Dawn in Antarctica

(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 sh

(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 M

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!

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.

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 f

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 (wi

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:

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

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 v

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 pr

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 th

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.

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