via e-mail. It mostly worked. I had to change the position of the photo and add labels, but the technique will work for low band width from Antarctica! (I also added this paragraph.)

Lower Body Clothing

2011-10-30T06:23:00.000+02:00

Lower body clothing is essential for keeping your legs and feet warm, particularly when standing around dive tending. My innermost layers are Pategonia travel underwear, which are comfortable and easy to clean with little water (or alcohol cleaner). I’m brining two pairs of thin silk long underwear and 4 pairs of SmartWool mid-weight wool long underwear. I can wear the silk ones under the wool ones.

As a mid layer, I’m brining several choices. I have black pile pants, which I wasn’t very fond of the last two trips, a pair of pile ski pants with a grey wind proof shell, and a new pair of black Monte Blanc insulated pants. These new pants are lightweight, silky and warm. They have 3/4 length zippers. My dad bought them for me in size extra large, so they are too long, but they are soft and compressible enough that I can wear them under my Burton snowboarding pants, which I really like, or my bib overalls. I’m also brining my blue wind pants. This combination should keep my legs warm!

For my feet, I have 14 pairs of polyester socks and a bunch of wool socks. I got the wool socks on e-Bay and they came as individual socks that don’t quite match each other. I also have a nice pair of REI expedition weight wool socks, and Dale says that we have some clothing from Woolrich in a crate. That probably contains socks, too. Over my socks, I have an old pair of Sorel’s with two different weight liners. I really like those boots. My feet have plenty of room, and they stay warm!

Cape Town

2011-10-29T07:35:00.000+02:00

Ian, Dale, and I arrived in Cape Town within a few hours of each other yesterday morning. I was the last in at 11:30. I had enough bags to require two luggage carts. However, to move them you have to push down the handle. It turned out to be almost impossible to wheel both at the same time. Luckily, a generous security guard helped with the carts through customs. I had no problem getting through. I showed the agent my detailed packing lists and said it was equipment for work in Antarctica, and he waved me though.

Outside, Dale, Ian, and I consolidated the luggage onto 3 carts and went to wait outside for our ride from Oleg of ALCI (Antarctic Logistics Center International), the contractor who is providing our travel logistics. We were ready early, so had a bit of a wait. Once Oleg showed up, we went to the warehouse where most of our gear for heading south is being stored. We repacked some of the things we brought, and left much of our luggage there.

Making a list of all of our cargo... Dale, Raymond, and Ian

Ian’s two silver cases look like ones German groups always use, so they will be specially marked to make them clearly ours.

Only the wood crates with orange x’s are ours - as Ian put it, 6 coffins and a cube.

We also sorted through some food and came up with a list of things to buy. We will be eating mostly freeze dried food, provided at 52% retail cost by BackPacker's Pantry! However, we need some snack foods, drinks, etc. ALCI had purchased a bunch of instant soups, tea, coffee, oatmeal, nuts, chocolate bars, and pancake mix at Dale’s request. We’ll need to add powdered milk, dried fruit, crackers, and a bunch of other things.

We overlapped at ALCI with the Antarctic ICE team. They have a great adventure ahead while skiing and sailing to the south pole and back around, following the katabatic winds!

In town, we checked into the Cape Town Hollow Hotel, right off Long Street. I have a beautiful view from my room!

We spent the evening walking down long street, consuming a couple of beers and a burger for dinner. Then it was an early bedtime. I slept very well!

On My Way...

2011-10-27T19:19:00.000+02:00

I'm sitting in the Dubai International Airport with 5 hours until my flight boards.

I started the trip at home with 5 giant bags weighing about 45-50 pounds each, plus 2 carry-ons. I'm flying Air Emirates, and they let you pay for 3 extra bags up to 75 pounds each for much less than the cost of sending them air freight. Thus, I'm taking all my science equipment with me on the flights. I'll paste a list of the gear at the end of the blog.

Tyler picked me up at my house with his truck at noon. We drove to San Francisco International Airport, where I checked my bags and hung out for a couple of hours. We boarded and left San Francisco to the west, and I was struck yet again at how beautiful the California coast is. I had a beautiful view from Stimson Beach up into Point Reyes and Tomales Bay. I need to spend more time on the coast.

The flight to Dubai wasn't completely full, and Air Emirates deserves its good reputation. Dinner (curried prawns for me) was good. They then dimmed the lights in stages, with the lights reddish to simulate a sunset. The stars came out on the ceilings above the isles. It was dark outside by this time. I watched a movie and then decided to try to sleep. I managed to be half or fully asleep for about 8 hours! It got light out, but just for a couple of hours. Breakfast was served, and we landed after sunset in Dubai. Ahh, the joys of time travel...

So back to my scientific equipment. Here are the itemized lists for each of my science crates, which also include some of Ian's cold weather and diving gear:

Black Pelican Case ~45 lbs:
Leica Compound Microscope
Nikon Binocular Microscope (minus stand)
Eye Piece Digital Camera

Black Box 1 ~58 lbs:
In Cardboard Box:
TISF Fiber Optic Light Source
Prizmatix Light Source, Slim-LED 435
2 FIX LED 500 DX Underwater Lights
1 Nikon Camera Flash & Cord
2 Small Camera Tripods
Loose:
Bag of zip ties
1 Black PVC Pipe
1 Binocular Microscope Stand
1 Insulated Body Suit
2 Laser Pointers and Mounting Hardware
1 Underwater Laser Pointer
1 Dive Hood
1 Pair Dive Fins
1 Pair Dive Shoes
2 Pairs Dive Gloves
1 Fiber Optic Cable
1 10m Tape Measure
8 #10 Rubber Stoppers
20 Round Plastic Petri Dishes
9 Square Plastic Petri Dishes
3 Dozen Epindorf Tubes
4 m Webbing
2 Dozen Glass Pipettes
12 Survey Flags
1 Long Hose Clamp
1 Roll of Aluminum Foil
1 Wire Tether
5 Forceps

Black Box 2 ~44 lbs:
1 Camera Tripod
9 Plastic Trays
1 Small Sheet of Aluminum
1 Pile Sweater
5 Pairs of Socks
8 Pairs of Various Gloves
1 Diving Knife
1 Aluminum Coffee Pot
1 Tea Pot
1 Pile Blanket
1 Pair Diving Gloves
1 Camera and Underwater Housing
2 Long Underwear Tops
3 Long Underwear Bottoms
2 Spatulas
3 GoPro HeroCams
3 Extra GoPro Housings
1 Hat
1 ThermaRest ProLite Sleeping Pad
1 Pair Boot Liners
2 Pairs Insoles
2 Packages Baby Wipes

Blue Box
In Yellow Pelican Case:
Licor Light Meter & Accessories: Data Logger Model LI-1400
Underwater Housing for Licor Light Meter
Loose:
Small Tools (wrenches, pliers, etc.)
Misc. Hardware
36 Glass Sampling Jars for lipids
Micromanipulator and Mounting Parts
13 Rubber Stoppers #13.5
Misc. Computer Cables
Misc. Batteries
1 Pair Sorel Boots
Velcro
1 Retort Stand and Clamps
4 Net Bags
1 Partial Roll Duct Tape
2 Clipboards, Paper
2 Instruction Booklets
1 Notebook
2 Camera Battery Chargers
1 GoPro HeroCam

Blue Suitcase
Ian's Dry Suit
Miscellaneous Cold-weather Clothing
2 Sleeping Bags
3 Books
Misc. Toiletries
3 Aluminum Tripod Legs

Hats and Hoods

2011-10-24T07:22:00.000+02:00

In my "Upper Body Clothing" post, I forgot my head!

Hats and hoods are really important, and I have some great ones. My favorite hat is a SmartWool thin wool hat with stripes. It is warm, but I don't even feel it on my head. I can pull it down over my eyes while I sleep to make it dark, and it doesn't squish my nose.

The rest of my hats are mostly extras. The soft red Mountain Hardware fleece hat is nice, but just doesn't compete with my wool one. I'll take two billed hats, but I tend not to wear them. I prefer to see the sky. The off-white one is from John Abelson's birthday party a few years ago. I'll try to remember to take a self portrait of me wearing it to send to him. He's one of the discoverers of the first HIV antiretroviral drugs and an amazing scientist.

I will wear my blue neck gator almost all day every day, switching occassionally to my scarf. When it's really cold, I'll wear my dad's Helly Hanson, custom modified hood. I'll take the wind-proof balyclava on the left, but I doubt I'll wear it.

I bought a new pair of Julbo sunglasses, since I broke my pair last year. I bought the polychromatic Nomads. It's taken me a while to adjust them to my face, but now they float on my nose, so I'll be comfortably wearing them all day every day - the joys of wind and UV! I'll also take the same Smiths that I've had for years as back ups. I've decided to go without goggles. I rarely wore the ones issued by NSF, they are expensive, and if I have to be out in weather than needs them, I think I can make due with deep hoods. The times I did like them in the last two years was for loading helos. They kept the sand out of my eyes. But this year, we'll have truck transport rather than helo transport.

Upper Body Clothing for Lake Untersee

2011-10-24T02:06:00.000+02:00

I've been frantically packing for Lake Untersee. I got most of the science equipment together a week ago, and I'll write about that soon. Today, I finished pulling my clothing together. This trip, we have to bring all of our own clothing, so I'll provide a detailed list and my motivations. This blog will focus on my upper body, and we'll move down with future posts.

My past experience has shown that I like wearing bikini tops or Patagonia sports tops more than bras, so I'm bringing two of the first and three of the second. These provide some extra insulation for the most cold-sensitive part of my body.

On top of these, silk or wool long underwear will be great. This year, I'm taking one very thin silk top, two lightweight Icebreaker wool tops with baseball shirt type sleeves, and two mid-weight SmartWool tops with collars and short zippers. With this combination, I can wear up to three tops at once going from silk to lightweight to midweight. The shoulder construction of the Icebreakers and SmartWool tops keeps the fabric from bunching up in my armpit and gives me a good range of arm motion. That is why I initially chose these two models, and I was very pleased with them last year.

I have several options of what to wear over these base layers. I was at REI this morning and saw a Mountain Hardware hoodie with a great hood design: the two sides overlap in front, keeping the neck well insulated. It's the hood that sold me on it. It is made of a very thin fabric (with a light blue swath), so it probably should count as a base layer, but it's new, so I don't know how I'll end up using it. I'm also taking my fleece hoodie and a jacket-type one (light green).

My absolute favorite new purchase is a Patagonia NanoPuff in bright orange. It is lightweight, very warm, and silky. It can layer under or over almost anything. The sleeves are plenty long for me to tuck my hands into. It will be fun to see how it works in Antarctica.

I'm taking an old friend as an outer layer, my dad's orange wind shirt with an insulated hood. I had to come up with my own warm outer layers this year, since they won't be provided by the National Science Foundation. Last spring, I found an end-of-season sale on a The North Face Destiny down coat (brown and I sure paid a lot less than the list price!). It is long and warm. Again, it was the hood that sold me on it. It is deep and has a small stiff bill. I can adjust it to close down around my face or to provide good visibility. It also has good cuffs, so I think it will bring me lots of warmth.

I didn't find an anorak that I liked, so my dad suggested I take his Excalibur indestructible megacoat that my brother bought him in Alaska years ago. It is insulated with down. The outer shell is a very robust woven material that will resist abrasion, unlike my down coat. It has a fur ruff around the hood. The sleeves are so long, it's hard to get my hands out the ends of them, but if I have to stand around out in the cold, this is what I'll want to be wearing.

I looked briefly on the web to see if I could track down some information on the Excalibur. I didn't find the manufacturer, but I did find another blog that describes the use of Excalibur parkas in Alaska:

"When I wear mine, I feel like I’m about 5 feet in diameter; I hate going into shops wearing it, as I feel like I’ll sweep items off the shelves on both sides of the aisle! Nonetheless, the garment’s warmth makes it worthwhile in extreme conditions. The snorkel hood can be zipped almost completely closed. The pockets carry so much gear, I make some crossings without a backpack, a practice almost unheard of in our neighborhood. They’re not waterproof, but highly water resistant."

These are clearly the same coats. They don't know where they come from either. We've added some copper wire to the opening of my hood so I can shape it however I want.

With these clothing options, I have confidence that I'll be warm at Lake Untersee!

A Tripod for Ian

2011-09-19T08:33:00.000+02:00

My colleague and friend, Ian Hawes, can spend half an hour diving in 0.5°C water patiently moving a mini-electrode into a microbial mat with a micromanipulator. (He prefers 3°C water or maybe even 20°C water.) However, there are times when his patience is pushed beyond the limits, for example when the geometry of the micromanipulator (attached to a stake pounded into the lake floor) doesn't let him position the electrode properly. After the last field season in Antarctica, when he couldn't measure O2 gradients in the vertically-oriented microbial webs we found, we talked about designing a tripod that would give him more flexibility with the micromanipulator geometry. I've been working on that tripod.

The idea is to have a light-weight tripod that can be placed over an area of interest and to be able to move the (attached) manipulator to measure the O2 concentrations and pH in mat oriented from horizontal to vertical. I'm part way there with my design, particularly after a very useful discussion with Art at the Martinez Home Depot. I used two sizes of C-channel aluminum, a larger one for the tripod and a smaller one attached to the micromanipulator. I filed a flat spot on the outside of a C-clamp, drilled a hole in it, and bolted it to a short section of the smaller C-channel aluminum.

With the attached C-clamp, I can put the smaller C-channel aluminum piece inside the larger one and hold it securely. It can't come off unless you open the C-clamp very wide. Ian will be able to loosen the clamp slightly and then use the clamp as a handle to move the manipulator up and down along a tripod leg.

The weight of the manipulator pulls in such a way that it will not slide down the leg on its own even if the clamp is loosened. However, it is fairly easy to intentionally move up or down by holding the C-clamp (at least on my deck - I hope the same is true under water!). This gives an overall system that is stable and can be manipulated quite a bit.

However, I have two concerns with the current design. First, when it is folded up, the two legs without the manipulator are still quite far apart.

I'm not entire sure that it will be easy for a diver to get the tripod through a hole in the ice. But I like this design because the tripod is very easy to set up since you only have to rotate the leg with the manipulator away from the other two legs to get a very stable geometry. I've sent Ian an e-mail asking if the folded geometry will be reasonable, but he's in the Solomon Islands and has limited e-mail access now. If it isn't acceptable, I'll have to come up with a different way to attache the C-channel pieces at the apex of the tripod.

The second issue is that the manipulator can't actually access the full angular range we want. We can get horizontal to about 30° and 70° to vertical (actually overhanging). I tried adding another C-channel piece that lets the manipulator hang from the tripod with its base plate vertically oriented. This provides access to the full range of mat angles we are interested in. However, this solution proved to have a high frequency resonance. Any bump to the tripod leads to the manipulator shaking horizontally for a very long time. I don't know whether or not this motion would be damped out under water. I do know that if it wasn't, it could break an electrode in a mat.

I think the basic problem with the vertically hanging design is that the manipulator weighs a couple of pounds, and it hangs from a C-channel piece that has some rotational flexibility. The energy from motion of the manipulator gets temporarily stored by torquing the C-channel tripod leg, and then it is transferred back to motion of the manipulator in the other direction, etc., etc., which leads to the "deadly" horizontal motion. I'm not sure how to avoid this problem... I'll have to think about it, and suggestions are welcome. In the mean time, we have something that is better than a stake, but not yet what we want.

I also plan to put discs on the bottoms of the legs to help their stability when they are placed on mat under water rather than on my deck.

Planning for Lake Untersee

2011-09-01T07:53:00.000+02:00

Dale Andersen, Ian Hawes, Chris McKay, Asim Bej, Valery Galchenko, Vladirmir Akimov, and I will be heading to Lake Untersee, Antarctica under the auspices of the Russian Antarctic Program in November this year. Our expedition is being funded through the Field Museum, Chicago, from private donations! I'll provide details when I have a complete list from Dale, who has managed to raise enough money and in-kind support to make this expedition possible.

As I start to plan for the trip, I realize how luxurious our trips with the National Science Foundation have been. They provide good food, lots of help with equipment, warm clothing, and lots of logistics. This time, we have to bring all our own food and field equipment, including warm clothes. We'll be eating a lot of freeze dried food rather than "home cooked" meals from regular groceries. I'll also be doing an new clothing inventory since I won't have the great layers from NSF. I bought a mid-weight down coat with a good hood on sale this past spring and I just added a Patagonia Nano Puff pullover as a warm, light weight mid-layer. I'm still looking for good mid-layer pants (I wish there were some made of the Nano Puff materials!) and a parka with a good hood.

The adventure is starting again...

First Paper on Lake Joyce

2011-08-31T06:31:00.000+02:00

Our first paper on Lake Joyce is now online in Geobiology. In it, we focus on evidence for a 7 meter rise in lake level in the past 40 years and the responses of the microbial communities to that environmental change. It's exciting to have it out!

Paper on Lake Untersee Stromatolites

2011-04-23T09:23:00.000+02:00

Dale Andersen, Ian Hawes, Jenny Webster-Brown, Chris McKay, and I just published a paper on large conical stromatolites in Lake Untersee, Antarctica. It's on the opposite side of Antarctica from McMurdo, and I haven't been there. However, Dale and Ian discovered these cool stromatolites, and I helped put them into the context of some of the most ancient stromatolites on Earth. Here are links to two news stories, plus the paper (which is open access):

Science News article
Astrobiology.com article

Science paper in Geobiology Journal

Back and Busy...

2011-03-02T06:49:00.000+02:00

Well, I haven't written since we lost internet service at Lake Joyce, way back in November. Since then, we went to Lake Vanda, some went to Lake Hoare, we returned to McMurdo and New Zealand at different times, and all of us are back to our "regular" lives. I've been teaching a lot.

On Monday, I did give a video conference seminar for the NASA Astrobiology Institute on our research results from our Antarctic field work. The NAI is a virtual institute with members all over the US and affiliates all over the world. Thus, the video conference format. They also record the speaker's slides and voice and post them for streaming. If you'd like to hear what I had to say, check out: http://astrobiology.nasa.gov/nai/seminars/detail/189

If you'd like to read some great posts on our field work, check out Tyler's blog at: http://cyanobacterialadventures.blogspot.com/

The Worst Journey in the World

2010-11-02T05:02:00.000+02:00

(Written Nov 2, posted Nov 7)

When I visited my dad this summer, our friend, Fred Dunham, loaned me his copy of the book “The Worst Journey in the World” by Apsley Cherry-Garrard. It is record of Scott’s second (and final) expedition to Antarctica, and “Cherry” was on the trip. This is supposed to be one of the best books about the science investigations and trip to the South Pole ever written, and it is excellent. (I can’t say that it’s the best since it’s the only one I’ve even started reading.) I’m up to Chapter 6 “The First Winter”.

In the first late summer to early fall that the expedition was in Antarctica, Cherry, Scott, and others were caught at Hut Point, and they stayed in Discovery Hut, which I described in an earlier post. Interestingly, I thought that they must have been miserable - cold, short of food, etc. Cherry says that they were cold and short of food. However, he loved his time there; it provided some of his fondest memories of the expedition. They had plenty of time to sleep and explore the area, whereas for the previous weeks, they had been pulling heavy sledges, working with ponies and dogs who were pulling sledges, or rescuing the ponies, dogs, and each other. Cherry also extensively quotes a letter written by Bowers, another expedition member, to his mother. In this letter, Bowers states that this time at Discovery Hut provided everything he could want. The companionship was excellent, life was simple, with only the bare minimum. There were plenty of seals for food, blubber to burn, and skins to repair boots. It was a lot of work to kill and butcher the seals, but they provided what the men needed. This bare minimum showed how little the conveniences of a more comfortable existence mattered. When some of the party made it to the winter quarters at Cape Evans (traveling on very thin, unstable sea ice) and then back with supplies, those who had been at Discovery Hut that Cherry quotes all felt a great loss. In fact, those who did not go to Cape Evans wanted to limit their consumption of the new supplies, fearing that the newcomers who had not learned the ways of Discovery Hut would want to eat all the luxuries at once.

We have luxury. Tyler just called in our first food resupply. We’re out of things like crackers, butter, and bread, but we will get them within the week. If the weather in McMurdo is bad, the helicopters won’t fly, and it could be a few days. However, we have enough calories to keep going for more than a month.

Perception of comfort depends so much on past experience, expectations, and adaptability.

Week 2

2010-11-01T03:10:00.000+02:00

(Written Nov 1, posted Nov 5)

The weather has still been warm, with only a few days with substantial wind. Last night had the strongest winds. For the previous couple of days, we had some internet access, but I didn’t take advantage of it. I was planning to do so today, but the wind seems to have misaligned one of the repeaters or there is another problem, and we don’t have access today.

All has been going well in camp. Dale, Ian, and Tyler are diving regularly, collecting samples, taking photos and video, measuring light levels, measuring O2 levels, etc. Alfonso has been taking ice cores as well as studying the photosynthetic behavior of bacteria growing in and under rocks. Stephen has been helping with the diving and coring as well as maintaining a time lapse photo system and two meteorology stations. I’ve focused mostly on trying to understand microbialites by dissecting them. Small pinnacles from 8.5 m water depth were first submerged by water in the early 1990’s. They show a period of colonization, followed by regular laminae that are probably annual. After 5-8 laminae, depending on how you count them, there is a layer with lots of very fine sediment (rock flour), fluffy organics with only very rough laminations, and then two well defined layers. Right now, we are interpreting the change from annual laminae to roughly laminated mat as correlating to a period of rapid lake level rise in 2003. We are also trying to come up with ways to either prove or disprove this hypothesis. So far, all the data are consistent with a big change in mat texture with lake level rise.

Camp is much like it was last year in some ways. The cook tent is similar, but we have two more small tables in it than we did last year. They make it much easier to cook and wash dishes. The electronics/science tent at the main camp is much less busy, at least until Wayne gets here. It is thus a nice place to sit and work, or write a blog, which I’m doing now. The scott tent for the toilet is identical. Our individual mountain tents are by Sierra Designs, and they withstand the wind nicely. On the ice, the dive tent is oriented so that the door is pointing west, so the wind off the Taylor glacier doesn’t blow directly into it. It has a wood frame inside this year, which the dive gear hangs from. That makes the tent much more stable. The science tent also has more tables in it this year, so it is also easier to work in. We also brought less stuff, so things are less crowded. However, it is very busy with at least two of us working in it almost all day every day. We have to take turns. This year, I brought my own microscopes rather than using those provided by NSF. They are much better, which means that we want to spend more time using them. It has been very useful.

One difference for me this year is that I’ve spend much less time exploring Pearse Valley. The combination of having good samples right away and being familiar with the area have led to my not making walks a high priority. However, after two weeks, I’m feeling a bit of the strain of living with 5 other people. I’m usually only alone when I’m in my tent reading or sleeping. I need more time by myself than that. Walks are a good way to make that time.

Lake Joyce!

2010-10-23T05:00:00.000+02:00

(Written Oct 23)

I’ve been at Lake Joyce for a week now. We’ve set up all our tents and melted a dive hole. The science gear is unpacked and being used on the first samples! All had gone very smoothly, and we are way ahead of schedule. And the mats are recovering and precipitating calcite! Here’s an abbreviated description of week 1:

Steve and I arrived into camp last on Saturday, and the weather was beautiful - bright sun and no wind. It was warm! Megan (from the BFC) had already set up my tent, so I just had to move in. The cook tent, the toilet tent, and the land-based science tent were also already up. Everything looked great. Over the next two days, Megan and Leah (BFC) assembled the floors for the tents we put on it ice, one for dive gear and one for science. They put up the tents with a bit of help from us. The rest of us sorted gear out and got things organized. Evenings were lots of fun with Megan and Leah and always included lots of laughter. They flew back to McMurdo on Tuesday. The weather was beautiful the whole time.

On Sunday, we started melting the dive hole. To do so, we pump heated antifreeze through a coil that is placed on the ice. We pump the melted water out of the hole. We ran the system 24 hour per day for about 2 days before the lake water started seeping into the hole. Once it started, the hole filled in 10 minutes, so there wasn’t any time to climb down into it this year. The ice is much thinner for this hole - only slightly more than 4 meters versus the slightly more than 5 meters we had last year. That meant we didn’t stop soon enough to be able to sample the ice, etc. Once the hole is filled, with water, it can take a long time to melt through the last bit of ice because all the heat tends to go up into the water rather than down into the ice. The hole was through by the end of Tuesday; it was very nice to have the dive hole ready so quickly.

We didn’t have all the necessary gear for diving on Wednesday, so we spent that day getting organized and working on miscellaneous things. Tyler and I got his underwater stereo video cameras going and lowered them into the dive hole. Here are some cool images:
<network connection too slow>

Thursday was our fist dive day. Ian went in first to put caps on the sediment traps that we left in the lake last year. That has to be the first thing to do so that the divers don’t actually disturb them and add more sediment. We need to know how much sediment falls out of suspension in the lake water to understand how much the mats get buried and how they respond to sediment. He brought up three of the six bottles, and Dale brought up the other three on his dive. He also looked around and saw that the deep water microbialites that we sampled a lot last year have active growth on their tops, which is a big improvement over last year. On Friday, Dale collected two samples in core tubes. One got a bit disrupted, but the second sample came up beautifully. Ian took down the diving PAM fluorimeter, which measures the activity of photosynthesis on the mats. He found that the mats at about 13 meters depth are much more photosynthetically active than they were last year. The signal was much weaker on the tops of the deep water microbialites. Ian collected some pinnacle mats from 13 m water depth.

It was great to have samples. The 13 m pinnacles are very photosynthetically active, so we imaged them using the imaging PAM fluorometer, which give the distribution of photosynthetic activity on the structures. We also looked at the various bacteria under the microscopes. We found two different sizes of leptolyngbia, one probably phormidium species, and one pseudanabaena. There are also several types of diatoms, but they aren’t very abundant in this sample. All of these organisms are photosynthetic and they have lots of pigments showing that they are active. The proportions of the different species varies with position on the pinnacles, which shows that they are taking advantage of different ecological niches.

In addition to having interesting species distributions, the pinnacles show lots of evidence for calcium carbonate mineral precipitation associated with the microbial mats. There are tiny flecks of CaCO3 almost everywhere and there are a few larger crystals with good crystal faces. I am quite sure that we’ll find that the photosynthetic activity of the mats is influencing the isotopic composition of the CaCO3. This will be a very exciting result.

The deeper cores that Dale collected also have varying microbial communities on different parts. We looked at the one that got disrupted during sampling. It contains lots of diatoms on the top, as well as abundant leptolyngbia of the slightly larger size. I also looked at two pinkish stripes that ran up the side of the structure. They also contain abundant leptolyngbia and diatoms, but the diatom species vary as do the filament diameter. I think that the communities vary even on similar-looking structures on the microbialites. However, because there are many fewer living cells in general, this variation might be due to chance colonization effects rather than stable ecological differences. I think that we’ll need to look at several samples to see which is the case. If they all have the same species at the peaks, that distribution probably represents a stable ecological difference, whereas if they are all different, it’s more likely to be a chance colonization effect.

Today (Saturday) was a less successful dive day. Dale decided he is too congested to dive. Ian started a dive, but had too much trouble clearing his ears. Thus, he came back up. This afternoon, Tyler did his first dive. He was over weighted and had trouble with buoyancy. That, combined with too much water in his mask made his dive short as well. At least we have several good samples to work on and the mats are growing well. We’ll have lots of time to work on them over the next several weeks!

And we're off...

2010-10-15T22:31:00.000+02:00

All our cargo is down at Helo, I have 3 loaves of fresh bread, and all our personal gear is packed. Tyler and Leah (from the BFC) fly out at 11:15, and Steve and I fly out at 11:35, more or less. Thus, this is my last post for some time. If we get internet, I’ll be back. If not, I’ll send some posts out on CD with helo pilots that will be passed on to someone at the BFC who will e-mail files to my dad who will post them... Don’t hold your breath!

The moon

2010-10-15T22:03:00.000+02:00

Last year, I didn’t notice the moon at all. In the last week, I’ve watched the moon go from a thin crescent to a fat half moon. It follows the sun around the sky, making a circle around me. Each day it is lower in the sky. I presume it sets farther north than the sun and rises farther north as well, although I haven’t been up to see either the moon set or the moon rise. Each day, it should be in the sky for less time. As it gets close to full, it should be below the horizon all day since it will be on the opposite side of the earth from the sun, and the sun will be up all day.

The moon is always beautiful.

Our last sunset is Oct. 23.

Bakers

2010-10-15T02:32:00.000+02:00

The baked goods at McMurdo are excellent. There is freshly baked bread of various types. (Pumpernickel is my favorite so far, although the rye last night was particularly good, too.) The cakes and pies are delicious. (Hazelnut pear tarts are excellent.) Scones are tasty any time of day. And Wednesday is cookie day! I think there were a dozen different types. The leftovers appear the next day, but they don’t last too long. I wonder how many dozens of cookies are made for Wednesdays.

One of the advantages of having given a popular science lecture is that people appreciate it, including Jenna the baker. I ran into her in the hall, and she wanted to know where Lake Joyce was since it isn’t labeled on most maps. I showed her and her friend. Jenna then offered to join us at camp to bake for us. We can’t take her up on that, but I did find out how to request fresh bread before heading out into the field. I arranged for three loaves, which I’ll pick up tomorrow morning before flying out. It won’t last long, but we will really appreciate it!

Cargo Again!

2010-10-14T08:43:00.000+02:00

At dinner, I sat next to Barry, the helo pilot who flew Dale, Megan, and Rebekah into Lake Joyce this morning. He said they got in fine, but when he tried to fly in a sling load of 100 lb propane tanks, he couldn’t make it. A katabatic wind was blowing off the Taylor Glacier down Taylor Valley so strongly that he started dropping every time he tried to fly over the toe of the glacier. The sling load was heavy and caught too much wind. When Barry lost too much lift, he turned back down the valley over Lake Bonney, stabilized the load, and tried again. Twice. "Three strikes and you’re out," so he took the propane back to Marble Point.

This is a satellite view of the area. Taylor Valley is the brown (dry) valley a bit left of the middle of the image. Barry was flying from Marble Point, to the north, down the valley to get to our camp. The winds were (are?) blowing very strongly off the ice cap to the south and down the valleys over the Taylor and Ferrar glaciers (winds represented by the black arrows). These winds blow downhill (the definition of katabatic wind) because the air over the ice cap is extremely cold, which makes it dense. The air over the sea ice (under the words "Marble Point" in the photo) is much less cold and less dense, but it is at a lower elevation. Thus, the ice cap air sinks under the sea ice air, creating very strong winds between the ice cap and the ocean - and down Taylor Valley.

I circled the area Barry couldn’t get past. There is a big jump in topography from the floor of Taylor Valley (and Lake Bonney) to the top of the glacier. The winds are also funneled through this narrow part of the valley. Geography and temperature differences make this a challenging place to fly. When we broke camp last year, I flew out with Barry, and we were going sideways from camp over the first part of Taylor Glacier when we had to cross the winds. The helo pilots decided to wait to take out the sling loads then, although the passengers all got out fine.

At any rate, the winds kept helos from flying in sling loads to Lake Joyce, so they don't have a lot of propane. However, Ian and Alfonso got in fine with the extra camp gear, and Barry did manage to fly in a load of internal cargo. Unfortunately, that was cargo that goes down on the lake where we’ll melt the dive hole, and it isn’t too useful for setting up the main camp. A few minutes ago, the helo techs were loading a helo with some of our remaining cargo and the white boxes with camping gear and food are ready to sling. I can watch this from the Crary library where I'm writing this blog entry. However, I haven’t seen any activity in the last half hour or so, which suggests that they won't be flying it out tonight. I saw an extra 40 lb propane tank with the cargo, so I suspect they try to get that out first thing tomorrow. We'll see!

+++++
UPDATE: H08 took off to Lake Joyce with internal cargo and the white boxes at about 8 pm.

Mt. Discovery in the background.

Cargo boxes

2010-10-14T05:48:00.000+02:00

Here are the white boxes full of science gear, waiting for a lift down to the helo pad:

And boxes and bags of science gear in our lab waiting for us to haul them down to helo tomorrow:

Cargo

2010-10-14T00:35:00.000+02:00

Dale took off to the field with two people from the BFC this morning. Megan and Rebekah (BFC folks) will help put up the initial camp. Ian and Alfonso will fly out this afternoon. Tyler, Steve and I will take care of the rest of the cargo and fly out with Leah (BFC) on Saturday.

The cargo can be hauled to our camp inside the helicopter or as sling loads that hang below the heliocopter. We have a mix of both types of loads. For the camping and science gear, we loaded four white plastic cargo boxes with gear and the helo will take two boxes per sling load. Fuel, such as 100 lb. propane tanks, are strapped together and act as sling loads as well. Smaller boxes and items, such as pelican cases, cardboard boxes, shovels, people, etc. are placed inside the helos. It takes a lot of organizing and guesswork to plan the helo flights. Passengers can’t fly insight the helicopters when they are carrying a sling load, but cargo can also go inside. The maximum weight that the helos can carry varies with the weather. Also, they have to balance the weight of fuel versus the distance flown versus the cargo weight. At our end, we supply lists of cargo weights and priorities for the cargo. Then Jessy (BFC) works with Suzie (Helo Operations) to figure out the flight schedules. I’ve included today’s helo schedule below.

Here is a list of camping and science cargo (not quite complete) to give you an idea of what’s involved:

Large White Cargo Box filled with camping gear: 520 lbs
Large White Cargo Box filled with food: 500 lbs
Large White Cargo Box filled with science gear: 490 lbs
Large White Cargo Box filled with science gear: 380 lbs

The following tables show the item, followed by the weight in pounds.

Flight 2:

Rebekah Davis	150
Meghan Walker	135
Dale Andersen	200
Rebekah Davis' sleepkit/personal	75
Meghan Walker's' sleepkit/personal	75
Dale Andersen's sleepkit/personal	100
Box A (cooler of survival gear)	40
Box B (cooler of survival gear)	65
Box C (food)	60
3x Freeze Dried Food	11
Mr. Buddy propane heater	15
Kero heater	28
Propane stove	8
Toilet	11
U-jug	5
Fire extinguisher	8
2 water jugs	90
1st aid kit	10
40# propane tank	60
2 jerries of kero	80
Kitchen box	39
Tent stakes	30
Arctic Oven	100
Endurance	90
Slede hammer	10
Flight 2 Total	1495

Flight 5:

	Solar panel	12
	Solar Charger	4
	black coms bag	14
	UHF	50
3	LPG Heaters	57
	Brown Box	32
	White cardboard box	47
	Dustbin assembly	88
6	Jerry cans	30
1	water jug	45
2	shovels	12
4	iceaxe	40
18	waste buckets	35
	Box bucket lids	15
6	Chairs	48
4	Tables	96
	Dale's extra gear	200
	Alfonso Davila	200
	Alfonso's personal/sleepkit	100
	Ian Hawes	200
	Ian's personal/sleepkit	100
	Flight 5 Total	1425

Internal Science Cargo for Saturday
Bk Pelican	52
Bk Pelican	45
Green Bag	27
Yellow Bag	30
Black Bag	50
Blue Hatch Case	25
Gray Pelican	57
Red Bag	27
Bk Pelican	26
Bk Pelican	75
Box, yellow lid	93
Bk Pelican	84
Bk Pelican	55
Blue Box	26
Cardboard Box	26
Cardboard Box	37
White Box	20
2x pipes	30
4x Chipper Bars	40
Grill	12
Sled	36
4x Jerry Cans	20
6x Chairs	48
Spill Kit	20

total	961

Helo Schedule for Thursday: Helo_10_14.pdf
We are event G-441 and Alfonso is B-302, so those are the flights to look for.

Diving at Evans Wall

2010-10-13T02:45:00.000+02:00

Yesterday, four of us went out with Rob and Steve from the Dive Locker to drill a dive hole near the Evans Wall. We rode out in a Piston Bully, which is medium on the comfort scale and high on the noise scale. Ear plugs are nice; conversation is impossible.

Evans wall is a steep volcanic area, and the dive hole goes at the boundary between the wall and a glacier:

This is Rob’s favorite diving spot in the world.

Putting a dive hole in the sea ice near McMurdo is much easier than it is at Lake Joyce. A tractor/grader pulls out a drill rig that uses a 4’ diameter drill bit. It drilled through the 6’ of sea ice in minutes.

The grader then cleans off the hole and positions the dive hut (which it also pulled out to the site).

Dale, Tyler, Rob, and Steve all dove twice and enjoyed it immensely.

The other Steve and I dive tended and enjoyed the view. (The dive tending consisted of helping the divers out of the water with their gear. We had a lot of time to enjoy the view!)

Discovery Hut & Scott's Hut

2010-10-12T09:54:00.000+02:00

Yesterday and today, we had great opportunities to see relicts of Scott’s 1910-1913 expedition to the South Pole. Yesterday, Cheryl (who works in the Crary Lab and went to sea with Z a few years ago) gave us a tour of the inside of Discovery Hut. Discovery Hut is very close to the McMurdo base. It was a staging area for preparing food caches, but was not intended to be occupied. It was not well designed for the cold climate in that it has one large room with a very high ceiling. A group of people from Scott’s expedition did get caught there for five months, and they screened off an area with the blubber stove with blankets to keep a bit warmer. It would have been miserable.

Discovery Hut was built in a pass with a good view across the sound (on a clear day). Today, we could barely even see the C-17 on the ice runway. It is one of the grey smudges just left of the hill with the cross on it.

The design of the hut is not ideal for keeping warm, with its high roof. It was prefabricated, and Cheryl said it was modeled after buildings designed in Australia to stay cool in the heat of the outback. One wonders at the thought process behind such an impractical design.

On entering the hut with our trained guide (Cheryl), we first clean our feet. Alfonso and Dale are leading the way.

The hut is poorly sealed now (and may always has been). The pile in the foreground consists of whale parts dusted in snow. Bones and blubber could be identified with imagination. Cheryl is standing near some boxed supplies.

The clothing Scott’s team wore were mostly made of canvas, although there are three fur mittens(?) in the foreground of this photo. Ahmundsen’s team, which beat Scott’s expedition to the south pole by a month, wore mostly fur clothing. Ahmundsen had a lot of experience in the high arctic of North America and learned a great deal from the native peoples about thriving in the cold. Fur is better than canvas. Soft wool, down, and pile are excellent, too!

Seal and whale blubber was both a fuel and food. Here is a piece of marine mammal dripping black fat. Things decay slowly in the cold, but they do decay...

The stove burned blubber for warmth and to cook food. There is completely unidentifiable food in the middle pan. The walls seen here are blankets that were hung under a lower part of the ceiling, I’m guessing in an attempt to keep more heat in.

Seal parts to eat, burn, and wrap up in...

There were also crates that contained imported food, including biscuits for people and dogs, hot chocolate, and pemican. These were probably luxuries once supplies started running low. I think the men that got caught at Discovery Hut were coming to pick up supplies to take back to the rest of the men at Scott’s Hut. It was a tough life!

+++++

Today, we went to the Evans wall, south of Cape Evans and north of McMurdo, for Dale and Tyler to dive with Rob and Steve. I’ll write another post about that. After the diving, we went north to Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans and looked around outside. This was were most of the expedition overwintered. It is surrounded by snow drifts and has lots more evidence of human habitation, such as old weather stations, crates, etc. The hut isn’t open for tours as of now, so we didn’t get to go in. My overwhelming impression is how different my visit is to Scott’s team’s life here. We drove up in a heated Piston Bully and returned to our research lab with plenty of time for a larger dinner than I should have eaten. I stayed warm all day.

Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans with Mt. Erebus in the background.

Scott’s team lost a lot of supplies when a ship broke free from this anchor in a storm.

I suspect that most of the men surviving the winter here appreciated the beauty of light and snow at first, but may have cursed it later. At what point in a difficult adventure does aesthetic pleasure become lost? Is it possible to appreciate the beauty of your enemy?

Men did die.

And from their memorial, I can see our ride home to McMurdo against the backdrop of shining snow and ice.

Atmospheric Balloons

2010-10-08T08:06:00.000+02:00

Yesterday afternoon, I had a very pleasant surprise. On my way back to the lab from my second phase of light-vehicle-driving-in-McMurdo training, I ran into Alfonso and his roommate Charlie. Charlie is from the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) and is working with a French team on characterizing various atmospheric parameters over Antarctica. They have been here for months launching balloons that take instruments up into the stratosphere to do things like characterize ozone reactions, calibrate radiation properties of the Antarctic atmosphere, etc. They were launching their 12th balloon in yesterday’s calm afternoon. It was fascinating and beautiful. I took some video:

Today has been a mix of MacOps coordination, snow school refresher training, how to build sling loads for helicopters, coordinating flights and gear, marking things off the lab supply checklist, looking for items we need ASAP and don’t know where they are, etc. In other words, a normal day for the beginning of a field season in Antarctica!

Back to McMurdo!

2010-10-08T01:38:00.000+02:00

The flight south was uneventful. There were only 27 passengers and lots of cargo. Most of us had sling seats on the side of the aircraft. We stared at cargo, including the box containing Hal, our underwater lander that manipulates microelectrodes. Dale said that there was a bit of time when conditions looked too bad for us to land. However, we did arrive yesterday to blustery winds. It wasn’t too bad walking from the C-17 to the Terra Bus, but I felt bad for the workers on the ground moving stuff around:

The small grey hunched-over smudges are people fighting the wind. I know there is at least one person, two I think, to the right and farther back from the red frames on the left. I can’t really pick them out.

Meanwhile, we were cozy on the bus.

After our briefing, we got our room keys, linens, and luggage. We’re all in dorm 203c, which has double rooms with bathrooms down the hall. I don’t have a roommate yet, but the others do. We unpacked things in the Crary Lab. Steve and Tyler have Happy Camper right away, so I took them up to the BFC to get good sleeping bags (Snowy Owls from Feathered Friends again) and ThermaRests. Thus, I met many of my old friends as well as some new ones. I also enjoyed the sunset again, one of the last I’ll see for some time!

24 Hour Delay

2010-10-05T22:26:00.000+02:00

I woke early this morning to make the 6:30 check in time, but there was a little note under my door: a 3 hour delay, so I went back to bed. Then at about 8, the phone rang: a 24 hour delay. Dale said he was over at the USAP when the call came through that McMurdo was in condition 1: Sustained winds greater than 55 knots (63 mph or 102 km/hr), or wind chill temperatures less than -100°F (-73°C), or visibility less than 100 ft (30 m). Based on the McMurdo web cam, visibility was definitely less than 30 m. Dale says the same was true for the Scott Base web cams earlier this morning. (Scott Base is the New Zealand base that is just over the hill from the US McMurdo base.)

It still looks like condition 1 in the McMurdo web cam, but it has cleared up some on the Scott Base cam. Here is the current Scott Base web cam image not showing White Island in the distance, but you can see the wind turbine.

I’ll use today to finish up all that work I still have to do.

UPDATE @ 11:35 am NZ time:

I'm glad we're not trying to land in this!

Last Day in Christchurch (I hope!)

2010-10-05T05:55:00.000+02:00

Here is my plan for today from yesterday:

1) Try to sleep in until 7 am (11 am Pacific Daylight Time).
Not too far off. The 6:30 am earthquake woke me up.

2) Work on spill over items from my normal job that need to get done as soon as possible.
Made some progress

3) Ian will drop off his gear at 8:30.
Yep, and we sat with the rest of the team for a while.

4) Ride into town with Ian and get coffee and breakfast.
&Ian dropped me off before the bookstores opened, so I had a cappuccino and french toast with caramelized bananas and bacon. Yum!

5) Buy some used books to take with me.
I ended up with The Denniston Rose by Jenny Pattrick on recommendation from the woman who owns Liberty Books. She also told me where Smith’s Book Shop moved. The previous location is not in such good shape, thanks to the earthquake:

Luckily, Smith’s Book Shop had moved out of the building in April because it needed to be seismically retrofitted! It’s too bad they didn’t do it a year earlier. At Smith’s, I bought The Windeater by Keri Hulme and The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende. I now have an excellent selection of books!

6) Buy a good kettle to heat water with.
Ian and I failed at this. We found one that was too small. Ian was going to look again later, but didn't find a suitable one.

7) Maybe buy some good scotch.
&Yep. And tasted too much at the shop for a late morning. I bought some Old Pulteney, which is somewhat different from the others I have. We’ll see how it does in the field.

8) Maybe have lunch with Jenny, a friend of Ian’s who I met briefly last year. She did some nice geochemical modeling for a paper we wrote about another Antarctic lake - Lake Untersee. She’s a professor at University of Canterbury.
No lunch with Jenny...

9) Go to the USAP Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) at 1 pm to get my cold weather gear and hear the details of our expected flight.
Got my gear, and we’re scheduled to check in at 6:30 tomorrow morning.

10) Go to the grocery store and buy tea and spices.
Yep, with Steve and Tyler. We also got some snack food.

11) Get the rest of that pesky work done!
Getting there. One important letter done, thesis cover pages sent off. A couple of letters and a review to go.

12) Eat dinner - maybe my last restaurant visit for a couple of months!
Had beer and roast lamb, with the roast lamb a lot like we’ll get in McMurdo.

13) Get a good night sleep.
I’m off to do that now. We have to show up at the USAP CDC at 6:30 in the morning. It’s a short walk, so we can just pop over with our luggage and conveniently borrowed luggage carts from the airport.

Next update from McMurdo or the flight has been delayed! I'll wave at the web cam: http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmWebCam.cfm

Aftershocks

2010-10-04T21:11:00.000+02:00

I went to bed last night about 9:30 and slept well until 10:21 when I woke to a rumbling, followed by shaking - an aftershock! Then another smaller one! Then one this morning at 6:30!

On September 4, 2010, a magnitude 7.1 earthquake hit east of Christchurch. The early morning time (4:35 am) and good building codes meant that the damage wasn’t as bad as one might expect. However, some buildings did come down. Most of central Christchurch suffered only minor damage, although we did see a shored up old brick church last night. Ian says that there was more damage along the river where the buildings are older and the ground is softer. The USAP operations weren’t damaged much, which is why we can still get to Antarctica.

Since September 4, there have been thousands of aftershocks. There is a nice visualization of them at http://www.christchurchquakemap.co.nz/. The first two I felt were magnitudes 5 and 4, and the 6:29 am shaking was due to two almost simultaneous 4.3 and 4.4 magnitude quakes.

It’s a dynamic earth!

In Christchurch

2010-10-04T09:39:00.000+02:00

We made it to Christchurch mid-day today. The flight seemed short after the one from LA to Auckland. We’re staying in the Sudima Hotel, like last year. It is very convenient to the US Antarctic Program (USAP) offices - less than a block away. However, it is a dozen kilometers from downtown. Thus, we took a cab downtown to meet Ian for beers and an early dinner for us. Ian had other plans for dinner. As of today, he is a part time professor at the University of Canterbury, and he has a celebratory dinner tonight. We’ll catch up with him again tomorrow.

Plans for tomorrow:
1) Try to sleep in until 7 am (11 am Pacific Daylight Time).
2) Work on spill over items from my normal job that need to get done as soon as possible.
3) Ian will drop off his gear at 8:30.
4) Ride into town with Ian and get coffee and breakfast.
5) Buy some used books to take with me. I’m particularly interested in finding a book of short stories by Keri Hulme. I read her novel The Bone People after coming off the ice last year and found it amazing. I then bought her book of short stories called Stonefish. I’ve read it several times in the last year.
6) Buy a good kettle to heat water with.
7) Maybe buy some good scotch.
8) Maybe have lunch with Jenny, a friend of Ian’s who I met briefly last year. She did some nice geochemical modeling for a paper we wrote about another Antarctic lake - Lake Untersee. She’s a professor at University of Canterbury.
9) Go to the USAP Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) at 1 pm to get my cold weather gear and hear the details of our expected flight.
10) Go to the grocery store and buy tea and spices.
11) Get the rest of that pesky work done!
12) Eat dinner - maybe my last restaurant visit for a couple of months!
13) Get a good night sleep.

In Auckland

2010-10-04T00:14:00.000+02:00

I left for New Zealand yesterday, or maybe I should say two days ago. I caught a flight from Oakland, CA, to Los Angeles on Oct 2 where most of the team met up. Dale, Alfonso, Tyler, Steve and I all caught a 13 hour flight to Auckland, leaving at 11:40 pm. Because of the length of the flight as well as crossing the international date line, we landed in Auckland at 8:30 am on Oct 4. We are now waiting for our flight to Christchurch where we’ll spend a day and a half before heading to “the ice”.

The flight to Auckland was completely full. I had a middle seat. However, I was really tired, so I ended up sleeping most of the flight. I also had some new noise canceling headphones. They cut out a lot of the background noise and really help reduce the fatigue of flying for me. I wear them even when I’m not listening to music or watching a movie. I find them more comfortable than ear plugs.

I still have some work to do that I didn’t get done before I left: a paper review to finish, a tenure case review, some letters of recommendation, etc. I also had a proposal that I didn’t get finished, but I’ve had to decide not to submit it. I just had too many things that I wanted to do. Now it is time to finish up those critical items, and mentally move into field mode. I’m looking forward to being able to focus on just the daily life and science of a focused field season. The demands on my time are still there, but because they are focused on daily life and one suite of science questions, I have time to think about things more deeply than I often can at home. I can feel that transition starting to happen already. I’m sure that when we check into the Sudima Hotel in Christchurch, I’ll feel one step closer to being in the field!

Packing to go!

2010-10-02T05:12:00.000+02:00

I’ve been working very very hard on a project for NASA’s Mars Science Laboratory, the next rover going to Mars. It consisted of evaluating the physical characteristics of rock outcrops at one of four potential landing sites, the one in the Mawrth Vallis region. At the community landing site workshop earlier this week, I presented a new model that suggests the site was heavily influenced by impacts from meteorites or comets. You can see the landing site evaluations at http://marsoweb.nas.nasa.gov including the slides from my talk.

This project consumed so much time that I didn’t start packing until today, and I leave tomorrow! Luckily, already shipped my scientific equipment (much more this year - I’ll provide a list later). Also, I have my personal packing list from last year. I’ve adjusted it a bit, so here it is again:

▼ ❑ Clothing
▼ ❑ Head
• ❑ 1 Helly Hanson hood
• ❑ 1 scarf
• ❑ 1 neck gaiter (thin and soft) (NEW)
• ❑ 2 synthetic baseball caps
• ❑ 1 synthetic stocking cap
• ❑ 1 wool stocking cap
• ❑ 2 pairs sunglasses
• ❑ 1 wind proof balaclava (NEW)
• ❑ (NSF - hat, neck gaiter, balaclava, ski goggles)
▼ ❑ Torso
• ❑ 2 light weight pile hoodies
• ❑ 1 zip front pile sweater (NEW)
• ❑ 1 wind proof pile sweater
• ❑ 1 windshirt with insulated hood
• ❑ 2 light weight merino wool long underwear tops
• ❑ 1 medium weight merino wool top (NEW)
• ❑ 2 light-weight silk long underwear tops
• ❑ ~12 pairs underwear (all travel underwear)
• ❑ 3 sports tops
• ❑ 2 swim suit tops
• ❑ (NSF - outer jacket; pile jacket(s); 1 pair long underwear)
▼ ❑ Hands
• ❑ 2 pairs pile glove liners (I almost wore one pair out last year)
• ❑ 1 pair pile mittens
• ❑ 1 pair insulated over mittens
• ❑ 1 pair German wool finger gloves
• ❑ (NSF - 2 pairs leather gloves, wool mittens with leather overmits)
▼ ❑ Legs
• ❑ 3 pairs wool long underwear bottoms
• ❑ 2 pairs thin silk long underwear bottoms
• ❑ 2 thick pile pants
• ❑ 1 pair snowboarding pants (NEW I bought a nice pair of Burtons on sale at the end of winter)
• ❑ 1 pair overalls (NEW I bought a used pair, I didn’t like the NSF ones)
• ❑ 1 pair wind pants (brought last year, but didn’t make it on the list)
• ❑ (NSF - outer pants; pile pants(s); 1 pair long underwear)
▼ ❑ Feet
• ❑ 1 pair Sorels (insulated boots, plenty big)
• ❑ 1 pair spare boot liners (NEW)
• ❑ 1 pair hiking boots
• ❑ 12 pairs synthetic socks
• ❑ 2 pairs heavy wool socks
• ❑ (NSF - thermal boots; 2 pairs wool socks)
▼ ❑ Other
• ❑ 1 swim suit
• ❑ 3 100% cotton bandanas, 1 poly mix bandana
• ❑ 1 camp towel
• ❑ lots of stuff sacks to hold things
▼ ❑ In Transit & McMurdo
• ❑ 2 pair pants (wear one on the plane)
• ❑ 3 shirts (wear one on the plane)
• ❑ 2 bras
• ❑ 3 pairs socks that aren't white (wear one on the plane)
• ❑ 1 rain coat
• ❑ 1 pair flip flops
• ❑ 1 pair pajamas (NEW - I forgot them last year!)
• ❑ 1 regular towel (NEW - none provided at McMurdo)
▼ ❑ Hygiene & Health
▼ ❑ Sun
• ❑ SPF 50 sun screen
• ❑ 2 sun screen chap sticks
▼ ❑ Hygiene
• ❑ 100 wet wipes (in small packages so they are easy to thaw out)
• ❑ panty liners
• ❑ tampons
• ❑ 2 GoGirl pee funnels or equivalent
• ❑ 1 roll toilet paper (more ordered for camp)
• ❑ 1 diaper rash cream
• ❑ (NSF - hand sanitizer)
▼ ❑ Medication
• ❑ 3 months worth of prescription medication, carnitine
• ❑ Ibuprophen
• ❑ Benedryl / sleeping pills (diphenhydramine HCl)
• ❑ antibiotics
• ❑ anti-motion sickness medicine
• ❑ yeast infection treatment
• ❑ athletes foot treatment
▼ ❑ Teeth & Hair
• ❑ tooth paste (small tubes so it is easy to thaw out)
• ❑ tooth brushes
• ❑ dental floss
• ❑ hair brush
• ❑ hair bands
▼ ❑ Other
• ❑ 60 Q-tips
• ❑ 1 Nineva cream
• ❑ 1 Johnson's Baby Wash
• ❑ 1 stick deodorant
• ❑ ear plugs
• ❑ nail clippers
• ❑ safety pins (NEW)
• ❑ sewing kit (NEW to list, but I had one last year)
• ❑ first aid tape (NEW)
▼ ❑ Camping
• ❑ 1 down sleeping bag (taking a warmer extra sleeping bag)
• ❑ 1 camp pillow (NEW)
• ❑ 1 water bottle
• ❑ 1 day pack (carry on luggage)
• ❑ 1 LED headlamp
• ❑ pocket knife
• ❑ (NSF - batteries)
▼ ❑ Entertainment
• ❑ 6 books
• ❑ 2 pencils
• ❑ 3 pens
• ❑ 1 pad engineering paper
• ❑ 2 diary notebooks
▼ ❑ 1 iPod
• ❑ noise isolation headphones
• ❑ 1 iPod connection cable
• ❑ music
• ❑ poetry
• ❑ pod casts
• ❑ 1 watch (wear)
▼ ❑ Work & Documentation
• ❑ 2 sharpies
• ❑ field notebook
▼ ❑ 1 Computer
• ❑ 1 laptop
• ❑ 1 laptop charger
• ❑ 1 microphone/headphones combination
• ❑ 1 flash drive
• ❑ 3 extra hard drives
▼ ❑ 2 digital cameras
▼ ❑ Panasonic 28-105
• ❑ battery charger & extra battery
• ❑ connection cable
▼ ❑ Nikon SLR digital camera - D90
• ❑ battery charger & extra battery
• ❑ connection cable
• ❑ card reader
• ❑ zoom lens
• ❑ 55 mm lens
• ❑ extension tube
• ❑ 8 extra camera memory cards (8 GB each)
• ❑ 3 tripods - one heavy, one light, one mini (some NEW)

My luggage seems smaller this year. I think I’m taking less science gear with me because I shipped so much earlier! I can hardly wait to leave.

X-ray CT of a Frozen Core From the 2009 Field Season

2010-08-08T06:01:00.000+02:00

Ian, Dale and I spent yesterday afternoon and most of today together planning our field season, working on equipment, interpreting data from last year, and planning a future project to study Lake Untersee, also in Antarctica. Ian lives in the Solomon Islands, and Dale lives in New York, so it is very rare for us to work together in person. Usually, we communicate via e-mail or Skype. Working together in person is much more fun and productive.

One of the highlights was looking at some brand new x-ray computed tomography (CT) images of one of our frozen cores that we collected last year. X-ray imaging provides a map of density differences, so one can see how the dense minerals are distributed in the low density mat. Computed tomography is a technique for turning a whole bunch of x-rays into a 3D model of the density variations. I used a CT scanner in the UCDavis Center for Molecular and Genomic Imaging to image the core. This scanner is usually used to image mice, so my project was particularly novel and interesting to the staff at the center.

The imaging worked well. The calcite stands out very strongly in contrast to the ice and mat:

The circle is where the core is and the arch at the bottom is the core holder. The white parts are calcite and the gray parts are mat and ice. It is hard to tell the mat and the ice apart, and you can't in this image.

We spent more than an hour looking at the data in 3D in the KeckCAVES, a visualization facility that I help develop. We could highlight the calcite nicely:

The calcite is approximately outlined by the various surfaces in this image. It has a very complicated distribution. We thought the "branch" on the upper right had broken off, but it is actually connected to the column that looks like it grew straight up.

However, when Ian, Dale and I tried to correlate subtle changes in gray to the mat and the ice, we had a very difficult time. We decided that we really need to cut the core and take a picture of it. I'll cut the core with a band saw, photograph it, and then match it to one of the CT slices (like that shown in the first picture). Hopefully, I'll be able to then see the boundary between the ice and the mat in the slice. Once I've identified that, I'll see what I can do with digital image processing to get those differences to stand out more. It will be a fun and difficult task!

Even though we weren't sure that we identified the exact boundaries between the calcite, mat and water, we learned a lot about how the calcite is distributed in the microbial structures. There is lots of variability, with sheets, columns, and rods of calcite, all connected differently. It will be really interesting to sort out all the variations. Tyler will have great fun with this!

We have 4 more cores to image, and we'll collect more when we go back out in the field. This is an exciting new technique to apply to these cores, one that will give us lots of insights into how the microbial structures grew!

Preparing to Go Again!

2010-07-25T20:21:00.000+02:00

It's mid summer, and plans for our next season in Antarctica are in full gear. Our core team this year consists of:

Dale Andersen - SETI Institute
Dawn Sumner - University California, Davis
Ian Hawes - Aquatic Research Solutions
Anne Jungblutt - Natural History Museum, London
Asim Bej - University Alabama, Birmingham
Tyler Mackey - University California, Davis

We'll also have guests from Chris McKay's Astrobiology Science and Technology Project who will help with our project:

Alfonso Davila - SETI Institute
Wayne Pollard - McGill University
Stephen Emmons

My other team members have been "PQed", in other words, medically pre-qualified or approved to go. My forms aren't in quite yet, but they are in the envelop ready to mail tomorrow.

I've been working on getting equipment together to ship before we go. I am taking two of my own microscopes this time. We are also looking for a LED UV light source for them. UV light makes the cyanobacteria fluoresce (glow), so you can see them well through the microscope. My light meter isn't talking to the computer, so we will work on that next. We'll have another one, but mine doesn't have a cable which make it easier to manipulate under water.

Also, there are now really cool underwater laser scanners (see 2G Robotics). We hope to be able to bring one in the field this year to map the morphology of the mats on the floor of the lake. It should have a resolution of about a millimeter if you image 1 meter from the bottom. This laser scanner would give us a great way to quantitatively compare mats at different depths.

First Talk on Science Results

2010-04-29T05:01:00.000+02:00

I've given several talks to friends and colleagues about my experiences in Antarctica, but I gave my first talk on the scientific results at the Astrobiology Science Conference in League City, Texas, yesterday. It was well received and I got some good questions. Here are my slides:

My talk followed two on the Endurance robot that was exploring Lake Bonney down the valley from us at Lake Joyce. I claimed that Ian and Dale were highly sophisticated observers that beat out any robots.

It's important to say where you were.

And to describe the regional context.

Lake level rise is one of the big stories. The yearly data until the 80's are from surveys by NIWA, whereas the lower graphs show the depth of the salty layers in three different years, including our data. Both show that lake levels are sometimes stable for years and often rise rapidly.

I started with the shallow mats and worked my way deeper. Chla is the concentration of chlorophyll a. AFDW is the ash free dry weight which is an approximation of the biomass. Both are per unit area of mat and extend from the top surface to the bottom of the active part of the mat. That thickness increases with depth, so the AFDW increases with depth. However, Chla is low except for in this shallowest sample.

Deeper mats have more structure, more biomass, and less chlorophyll.

They are not photosynthetically very active, though, because we could not detect any O2 production in them. Photosynthesis produces O2 (at least this type of photosynthesis).

These two images show a mat that is falling apart (left) and part of the same mat showing that the bacteria aren't even capable of doing much photosynthesis. The point where 3 ridges come together in the green image is also in the upper part of the tan image. It's rotated a bit, though.

This is one of Dale's beautiful photographs (and no it isn't a painting!) I showed it mostly because I love it, but you can also see little pink lines on some of the ridges. Those are some of the "happier" bacteria that can do a bit of photosynthesis.

Most of the peaks, though, are coated in rock flour, which is bits of rock ground up by the glaciers. The peaks have flopped over. They are not very active microbially except in the pinker areas.

Again, the bacteria aren't capable of much photosynthesis.

The calcified structures are much taller than the mats at shallower depths, but they aren't happy.

This is a sample we brought to the surface. The tan color is due to rock flour and a lack of chlorophyll.

This is the first sample I dissected. All the calcite pieces on the right came out of the structure on the left. It is the calcite that held the column up. However, it did slump after sampling because the calcite pieces shifted relative to each other during sampling. I froze some samples like this, and we'll do some x-ray computed tomography (a 3d imaging technique) to see how all the calcite pieces fit together inside the structures.

In some samples, there are thin rods of calcite in photosynthetically active peaks. You can see the darker calcite rod in the largest peak in the right image. The image on the left shows the concentration of chlorophyll, and the tallest peak is the same one visible in the right image. We are going to try to see if there is evidence that photosynthesis helps the minerals form.

We have a number of interpretations. The first is that the tall, deep structures need that calcite to be tall, and that they weren't always this shape.

The second interpretation is that the tall structures don't get enough light to recover. If they are going to start growing again, the ice on the lake has to become clearer.

The next interpretation waffles. We know that the shape of the mat changes with depth, but the deeper mats have more biomass. Thus, we do not yet know if the difference in shape is due to differences in depth or differences in biomass. I can make up good, logical arguments for either interpretation. I also don't know how we are going to sort this out yet. We need to develop some hypotheses about what would be different for these two models, things that we can look for in the field.

We do know that most of the mats grew when conditions were more favorable. If you compare this year's mats with those that Dale saw in 1997, they look in bad bad shape.

The end...

By the way, we just got our samples from Antarctica two weeks ago. They took a long ride back on the ship. Tyler is hard at work describing the calcite!

C-17 Aircraft from McChord

2010-01-26T20:44:00.000+02:00

C-17 planes transport people and cargo between Christchurch, New Zealand, and McMurdo, Antarctica. I really enjoyed both my rides on them. They are cold and noisy, but the crews are fantastic and the "interior decorating" is much to be admired. My dad sent this link about the challenges of flying and how the best McChord Air Force pilots want to be part of Mission Deep Freeze: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/localnews/2010883061_antarctica25m.html It's always nice to have the best looking out for you!

Here are some of my C-17 pictures.

Our plane in Christchurch:

Cargo waiting to be loaded:

Looking toward the front of the plane over a sea of 127 scientists and support experts:

Me in my seat on October 5th, 2010:

Looking back at the cargo:

The cargo is held in place by slots in the floor that special pallets slide into. The same is true for the seats.

Lots of tools are essential and look great!

I had handy tools to secure cargo above my seat. We went through FFA approved security to get on, so we certainly couldn't have carried any of these in our hand luggage:

There is only one lavatory and the line was constant and long with so many people on the flight:

The ceiling emergency exit was my favorite. It included explosives to open it!

We got tours of the cockpit:

The views out of the few windows were great:

While in McMurdo, I saw a C-17 land on the sea ice runway right off the base. When I flew in, we landed on the ice shelf runway because the sea ice runway hadn't been built yet. This was one of the first flights to land on the sea ice and it was right before we went into the field at Lake Joyce. Here it is at the end of the runway and beautifully framed by Mt. Discovery:

We saw it from hut point while exploring one of Scott's old outposts.

The whole "airport" has minimal infrastructure:

When I flew out on December 11th, the sea ice runway was closed again because the ice was too warm and soft to play runway. We took a bus out to the ice shelf runway. Here is the waiting room where we spent an hour waiting for our C-17:

Eventually the plane approached and landed in perfect weather:

Watching the cargo transfers was great entertainment.

Eventually, they were ready for us:

There were fewer people on the flight back and less cargo.

The view from my seat was dominated by a big yellow crate carrying parts of the Endurance autonomous underwater vehicle.

This robot had been exploring a lake in Taylor Valley about 20 km from my camp while I was out there. Some of their team members were on the same flight.

I'll be heading back to Antarctica next fall. I'm looking forward to my C-17 flights!

Clothing Review

2010-01-18T21:18:00.000+02:00

I'm back to the states and busy with my normal life. However, there are a couple of things I'd like to follow up on in my blog. One of which is a clothing review.

Base Layers
I loved my wool long underwear. It was comfortable and didn't smell too badly even after more than 6 weeks of wear. I had two shirts and two bottoms that I alternated every day, allowing the other pair to air out hanging in my tent. My silk long underwear was also nice, but I didn't wear them as much. When it was really cold, I wore my silk bottoms under my wool bottoms. However, they didn't hold up as well. One pair ripped. The stitching in the waste band of the other pair broke, and I had to sew them up. Both pairs were old so that might have been part of the problem. The silk tops had normal sleeves whereas the wool tops had baseball-type sleeves. I found the baseball-type sleeves much more comfortable. The wool tops also had a closer fit, which was great for a bottom layer. NSF provided some polypro long underwear bottoms and tops. I didn't wear them since I liked my own much better.

My pile hoodies were great. I liked having the hoods to keep cold air from going down the back of my neck. They were plenty big so they didn't restrict my movement. However, my pink, wind proof Patagonia sweater was too small. Although it fits in normal conditions, when wearing enough clothes to be warm, it felt too restrictive. I also had a heavy pile zip-front sweater supplied by NSF. I hadn't brought my own zip-front sweater, and it was nice to have one when moving from outside to inside a lot.

On a warm day, with a pile hoodie as an outer layer.

My pile pants were not a hit. They don't have enough ventilation. Unless it was very cold, I found wearing them made me feel damp and clammy, especially if I was walking or otherwise active. I'll write more about them and what I would do differently in another post.

Outer Layers
I wore my wind shirt quite often, particularly once the weather became warmer. It blocked the cold wind very well, and didn't provide too much warmth when in the tent. It was easy to put a warm coat on over it when necessary.

Recording dive notes, wearing my wind shirt and ski pants. I had both a hat and hood on even though I was inside the tent. I was taking notes with gloves on. It was a cold day.

NSF provided two coats, one light weight anorack and one very warm down parka. Both were red. The anorack was fine, except the zipper always got caught on the fabric flap designed to keep wind from blowing through the zipper. Once I sewed the flap out of the way, it was a fine coat. The down parka was supper warm and had a strip of coyote fur around the hood. I heard there were 20 pockets, and that certainly seemed to be true. The parka was great when the weather was cold, but I didn't wear it too much because it was too warm much of the time.

Coyote fur on the parka was great on a cold night in McMurdo

NSF also provided wind proof, water resistant, lightly insulated overalls. They fit horribly. The waist was too tight and has stiff Velcro that dug into my side. The crotch was too low. I wore them when I was doing things that could get me wet or required a lot of standing out in cold weather, but only because I didn't have a good alternative. When it was reasonable, I wore my ski pants instead. They were much more comfortable, but the outer fabric was too soft, and I ripped them and wore through the knees. Also, they were not overalls, and the waist would sometimes slip down. Ian and Dale both had sturdy, water proof/resistant mountaineering overalls. I will get some similar ones for my next trip. Having well fitting lower layers is a great increase in comfort.

Gloves and Hats
My dad's fingerless wool gloves were fantastic. They are soft and warm, and I could take nuts off bolts, etc. while wearing them. When it was cold and I had outside work, I'd wear them under leather gloves (provided by NSF). I could pull off the leather gloves, change a bolt, and put the leather gloves back on without my fingers getting too cold. I also wore the fingerless gloves under insulated, waterproof rubber gloves when helping with the dive lines.

Wearing my anorak, ski pants, fingerless gloves, and leather gloves to add a flight to the Jiffy Drill.

I also really liked my light weight Outdoor Research gloves. I wore them every day, sometimes under the leather gloves. The leather gloves were essential for much of the hard outdoor work. NSF issued two pairs, and I wore one out. I didn't wear any of my mittens very much. Sometimes I wore my water proof outer mitts over gloves, but I much preferred gloves to mittens.

My light weight wool hat was essential. I wore it every night, pulled down over my eyes to make it dark. It was really comfortable, so I ended up wearing it most days, too. My other hats were okay, but I didn't wear them often. I didn't need the separate hood nor a balaclava because I rarely was out when it was both very cold and windy. I used my scarf to cover my mouth and chin when necessary. I will probably bring a neck gaiter next time. I used the NSF issued one sometimes, but it was too thick; I felt like a traditional Ndebele woman while wearing it. Also, I didn't like wearing hats with bills because they cut down my visibility. I love being able to see the tops of the mountains without tilting my head back!

Yet another picture with my wool hat and wind shirt...

Boots
I really liked my Sorrels. They were comfortable and warm. I usually wore them with a pair of sports socks under a pair of thick wool socks, issued by NSF. I took the liners out almost every night to dry out - before I started doing this I'd notice my feet were cold and the liners were damp. NSF issued a pair of "bunny boots", white rubber boots insulated with air. It was impossible to wear them they were so uncomfortable. There were two other choices: FDX and Baffin boots. I might try one of those next time, but I'm bringing Sorrels again, this time with two liners.

So Many Things To Do...

2009-12-14T09:44:00.000+02:00

There is no daily routine in the field, at least not this field season. The range of things I did was huge. Some things fall into the “keep camp going” category, some into “preparing to do science”, some “doing science”, some “entertainment” and some “personal care”. I’ll give a few examples of each.

Keep Camp Going
When you stay out in a harsh environment for long periods of time, there are numerous tasks that have to be done to keep the tents up and healthy, people fed and healthy, and the environment clean and healthy. Here are some of these tasks:

Check (and tighten if necessary) guy lines on tents - every couple of days and every time the wind blows hard
Sweep tent floors - variable depending on the tent and how much dirt is tracked in. The dive tent floor was swept every day to keep the water that drips off the dive gear down at one end. The lab tent was swept twice or so during the whole field season
Fill water jugs and carry them up to the kitchen tent - average of one jug per day or a bit less
Cook dinner - every night. The first person who started dinner got to make it. Usually someone volunteered before 7 pm and we ate at 7:30 or so. Breakfast and lunch were individually prepared unless someone decided to make pancakes or other pan bread.
Wash dishes - every night and sometimes after breakfast or lunch.
Restock the food boxes in the kitchen tent - a couple of times per week
Empty the trash - about once a week or before visitors came.
Change the human waste bucket - about twice a week. This consists of putting a good lid on the old bucket and putting a new bucket in the toilet box. We also made sure there were toilet paper and hand cleaner available.
Put heavy objects (rocks) on light items that could blow away - every time we saw a light item left outside.
Put fuel in generators - regularly depending on generator use
Turn the solar panels to face the sun - many times per day
Dig out items that melted into the ice - too many times...

Preparing To Do Science
A lot of time is spent preparing to get samples, fixing equipment, clearing an area to work with samples, deciding what you want to do, etc. This is an essential part of any scientific project, even though you might not be “doing” the science for these tasks. They include:

Getting dressed for diving, warming up after diving
Cutting core tubes, filing the ends to sharpen them, screwing screws into rubber stoppers, and tying the stoppers to the tubes
Figuring out how to extrude sediment out of core tubes given that you’re missing a critical part (I failed on this one after more than 18 hours of trying over several days.)
Taping wire to bamboo poles for a transect line

Me, sitting out of the wind on a warm day bending wire and taping it to poles for the transect line.

Taping rocks to sediment traps made out of Nalgene bottles and bamboo poles to make the traps heavy enough they will sink rather than float
Calibrating instruments such as pH meters, salinity meters, turbidity meters, etc.
Figuring out why instruments quit working or what went wrong with the data
Fixing broken equipment, for example soldering the wires on the digital thermometer
Drilling or melting holes in the ice; melting the drill flights out of the ice after getting them stuck

Preparing for the last bit of drilling that will break through the ice. It's HARD work and the bit has to be pulled out of the hole before it freezes in. I'll write more about this later.

Unwinding and winding lines and ropes for underwater equipment
Making lists of things to do and planning the day’s activities

Doing Science
This part is often the most fun, although some jobs are tedious. Here is a small sampling of what we did:

Collect samples, choosing ones that look interesting after deciding what “looks interesting”
Look at samples under the microscope
Measure the concentration of chlorophyll and determining its potential activity
Photograph and describe microbial structures under water
Photograph and describe collected samples
Choose and cut out bits of mat to preserve for later examination under the microscope
Pull mat off pieces of calcite, describe the relationships between the calcite and the mats, and prepare the calcite for drying
Dissolve calcite in acid or organics in bleach and describe the relationships between them
Lower instruments that photograph the bottom or measure chemistry or light levels into holes in the ice
Collect water samples for various analyses
Filter water to collect chlorophyll and suspended sediment
Titrate samples to measure alkalinity
Place and manipulate microelectrodes in mats underwater
Talk about our observations and results

Entertainment
When you are in the field for weeks at a time, it is important to include things in daily life that aren’t work. Different people like different things, and here are some of the things people did for entertainment:

Read
Watch movies
Listen to music
Take walks
Do logic and word puzzles like sudoku and crosswords
Surf the web (only for very brief periods of time when it actually worked)
Take photos
Talk

Personal Care
Without much water, we didn’t wash much. However, for a long field season, it is essential to keep yourself healthy, warm, and happy. If you don’t, you’ll be miserable. Here are some of the things I do to take care of myself:

Use hand cleaner several times per day and always after going to the bathroom and before eating
Wipe off with baby wipes regularly. This was easier once the weather warmed up and they weren’t frozen hard.
Remove my boot liners almost every night to make sure they dry
Change my clothes every day. I put dirty clothes back on, but rotating them and letting them air out between wearings helps a great deal.
Wash underwear and long underwear, although I only did this once; I had enough socks I didn’t need to wash them
Mend clothing with holes in it
Have an extra sweater handy to put on if I get cold
Go pee more often than normal so I don’t wait until I have to go very badly because sometimes it’s inconvenient to go. For example, there might be a bunch of people around, and I wouldn’t want to get out my pee bottle, find a sheltered spot, etc.
Spend at least a little quality time by myself every day
Keep an interesting idea or question to think about when I start getting tired
Push myself hard physically, but admit to myself and others when I am at the limit of what I can do
Take a nap when I need to
Take a walk when I need to
Eat plenty of food and drink plenty of water
Do something nice for someone else. This always makes me happier, particularly if I’m irritated at the person I do something nice for. (For my friends: I also do nice things when I'm not irritated at you, so don't read too much into this!)

Overall, there is plenty to keep one busy in the field!

Diving

2009-12-13T21:03:00.000+02:00

I'm back in New Zealand after a week in McMurdo frantically working to get field gear sorted and returned, plus documenting and organizing field data and ideas while I still had Ian to work with. I still have lots to say about the trip, so I'll keep posting things about the field work for a while.

_____________

I spent a lot of time dive tending while Ian and Dale dove under the lake ice. There are two essential jobs above the ice when someone is diving: 1) Watching the air levels and communicating with the diver via the control box; and 2) feeding out and taking in the air and communication line. Sometimes I’d do the air/communication job, particularly when there were numerous scientific notes to take.

This is me taking notes by the yellow coms/air control box. It was a cold day as you can see by how many clothes I'm wearing even though I was sitting inside the tent. The person handling the line was standing out in the real cold.

Most of the time, however, I tended the line.

This job can be anything from very enjoyable to extremely uncomfortable depending on the weather. One has to stand in the open between the dive hole and the reserve line, feeding it out as the diver goes farther from the hole and pulling it in (wet) when the diver gets closer. Often, the diver doesn’t say exactly what he’s doing, so you have to pay attention. If the line gets too loose, it can get tangled around other things in the water or get loops that are disorienting for the diver. If you hold it too tight, the diver tells you. Sometimes they want extra line. For example, when Dale is taking photos, it’s really important that the line isn’t so tight that it pulls him the wrong way in the water. Or when Ian is adjusting a microelectrode in the sediment, pulling on the line could cause him to turn and disrupt the experiment. If they start swimming back toward the hole without telling you, line can pile up. Sometimes the only sign that you need to pull line in is that it’s floating up into the hole on its own! Then you have a lot of work to do quickly.

When you pull in line, it needs to be wound neatly so that you can feed it out again without tangles. We wound it into a figure 8 on a sled to keep it off the ice. Sometimes, when I’d get behind, I’d end up with extra twists. It’s nice to have help keeping the line neat when the diver is coming in from a long ways off.

Neatly wound dive tether.

Some of the other dive tending jobs including feeding out rope that is attached to instruments the divers are deploying, handing the diver various items like cameras or core tubes, and taking things like cameras and cores from the divers.

Ian and Dale did various things under the water. Dale is an excellent photographer, and he had several dives that focused on taking video of the various microbial mats and structures. They are beautiful. Ian tends to focus on detailed manipulation of equipment and scientific observations. He has the patience and ability to control his motion underwater well enough to put expensive, delicate microelectrodes into the microbial mat to measure O2 concentrations and pH. Sometimes he manipulates them by hand, such as in this experiment.

The instrument in the upper center is a manual manipulator with a microelectrode attached to it. It's measuring O2 concentrations, which are recorded by the instrument on the lower left. The instrument on the right is measuring photosynthetic activity. This experiment was to evaluate how active and healthy the mats were. They were barely alive, producing almost no measurable results. To place this experiment, Ian first took out a large metal stake attached to a blue rope with the manipulator on it. After choosing a spot and getting it stable in the sediment, he came back to the dive hole for the micro electrode. He attached that and did a short profile in a carbonate structure. After repositioning the electrode, he came back for the PAM, which measures photosynthetic activity. He positioned that, made sure it was on and ended his dive. Hours later, Dale dove to the same spot (following the blue rope) and added a spot light on a tripod to the experiment to see if more light would change the activity. It turned out that the instruments had already stopped logging data, so we don't know if the light changed anything or not.

However, for this trip, we were able to borrow Hal, an underwater microelectrode manipulating robot.

Hal in the lab at McMurdo

Hal allows us to manipulate the microelectrodes from the surface rather than having to do it by hand while under water. We lowered Hal to the bottom of the lake. Then Ian or Dale would dive down to him and inflate an air bag to lift him off the bottom. They would then swim Hal to the location we wanted to study and lower him by releasing air. Once Hal landed on the bottom, the diver would uncover and reposition the microelectrodes. If all worked well, the electrodes would not break, and Ian would send commands down to Hal to move the electrodes and they he’d write down the results. Hal is supposed to be able to position the microelectrodes automatically as well, but when we tried this, the electrodes broke, so we worried that he moved them sideways while they were in the mat.

Another common job for the divers was to collect samples. We did this in three ways. For some of the carbonate structures, the divers could tilt them over into boxes that they would seal underwater and bring up to the surface.

For softer mat that was thick, it worked well to take a piece of clear plastic pipe, push it into the sediment, and put rubber stoppers in both ends as it’s pulled out.

These cores were our most common samples. In places where the mat was thin and had coarse sand or gravel below it, the cores didn’t work. For these samples, the diver would use the core tube to cut through a section of mat and then waft the mat into the core tube sideways. For very thin samples, Ian used a small Nalgene bottle with the bottom cut off to cut through the mat, and he put the cutouts into boxes.

Dale also did a couple of dives where he swam instruments around under water to map out variations in light and chemistry. These sorts of dives are ones that require a lot of note taking because approximate locations and sometimes instrument values have to be recorded. We used the time of observations to provide data to correlate to chemistry measured by the instrument. We haven’t gone through these notes yet to see how well we did. That’s a job for the months between now and the next field season.

Ian ended his underwater time with an epic dive in which he did 3 dives worth of work in a bit less than an hour. We melted a second dive hole and decided to use it as a reference for changes over the next year.

Ian had put in a transect line the day before to mark a specific area that could be documented this year and again next year. It was held in place by bamboo stakes and had floats to keep the line off the lake floor. Ian started the epic dive by adjusting the line, placing the floats in good places, putting in a bamboo stake that had come out, and pounding in the end stakes with a hammer. (Think about how hard it would be to pound something into sandy ground underwater. With nothing much to push against, conservation of angular momentum causes some difficulties we don’t have on land.) Ian then swapped the hammer for a camera and photographed each of the areas with either a meter mark on the line or a bamboo stake in the lake floor.

After that, he deployed 6 sediment traps to see how much sediment settles out in the next year. This was a lot of work. I could tell it was hard as I tended the dive line. Ian was constantly moving back and forth, up and down. And he wasn’t talking. I paid very close attention to the tension on the line, trying to keep it exactly right so it wouldn’t interfere with his work. Luckily, it was a beautiful day with little wind, so it was very pleasant to be standing on the ice, and it was easy to concentrate.

Me, wearing only a few layers!

The diving was very challenging. First, the divers are under the ice with only one way to the surface. They have to always keep that in mind. Second, they are wearing full face masks with a tether to the surface. The face masks restrict visibility to only straight ahead.

Dale getting help from Bekah with his mask just before a dive.

The tether (or air and communication line) can get tangled around things, can get in the way, and if it’s too tight, can pull the diver. Third, the water is just about 0°C. It’s cold, even with a good, insulating dry suit on.

Ian and Dale chipping ice out of the dive hole so they can get through. Early in the season, 10 cm or thicker ice would form over night. Later, it warmed up, and only a thin layer was present.

Ian in his dry suit getting ready to dive.

Fourth, the divers can’t touch the bottom of the lake without stirring up mud that clouds the water. They try to touch the bottom as little as possible. Fifth, the work requires very careful buoyancy control. The divers are weighted with lead weights to help them sink, and they add air to their dry suits to help them float. Work near the bottom without touching it requires that the divers perfectly balance the amount of air they have in their suits. The air compresses when they go deeper because the pressure is greater (PV = nRT so if P (pressure) increases, V (volume) has to decrease because the number of air molecules (n) and temperature (T) stay the same; R is a constant). To increase the volume to help them float, the divers add air, e.g. they increase n. However, if they go shallower in the water and n is still high, they keep going up faster and faster. Thus, the divers have to let air out of their suits. Doing this precisely is an important skill, particularly since there is one more complication: breathing! Breathing in has a similar effect to putting air into the suit, and breathing out does the opposite. Thus, divers tend to move up in the water when they breath in and down when they breath out. Often when Ian or Dale was doing something delicate, they would hold their breath, sometimes taking in a bit more or letting some out to get their position in the water exactly right.

Sixth, some jobs required several instruments and tools. Some of these float and some sink. Keeping all of them under control when you can’t necessarily set them down and have them stay put is a challenge in itself.

Seventh... I think you get the point. I’m in awe of how much Ian and Dale got done under water!

Discoveries

2009-11-27T16:08:00.000+02:00

Written November 15, 2009

I love taking walks. Every time I do, I make surprising new discoveries.

My first walk was to the Taylor Glacier and up across the moraines (debris left by glaciers) south of Lake Joyce. The landscape has all sorts of strange mounds and hollows that I now know probably form when buried ground ice thaws and the water runs out. The surface collapses making a hollow and leaving mounds behind. This walk was a wander.

My second walk was more directed. Dale had spotted a possible ice patch on a Google Earth image before we left the US. He was hoping to be able to find it on the ground once we got here. He showed me where it was, and I walked in that direction. After seeing tons of cool things, including polygonal fractures caused by expansion and contraction of the ground,

I walked over a big mound of till (also debris left by glaciers) and found this beautiful blue ice patch.

The ice is clear and has bubbles caught in it, which indicates that it was a pond when it froze rather than being remnant glacial ice.

There is probably remnant glacial ice in this area and that supplied the water for the little pond, but I didn’t see it at the surface. However, on a later walk, I did find exposed ground ice on a west-facing channel wall.

The white patches are snow and the ground ice. The tan patch in the foreground behind the large rock is slushy water.

I wasn’t looking for ground ice on this walk, but I was looking for a source of water for some other ponds. The ponds looked to me like they had overflowed into Lake Joyce last year, and I was curious where the water came from. I chose the fan with channels that looked the freshest and followed them up into the moraines. The big channel that fed the fan had ice at it’s bottom, but it was often covered with wind blow sand and granules. I though maybe it flowed last year. But when I saw the ground ice, I knew that it must have. There was liquid water even on that day in November when it was still spring and fairly cold. The sun was just hot enough to melt the ice! I’m sure by January, water is flowing down that channel, into the ponds, and into our lake! It was a very exciting find.

My walks are also interesting historically. I had a conversation with some friends at Picnic Day last spring about feeling like you’re the first person to ever be in an area. I said that I sometimes felt that way, but every time I started to, I found evidence of previous travelers. This is also true in Lake Joyce, the most remote place I’ve ever been. I can walk for an hour and not see a sign of others, but then the history pops up.

The remnants of a broken thermometer on a fan with a polygonal fracture running into the background. The middle ground shows one of the ponds that flowed into Lake Joyce and the Catspaw Glacier caps the mountain.

This area was actually the focus of a study by the New Zealand Antarctic Program. How do we know they were from New Zealand?

They left some supplies.

There are also more subtle signs of previous scientists, like this rebar survey stake.

There is also a mystery weather station that no one seems to know who left. We’d like the data!

The history of Pearse Valley discoveries extends back decades, and we’re adding ours to that history. We aren’t the first people here, but we are the first to make some of the scientific observations we’re working on. I don’t mind not being first. I am happy to be here, learning what I can from an interesting lake in a beautiful environment.

Cold or Not

2009-11-26T12:49:00.000+02:00

Written November 14, 2009

Pearse Valley is a new type of environment for me. It’s colder and dryer than anywhere I’ve stayed. There is more ice. It can be windy, although it hasn’t been too bad yet. There are no plants, although rumor has it that lichens have been spotted high up the valley walls where clouds often form.

When I first got here, the cold was intimidating. And it was cold: often about -25°C when I’d get up in the morning. My toothpaste was always too frozen to get out of the tube without putting it in a pocket or my sleeping bag (or keeping it in a heated tent).

However, after a few days, I learned what combinations of clothes work keep me warm doing different jobs. Wind protection is really important, and I tend to always have two windproof layers handy. I also found that I can let my hands get quite cold if I need to do delicate work without gloves. They warm up quickly if I keep the rest of my body toasty and put my fingers in a warm place. Also, my wool fingerless gloves are absolutely fantastic when I’m screwing or unscrewing bolts! (That is one of my jobs when we’re drilling holes through ice.) I can also go between tents and get chilled, but warm up again very quickly - faster than it takes my body to warm up a cold coat if I put one on just to go between tents.

I actually find that I have the hardest time warming up if I’ve been sitting and working on something like the microscope or photographs. I often get a bit chilled, especially my feet, which are down at the cold floor level. They don’t warm up for quite a while (hours) unless I get some exercise, like walk up a hill or do some heavy work. This is a bit of a problem before bed. We often watch movies in the evening, and it cools off significantly. I rarely feel like going for a walk between the movie and going to bed, but it is the best thing for starting the night with toasty feet. A water bottle of hot water in my sleeping bag can also work, but is much slower.

It also took me a few days to get comfortable with the beautiful ice. It is really slick, and we’ve all fallen flat more than once. The second time I did, I was carrying a glass flask of hydrochloric acid in one hand and a bunch of little things in the other. I managed to not break the flask, which was much more important that catching myself on the fall. It didn’t hurt too much. I am now much better at walking on ice. We also have “stabilizers” which are rubber soles with metal cleats that you attach to the bottoms of your shoes. They really help, and I always wear them if I’ll be walking on ice for more than a few 10’s of meters. I’ve also realized that the slipperiness of my boots changes. After I’ve been walking on snow, they are REALLY slick on ice for the first dozen steps of so. I can only step at the bottoms of little slopes - my foot will end up there anyway. Once the snow is off my soles and my boots have either changed temperature or the ice type on the bottom has changed, they are much less slippery.

The ice also has another aspect that needs watching - it falls off the edges of the glaciers. The edges of all the glaciers have large cracks in them, and parts of them can suddenly give way. The Fountain Glacier, to the north of camp, has had the largest ice avalanches to date.

An avalanche off the Fountain Glacier

They are too far from camp to pose a danger. They also very interesting because the debris melts to provide water for Lake Joyce. I’ve already seen some running water due to solar heating. The Taylor Glacier also has ice falls, although they are much smaller and much less frequent. But I do walk along the base of the Taylor Glacier ice wall sometimes. I definitely pay attention to where the cracks are and where ice may fall.

Last night and today have been our windiest days so far. It is very gusty with moments of calm separated by turbulence. Our personal tents and the Endurance tents are excellent in the wind. The Arctic Oven tents aren’t. They flop around and deform more than we’d like to see. The Scott tent is a good design for the wind, but it is the one that broke today. The stitching in one of the guy lines pulled out on the side facing the wind. The tent is old, and the threats broke. To stabilize it, we tied another line to the top of the tent. The side without the guy line was then bowed inward, which places even more force on the tent. To fix that problem, we put a long box (for a ground penetrating radar antennae) inside the tent, pushing out the side. One end is sitting in a dish-shaped hole in a granite boulder and the other is attached to the point where the guy line should be. It seems to be working well.

It’s hard to take a picture of the wind, but the wind ripples are a good indication. In this photo, there are two phase changes in the size of the ripples. These also correlate to changes in grain size. They are beautiful!

Camp

2009-11-25T15:27:00.000+02:00

Written November 11, 2009

Our camp is a comfortable place to live for a month and a half. We have four large tents that are mostly heated by propane heaters. When they work, they keep things above knee level from freezing. Two of the heated tents are Endurance tents (striped), and two are Arctic Oven tents (yellow). One of the Arctic Ovens is our cooking and eating tent.

The bright yellow tent in the foreground is our cook tent. 100 lb bottles of propane provide fuel. The white boxes on the left are our “freezers”. Note the giant rocks holding the tent down. The pointed tent in the background is our Scott tent with the toilet (see below).

We have a propane Coleman stove for cooking and boxes of food on the floor where it stays cold or frozen. We also have water jugs and a cooler for water. We drink the lake water, dipped from the dive hole, and it’s tasty.

The rest of the heated tents are work spaces. One of the Endurance tents is for electronics. Wayne is using a ground penetrating radar (GPR) to map out ice, sediment and bedrock in the subsurface. He uses that tent a lot to set up his equipment and charge his batteries. The rest of us use it for computer work, and I keep a couple of things in it to keep them from freezing (toothpaste and wet-wipes). It also houses the (rarely working) wireless internet equipment and is the hub of our solar power station.

This is our electronics Endurance tent. Our six solar panels of various sizes are on the left side. The white tube on a tripod is supposed to be our internet connection. It’s pointed at the top of the mountain next to Mt. Coates, where there is a repeater that is supposed to beam our messages to the repeater on another peak, then to McMurdo, and finally to you. Oh well. The large white boxes are storage for extra camping gear and food.

We need enough power that we also have two small generators to run equipment and charge batteries.

The little red thing is the generator. The grey bucket is a human waste bucket. The brown can is gas, and the cardboard box has white gas in it. The yellow tub is a “spill kit” and has everything we’d need to clean up a fuel spill. The beige “tray” that these are all sitting on is called a berm and is designed to catch any spilled fuel. We have one for every fuel area

Our other two heated tents are on the ice. They are put up on wood platforms because the ice is very uneven. Jessy and Lisa, from the Berg Field Center, McMurdo, put them up for us with some help from me and the others.

Our lake ice camp from near our main camp

Our lake ice camp

Jessy putting up our lab tent

We tied down the lake ice tent with ice screws. This ice was entirely clear before I screwed in the ice screw. I got to watch each of the cracks in the picture form.

The second Endurance tent is on a wooden floor on the lake ice. It’s our lab tent. We have two microscopes, an instrument that measures photosynthetic activity, various chemicals, and miscellaneous other experiments set up in it. It is also where I dissect microbialites and take pictures of them.

The other Arctic Oven is dive central. It is right next to the dive hole and houses all of the dive equipment, including dry suits, dive masks, the communications and air supply box, Hal (an underwater manipulator for microelectrodes that can be - sometimes - controlled from the surface), underwater cameras, instruments that log water properties like clarity and pH, etc. This is where the divers put on/take off their dry suits as well as dry out and repair their gear.

We have a fifth, unheated large tent, called a Scott tent (like the ones we put up at Happy Camper). It’s our toilet.

The actual “toilet” is a bucket inside a wood box with a hole in the top. The toilet seat is blue foam which doesn’t feel too cold to sit on. The bucket is mainly for poop and toilet paper, and once it’s full, we put a very very good lid on it and use a new bucket. The buckets go back to McMurdo via helicopter for disposal. For pee, we go in bottles and then dump it into a 55 gallon barrel. These barrels also go back to McMurdo for disposal. We have to collect all of our pee so that we don’t add extra nutrients to the environment here. It’s fairly easy for men to pee in a bottle, but harder for women, even if it is a wide mouth bottle (trimming your hair helps). Fortunately, women can use specially made funnels that make it easier and less messy. People at McMurdo put together some tips on their use that I will link here later.

For sleeping, we each have our own mountain tent. They are smallish, but big enough for me and most of my non-science stuff. They are very sturdy in the wind.

My tent with my address (G441, our project number)

This is our home for weeks!

Contact Again!

2009-11-24T15:59:00.000+02:00

[There is still no Internet connection to Lake Joyce. Dawn sent a CD out on a helo with Cindy to give to Lisa in McMurdo to email to me in Kittitas. Here is her next blog. Bill Sumner]

November, 6, 2009

Yesterday’s blog was about a microbialite sample. This is what it looked like:

The microbial growth is the soft looking part sitting above sand. The stuff that looks like old shag carpet is all bacteria, thread-like (or filamentous) bacteria. I dissected it as described before, and ended up with some nice pieces of calcite, which I talked about categorizing. Here is how I’ve grouped my pieces:

The large pieces not in a petri dish are special and don’t fit a category. The ones in the dish in the bottom middle have complicated, lace-like structures. The ones toward the right side of the dish are more rod-like but still have lace-like details. The pieces in the dish on the lower right has rods on the left and smoother plates toward the right. The plates toward the bottom have extra little details on their surfaces.

The dishes in the upper row are left grouped by where I found them. The outer coating bits (in the left dish) were on the outside of the structure, but lower down. The dish in the middle has calcite that came from the tip of the microbialite. These calcite pieces probably grew about the same time as the “outer coating” pieces, but they are much bigger and more robust. That might suggest that calcite forms more quickly at the tips of the structures. The dish on the far right has pieces that were mixed in with sand at the base of the microbialite. When I dissected the structure, these bits looked like they were crushed by the sand falling on them. The rest of the microbialite then grew up over them.

Our plan is to take more core samples like this one. We’ll drain the water and rinse them with distilled water to keep more calcite from forming. Then we’ll ship them back to the US. Once there, my student Tyler will work with them. I’d like to use x-ray computed tomography (like a medical CAT scan) to map out the distribution of the calcite before Tyler dissects the structures. That will help us figure out where all the bits come from. Then Tyler will pull the samples apart, looking at the relationships between the calcite, the (dead) bacteria, and the rock flour and sand grains. We’ll look at pieces using a scanning electron microscope (SEM) to see what the individual crystals look like and to look for fossilized bacteria. Finally, we’ll analyze the carbonate chemically to see if we can figure out the chemical environment that causes the crystals to grow. We’ll specifically look at the ratio of 12C and 13C to see if microbial processes affected mineral growth. This is going to be an EXCELLENT project, right Tyler?

Calcite in Mats

2009-11-09T03:05:00.001+02:00

Written November 5, 2009
[We have web access! I'll update my classification if it continues.]

Three days ago, Dale collected some samples from 19.5 meters (64 feet) in the calcified zone and 10 meters (34 feet) off boulders. The mats all had the mineral calcite in them. Calcite forms when the activities (sort-of like concentrations) of calcium (Ca2+) and bicarbonate (HCO3-) in the water are high. Bacteria change the concentration of bicarbonate in the water when they photosynthesize or respire and organic molecules can absorb or release calcium. Thus, bacterial communities can influence calcite precipitation (see YouTube videos). This calcite is what can turn the microbial communities into fossils.

I spent parts of the last two days cleaning the mat, rock flour, and sand off the calcite. I use tweezers to pull off some of the mat and a pipette to squirt water on the sample to remove other bits of mat, rock flour, and sand. Sometimes I hold the sample with tweezers and shake it in a bit of water. When there is lots of mat, it feels like I’m dissecting an animal. When there is lots of sediment, I feel like an archeologist. In both cases, I go from a gooey mass to interesting bits of hard calcite.

The calcite varies substantially from place to place, reflecting differences in the fossilization process. In some places, there are only a few crystals, barely connected - the fossilization process is just starting. In others, the calcite is in robust rods or sheets forming very rigid structures. These are much closer to fossils that could persist in the rock record. In many cases, there are patches of mat that are highly calcified right next to patches that have no calcite in them at all. Why? What is the difference in the biology and chemistry of these areas? I don’t know yet. Right now, I’m in the process of developing some hypotheses on the differences. I need a model of how calcification varies to direct my observations.

This is one of my favorite parts of science. I have made some observations (the amount and style of calcite varies) and have a question (why?). Now I have to figure out what to observe next to start to answer my question, to refine my question into one that is specific enough to answer. One way to start is to categorize my bits of calcite. To separate things into different groups, you look for similarities and differences. This requires deciding what is important about the bits. For example, some are slightly darker grey than others, possibly because they have more glacial flour mixed with the calcite. Is that feature more important than the shape? Or do I categorize them by both color and shape?

Even in writing these questions down, I’m starting to understand the samples better. The darker grey samples come in only two basic shapes: thin smooth layers and thick knobby discontinuous layers. If I make these two categories, how do they relate to each other in terms of the process of calcification?

This is my scientific process right now. I love it.

Lake Joyce - It isn't what we expected

2009-11-09T03:03:00.001+02:00

Written October 28, 2009
[We have web access, at least for now! I'll add photos later if the connectivity remains.]

Lake Joyce... It isn’t what we expected.

In any field science project, you choose a place to go and things to do before you’ve been there and done them. You use all the data you can find to choose the best place, to make predictions about what you’ll find, and decide what work to promise to do in your grant proposals. When you get there, you find unexpected things. Sometimes you can’t even do the science you proposed. It gets exciting and challenging. It always happens to at least some degree. On this trip, we got a big, unexpected surprise.

We melted a dive hole through the ice.

The ice was thinner than it was when Dale was here before - only a bit less than 5 meters thick, although it is 6 meters thick in the middle of the lake.

The first dive down found sediment coating all the microbial mats we’ve come here to study. The mats are barely alive. We only found a few living cyanobacterial filaments in samples brought to the surface. Life in Lake Joyce has been tough lately. We won’t be able to do a bunch of the research we proposed. But we are here, and things are interesting. How do we reshape our science plans?

Today, on dive 5, Ian took down an instrument (a PAM Fluorometer) that measures how much chlorophyll is present in a small area of mat as well as whether it is attached to energy-producing biosynthetic pathways; in other words, it tells you whether photosynthesis can produce energy for the bacteria in the mat. Almost all the mats below 16 meters water depth show very little photosynthetic activity. At about 16 meters, as well as shallower, there are patches of mat that weren’t as buried by sediment. These areas show more reasonable photosynthetic activities, but they are still very low compared to other lakes in the area. Unexpectedly low.

Why?

We hypothesize that the microbial mats are barely getting enough light to live. Based on the large amount of very fine sediment on top of the mats, they may have been partially killed by sediment blocking their light. We’ll compare ones with more and less sediment to test this idea. Also, there is a lot of very very fine “rock flour” floating in the upper part of the lake. Rock flour consists of tiny bits of rock that are ground up as glaciers move. It floats for a long time because the grains are so small and the upper part of the lake is convecting (the same process I described before that moves heat) which keeps carrying the particles upward. The rock flour scatters light, which means that the mats at the bottom of the lake get even less light than they would if the water was clear. Thus, we think that sedimentation has disrupted mat growth, and we’ll try to test this idea.

So this is where we are: We came here to learn how the mats make peaked structures and ridges, but if they are mostly dead, we can’t do experiments with them that we planned. Rather, we have to come up with new questions, ones we can answer. Here are some of our new ideas:

1) There was a big influx of sediment some time between when Dale was here in 1997 and now. When did it occur? Is it associated with a lake level change observed elsewhere in the Dry Valleys? How much sediment was brought in to the lake? Where did it come from? Is the sediment spread across the entire lake or are there some areas that still have active microbial mats? We’ve only looked in one area. It isn’t one that appears to have a particularly large supply of sediment based on the geomorphology of this part of the lake. Our suspicion is that the whole lake had a large sedimentation event. How do we test this?

2) How can we determine how much the level of Lake Joyce has changed?
Alfonso and I mapped the shoreline with GPS yesterday by walking around it. Today, I looked a photo Dale sent me from last time he was here. The shoreline is definitely higher. Thus, we’ve convinced ourselves that the lake level has gone up, but how can we make some good quantitative measurements? There are some deltas going into the lake. Their geometry suggests there was flow down the gullies that feed them while the lake was close to it’s current depth. Other flows don’t show delta-like geometries now. I suspect that these probably haven’t flowed since the lake level rose; their deltas are now under the ice. How can we tell when the flows occurred? That could tell us when lake level rose.

3) How have combined changes in lake level and sedimentation affected the microbial mats? How long have the microbial communities been stressed by these changes? How long will it take them to recover? What does “recovery” involved? Based on observations of other Dry Valley lakes, Ian thinks that it takes years, maybe a decade, for the mats to build up again. What observations do we need to make now and in the future to understand the “recovery” processes?

4) Are there areas of mat or areas in the lake where we can do some of the research we planned? Specifically, are there areas where the microbial activity is high enough that it is worth measuring chemical gradients to look for microbial influences on lake chemistry? Also, there are structures that are mineralized by calcite. Have these changed? Can we see these changes in the composition or color of the minerals? Finally, are there any bacteria that are doing well enough that we can study their motility and pattern formation behaviors?

There are still some really interesting things that we proposed to do and can still do. Some morphology of the mats are still the same, and they are very much like the ancient microbial structures I’ve studied in the rock record. We can make some nice morphological comparisons. Also, some of the microbial structures were coated in calcite. We can still look for microbial influences on the calcite formation as well as image any laminae, etc. inside the calcified structures. We may very well find a sample or two of active bacteria we can study for microbial motility. It’s all hard to predict at this point.

And it is really beautiful here!

Helos & Pearse Valley

2009-10-22T15:51:00.000+02:00

I’m in Pearse Valley, camped next to Lake Joyce! It’s incredible. We don’t have internet access, but Jessy and Lisa from the Berg Field Center came out to help us set up two large tents on the lake ice. They got stuck here for days, so I had time to write a blog, and I’m sending it out on a CD with them. They will e-mail the files to my dad, who will post them.

[Note from Bill, Dawn's Dad: Lake Joyce is about 75 miles from McMurdo. The exact location is noted in Dawn's Blog posting "Lake Joyce Information". In addition to instructions to me about her blog and the video link below, she wrote "This is an incredible trip! I’ve been working hard and enjoying every minute of it. I’ve mostly been warm enough, although sometimes sitting around gets me cold. I feel well prepared."]

On Monday morning, Bekah, Alfonso and I climbed aboard a helicopter bound for Lake Bonney, where we dropped Emma off at her camp, and then Lake Joyce, our home for the next 6 or 7 weeks.

Alfonso ready to fly

Walking to the helo

We sat facing backward and facing a huge pile of luggage (ours). Even so, the views out the windows were amazing.

Bekah and Alfonso with Emma hiding on the far side

Sea ice

Sea ice, too

Edge of the clouds - off into good weather

The boundary between sea ice (left) and ice shelf (right)

Mountains

Ground with patterns created by ice in the soil expanding and contracting

Taylor Valley below (east) of the Taylor Glacier - the sublimation of ice and snow is faster than the precipitation of ice and snow, so the glacier ends in a dry valley.

More snow falls on the peaks, creating glaciers. The smear in the upper left is the spinning helo blade caught by my camera.

A glacier formed from ice that fell from a valley higher on the mountain.

The edges of the glaciers are almost vertical walls. Their morphology is controlled by ice falls. The ice cracks near the edge of the glacier from the forces pushing toward the edge. These cracks grow until the weight of the ice is too much, and huge chunks fall off, creating an apron of white along their bases. To get such steep edges, the ice has to be very hard and brittle. It behaves this way when it is so cold that it has a very high viscosity. Glaciers in warmer areas have more gentle boundaries because they flow more easily, their viscosity is lower.

The main process for gaining ice is precipitation, e.g. snow or frost. The main loss of ice is sublimation, which is the evaporation of ice directly into water vapor. Some of the ice also melts, creating run-off streams, but more ice is lost to sublimation due to the very dry air and very cold temperatures. The surfaces of the glaciers are very blue because there is so little snow on them.

The next few photos show our approach to camp and then our camp. It is an incredibly beautiful area.

Looking west along the Taylor Glacier. Pearse Valley is on the right just before the black and tan ridge (sandstone with a diorite sill running through it).

Our camp site in Pearse Valley with the helo that flew us in.

My tent with the black and tan ridge in the earlier photo in the background

Lake Joyce covered in ice and abutting the Taylor Glacier. The darker area near the edge of the lake closest to me is our lake site which now has a science tent and a dive tent.

Soon after we arrived, Jessy and Lisa from the Berg Field Center at McMurdo joined us. They are two of the people who helped us get all our field gear together, and they came out to help set up our lake tents. These tents have wood floors specially made for us.

Jessy using boards to level the floor of the science tent before she and Lisa assemble it.

Jessy getting poles in position for the Endurance tent that went on top of the floor. That’s where I’m typing this now.

Bekah warming herself at the heater in the science Endurance tent.

We used ice screws as stakes for the tent. Here is one I put in.

The ice did not have any cracks when I put the screw in. Slowly, the cracks formed and grew as I turned the screw. The ice is very brittle because it is very cold. It is very very beautiful.

The walk from the main camp to our lake camp is a fairly steep hill. We needed various equipment, including 55 gallon barrels of fuel, moved from the main camp to the lake site. A helicopter moved it for us with three sling loads. Lisa hooked the loads onto the helo. The helo pilot lowered the copter over her until she could reach the hook at the bottom of the body of the copter. She clipped the hook holding the sling load onto the one on the copter. This is a very impressive process!

Lisa under the helo after hooking the first load

The helo lifting the first load

The helo lowering the first load at the lake bed. The helo pilot can release the hook that is holding the load from inside, so no one has to release it on the ground and the helo doesn’t actually have to land.

This is Lisa hooking the second load!

After the fuel and equipment was down on the lake, we started melting a dive hole. We pump warm antifreeze through a coil that melts the ice. This involved a generator plus a heater and pump with their own engine (a Hotsy).

Dale (red) and Bekah (blue) with the coil for melting a hole.

We watch the process continuously, pumping out the water as the ice melts. We also adjust ropes, etc. to keep the hole forming straight down (more or less). If left alone, the coil can slide sideways making a slot that is hard for a diver to get through rather than a nice hole. We’ve been running it for about 36 hours. I had the 3:30 am - 7:30 am shift, although I didn’t hear my alarm go off. I got up at 3:45, so I was late. I’ll put my watch in my hat next time, like my dad does. I volunteered for that shift so I would see what dawn in Antarctica was like. It was beautiful:

We’ve also had some fun. Lisa and Jessy were supposed to leave after one night. However, there was ice fog in McMurdo for the last 2 days, so the helicopters couldn’t fly. Thus, they are still here, cleaning up our camp, hiking around, and fixing delicious dinners (Fajitas night 2 and Pad Tai night 3). There was also time to contemplate nails and impromptu sharpie manicures.

Bekah, Jessy, and Lisa contemplating nails

Before and after

Unfortunately, Purell hand cleaner dissolves sharpie ink on nails, so three of us have black rings around our cuticles with the dirt still showing through the upper parts of our nails.

We really enjoy Lisa and Jessy’s company, but we also hope that they can get on with their real jobs tomorrow, e.g. fly to the Blood Falls camp (I’ll provide a link to the incredible spot when I have internet!) to do some work there and then back to McMurdo where their colleagues are having to do their work for them while they’re here with us. They have great jobs!

Did I mention that the ice is beautiful?

Break from posting

2009-10-18T06:04:00.000+02:00

If all goes well, I'll be on a helicopter flying into the Dry Valleys tomorrow morning. We don't have internet from our Dry Valley camp yet, so I won't be posting anything for an unknown amount of time. I think the Mt. Coates repeater is in, but we'll have to have someone from McMurdo come out to camp to set up a receiver for us. The helos are very busy flying scientists and their gear into the field (yeah!), so the lower priority internet connection is some unknown time in the future. You'll be able to tell when I'm back on. I'll try to blog even if I can't post them so you get a delayed taste of what I'm doing.

Until then, find other entertainment!

Happy Camper 2

2009-10-18T05:59:00.000+02:00

Here are some of the things we did during Happy Camper...

Megan and Dillon were our instructors. We started with some discussions of hypothermia, frostbite, and layering in a classroom at McMurdo. Then we rode in a Delta or a van out to the ice shelf south east of McMurdo and fairly close to Scott Base. Here's our environment:

Discovery in the distance

Ice falls with flagged route on the ice shelf

Mt. Erebus with a volcanic steam plume on top

Weatherhaven lecture hall

Two Happy Campers

We started with lunch and discussions in the blue Weatherhaven. It is important to eat and drink enough to keep your energy up and to stay warm. There was lots of food! Then we learned how to light, run, and fix Whisperlite stoves. My dad designed these stoves, so I know them inside and out. They are the standard issue in the survival bags, because they'll run on almost any fuel (including kerosene, unleaded gasoline and diesel, but not alcohol) and almost any problem with them can be fixed with just the well equipped repair kits that are also included.

Lighting Whisperlites inside

Dawn pretending to learn how to prime a Whisperlite on the porch

After these lessons, we went out into the snow with the goal of surving until 9 am the following morning. We started setting up our camp by erecting Scott tents. These yellow, four-poled canvas structures are easy to put up, sturdy in the wind, and warm. We learned to stake them out using a bamboo "deadman". To place a deadman, first dig a hole about 50 cm deep and the length of your piece of bamboo. Position the bamboo in the bottom of the hole parallel to the edge of the tent. Next, cut a slot into the snow on the tent side of the hole for the line to go through. Loop the line over the piece of bamboo and adjust everything. Finally, bury the bamboo and tie the line tight. If you have firm snow and put the bamboo in deeply enough, even a Condition 1 wind won't pull out the bamboo. The line or the tent will rip first.

Megan tying a line to the bamboo deadman

Our two Scott tents

We also built a snow shelter called a quinzhee. We made a pile of all our sleep kit duffel bags and covered it with the floor of a Scott tent, which is like a tarp. Then we shoveled snow over it and packed it down. After setting up 4-season mountain tents and doing various other projects, the snow over the duffels had "set". Then some people dug into the side and pulled the bags out. The snow shell stayed put, making a great shelter. Then people dug down into the snow from both inside and outside the quinzhee. The two holes met under the wall forming a door. Having the door below the ground level helps keep warm air inside the quinzhee. The side hole that the bags came out of was partly filled in and partly blocked with a bag while people were sleeping in it. It also acted as a window.

Quinzhee building digging frenzhee

Opening the quinzhee door (down and right) and removing snow through the window (left)

Quinzhee window from inside

Here is our pre snow wall camp:

We had three other snow construction projects. We built walls downwind of our not-so-wind tolerant mountain tents.

Guess which one is Bekah! She's a master wall builder as well as a dancer.

And we dug a deep, long trough in the snow to act as a kitchen. You could stand up to work the stoves. I spent a lot of time there later in the evening melting snow, boiling water, and ladling out water for people's hot drinks and freeze dried dinners.

After getting us started on the kitchen and talking to us about personal snow shelters, Dillon and Megan left for a heated night in the Weatherhaven. We had to survive the evening and night on our own.

Two people, Willy and Cheryl, built personal snow shelters (with help from many others) by digging down into the snow and covering the top with blocks of snow or sleds and poles covered with snow. They took a while to build because the snow was hard packed and dense. These shelters were one form of creativity. Others expressed themselves in other ways:

A frame for Castle Rock, built by Bekah for another purpose

The ghost of Happy Camper past

An interactive community sculpture effort

After eating a freeze dried meal and consuming various amounts of candy, instant soup, hot chocolate and coffee, we each chose a place to sleep (a mountain tent for me), and slept in a better-than-survival-kit sleeping bag on better-than-survival-kit pads. Those of us going in the field brought our own sleep kits, so I had a Snowy Owl sleeping bad from Feathered Friends, a foam pad, and a Thermarest, plus my own Wallcreeper sleeping bag. I used the Wallcreeper as additional padding and insulation below me. Many of us were plenty warm, including me. Some people, however, got quite cold. People vary a lot in their heat prodution at night, and how warm people stay depends on how warm they are when they go to bed, how much and the type of food they've eaten, how much exercise they've done relative to their normal levels, and many other things in addition to the warmth of their sleeping bag. Keeping warm reliably really depends on knowing your body and being prepared with the right equipment. A bottle of hot water can help, but it isn't always enough.

For me, the biggest problem with sleeping was the light. I am used to getting up with the increasing light of morning when I camp. However, it never got dark. I'd wake up, peak through the narrow hole in my bag, see light and want to get up. I'd check my watch, see that it was midnight or 3 am and go back to sleep. I'll have to fix this problem quickly when we get into the field!

In the morning, we boiled more water, ate gorp, oatmeal, hot chocolate, instant coffee and soup, packed up camp, and cleaned up the area, leaving our walls, emergency shelters and quinzhee standing. Then Dillon and Megan came back to camp, and we all moved back to the Weatherhaven. Seated in the Weatherhaven with hot drinks and food, we talked about the night out and how we did or did not stay warm. Next it was radio lesson time. We set up high frequency (HF) radio antennae and used them to contact Mac Ops at McMurdo. My group asked for the minimum air temperature overnight at Pegasus Air Field, which is somewhat near us. The answer was -26°C. It was cold, but we didn't have wind, which made the weather beautiful.

HF Radio Free Happy Camper in action

Then we worked through some rescue scenarios, including the infamous Bucket Head exercise where we try to find someone lost out in a white out, simulated with buckets on our heads. My subgroup actually found our missing person. I'd like to say it was due to good technique, but I think it was by accident. You really don't want to get lost in a whiteout and rely on your companions to find you!

Happy Camper was lots of fun!

Chadden was the rope leader for the successful rescue!

(Larger versions of these images and a few more can be found at http://mygeologypage.ucdavis.edu/sumner/recess/HappyCamper/index.html)