Dispatches From Afar

Steve's Incident (rockfall)

2009-10-22T11:44:00.001-06:00

Hi all,
I know Steve’s incident is old news at this point, but also that the information provided was a bit thin. This is to satisfy the curiosity of a wide range of people from those with zero interest/background in climbing but an interest in the human aspects of this event, to those curious as to how these kinds of incidents unfold (how decisions are made) and those who already know what to do and are curious as to how it went for us. It is difficult to write to such a wide range of people without boring everyone to a certain degree. Argh.

It was October 9th, his birthday, and we had just climbed the classic super-great crack “Outer Space”, a 6-pitch route on Snow Creek Wall near Leavenworth in central Washington. It took an hour and a half to walk in. We expected more sun than we had and were cold for much of the time.

At the top we put the ropes away and walked and scrambled down the descent “trail”, helmets still on. The guys who followed us up the climb, and who had gotten to know Steve, had recently passed us. There was no indication of goats being above us and no rocks had fallen. We were getting close to the base of the descent, moving down a steep narrow little gully with Steve about 10’ in front of me. The guys had just finished a 20-25’ rappel and had left their rope hanging through the bolted anchor for our use.

Without a warning sound, a soccer ball sized rock appeared in the air about a meter away from Steve and heading toward him. It did not come down the gully I was still in but from the cliff to our left. Instantly “ROCK!!” erupted from my lungs but of course it was too late and the rock impacted the side of Steve’s back. As he crumpled onto the gravel-covered sloping rock surface, I yelled to the guys below “CATCH HIM!!”, as if they could in any way, followed immediately by “HELP HIM!!”. Steve, looking calm but confused, was clawing for something to grab, seemingly in slow motion, but there was nothing.

Later he described realizing he was being pushed, wondering why he was being pushed, and ‘why won’t it stop’.

It was surreal watching him disappear over the edge. It happened too fast for fear, I just had the sickening awareness that this was serious, that it has finally happened. And that I needed to get down to him without knocking more rocks on him or messing up my own rappel set-up and getting hurt myself (and landing on him).

As I rappelled over the lip I could hear him moaning, a good sign at least for now. I saw that one of the guys was holding Steve’s head to stabilize his spine, but I was dismayed to see blood coming from his mouth. As I got closer I saw that the blood was originating from his cheek instead; a significant relief.

This fellow, Brian, is a recently certified EMT, yay. However, he instantly turned the scene over to me although my certification, Wilderness First Responder, is lower than his. With the extent of my training over many years and field experience, I was happy to take the lead role especially as I was already well into Response Mode.

Brian had determined that Steve knew his name and that it was his birthday, but not location, who we were, or what had happened. Steve asked the latter questions again and again and we answered again and again. Meanwhile, I looked for immediate life-threats and assessed his injuries beyond the obvious concussion. His helmet has a dime-sized dent over his ear. His ribs, his chief complaint, were super painful but he was not bleeding from them. A concern was a broken rib puncturing his lung so we carefully monitored his breathing. We essentially ignored his painful swelling ankle for the time being. His respiration and pulse were in the reasonable range and remained stable throughout. He spit pieces of tooth into his hand.

Steve saw the rappel rope still hanging and reached out to hold hit, frequently staring hard at his hand on the rope. Later he said he thought the rope helped ground him in where he was, what was going on. It was maybe 15-20 minutes before he had a good grasp on where he was and what happened though he still doesn’t remember the incident.

Brian’s partner Eric ran to the base of the route we had climbed to retrieve all of our packs. These guys, unlike Steve and I, had brought their phones. Steve had thought we wouldn’t have reception; I had no excuse not to have my phone. I had simply chosen not to bother bringing it; lesson learned.

The first 911 call went in at 5:31pm, about 10 or 15 minutes after Steve fell.

As soon as he was stable enough, I got Steve’s permission to take photos and continued through his hospital stay. This was both for documentation to help us later assess what happened, what we did and when, as well as for Steve to have to tell his story. Clearly this would be a major learning experience for all of us. It turned out that everyone involved in the evacuation was interested in copies of the photos (as long as Steve gave his permission, which he has).

An overhead sound drew my attention. Fifty feet above us, three mountain goats peered down upon us, surveying the results of their sloppy footwork. Not much we could do to get them to leave. They aren’t hunted in this area, are curious, and hang out around people because we supply salt, a nutrient lacking in their diet. In other words, they often follow you around if they think you’re about to pee.

Steve was on somewhat of a ledge: not in a place where we could effectively manage his injuries (not to mention protect him/us from further rockfall). Despite the rib pain, for other reasons it seemed reasonable to see if we could clear his spine. He really kept his composure throughout this whole incident. We took our time with assessing his spine, Brian still holding Steve’s head. We waited until Steve’s feedback was reliable and I did the assessment exactly by the book. I also made sure he understood the potential consequences of moving him if he had a spinal fracture. The exam revealed that his spine was fine.

Steve had previously broken ribs in a motorcycle accident, and recalled how easy it was to panic and make things worse; he knew the importance of steady controlled breathing and staying relaxed in minimizing respiratory distress. He kept his head together and with a lot of help from the 3 of us, was able to very slowly move himself down to a flat spot 3m away, better protected from rockfall, where we situated him on empty backpacks for insulation. We elevated his very swollen ankle and other foot to help minimize shock. At this point about 45 minutes had elapsed from the fall.

We did our best to insulate him including draping the ropes across him which he reported as helping a lot. By this time Steve was quite coherent and verbally involved with his care though talking was painful and required more energy than he had to spare. Steve had the great idea to cover his face to warm the air he was breathing. Everyone remained relatively positive and upbeat, feeding off each others’ light tone. I knew Steve was not about to die, that it was just going to be a long haul out and healing. It turned out that the guys, having seen Steve land next to them, weren’t at all sure that he would be ok, but hid it well. Steve had whiplash so couldn’t move his head and continued to experience severe pain in his ribs. Darkness descended as did the occasional small rock from above as the goats went about their business.

We heard from dispatch that there would be a delay in responding to our call because of a search already in progress and a motorcycle accident. Turned out that a speeding motorcyclist had crossed the double yellow line and crashed into the side of the emergency vehicle responding to our call. Gulp.

The dispatcher ruled out a helicopter because there wasn’t a suitable landing zone. We later found out that the county doesn’t have a helicopter equipped for short-hauling (a cable hung below for the litter for when there isn’t a landing zone). Locally only the military can do that, but the helicopter would have had to hover dangerously close to the rock wall above, a risky maneuver in daylight. As it was night and Steve was not facing loss of life or limb, the military possibility wasn’t appropriate.

By this point our main concerns were shock and hypothermia. After careful consideration of the details, the four of us decided that Brian and Eric would head back to the cars to get insulating materials, enough for us all to be there through the night if it came to that. They left 2 ¼ hours after Steve’s fall.

In addition to discussing logistical details, including that I was supposed to fly to Antarctica from home, in a week, Steve gave me a list of people to call and told me where his insurance card was… everything we could think of to organize until we could talk again in the hospital. It was way too early to make any decisions regarding me going to the ice and I did my best not to fixate on that during the hike out. Conveniently this happened Friday night so I had the rest of the weekend before the office opened to see how injured he really was and how much help he would need in the coming weeks or months.

As he lay there feeling cold, Steve’s muscles slowly tightened up. This increased his pain when he tried to move at all and he spent a lot of the time zoning out to deal with it all.

About 2.5 hours later, the guys returned and we covered Steve in 3 sleeping bags and pulled on warm parkas ourselves… ahhh. Steve really warmed up. While waiting, we exchanged contact info with the guys and organized for the craziness expected when the team arrived.

At 10:40 the team arrived. Dr. Mark, who is also a climber, checked Steve over and soon whipped out the needles, shooting Steve up with an anti-nausea drug and a bit of morphine. Mark was great and later visited Steve in the hospital and then helped us out later with some other logistics.

I was pleasantly surprised that the team indeed welcomed my help for the evacuation. This is not necessarily the case with all Search and Rescue teams. Although some members had a technical background, it turned out that this team, all volunteer, hasn’t been extensively trained in technical rescue. I started out hanging back, watching and respecting their jurisdiction, but soon found myself drawn into an integral role.

With the Search and Rescue team I worked on in Antarctica, I received a lot of (and gave some) training for just this kind of situation. I felt super fortunate to both have had the training, to be here, and to get to work with such great, hard-working, and non-ego guys. As well, Eric and Brian assisted us through the very end and were a tremendous help, including building the initial anchor in the rock with their own gear. We really could not have had a more committed and easy to work with Mountain Rescue group (plus 3 deputies from the Sheriff’s office).

It was particularly important to make sure Steve was packaged well to minimize the rough-ride hell he was going to experience on what promised to be a very long evacuation. Again, I felt grateful for my training as well as for the confidence provided by having the skills.

I wrote earlier that it was 7-8 pitches (sections, often up to a rope length), but in hindsight I count fewer, more like 6. In my late night stupor I counted the several intermediate anchors for the traverses and a couple lower-out belays to control the litter until it was sufficiently below my main belay (anchors were often hard to come by so we had to take what we could find). There was only one real spot of fourth class, steep/exposed enough to make one think. Otherwise it was all scrambling or even walking terrain on a narrow exposed loose path for some of the traverse sections. Others rigged hand-lines for the team members to hang onto. At one point we actually needed to raise the litter a distance so I got to switch from a lower to a raise, another skill I’d practiced in trainings.

Down by the creek we used the rope in the steep burned-out trees mostly to give the litter attendants something to lean against and balance on while managing an unwieldy and heavy load in awkward terrain. It was a TON of work for the litter attendants, wrestling the litter over rocks and logs, for many hours, while I had it easy operating the main rope and setting up anchors. Knowing how hard it is to manage a litter, I really appreciated not to having to help and super thankful for everyone’s efforts. They sloshed through the cold muddy creek with the litter while I got it easy: crossing on a log.

By 4:30am we had reached the trail, where the team had stashed a wheel that attaches to the base of the litter making it much easier to get down the trail. I winced upon seeing the wheel: it wasn’t the wide burly off-road type I’ve seen before, but more of a glorified, small, mountain-bike tire. It would give Steve a rougher ride, but, well, it’s what they had and I was sure glad they were there.

The whole ride shook the daylights out of Steve and no doubt contributed to muscle spasms and pain, but he knew that was the deal so just sucked it up and didn’t complain whatsoever. One of the team members used the word ‘stoic’.

Two hours later, at 6:30am, Steve was loaded into the ambulance and was taken to a hospital in Wenatchee.

The guys and I finished sorting gear. I made the phone calls Steve had requested and headed back to the campground to pack up our camp. Getting in his car without him, I had the sudden feeling that “this trip isn’t any fun anymore”, realizing I had even enjoyed being in the car with him. How quickly things can change. During the evacuation, knowing that Steve was going to be ok I could appreciate getting to actually use some of the skills I’ve learned. But with that over now, the reality began to sink in.

When I got to the hospital, the first thing Steve said was “When does goat hunting season open?”.

In contrast to the number of pitches I initially reported, I may well have short-changed Steve on how far he actually fell in my effort to avoid the common hyperbole, conscious or otherwise, making accidents sound more dramatic than they were.

My initial assessment, from the bottom of the rappel looking up, was 25’, but then I decided 20’ to be conservative. Remembering the effect of fore-shortening, my view when I first looked down to Steve and Brian, and looking at the photos, I think it was more like 25’ that he fell over the vertical drop. This is in addition to the 8-10 feet he slid down before he dropped out of my sight, so he launched over the lip with some momentum.

He landed so suddenly and completely, with no shock-absorbing tumbling, that Brian and Eric were absolutely sure he was going to have more severe injuries than he did, thinking people don’t survive falls like that. Later, a friend who saw the photos, a SAR team member elsewhere, went wide-eyed when he saw the rocks Steve landed upon. Steve was very lucky he didn’t land on the worst of it. Dr. Mark later said that people who fall 30’ have a 50/50 chance of survival. In all likelihood Steve would not have survived without his helmet. Wear your helmet.

That afternoon he went into surgery for his ankle which had swollen substantially in the preceding 22 hours. He has a spiral tibia (and fibula) fracture starting at the base of his tibia (shin). Five screws pulled the base of the tibia back together. The surgeon determined that the spiral fractures should heal fine without a plate as long as Steve doesn’t catch and twist his foot or fall in the coming month. Given time, his moderate concussion and numerous fractured ribs will heal on their own. The ribs are the most painful and its taken awhile for him to be able to breathe normally or move around much. The jaw fracture doesn’t need wiring or anything dramatic. The broken molar doesn’t seem to have included the nerve very much so thankfully he can wait until he can open his mouth more before going to a dentist or oral surgeon. The only painless injury was nine stitches under his chin.

He spent almost 2 ½ days in the hospital; he was really beaten up all told. They knew we’d been camping and let me stay on a cot in his room, which I greatly appreciated so I could be there with him. I have never helped someone in the hospital and was surprised at just how much there was to do in terms of direct care in addition to being a liaison with the outside world. He still had sticks in his hair and dirt all over his face from the evacuation. They only cleaned up his ankle for surgery, but I really can’t be surprised.

We were still in the hospital when Monday morning rolled around. I had realized I would have to make the decision myself whether or not go to Antarctica; he continually encouraged me to go. However, it had become rather obvious that he needed quite a lot of help and would for awhile (nor did he have great options). Although the situation was relatively cut and dry, it still took me some time to fully accept that reality. Had he been in better shape the decision would have been a lot harder. I knew what I needed to do for myself: I would not have been able to live with myself had I gone to the ice. I did this for myself at least as much for him. First thing Monday morning I made the call. It was helpful that I had to leave messages rather than having to say “No” directly to a friend for a job I really enjoy. They have all been very supportive and understanding, thankfully.

Helping him out has felt right, he’s still pretty messed up. I don’t have romantic delusions of care-taking; we’ll have our stressful times without a doubt. Lots to learn and I can see how such dynamics can be a mine-field between any two people; I’ll do my best to stay on top of that stuff as it arises. I enjoy being with him and even at his most miserable thus far he’s been tolerable. So far taking care of him has been relatively easy and of course he’ll need less assistance over time. I think getting out and doing things for myself, being active, is as important for him as it is for me both indirectly (my being happier) and directly: his not feeling that he’s trapping me, that assisting him is dominating my life. And I’ll play the tough-love role and crack the whip for him to do his physical therapy (when he gets to that point) and otherwise heal so I can climb and ski with him again sooner than later. Told him last week that “The good news is that I’m going to stay and help you, the bad news is that I’m going to stay and help you”.

Steve used to live in Bellingham so it made sense to go there for the first week until his follow-up appt a couple days ago. The orthopedist said that nothing can be done for the next 4-5 weeks other than to remain absolutely off the leg. We’ve just returned home where I can take care of him while moving along with my own projects and activities (such as rustling up winter work).

Turns out great to have gone to Bellingham. Many of his friends visited and it’s nice that he got to tell them the story in person and enjoy their company again after having moved 4 months ago for the year-long climbing trip. Brian and Eric were also in town for a few days so we got to see them a couple times. That was valuable for closure; we shared our different perspectives and thoughts during and about the incident, answered each others’ questions, and otherwise got to talk and process this event… and just hang out; they are great guys. This stuff matters, sort of our own informal and dispersed Critical Incident Stress Debrief. For the same reasons it was also nice to see Mark a couple times in Wenatchee and talk with a couple other rescuers after the incident.

Before we left home last month, Steve had signed up for a Wilderness First Responder course. This incident will certainly enhance his understanding of the curriculum! Anyone who spends real time in the backcountry should take this course. Backcountry is technically defined as only 2 hours between patient and advanced life support; we were 13 hours between despite the hike in only taking 1.5 hours. If the cost and time commitment are a deterrent, take it not for yourself as much as for your backcountry partners. This is a big deal. I cannot imagine not knowing what to do in such a situation and how horrible it would feel to not be able to help someone so in need. At the very least take Wilderness First Aid, a much shorter/cheaper course. In fact, even for those who have no interest in the backcountry, Basic First Aid, a short course (day?), could have the same value if your friend/child has injuries that could kill them before the ambulance arrives. Stay current with your certification. There is enough to know that the reinforcement and practice really make a difference; it’s how we actually learn the material over time. Enough said, I’ll get off my soapbox.

Thanks for all the comments and positive energy sent my/our way. It’s been really was nice to hear from people; thanks for checking in.

Love and Helmets, Suz

Mt. Vinson season summary

2009-01-09T20:42:00.001-07:00

Hi my most wonderful friends and family,
As many of you know I am back from my sixth season getting paid to explore the amazing continent of Antarctica, this time from an entirely different perspective. I guided climbers on Mt. Vinson, the highest peak in Antarctica, rather than teaching/guiding scientists working for the US Antarctic Program.

Apologies for too much detail in certain areas. That's the "problem" with diverse friends: ice people want to know certain things, climbers/guides/skiers others, while some people barely know what a crevasse is. How boring would it be if all my friends were just like me. Skim and look for what might be interesting to you.

Working with a variety of people from different countries and continents was interesting in the different styles and approaches, and at times challenging with different dialects and Spanish. Fortunately the very-Scottish radio operator at Patriot Hills was patient with me as I did my best to interpret his words! Funny.

We spent two weeks in Punta Arenas, Chile getting oriented to the program, preparing gear and food, and then waiting for the wind to subside enough to get the plane in (video on Facebook). Then we spent a week putting up the large industrial tents familiar to ice-heads everywhere for the Patriot Hills (PH) main camp. This was a full-on field camp, like the one I was at last season (WAIS) with the USAP.

My previous ice experience was of course immeasurably helpful in knowing what was going on, being able to contribute, knowing what to ask and expect. Would you believe that when I went down in ’03 I didn’t know how to ride a snowmobile?!

A few days after arrival a big windstorm hit, creating white-out conditions with the blowing snow; definitely makes one think twice about going outside to the outhouse (all solid human waste is flown off-continent, in addition to all pee from Patriot Hills). This wind broke the previous record and was measured at just over 100mph. A bunch of staff sleeping tents (normal tents) were destroyed and we spent much of the windiest day trying to keep the big hut-tents intact. Welcome back to Antarctica.

A week later 8 of the Vinson guides were flown in a (Ken Borek) Twin Otter over to Vinson Basecamp at 7200’ on the Branscombe Glacier below Vinson Massif.

We spent a few days getting that camp up surrounded by steep cliffs, ridges, and beautiful icefalls that occasionally cut loose over the season causing avalanches a comfortably safe distance away. As everywhere down there, the scale is massive.

Each season there are five Vinson “rotations” about 2 weeks long each. The mountain, with only two camps, can be comfortably climbed in 5 days but often takes longer due to weather. Sometimes the rotations start late due to flight delays which are very common from Punta-Patriot Hills so the long rotation time is important. Our clients have it easy because we have gear cached at the two camps so we can just go from Low Camp to High Camp in a day rather than having to ferry a load to high camp, which takes a day, as the other groups do. Everyone drags a sled to Low Camp so there isn’t any load-carrying to that camp, we just have lighter loads (yay!). The fixed lines (1200m worth of 35-40 degree snow) preclude hauling sleds to High Camp. This slope is the steepest part of the whole climb though the summit ridge involves a negotiating a wee bit of exposure and third class rock.

ALE’s sub-company ANI (Adventure Network Inc, whom they bought out and expanded in ’03) has their own/our clients. ALE is relatively new and growing super fast; much is being worked out. Like Exum, numerous owners adds to the complexity. A very interesting and dynamic time to be involved.

ALE also wholesales the logistics (mostly air transportation) to other, normal guide companies (like Alpine Ascents). That is the “Logistics” in Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions”: ALE. These companies supply their own guides and gear and many of our guides first came down with one of these companies and we all have friends working for them.

Some of the companies come from, uh, “less developed” guiding cultures. I have a photo of a guided group taking a snack break on the glacier. The guide and client very close behind him on the rope were sitting right in the middle of a snow bridge over a large crevasse (big crack on glacier). The other client was sitting on the edge of the crevasse. Once I was over my shock I asked the guide whether he knew he was sitting on a bridge. He assured me he did. What does one say to that? This was before I had a handle on the bigger issues that we as rangers are dealing with. Now I would know what to say!

Some of the Antarctic Treaty nations do not want ANY recreation in Antarctica (the US is not among these) and ALE’s permit to operate down there comes with heavy responsibility to basically, not f**k up, as in have someone die on the mountain whether or not it is an ANI client, whom we directly control as guides or an ALE-contract-company whom we try to influence as rangers. Maybe we don’t have so much control over clients: recently one sneaked away at “night” (24-hour light) to go to the summit including crossing the crevassed glacier alone. How does a guide deal with that?! [Fortunately, twice ALE has come to the assistance of treaty nations and not yet has had to ask for help.] It’s all about credibility in the international arena where rules have no bite but it really pays to get along. On that note ALE pretends to recognize Chile’s claim to a slice of the ice because then the Chilean government will support ALE’s being based in Chile and use of the airport/airspace.

This tension is the crux: how to manage these companies who already think ALE, via ANI, is trying to push them out of guiding down there. Not the case. ALE makes a lot more money with other companies than our own clients, but how to manage it all is a work in progress. There is no other mountain like this in the world because of Antarctic Treaty requirements, like super tight envir. standards, higher than USAP field camps, which we support, and the related politics.* The whole equation can get rather tricky and was the subject of some distress and much discussion over the season.

I only worked the first three rotations so that I could get home in time to work a backcountry ski and winter ecology course here in the Tetons. I guided the first rotation (with another Exum guide, the Highly Capable Andy Tyson), worked as ranger the second rotation, mostly hauling gear around, and was Basecamp Manager for my last rotation.

The weather when I was guiding was quite cold and windy (-35-40 with constant wind at high camp, 13,200’), but we were able to get all 5 of our guys to the summit (16,000’) and back with all digits intact. I actually had a helluva time on summit day with heavy frost between the lenses of my goggles (non-removable) and some other highly annoying problems of not having my gear scene quite together. It was highly frustrating not being able to really see and the cold made the climb a lot more exhausting for everyone.

Fortunately on my ranger patrol, after establishing a rescue cache high on the mountain, I had the opportunity to not only go to the summit again, but to actually see the terrain and the spectacular view (different goggles: cheaper, ironically). The four of us climbed a new route up the central north face to the summit which sounds a lot more impressive than it actually was (Antarctica is Land of Low Hanging Fruit… if you can just get there): 4th class with 60-70 degree alpine ice topping out. It was super fun to actually feel like we were climbing, to have to pay attention and use good technique. We didn’t rope-up and we all climbed slightly different lines. Super fun. I felt great and was comfortable in addition to being able to see, so this time I summited in good style. The ‘summit pose’ photo on my Fb profile is from this second time on top.

Overall we had a diverse, dynamic, and competent little guide team, evolving with different people through the season, and lots of support from Patriot Hills, the hub of the company’s ice operations. The fly or ski-to-South-Pole and other trips all base out of PH. The Ski the Last Latitude Degree (or 2) to the South Pole trips are guided by Vinson guides as well; this year I was not assigned one but maybe next year I will be. Would be interesting to ski the Last Degree (8-10 days) and arrive at Pole and visit friends there; I would like to do one. However I don’t think I want to specialize in shuffling across the Great White Expanse into the wind, which occasionally gives people frostbite on their thighs (weird).

Vinson basecamp has nicer weather than the nearly-always-windy PH. At our little camp below Vinson (120 miles away) “bad” weather almost always means fog, rime, rarely wind, so it’s pretty luxurious esp in our personal tents which get quite warm inside during the sun’s midday high-point.

We did have a Antarctica reality-check storm at basecamp (Fb video clip), one associated with the 11-day delay in getting rotation-3 clients to the continent. The delay meant that my basecamp manager experience did not involve having any groups on the mountain but I did have lots of help and company in basecamp. When the weather was nice we went on a number of ski tours: great fun.

Skis are used en route to Low Camp during ranger patrols (not while guiding clients) and to get out of basecamp for exercise and FUN. It’s all AT (randonee), and I have essentially no experience with parallel turns other than faking it on my tele gear on the blue groomers. Not having AT boots didn’t help much, so I’m told, but next year it’s been my plan to broaden my ski skills: buy AT gear and learn to parallel turn for real and open up some new terrain for myself. But it was fun nonetheless skiing in my mtn boots as I don’t know any different and it’s simply a blast to be out gliding on snow anyway. The lack of wind at basecamp means the snow is unusually skiable, unlike 99% of the continent which is mostly flat too.

Two birds were sighted, week apart, at basecamp (I only saw one); consensus is that they were both snow petrels. These were the first birds ever seen there and it was pretty exciting. Also, we had an insect show up in the hut/tent. This too was a highlight (ok, for me at least) and I reported it with the twice-daily check-in with Patriot Hills: they appreciated it! (Victoria, who also used to work for the USAP, actually). The only thing that makes sense is that it came in as an egg or larva on the fresh…ish veggies that we once received.

PH and the Ellsworth Mountains feel far less “Antarctic” than the McMurdo Sound region although it’s actually more like most of the continent than the latter. No penguins, no seals, no skuas, no volcano, no Dry Valleys, no sea ice, and no science highlighting much of what is so special about Antarctica. Instead it feels like mountaineering (and some skiing) with an Antarctic-flair, which is plenty enjoyable in itself. However, I feel a bit bad for my colleagues for whom this is the extent of their Antarctic experience. On the flip side, I MUCH appreciate the break from the scene of McMurdo and all the politics and bureaucratic crap of such a large corporate uptight organization. Great to work for a small, responsive, committed company run by people with their heads on straight and their priorities in the right place. Refreshing!

I had a good season down there and very much enjoyed the new scene, getting to know yet more really cool people, and of course getting to play in an Antarctic alpine setting: a big change from my past down there. I anticipate returning though am also on the look-out for a USAP contract as a field mountaineer with a geology group (spread the word, my dear USAP friends); hopefully both can fit in next season.

Especially in this age of global warming, how can I arrange for a full season on the ice and still be home for a long season skiing in the Tetons?! [Don’t get me wrong, I love summer and desert climbing]. Getting to know people from different countries has opened up new parts of the world in my awareness. Where is the balance between developing a life at home here in the incredible Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem and exploring the world…on diminishing oil supplies and while increasing one’s carbon footprint. Argh. Oh yeah, then there’s the part about having a best buddy for such explorations.
Suddenly my simple life seems complex. (Yes, I know most of you, esp those with children, will want to slap me for that comment; fair enough: you are right!).

When I get home from the backcountry course I’ll post some photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze
I hope you are healthy, still employed, and not dependent on the money you have invested.

Peace, Love, and Light to you and your family, Suz

http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html

*USAP ice friends: we were told, as an aside, that no-dogs policy was not initially adopted for the environmental reasons we’ve heard (not that those reason aren’t valid). Instead Australia initiated it to one-up the US related to some other ice issue, something they wanted… some political reason that of course the US and others had to follow to maintain clout… I don’t know the details but it’s been interesting getting a broader view of how things work down there.
Many thanks to you who have sent me updates. I still feel very connected to you all and much appreciate your. Hugs to each of you.

Punta Arenas, Chile, heading to the ice

2008-11-01T09:23:00.004-06:00

Hola amigos/as y familia,
Happy Halloween. I hope you are well.
I am in Punta Arenas, Chile on my way to Antarctica.

Funny how thrashing about with my Spanish and planning for time on the ice erodes my plan to focus mostly on my home-area life for the next few years. Traveling and working in amazing places has a way of thoroughly engaging and challenging me. But then again, so does climbing and other adventuring, just in a different way. However, my rough plans are to be home only around 8 months a year anyway, so it's not a matter of one type of lifestyle or the other. So much to experience and learn in this crazy life!

The company leadership is setting the "right" tone and saying the "right" things for the most part as well as making us feel welcome. Off to a good start. Interesting to learn a bit more about the politics involved in the Antarctic Treaty and how it's been managed over the decades. Am appreciating a view of the ice from a non-governmental/corporate perspective (not to imply that the NSF-USAP has been dishonest).

My ice background has made an incredible tremendous difference in what it feels like to start with this company. To understand the language, systems, the realities of working down there and to know what questions to ask has made this much less stressful entry than in 2003. Yee haa!

I feel at home with our team partly because I already know 3 folks from Exum and a couple others from my time in McMurdo. Our staff represents about 15 countries so it's been fun learning about different cultures and deciphering all the different dialects, accents, and phrases.

Speaking of which*, astonishingly, much of my meager Spanish has awakened after 8 years of hibernation. I love getting to actually interact a bit with patient locals and trade language-teaching with some of our Chilean staff. *ha

This company, "Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions", has several components, one of which is wholesaling Vinson trips to private guide services (such as Alpine Ascents) who then get their own clients, have their own guides, etc.

ALE also owns ANI, which "retails" Vinson climbs directly to climbers. As ALE-ANI guides we also act as rangers on the mountain, maintaining the fixed ropes, coordinating the radio communications, reminding groups of Treaty environmental requirements, relaying weather forecasts, managing the basecamp from which small aircraft (Twin Otters from the same company as the USAP uses) fly people back and forth to the main camp Patriot Hills. Seems to be the best company to guide Vinson for. This year I think we have about 135 Vinson climbers, making it the most popular trip though skiing the last latitude degree to the South Pole is also popular.

[Mt. Vinson, 16,050' high, is the reason so many people are willing to shell out $35 grand to be cold: simply because it is the highest summit on the continent, one of the "Seven Summits". Climbing the Seven Summits has become a popular goal for those of, uh, "significant" means and little time (or... skills).]

The stories that I've been hearing about some clients and what they'll hide in order to summit (frostbite, injuries, medical conditions) are a little daunting even though this company regularly turns down potential clients (who then show up on the mountain with other companies). I'm amazed how many highly-publicized "solo" ski trips have made to Pole... with a photographer or even a GUIDE along (even hauling the person part way behind a snowmobile). The photographer and/or guide somehow never show up in the photos and video distributed to the media and sponsors. How naive I am: it really should, however, be of no surprise that people bring their "stuff" with them no matter how far afield they venture. As you can well imagine, stories abound.

Patriot Hills, in addition to serving Vinson climbers, also supports other ANI trips such as people being flown to the USAP South Pole Station for a 3-hour tour and t-shirt purchasing session, and people skiing to Pole from the edge of the continent: LONG hard trips. People even fly in for the marathon run. ALE's Patriot Hills also supports numerous other private trips and governmental projects that need logistical support (some projects are science: in fact the USAP occasionally contracts with ALE).

There are only 2 penguin clients this year, so I won't be working that trip. (Also, no Ellsworth Mtns clients either). Right now I'm on for two Vinson climbs then basecamp manager, but with the changes of plans based on weather-delayed-aircraft, I know not to "expect" that to actually happen. Whatever I'm assigned, I'm sure it'll be fun and I'll learn a lot.

Patriot Hills maxes out at about 80-90 people and has a reputation as serving the best food in Antarctica. People sleep in normal tents but on nicer mattresses and there's some sort of shower facility for limited use. Laundry is sent out on the weekly flights from the large plane, the Russian Illushin-76 that ALE contracts with for flights to/from the ice. Overall it sounds much like any other large field camp I've been to, minus the science.

The idea of real recreational activities such as skiing and climbing being not only legitimate, but the goal is a bit of a mental shift... a refreshing shift. Skis as part of our work gear! (even if just for slogging around upon) There aren't much in the way of rules around personal recreation, but of course there are heavy expectations in the way in which it is undertaken... for good reason. Time and energy will the issues around recreating. It appears the Norwegian cook staff have brought kite skiing down here; I am looking forward to seeing that.

I'll spend nearly all my time, however, at Vinson basecamp with about 15 other guides (most of whom are on the mtn at any given time), and a cook(!).

I don't fly onto the ice for another week so have some time to sort out which of the local dark chocolates is worthy of taking to the ice. How is it that I visit countries that don't "do" chocolate very well?

Would you believe there's a climbing gym here in Punta?! 'Climbing gym' is a relative term, but it has half the rules and twice the character of any gym I've heard of. They get points for creativity and resourcefulness; definitely a kick... and a good work-out.

My email messages will wait for me on my Yahoo acct so feel free to send whatever you'd like, especially holiday letters with attachments, photos of you with your sweetie, family, pets, friends, and whatever your current adventures may be: re-doing the kitchen, surviving the holiday season, or getting out and about in whatever capacity. !Muchas Gracias!

On the ice I will be able to receive two emails a week to the ALE account and send out four; beyond which I will be charged. There's no internet access down there; the connection is very slow and there is only one computer for staff email anyway.

[Incidentally, I am on Facebook. I'm trying to find someone to post updates I send from the ice to this blog and then put a little note on my Facebook profile that there's an update here. If I cannot get anything posted while on the ice, I'll do so when I get home in early January.]

Love and Icy Breezes, Susan

The company I'm working for:
http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html

Photo of Vinson basecamp:
http://exposedplanet.com/index.php?showimage=220

Of course, YouTube for Vinson basecamp etc etc:
http://noolmusic.com/youtube_videos/to_at_mount_vinson_base_camp_in_antarctica.php

A 2005 science expedition that flew in from McMurdo-Pole on the planes (LC-130) used over there. This year no NSF-USAP groups and only two science projects (other countries) out of Patriot Hills. But it does give one a sense of Patriot Hills, despite not being a recreational trip which is the vast majority of ALE's business:
http://mitchell-antarctica.blogspot.com/2008/01/patriot-hills.html

pbase.com/antarctic_suze photos won't be updated till January.

Humorous Spanish-to-English translation of the week: seen on a box of condoms while waiting in line at the cashier in the grocery store. That particular type of condom was described as "Sensible".
I had to think about that one for a moment and concluded that it's probably more accurate than what they actually meant.
;-)

Guiding climbers in Antarctica: something different

2008-10-24T10:45:00.004-06:00

Hi All,
I hope this finds you savoring the cool fall days and enjoying the crunchy leaves. It's been wonderful to be around for this much of autumn for a change.

After five seasons working as a field instructor for the US Antarctic Program, I'm going south from an entirely different angle and for a much shorter season. I'm going to be guiding climbers on Vinson (one of the Seven Summits: continents), other peaks, and potentially penguin-watchers for a private company called Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (partly British). I hear many of the clients are European. Can you believe it costs $35,000 USD to climb Vinson! And with the economy as it is...?!

http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html Click on Adventure Network International, the company they bought. The Ellsworth Mtn Safari sounds like a lot more fun than Vinson; hopefully I'll get a variety of trip types.

I'll be flying through and training in Punta Arenas, Chile and working out of a large camp called Patriot Hills near the Ellsworth Mtns and Ronne Ice Shelf (Weddell Sea). Patriot Hills is much more like what one imagines when thinking of Antarctica than McMurdo is: a lot like a major USAP field camp such as WAIS. I'll be sleeping in a normal tent for the whole time which is another good reason not to be down there for six months again!

I'm looking forward to seeing a new part of the continent and a different field operation. A nice feeling to be going into their scene with so much Antarctic field experience.

They run a "Last Degree" ski expedition on which they ski the last latitude degree to the South Pole. I hope to work that trip and then get to visit my friends at Pole! That would be a kick after skiing across the Great White Expanse for however long ("Look! More snow!") One friend already promised to sneak me and my clients fresh cookies ;-)

I'll only be down for about 10 weeks which will be nice as it will allow me to work a winter ecology (and ski, avalanche) course here in the Tetons for Prescott College in January. I am looking forward to getting back to my roots and developing additional winter employment options, esp locally. I must say, however, I have mixed feelings about coming directly home from the ice rather than spending time in South America...

I'm not done with the USAP and expect to return hopefully next year as a mountaineer/guide contracted by specific science groups for the duration of their project. These would be shorter contracts and would allow for more guiding for ALE as well as home work and play.

I don't think I'll be able to post the occasional update on this blog because we'll have such limited bandwidth that normal websites won't be accessible. Because this Antarctic program is so much simpler than the enormous and complex USAP, I will have far less to expound upon so will write short messages as per last year.

This will be more the classic Antarctic experience... I'll be in the field the whole time to varying degrees.

I recently enjoyed my first fall climbing trip in years, albeit a short one. Spent almost two weeks in the Indian Creek and Moab (Utah) area enjoying delightful and challenging sandstone crack climbing. Visited with several friends in Moab, mountain biked a couple times on the famous Moab slickrock, and overall much enjoyed being out car camping and climbing again. I so love the simplicity of the lifestyle.

I hope you have a wonderful end of the year and I look forward to hearing from you sooner or later :-)

Love and Wild Winds, Suz

Kilauea Volcano Exploration

2008-04-30T13:36:00.004-06:00

I sat on a ledge less than 50m from the action. Orange blobs of lava shot starward as ocean waves crashed into the hot lava, flowing out of sight but reflected in the tremendous steam/gas clouds rising and roiling above this violent meeting of molten earth and super-heated sea. Stunning. The photos show orange streaks, but what I saw was the actual blobs flying, some of which trailed mini-plumes of gases like meteors with streaming tails.

The sounds were vividly alive: waves crashing, lava hissing, and blobs taping lightly as they landed in front of me and faded into blackness.

I headed to Mt. Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii in search of hot lava, wanting to experience it up close and personal. I’d been "turned on" to live volcanoes a couple years ago on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.

I rented a hatchback and lived in it at free campgrounds, cooking farmers’ market fare on my campstove. I enjoyed a relatively cheap trip with maximum flexibility and spontaneity; totally my style.

The exact locations where lava flows on the surface change almost daily, and officials imply that more places are legally closed than actually are. I understand the importance of this for the non-outdoorsy public; however, it required a lot more work on my part.

It was a sleuthing project involving talking to as many people as possible, assessing their reliability, comparing maps (some of which aren’t current due to lava destroying and creating), learning to interpret the USGS daily volcano report, figuring out which laws were enforced and how, which sites and access points are high profile, and trying to read between the lines coming from the mouths of well-trained Park Service rangers.

The action this year is outside of Volcanoes National Park. The lava flows in hidden tubes on its way to the ocean entry points where the official viewpoint is located. It flows down a hill through a defunct housing development; only an island of forest and a couple ruins remain. To safely manage the public, the state Civil Defense provides a well-guarded official veiw-point quite a distance from the ocean entry points, open limited hours.

Being comfortable walking on loose uneven surfaces has it’s advantages, allowing one to easily use more distant access points: less obvious to law enforcement.

Choosing a legal parking spot within the park, I hiked in black clothing (camo) across an older lava flow for 2.5 hours out of the Park to get to the large tree-island in the defunct subdivision. I skirted the lower edge of the trees, admiring the many “tree molds”: holes in the lava from where it had surrounded trees before burning them up. A fleet of helicopters on flight-seeing tours, research tasks, and occasionally law enforcement demanded attention. I was trespassing and probably also breaking some other broad-brush law designed to bust terrorists like me within a quarter mile of the flow.

The increasing smells of gases, tree soot, and the cooling lava itself informed me that I was approaching the current smoldering flow. When the lava had recently flowed on the surface, the wind blew the gases and heat into the adjacent forest, scorching it and providing me fairly easy, if hot and sooty, uphill travel. More importantly, the trees provided cover for the increased number helicopters flying close above as I was adjacent to the steamy flow. I hid behind trees, dashed from cover to cover, and did my best to avoid being seen. Most pilots are renegades not likely to bust me, but I sure wasn’t willing to take any chances.

I wanted to cross the flow to confirm that there wasn’t any surface exposure along the other side. Fortunately there were pauses in the helicopter flights, so I went for it, hustling across fresh lava, some of which was nasty loose a’a lava, for my first time. It was an exciting dash through the gases along a rough and circuitous route. At certain spots the intense smell and heat suddenly increased, instantly turning me in another direction, my pulse rising as I increased my exposure time. I made it across with the same cotton-mouth feeling I get when leading hard routes!

The rainforest-thick vegetation and that awful, loose, sharp a’a lava made for a heinous descent along the far edge (ok, sandals didn’t help, but at least the socks did). My dash back across at the base of the hill, hours later, was much more relaxed because the hot lava seemed to run deeper under the surface and I had a better feel for the risk.

In hopes of finding a lava “break-out” near where it emerged from the deep, I prepared for long hikes from a basecamp into a closed area. I planned three nights to give myself enough time to try different routes in my quest. The campsite lacked water, so ahead of time I hiked in to cache four gallons, get a feel for the terrain, where exactly the trail closure began, and the amount of law enforcement coverage. Because I would have to have a camping permit, they would know I was there; what else would I be doing there for that much time?

Later I backpacked in for the blitz. Knowing I needed a lot of darkness, I went to “sleep” at 5:30pm for my 9:30pm alpine start. The moon was so bright I didn’t use my headlamp for a long time; much easier to see distant terrain silhouettes.

When I arrived at the edge of the old flows at the base of Pu‘u O‘o (a small peak along the rift ridge and source of current flow; in the photos), I was lured by the promising orange glow in the gas clouds arising from top of the ridge, appearing to reflect the hot red stuff just below. I headed straight up there, only to find that my speed dropped dramatically as I discovered what the locals call “shelly” lava, “breakable crust” in ski lingo. I felt like I was moving fairly quickly but realized that although my body was in constant motion, I really wasn’t making much actual progress. Evaluating the surface failure potential of each step, recovering balance from collapses, and dodging the weakest surfaces made for a highly circuitous, inefficient route.

As I ascended, the orange glow shifted location and I realized it had never been coming from Pu‘u O‘o, but from the break-out a good distance on the other side. I started to traverse to the far side where I knew the lava began its descent to the sea. This meant going into the gas plume, which had disadvantages… eyes stinging, a coughy feeling in my throat… potentially much worse. Depending on how intensely the wind blew, I alternated between the traverse toward the compelling orange glow, and bailing for the trees, irritatingly out of sight a mile+, where I might(??) be able to travel faster and in better air, but it would be an even longer approach (miles).

Now the rock had changed, becoming talus that frequently disintegrated, from decades of the acidic plume, when stepped upon. Slow! But finally I could see the bright orange of a lava break-out… in the far distance. At one point the glare intensified as the lava appeared to be shooting up out of the fissure. Beautiful even at a distance. Argh! How I wanted to be there!

It was getting rather obvious that I wouldn’t have time to get there and back by daylight, esp since after daybreak, I would have to take an off-trail, much slower route back the last few miles so I couldn’t be seen on the closed trail.

Eventually I made it to the trees where I found forest too dense to travel in for daytime cover (damn). I began the long traverse back on the old but solid lava, following the highly irregular lava-forest edge (circuitous, yet again), back around to where it intersected the trail I left to approach the mountain. Clouds obscured the moon, rain didn’t help, and in the faint beam of my light, I saw a hazard I hadn’t yet encountered: volcanic ash partly covering deep “earth cracks” in the underlying lava-rock, like snow covering crevasses. Hmm.

An hour after daylight I made it back to camp. Later I hiked out, having accepted that it is just too far to access the break-outs from this side. Damn! But it had been a good effort; appreciated getting a real feel for the different kinds of lava terrain here.

From a scientist on Mt Erebus, I had a name of a local volcanologist who invited me to go into the field with him and a class. I learned a lot about assessing active volcanic risks and without the fear of getting busted, thanks to Ken’s permit. It turned out that I was far more cautious than I needed to be that earlier day (no surprise).

Around 4am, Ken led us out to admire the lava “ocean entries” in their illuminescent glory. We sat admiring the flying-lava-bomb show through sunrise, at which point I could see large chunks of fresh lava floating in the water, orange in the middle and steaming heavily before cooling and disappearing. Floating steaming lava! How crazy is that?!

Soon it was time to head to a small skylight (hole in lava tube ceiling) radiating such intense heat/gases that we approached from upwind. Ken took samples of the dangling lava-cicles with a steel cup mounted on a long metal rod.

Through the skylight, you could see the flowing incandescence down in the lava tube. We threw in rocks to see the lava surface and flow rate, which otherwise aren’t discernible because of the brightness. It was amazing to watch the rocks gently received in the viscous flow, maybe flowing 4-5mph? A head-sized rock would smoothly submerge or nearly, while smaller ones rafted along peacefully in the 1800F degree flow out of sight.

On another early morning I returned to this same ocean entry. The site looked different, further out into the ocean. New lava had created new land, some of which might later break off and fall into the sea on its loose base.

I moved in pretty close, enough so that when a big wave sent a lot of incandescent blobs overhead, I reflexively went into the mode learned on the Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus to avoid getting hit. A couple tiny blobs landed nearby… a bit too close for comfort. Very interesting location: alive and dynamic, commanding of great respect.

Then I saw it, slow moving orange nearby, intensely bright at the tip… an actual break-out, what I’d been hoping to encounter. And better yet, it was below a meter-high ledge that provided protection from the fiery heat as the lava creaked and popped and slowly oozed and crept my way. Absolutely mesmerizing. And the smell of the lava itself was even more intense than usual: a sharp metallic smell, one that stayed on my skin for a short while afterward. Fascinating to see how the fantastic shapes of cooled lava form, and how irregularly it flows, sometimes stopping in one place only to break through somewhere else where it had been slowly cooling. Clearly a lot of pressure behind the flow.

The sound alone was captivating. It truly creaked and snapped and popped and groaned; strands of glass stretching and breaking on the surface of the slow-mo flow. So alive, earth and rock being born right in front of me, uncontrollable on the big scale; the very tip of a direct conduit through the crust deep down into the mantle of the earth. ‘Twas a magical, encompassing, wildly multi-sensory experience, one I am most definitely not ‘over’.

In daylight the surface of much of this pahoehoe flow might have appeared dark, but it was in it’s vivid orange glory at this hour. It was so intensely hot that I tied a bandana around my face and worried a bit about my camera.

Many of you know that my sole goal in going to Kilauea was to stick a stick into hot lava. Finally I found the real thing, but WHERE WAS MY STICK?! How easily I could have brought one to that site, argh! Life is about improvisation, right? As the luscious lava creaked and glided just below my ledge, I quickly reached over with a rock to bang on the hot orange tip of the flow. Amazingly I had to whack it pretty hard to dent the surface. Fun!

That half hour was distinctly the highlight, but definitely not representative of my overall experience.

I met a really cool biologist who works on alien species in the Park. He had done his thesis near where I live with a scientist I know from Antarctica. Later we went for a hike and I heard about the issues, complications biological and political… as well as general local info and lore. The summary is that Hawaii has been as destroyed as anywhere on this planet because of invasive species wreaking havoc; quite a story, and much energy goes into minimizing further damage. I helped him walk his dogs in the rain and had dinner with him a couple times. It was nice to have a friend there, someone to answer questions and process my experience with.

The current volcanological excitement in Hawai’i is the recently-started gaseous eruption of a vent in the main crater on Mt. Kilauea called Halema’uma’u (got that?). It’s spewing tons of ash and toxic gases that caused the Park to close when the winds changed. Thousands of people, mostly in tour buses, had to leave. I was on a hike that day in a remote part of the Park so didn’t find out until I saw the note on my car. I was far from the gas plume, in great air at the far end of the road. I put the note back in its bag and under the windshield wiper where I’d found it, and made dinner at the back of the car. Ended up sleeping in the car right there, having concocted a reasonable story in the highly unlikely event I was found.

The next day I left the Park and went down to the eastern coast, to delightful steam caves mentioned in the guidebook I borrowed from the local library. There I met a local who directed me to a coastal state park where I could safely camp for free.

On a walk the next morning I discovered that wild coconuts do not look like the fibrous brown ones you see in a store, and that they are very difficult to open by hand. Soon I met a Hawaiian who answered my questions about how to tell if a coconut was ripe and how open one. Imua was super kind and friendly in an innocent way; a treat to hang out with. After awhile I followed him to his house where we used his giant hook to pull down coconuts. He showed me how to chop them open with a machete: MUCH easier than the rock-bang and wrestle-peel method. We spent some time opening them, drinking the “milk” inside, and getting into the ‘meat’, which was soft and slippery, a lot different than I’d seen; tastier too. It was really fun to see how coconuts develop, to get a sense of them. They were brought by the early Polynesians, but are not an overtaking, destructive introduced species.

Later I went to another coastal park and found lava tubes long enough to require two headlamps. If one died, you’d have a very difficult time trying to get back out.

Lava tubes are everywhere and super interesting; I quickly learned to always carry leather gloves and at least one headlamp in my pack. [As a precaution I made a habit of leaving my pack clearly visible from the air (when possible) just outside the cave I was exploring.] Some caves sport a variety of features created by the river of lava that once flowed within and the tremendous convective gas currents rushing across the lava and out through skylights. Over the centuries after the lava flow ceases, various microbes colonize the tubes. In some tubes you can stand and walk quite easily for a hundreds meters or more, sometimes dodging roots, maybe seeing one of the blind cricket species that evolved there, or slime molds, bacterial coatings, and minerals deposits. It’s important not to touch the features.

I was pretty motivated to check out all the variations and channels I could reasonably fit into in all the lavas tubes I found throughout my explorations. Always the question: to squeeze through and hope it will widen into another wide area? To take the risk of having to shimmy and crawl backwards, clothing snagging on everything, because the tube stayed small? Even a casual practice of yoga has many benefits.

It took me awhile to understand how the Park Service manages visitors and lava tubes. They consistently but very subtly discourage tube exploration, subtly in order to avoid drawing attention to the caves. This is for very good reason because of the fragility of the features alone (never mind the safety issues). The Park has developed a huge, nearly featureless tube through which thousands of people walk every year. In the smaller caves or narrower channels in the backcountry, I didn’t see evidence of exploration. At times I even had to temporarily move rocks to worm my way through.

One cave ended at the cliffs above the ocean, tall basalt cliffs upon which the waves slam so hard they make the rock you’re sitting on at the edge actually vibrate. The first time I felt that I almost dropped my camera while leaping away.

Anyway, big waves sent water pouring through unseen cracks in the roof of the cave I was in, but it flowed out through other cracks.

Then around the corner in a tight chamber I came upon… old human bones. Startling.

It was a burial site, of which I later learned there are many. The very incomplete skeleton was accompanied by a bit of wood ash and glass beads near the head area. The bones looked quite friable.

Much to wonder about. Who? Circumstances? When?

Deep in that tight dark cave, alone, I definitely considered the implications of disturbing (by simply being there) such a site. Hawaiian religion is alive and well; what did the volcano goddess Pele think? I didn’t touch anything nor take any pictures.

Later that day, after yet another really interesting cave and time to think about the burial site, I returned to take a more clear inventory of what I saw, wanting to remember it well.

Eventually I caught wind of the Kazumura Cave, the longest lava tube on Earth, some 40 miles, steep overall, 5 centuries old, and heavily researched as far as lava tubes go.

I paid $20 cash for a private four-hour tour through a mile long section of this cave. The guide was a guy my age living with his parents in a rural rainforest housing development over this lava tube.

Harry and his parents are absolute characters, the ultimate Mom & Pop scene. They bought the land and as they hand-cleared a place for a house, they stumbled upon an opening to this amazing cave. They educated themselves and developed it minimally with a heavy emphasis on preservation of the delicate features, some of which are very rare. Lava-falls limit how far one can easily travel up or down the cave, and they have a locked gate at their entrance, a response to vandalism.

Their tour business isn’t strictly “legal” because the cave doesn’t officially exist, or does it?… Ambiguity surrounds ownership and liability: agencies making silly and contradictory laws over who has rights, or simply ignoring caves altogether to avoid liability. But it clearly exists in the scientific world; it even has bits of marked survey tape along the walls as reference points.

The business has no real website, no email, no real marketing. The family is very protective of the cave and won’t allow groups of young kids in. These folks aren’t exactly the most, uh, “diplomatic” or “professional” in talking to would-be cave explorers who have certain expectations. Their stories are rather entertaining.

Hawaii seems to draw a lot of “independent, alternative” types, much like Alaskans but less hardy. Harry and his mom Ellouise were so unusual, opinionated, friendly, and chatty that I stayed another hour.5 just to listen.

I highly recommend the tour. Despite being very critical of academia, Harry has learned an impressive amount of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, and fluid dynamics. He has spent untold days studying the cave and consulting with endless numbers of experts who have helped him figure out how the formations were created and identifying the different biological features. I didn’t catch everything he said, but I learned a lot and had a ton of fun anyway.

A couple mongooses and even a wild pig (both extremely destructive aliens) long ago found their way into the cave… but not back out. We saw their remains, and even the outline of the pig’s body on the floor where he lied down for the last time. Wild!

Throughout the trip I’d been scoping out the details for a stealth approach of the Halema‘uma‘u crater, that new eruptive site that caused the park closure. A webcam and other instruments from the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, overlooking the crater, keep careful watch of the eruption. Someone is on duty all night, discretion is advised. I developed a plan: a parking place and approach other than the obvious sneak-access favored by most scofflaws (locals).

Fortunately, my skills for running around in the dark, with minimal headlamp use, figuring out off-trail routes were improving. Route-finding is a lot harder when one needs to avoid the use of a light and there aren’t many large-scale land forms to navigate from.

Hidden in black clothing, I found the balance between being upwind, out of plume, and somewhat out of sight of the observatory, as I positioned myself at the crater rim overlooking the fiery pit 400 feet below. Once again, the sounds were fantastic: a loud, deep, irregular whomphy breathing as the crater coughed out clouds of ash and nasty acidic gases like sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Occasionally I could peer down into the upwind end of the pit just enough to admire the interior wall illuminated by the molten magma lake hidden by its own incandescence and glowing plume.

It’s powerful to experience landscapes in a multi-sensory, all-encompassing, intimate way. So real, so engaging; full presence… our planet in all it’s glory.

Then for a moment, the wind shifted and gave me a lungful of visceral comprehension of how all those people died in 1790 when a plume engulfed them. As I quickly headed upwind from the toxic gases, I was abruptly stopped by burning eyes accompanied by the far scarier sensation of burning lungs. It was merely one second’s worth, one breath, before the wind pushed the plume back. Because of its brevity I was grateful for the experience; a sharp reality check on volcanic hazards.

I do believe that now and then, one has to put a metaphorical toe, just a toe, over the edge of any given hazard to feel out where that edge actually is, to understand the risk on a gut level, not simply intellectually. This is known as getting experience, real experience, the kind one doesn’t get under the protective wing of the Park Service. Or a guide.

All and all it was an amazing 3 weeks. I learned a ton and had a blast.

Photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze

Huge deep field camp, SAR call-out

2008-01-04T19:00:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Happy Belated New Years; can you believe we’re almost through the first decade of the new millennium?

I spent Christmas and New Year’s at a deep field “camp”. It’s so large, 60 people, and so well outfitted (3 cooks, full industrial kitchen, showers, internet, hard-shelled buildings) that it’s more of a station than a camp. I hear it’s bigger than the stations of all the other Antarctic nations and it’s larger than the US station Palmer on the Antarctic peninsula . Maybe they just call it a camp because it’s seasonal and temporary.

It’s located on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS is the camp name) and it’s a long term (7-10 years?) ice core drilling project on the Great White Expanse (ie nothing but snow and sky all around). West Antarctica is of great interest in this time of climate change and this location was chosen for the ice having a “high resolution”, meaning a lot of ice representing each year so an unusual amount of data can be extracted from it.

The high resolution ice core also means it snows a lot there. This year in general has been characterized by consistent unstable weather. As many flights (helo and plane) have been cancelled/postponed as have gone on schedule and major changes have been forced on many projects. Such is Antarctica .

A highlight of my season was being at WAIS for the densest white-out I have experienced down here. People routinely refer to storms in which “you cannot see your hand in front of your face”. This, however, I believe is complete bunk. The only time that is true is in caves or in the deep forest on a cloudy new moon night. However, it doesn’t have to be that intense to be problematic!

I helped lead a group out to the tent area beyond the end of a flag-line. It turned out, that making a human flag-line beyond the real flags, toward the tents, didn’t work. We had to have people only about 20-25’ apart to make sure we could see them often enough to be sure we wouldn’t lose anyone. Elizabeth and I were out at the end and had too much time when we couldn’t see anyone or anything else, so we aborted that plan and had everyone return to the main buildings where everyone spent the night.

The coolest part was the static electricity that the wind created (measured 58mph tops). In my damp leather gloves I got a good static shock every time I touched another person: that was novel! The other funny thing was that when someone opened the upwind door of the buildings (downwind doors drifted in), the wind blew in so hard that sometimes the pressure made our ears pop.

I was there to support a much smaller multi-year project just getting started. A team from Penn. is looking at the Thwaites Glacier grounding line. This glacier puts out more ice than any other on the continent and whether the grounding line, from which it extends out onto the ocean, is glacial till (loose) or solid rock has much to do with how the glacier is likely to respond to warming temperatures (ie how fast it cuts loose and flows out). Much of West Antarctica is actually below sea level so rising oceans stand to de-stabilize the already dynamic and active ice of this lobe of the continent. East Antarctica , which is twice as large, appears far more stable and the ice rests mostly on ground above sea level.

The team I was working with was going to do a seismic survey to assess the rock (ie explosives) and place a couple dozen differential GPS receivers on this enormous glacier to track movement rates as related to tides. We were basing out of the WAIS camp before actually going camping on the Thwaites Glacier. It turned out that the crevasses on the lower Thwaites extend a lot further up than the satellite imagery suggested, so we had to select camp a lot further up than they expected/wanted. The camp and work area we chose was entirely crevasse free which obviously facilitates their work. On the other hand, in helping them choose this logical location, I put myself out of work. Damn. (On the other hand, roped-snowmobile travel for crevasse terrain is a sketchy activity at its safest). At least I did get to help install all of the GPS receivers over 5 Twin Otter flights in 2 days; that was fun.

Most of our time at WAIS involved being on weather-hold for flights. Recently, use of the Basler, the DC-3, ended for the season due to an incident during take-off from a remote site. No one was hurt, but the plane is still out there (my high school classmate was onboard so I’ll have to get the real story from him sometime). They’ve built a camp at it to fix it so they can fly it out soon. This plane was to be our put-in plane, so its temporary demise put us and other projects even further behind. After getting back from WAIS, I was repeatedly scheduled to fly out there to run the ground penetrating radar over a section of the glacier to make sure it was crevasse free so they could land a LC-130 (“Herc”, big) there to put in a recovery camp. After weather cancelled the flight for the 6th consecutive day, they changed plans because it was just getting too late, and used the small Twin Otters. What a scene, (what a weather year!).

If there’s one thing one learns here, its flexibility, to be able to go with the flow, to accept the current permutation of the plan without stress or expectation. “Tentative” is THE operational word down here even more than usual. I don’t even ask many questions any more. By the time someone finds the answer, the plan has changed again anyway. I just wait, show up when told, and when I hit the ground, I know what to do: that’s my scene. They pay me the same to wait as to actually do something.

Anyway, the down time at WAIS was wonderful, in fact I think it’s why I’m not burned out or overly exhausted now. I shoveled a lot of snow to earn my keep, but otherwise read a lot, worked on personal computer projects, skied a bit, and did some yoga. It really was much needed R&R, esp as I arrived here August 20th, well before my usual early October arrival.

So 16 days at WAIS constituted my field time this season unless something magically appears as the season winds down. This is a radical change from previous years, esp last year when I had an inordinate amount of (real) field time partly filling in for an injured colleague. I was the sea ice person this year and worked on the sea ice a lot, but the project that was considered at the ice edge wasn’t actually at the edge this year so we didn’t see the sea animals they did last year. Definite bummer.

Many people spend their entire seasons trapped in McMurdo: I dare not to complain. (Or am I?)

On the other hand, no way would I sign up for such a job. How freakin’ spoiled am I?! Someone slap me, quick!

Every season has been different; the variety has kept it interesting. I have made the most of being in town in terms of yoga, working out, skiing, ice skating, and riding my bike... all of which are rewarding. Obviously I have not been spending time emailing. That’s a lot easier, as many of you know, when one’s job doesn’t include time in front of a computer. (Yeah, slap me again.)

Seems NSF is funding more and more enormous (and long-term) projects: WAIS, another massive seabed drilling project called ANDRILL, a neutrino capturing project at the South Pole (called ICECUBE), and a international collaboration survey of a buried mountain range in East Antarctica (AGAP). (Any of these can be found via internet search.) It might be my imagination (or my season) but it appears that the kind of smaller projects in more technical terrain, the ones we mostly support, are on the wane.

I don’t know how long it’s been since someone stayed in this dept, Field Safety Training, as an instructor (not as supervisor) for 5 seasons as I have. I sure have a lot of Antarctic field experience, both deep and local and in a variety of Antarctic landscapes (it’s more varied than you’re thinking!).

There still seems to be plenty of field work for contract mountaineers, many of whom are former members of my department; it’s great having them around when they’re in town. They contract directly with an NSF science project and spend their whole time with that group. They don’t get to see as many places as we do, at least over the years one might spend in this dept. But if one gets on with a fun team in fabulous terrain (prob. a geology project), it would be well worth it. And it's a shorter season so allows for being home for part of the winter.

After all these years… I still haven’t had my fill of time outdoors.

I did get to respond to an actual SAR call-out last week for the first time, yea. It involved a snowmobile accident a half hour flight from town. Only 2 SAR members were sent out due to helicopter availability/capacity, but we were able to handle it easily enough with help from on-site folks. I was the incident but Matt has tons of USAP SAR experience and we worked well as a team. The weather involved high winds and blowing snow (of course), but the pilot was able to get in and out both times so it worked out fine.

Nice to finally be both in town and available for a call-out. All that training, especially here, but also over the years with outdoor education and guiding… a lot easier to take it seriously when one actually gets to use the skills occasionally (but not on someone in my group!). A good learning experience. The patient will fully recover from the injuries. The patient, incidentally, is also a friend of mine. It was really nice to be there to help him when he really needed it.

Larry was been out at AGAP on the E. Plateau since after I left for WAIS, but got back last night. Great to see him again.
Post-ice, he heads home for knee repair and I go climbing again in Arapiles. After a potential trip in search of hot lava on a certain island in the middle of the Pacific, I’ll head home for another season working in the mountains. I’m quite psyched about that. Larry will probably work science support in the Arctic this summer.

Ok, I’ve been blabbering quite enough. I’ll end this hear so you can go do something useful with your time!

Huge thanks to all who have not given up on me despite my inability to email you personally. Double gratitude to those who have included me on holiday updates and photos. It means more to me than this mass mailing can actually express.

Best of the new year, and the SNOW SNOW SNOW in the Rockies and Cascades. Send me powder shots! (ha ha) Make me drool more than I already am! Hey, we actually got a temperate-type snow storm the other day, six inches of a Sierra-cement snow! Snow to walk in and make snowpeople… novel! Snow falling from the sky (as opposed to being blasted horizontally by the wind) makes most people here happy, well, at least those who aren’t trying to go somewhere.

Stay in touch in whatever format works for you. I will be here (the big Here, not necessarily any particular geographic 'here').

Love and wild winds, Suz

Thin Sea Ice research, penguins, seals

2007-11-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

Hello-hello,

I’m sitting here in the coffeehouse, my bike outside leaned up against the wall, and my double chocolate chip cookies by my side along with a mug of tea. This decadence has become my Sunday tradition. Among other things from the other world, I check the weather in the mountains at home… ever hoping for snow, the kind you step in, not on.

Tomorrow Larry gets back from almost 3 weeks putting in a major camp out on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. I must say we’ve both been so busy and so tired that we’ve had little time to do much together before he left anyway; this isn’t the first time we’ve experienced this down here. I think it’s funny that we met down here, but back then the newness of it all helped overcome the tired factor and we were both a lot more social. I remember how much fun we have off-ice, the laughter and energy, and know that this flatness is simply situational. I suspect many couples have the same experience day after day, year after year, dealing with dual careers, kids, and taking care of a house, so I know not to feel sorry for myself!

I’ve been working a lot with a project studying how sea ice fractures. The work site is close to the ice edge on two feet of ice and we go out for 16+ hour days (I get to sleep in the next morning and go into work for the afternoon, but it throw’s me off to get to bed 4 hours before my normal wake-up time).

Using chainsaws, they isolate a 7m x 4m plate of ice and then use ice hooks from the 18th century to pull out the chunks of ice from along the sides so the plate is free floating with a strip of open water surrounding it. Then they install instruments, cut a slot in the side to put a special jack into. They pump nitrogen into the jack, basically a balloon, until the plate cracks. It takes most of the day to get to this stage and I must say the final effect was anti-climatic. I was hoping for a big CRACK and such, but sea ice, esp younger ice, doesn’t do that. It creaks and groans, making small popping noises as it slowly rips in half. But still pretty cool.

The resulting plates are just small enough to get rocking by stepping on and off of it till it’s going pretty well. It’s fun to stand with one foot on each of the post-fracture plates and step back and forth, getting the floes rocking hard, to actually feel the ice moving. In my experience down here, the aliveness of ice has been theoretical, so this is all rather exciting. Interesting, at least. As the ice warms and thins in the coming weeks, we’ll have to tune in to whether the ice is moving with the swells: a sign that we should probably leave soon esp if the day is warm and the winds from the south. So by standing on the bobbing floes I am training myself to feel the undulations… all important scientific research in the name of Field Safety.

Locating the site was a challenge. It took several helo flights to find ice thin enough for the researchers adjacent to ice thick enough for Science Support departments for a tent, snowmobiles, and helo landing. Then when we came out the 3rd time, a huge crack 40m across had opened up just a couple meters from the work site. That was an eye-opener. I’d like to say we chose that site sensing it would stay put, but the reality is even the researcher was surprised that our site happened to end up on the fast-ice side of the lead. The fracture didn’t follow any predictable path such as old fractures or plate margins. Hmmm. Was fun to write about this in the Sea Ice Report.

After much programmatic hand wringing we decided to stay with the site. Storms have since blown all the ice on the far side of that crack out, but recently a foot or so of new ice has formed. I’ve been watching that carefully out of curiosity as much as anything, measuring it further out each time I go out there, seeing how it’s forming up (.25m is as thin as I’ve been on). As warm as its getting these days, we’re not accumulating much more ice thickness on the existing ice anymore so this will likely stay soft and spooky.

Funny that I am the Sea Ice point of contact, when last year I spent a whopping 2 days on the sea ice. There is so much variety in this job that 5 years into it, I am still new to numerous components. I like that in a job. This is the first time I’ve seen thin ice or been at the ice edge. That was that one day when there was actual water next to the site. I kept an eye out and saw a penguin porpoising through the water. When he saw us, he turned and launched, landing on his belly and rapidly gliding, nonchalant, toward the powercord to the generator. After checking out our scene thoroughly, he laid down for a nap, bill in the snow.

What a treat to see a penguin swimming. Our standard sighting is them either vertical walking or tobogganing on their belly, kicking along with their feet. They are so graceful in the water; delightful.

Sea ice forms quite differently than freshwater ice, and now I’ve been able to actually see some of the differences. Quite interesting. I’ve been learning a lot, figuring things out, combining theory with reality. We hear that the marine USAP station, Palmer, allows foot travel on a foot of sea ice, but we’re not sure what ice temperatures that includes. Here we normally have a 2-5m of ice, so thin ice is something new to me. We still have lots and lots of thick ice and travel is closed long before it gets thin. The hazard is that it gets warm (while thick) and then falls apart and blows out, not that it would get thin enough that you’d fall through like on freshwater ice. The whole thing is interesting and I’m grateful to get to know this complex and dynamic medium a bit more.

Also seeing penguins and seals regularly. As always, the penguins usually visit us to make sure we’re doing things right. They are as charming as ever, and the two different species as different in movement, in effect, as I described my first season. I remind myself that these are the real things, wild creatures, free as can be, doing their own thing. When else in my life will I get to watch real penguins in their world, going about their business, which is frequently investigating us?

For that matter, when else will I commute by helicopter? How fun is that? I quite like working around them and feel pretty comfortable with it, dealing with the protocols, radio comms, all things that I’ve learned down here. Enjoy working with the pilots, all seasoned local veterans. They know this place and their job here really well. And they seem less crusty than when I met them 4 years ago as a helo-passenger novice. (I hope that doesn’t suggest I’m getting crusty).

The seals are done pupping and are training their little ones to swim now (so I hear from the researchers). Near our work site I saw a distant skua (big brown gull) feeding. There isn’t much to feed on, so I investigated, predicting what I’d find: dead pup. The skuas peck out the eyes but, like ravens, cannot open a carcass. Ravens wait for coyotes (et al) to open the bonanza, but here with no terrestrial animals, carcasses just freeze into the ice, basically mummifying until the ice goes out and they feed marine scavengers. Some of the multi-year ice includes carcasses years old, mummified with the fur worn off by winter snow-blasting.

The part of the dead pup that wasn’t drifted in was soft pliable, probably due to the sun’s heat. I didn’t realize their hind flippers are really like hands: five furry fingers, each with a claw, separated by skin like a duck’s foot but with fur. The outer fingers are biggest by far, followed by the middle finger. The coat was super thick (same number of hairs as adult, so ultra dense), but not as soft as one might expect given that baby seals were killed for their fur no so long ago (or at least not in the papers anymore). They have beautiful little faces, not unlike a Labrador but rounder.

The other day we heard a seal breathing nearby, and found the hole. Every ten or so minutes the seal returned, taking big bold breaths before going down for another fishing dive.

I know I have made a new record this year for poor personal correspondence, as exemplified by the scarcity of these updates. Despite that, know that I really appreciate hearing from you, from those in my other life, knowing what’s going on back there, how you are. It’s a treat to get photos too: you, your family, adventures, house, kids, pets, and especially landscapes with plants and animals… the Land of the Living.

This place is amazing no doubt. I am still enchanted with this powerful landscape; there is much to it. I suspect that for the rest of my life when I’m done coming down here, I’ll cry every time I hear the voice of a penguin, among other reminders. My comments above simply reflect the fact that I remain quite attached to other kinds of landscapes as well, and playing within them.

I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday: family, friends, food, but without the hype and commercialization of Christmas (that’s one thing I really don’t miss). I hope you were able to get out and walk that day too, soak in the cooling temperatures (or so I hope they are), the dead leaves, the longer nights.

Nights! Yeah, that’s something else miss under the ever-present sun. This is such an intense place, a lot different than the feel here in August and September when there were a third as many people here and dark nights.

Larry is back and today we biked out to the informal skating rink, yea. Quite a lot of fun, and something different. I’ll send some photos from that as well as seal snout shots and maybe some penguinos.

Love and wild winds, Susan

A different season on 'the ice'

2007-09-27T21:16:00.000-06:00

Hi all,
I hope you have been enjoying the changing seasons. Crunch through some leaves, drink in the scent of the early morning air, and admire the aspens turning gold.

I arrived here on August 20… full-on summer at home. I only worked for a couple days and wasn’t exactly ready to leave when the time came. I had been curious about the Antarctic 6-week pre-season, hoping to see the aurora australis, nacreous clouds, darkness (southern stars!) and to feel the cold here in McM. I knew I wouldn’t do it again because I too much miss late summer in the mountains, and personal trips after the work season. But to be here once for this time was worth it despite having missed the infrequent aurora displays that occurred during the few clear nights. Local knowledge has it that this is the most unstable weather of the year. Only one nacreous cloud has been sighted and I missed it.

Yet the lighting has been lovely because of the sun being at such a low angle. Brilliant and long-lasting sunsets, brightly illuminated clouds, even the steam from building vents glows pink in the light. The velvety colors and long shadows on the Royal Society Range (13,000’) across McMurdo sound continually draw admiration. The enormous full moon, looming large just above them, provided photographers grand material and the rest of us a great distraction.

When I arrived, it was only light for a few hours midday. Darkness was a real novelty and I enjoyed the restfulness of it. The always glaring sun or at least light of summer is exhausting. Walking to and from work at night was quite a bit different and after a few days I even looked forward to being able to see into the distance as the sun eased just above the horizon, remaining hidden due to the hills on 3 side of town. With the snow and town lights, it wasn’t really that dark in town. The light changes fast this time of year, each day about 20 more minutes of light. Two weeks ago sunglasses came out midday.

There are only about 350 people on station, less than a third of the summer population and only 3 science groups (one measuring ozone, which starts to break down this time of year as the sun comes up).

Everyone loves how quiet it is, except the remaining winter-overs who think it’s busy and crazy. It’s easy to get on a cardio machine at the gerbil gym, find a seat in the coffee house, and linger at a relaxed dinner. All that is about to change, but on the other hand, it will be fun to see a lot of old friends returning. Unfortunately, like anywhere one stays for some time, fewer and fewer of my longer-time friends still return which is a drag even though cool new people enter the scene each year. On the other hand are the people who have been coming here for decades and will forever.

Even with only 350 people here during this pre-season which is called “winfly” for “winter fly-in”, there’s enough talent for a number of bands. Recently the Recreation dept put together “Winstock”, a party during which band after band played for a few hours. It was fun to be out and dance, something I very rarely do during the summer season.

I’ve been Acting Supervisor for these 6 weeks. A few days into it, one of our dept’s new guys arrived so I began training him in addition to being interim SAR Leader and Sea Ice Point of Contact. The latter is a role that I’ll have through the sea ice season, and means that I take the lead on gathering data (how thick is the ice, how big are the cracks) and write the biweekly report.

So far I’ve been pretty consumed with supervisory responsibilities and haven’t been able to get out on the sea ice as much as I expect to next month. I am super glad I didn’t apply for the dept Supervisor position when it came open 2 seasons ago. It has been fun to interact with and get to know a new set of people and I’ve enjoyed having the wider view of what’s happening in the program. I also don’t mind developing my limited computer skills. However, it isn’t worth the time spent in a chair, all the admin stuff, and especially dealing with politics and the bureaucracy. This time of year there’s no one to handle course sign-ups, so I had to get people signed up (a couple hundred people) for their Refresher and other classes. I couldn’t believe how much time and emailing this took. It did, however, make the actual teaching all the more fun.

I’ve already ran a few GPS courses. Given that I didn’t know the first thing about them when I started here and now use one a lot, esp on the sea ice making or following routes and marking crack crossings, it’s been fun to figure out how to effectively share this skill with others. As useful as this tool is here, I don’t see any real use for it in normal backcountry use, esp with 7.5 minute maps. I am really glad I grew up pre-GPS, in the map and compass era and culture.

The politics have been a bit of an education. I learned about how important it is to know the personalities of the people above you on the food chain. We had a vehicle incident in which someone in a high position on station sent around an inaccurate and accusatory message regarding my involvement (fried transmission). Not realizing this guy is known for shooting and asking questions later, I took it pretty seriously and spent a lot of time explaining to everyone what actually happened. It was a bit of a mess for a couple days, but I did find out how much respect and support I have in this community. Eventually a formal investigation was launched, much to my relief, so that key questions were asked, ones I could not ask because I am so close to the situation. It’ll all resolve fine, but good grief, what a dumb way to spend time! Esp when there is so much real work to be done.

I also learned that no matter how much I appreciate and respect a casual friend with a good reputation, to document via email, all work related conversations, even those that happen at dinner. People don’t always say what they really mean and sometimes tell you what you want to hear even when it isn’t true, esp if their supervisor isn’t in on the discussions, it can lead to a mess. That too resolved fine, but I sure didn’t appreciate having to deal with it.

That was a challenging week but things have mellowed since and I can get back to actually being productive. I am quite sure that most of you are amused that only now am I learning such Office Basics, and that these little messes are nothing compared to some of the drama you’ve been dragged into and had to spend a ridiculous amount of time dealing with.

Training Galen has been fun. Enjoying figuring out how to pace and prioritize the tremendous amount of information required simply within our job, as well program-wide. Fun to figure out how to make his learning curve smoother and better supported than mine was in ‘03. He’s been doing well. I however chronically have mixed feelings about assigning him all the logistical tasks and much of the teaching that I would normally do and esp. sending him out in the field without me because I have to sit in front of the computer instead.

I look forward to Cece returning with the gang and me getting to be just a Field Instructor again. I have a suspicion, however, that she’s going to take advantage of the admin and supervisory skills I’ve gained esp because our dept of 6 will be half new this year. And, for the first time, 50% women which is esp cool given that when I arrived, people couldn’t remember exactly when a woman had last been in the dept.

Fortunately I’ll be busy getting out on the sea ice to gather data (and then entering it into the spreadsheet and writing the reports… butt time but I’ll learn to be FAST about it), which also means I’ll have a lot more opportunities this year to see penguins and seals (have already seen seals!). Last year I spent a lot of time in the deep field, mostly on the plateau, and missed a lot of the animal action, which is all coastal. Always a balance: this year I won’t camp as much, but I’ll see more wildlife and I’ll get to try out the speed-skate blades I bought that fit onto my skate ski boots. Last year Larry had a day of skating near penguins so this year I might get a chance.

Enjoying having my bike down here even though I just putz around town. Somehow it gives me a feeling of freedom of movement, esp. comparison to walking and in light of being very used to biking around town at home.

The sea ice will likely be interesting again this year. It is still recovering from the mega-berg years, when that giant iceberg (as big as small NE state originally, now gone) grounded locally blocking currents and causing a tremendous build-up of sea ice, some of which remains (4+ meters thick). Last year a lot of the ice “went out” so with the icebreaker ship channel, we had some open water in front of the station. The breaker channel was only about 10 miles long, not 80 as it was just a few years ago. We have more new ice locally than I’ve seen (1.5m or more) and maybe it’ll “all” go out this year so conditions will return to the pre-mega-berg days and have full-on open water right here in front of town.

One our big jobs during the pre-season is assessing the ice north of town where the scientists work and flagging a route so that Fleet Ops can groom it and drag out the little huts for the research camps. That took five different trips, the first two of which aborted due to vehicle problems with the cold. The only one I could go on was one of these first two, unfortunately. This job takes a lot of people, so we take volunteers from the community. They love it and its fun to offer these “work trips” to the many people who don’t get out much.

Then there’s the depts. who prepare the sea ice runway (70” ice minimum) just outside of town for the C-17s to land upon almost until Christmas. We landed on the ice shelf, floating glacial ice on an airstrip that remains landable most of the time with minimal management because it’s wind scoured hard ice. This runway is a long way from town, so it’s worth it for them to build and maintain the sea ice runway right outside of town until the ice weakens and they switch to the other runway.

Our dept has nothing to do with the runway work. Their surveyor keeps track of that ice and reports it’s temperature to us, which I’ll include in the sea ice report.

Enjoying living with Larry again. We have our little scene pretty figured out and leave a lot of stuff here over the southern-winter so don’t have to fly with so much stuff. He has a soymilk maker and it’s a treat to have fresh soymilk. Also this year have realized I can fill out of form from the galley to get ingredients to make my fabulous double chocolate chip cookies! I avoid most of the chocolate desserts here due to hydrogenated oils, so being able to bake my own in our nice breakroom kitchen has improved life. Sometimes after lunch, Larry and I fill out the hour with popcorn in our breakroom, another treat.

Well that's about it for now.
Thanks for the updates and photos... I greatly appreciate it.
Love and light, Susan

Canoe trip in NWT Canada

2007-08-10T22:31:00.002-06:00

Hi all,

Finally I sit down to write about the arctic trip as I wait for my double-chocolate chip cookies to bake here at my home in the glorious high country. I meant to write sooner but have been consumed with getting ready to head south for the winter on Tuesday and sneaking in a few wonderful days of working. Plus Larry is around taking a first aid course, so we've been able to spend a bit of time together.

I posted photos of the trip on my website so will write about impressions of the experience rather than the itinerary. As you can probably tell by the emphasis in the photos, my favorite parts were the wildlife, the Sherbert Hills, and being on the coast, esp in the pack ice.

We saw the majority of the dramatic animals during the first week, including a trio of grey wolves that we watched for a half hour or so. As we slowly paddled up the Carnwath they trotted upriver along the bank staying about a quarter mile ahead of us rather than disappearing into the boreal forest. They'd pause, look back at us while we caught up, then trot onward.

After awhile we stopped for a break, then paddled a bit up a tributary before returning to the main river. Lo' and behold, the wolves were still there in the distance upriver. They saw us, stood up, stretched, then began "leading" us up the river again until the novelty wore off and they vanished. Lucky for us we were the most interesting thing going on that morning. That same morning we also had a quick view of a bear (all the bears we saw were grizzlies).

On the previous day, we watched a sow and two cubs swim across the river ahead of us (photo, but only one cub shown). We watched for awhile, binoculars glued to our eyeballs. The bigger cub climbed up onto a chunk of river ice and then did a little dance step ("Did you see that!?”) before jumping down to catch up with his family.

Another day, after watching a sow and cub mosey along digging up roots across the river, we saw her lie down and start to nurse her big toddler. Wow, what a personal moment. It didn't last long, however, as she abruptly sat up with a distressed expression, looked in our direction with her nose in the air, and quickly ran up the steep hill, hungry cub on her heels.

The second bear photo was taken weeks later where we wanted to camp. Before committing to that great site, we wanted to make sure that 1.) the bears became aware of us before getting too close, and 2.) that they would run away immediately when they smelled us. Anything less would mean we'd move on. As you can see, these two bears were especially pretty.

That camp was at the mouth of a 3-mile long estuary with a narrow neck the tides flowed through. We reveled in the thrill of watching and listening to the pack ice race through the narrows and then temporarily ground on a shallow area on it's way deep into the estuary. The pieces would pile up against each other making a wonderful crunching and grinding sound, so cool I wanted to stay awake all night to watch. Then of course 6 hours later it was rapidly flowing back out right past our camp. A fabulous sight.

It was really something to watch birds from the courting/nesting phase through raising chicks. In June it was all eggs, and July we only saw chicks. We would look at the little chicks, goslings, ducklings and wonder how on Earth the little critters could possibly get big and strong enough to fly thousands of miles in, what, 6-8 weeks?! Baffling. Observation and our field guides led to all kinds of fascinating insights about the different strategies species use to deal with the short season and harsh conditions. Animals really are amazing and diverse... so little we can really know.

Many species we saw so frequently that I really felt like I to got to know them, their ways of being, not simply that I could identify the species. It's really different getting a sense of their character, how they live, rather than the usual simple sightings. For example, my sense of bald eagles really changed. Did you know that big boldly marked bird, our national symbols, squeaks? I kind of knew it, but nothing like I understand now. So much for "Screaming Eagles" and that kind of misrepresentation. They have this delightful truly-squeaky little voice that they use freely when you paddle below their giants nests. The voice is actually quite charming, endearing, unlike the screech of peregrines or the persistent cry of rough-legged hawks. Did you know that Canadian geese raise their kids in groups of 2-3 families? And the goslings dive and swim like loons when scared, an ability they lose with adult plumage (and I really know that having skinned one and felt the deep, pelt-like chest plumage). They share parenting duties when responding to perceived threats, whereas female ducks raise their little ones alone.

The Sherbert Hills were quite fascinating as you can tell by the number of photos. (I omitted a lot, believe it or not!). It took me awhile to figure out the basics: sulfuric acid seeps up from the deeps, becoming hydrogen sulfide gas at the surface (which we smelled most of the time: the classic rotten eggs). The acid chemically weathers the sedimentary rock into clays, which don't support vegetation. Various metals and whatnot in the rock oxidize, causing the beautiful sherbert hues in the badlands-type landscape. I wished we could have had a geologist along to interpret another level; there isn't a guidebook for this terrain. I don't know what was going on with those large white crystals other than they must have precipitated out of the acidic solution; somehow I think they’re calcite (let me know if you recognize them). In the photos you can also see what the wind has done around the vegetation that does manage to grow on these unstable slopes. The water coming out of the hills was nasty acidic so we paddled out to the far side of the river for potable water. Further down the river we saw much smaller sherbert slopes with only faint sulfur scents, so the crustal cracks must be fairly long. You can see in the photos the clay-mud coming from the hills.

I have learned to love the smell of hydrogen sulfide because I associate it with fantastic landscapes: the volcanoes Baker and especially Erebus and the geothermal activity in the Yellowstone area. This place just added to my appreciation of this smell that most people consider unpleasant.

A week later I found the instability of a canoe in coastal waves much less disturbing with the cover on because the boat appeared a lot more like a kayak, in which I'm used to rocking around in river waves (past life). In fact one day in Wood Bay I was paddling blissfully along casually noticing the waves increasing when Larry noted it was time for a break. When he turned the boat toward the shore, where the waves were breaking, I realized with a start that we were in lively water and that this wouldn't be the easiest landing. Soon, as I stepped out of the "cockpit", which was rising and falling with the waves, I managed to catch my second foot on the canoe cover. I nearly face-planted, catching myself on the submerged rocks with my gloved hands and other knee, and then instantly jumped up to scramble out of the way in case the boat was about to plow me over (it wasn't). I was fine, but it was a funny way to discover that it doesn't take much in terms of waves for a loaded canoe to be exciting. Soon Larry said that we should camp here, even though it was only 2pm, because of the increasing waves. I didn't argue.

As it turned out, for the previous half hour, Larry had been in Decision Mode, carefully assessing the whole situation to determine at what point we needed to get off the water. He had been feeling the stress of making the right decision (couldn't camp just anywhere along the shore) while I was completely unaware that anything was going on! I realized how useless I was in terms of coastal decision making at this point, and made a note to tune in extra carefully to the tone behind his understated words. What a different role to be in, no doubt good for me to appreciate the helplessness novices sometimes experience.

Interestingly, both days when we were in the denser pack ice, the water was glassy. The correlation was so striking that I had to wonder if there was something going on. Maybe the ice was absorbing enough heat to chill the lowest layer of air, making it dense and heavy. Then maybe breezes, warmer lighter air, were riding up over the chilled layer on the water leaving the water so still. Ok, maybe a crackpot idea, but I suspect that there was something going on, maybe related to the melting ice affecting the water temp/density/salinity. Or, maybe it was just a freak coincidence that the only glassy water of the trip was during the hours we were surrounded by ice.

The fishing rod you see in the photos was just being carried there; we weren’t trolling. The plastic gas container we found on a beach.

I loved the ice (what it is about ice?). There was something surreal paddling through it in the silence on the smooth water. At one point we could see the floes moving in different directions due to variations in tidal currents, making navigation in the dense ice more interesting. Sometimes the ice moved fast and at one point when it was really dense we found ourselves paddling fast to get through a gap before it closed. It wasn't like we were going to get squashed like berg ice could do, but it was still a kick to have to paddle hard to shoot the gap.

A couple times isolated seals checked us out, poking their heads up and even rising up like orcas do, "spy-hopping" to get a better look. Given that they are probably hunted, we assumed that they only approached because we didn't have a motor. It was fun spinning our heads around trying to see where they'd pop up next. Sometimes they alerted us that we'd missed them with a big sassy splash. There were also more birds among the ice flows than out on the open water.

We paid through the nose to rent a satellite phone in case of an emergency (bear injury), but it turned out to be worth it for the freedom and options it provided. We went into the field with neither an end-date or location... when have I ever done that?! It was gloriously refreshing to have such freedom to explore and decide as we go along what we wanted to do and even how long we wanted to stay out (at least up to a certain date). Our main options were either go up the Kugaluk River, or go through the Eskimo Lakes, all the way to the road via some tiny marshy creek or get picked up at a lake near the road. Such beauty in options, being able to customize and respond to whatever inclination we had rather than having to commit so far in advance.

We were strong by the time we got to the Kugaluk so paddling upstream in that current was reasonable. We heard that there was a lot of wildlife and good fishing there, and the map showed miles of curvy canyon so it was an easy choice. We were disappointed by the paucity of animal sightings. The fish were burbot, a bottom feeder; it was a warm river lacking trout or grayling. Our broken fishing rod didn't help. We didn't see any large mammals for weeks, and only one (handsome!) bull moose just before we reached our pick-up lake (where I caught that Northern pike, my first fish!). The fishing on the Anderson and Carnwath wasn’t because it was so early in the season. We put it as soon as they could fly us in after ice break-up, when the water was still muddy. Breaking the fishing rod didn’t help either.

Unlike on the Carnwath where I did all the tracking (walking-ferrying boat upriver), I didn't do any on the Kugaluk. This far into the summer the rocks were snot-slick with algae and the Kugaluk had more current than the Carnwath. We also didn't know whether we'd have enough days left to deal with whatever mysteries the Kugaluk held (we had little info beyond the map) so it made sense to maximize our chances of getting to a lake at the top where we could get picked up rather than having to go all the way back down the river to the delta where we could also get picked up. Larry enjoyed the challenge of tracking in these conditions so found this section of the trip engaging enough despite the few animals. Sometimes in higher current the water was too shallow to paddle in and there wasn't a good bank bar for tracking. For these spots we devised a new technique "motorboating" in which Larry would jump out and push the boat while I stayed in the bow and continued paddling! It worked great.

We did have one class 1.5 rapids complex enough that we had to paddle through part of it. There was an exciting few seconds after paddling like hell to ferry across above the crux when he was telling me to "GRAB SOMETHING: GRASS, ANYTHING. GRAB SOMETHING NOW" so we wouldn't go down backwards. There wasn't much to grab, but I managed to claw enough mud and grass to arduously pull us in and eventually scramble out to pull the boat further up out of the rapids. Then we had to track the boat climbing through a willow thicket, passing the rope to each other to get it around the willows that we then climbed over... good fun.

We weren't in an official Wilderness Area, the concept of which is the product of our modern nature-distanced industrial lives. This landscape is well used by the local native peoples (several groups). We saw a number of subsistence cabins, "camps" accessed by boat or snowmobile. This is not the plane culture of Alaska (gringo culture). These camps ranged from a pile of ruins and junk, to a 3-family relatively well-maintained camp that has obviously been in use for a long time. The insides of the cabins show that the families even bring their little kids with them and stay awhile. Fishing, hunting, and trapping at these camps provides much of their protein for the year (In the week during which we waited to put in, I learned a lot about northern culture.)

I found it interesting that we really didn’t see any trash from recreationists (just a couple plastic bags where we found the Great Grate: see photos of stove dying then finding a fire grate that very night). In fact we barely saw any evidence at all of other boaters the whole trip. Instead we saw many fuel drums from subsistence-related snowmobiling, boating, (possibly ORV’s and maybe from aviation caches?). We also saw what are probably giant collars for pipelines. You can see one of the 18 orange plastic halves in Liverpool Bay in the photo of the bears at the coastal camp (the latter of two bear photos).
The native people have a different ethic regarding leaving trash, one that made me look at my own perspective with a different eye. How easy it might be to criticize them, yet what would I say when a native countered with a remark about all the shit we put into the air that's causing the far north to change more dramatically than the temperate areas? We benefit from all the hydrocarbons we burn with our affluent lifestyles while they pay the higher price (including serious heavy metal toxicity in marine meat), barely enjoying the benefits.

Also, there's the visible-local-innocuous versus invisible-global-toxic effect. Is it really worth the fossil fuel it would take to remove all the shotgun shells and coffee cans, the empty fuel drums and broken down snowmobiles? Not only the fuel use, but also the greenhouse gases emitted. This issue has come up in Antarctica regarding benign trash out on the plateau where it gets consumed by the ice. I appreciate clean landscapes, but at the price of destroying those same landscapes by global warming?* Not a simple situation. [One thing we try to do in Antarctica is to fill the plane with junk after they've dropped us off at one of these older camps, so the trash gets out without requiring special flights, but this is less feasible via boat or snowmobile.]

The two government related huts were better maintained, but it was the commercial hunting camp, run by and for gringos, that were the four star scenes... and accessed via planes. Definitely a lot more money available for guided hunting/fishing (and us), a contrast that I'm sure doesn't escape the native population. [The photo at the end with the satellite dish]. The #9 record-sized barren-ground grizzly was shot here a month before we arrived, by a client from Montana.

We also saw a number of cabin ruins from the old days of trapping, presumably the 1800's. We observed that the beaver and muskrat populations had recovered well. A book suggested one of the coastal cabins had been a whaling camp.

The culture within our little team of two caught my attention as well. I knew Larry pretty darn well going into this trip, but 46 days alone together, in his element, took it to a whole new level. The first weeks found us sharing more and more stories of our lives (and I kept talking about Outward Bound-NOLS courses as this extended trip reminded me). He doesn’t draw attention to himself and is super laid-back. Because he doesn't always talk about himself much it was great to get him going about his life, parts that I'd only known a bit about. I loved it.

More significant than our stories was how he worked with me. My background in working with others in parallel situations allowed me to step back and observe how he dealt with me out there. Even when it was inconvenient (and costly) for him, he gave me a lot of room to figure things out for myself. The biggest example is how concerned I was about grizzly bears during our planning months. Partly based on the opinion of a senior serious wilderness explorer I guide with, I was pretty into having a good shotgun (semi-automatic), a tarp (so no human-taco of a tent, unless weather a bigger hazard), a satellite phone, and bearproof food canisters for when we were off hiking. On all his prior trips he's taken none of this except a pump-shotgun and bear spray (which we also had), but he didn't give me ANY shit for being bearanoid. He even bought two of the bear canisters. He didn't want me to be nervous out there (which I wasn't) even if it was more hassle for him.

He let me see for myself that the bears are indeed "well-behaved". As soon as they smelled us, they always ran off just like his past experiences. Over time I became comfortable camping in places that weren't the absolute-least bear-exposed. Mid-trip I even suggested a particular camp but he pointed out that it was on a narrow travel corridor (meaning a bear might feel trapped when stumbling upon our camp)! Not that all bears will always run away, and we did go through protocols for different kinds of encounters, but it was nice to have the space to figure it out for myself, to find my own level of comfort with one of the more complex outdoor hazards.

The other thing was how he dealt with me regarding hunting. He trained me well before the trip and we practiced shooting again the first morning in the field. During the first couple weeks we talked a lot about hunting but nothing happened. I finally realized it wasn't happening yet because he was waiting for me to step up and take the initiative. He's pretty mellow about hunting or fishing, and wanted to be sure that I was mentally ready to deal with the reality of shooting a animal,
watching it die, and then gutting the little body to eat. He was smart to make sure the impetus was mine.

I shot the first of two ptarmigan in the Sherbert Hills. We always hiked with the gun for bears, but put 2 birdshots in so we could hunt but still, on the third shot, take down a bear if necessary. Larry refrained from taking photos for the first bird I shot, letting me go through the experience without having a camera in my face. From the start I was committed to only shooting a bird on the ground (no flight shots) and well within range. And male ptarmigan only (bird books say female can raise chicks alone). For both ptarmigan I aimed at the bird as he trotted away and asked Larry "Is he in range?" "Yes", as the bird continues to move. "Is he still in range?!" “Yes”. I realized I'd better stop asking and shoot or he'd be out of range. For the first one, I walked right past the female, still as death, incubating her eggs. A bit weird: she was safe as could be though I could have grabbed her I was so close, and yet I was about to kill her sweetie. Whew.

The sound of the gun was a bigger deal than the kickback, and I even shot the next bird a week later with earplugs! In fact this first time I didn’t even notice the kickback because my ears were exploding.

It took me awhile to "get it" about the "chicken thing". You know how chickens supposedly run around when beheaded? Larry assured me it's true, but didn't hassle me when, for each bird, I kept trying to hand-kill the already dead bird as it flopped around. Frantically, while audibly asking the bird to "please die!", I'd beat the neck with a rock, pinch the trachea, break the neck.... anything to stop the movement. Nothing made a difference: the birds were already dead. Larry just patiently watched until I finally accepted the chicken thing. And afterward, when I held the soft little body between my hands, feeling the weight and warmth, silently thanking the little being, he stood by quietly. He coached but let me do all the skinning, gutting, and cooking-prep, and didn't mind my delaying (despite the mosquitoes) while I examined the various organs (there really were rocks in the gizzard, just like there's supposed to be!).

We also got two geese. It took me weeks for me to get past the golf-course chemical concern with Canadian geese, and to figure out that the large flocks were likely pre-breeding birds: single (not married) and fewer years eating chemicals. A couple times I hatched plans to stalk geese. We came across a large molting flock. One might think they'd be easier to catch. WRONG! They are even more alert than ever and run or swim away unbelievably fast. I got pretty interested in getting a Canadian goose (something I've thought about for years actually).

Twice I asked Larry to wait while I tried to outsmart the birds by very patiently sneaking around from another direction... not a chance. Larry stood around waiting, remembering that I was never a ten-year-old with a .22, so I haven't been through that phase. One time I even devised a plan in which Larry would signal to me while I oh-so-slowly crawled up truly on my belly, mostly hidden by small shrubs. The plan seemed pretty foolproof, but every time he lifted an arm to signal a direction, the geese would perk up and cackle. Plus I forgot to figure out a signal for going backwards... it was actually a rather funny 45 minutes. I really took my time trying to get the Look-Out goose, even moving only when his friends weren't looking. I figured that maybe if he made the alarm call and they hadn't seen me themselves, they might not take him as seriously.

Didn't work. He intently watched me creep up, scooting intermittently on my belly. When I was still at least twice shooting-distance away, he flew to join his flock, who had been grazing-walking away faster than I had been advancing. Then I tried Larry's strategy of suddenly running up to close the distance, then shooting as they start to take off. Later Larry said he'd wanted to signal this via acting it out in place, but the geese were way too savvy. I had been lying down so long that when I stood up and tried to run on the lumpy tundra, it was like I was drunk. Plus I was carrying the gun in a position ready to shoot (awkward), and didn't have a pre-picked spot to stop at so I floundered across the tundra while the geese nonchalantly walked away and eventually took flight. I didn’t have a chance; what a scene. After this Larry told me that waterfowl hunters don't stalk their prey: they put out decoys and sit in a blind drinking beer till the birds arrive.

I got a shot at a snow goose. It was a surprise as we hadn't come with 200m of them, and then there was this one walking away from us on the beach. I checked in with my coach and this time I did the run up and shoot plan; I could feel my heart beating as I ran! After he died we found out what Larry had suspected: the bird wasn't right. His chest had two major open wounds, maybe from a fox? Couldn't fly and it probably hurt too much to swim, so it turned out to be a mercy killing, poor guy. We didn't eat him, don't know if he was sick from infection or what. I set him on some nest-like sticks, folded up his feet and wings, and then tucked his head under his wing like he was sleeping. A scavenger will be happy to find this meal.

The Canadian goose we got was even more a team effort than the other birds. We were paddling upstream late in the trip when we found ourselves close enough for a shot. I needed Larry to actually watch the bird to determine when it was about to fly because it was all I could do to keep "the bead" (aim) on the goose. The bird was running away and the boat was bobbing up and down as Larry kept paddling to close the distance. He gave the word and I pulled the trigger. The bird was on a muddy bank so that's where I cleaned him, getting dirt into the clear-colored fat under the skin despite my best efforts to keep him on his skin and wings. Larry was patient about the dirt and it turned out we couldn't taste/feel it anyway.

This bird we pressure-cooked which worked well in terms of reducing the chewy factor. But they all tasted good (I opted out of the commercial meat industry years ago NOT because I don't like meat), better than the fish, which I also enjoyed. A great break from bean, rice, and tortellini.

I must say my respect for these animals increased quite a bit and my overall relationship with them has deepened. Hunting is difficult, and represents a very different way of being on the landscape, a way of moving. It really is a powerful and primal experience (or it can be, I am well aware that it can be a lot different than that). Can hardly imagine the process of taking down and field-dressing a large mammal like a deer. Yeowza. Also increased respect esp for traditional native hunters.

The mosquitoes were a real psychological challenge. At the beginning, we had almost two glorious weeks with nearly no bugs. I appreciated it more because Larry pointed out that this would be our only perfect-conditions phase: not too buggy, hot, or windy. He sure was right. From the start I was determined to keep my head about me regarding bugs, to not let them get to me: a significant challenge. Never scratching a bite helped, but not as much as thinking of it as being "too hot" rather than "too buggy". In that photo where I'm lying on a chunk of sea ice I was desperate to cool off. Wearing our full bug suits makes it look like cool weather. Don't be fooled! It was full-on shorts and t-shirt heat, but that would've been a worse fate than drowning in sweat in the bug suit, esp when the air was still. Heinous. Thanks dearly to Mike for the bathroom bug net (see photo). Larry preferred using a stick to switch to bugs away during very quick squats... don't know how he did it. I even learned to slide a pee bottle down my pants so I could pee without exposing skin. Crazy.

Another way to deal was to think of caribou. Not only are they truly tortured by mosquitoes, but the book describes two horrifying parasitic flies that make summer absolute misery for caribou and also substantially weaken them (large wad of larvae in sinuses, hundreds of larvae under skin on back... every caribou). This was consistent with the tortured look on their faces and especially how they are always moving (burning calories they need for winter). They are so miserable it wasn't fun to see them except that one bull in the purple flowers (photo). If I ever find myself born as a caribou calf, I'm heading for the nearest wolf.

Larry and I wondered how the native people dealt with mosquitoes with traditional materials. Mind boggling. We had little to complain about. Late in the trip Larry told me that the bugs were worse this time than on his previous trips.

Fortunately just when we were about to lose it, a breeze would reduce the bugs. Paddling out on the water, esp. in the sea ice helped reduce bug density. If you look carefully, you can see bugs (sometimes as smudges) in many of the photos including the night paddle shots. In the bug-screen shelter we cheered for the bees that plucked mosquitoes off the screen, bit off wings and legs, then rolled up the carcass to take back to feed their larvae. We noticed that when the horseflies got thick on the Kugaluk River (killed 22 on my pants in 3-4 minutes), the mosquitoes subsided. Not sure if it was due to the horseflies being a direct threat or if it was a safe-airspace issue, but it was definitely a better deal.

Larry says that years ago he promised himself that he'd never be out again during blackfly season, assuring me that they're worse. Turned out that we left the day they began to hatch.

Back to the bit about Larry. My appreciation for him grew not only for how he dealt with me out there, but also seeing him in his element. I'm not exactly new to rivers or seeing animals, but he took all that to a whole different level, esp. reading river and the bays. It was amazing how easily and well he interpreted the water, the level of subtlety. (I realize (hope!) it's no more so than my reading of rock and alpine environments). Clearly he's an elite wilderness paddler and traveler. His years of canoe racing also help, esp for the upriver sections (and I got some great coaching on my technique!). What a unique position for me to be in, so much learning. Refreshing. I wrote a ton in my journal, about many things.

Most of all, he's really easy going and has a similar level of risk acceptance as I do. I knew those things from climbing and skiing with him, but with water I am not on the same level so need to rely on him and trust his judgment unlike I do in familiar terrain. I knew that he wouldn't let us get into a situation that we couldn't handle as a team, that he can read people as well as he reads water. This meant that it all flowed beautifully. Even the few times that my eyes got large (like that landing above), I knew we really weren't in a serious situation, that all I had to do was combine my judgment with his instructions and all's well.

Did you notice the photos in which he’s in the boat and I’m walking? I have teased him saying I’m going to tell everyone that he kicked me out and made me walk! Not the case. Sometimes I felt like I hadn’t walked enough lately or just wanted to take pictures. He, on the other hand, might have been glad to finally get some time away from me!

I'd never been out that long before, much less with just one other person and not seeing anyone else. We really got into a flow of working and being together, a lot of humor (except when the bugs, uh, I mean the HEAT, was at it's worst; then we were just quiet). Fun to find that it's really as great as I expected to be out for such a long time period, how one really settles into the flow of it even more than all the 30-day courses I've worked. We adapt in many subtle ways bodily as well as mentally, such as one's hair stops producing much oil so the itchy-head of the first weeks disappears. Our food was so good that we didn't have any cravings when we got back to town except of course fresh produce.

So there you have it, more details than you cared to know on my northern adventure. I hope you enjoyed the photos.
Since getting home I've been alpine-homesick, missing and appreciating being here and working here, but I'm finding I'm feeling it less having just re-lived much of our trip. Funny.

I hope you and your family are well and getting out more this summer. Thanks much for the updates about your lives, and photos… including your home remodeling, your kids, your dog, and anything that is of interest to you in your life. I so love staying in contact, however sporadically, with each of you receiving this.

Love and wild winds, Susan
* (yes, global warming has occurred before, but this rate is unnatural and now it's a hell of a lot harder for organisms to adapt).

Crazy ice and Icebreaker ship ride

2007-02-02T21:28:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I just saw spray from a whale in the icebreaker channel right here by town. The winds is blowing the broken up ice to one side, inviting the whales in to play, or hunt, or do whatever they do... Very cool. We get Minke whales and orcas.

So much for writing shortly after returning from Minna Bluff. That was almost 2 weeks ago. The consequence is that now I've had two especially interesting experiences since the last update... so, well, not quite so short this time (eeekk!). But not so long as previous years, at least.

I was out for 2-1/2 weeks with geologists who were working on steep snow and loose rock (often with ice just underneath), and above crevassed terrain at times. The team included my favorite researchers, the volcanologists with whom I've had my best times down here on Mt Erebus. There were four senior scientists, 3 graduate students, and a contrtact mountaineer (ie he isn't part of our dept but could be).

Minna Bluff is composed of dozens lava flows, and the team was investigating how these highly varied eruptions interacted with water: glacial ice, lakes, streams. They were also working on mapping this complex terrain and gathering samples for chemical analysis as well as age-dating. This area, 50 miles south of McMurdo, really hasn't been studied. The results will augment some major rock core drilling projects and other climate related (and more) research.

Mostly we hiked to our sites, much to my enjoyment. Much of the terrain was what one might call "technical hiking", in crampons, especially on the highly varied and uneven surfaces of glacial and melt-water ice right below the cliffs. The Ross and McMurdo Ice Shelves meet at Minna Bluff (see map on pbase.com/antarctic_suze). These two sheets of ice glide over the Ross Sea at different speeds and in different directions, creating a tremendous amount of stress resulting in miles of beautiful ice chaos. I'll send photos separately. Not only are there so many crevasses and gigantic blocks of ice that there is no discernible pattern or actual level surface except at the very edge, but there are 3 magnificent rips, canyons really, reaching out in gentle arcs several miles into the distant flat white of the shelf. Fantastic scenery, and it was really fun to explore ice in it's many magical forms walking to and from work every day, esp when it became warm enough for melting and refreezing (a game to see if you can walk on the frozen surface of the shallow meltpools).

On some days we helicopter-commuted because the distances were getting so great that too much time was spent hiking. One time the helicopter landed so close to a crevasse that we had to be careful while loading our packs into it. Another time, as the helo arrived to pick us up, the rotor wash pushed a pack out onto a snow covered crevasse. (The crevasse was visible by the sagging snow). As we started building an anchor to belay someone over to get it, the pilot said he would blow it back to us. Hearing that unlikely offer over our radios, we didn't pause in our anchor building. We had visions of the pack going further and then down into an open crevasse.
Then the pilot actually did it! He herded the pack back to us using the wind from the rotors. At one point he almost lost the pack, but he pulled it off: full-on helicopter-cowboy rounding up the errant pack. We were mightily impressed.

The other funny thing about working out there was, knowing the place is known for its wind storms, we worked our first 5 days in substantial wind with occasional snow thinking that was normal local weather. Then the 45-55mph wind abated and the sun came out... we were shocked! We had a good laugh at ourselves; we should have known. Then later when we had big winds we took some much appreciated rest time.

Last Sunday, the Coast Guard Icebreaker the Polar Sea offered 2 "morale cruises". In recent seasons there was so much ice because of that giant berg B-15 that the ships were too busy breaking a channel to offer these trips. This year they finally had some free time like in the last decade. This is the first year, since I've been here, with NO icebreaking/ship drama: a big change.

Almost everyone on station entered their names into the lottery for the limited number of spaces. The little trip out into the channel and back was a lot of fun, very novel. We saw two Minke whales, swimming right below us in the water. Beautiful. One turned it's massive head a wee bit to look up at us, although I couldn't see the eye. I didn't worry about photos because plenty of others did and I figure some good shots will make it to the common drive on the intranet (I will send some soon). Instead I focused on watching the whales for the moments we saw them up close. Beautiful powerful graceful animals. What a treat.

For the first time I saw an Emporer penguin sitting on the surface like a duck! We were all initially baffled, and I heard a couple folks wonder incredulously, "Loon?!?!" until someone realized. I've seen them via the observation tube down in the ice, swimming like torpedoes, waddling or tobogganing on land, in photos porpoising along the ice edge, but never on the surface like a huge duck with a white neck. How funny.

Also really enjoyed watching how the ice reacted to the ship. We had to push through a bunch of slightly refrozen densely packed chunks, so watching the new ice break and how the big pieces reacted to being pushed upon by the ship was cool. And later I was further back on the ship and saw large (meters) chunks of ice resurface after having been forced under by the front of the boat. Sounds bland, maybe, but it was actually really dynamic how the ice and water interacted and sounded. And of course all the wonderful aqua blues of ice on the slick looking darkness of McMurdo Sound.

Before we turned around on the 2-1/2 hour trip they rammed the 13' thick edge of the channel a couple times to give us a taste of icebreaking (just try to sleep through that!). The ship rides up on top and the weight breaks the ice, bit by bit by bit. Must've been horrendous when they had 100 miles to break a few years ago.

Seeing actual water is a real change. The area we camped in at Minna Bluff has many tiny ice ponds and a lake. Over our time there, one pond, right by my tent, began to melt. It was really different to see in to water and to see water move in the breeze; the strange normality of liquid water reminded me how 'abnormal' this place is. There was even algae in the bottom of the pool... now that too is a treat: plant life! We get so used to seeing nothing living except skuas looking for people carrying sandwiches away from the galley, that any form of life is really cool (and now whales in the channel).

The open sea absorbs light making the clouds above dark ("water sky" to the old explorer's looking for a route through the ice). Very distinctive and fun to finally see it this year.
Additional Nat'l Sci Foundation budget cuts are amply lubricating the rumor mill. Recently there's been a lot of talk of altering the flow of the year down here next season in order to skimp through until the next budget cycle starting in October, which may not be much better anyway.

This next ice year is the International Polar Year, following the Internat'l Geophysical Year half a century ago, when the US Antarctic Program began. On one hand there's been a build-up of big international high profile projects... but now with budget chopping... we shall see what happens.

Post-ice travel plans are on everyone's mind. Larry and I are working out the details for an extended Arctic river trip later this spring. We're thinking the Anderson, in the NW Territories of Canada, going through a bird sanctuary during nesting season, and ending by paddling along the coast of the Beaufort Sea back to the town from which we flew in. Part of the idea is to go before the seasonal cycle of landscape and animals is further thrown off by longterm warming. Logistics remain to be worked out; we'll see what unfolds.

I'm getting really psyched to climb for 5-6 weeks in Arapiles, Australia again. In case you're feeling nauseated by all the time that I don't work, know that if all my working hours are added up, I work more than the supposed standard for a full time job. I'm not completely slacking! But yes, I do realize that I'm pretty damn lucky, and in many ways.

Love and Light, Susan

Blood, Search and Apprehend, sea ice

2007-01-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Despite my expectation expressed in the last message, I made it back to town for the TWO-day weekend of Christmas. AND, I was actually here for the third and final real weekend of the season: New Year's. Today I'm headed out to the field for ten day gig, this one though in actual technical terrain... I'll actually get to use guiding related skills, not just grunt work on the Great White Expanse.

Last weekend Larry and I enjoyed a wonderful ski near town. As usual we rode our bikes there and back, which continues to be a lot of fun. The weather was calm and clear: a real treat and it reminded us of other places that we play in (minus trees, of course). The snow was sparkly and the surface was unusually great for skiing (an inch or two of facets on hardpack)... a superb outing.

Last week I received a call to come into Medical to donate blood. There was a guy with some very serious condition that needed a lot of blood of my type. This program maintains a "walking blood bank", and this is the first time I've heard of it being activated. I gave blood during the drives in high school, but this turned out to be different. With blood drives, I assume the blood will be separated into its components, mixed with a thousand other people's, and then sit in a freezer for months. This time, the pint of warm blood I held in my hand was moments from going through a filter (for clotting) and then directly into the body of someone I might even know. He received six pints before being flown to NZ. The Medical folks seemed pretty concerned about whether he would survive (no update).

I was surprised to find this process involved an emotional aspect: it's really different knowing a part of my body is about to go directly into the body of someone else, someone I might know. My friends in Medical also found this experience emotionally impactful, and they all seemed super grateful to those who were able to help. If I ever need blood here, I think I'd like to meet and thank each person, to know of whose blood was becoming mine. Intimate in a very novel way. Wild.

The other strange event last week was getting called, as part of the Search and Rescue team, to pick up two people who were seen walking off the safe-flagged route on the sea ice and deliver them to station management. They were perceived as also not having checked out as required for such recreational events. The vehicle we took couldn't cross the transition to the sea ice from where we were, so the two of us stood there, waiting for these guys to finish the loop (now they were on the flagged route). It was weird feeling like a cop waiting to bust someone. We decided that we'd been demoted to Search and Apprehend, and wondered if the guys, who must have seen us standing there, knew they were about to get ambushed, walking into a trap, or whatever the right phrase would be from Hollywood.

Turns out they had indeed checked out (we asked before assuming!), and had just temporarily taken a wrong turn to a dead-end flag-line, so taking them back to station management wasn't a drag because we knew they were innocent. Weird part of the job!

The first icebreaker, Swedish, is getting close to town. This year, for the first in four, there's been NO drama around sea ice and ships being able to get in. What a change!

And I finally saw penguins (endlessly entertaining, and the two local species are so different in character!) and seals on a de-flagging trip on the sea ice. The sea ice is officially closed now, mostly because of meltpools and mushiness on the surface near town, not because one will fall through, so we were out pulling the flags out of the routes. The ice is still up to several meters thick in most places, though the first-year ice is only about a meter or so. As the ice itself has warmed it has become less strong, but it's the surface where we drive and planes land that has become inconsistent. Plus if it got really warm for a while, the ice could possibly start to disintegrate or break up and get blown out. We hope for this so we can see whales, seals, and penguins from town, but that hasn't since '99 or so, before that giant berg B-15 wreaked havoc regionally.

My upcoming field stint involves geologists gathering samples from outcrops above snow/ice slopes, some of which are above a heavily crevassed area. It's also with my two favorite researchers (the Erebus people) and their new-to-Antarctica grad students. Should be fun. This group has their own contract mountaineer, a Brit, but the terrain dictates that they have another mountaineer, from our dept, out there as well. I taught their glacier travel course Saturday and it went well working with their mountaineer (who has been down with the British Ant. Survey) a number of times.

Other news is that Larry's elbows have been hurting enough that he has decided not to go to Arapiles to climb with me post-ice. Bummer! I will go without him (easy to find partners there), but am waiting to hear what else he plans... that might make it harder knowing he's on some other cool adventure! We are concocting a northern trip together for May-June. More on that later.

Anyone interested in incredible cragging with me in March? Search "Mt. Arapiles" (Australia) and get a better idea of how amazing this place is, in many respects. I have all the gear, both camping and climbing, so all you need is to fly to Melbourne with your personal climbing gear and I'll set you up with transportation to Arapiles (4 hours by car). Once there, it's super cheap.

Love and the most splendid year we can hope for, Susan

South Pole, AGO shoveling, season reflection

2006-12-06T17:59:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
I am at the South Pole Station, waiting another day to get a flight out to the next AGO site I’ll be working. These are the Automated Geophysical Observatories (space weather, basically), that get serviced annually by engineers who are not necessarily deep field savvy. For the last three years 3 of the 6 original AGO sites have been maintained, having been switched over to wind power. This year they’re adding one that hasn’t been maintained in 5 years. My job is to dig out the survival cache, fuel caches, and other caches and inventory stuff, flag and GPS everything, and manage camp. Glamorous!

I was originally assigned to go to one for a week in place of one of our new guys who has an injury that prevents shoveling. (He is now working on a much more interesting project that I was originally assigned). The snow out there can be rather firm, such that one can place a steel shovel blade in a bit and then step onto the shovel with both feet and then jump on the shovel to get it to penetrate. Then if a block didn’t release, you have to wrestle the shovel back out and try again from a different angle. In climbing we love this kind of snow and call it “bulletproof”. I won’t say what we call it here. Not all the snow is like this, but a lot is and it requires good technique (as above rather than trying to ram in the blade with arms) as well as pacing oneself to be able to dig out caches. Yoga or at least simple stretching, is key.

I have assigned myself the task of writing an SOP (Standard Operating Procedures) for these sites to help the newer people know what to do so we can make it easy for everyone… starting next year. If the caches are moved to the new surface each year, they don’t require psycho digging. However, we are behind in this currently as past people looked at caches and noted that they wouldn’t be buried by the next year. A cache doesn’t have to be fully submerged to be hell to dig out.

One of the engineers made the unsolicited comment last week that I’m the hardest working person he’s seen from my dept in his 3 seasons; he started right after I had been to all sites my first season. (But I made up for that during our flight delay days by lying around reading). Given the state of the last site and the lack of inventory (of survival gear, food, etc), I am not surprised.
I don’t blame the recent others for preferring to help the engineers with the wind turbines and all! In any case, I hope we can make this job much easier for everyone in the future. Last year one of our guys got a back injury and had to be switched out (with the woman who is now our supervisor).

That week stretched into 10 days with technical and then flight delays. Our dept in crunched back in McMurdo, our usual state of affairs (we have desperately been trying to get an additional person for since I’ve been working here) and I’ve been asked to go to the next site as well, the one that hasn’t been maintained in at least four years (no one seems to know how long probably because of high turnover these last 2 seasons). I’m ok with it except for the fact that now it’s pretty clear that I’m going to miss our second two-day weekend. We get three a year: Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years, so this is a big bummer, especially because I have someone I really like to spend time with back in McMurdo. At least I enjoy the 3 guys I’m working with, so it’s not like being in the field with them is a drag or anything. And I did ski twice at the last site… rough skiing for sure, but fun nonetheless.

As you can tell from emails this year it hasn’t been all that lively of a season for me down here. (Whether the sea ice will go out remains to be seen, and it isn’t acting as weird/dramatic as it did last year). I’ve yet to see a penguin or even a seal, have not been to the Dry Valleys, or on a helo once. I have no delusions of getting back to Mt Erebus this year, but it isn’t sending out bombs NEARLY as much this year anyway: I am happy to accept that that truly was a once in a lifetime experience, and to savor the memory.

I have not visited dynamic places yet this year because I’ve been in the deep field a lot, unlike last year when I didn’t go at all. This past October, I did get two weeks in the field with Larry (and many others in small spaces and with a lot of work to do), which was an appreciated first. And I’ve had more fun skiing and this year biking with him than in seasons past, and that counts for a lot.

Hopefully these things simply cycle. I do enjoy being in the deep field, but it certainly isn’t the only thing I enjoy down here. The deep field is often short for the Great White Expanse… not exactly a vibrant place. It dominates the continent, but definitely not the Antarctic Program involvement with the continent. It is still a wonderful and worthwhile experience being down here, don’t get me wrong. As normal as everything gets, I remind myself that I won’t be doing this job forever, so I want to keep savoring the wide variety of experiences I have here, and to keep taking pictures, not taking anything for granted.

Love and light, Susan

Skua attack, pooping planes, and DEEP cold

2006-11-13T21:22:00.000-07:00

Hi all,
Yesterday at lunch I got "skua'ed! I was carrying a sandwich away from the galley when I was struck on the back of the head by a wing and had the wrapped sandwich knocked out of my hand. Those birds are bigger than they look and with my hood up, I didn't hear him coming. Although I was able to rescue the sandwich before the bird got back to it, the impact made enough of an impression on me that now I automatically go on high alert now when I go out that door, with our without food. They are stealthy and notorious. Don’t believe their innocent expressions in the photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze.

I'm back from two weeks at Taylor Dome, just above Taylor Valley (Dry Valleys) on the East Antarctic Plateau.

We were scheduled to fly back on a Herc (LC-130), the big plane flown by the NY Air Nat'l Guard, but that morning were switched to a Twin Otter, a much smaller plane flown by a contractor out of Calgary. Flying with Canadian bush pilots is quite a bit more fun than flying with the US government. With the Canadians, it's a rather casual affair, starting with them buzzing camp "to let you know we're here". The Hercs are strangled with endless structure, rules, regulations, and formality, so getting switched to a Twin Otter was a treat... that plus lots of windows.

The first few days of getting the camp together had it's challenges with weather and it's results, such as propane hoses snapping in the cold and the fact that heaters (propane or diesel) don't work well (nor do generators) below minus forty degrees C/F (minus forty is the same on both scales). Poorly running heaters and stoves lead to nasty fumes... not exactly what our bloodstreams need in the cold at almost 8000', which physiologically is higher at polar latitudes.

Digging out the giant tractors took some time, followed by much engine warming with the gas-powered heaters we brought, but eventually they ran again and the operators could get the runway groomed enough for the Hercs. The Twin Otters can land just about anywhere and take off in what appears to be 100', but the Hercs have to have all the right runway markers, etc on their two mile regulation runway.

The Hercs dropped off a lot of cargo over numerous flights and will do so for the next few weeks as the scientists get out there and get ready for the Traverse (see last message). With the air as cold as it was, exhaust creates an ice fog that surrounds the plane. Obviously this doesn't help much for finding the runway, so they do a hot offload. What happens is the plane taxis along with the tail ramp down, then you'll hear the engines rev up and it'll pick up speed while the cargo pallets are released down the ramp in the swirling ice fog. The effect is very much that the plane is pooping: a big gray bird pooping squares on the snow. For some reason I find this quite amusing.

It's truly amazing how we adapt. Believe it or not, -30 actually seems warm, esp without wind, when you've been dealing with temps below minus forty. The coldest we measured was about Fahrenheit minus 55...
brrr! At that temp, ziploc bags become crinkly and stiff like cellophane, those yellow foam earplugs snap in half, and we didn't go out with a square centimeter of skin exposed. The wind really zaps warmth, so when it isn't windy, it seems radically warmer.

We slept in little heated (more or less) buildings on skis that will be hauled along the traverse, so it isn't like we were living in tents in these conditions. Nonetheless I had my hands full making sure people didn't get frostbit and putting into place the basics of a safe camp. But it was fun... part of the reason to come to Antarctica is to occasionally get a good pounding.

The other day we had a Search and Rescue call-out, a missed Twin Otter check-in, that got as far as us starting to pull gear from the SAR locker before they radio'd in. It was the pilots I'd flown with 3 times recently and I had seen them and their two passengers leaving that morning. The thing about SARs here is that there is a high probability of knowing the people involved (not to mention that we rarely have real incidents so we don't exactly have much opportunity to get calloused about it (does anyone ever really?). It was sobering thinking about what we might encounter as we pulled gear. Fortunately almost always the party calls in before we get very far.

Since getting back I've started riding my bike around town. Larry and I bought used rentals back home and had them sent down as entertainment as much as transportation (town is compact). It'll provide more flexiblity not needing to wait for the airfield shuttle to get out to skate ski on the road to the runway, but it's already been fun just being able to move at a less of an Antarctic pace. And then there's the challenge of finding the right balance between real ice and too-loose snow which definitely helped me wake up this morning. But the roads are drying out (sublimating, that is) so the riding will just get easier as I figure out the best biking routes around town. I'm finding the seat is quite hard, but am hoping it'll soften up as the temps warm.

So, not too much exciting going on. Tomorrow Larry gets back from Taylor Dome now that they're done swapping out the skis on the giant sleds, but I'll be out at Happy Camper school overnight.

Be well, and enjoy the crunchy leaves out there for me. And the smells of fall...
Love to all, Susan

Skua incident, Return of the Nodwell; season end

2006-02-11T17:13:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I fly north on your-Thursday, so this is my last ice message of the season; just a couple notes.

You might recall early season I mentioned our dept vehicle woes, which deteriorated throughout the season leaving us facing a crisis next year (having to run half size Happy Campers, which would greatly slow down the research teams from getting into the field, which would get NSF’s attention). In the middle of last season our tracked behemoth (vintage 1976, Navy), the Nodwell (see Oct or Nov ’03 on blog) died and we were told it couldn’t be repaired. Well yesterday I got a phone call to come pick it up. Our boss’s boss had pushed to get it resurrected but didn’t want to get our hopes up so withheld this information.

What a thrill to drive the Plodwell again, the one with two levers sticking up off the floor: you pull either one to steer. It doesn’t track straight so you leave drunken tracks across the snow, has a turning radius that one must be cognizant of (plus you have to be careful not to throw a track), and is so loud everyone wears ear protection. It leaks oil so we are outfitted with containment and spill kit supplies to deal with that (my favorite part of the job). But it works, starts in the cold, and will haul 20 people and gear without getting stuck. We had a challenging year with vehicles so this is a big deal, our preferred solution. It’s funny, a huge piece of shit that those of us who were here in previous years have come to greatly appreciate.

All the ship drama with the icebreaker channel? It all worked out.

It appears that the sea ice won’t go out much this year despite all the early season excitement because the mega berg B-15 finally left. Now, there’s a small berg, maybe only as big as Rhode Island or so, poised at the mouth of McMurdo Sound, causing a few ripples of anxiety among those who pay for the ships. That story, if it becomes one, will have to wait till October.

Remember that large scavenger brown gull the skua? After hearing stories for 3 seasons, I finally had my first incident. I was carrying a wrapped sandwich away from the galley when one swooped close over my shoulder and grabbed the sandwich right out of my hand. I couldn’t believe it, but my hands were indeed empty. The bird avoided brushing me with wingtips or feet, which I thought was a pretty coordinated bit of flying. Rumor has it that this is a well practiced skua skill. They don’t always avoid contact, however, and traumatize people regularly. Sometimes you see abandoned plates sitting there on the ground, plastic wrap fluttering.

The sandwich was heavy so the skua had difficulty gaining altitude. I saw my opportunity. Disturbing wildlife is most distinctly against the Antarctic Treaty, but I chose to re-interpret the law more toward its intention: protecting wildlife from human harm. Clearly eating human food is unhealthy for the bird on more than one level, so retrieving the sandwich would ultimately protect this sneaky skua more than letting him get away with it.

It was a fairly long chase around the “quad” type area between the galley and dorms, and a well matched race it was as I was right behind him the whole time. Then he made the miscalculation of heading toward an inside corner in the galley building. I realized this before he did (I guess that means I’m slightly smarter than a bird-brain) and herded him a bit more into the corner, knowing he wouldn’t be able to clear the building with the booty. It didn’t matter that the sandwich was full of skua-foot nastiness, because the skua didn’t get to eat it either. Ha.
And there weren’t any higher-ups around to bust me for treaty violation.

When I get home I’ll start developing the photo-display website my friend Rob set up for me, so then you can click through more photos more conveniently.

So, thanks for tuning in, and much more so for writing back to me despite my impersonal mailings. I much enjoy hearing from you, and about your life back ‘in the world’, particularly when I am down here in the land of ice and wind, stunning but stark.

Yes, I plan to return. I am not yet done with Antarctica, or should I say the Antarctic is not yet done with me.

The photos are from the SAR multi-day exercise in the Asgard Range and Wright Valley in the Dry Valleys. We are on the summit of Mt. Electra, Kiwi Paula and I.

Love, light, and the smell of spring in the winds, Susan

Mt EREBUS: lava bombs, crystals, caves! Finally!

2006-01-31T17:09:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

I finally made it up to Mt. Erebus, the 12,800' active volcano that explains the existence of Ross Island. I went up for area familiarization for Search and Rescue, and to help them with camp close-out. After acclimatizing for a day at a lower camp, we were flown to the hut on the caldera, which is the lower angle break in the mountain's profile.

My time up there constituted some of the most amazing experiences I've had. The lava lake, only 42m across but 1000' down in the 1000' diameter crater, is spewing lava bombs for the first time since I graduated from high school. I learned the protocols for what to do when there's an eruption: drop your pack if it's heavy, face uphill, and look up in the air for bombs falling toward you. The ones that barely make it out of the crater could come at you horizontally, so you have to watch out for those too.

But realistically, one's chances of getting hit are quite slim and approaching zero along certain parts of the rim. Only a VERY small percentage of terrain is hit in any one eruption, even if you include the bouncing and skidding of bombs along the surface (which, by the way, is largely composed of 1984 and much older bombs that have disintegrated in the acidic steam, leaving the Erebus crystals covering the ground in between the bombs).

The volcanologists up there have seismometers all over the mountain, as well as cameras on the rim watching the action and showing it in the hut and in the lab in McMurdo. They had a pretty good idea of how many hours between eruptions (one or more per day) and how big was big, so we could time our rim visits to minimize the chance of being there during a big eruption. Sometimes the active steam vent erupts, emitting a lot of steam, but no bombs. Normal eruptions sound much like avalanche bombing... a large deep reverberating BOOM!

At times we were on the sides of the mtn and upon returning to the hut we discovered via the seismometers that we'd missed an eruption so we'd replay the video and see how big it was. One time you could see lava flying toward the camera: a blob getting bigger fast, then dropping out of sight right in front of the camera. Then you could see steam rising from the bomb in the snow below the camera. Later I checked it out and the bomb, about the size of a cat, had hit the vertical snow of the rim just below the camera, slid down a meter, and was still there stuck in the vertical snow. Crazy.

On the video in the hut you can sometimes see shock waves from the boom, and Nelia and Bill report that the force of a big eruption can knock you down if you're on the rim.

They grantees were, among many things, collecting smaller bombs to later examine their chemical composition and to determine the extent of this year's bomb throwing (ie how big is "bomb alley"). Fresh bombs are covered with a tannish gold fine hairiness of volcanic glass. Sharp. Some of these fibers fly out of the crater alone and land on the snow as "Pele's hair" (volcano goddess). Smaller bombs are irregular in shape, but the bigger ones, like from 1984, are bulbous. The larger of those have collapsed, leaving a shape much like a red blood cell. The biggest '84 bomb they know of is 11m across, and the biggest this year 3m long. Wouldn't want to find myself calculating the trajectory of something that big. And hot.

Then there are Erebus crystals. They are wonderful for their shape, not for being translucent or dramatically colored. I'll send photos soon. The crystals are a type of feldspar (but different shaped) are thought to slowly form within the convective currents deep within the lava lake.

The first day I went to the rim I found myself rather quiet, trying to absorb everything. There was so much to wrap my brain around. That day the view of the lava was largely obscured by steam, but I sat and stared, and did get good glimpses occasionally. I even saw some orange bubbles rise up like burps out of the highly viscous molten earth. To see pre-rock, full-on live lava gurgling in slow motion, steaming, hissing, and building up pressure, blew my mind. We were on a safe part of the rim, so of course I wanted to see an eruption, but just being there was spellbinding.

Pulling with my ice axe, I later opened up an '84 bomb, now cracked on the outside and hollow from the gases, expanding due to pressure release, having escaped the lava but to the inside because the outside was cooling. The rock on the inside was shiny black, absolutely smooth, much like black shiny taffy where it had been stretched into long fibers. Where it hadn't, it was pocked with large holes where the gases had accumulated.

The outside of the bomb was quite different having been much eroded by the acidic plume. No longer was the bomb irregular, but rounded and all the Erebus crystals were light colored, standing out on the slightly darker surface except where they were obscured by green/yellow sulfur deposits.
I have to admit I have learned to love the smell of sulfur. Between Mt. Baker, Yellowstone, and now Erebus, how could I not? It means I'm in a deeply dynamic place, the smell of live hot earth...

I spent New Year's up there. Five minutes before 2006 we were in the hut playing a game and as always keeping an eye on the monitor showing the crater. BOOM, a big one went off so we hustled to the window to see the action. In two places the snow was steaming... but Bill suggested we finish the game. Afterward, we all jumped on snowmachines, and zipped on up there like little kids giddy with anticipation (some more than others).

I pulled hot lava, like very stiff taffy, out of a fresh hot bomb. This was something I'd heard about and greatly hoped to do, but certainly had no expectation. Bill waited 22 years for this experience. The bomb was about 1.5m x .75m, and still too hot to touch, or so we assumed (too sharp anyway). It had left a 5' round crater in the snow, then bounced out and had slid to it's final location, melting snow along the way.

Bill let me hack into it first, and yes, it was glowing orange inside. I was surprised how stiff it was, one had to lean on the ice axe to pull taffy, which cooled as it was exposed to the cooler air. You could see red-hot Erebus crystals suspended in the lava, re-orienting as pulling taffy brought them into the light of summer. One had to be careful while pulling so hard: good footing in the snow standing over the bomb was important. Bill said the lava was probably about 800+degrees Celcius (8x boiling). You wouldn't try to touch the outside anyway because the fibers are so sharp. With the heat, definitely leather-glove terrain. It was wild.

We hacked and pulled taffy till they got bored with it. We separated out crystals to let them cool in the snow (they are covered with black shiny roughness), and kept some cooled examples of the taffy pulls, complete with imprints where the ice axe pick had been.

I was cognizant that this is likely an experience I'll not have again in this lifetime. Hot live molten earth, rock in the making (weird rock as it is), the real thing. Almost surreal. Since coming here, I'd fantasized about simply seeing the orange lava lake; pulling taffy only became possible this year, an experience too wild to hope too much for.

I have to admit that, along with certain other members of their group, I didn't exactly avoid opportunities to hang out at the rim in the hazard zone. I knew I'd be able to keep my head about me and dodge, but wanted to experience it, to viscerally feel the power of the mountain vomiting. It didn't happen, but I did watch/hear/feel an eruption, from the moment before the enormous bubble arose, to the bombs flying as high as us but then falling back into the crater. I also saw deep in the crater little lava-gas bubbles fling orange bombs onto the cliffs above the lava lake, which was covered with layers of bomb-lava much like the accumulation of candle wax drippings. Expert consensus was that the lava in the lake is viscous enough to walk on (hold your breath!), but not enough to ride a horse on.

I have a bit of a geology background, and made a point to build on that as it pertains to Erebus (and other volcanoes), talking with Nelia and Bill who were exceptionally generous with their time and expertise. Truly fascinating.
Would you believe these are not all the charms of Mt Erebus? Steam sneaks out of the mountain in many locations, and slowly melts its way out of the deep snow/ice above which slowly moves downhill, leaving marvelous caves to explore (and fall into if you're not careful walking or snowmobiling around). Our last night, Bill attached a ladder across his snowmobile, and we all headed to a new cave, the entrance of which we checked out earlier.
We needed headlamps. One doesn't normally bring a headlamp to Antarctica in summer, so I was relieved when Bill, with a smirk, pulled one out of his pocket for me.

Yup, this was also incredibly cool. Much like my first time on the rim, I wanted to be alone to absorb it all, as best I could, privately. I also wanted to explore every single alcove, tunnel, corner, and nook in the cave system. I wanted to make a mental map of the cave as well, get to know it. This one was shaped like a circle with a long tail ending at some fumeroles, hollow towers of frozen steam that later we climbed out through. I basked in the wonderful hues of blue in thinner parts of the roof overhead, and admired the Erebus crystals showing up so clearly in the rock (not bomb-rock, but an ancient lava flow). These caves are relatively warm and quite humid.

I looked for little squeeze slots that might lead to bigger chambers. I did indeed find one unobvious narrow hole in particular, which led into a secret magic crystal chamber. I left my axe outside so that they wouldn't get worried as to my location, and squeezed my narrow frame down. It opened up into a room with, I pause as I write, incredible crystals, a type of faceted crystal, but centimeters across and deep and all over the ceiling, walls, and some on the rocks as well. It was like being in cathedral art gallery, I was very careful not to bump the walls and destroy these fantastic shapes. Turns out they are quiet durable. I picked one, plucked like a wild huckleberry, off the walls to feel it and take photos of an isolated one. They are three dimensional, and when I dropped it (gasp!), it remained intact. I went further into this closet-sized room, and found another alcove with different crystals. And can you imagine how quiet it is?

Hmmm. How to get an NSF grant to study how/where the different crystals form...

There was a bulb of ice, absolutely clear transparent ice, hanging 2' off the ceiling. I could see my hand perfectly through 6" of this ice. I've never seen anything like it, didn't realize ice could actually form like glass, for real.
Another crystal chamber sported enormous dangling crystals of shapes I've also never seen before, even in crevasses, and different than the last. And fibrous hair crystals grew up from a rock. Again, mind-blowing. I was grateful for aloneness to just be with it. I've not seen crystals like these in photos in avalanche books either.

Then there was another room that the others discovered, guarded by more clear-glass ice, but this time in stalagmites sticking up from the floor a meter or so, a couple having formed together. These were named the kachinas and this is now the Kachina Cave. Behind the guardians, in their own room, were the largest crystals I have ever seen. I kid you not: these needle-like crystals, somewhat intertwined (grew at angles into and across each other) were 12-15" (yeah, fifteen inches) long, hanging off the ceiling. Unreal. Some were lying on the floor, so I could handle and inspect them for the secret of their magnificence. They did not reveal it.

No doubt they have formed very slowly in a consistent humid environment over much time, with no disturbances such as air movement. Presumably this explains... something?

Whatever. They were simply magical. Delicate, exotic, varied, a gift to see them. How many crystalline forms can the humble water molecule take?
I reread this and laugh. Yes, despite sounding like a child, it is true that I am nearly 40!

And I did take photos, which will give you the most basic idea at least.
Ok, a bit more about station life. Life in the Antarctic Program, even mine, is not all about drooling over volcanoes, crystals, and penguins. I do have days where I'm in the office or building almost the whole day, including hours in front of the computer on various projects including running the Secondary SAR team trainings. And last week my boss was away again so I was acting supervisor which kept me hustling.

Recently a congressional delegation visited for a few days. Among others, Johns McCain and Sununu were issued big red jackets and given first class treatment as they checked out how the NSF Office of Polar Programs spends your tax dollars.

One place this money is going these days is into ships. The ice has not gone out this year despite the mega-berg B-15 finally leaving. During it's presence, the ice became thicker each year, seriously affecting local penguin and seal populations as well as needing more time to weaken, break up, and "go out".
Sea ice desalinates over time. What this means is that now the ice itself has to reach 32 degrees F to melt, not 28.5, the temp at which sea water freezes here.

It looks like that berg set into motion a chain of events, a negative feedback loop that will last who knows how long, leaving the NSF with serious difficulties getting ships in to resupply the station. The ships are nearby and have been in and out of the channel varying distances, but the channel in the ice is packed full of ice pieces (refreeze) and won't clear because it's long and wiggly. The compression in the ice that greatly affected sea ice travel earlier in the season is now slowly narrowing the channel. The US icebreakers are out of commission, and the contracted Russian icebreaker broke a propeller... on goes the drama. We are all most eager to see what will happen. The costs this year have increased about 650%, thus far. It's pricey to have the fuel and resupply vessels just sitting there, as well as the Russian ship. Not to mention 70 tattooed Navy cargo handlers hanging around McM waiting for work to do.

But seeing Russians occasionally in the galley is quite interesting. It seems the women are tall, wearing stiletto heels arm and arm with a short guy wearing a fur hat, and they stare straight ahead (can't blame them as we stare at them!). Fun to have a little cultural exposure right here in "Mactown".

The contractor continues to tighten the noose on the local population; too bad their contract was renewed last year. There are fewer and fewer opportunities to get out of town for most people, ridiculous safety rules (see Oct or Nov update), more and more paperwork, less and less trust in us and they discourage thinking, especially creatively. They are trying to reduce the number of people who receive evaluations of "exceeds expectations" to save the extra 2% you get on your bonus for that, and also refuse to rectify the alcohol-ordering error so created a season long shortage of alcohol. The dishwashers are getting more carpal tunnel than ever. People are afraid to get injuries treated because injuries affect future employment. Our dept is particularly understaffed and this year, under-vehicled, which has caused a number of problems that are not unique to us.

Morale is low; people are exhausted, burned out, and especially eager to leave this year. RPSC sent out a survey trying to find out why so many senior full-time people haven't been returning. Next year will be interesting as things have deteriorated further this year.

I, however, live a pretty insulated life down here. I am in Direct Science Support, an enclave of rationality. Better yet, my boss (and his boss) have little tolerance for crap, so hold the line pretty well, advocating for reality, and keeping our jobs overall quite doable and even enjoyable. As the Field Safety Department, many of the industrial safety rules don't apply to our terrain. We are permitted to operate under the safety guidelines of mountaineering and guiding, which of course is something we know about and they don't. As long as we maintain our safety record...

Our new folks (all 3) have been really great, yea. And now that our dept is 40% female for the first time ever, our little culture shifts further. We all work together well and avoid much of the politics and pettiness I hear of in many larger departments.

As you can imagine we are rather tight-lipped about the opportunities we have. I have only told two people, including Larry, the details about Erebus. Fortunately Larry also gets out with some regularly to build field camps for the researchers. They work fast so they can explore before the helo returns. He is there without the grantees being around, while we are there with the scientists. Both have their advantages, but I think I prefer getting to learn from the grantees, some of whom are wonderful.

I am doing well. I am scheduled to fly north on Feb 17th, and plan to spend 4 days in Christchurch (NZ) before heading home to ski Ski SKI with Larry. What's the snowpack been like? Tell me about seeing animal tracks in the forest snow, hearing the trees crack in the cold, and making graceful turns in deep powder... (I have goosebumps!) (What a flake).

Take care of yourself, and feel free to drop a note or photo now and then.

Love and late winter thaws, Susan

South Pole, Snowmobile riding training, why so little life here

2005-12-21T17:43:00.000-07:00

Happy Solstice, Everyone.

Given that it can take minutes to download an internet page, I'm not going to try to run a search to find the exact time of the solstice. I'm sure you are deeply disappointed.

I miss winter solstice, the time of the long cold starry night, squirrel and hare tracks in the snow, branches drooping under the weight of qali (snow in trees)... the celebration of hope and renewal, the rebirth of the sun, without which there would be no life on Earth.

I am back from the South Pole Station, where I took a dozen "polies" out for an overnight away from the station. They don't get many chances to leave the station, so this is a great opportunity for them.

I hadn't been to Pole since my first season two years ago, so it was fun to revisit and see the changes as they continue to work on and move into the new Elevated Station. The idea of the elevation is to minimize drifting, but it's only somewhat working. Nonstop for the whole summer, bulldozers work moving the massive drifts that build upwind as well as downwind away from the building, creating huge piles of snow among the many cargo lines.

One gets a strong sense that the snow ultimately wins. It slowly but steadily claims everything on the plateau, and fighting it is reminiscent of shoveling sand against the tide. Not much snow falls per year, but with drifting, it really adds up and essentially never sublimates as the air is so cold (cannot hold much moisture). The average annual temp there is something like -57 degree F, and they recently matched a record high of +7 degrees.

The Pole is also high, 9300' but with the thinner atmosphere of high latitudes, it is physiologically about 10,500' or higher, so upon arrival one feels the oppressiveness of the altitude in addition to the cold.

But it's very bright there; the sun circling relentlessly overhead combined with a lack of wind made the -12 temps we had quite comfortable. Pole isn't nearly as windy (or prone to white-outs) as McMurdo, which is on the coast within the Ross Sea.

Polies are an independent sort and revel in being in the "real Antarctica", yet paradoxically they spend most time confined inside and have no where to go and nothing to do outside except for one ski loop on the Great White Expanse. For contrast, most new arrivals are quite surprised how much terrain we have around McMurdo: numerous stunning mountain ranges, active Mt Erebus, sea ice, islands, and hiking routes up a big rocky hill, along a peninsula ridge, and up on the glaciated peninsula to the steep outcrop of Castle Rock. And we have skua gulls as well as the occasional seal or penguin near town.

The research at Pole is only subjects like astrophysics, neutrino collecting, measuring cosmic rays... less compelling to the latent biologist in me.

But I did get to check out the tunnels in the snow/ice, the coldest temp I have been in ever: a relatively balmy (for the tunnels) -47 degrees (no sun! but also no wind). There are over a thousand feet of tunnels about 35’ under the ice meant to last the next 50 years connecting the station to the wells that use hot water to melt snow/ice to make more water, then to transport this water in heated and hyperinsulated pipes, back to the station. These pipes run parallel to the pipes that carry sewage back to the previously-used water-well: there are several enormous masses of... ugh, frozen into the polar icecap, ever so slowly making their way to the ocean along with all the remains from the explorer days early in the last century. There's a pony somewhere in a crevasse on the Beardmore Glacier, and of course people, sleds, dogs, camps... and more modern detritus lost to the ever insidiously accumulating snow. The original (1950's) South Pole Station has been fully claimed by the snow, but they continue to fight against the burial of the famous Dome station, which they plan to dismantle and send north when they are fully moved out of it soon.

Pole is fun to visit, but not somewhere I'd enjoy living. But it's probably a lot better once you know the community well (about 200-250 people, McM is about 1100). See the blog below, December 2003 for more about the South Pole Station, like the freezer doors on the newer buildings.

The other fun thing as of late was the SAR technical snowmobile riding training. It was good to learn how to hang off those things to keep them on slopes, how to handle losing traction on steep ice, and how to leap off when it rolls over (the windshields were removed for this). I, however, have not become enamored with these stinky loud machines as some others who also hated them in the US have confessed. I appreciate them a lot for the fact that they can go 40+ mph on the sea ice (flat) as compared to the usual 10-15mph of most other vehicles, but don't expect me to adopt this activity as recreation! But it was fun to learn how to actually have some influence on their behavior (they weigh about 750 pounds).

Tomorrow we are supposed to snowmobile up Mt Erebus as a SAR training. It's 12,800' and could take up to 20 hours. Part is notoriously steep and icy, hence the training. What a coincidence that two days ago there was an altitude "near-miss" on the mountain, highlighting the need for us to be able to get up there and get someone down when the helos are weather-grounded.

I have learned not to count on anything regarding my getting up Erebus, but am optimistic. Also possible I might get up there next week via the usual helo transport. Nelia, a grantee up there, mentioned a volcanic bomb that was a meter big and when they stuck in their ice axes, they pulled out magma. Erebus has been throwing small bombs just outside the crater lately (see last message). Also there are ice caves up there.

I've not yet been up. (see Jan ‘06 entry)

One more thing about Antarctica. There is little life on the continent not because of we are at the south pole, but because Antarctica's separation from Gondwana (the southern mega-continent) eons ago allowed the development of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current, the world's largest. It doesn't mix with warm northern water and keeps the continent cold and icy (there's a feedback loop with the ice). Pre-isolation, but at the same latitude, there were forests here. Fossilized beech trees abound in the Transantarctic Mountains from when it was wet, cool, and very alive. Animals moved between South America and Australia via this continent.

Larry is supposed to get back from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet today. Haven't seen him since before Thanksgiving.

A bright Solstice, a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and enjoy the lengthening of the days. It's fun to see the (fake) Christmas tree in the galley, the gingerbread houses (was there a decorating party?), the decorations, but it's the music that I associate with the holiday and enjoy from childhood. Maybe someone will play some of that sometime, like at the big Christmas party in the made-over Heavy-Equipment Shop. We are so lucky to miss the retail feeding frenzy of the season. That alone might be enough reason to come to Antarctica.

Love, peace and joy to all...
Susan

Dry Valleys trip, WAIS, Erebus, LakeVostok, town notes

2005-11-30T16:28:00.000-07:00

Happy Holidays to Family and Friends, Near and Far (mostly far), Old and New,

I hope you had a great Thanksgiving. It’s my favorite holiday, though this time I was not in town for it. They serve a nice meal here, but climbing a peak and backpacking in one of the Dry Valleys, in the name of Search and Rescue Training, was more than worth missing pecan pie.

It was a trip planned by our Kiwi counterparts. Usually these trainings occur later in the season, but this year we have fewer field commitments so are not quite as crunched as normal. Oct and Nov are always exhausting with all the courses we teach, but now we are fully into our field season, meaning fewer courses and more direct science support.

There is a massive camp going in this year on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). The goal is to drill a 4” ice core down 3500m (3.5km) to the base of the ice. They plan to bring the cores up in one meter sections… that’s a lot of ice cores going through town on their way north, carefully packed to ensure they remain frozen. Not sure what university or lab they’ll be going to. The site was partly chosen for it’s minimal ice movement, which will help the bore hole survive over the winters.

They are looking for climate data and have chosen this spot because of its high resolution, meaning that that each year is represented by a lot of snow compared to other areas. What this also means is that it snows there a lot and is overcast even more often. What this means in turn is that it is difficult to assess weather conditions at ground level with no one there on the ground. They need clear weather to land a LC-130 (a good sized ski-equipped plane, also called “Herc”).

This is a long term project; I hear numbers ranging for 7 to 10 years. It’s also a large camp, with up to 70 or 80 people at a time there, and they’ll even have 3 hard-sided buildings. Apparently there hasn’t been a camp of this magnitude in years.

Right now Larry, a field carpenter, is out there putting up some of the first structures. He was scheduled to go weeks ago, but there were lots of weather delays.

At one point they were getting desperate and discussed flying a smaller plane (Twin Otter) into an established camp 90 miles away, and driving with ground penetrating radar to the WAIS site. For a few days I was preparing to go on this mini-project as the GPR “expert” (it‘s all relative). But then some waiver came through from D.C. allowing the Guard (the NY Air National Guard, who contracts with the National Science Foundation down here), to land there without certain requirements… a very complicated bureaucratic situation (imagine that!). I was disappointed that I didn’t get to go out there with them, I’m sure it would’ve been fun and interesting. But it does illustrate how crazy this place is. How did they not anticipate this situation? It’s not like they didn’t realize that that area would make it difficult to get a runway in. Yeowza.

Setting up this project requires something like 50 Herc flights, and a huge chunk of the money the NSF’s Office of Polar Programs had for this year. Of course the NSF has had it’s budget cut given our national priorities, so we feel it down here as I know a few of you also do in your worlds. There are fewer small projects this season, and our dept (Field Safety) typically supports the smaller projects. The Field Equipment department is also having a lighter season, time to catch up on the many long term projects needing attention.

Given our schedules for the last two years, this is not a bad thing. Our To Do list is notable, and seems to grow daily, so on top of the projects we are supporting and all the classes we run, we have some time to actually be proactive and move some logistical and programmatic projects forward. And, to return to why I missed stuffing and cranberry sauce, we have time to sneak in an early SAR multi-day exercise.

This multi-day trip was as intense as unique. Me and two Kiwi SAR team members were dropped off by helo in a basin in the Olympus Range after a full day of work. Soon we headed out on what turned out to be a 10-hour peak climb. It was really fun, though I found it difficult at times to watch someone who looked a bit shaky on exposed terrain. Part of the value of the trainings is to get to know each other’s skills in the field.
Can you imagine the fall-out if something happened to members of the SAR team on a SAR exercise that most people see as a boondoggle? “Boondoggles” use government resources for personal fun; when they are official, they are called “morale trips“ of which there are fewer and fewer. There are people who essentially never leave the station and would donate a lung for the opportunities we get, especially these multi-day trips where we actually DO things (climb). We are highly discreet about what we do. There are numerous valid reasons for these trainings, but nonetheless, they are typically a ton of fun (as well as exhausting). Because it doesn’t get dark and the opportunity is so rare (and stress does mimic a SAR), we tend to do a lot in our time out there. We get one trip a year generally and we are told not to approach them as if we’re entitled; politics abound.

So we climbed a narrow sandstone gully up some steep snow, moderate-angled ice, and with a couple fourth class (not too hard, but exposed) rock. It was really fun. We walked along a broad talus ridge to the summit, then found our way down steep snow, across the bergshrund, and onto a small lower-angled glacier heading back to camp. Really fun to actually climb… we get so rusty in our jobs down here.

We got to bed around 8am. Who can sleep at 8am? We were up again at 1pm for our radio check-in and to get moving on our hike down through the Labyrinth, a convoluted and unusual canyon system below the Upper Wright Valley Glacier (which is below the very spectacular Airdevronsix Icefall, which careens off the East Antarctic Plateau in very snow motion. And remember, everything is large down there. The scale is beyond that of Alaska even.

Now let me tell you about “light and fast” (a style we enjoy in mountaineering) as it applies to the Dry Valleys.

It doesn’t. One must not leave anything in this fantastic and unique landscape. Nothing. This means we carried out our urine in addition to poop (which many of you have done on certain mountains). Do the math: high metabolism + 10 hour climb + two hot meals + “sleep” + 10 hour hike. We each had two pee bottles (liter each). Simon is experienced at dehydration so he had no problem. In his pee bottle, I noticed urine of a color I’ve never seen before; it made my kidneys hurt. We did have some heavy duty plastic bags, and, fortunately, well-below-freezing temperatures. Suffice it to say my pack was ridiculously heavy, at least for someone who has a part time desk job these days (though I do work-out on a cardio machine with a pack). And I was wearing double leather mountaineering boots: not exactly the best footwear for hiking on talus (rocks) in. Ugh.

The Labyrinth is amazing terrain. A wide variety of rock colors, textures, types (though mostly sandstone and a very old granite underneath), size, and configurations (some stunningly wind-carved: “ventifacts”), occasionally interspersed with tiny ponds long frozen and without the faintest hint of life at the margins. I recently learned that the Labyrinth is suspected to have been formed by the blowout of a massive subglacial lake far back in time.

The wind sand-blasts some types of rock surfaces into patterns not unlike the way it shapes snow. It also carves the sand and scree (gravel) around boulders like it does sand. In other places, it scours the sand out of gravel, leaving desert pavement like one sometimes sees in, well, deserts (this place is indeed a desert). There are small areas that are all sand except for large boulders; where are the mid-sized rocks?
The wind absolutely raged off the Plateau, down the Airdevronsix Icefalls, across the scoured smooth blue-ice glacier, and then down into the canyons of the Labyrinth.

Air masses flow from the mid latitudes to the poles, where they cool down and therefore become heavy. This cold dense air flows off the continent in some places nearly constantly. I know of one coastal location where the AVERAGE windspeed for a year measured over 70mph. The winds more than the cold or any other environmental variable inhibit human activity down here. It can really wear on people.

I have never hiked anywhere where I saw not a single sign, not one thing, of any life other than ourselves, pre-historic, historic or current. And I must say I have a pretty darn good eye for such details. Not a single footprint, pawprint, hoofprint, not the tiniest dot of lichen, no moss or even soil, no cairns (rocks piled as a marker), no tiny bit of trash, no scar from a vehicle, no ruins of structures or slivers of wood, no game trails across the slopes, no scat, no birds in the air, no planes or contrails splitting the sky, not the faintest hint that there was life on Earth other than ourselves. A very different feeling.

Yet it was much more complex and featured than being out in the Great White Expanse, where there is nothing in sight (360 degree view) other than the sky, sun, wind-carved snow, the shadows cast by it, and a very few of my tracks.

Antarctica is a very raw and wild place. How could I not be so drawn?
Think of how rich and vibrant, how alive every other wild place feels in comparison, even the Mojave desert. Perhaps the depths of the Sahara might give a similar feeling… the scorched version.

I do miss the company of other species, simply their existence. That spider on your wall, the ants on the pavement, that mosquito buzzing around your ear… we have none of that here. Zero. Now and then a dust-bunny scurries across the floor, grabbing my attention as if it were an alien tapping me on the shoulder. I’ll startle myself now and then thinking I just saw a cat or dog out of the corner of my eye. I am lucky to get my fur fix living with two dogs and a cat (and, of course, the chickens) at home.

Our route finding through the Labyrinth was facilitated by a flyover on the way, a satellite image (LIDAR) in addition to the traditional topo map (which was the least useful, actually). We have a GIS person down here who can provide amazing maps and imagery on just about everything here.

Our hike ended just before 2am at another world-class unique place: Don Juan Pond. This pond is located at the bottom of a basin where over the eons water has accumulated and evaporated during the warmer months of the year. It is about 35 times saltier than the ocean (yeah, thirty-five) and quite shallow. It’s surrounded by a 50’ to 150’ ring of white crusted salts on the sand; I suppose that when it’s warm enough for water to flow, the pond enlarges to swallow part of the ring. As saline as it is, it is said that Don Juan Pond never freezes. How crazy is that?
I’ve been fascinated by the idea of such a place since researching this continent before first arriving, so this was a treat. I wanted to taste just the tiniest drop of this water to actually experience, to believe, its saltiness.

Don Juan Pond is also a heavily protected place for obvious reasons. I did manage to very gently walk across the crustiness to the water. Larry had warned me that if the air was super cold, the water would also be super cold and could cause contact frostbite as can super cold fuel. It wasn’t cold, however, and I put a drop of the water on my fingernail. I touched my tongue to the drop. It was so salty that it seemed to sting. I wanted to spit it out, but one does not spit at Don Juan Pond. With the near-burning sensation on my tongue, I had to think quickly. I spat into my hand.

Tasting DJP water was up there with doing a headstand at S-Pole my first year, and my unmet goal of seeing the molten magma of Mt Erebus (see January ‘06 update!).

Let me talk more about Mt Erebus. You might remember that last year I referred to seismic data suggesting that the banging of Iceberg B-15 against Mt Erebus in effect “burped” the mountain, significantly reducing the eruptivity (how’s that for a word; I made it up) by not letting pressure build up within the magma. Well B-15 has moved it’s merry way north this year, and yes, it turns out that Erebus is again more active. Sitting here today planning the next Secondary SAR Team training, I overheard my two favorite scientists, both Erebus researchers, on the radio.

I was supposed to have flown up there yesterday with Nelia to assist her with her new grad students in acclimatizing and getting around safely. The bigger purpose was for me to gain familiarity with the terrain, esp as we have mostly new people in the dept this year. Search and Rescue is an amazingly good justification for many things. My boss remembers the week I spent 2 years ago, on weather-hold trying to get up Erebus with these same researchers. I ended up only getting to the acclimatization camp (9k’) and not to the hut at almost 12,000’, where the fumerole ice caves are and also access to the crater rim. The crater is probably a thousand feet by 1500’ across, and the magma pool is usually hidden in steam about a thousand feet down. I can hardly write about this I so want to see it.

So I heard Nelia tell Bill that the crater was erupting like it did in previous years (I am turning green with jealousy). It even threw volcanic bombs (that’s the Erebus version of erupting) up over the rim. Put your helmet on. The lab now has video clips from the camera situated on the rim of magma flying into the air, past the camera, and over the rim. The old explorers talked of seeing these bombs lighting up the winter darkness as red balls o’ fire.

I have seen these bombs in the lab. On the inside they are a deep rich shiny black with fragile threads that have solidified into rock, lots of threads showing how fast they solidified as the gases expanded, finally released from the deep earth. Erebus also produces unique, though not very dramatic, crystals which are lie all around the crater. I saw one polished and on a necklace, and it still isn’t as dramatic as any semi-precious stone, but it’s pretty darn precious around here anyway.

Sigh. Nelia and Bill will be on Erebus into January, so I maintain hope. The problem is that it takes a day or two to acclimatize at the Fang Ridge camp, and then another to adjust to the hut elevation, then two days to explore the ice caves and the crater. Five days is a lot of time given our dept schedule, but I’m willing to take Diamox in the traditional prophylactic way and go straight to the hut, suffer a couple days, then explore. Cross your fingers for me. (see Jan ‘06 update!).

Larry has been directly to the hut a number of times to work on it, but they only stay for the day, during which they typically feel pretty bad. You can imagine how carefully Helo Ops watches the weather on those days. To leave the carps up there, poorly acclimitized, could be serious.
Larry has been to the crater numerous times, seen the magma, and also explored the ice caves over the last few years.

End of digression. The Wright Valley SAR exercise continued for another day. We enjoyed a much less dramatic, but shorter and easier hike as we’d cached a lot of stuff at Don Juan Pond to later retrieve via helo.
The Kiwis maintain a small building at Lake Vanda, out of which much research has gone on for the last 3-4 decades, research on geology and also the lake (at the bottom, well below the meters of ice, is 68 degrees F water… something to do with the greenhouse effect through the ice and a lack of mixing within the lake layers).

I was fascinated to find old copies of the quarterly report put out by the international Antarctic association, based in NZ, describing all the news relating to what goes on down here. They dated back to the late ‘60s even. It was really interesting to read about many events and places I’d heard of (women coming into the US program, accidents, research areas, Mt Erebus activity…), and I was surprised that every issue included articles about things I’ve known about, and how many of the researchers are still coming down here. And to see photos of the gear they used was also interesting.

We arrived at Lake Vanda Sunday evening, and were picked up the next morning to return to McMurdo, where everyone was just getting back into work after our first two-day weekend of the year. Larry flew to WAIS that same morning, but did leave in some treats from the Thanksgiving feast… yum.

My boss has flown back to NZ for a week to attend a sea ice conference, leaving me as the interim supervisor for our department. I am ok with this for the time being, but all too well aware of the slippery slope at the top of which I’m standing. You may recall that I am the only returnee in our dept (other than boss), so have 2 years seniority on our 3 new folks. This puts me in an obvious position.

I have resisted getting involved in anything too close to the poisonous adminosphere of a corporation and government bureaucracy combined. Simple examples include filling out incident reports such as when the automatic shut-off on a fuel pump fails, causing a liter of diesel to soak into the snow. I answered the questions when Environmental filled out this computer form, but until recently had avoided the electronic form myself. A recent camp-stove pump meltdown requiring a fire extinguisher pulled me into this realm. Then of course is more paperwork following up on What Will Be Done Differently and Where This Will Be Documented… on it goes.

As close as I care to get to chronic office work is the new role I’ve carved out: Coordinator of the Secondary SAR Team. It was a role of the SAR leader, but he has more than enough to do running the Primary Team (and all the politics and admin stuff with that) that the Secondary trainings have historically not been well organized or run. I am changing that. It's fun especially as they are psyched. I enjoy developing curricula, seeing how it unfolds, then improving it, but I am also surprised how much butt time this requires.

I have also been drawn into more of what goes on in the bigger picture of the dept. Some of this is illuminating and helps me understand the ‘why’. Sitting through meetings with the big whigs, such as the one about the pager system for SARs, which came up when we had to drive out to find an overdue vehicle on the sea ice (He was fine, just forgot to check in. This was the most excitement I’ve experienced regarding SARs, and made it obvious to me how abstract the whole thing is: I/we knew he would be found fine. Good thing I’m not the actual SAR leader, because I am finding I don’t quite take it seriously enough. Someday when something really happens, I’ll be in for a major shock.)

But I have to draw the line somewhere, cannot let myself get drawn in. I know the pattern: I have seen it before. It starts with appealing phrases like “more responsibility”, “leadership” and the unspoken “more status” bit. It’s a lure into the dragon’s lair; one gets insidiously suckered in. You learn more computer skills… innocent enough, but now you are more useful so more paperwork falls into your lap. Pretty soon you start to feel important, you start coming in early to check email, and then staying late…. Your parents are pleased that you are finally growing up (no, I don’t get that stuff from my folks, thankfully, but I hear it from my friends sometimes).

Maybe you eventually hear “promotion” and get more money… how addicting is that? They aren’t called the “golden handcuffs” for nothing.
Then one day you realize you’ve slowly grown into not only an indoor job, but a desk job. And god forbid I end up committed to a desk job. In my narrow little mind, that sounds like the end of real living.
So I resist.

But I quite enjoyed the Power Point class I took earlier this week. Huge potential there for the indoor sections of our classes…

A few weeks ago my attention was pulled back to the light here, yet another polar weirdness that I have adapted to. I gave a Refresher course for night shift workers. It started at 8pm and went past midnight… not exactly dramatically different hours, but different enough to dramatic on this sunny day. Our “day” this time of year spans 3 months, so there are no significant changes of light/dark to mark the passage of time.

I realized how aware I am of where the sun is, where the shadows are, and how much that tells me what time of day it is. It was very strange to eat at mid-rats (midnight rations, lunch for the night shift workers) because it seemed so normal except for the small population and especially the sun/shadows being in the “wrong” place. It was disorienting to have the sun in the south, to have direct sunlight in the “wrong” places. I suspect had it been overcast, I would not have been nearly so affected by it.

I have found that in our room after dinner, I have to put the shades down and turn on a light to get the idea that it is night, to get mentally ready to go to bed (this is independent of how tired I am.)

The other day I noticed a “cold alarm thermostat” in a building. It appears that if it gets below a certain temperature in the room, the alarm will sound (either there or in another building), presumably to alert them that the heating has failed.

Most (all?) buildings have a red light sticking out from the outside wall. When the power is running the light is illuminated so they can tell from the outside whether all is well inside. Not so much of interest now, but during winter that could certainly matter.

In fact, it’s full on summer here: recently the thermometer has hit freezing. There are puddles on the roads (all dirt roads here, of course. Volcanic sand and gravel), and people are much more lightly dressed, sometimes in shorts. When there isn’t any wind, and now with the sun high (well, it seems pretty high; we are at 77 degrees latitude), an ambient temp of freezing can feel like in 60 degrees or more in the sun… quite luxurious.

As of about now, I have not been on station for the next 3 week time period during my last two seasons down here. For the first I was out at those Automated Geophysical Observatories (much research coming out of those, by the way) and last year on the Ross Ice Shelf with the South Pole Traverse. So to be here in town during the warm part of the year will be new, not to mention to see what Christmas and New Year’s, including the Ice Stock New Year’s outdoor live music and barbeque festival, look like.

Speaking of the change of years headed our way, consider sending your old calendar down here if it includes photos of wild places, wildlife, pets, flowers, trees… anything like that that we are in rather short supply of here. People post such pictures around town and I think it does matter to be reminded of the existence of life other than each other. I think it’s true that plants have a calming effect on people.

We are not completely alone: skuas, large brown heavy-bodied gulls, hanging around town now looking for hand-outs. They are known to be aggressive, and are generally looked upon poorly for their habit of eating penguin eggs and cute little baby penguins (what else they would eat I don’t know).

And of course seals and penguins frequent the sea ice not for from here. Once two seasons ago, an Adelie penguin made the rounds through town, and for a couple weeks that year an Emporer penguin hung out along the road to the ice runway. These were some highly photographed birds!
The Sunday Science lecture was fascinating as usual. It was about Lake Vostok, which is on the high east polar plateau, bigger than Lake Tahoe in CA, and under 2.5 miles of ice. There are at least another 150 subglacial lakes in Antarctica, and they are associated with massive rivers and a complex hydrological system hidden deep beneath the ice. The lakes’ internal turnover time is about a thousand years. The lakes we’re familiar with in the rest of the world turn over each spring and fall as the temperature regime shifts.

The Russians have long had a station that happens to be located above Lake Vostok (called Vostok, surprisingly enough) and they are a number of years into a project to drill down to the lake. This is actually a very big deal because the significant engineering challenges of maintaining the hole over time in moving and malleable ice are being met with kerosene as a drilling fluid (65 metric tons of it) above silicon deep in the hole. The international Antarctic community (treaty countries and all) have weighed in on the obvious concern about contaminating the lake. The lake water is under enormous pressure due to the abundance of “clathrates”: little nodules of water frozen around gas molecules. They say 30% of the lake water is composed of clathrates, and a one foot drill hole would squirt 1000’ into the air for months as the pressurized gases expanded. Of course there is much more to it than this, but it does give you some idea of the magnitude of the project and its ramifications.

There are also concerns about the research quality of the ice cores because of drilling fluid contamination. I think the Brits are working on hot water drilling techniques, so maybe in a few years they’ll have that figured out and the next lake can be violated without polluting it. To be fair, the Russians have addressed all the specific concerns of the international community, and I certainly can’t be sure the US wouldn’t blow off the world community if we already had a hole 95% of the way through the ice right below our station, into an area of study that has just barely begun (think of the number of doctoral theses and scientific papers these lake will provide in the next half century).

It’s a few days later and we’ve been having the strangest weather system, one I’ve not seen here before. We’re actually have ground level clouds, fog, whipping through town from the south. It’s intermittent enough to reveal higher clouds raging northward overhead, and still higher clouds indicating super high winds, those wonderful flying-saucer stacked disc looking clouds. Very strange to have a warm and DAMP wind. The absolute humidity here ranges from 10-30%, but it must be quite a bit higher now.

Today it snowed, actual snow falling from clouds as opposed to the snow that blows around and around as usual. They were even big fat clumpy flakes, and I saw actual water on a window where the flakes had melted, and some dripping off the roof. This kind of warmth and humidity are really weird.

And the other day when I stepped on some snow in town something very unusual happened: my foot went right through it! Normally the snow here is hard, very hard at times, and you can nearly always just walk across it. How strange that it could be so soft. Kind of the like the other world!

Then I’ll spend the rest of this evening sitting here working on the Sea Ice Powerpoint presentation… it’s been a lot of fun. Who needs a personal life?

Have a wonderful holiday season, enjoy the lights against the dark of night and the stars, and feel free to drop me a quick note sometime. I’ll be “having Christmas” (in that generic secular blasphemous way) for the first time in 3 years. I am sure there is also a solstice celebration here, which won’t be nearly as fun as winter solstice celebrations in the dark.

Love and wild winds, Susan

Penguins, Sea Ice, Dry Valleys

2005-10-31T17:56:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

It’s Saturday night, the eve of the Halloween Party. This is the first big show of local creativity, as well as the first big party of the season. Heading into the galley for dinner tonight, one is confronted with a bunch of “drunks” sitting by the side of the “street” hassling passersby and panhandling (they were occasionally successful!).

I am skipping the party this year because I am hoping to skate ski tomorrow: I’d better get this drafted. Strange that’s there’s barely anyone here in the computer kiosk now (just us losers not going to the party).

Shortly after arrival this year, I noticed that I was focusing much more on the people than the facilities and many unusual details of life “on the ice”. Upon arrival my first season, I noticed the facilities and landscape much more so than the people. Like any tight community, where people work hard together, live together, and play together in a harsh and isolating environment, surprisingly strong bonds develop even in relatively short time periods. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed seeing people again, how genuinely warm and enthusiastic the greetings were when the planes started landing in McMurdo earlier this month. Not unlike the long term friendships that develop in guiding and especially outdoor education. It seems that many people crave strong community connections, even if the community is not very traditional or long term.

At work things started out a bit rough this year. We have 3 new people; only me and my boss returning. It became obvious to me how much one guy in particular last year did in the 6-week pre-season (before we arrive) to set up for our classes. This year our gear was a mess, at least in the eyes of someone who really likes to have her logistics tight so that courses flow smoothly and professionally. When we hit the ice, we are super busy teaching courses so have very little time to do any of the background work. Before people can go out into the field, they either have to have the one day Refresher course if they are returnees, or the Happy Camper and maybe Sea Ice courses before they can leave the station to any real degree (supposedly). This means we might teach up to 5 of our 6-day work-week for the first week or two, leaving little time to get gear dealt with… our supervisor describes it as “triage mode”.

This year we are also down to a staff of 5 because the South Pole Traverse (SPT) hired their own mountaineer because of our sudden shortage of people with ground-penetrating radar experience (me). Also, they wanted one person for their entire drive to the South Pole. A person who worked in our dept years ago and also with the SPT and their radar, has signed on with them (a guide with the same company I work for, actually).

Three of our guys from last year are returning as mountaineers for specific projects. This is a common retirement plan from our Field Safety Training department because the contracts are much shorter. It’s great to see them again, even if they’re only going to be in town for short periods of time.

Our new folks, one of whom is a woman (we are now 40% female! This seems to be a historic year), are catching on quickly and have been fun. Months ago I turned down the offer to come down here in mid August for the pre-season, so a new guy did instead. He picked up the Sea Ice Point of Contact role as it starts during the pre-season. He seems to like it and is doing well, so it makes sense for him to stay in that role.

My boss has long been the Search and Rescue team leader and really understands the administrative side of it, so I’m also happy not to be in that role. I will take a lead role in training the Secondary SAR team, and that’s about the right amount of specialization (almost none) I want. I am enjoying being in the role of the versatile veteran. It means I have more variety than the others and get to do more of the unique projects that require program experience. It also means that I get more of the best projects, and this year I’ll get to focus on going to places I’ve not yet been. The biggest one of these is Mt Erebus, our 12,800’ active and open volcano right here on Ross Island. Lots of research going on up there, but I’ve yet to see the molten magma down in the crater, or even just get to the rim. There are also really cool ice caves from the steam vents on the sides of the mtn. Cross your fingers for me to get a chance to get up there! (see January '06 update)

One of these prime assignments was getting to accompany the NSF Representative (top of local heap) and 4 photographers on a visit to a Emporer Penguin colony. The role of the NSF Rep was to be penguin cop: to enforce the 50m guideline (distance from the birds) in the international Antarctic treaty to prevent over-stressing the parents and chicks. If the birds in the outer edge of the colony began flapping their flippers, then we were too close, which could result in bad outcomes for the chicks.

My job was to assure safety in case the terrain was weird. It wasn’t, so the only thing I did that actually felt somewhat useful was to hop out of the helo right after it landed on the sea ice to determine the ice thickness. The pilot kept the power high in case the ice wasn’t thick enough. Then I, with the props screaming overhead and everyone waiting, used a 2” diameter hand drill to make sure the ice was over the required 30”. When they land on a glacier, sometimes they bounce the helo up and down a bit to get some idea of whether they’re on a bridged crevasse. Then they dump us out to probe (with an ice axe, not a 3 meter avalanche probe which would get into the rotors) before they power down the engines.

The photographers originally had planned to go to Cape Crozier, but it turns out that there are ZERO chicks there this year. This sad state of reproductive affairs is a result of that mega-berg you have been hearing about for two years now, “B-15”. This berg has moved north and is no longer directly influencing our region, but it’s effects are still very much with us. No chicks, but maybe next year. Fortunately in B-15’s northward migration, it managed to avoid taking out several other Emporer colonies along the way; this was a great relief to the Penguin Ranch researchers in particular.

We instead went north about 60 miles to Beaufort Island after I taught a full-day sea ice course. We went late to get better light. We landed on a most beautiful evening, behind a small berg (only about as big as a big-box store), and walked around the corner to the colony.

Being close to penguins was as wonderful as it is rare (no doubt it’s the #1 dreamed of experience here, yet VERY few get to have it). Penguins lack land predators and are quite curious. The non-breeders wandering around will often approach, so the trick is to get reasonably close and just sit down. With camera.

Pretty dang amazing experience. They’ll walk up, and if you can keep from laughing at their swaying gait and very intent, serious expressions, they might get within arm’s reach from you. They do astounding things with their necks: they have No Neck position, Giraffe Neck Position, Rubber Neck position (to sides), and also Chin Tuck position, which may be accompanied by a sound between squawking and trumpeting. Sometimes they were too close to get good photos especially as they moved around. I enjoyed hearing their reptilian feet padding along on the hard snow.

The chicks, in the distance from us, entertained their parents by throwing their heads up and back or to the sides, emitting a more normal cheery bird-like singing call with each head toss. The chicks were about 40% to half of the parents’ height. They are quite funny, esp. through binoculars. They’re built just like you saw in the movie: like the circus clowns who have giant inner-tubes in their costumes down by their ankles. When the chicks move, it looks much like the clown in that you can tell the part above the innertube is seemingly somewhat hollow, mostly skin in this case. Quite funny. The chicks mostly stand but also toddle around followed closely by a very intent parent in Chin Tuck Neck position. Not unlike my friends attentively following their toddlers around…!

Watching the adult penguinos interact is fun as well. That movie is actually quite good, so you know exactly what I’m talking about. These birds are much closer to open ocean than the ones by the French station (movie), and it looked like they were at the stage of parents taking turns going fishing. Some were fatter and cleaner than the others, so we assumed they were recently returned from food and bath. It was even funny to notice a tail suddenly rise, then the green spew onto the snow.

A penguin colony is not a quiet place. The sound is a bit like that stereotypic staccato monkey sound mixed with general squawks and punctuated with the lovely chick songs (at some point they trade in the sweet voices for squawky voices but elegant plumage). Their voices seemed to flow through the colony like waves.

We did see a trio of smaller, faster, flappier-flippered Adelie penguins move along the periphery. There’s an Adelie rookery on the other side of the island, but the vast majority of the Adelies (cute) won’t arrive until a few more weeks at which point they’ll begin mate-selection, nest building (little rocks), and raising their young.

After a couple hours the sun dropped behind Beaufort Isl (we were very close to it) so we lost the light and the chill crept in. I got home at about 12:30; a long day, but no doubt this will be among the best couple hours of my season.

I missed the next day’s SAR scenario, a complex situation with numerous patients in a couple crevasses spread over a couple hundred feet and accessed by helicopter. It was a great exercise, so I hear, but went late: all the better that I didn’t participate. I slept in and worked on a number of the projects we always have in our dept needing attention. I think I’m at the point now where the long haul of the season is setting in: not a bad thing, just need to remember to pace myself.

The other SAR trainings we’ve done include the white-out scenario, where we cardboard up the windows of the Hagglund and find each other out on the ice shelf with GPS. It works best when you don’t run over the person you’re searching for, so we have someone with their head popped out the hatch. We also play with regular radar which is great for finding vehicles, and we also train with Radio Direction Finding equipment, which is what wildlife biologists use to track collared wolves and such, so we could find you if you just had your radio out on the ice.

Last week we had our helo SAR training day: focusing on how to load litters, and how to turn off the engines, fuel, and batteries in the event of a “hard landing”, which seems to be the euphemism for crash. There was one, from 200’, three years ago, so these skills have been added to our SAR training. We also learned where the batteries are in the two types of helos we have, as well as looked through the crash rescue kits: collections of tools used to pull apart a helicopter, which they say is surprisingly easy once the integrity is destroyed in the ‘hard landing’. Some of the medieval tools look like something out of movies about crusaders, and would no doubt get anyone’s testosterone flowing as much as one’s adrenaline would be. The helo in that last crash was pulled apart, to get out the pilot and helo-tech (both survived), with just an ice axe and a “leatherman” multi-tool.

Enough on that.

This year our department has finally come up against the reality of having had our vehicle replacement requests postponed repeatedly. Last season our Nodwell, the large tracked 1970’s behemoth that we hauled Happy Camper students in, died, so we borrowed another massive machine called a Delta (tires taller than me and 3x as wide). We had to give up our SAR Piston Bully because science groups need them; these are the most modern and reliable vehicle we have: they are truly nice. During a SAR training while we were at the Kiwi base 2 miles from McMurdo, the wiring under the dash in our Sea Ice Course Hagglund started a fire, making for a rather interesting morning. That vehicle won’t run again this year, perhaps ever. The inside is rather burned out, including the windshield being partly melted. This leaves us with what was our SAR Hagglund, which after having been recently fixed, goes as fast as about 12mph. At least now defrost works, so we can drive places that are not flagged without having to almost constantly scrape the windows (flags assist one in staying on roads during white-outs) We are using this Hagglund for Sea Ice classes, and working with keeping the Delta running (not entirely successful) and also dealing with the oil that it spews. This involves large plastic buckets that we fill with oily snow out at our Happy Camper school area, and dropping them off at Hazardous Waste on the way home. YeeHaa.

On a more interesting note, the sea ice this year has been doing things we have no institutional memory of. Namely, we have pressure ridges in places we haven’t seen them before, and the Barne Glacier crack is too big for the usual road north to Cape Royds (see previous updates about the Adelie rookery there as well as one of Shackleton’s huts). We had to re-route the road past the Erebus Ice Tongue (five mile long, mile wide tongue of glacier ice floating out in McM Sound from Mt E) because of the roller that formed there, then compressed further, then cracked on the crest creating a pressure ridge. It also cracked in the trough, allowing sea water to flow in, fill, refreeze, fill, refreeze, add weight and push the trough deeper below the surface… Last week on a Sea Ice course we measured the ice in the middle of that. There was a half meter of drifted hard snow on top of about 3 meters of very stiff slush: the original 3m of sea ice has rotted out! Rollers are now forming along the detour road, so we’ll see what happens there.

No one knows quite what is going on, but we’re watching carefully. The concern is for the science camps in the area and further north. Not only do they need to get around, but after they’re done, heavy equipment needs to be able to get out there to retrieve their huts, which are mounted on giant skis.

On one Sea Ice Course, we visited with Gretchen Hoffman, a Primary Investigator (head “beaker”) working on fish physiology. She was fishing in the crack we were measuring, with a silly-looking 2’ long rod, putting the prehistoric-looking fish she caught into a insulated plastic water cooler. It was quite a funny scene, her tucked behind the Piston Bully out of the wind, fishing with the micro-rod through the slush in this little fresh crack. They also have a little hut with a hole in the floor. With the Piston Bully they pull the hut over the cracks and fish in the comfort of the heated “tomato” hut (that’s what it looks like). They do some dissections in there as well, for later study of anti-freeze proteins.

The Scott Base (NZ station 2 miles away) rollers and pressure ridges are becoming more dramatic as well. The Kiwi base, very small, is located quite near where the McMurdo Ice Shelf meets the multi-year sea ice. Is the ice shelf pushing harder these days? Same with the Erebus Ice Tongue? Or is this a factor of the fact that now for the first time in USAP history (50 yrs) we have fifth year sea ice where it used to be annual?

We have this ice NOT because of temperature changes (it’s warmed over time) but because of B-15 having spent 4 years blocking the ocean currents that led to the annual melting of the sea ice. At a recent Icebergs lecture, I took notes on some B-15 stats: When the berg broke off the Ross Ice Shelf in 2000 as the largest known berg in world history, it was about 1000’ thick, about 185 miles long, and approx the area of Connecticut. It could supply each person on Earth with 2.5 gallons of water per day for 75 years. Because of meteorological and climatic reasons, including tidal differences of less than a foot as well as air pressure/wind, it remained lodged just north of Ross Island (partly aground on Beaufort Island). A year or two ago a large chunk broke off, but it’s still BIG. We see it on the daily infrared satellite photos (when clouds allow) and its gone north out of the Ross Sea and about to turn the corner west to get into the Antarctic circumpolar current.

Evidence suggests that mega-bergs break off the Ross Shelf every 50 years, so they are trying to learn as much as possible about this one. There is a massive crack these last couple years on the Ross Ice Shelf, called the “nascent berg”, and glaciologists are studying how it’s breaking off, among other things. Turns out that these bergs come to the end of their lives quite catastrophically. Surface meltwater forms from the sun’s heat and cover much of the surface. These pools fill the crevasses, providing a warm and very heavy wedge. In a matter of days or a week, the berg disintegrates into tiny chunks that soon melt. The dust and minerals trapped in the ice provide an important source of nutrients for algae growing on the bottom of the ice, which then feed larger critters.

The edge of the sea ice this year is out far again, 80 miles like last year (pre B-15 was 20 miles), but I haven’t heard any of the Higher-Ups stressing about is as during last year when we had this much ice. It may be that this year’s weirdness (pressure ridges) will lead to a massive break-up of the multi-year ice?? It’s truly anyone’s guess. This place is an ever-interesting place to live.

Unfortunately the tentacles of corporate America have reached McMurdo with all their absurdity. Now, as they continue their efforts to improve the safety record here (sprains and strains mostly), they have instituted a rule that no one can lift anything heavier than 40 pounds or be above 4’ off the ground without safety mechanisms in place (harness and all). Clearly whoever made this decision has never been here and has no real understanding of operations in a program such as this. They sent down a safety guy to prepare us for the safety audit coming up, and he sure had plenty to do. In many cases, compliance is all but impossible (objects such as batteries and propane bottles that are too small to get the required number of people around it to lift) in the field. In town there can be all sorts of mechanical aids, but in the field, esp helo supported operations (there are many) where weight is an issue, and on surfaces like ice, snow, sand, rock… these rules are quite unfollowable. We have an exemption for SAR related activities, but even our Happy Camper Class food boxes weigh over 40# when full. The number of micro-tasks that now require 2 people is enough to substantially affect operations… if they were consistently followed. The NSF grantees are under no such rules, so they get a kick out of offering to help us, which is funny when it’s a tiny female scientist offering to carry something for the huge burly carpenter guy.

There are all sorts of rumors regarding this being related to them wanting to save money by not paying worker’s comp if one is hurt lifting 41 pounds… but the safety guy assures me that such an idea is nonsense. He has zero sense of humor (I had him in a Refresher class and found this out for sure as I tried to playfully needle him a bit), and I believe he genuinely believes everything he says!

I think it would be quite interesting to have a Safety Compliance Day, during which everyone agrees to follow the rules precisely. Some people think that this is exactly what the company wants: to stop operations and thereby convince the NSF they need more money… this place is as good as any for the rumor mill. I was tempted to put an official looking sign up in the weight room saying that “next week” all the weights over 40# would be removed…

This past week I got to check out a different valley in the Dry Valleys for the first time. A few years ago a battery was lost in the ice of Lake Vida, a battery that held solar power for a ice data gathering instrument. I went out with a gal from the Environmental department and another guy and we used the ground penetrating radar (GPR) to search for the battery.

The GPR we used to detect crevasses on the South Pole Traverse was reasonably user friendly as it was configured for Windows. This unit is less straightforward and challenged us, esp. given how fast the batteries ran out despite our best efforts to keep them warm. Kaneen and Peter dragged the antenna unit across the ice in a dish-washing basin, and I sat on our packs interpreting the lines on the screen, trying to separate out the wires in the same area. We found two objects in about the right place and flagged them (2.5 and 3m down), but it’ll be awhile before they return and melt-dig to see whether we were right.

The use of GPR is still VERY new here, so this was more experimental than anything. I was most relieved to hear that I was not expected necessarily to be able to find it. Fortunately a true radar expert met with Kaneen and I for a couple hours so we could get the specific settings that would give us the best chance.

After the batteries died we still had several hours before our helo pick-up (gotta love helicopter commuting), so we were forced to walk around and explore the area a bit. As with much of Antarctica, the scale is massive, but still it was fun to get to the edge of the lake, admire the largely clear and aqua blue, partially cracked ice. The ice here is still absolutely fascinating, everyone takes pictures or at least enjoys the landscape here, even the crusty old-timers. Amazing old granite, very granular, and wind-shaped basaltic “ventifact” rocks. The whitish scale underneath is not a mineral deposit (necessarily), but a bacteria that goes into suspended animation for years and years till it’s exposed to water again, then POOF it becomes alive and does it’s thing till it dries up again, not unlike warmer deserts.

There’s also a whole nutrient flow involving algal mats under the 20m of ice on this and other lakes, that float up to the ice bottom on the O2 they produce. They incorporate into the ice and eventually reach the surface where they are blown to the lake edge, into the summer edge-meltpools, and get back into the lake again, supplying nutrients and/or growing again. Or some story much like this. This is the level of ecosystem in the Dry Valleys, much like what is expected on Mars.

Lake Vostok, several miles under the East Ant. Plateau (under the Russian Vostok station) is expected to be much like the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa, and plans are underway to drill down to find out what’s living there. This is a very difficult technical challenge because of the requirement not to contaminate the water once they reach the lake, and the other difficulties of drilling into about 2 miles of ice.

This place continues to amaze me.

On a more personal note, Larry just received the soy milk maker he ordered, and we had our first batch today. It’s pretty good, actually, esp with vanilla added.

It’s been great living with him, having my best buddy around to process all that unfolds in our lives down here. This year he (science construction: builds anything and everything the scientists need) didn’t get to the Dry Valleys for camp set-ups, but was assigned to set up the numerous sea ice camps. He’s disappointed, but he’s probably had more (or same) Dry Valleys time (incl hiking) than anyone else in his dept for the last couple years. Soon he heads out for 3 weeks to West Antarctica to help set up a camp for a 7-year project to measure the changing West Antarctic Ice Sheet, which has received much attention lately because the land under the ice is below sea level and there are huge ramifications for global climate and sea level over the next century if this ice sheet continues to ablate at the current rate.

My good friend from home, Marlow, is working here in the kitchen. He is partners with my wonderful housemate Krissi, and running the morning egg-line. He is on the night shift, and enjoying that quieter time of day. It’s great to see him and get little updates from home when I manage to get to breakfast with enough time to get in the egg-line.

The weekly official NSF USAP newsletter is back in print, and available at antarcticsun.usap.gov, if you’re interested.

Well, my fingers are tired!

Love and wild winds, Susan

Caches Across the Yukon, River Trip

2005-09-08T11:04:00.000-06:00

Caches Across the Yukon

Late in late August I flew north to spend two weeks with Larry. It was a treat to spend time with him, especially in his area of expertise, before heading into our Antarctic work season. He lives in SE Alaska and has done many of extended remote river trips in the far north, mostly in late autumn. Our trip included 7 nights on the Hyland River in Canada’s Yukon Territory, then two days biking back to the car, having stashed the canoe at the take-out.

Before we could put-in on the river, we had to set up the bike shuttle which meant stashing gear at a couple locations. The plan was to hitchhike from the take-out on the Alcan highway to the town of Watson Lake. From there we’d bike back to the car, using camping gear cached midway to minimize bike weight.

We stashed the bikes near town, and 56 miles later cached a tent and stove at a lake. We couldn’t leave food because of bears, so had to carry that with us on the bikes.

We put-in on what they call large creek, paddled through a culvert, and on down a bit to the Hyland.

Our photo-copied map, which did not include our put-in, take-out, or the scale, provided a lot more challenge and humor than help. In a couple places the river had changed courses distinctly since the map was made. (I swear! We had a compass, for one thing). The half page guidebook description was also rather cryptic. But Larry said this normal for these kinds of trips and it did add to the adventure. And it’s not like you’re going to get lost paddling down a river. It’s more a matter of being able to plan which day you’ll find yourself at the take-out. But it is a bit odd, for example, to be looking for a particular large creek tributary for many hours, only later to realize that you are fifteen miles past it!

This trip put me back in touch with my earlier years learning to canoe at summer camp and building campfires with my mom on car camping (and girl scout) trips. The first night I was pleased I could show Mr. Wilderness Canoer that I, this modern, high-tech climbing guide could still actually build a campfire. Lucky for me that first day had been sunny. Afterward, the intermittent rain made fire-starting more challenging than simply holding the lighter under a few twigs for a couple seconds. Larry opted not to bring a grate to put over the fire, so I learned how to get rocks in close enough to balance a pot while still leaving enough space for air to get in there for the fire. Also learned how to use two bigger pieces of wood for this purpose, and that aspen is better for this as it doesn’t burn as well as resinous spruce does so the fire is more contained and easier to cook over. We kept the fires petite, frying pan size, and Larry brought giant salad tongs and leather gloves: brilliant. The next morning I threw the warm sooty rocks into the river to hide the evidence.

He has an old dutch oven, a type unlike I’ve seen before: it consists of basically two deep fry-pans, one a bit larger (the top, so the coals falling off won‘t get into your meal). It was lightweight and versatile, unlike the cast iron versions I’ve used. We baked enchiladas and veggies/potatoes/tofu, and also cooked other things like eggs and popcorn in it… yum!

Oh yeah, we did the traditional river thing and brought alcohol: not the traditional copious amounts, but enough to seem decadent to me. Apparently the booze of choice on Yukon river trips is Canadian orange brandy. I must say it did go down smoothly, and it doesn’t take much to add some zip to tea or to get warmed up a bit before making camp. We failed to follow the redneck tradition of throwing our bottles into the river. Or we weren’t buzzed enough to think of it.

The whole bear camping scene was a bit different than I am used to. We kept a very clean scene as usual, but at times only slept a few meters from the food. This took a little getting used to. In truly wild areas, wild animals run from our presence well before we see them, which is usually a bummer. This contrasts with the semi-wild areas where we sleep 100m or so from our cook area and sometimes use bear canisters for our food, etc. We only brought one can of bear spray (pepper spray for bears, like mace), rather than one per person and always.

This was also my first time in bear country with a massive river; at times the river measured a couple hundred meters across. Fruit and veggie scraps and sandy popcorn went into the river to minimize food smells in camp.

Another different practice was one that Larry had repeatedly warned me about for the almost two years I’ve known him: cutting down a tree for firewood. I know some of you are appalled that I’ve even said this, so let me explain. “Tree” means dead spruce sapling (2-3 inch diameter), not the big standing dead that house nesting birds and insects and that are an important (and usually unrecognized) component of healthy ecosystems. It even has to be vertical so it’ll truly be dry, at least in weather like we had. This is also during a season when driftwood is particularly waterlogged so does not sustain fires well.

This river is infrequently paddled and there are certainly no particular places people camp (no permits like in the SW which largely determine how far you go each day and with limited campsite options). The ONLY evidence we saw in over a week of someone else ever having been down that river was a well-overgrown stone fire-ring on a bank, and once I saw color scraped from a canoe onto a submerged rock. Even the put-in lacked a clear path to the river.
Rationalizations.

So, there you have it, Susan involved in the wanton destruction of wilderness, having given up, sold out, and become that which she for so long abhorred. Will you still talk to me?

Despite not seeing evidence of other recreationists, we did see a few fishing or hunting cabins belonging to the local native people. The rustic shelters were below the rapids, so the people can run motor boats up and fish in the fall. Larry said that in winter they also might snowmobile up the river to access these cabins.

I learned about tracking and lining, techniques for moving a canoe up or downstream (respectively) when the water is too shallow to paddle. You walk along the shore, guiding or pulling the canoe through the shallows via ropes off the ends. Larry tells me that this technique was used by the trappers and explorers long ago to go many miles up rivers. He and his friends have avoided hiring a plane for a drop off by going up one river tracking when necessary, portaging (carrying everything) between rivers, then paddling down another. We lined through one rapid and the first day tracked back up to a nicer campsite (and so I could learn). Works well.

Two of our river days involved series of class 2+ rapids (drop-pool). Years ago I kayaked a bit harder than that, but running a loaded open boat down such rapids in a remote location is a little different. Canoeing is also different in that you have to work with someone else, which can provide all sorts of challenges. Larry said two person canoes are regularly called ‘divorce boats’. Fortunately we managed to avoid interpersonal rapids on this trip. For the first 3 days I started out in the standard beginner place, the bow (sort of like being top-roped in climbing), but slowly grew tired of the lack of variety. On the fourth day, during which we expected rapids, Larry was fine with me paddling in the stern. I figured if he trusted my performance thus far, so did I in the rapids. It helped that I’m not inherently intimidated by class 2+ water and tha my teenage canoeing was mostly in the stern.

Moving a loaded canoe through rapids requires a lot more finesse than I used kayaking. Back then, when the water got big, my general strategy was just to paddle like hell and brace here and there. It generally worked, but won’t with a loaded canoe. We planned ahead more, setting the boat up so that the current would take us where we wanted, and also slowed down at times by back-paddling to reduce the force with which we hit certain frothy features so that we (Larry!) wouldn’t get so wet and take on water in an already weighty craft.

Keeping ourselves and gear dry was more than a comfort issue as the weather was cool enough that some of the rain left snow on peaks several thousand feet above us. Also, without another boat as back-up, it was especially important that we not get separated from the canoe. The difference is parallel between taking risks at a roadside crag versus climbing in the highcountry.

At times the current was painfully slow, so to keep moving through it, we’d take our breaks while drifting along. I could even pee over the side of the canoe without too much drama. Yes, with the volume of water and the lack of human use of the river, peeing in the river was reasonable (plus in bear country, it seemed logical not to have the scent of blood in camp).

Early on when I was adjusting to paddling in the rain (how to keep hands warm yet still being able to grip the paddle well), Larry briefly saw a moose on the bank. For days we didn’t see any other mammals, not even squirrels. Even the birds were very skittish, but we did see mergansers and osprey regularly, and also red-throated loons. On our last morning I happened to notice a wolf standing on the bank a distance from us. That was cool! And later that day we got a close look at a black bear, with a very beautiful and innocent looking face, until he caught our scent and instantly ran away. Bears don’t see very well and depend on their strong sense of smell.

Speaking of bears, there was one other bear sighting. We were on a break, and walking down a long gravel bar when Larry decided to head back. When I later turned around, I heard him call out to me in a calm voice. Larry is very laid back, and would wait till I returned to show me some really cool tracks or whatever, so I knew something was different. I moved away from the forest toward the edge of the gravel bar just in case.

When I got back to him, he described a very close surprise encounter with a grizzly bear. He had suddenly heard the noise of a large animal moving fast, and expected to see a moose come out of the trees. The bear appeared about 20-25’ from him, somewhat above him, and was fairly large as bears go. Larry put his hands up in the air, started talking to it while slowing backing up as he well knows to do. The bear stood on his hind legs, snorting, trying to get Larry’s scent. Soon he did and ran away (how could you blame the bear, Larry hadn’t showered in almost a week). Although I didn’t hear anything, the bear ran off in my general direction, (hence the warning call) leaving Larry was his heart pounding and his fingers tingling.

Larry has seen bears that close before, but not so suddenly. We were fortunate that the bear was not on a kill or with a cub.

I was a bit miffed about it, but I’m not sure how much of it was jealousy of getting to safely see a bear up close (20/20 hindsight), or how close he had come to being injured or worse with only me out there. We had days of river left and a consistent upriver breeze.

Frequently we saw wolf, griz, and esp moose tracks along the muddy banks. One of our camps had sow and cub tracks on the bank below, but they were old. Plus, the noise generated by being in camp I am sure clears out every animal within a mile. Breaks and scouting rapids were of more concern, rapids especially so because the noise conceals ours.

One day we checked out a dead moose on the bank. The fact that it had been dead awhile but had not been found by a bear suggested something about the density of bears out there. The ravens and other scavengers had eaten what they could, but without a bear or coyote to open the carcass, they were limited in what they could get. It also looked like the ravens were eating wild cranberries, of which there were lots. Wild cranberries are better once they freeze, so not something we made use of. In wolf country, coyotes populations are low, so it most likely would take a bear to open the carcass.

I kept my ears open as we investigated. There was what looked to me like a bullet hole in the shoulder, but Larry thought it unlikely that someone would hit there and not be able to retrieve the moose, plus is wasn’t moose hunting season.

Fall comes more quickly to higher latitudes because the length of day changes faster around the equinoxes. The day to day difference in the foliage color was striking, and that it was due to time, not location, was verified later when I photographed the exact same place along the highway twice about 36 hours apart. The aspens turn their yellow, orange, or gold, and the highbush cranberries turn a vibrant deep red.

At one camp, the groundcover was only horsetails at a density, complete coverage, that I’d not seen before. That camp was also interesting in that it was a place in the river that had been dramatically affected by the ice dams that form during spring break-up. Clearly in places the damming had released with great force, carrying loads of sand very quickly but only for a short duration and distance. There were numerous branches of the river, seeming to have been formed by the random and temporary damming forcing a change in the flow and then during failure, transporting significant loads of sand/debris onto previous loads that had released somewhere else. It was wild, chaotic.

During day 6 on the river, Larry commented that planning to break camp, canoe a distance, cache the gear in the woods, hitchhike and then bike a full day’s ride in one day was likely a poor idea. Good thing one of us has a brain. He suggested we plan a whole afternoon to get to the town of Watson Lake, and then stay there that night so we’d have the whole following day to bike 55 miles. It worked great and we only had to wait a half hour for a ride.

We sorted out all the food for the 2-day bike ride, added a lot of clothes and rain gear, then the sleeping bags (we lacked an extra set to leave with the camp cache), and walked two miles to our bikes. It was rather nice to find that they were still quietly waiting for us in the woods, and that we remembered where we left them. We had some food that we didn’t want to stash outside (animals), so we left that at the little hotel.

We really wanted to minimize the bike loads, so we left a small cache of a couple items where the bikes had been.

Are you keeping count? Now we have six caches: the car which counts for two because of the key on a nearby boulder and especially Larry’s iPod, worth more than the car, stashed in the rocks. Then there’s the hotel food cache, the gear where the bike cache had been, the camping gear midway along the bike route, and of course the canoe and gear at the take-out.

We are later to place another cache and also get three more hitchhike rides, but fortunately we don’t know this yet.

It was a real pleasure to find that my borrowed bike was indeed in good working condition. It also fit me, yea. The biking went a lot easier than expected. Larry hadn’t biked of in months, and I’d sat on my butt for both weeks prior to this ride and mostly just ride my bike to the grocery store, so we were prepared for pure torture, butt bones in particular.

The first day included the occasional stretch of pavement, some sunshine, and also a ride across a construction zone from a foreman who took pity on us walking our bikes through the mud. He noted that we “looked, uh, a little less prepared” mentioning the milk crate on the back of Larry’s bike. My stuff was bungee corded to the rack and wrapped around the middle of the handlebars. That plus our attire… we looked as professional as they come, but this was in the Yukon!

The last 10 miles that day weren’t so pretty, but our cache was there and only a little mildewed from the rain. We camped by Simpson Lake and enjoyed watching the common loons and listening to their magical calls.

The second bike day was rainy, but our butts did not hurt too much. Good to know there’s a 2-day grace period for future planning… The treat that day was a quick glimpse of another wolf. Both days were pretty hilly.

These 56 miles actually went a bit easier, probably because we paced ourselves better. We got to the car in the mid afternoon, and everything was intact. During the drive up, a beer can had been rubbed through so the back of the car smelled. Fortunately it had not attracted the attention of a bear. Nor had the iPod.

We drove south, collecting all our caches, and camped in the same place we had on the drive to the river.

The plan was that the next day we’d simply drive home, arriving in the late afternoon.

The rest of the story goes like this: car breaks after an hour on the road, fuel pump or something. Here is cache #7: hiding all the gear (now it’s both boat and bikes) in the woods so we can leave the car.

Three hitchhike rides home including one with fundamentalist Christians moving to Alaska from Alabama for missionary work, a 20-something Yukon born/raised woman who regularly travels alone for many months at a time in India, and later a group of raft guides that needed to stop to cache some dope before crossing the border. (Does this count as cache #8?).

The next day we spent 13 hours using Larry’s still-for-sale truck to tow the car back. I drove the truck towing the car via a rope. Larry rode in the car to steer and keep from rear-ending the truck or dragging/tangling the rope in the axle going down the hills. The car horn didn’t work and the car was too close to see the headlights, so I had to keep glancing at Larry in case something wasn‘t right. This part of the drive lasted four tedious hours. It would have been two more had we not been able to drop the car off at a mechanic two hours from Skagway. I had gastrointestinal cramping, so that made the drive even more fun.

My last day of this trip was spent dealing the gut bug. It was nasty for awhile, so we had to get the local Physicians Asst to open the clinic Labor Day evening to get me functional enough for the 14 hours of plane travel to get home the following day.

But I got home fine am an now getting ready to take an 8-day technical rescue rigging course. It’s for the Search and Rescue portion of my Antarctic job, which means not only are they paying for it, but I am being paid to take it. This is a radical concept to someone who has spent her whole career in outdoor education and guiding. There are benefits (ha) to having sold out to a major corporation.

Cheers for now, Susan

Better Than Fair Cookies

2005-08-21T20:20:00.000-06:00

Remember the chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe I have been refining and making for years? Well, I am entering it in the County Fair. You know, the County Fair, the one with kiddie rides, pig wrestling, and ending with the raucous Demolition Derby.

My goal is to attain official Renaissance Woman status. Not only do I live the life I live, but I can make a wicked cookie!

I meant to enter last year, but didn’t follow through. This year, my latent competitive nature erupted and I am entering the best cookies ever made: two versions. One includes chocolate chips for the Chocolate Chip Cookie class, and the other is chipless and will compete in the Drop Cookie class.

I took great pains to make them just right, even sifting the lumps out of the sugar. It was great fun; I found myself laughing at myself more than a couple times at the silliness of the whole thing. The chipless cookies first: bake ten and enter the best six (six are required). They had to be entered on paper plates; fortunately we had some old ones lying around in a drawer.

I tried a new strategy to find the balance between getting them cooked through, but not letting them crack nor collapse much. To get an idea what other than taste might be considered by the judges (no doubt County Extension Office agents, 4-H leaders, and former Future Homemakers of America members), I read about how flowers are judged, including things like “cultural perfection”. Translated to cookies, I take that to mean they look perfect as well as blow the socks off of true chocolate lovers. I hope the judges appreciate full-blown chocolate, and are not stuck in the rut of traditional chocolate chip cookies.

To my dismay, they came out a bit bigger than normal, so my plates were too small. Bummer, as I’d glued a short stack together to make a plate sturdy enough for my cookies.

Off to Safeway I rode on my trusty town cruiser. I decided to maximize my chances of winning by selecting the plates tastefully trimmed with a Patriotic theme, to prove that I am a full blooded Patriot Woman, which should appeal to the County Fair crowd (what could be more American than the County Fair?). My keen sense of competitive strategy easily accepted this disingenuous move in the name of winning (something… anything!).

So I arranged the six cookies on the their respective plates, sacrificed shiny new ziploc bags to each, and packaged them up. To protect my precious entries, I decided to walk over rather than pedal, carrying the plates wrapped in a towel. Soon into my walk, I realized that the warmer cookies were on the bottom. I peeked. Alas! Four of the six were squished. Intolerable, certainly no longer Fair worthy. I turned around. Fortunately, I had some dough left in the fridge. I also devised a new technique for packaging: invert the remaining plates over the cookie plates.

Entering was interesting in itself, and not because they lost my pre-registration form. I got in line behind a kid entering the Refrigerator Art class, and was followed by a man pushing a wheelbarrow with a bale of sweet scented hay. Gotta love the County Fair.

It was also interesting trying to get information about when the judging results would be available, versus when the entries would be on display, and when one could pick them up. Clearly these three older gals assumed I had some idea of how things work (including Fair language). I felt like a dork! As I pressed for the hours they are open and found that almost none fit, they asked me what I do. When I told them I work as a climbing guide, they kept looking at me with no particular expression, and said nothing. But my cookies looked great.
I think next year I’ll enter the Demo Derby.

Cookies Part 2, a week later.

Funny that after entering, I found myself surprisingly invested in how they fared in the competition! But I reminded myself to keep my perspective and just enjoy the fact that I entered.

One day I returned from work and my wonderful housemate Krissi told me she visited the fair exhibition hall, and saw a plate of my cookies with a ribbon. Cool! Soon she told me the ribbon was blue. She didn’t see the other plate anywhere, but confirmed that this one actually had my name on it.

Days later I was able to get over there and indeed found the blue ribbon plate: the drop cookies (no chips) as expected instead of my non-traditional entry in the chocolate chip class. But then I found my plate of choc choc chip cookies also with a blue ribbon! How cool was that?

Then I looked around a bit more carefully at the shelves covered with numerous types of sweets. Among the many blue ribbons were others in the exact same classes as I’d entered. In fact, there were 7 entries in the choc chip cookie class, five of which had blues, and the remaining 2 were awarded red ribbons. Both drop cookies entries sported blue ribbons. Hmmm.

What kind of competition was that?!

I took some photos (excluding, of course, the OTHER blue winners), then pedaled back home. A curious call to the Fair office revealed that they judge using the Danish System. Huh? In the Danish System, each entrant is based on it’s own merits. Oh. How progressive!
So I am competing against myself. How sweet! But I already KNEW I had ass-kicking good cookies…

But at least now I have not only one blue ribbon, but two, to prove my homemaking talents in addition to the rest of my skills. Good thing I didn’t get any red ribbons! Look out, Martha Stewart.

Well, the Danish System is much easier and faster for the judges, and cheaper for the Fair, esp as the ribbons do not have the year printed on them. And given that taste preference varies so much among people and the lack of prescribed qualities for each kind of cookie, it really does make sense.

It turns out that ‘yes’ the entries were available for recovery after the Fair ended, but only until 2pm the next day. I arrived the following morning (the first time I’ve been off during their hours).

I was able to pick up my ribbons, but my cookies had been thrown out. What a crime!

On my way into the now-empty Exhibition Hall, I passed a trash can overflowing with Fair detritus. Realizing my little treasures were probably in it, I began excavating. Dying flowers, wilting lettuce, banana bread and many other sweet delights still wrapped on their plates… Ouch! Rose stems. More cookies, but not mine even down at the bottom. All this compostable material going to the landfill!

Further sleuthing revealed one more trash bin on the other side of the room. My cookies were near the top, five left of the original six per plate, in nearly perfect condition. Yea! I also snagged a pecan pie.
I walked out of the place once again laughing at myself, this time for digging through the trash for my silly cookies (and taking the pie). Just a bit of rinsing and the sticky-dessert-goo on one of the plastic bags disappeared, leaving my packaged cookies still quite presentable, patriotic-themed plates and all.

I kept a few of the choc choc chip cookies, and then combined the rest onto one plate to bring in for the office folks whom I had told of my ribbon the day after Krissi had seen that I won. Of course I had to add Official Legitimacy by attaching one of the ribbons to the plate!
The computer guy at our office is collecting video footage of each of us talking very briefly about anything. When I showed up with the cookies, he pulled me aside to get me on video showing off my little treats and the bright blue ribbon. Quite silly… and fun for all.
Despite being a week+ old, in the office, the cookies were short-lived. I neglected to mention that I got them out of the trash.
In case your county fair is competitive, here is the recipe so you can enter them and see what how well your local judges appreciate chocolate:

Set the oven at 350 degrees
In a large, thrift-shop bowl, combine:
A stick of butter (softened, and best if organic)
1 cup white sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar (no lumps!)
Add: 2 eggs (organic)
½ tsp vanilla
And beat it well.
Then add:
1-½ cups unbleached white flour (organic)
1 cup cocoa powder (organic)
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt (distilled from the ancient seas on Mars)

Once that is all mixed, throw in a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips.
Get your hands oily so that you can roll the dough into little round balls about 1-¼ inch diameter without it sticking too much, then set the balls on the pan, squashing them only enough so they won’t roll off when you pick up the pan.

I like how the cookies come out best when the dough has been refrigerated (which I do so that I can make them fresh weekly or so!). If the dough is cold, you can roll the little balls without having much dough stick your hands. When the dough is room temp, the cookies will be larger (as with what happened when I made them for the fair) and less tall. This way, they have less surface area so are even more moist and tasty.

I bake them for only 7 minutes. This is enough to be cooked (as verified by local County Professional Cookie Experts), but also enough that you can later put a couple in the microwave for 12 seconds and have them hot and gooey all over again without overcooking. Yum!

Oh yeah, without the chips they are called "The Power of Addiction", and with choc chips, they are "The Power of Addiction, Squared".
Enjoy! And let me know if you find a way to improve them.

Alaska Range adventure

2005-05-31T12:41:00.000-06:00

Hello-hello,
I am back from spending 4 weeks in the Alaska Range with Larry, and about to start work (Now that it‘s finally sunny here, more or less!).

We drove Larry’s gas guzzling, luxurious van north from Denver, where we went through the medical process for Antarctica, then up through Montana and to the Alcan highway. The Canadian Rockies are as spectacular as they look in photos, esp. that time of year. With a stop at Liard Hot Springs, we passed through the Yukon and arrived in Larry’s (adult-life) hometown in SE Alaska about 4 days later. After he gathered up his gear, we continued north, having to go through Fairbanks because the road to Anchorage was washed out. Eventually, after thousands of miles and having seen moose, elk, caribou, a fox, woodland bison, "stone" bighorn, and a bear (Larry also saw a wolf), we arrived at our final destination of Talkeetna, Alaska (“A quaint little climbing town with a drinking problem”). Gas prices in parts of Canada were up to the equivalent of US $3.80 per gallon. Oww.

Soon were boarded a little prop plane and flew onto the Ruth Glacier with well over a hundred pounds of food for four weeks in the field.

The Ruth Gorge is well-known for it’s steep rock and challenging mixed routes on stellar granite surrounded by huge glaciers, especially on the Moose’s Tooth massif. We, however, had no such aspirations for a number of reasons not the least of which was our relative lack of fitness. Rock climbing, especially with Larry healing from 3 broken ribs, in Arapiles didn’t do much for our mountaineering strength despite our efforts to train by carrying packs on steep terrain.

Our goals were quite modest. We simply wanted to check out the area, get some fun routes/peaks in, ski tour, get in a few turns, and otherwise enjoy ourselves.

We basecamped near the airstrip and started with a couple of refresher classes for Larry on skills like single-rescuer crevasse extraction. Given his overall competence and experience, I was not surprised how quickly and thoroughly it became clear that I had nothing to worry about.

Neither of us skis especially well, so skiing downhill roped up provided “opportunities” for “intense concentration” for the second person in particular. Somewhere lies a balance between not catching up and damaging the rope with a ski edge, and not slowing down, which results in hitting the end of the rope and getting launched forward while the first person is suddenly yanked from behind. Good humor.

Not far from camp were some nice slopes that everyone skis unroped (just don’t ski into one of the 2 crevasses!). It was really fun to actually get in some turns; sometimes the snow was excellent, if heavy. Numerous days we’d go out and make up for having missed ski season by being in Antarctica. It was fun to still remember, more or less, how to telemark.

We averaged a couple weather days per week, but that was fine because it meant we could lounge around in the tent, read, eat, and remodel/maintain our snowcamp, which turned out to be a significant project due to the warm temperatures. We had great views, especially to the north, and many times a day listened to gravity interacting with geology and glaciology on the surrounding peaks.

One morning we climbed a straightforward snow peak called Barrille, right near camp. It was a lot of fun and we left early enough to need crampons, thereby avoiding the wallow that other teams suffered by leaving later during this warm weather. On top we enjoyed incredible views down the Ruth Gorge and to Denali, Hunter and Huntington as well as a Gyrfalcon circling high overhead.

On other days we ski toured into the NW Fork of the Ruth Glacier to check out the widely known SW Ridge of Peak 11,300’. It was a great day in terms of weather, skiing, and getting a look at that route, which has largely melted out, and the north side of Huntington with it’s hanging glaciers. We also scoped out our intended route on Mt. Dan Beard.

Starting the day we planned to climb Dan Beard, which we expected to take a couple days, the weather closed in. Instead of the peak climb, we decided to head over to recon the Moose’s Tooth despite the weather (and just to get out of camp). On the glacier, we saw wolverine tracks… very cool! We wondered what the critter was doing as there certainly doesn’t appear to be much to eat, at least not yet, up here.

When we were in the crevasse field approaching the base of the West Ridge we became socked in and the light completely flattened, leaving us unable to see the snow bridges over the crevasses. Then it began to RAIN! We were at 5,100’ and it was only May 12th; this was wrong. We were quite dismayed not only at the rain soaking our ski skins, but how it weakened the bridges over the crevasses that we couldn’t see.

We turned around and headed home to make quesadillas.

Worse than the small amount of snow the system brought was the warm temperatures. At times it didn’t quite freeze at night at our 5,700’ camp, so the climbing conditions were rapidly deteriorating. Not to mention the increase in avalanches.

Soon we made plans to get a flight over to the Denali basecamp on the Kahiltna Glacier to the west, where we hoped the higher elevation would make for colder temperatures and better snow conditions. The Talkeetna air services use that airstrip for their “glacier landing” scenic flights and many other climbers were coming and going, so it was easy enough to get a flight.

It was only 1200’ higher there, but it was still freezing hard at night, so the snow was quite nice for climbing, at least if you got up early enough! We were nearing the solstice, so the days were long, nights were dusky as most.

Kahiltna Basecamp is large encampment, with dozens of tents and caches from many expeditions representing numerous continents, and also a National Park Ranger quonset hut. The basecamp manager Lisa has her own hut and coordinates the airstrip activity.

The basecamp is situated at 7,200’ at the foot of Mt. Hunter, a major Alaskan peak with no easy routes to the summit. Basecamp sits between Hunter (14k‘), Denali (20k‘), and the also massive Mt Foraker (17k’). The “Alaska Factor” dramatically applies here: it’s hard to conceptualize the scale of the terrain (and no trees as reference points). The many kinds of avalanches that frequently release appear to fall in slow motion because they are falling so many thousand feet.

Predictably I saw a number of people I know, mostly guiding, and we also enjoyed seeing some of our Antarctic friends, including 2 guys from my department (and on the Ruth, a friend we met from Arapiles!). The social scene was fun, when we chose to partake!

Our first day on the Kahiltna we skied 4 miles to the most unnoticeable choss heap in the Alaska Range. Here we are, amid the most spectacular peaks in North America, and what do we climb? Some obscure tiny slag pile called Farine. Enough time had passed since my last scree slog that this one was actually fun enough. There was even one spot where we actually had to climb a short section of very steep snow-- yee haa! Plus, it was a good opportunity to see how well crampons work on tele boots on rock, which turned out to be quite well. I didn’t wear my mountaineering boots again on the trip.

One day during unstable weather, we took our approach shoes and scrambled up the west ridge of Mt Frances, a granite, mostly rock peak next to camp. We turned around when we needed a rope, which was also when the weather began closing in and snowing. It was really fun to move on rock, nice alpine rock, and be light and fast. A number of alpine plants were in bloom, most notably, Purple Mountain Saxifrage. It was a treat to see plants (why does that rarity remind me of Antarctica?).

We had planned to climb Mt. Crosson, but closer examination revealed that the rock was much like that of Farine. Having had our fill of scree/talus, Larry renamed Crosson “Chossen“, and we instead turned our attention to an appealing peak a mile from camp.

The elongated south ridge of Denali ends as a peak at 12,200’, which consists of some of that nice granite, but is mostly steep snow and glacier travel to the summit. It looked like fun.

At our 3am wake-up time, it was foggy, but at 5am, the weather had cleared so we packed up for our late start. We moved efficiently through what we thought was the crux: a long section of steep snow not far above the saddle. We were surprised to find that the steeper rock on the ridge was not passable on the side that was out of sight from camp as we’d hoped. Our pace slowed quite a lot as we picked our way through the steep, loose rock and weak snow around to the side of the ridge.

By the time we got to the easier upper slopes, we wondered whether we might end up having to bivy! We certainly hadn’t packed for it, but could make it work if need be. The last couple thousand feet took awhile as it involved exhausting post-holing, finishing up on weak snow on steeper ice to the west summit. Clouds surrounded us so we didn’t see anything, and our wet items froze in the chill. The main summit was another half mile away of low angle post-holing and only a few hundred feet higher. It was getting late, so we contented ourselves with the west summit. After brewing up and drinking over a liter of water each, we headed down, arriving back at our skis after midnight.

The ski home was surreal in the dim light and fog, blue-grey crevasses silently sliding past, giving no sense of their distance from us; we had no depth perception. I could only see our trail by the holes my ski poles had left on the way up. The steeper slope made for its own adventure, making turns in the faint light, unroped on this hill we knew well.

The climb had taken us 19 hours! Funny to think how much less time 5000’ can take on easier terrain, especially without the deep snow wallow.

We finished up our expedition with a ski tour up the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna, under the famous and beautiful Moonflower Buttress of Hunter. We checked out a route on the Kahiltna Queen, adding that to our long list of potential climbs for a future expedition to the Alaska Range.

Before driving to Anchorage in Larry’s van, we had dinner with a college roommate of mine, Diane, and her family. We were joined by another friend who works with both Diane in Denali NP and Larry on the ice. ‘Twas a fun way to end a really nice month together.

PHOTO

2005-05-12T11:42:00.000-06:00

Working on my alpine hair style

PHOTO

2005-05-12T11:41:00.000-06:00

Hiding out from weather in the Alaska Range, May '05

Arapiles, Australia, home, and beyond

2005-04-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

Well, if I’m going to develop this into something of interest for the people in my life, actually using it beyond being on the ice might help.

Larry and I spent most of 5 weeks in Arapiles (uh-RAP-uh-leez), Australia. Arapiles—Tooan State Park is a world class quartzite-sandstone climbing area located on the agricultural Wimmera Plain, in the state of Victoria, which is in the SE part of the continent. Melbourne, at 4 hours away, is the nearest big city.

Arapiles is a most wonderful place to be, climb, and recover from the highly structured and very busy life working for the US Antarctic Program. The weather was very warm, but it was dry heat, and there’s always shade to be found. Every day was climbable, including the days when it rained: the rain was light and of short duration. The dominant tree there seems to be the gum tree, or eucalyptus, and there are all sorts of other smaller trees making up the "mallee" ecosystem.

I was again fascinated by the avian population, both their voices and their plumage (it seems either one or the other is dramatic). The local magpies sound like drunk meadowlarks, and they are everywhere with their many calls and songs, strutting around with attitude in their crisp black and white. Australian ravens have a very entertaining call as well. The parrot species are spectacular, one being red, green, and yellow, with a mostly red with some blue species as well. The galahs are also brightly colored, as are the green lorikeets, who in particular fly around in very noisy flocks. Each day we saw most of these characters and others around camp and out by the crags, where we also admired Australian Kestrels (falcons) whipping around the cliffs.

Did I mention seeing kangaroos, sometimes hopping by, visible from camp? They are funny, with such huge powerful hindquarters and tails, and little tiny arms and hands. And little deer-like faces. Sometimes we saw the joeys (young) in mom's pouch. We also enjoyed echidnas, which look like a small porqupine with less threatening-looking quills. And some cool Big spiders and a large lizard called a "stumpy", but no animals to really be concerned about in terms of poisons and the like.

The climbing deserves its reputation. A partly metamorphized sandstone with a very high quartzite content, the rock is exceptionally strong. The long routes there are only 4 pitches or so, and one can walk off of most off the crags. And most everything is in walking distance, yea. We didn’t have a car and didn’t miss it.There are a lot of steep routes with huge holds, a few slabs, and the cracks eat stoppers like I eat dark chocolate.

One can visit as long as one wants, and the camping fee is a whopping $2/day including bathrooms with flush toilets, a centralized dishwashing sink, trash removal and recycling bins. There aren’t designated camp sites, just a big area where people pitch their tents, cover them with UV tarps if they aren’t under the pines, and stay as long as they want. Like I did last year, a lot of folks show up alone, meeting people there to climb with. It’s a fun, laid-back scene with lots of interesting people from different continents.

Nearby is a pond for use in case of wildfires, and it’s open for swimming. And on Sunday afternoons the adjacent organic farm opens their stand and sells wonderful fruit and veggies. Town isn’t far away either, and it’s easy to get rides with people if you can be a bit flexible in your schedule.

Larry didn’t climb for the first few weeks because of his healing ribs, and I found other people to climb with. We did spend a lot of time together doing other things, and sometimes he accompanied us to the crags. Quite enjoyed seeing some folks I met last year, and also meeting new people.

It can be an interesting game finding good partners. At this point I don't worry too much about how safe someone is in terms of me taking care of myself, partly because one figures out to start on easy routes to see how good someone's else systems are (ie I am not worried that I might fall). There are some very interesting characters out and about!

To minimize fitness loss, esp with our upcoming Ruth Gorge (Alaskan climbing) trip, we often loaded up our packs and schlepped up and down the only steep (though short) trail down from the top of "Mt Arapiles". We also did a bit o' yoga, read, and otherwise relaxed.

Some of our Antarctic friends showed up, which was great fun. We'd all go to a crag, Larry included (everyone needs a peanut gallery), and climb in pairs, swapping routes, and generally having a good time. Nice to hang out with people separate from the ice.

In the latter two weeks, Larry started climbing, leading some easier routes. It was fun to finally climb with him.

Arapiles last year was my first rock climbing trip (as opposed to mountaineering) internationally. Fun to figure out a new rating system. I used it to my psychological advantage, memorizing their system compared to ours in a way that encouraged me to get on harder routes. The numbers overlap, so I'd focus on the lower US rating that matched the local rating. Think it helped a little, but it definitely highlights how mental climbing is. Many details highlight how incredibly mental climbing is. That is part of the draw (that and the feel of a good hand jam).

It's amazing how quickly time goes by on such a trip. Days melt into each other, and then it's time to leave. Too soon we headed back to the US, where Larry visited his family, and I visited my folks and friends.
Now I'm back home getting organized for the Alaska Range (and from having been out of the country for 6 months).

Tomorrow he arrives in his van from MN, and in a week we'll drive to Alaska, stopping briefly in SE Alaska, where he has long lived. We are scheduled to fly onto the glacier April 30th, and plan to be there till the last week or so of May.
Neither of us is very fit (his now-healed ribs didn't help, plus rock climbing and visiting friends doesn't exactly create the kind of fitness we'll need), but we'll have fun. Our plan is to get info on various routes and peaks, see what's in condition, and go from there as opposed to having any particular goal.

Cheers, Susan

PHOTO: Kangaroos

2005-03-12T11:47:00.000-07:00

Kangaroos, a mom and a big joey (nursing) at Arapiles, Australia, a fantastic rock climbing area.

PHOTO: Mt Erebus Volcano, seals, penguins

2005-02-13T17:08:00.000-07:00

A friend took this shot of 12,000' active volcano Mt Erebus (Ross Island, Antarctica), Weddell seals, and a couple Adelie penguins on the sea ice.

PHOTO: Emporer penguin

2005-02-12T11:42:00.000-07:00

Emporer penguin on the Ross Sea, Antarctica

SAR peak climb, crevasse, penguins, historic hut

2005-02-08T15:55:00.000-07:00

Hello-hello,

Shortly after I hit 'send', I'll be on a C-17 headed north to Christchurch, NZ, a week before I was originally scheduled. In the Dry Valleys recently Larry severely injured his ribs and is being sent north early. The official reason I was also switched is to assist him with luggage and also general life to facilitate his healing. We'll hang out for a bit in Christchurch eating green things, smelling green things, watching animals, and just... being.

Then we'll head to Melbourne and hang out with a friend there for a bit, and see when we can go to Arapiles to see how climbing goes.
Here is the rest of my final update.

Our local meteorologists inform us that Punxsutawney Phil, the official Groundhog, saw his shadow back in Pennsylvania last week. Am I right in thinking that means another 6 weeks of winter? I hope that's good news for you. Maybe the mountains will get some more snow soon; I wouldn't mind getting a few turns in in mid-April.

We are distinctly not headed toward spring. It hasn't become particulary cold yet (teens and 20's, but mostly sunny), but it is definitely chillier than it was just a few weeks ago. More obvious that summer is ending is all hustle and bustle around town now as The Vessel (the cargo ship) has arrived and is being "offloaded" (why it's not "unloaded" I don't know). Many depts are now on a 12-hour shift and the offload/onload is expected to take about a week. It is quite a process. Being driven all around town are lots of forklifts and trucks, some very old looking ones from the Navy era and only used for this process. The USAP flies in some guys who I think are in the Navy and are cargo specialists here to help with the offload. Plus a road-watering truck to keep the dust down. The dirt here is volcanic (Mt Erebus), quite dusty and gritty.

I believe there are something like eleven million pounds of Stuff being unloaded, and about 8 million pounds of trash, recyclables, and more Stuff will be loaded to be "retro'ed" back to the US. The Stuff is in "milvans", big orange shipping containers about half the size of the tractor-trailers on the interstate.

Our department is not involved whatsoever with the offload, and indeed a few weeks ago our quiet time of the season began. There is very much a seasonal cycle here, officially ending with the Vessel Offload, and different depts are crazy-busy during different times. There is a pre-season from mid-Aug to the end of Sept in which supervisors and others invade the winterovers and begin setting up for the science season. Two from our dept arrive then and teach Refresher courses, a very-cold Happy Camper course or 2, and do things like set up the sea ice hut, and the road out to where the sea ice camps will be. Then the most of the rest of us start pouring in early October. Beakers (scientists) also start arriving. After a couple trainings for us, our dept is in full swing with Happy Camper courses, Sea Ice courses, Altitude, Glacier Travel (wish there were more need for these), and GPS classes. Additional tasks include things like setting up the acclimitization camp partway up Mt Erebus.

The beakers are very busy getting their gear together from many departments. There is an unbelievable amount of stuff they need, including things like spill kits for hazardous waste (mostly fuel), HF radios, and others things one wouldn't normally think about, so all those departments are busy getting gear ready for the expeditions. The field carpenters go out and set up the big field camps, the helos start flying, and pretty soon the LC-130's begin to arrive so they can start flying to the South Pole Station. Meanwhile the smaller planes (Twin Otters) fly down from Canada through S. America and Pole, arriving here in time to take people out to the far away camps where they can land on non-prepared snow surfaces.

The main part of the season has projects constantly starting and ending as well as new people arriving and needing our classes; work stays quite busy for us through December. The Secondary SAR team is selected by mid November, and biweekly trainings for them begin (alternating with biweekly trainings for the Primary team... if there are enough of us in town!). By November, penguins show up in the greater McM area, much to everyone's delight. Around Christmas, the runway is moved off the sea ice and farther away onto the shelf ice as the sea ice deteriorates. News of the icebreakers start to circulate, and this year the higher-ups stressed heavily about whether they'd have to offload the cargo and fuel ships from somewhere out on the sea ice. The sea ice courses end, the sea ice camps come in, and later the sea ice is officially closed to travel. Beakers with later season projects are still arriving, keeping everyone busy. A few skuas start to show up.

You might remember that skuas are large brown gull-like birds that scavenge, aggressively sometimes, sitting outside the galley waiting for naive people to walk by carrying food. Just the other day I saw one successfully grab a sandwich from a very surprised woman who, if she had acted aggressively toward the bird to reclaim her lunch, would have been breaking the Antarctic Treaty. I think the skuas know this!

During January, most of the camps are closing down and people are returning to McMurdo will all their gear in need of sorting, cleaning, and returning to various departments. Some of it goes to Science Cargo, where they package equipment and other stuff so that it can fly safely in terms of reality and also NSF (FAA?) regulations, either into the field or back north. With fewer field commitments, our department finally has a chance to catch our collective breath. Also during January, the Coast Guard icebreakers show up, having rammed their way in from the sea ice edge, which this year was a very unusual 60 miles, and we have "Coasties" around town. This season we had one USCG icebreaker and they were finally able to contract a Russian icebreaker to replace the other USCG breaker that is having engines replaced. A commercial tourist ship or two follow the channel into the McMurdo Sound and the passengers get tours of town, checking out us 'locals' much in the same way we rubberneck the real locals: wildlife.

Some folks have left, including my friend and roommate Jean, and winterovers are flying in. My new roommate is a winterover in the Supply Dept, so they are busy getting going for the transition into the long cold dark bleak winter season. We provide them the half-day long Winterover Survival Training: basically a Refresher course slanted toward winter.

A few weeks after the icebreakers show up, news of the fuel ship arriving near the ice edge floats around town. It takes, I think, about 5 days of hoses running from the ship to the fuel tanks to unload the tanker, which also refuels the icebreakers.

Our dept is greatly relieved to have a reduction in our responsibilities at the end of the season, esp. this year because we effectively lost one guy for 5 weeks. The NSF (Nat'l Sci. Found) tells groups whether they need a "mountaineer" on their expedition. The grantees (beakers) decide whether to hire their own (NSF approved, and often former people from our dept), or if they prefer they can use us: the Field Safety Dept. One of us had to spend 5 weeks replacing a project-specific mountaineer who had to leave because his wife died in a car accident, so we were really strapped for much of the season. Often of the 6 of us, only 2 would be in town at a time. So when this time of year rolls around, we can relax a bit and work on maintaining and improving our systems and such... a welcome break esp as no one wants to begin their post-ice vacation completely trashed.

Something else we can work on this time of year is further Search and Rescue (SAR) training. We go out in small groups including our Kiwi team members from Scott Base and with whom we trained pre-season in NZ, on what we call Multi-day SAR Trainings. These are really climbing trips (!!), with the real bonus of terrain familiarization and more importantly to me: to get a sense of where people are with skills in technical terrain. It's also valuable to go through the process of preparing a trip, USAP-style, much like the beakers go through, making us more efficient in the event of a SAR.

For "my" multi-day this season, 5 of us returned to an area in the Asgard Range, in the Dry Valleys region, that I went last season with two others. Last season the trip organizer was really burned out (the guy who had a nightmare 4 weeks on the South Pole Traverse), unmotivated/cynical, and not much of a climber anyway: a rescue ranger instead. The Kiwi guy was quite inexperienced and, far worse: not especially motivated. Fortunately the weather provided an excuse for the climbing that didn't happen (argh!), so I didn't have to explain to our boss what was really going on. Needless to say, I was quite looking forward to returning to Mt Obelisk and actually climbing it with fun people.

This time we had motivated folks, another guide-type who saw the same line to climb, and others who were psyched to develop their skills. We also had the weather, yea. It was really fun to teach/guide my good friend Barbie who is the Physicians Asst, SAR medic, and also teacher of wilderness medicine (WMA). The route involved steep snow, scrambling on rock, a lot of exposure, and a little bit of rock hard enough to rope up for. It was a blast, and at 14+ hours, a long day especially as none of our jobs promote fitness of any sort! (I can hear your sarcastic comments already.) Nice not to have to worry about getting benighted on a long climb.

After our rest day, our helo pick-up (heli-climbing!) was postponed so we scrambled up another fun peak with more amazing geology. Sandstone that weathers into fantastic forms called ventifacts (like Utah, but an order of magnitude more dramatic and widespread), on top of and mixed in with basalt. The Dry Valleys region is truly magnificent... and includes the glaciers pouring off the Plateau into the upper sections of the Valleys... stunning.

Another really fun adventure occurred after work one evening (again, nice to have endless light. Except when one is trying to sleep.) I had not been to the Imax crevasse this season, the crevasse that was once used in an Imax movie and that we take the secondary SAR team (selected community volunteers) into as part of their training.

I went with Larry, who had not been there before. It was a 30+ minute snowmachine ride, then we rope up and walk another quarter mile to the entrance. It's on the lower slopes of Mt Erebus, about where our peninsula juts south from the volcano itself. It's open at one end, about 40' high to the bridge overhead, and maybe 150 yards long, ending in a broken section where it's cracking in the opposite (left/right) direction and deeper than the floor we're walking on. This end is partly open to the sky, and there are places where large blocks have fallen and are bridging the deeper cross cracks. Beautiful. And as it hadn't been visited in awhile, there were 1" flat layered (faceted) crystals lying on the narrow floor. These crystals are gorgeous and surprisingly strong/thick. And the colors, the muted blues and whites... fantastic. Quite cold too.

We have to be super discreet about such boondoggles. You can imagine how much this kind of thing could cause resentment. A lot of boondoggles happen throughout the large Science Support Division; we have much more access than people in Operations. Our dept is not alone in such treats, but ours tend to be more dramatic because we have even more access (and technical skills, responsibility) than most.

Larry works as a science carpenter and spends a fair amount of time in the field as well. When they are done with their work and awaiting helo pick-up, they get to do things like check out the ice caves caused by steam vents up on Mt Erebus. This is the coolest exploration I have NOT had... I am envious! But he also has to spend time in the dusty shop making things for beakers; I have more variety and time outside, so I don't whine too much!

In fact, he is away now for ten days in the Dry Valleys taking down three different camps. They work hard and fast so that they can get out on hikes up peaks there. It's been fun to see his pictures of the places and camps going up/down, and he appreciates seeing my pictures of the South Pole Traverse and my other work situations/locations. Another way to learn more about how things work around here.

There are official boondoggles, called "morale trips" for folks whose job is always in town (like the galley, or janitors, esp). I just worked one to a spot very near the Imax crevasse, called "Room with a View". It's basically a knoll on the glacier, with a tent in case we need it, and great views. We just go out there and hang out (frisbee anyone?) till people are done taking pictures and are bored. But it's always fun to get out of town. However, having become a snowmobiling guide, my self-esteem has taken a dive.

One project I've been heading up is cleaning out the old FSTP (our dept) building. NSF has a long term plan to reduce the footprint of McMurdo and also make it more efficient and professional; we are funded by Congress, after all. Part of that was consolidating various Sci Support depts into this big fancy (it's all relative) Science Support Building as of last season. Evidently during the pre-season, FSTP moved out of the old dive building rather quickly, leaving both useful items and a mess behind. Now we have to clean it up, and me being someone with a particularly strong aversion to throwing away useful items, I am the one to organize it. Yee haa. It has been interesting to get a feel for the history of our program, which has become a lot more professional under the current leadership (including no more boyz club attitude... yea!).

I much enjoyed a Sunday Science Lecture a few weeks ago on the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys. This is the glacier on which I helped the glaciologists (the Seattle gal with the 120 cornrows in her hair) place their instruments on the vertical face and that my high school classmate works on as part of the Long Term Ecological Research Project (nationwide, if not worldwide). It was great to learn more about it in an organized and structured way. Surprisingly, perhaps, that when one is immersed in the details of a project, it's hard to get much in the way of the broader information. This was a not-to-miss lecture for me.

Other fun events include the MAAG, the McMurdo Area Art Gathering, an alternative event, not sanctioned by Rec or anyone official. Last year, the MAAG bra show was a major hit. I was in the field, but saw the photos of the incredibly creative bras people came up with. It was a fundraiser for breast cancer research. This year, Jean my former roommate contributed a collage, "The Women of Antarctica: From Hardhats to Pearls". It was a collection of photos of local gals at their worksites, but dressed up. When we were in Christchurch before coming down, she and I bought fancy dresses at a thrift shop. In this town, one can wear whatever one wants to parties and social events (drag is popular), and it's fun to feel attractive every now and then. At the Taylor Glacier, I posed in my strapless formal in front of an ice cliff, surrounded by my gear. My high school classmate was out working that day and we had fun over the radio joking about who stood up who for the senior prom twenty years ago. Nevermind that we didn't know each other back then. Fun in Antarctica.

Oh yeah, last time I wrote so much about the South Pole Traverse that I didn't get to talk about Cape Royds, an exposed point of land north of here on Ross Island, directly below Mt Erebus, meaning not on our peninsula. Cape Royds is the site of an Adelie (uh-DELL-ee) penguin rookery and also Shackleton's 1908 hut, preserved by the cold dry climate and more recently the Kiwi's Antarctic Historic Preservation Society.

I had been out there last year before the Adelies had arrived, and was with the photographers (Artists and Writers in Residence Program), who had the difficult-to-obtain key to the hut. The key is tightly controlled by NSF not so much because of vandalism/theft (I think), but because the warmth and moisture we bring inside increases the rate of deterioration of the many artifacts. The AHPS has a monitor inside for humidity, and a book for visitors to record the time and length of their visit so they can determine how much affect visitation actually has. Decades ago, the hut was packed full of snow before the AHPS removed the snow and made it visitable. They have labeled some items and added notes as to the uses of parts of the hut, the people, etc (it was well over a year ago that I was in there!). Cool.

The inside of the hut is fascinating. It appears they left fully expecting to return. There are reindeer sleeping bags, wool clothing, and fur boots, all of which are of course what we consider highly inadequate for such conditions. There are many kinds of canned foods, including Ox Tail Soup, "Specially Prepared for the Invalid". Hams still hang on the wall, the stove and furniture are there as well as photos of British royalty, science equipment, tools, and personal effects. Really gives one a visceral appreciation of how they lived, what they endured, how truly hardy these people (men) were.

This visit we did not have the key so were limited to checking out the food stores outside (jars of salt, rusted open cans of beans and unidentifiable foods), the pony stall with straw bale, and dog kennels, and other storage around the outside of the hut. There are a couple seal carcasses left. Apparently the AHPS has found anthrax spores around the pony stall, but no one has become sick from visiting the hut. It is also related to why all animals and plants have been prohibited from Antarctica in recent years: to protect the wildlife and ecosystems from destructive microbes.

We also checked out the Adelies, who were in the egg incubation stage of their reproductive cycle. The rookery is a Special Scientific Study Area and signs prevent people from walking among the penguins. We could however, get close enough to watch them (a smile breaks across my face as I write) take rocks from each other's nests to add to their own, doze while incubating, and otherwise be penguinos. The unpaired males seemed to hang together and extend their heads and flap their flippers in the oh-so-sexy "ecstatic display". And we watched a few (of the hundreds there) head out to or back across the sea ice to the water.

Adelie penguins often run, unlike their larger cousins the Emporers (our only two species). They put their flippers (wings?) out, their heads forward, and run along with their flippers flapping. They are most entertaining, esp. when they come up to a ledge or other obstacle where they abruptly stop. They have white eye-rings which give the impression of facial expression, so when they bow their heads to inspect an obstacle below with a look of mild consternation, it's quite amusing. When it's an up-obstacle, they pause, evaluate, and suddenly spring upward and land on the ledge, higher than one would believe they could. How they do that on such tiny legs is anyone's guess.

Emporers, by contrast, cannot run. Penguin Ranch beaker Paul Ponganis confirms this and says it has to do with their leg skeletal structure. They instead (another smile) keep their flippers at their sides, very dignified, but then waddle on stiff legs. It's a very rhythmic waddle with their heads and bodies swaying to counterbalance their stride. Also very entertaining. There eyes are not visible at a distance, and the orange line along the edge of their bills give them a look of serious concentration... again, wonderful.

Sometimes they lay on their bellies and push along with their claws; this is called "tobogganing". Penguins of both species have been seen dozens of miles from open water, alone, walking along. The Taylor Valley team watched one march right past them doggedly headed up the valley, no doubt to his death. The researchers have no explanation for this. Last year an Emporer hung out far from the ice edge by the ice runway road for weeks, just hanging out. An Adelie took a hike through town last month.

I think penguins are so endearing largely because their walk is so incongruous with their plumage; both are extremes. We see their very elegant tuxedo and think, "dignified, sophisticated". However, we then see them waddle with an expression of concentration (Emporer) or run with a wide-eyed look and flapping flippers (Adelie), and think "toddler". What a hilarious combination. If their coloring matched their gait, they'd have much less respect. If their gait matched their plumage, we might not identify so easily with them, they might seem less accessible and instead aloof. That's my take on penguin charm. Other ideas?

People have been seeing orcas from the air (the helo techs and pilots don't have a bad job either), but I have not yet. I have photos of them and penguins from the common drive so can send some to anyone interested.

This is long enough that it's a blessing that the iceberg B-15 (B-15A and C) has not yet done anything exciting. It is still about 7km or so from the Drygalski Ice Tongue (see last message), and we continue to watch.

We have fresh food these days. What a treat a banana can be :-) This morning at breakfast a gal at an adjacent table asked if she could borrow our paper. As there was no paper on the table, I was baffled until she pointed to the pepper. She is Kiwi. Good to start getting used to their pronunciation again! Sometimes I really have a hard time understanding.

Love and spring freshness, Susan

South Pole Traverse, penguin ranch, ice berg & sea ice

2005-01-11T21:25:00.000-07:00

Happy New Year to all,

Subject: Missing seal to watch for on sea ice trips
We have had a seal escape from Fat City and she is most likely going to show up either by the Erebus Ice Tongue or out somewhere on the crack running from the Tongue over towards Penguin Ranch. I believe these are areas that your team routinely visits.

She is very easy to ID...instruments glued on her back with bright yellow and pink neoprene. If you find her, please contact the Crary lab immediately and let them know. They will get in touch with us.

Thanks, Mike C---

What a crazy place this is. This message is quite old; forgot to include it last month.

Today is a comp day for my time on the South Pole Traverse (SPT). Our dept has time now because of a storm that's been swirling around for the past few days. Not cold (around freezing), a little snow, a little wind, but not a little impact on McMurdo. We have not had a flight for the better part of a week now; some people are stuck out at camps others waiting to get in... but this does not surprise anyone. I am grateful not to be stuck on the Traverse. It seems that anywhere that so much energy is required to make it hospitable (much less conduct research) will also be a place where people are frequently directly affected by normal natural events. It is unheard of in my other life for the world to stop for a mild storm such as this. Here we are very vulnerable, much less buffered than "back in the world", the developed world, at least.

Not only are freshies (food!) and package mail sitting on Air Force pallets in Christchurch, NZ, but so are three dozen people whom right now we were to be taking through Happy Camper School ("Snowcraft I": how to camp in the cold, use the camping gear in survival bags, use the radios, etc. Two days). This makes it easy on the dept for me to get one of two comp days for having been out on the SPT for nearly 5 weeks.

You might be surprised what my fingernails look like, and not what you're thinking. Yesterday I went to Girl's Night, an informal gathering hosted by the field-gear dept (5 women, one guy), where interested men are welcome. The table was covered with fancy lotions, incense, candles, nail polish, margaritas, the chocolate I contributed... and the main event of the evening turned out to be removing the 120 corn rows (very thin braids) from the hair of the Principal Investigator of the Blood Falls glacier project I told you about last time. Full on chick-style scene: nurturing of self and others; only men comfortable with their masculinity will enjoy. There was also a pre-made foot bath tub that was popular.

The novelty of the fingernail polish, in many non-traditional colors, was irresistible. Each of my nails is a different color, then with spots on top, and then covered with a glittery layer. (To answer your question: I only had one margarita). And two of the guys let me paint their toe nails. Fun in McMurdo-land (McWeirdo?).

The nail polish had been collected over time from Skua Central. A skua is a scavenger bird, a large brown and unusually bold gull. If you leave the galley with a plate in your hand, they will come right at you. Any item one has that is no longer wanted but still usable is donated to "skua" and anyone may take anything they want from skua. Skua is also a verb, like to "skua that coffee maker" before you leave. Especially for a remote place like here, it's a great system, one I wish was more widely used elsewhere. Not unlike OB roadkill, NOLS refugee food...

Girl's Night kept me up uncharacteristically late, and was followed by more novelty: a 4am wake-up to accompany Mr Needs No Sleep to the gym for his workout: arm, abs, and then a session on a gerbil-wheel machine. Recently I have overcome my self-consciousness and now am carrying a pack on the gerbil machine so that I might be able to schlep weight up into the NZ mtns post-ice if it stops raining/snowing there by then. Given that the weather there is worse this year than last, I am not optimistic, but there is still time.

Then we went to yoga, fortunately it was mellow. THEN, was breakfast and the "start" of the day. Yeowza.

Ok, something more of substance: the South Pole Traverse. My dad had some questions that others may share. The goal of the traverse is to put a route in across the ice shelf, through the mtns, and then across the polar plateau, 800 miles to the South Pole Station. Being able to haul fuel, building supplies (new station work continues), and equipment should be cheaper than flying all that down there, freeing up more resources for Science (the Sacred Cow). The route is little more than compacted snow, crevasse-free underneath, and flagged at quarter mile intervals with occasional 4x4 posts naming the waypoint and marked to measure annual drifting. The compaction from 5 heavy "tractors" and their numerous sled loads persists year to year even when buried by a the little new snow this place gets. This is the third year of this very involved, high profile, and pricey project. They are through the mountains and only have 300 miles to go across the plateau, but are turning back as they don't have enough fuel to make it to Pole and back.

Last year they had to cross a shear zone where the McMurdo Ice Shelf ice and that of the Ross Ice Shelf converge. The Ross ice is moving faster, creating crevasses in response to the tremendous shear forces (somewhat similar to the San Andreas Fault). These 25-30 crevasses were "mitigated" which means the bridges were blown up and then the holes were filled in with snow by a dozer with a blade taller than me. A handful of small new crevasses have formed since last year in the shear zone, and I don't know that anyone knows how often they will have to rework the route. Also, the ice along the route is moving at different rates, up to the better part of a kilometer in places... you can imagine what longterm havoc that could create on such a route. This is of surprise to no one so I assume they have some idea of how they'll deal with this over time. For now, they're just trying to get to the Pole.

This is a controversial project because of extending the US footprint down here (though other countries have traverses, all shorter), its feasibility, and because of the "professional style" of the project manager (he has pissed off many people). Some of you may be aware that Edmund Hillary criticized this project, though without a clearly articulated reason, when he was recently down here for a Kiwi base event. In 1956, he was among the first team to drive to the Pole.
My job as you might recall was reading the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) screen, a laptop with lines running across the screen, riding along in the Pisten Bully. The Pisten Bully has a 20' boom sticking off it's front at the end of which the GPR unit is mounted. The idea is that I can see a crevasse and say to Jim, "Stop", (or "STOP!") fast enough to remain on the surface. It worked fairly well*.

Meanwhile Jim, the engineer from the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab (a part of the Army Corp of Engineers; Fairbanks, and Hanover, NH) did his best to drive a straight line via the inconsistent GPS. Turned out that Jim is not a GPR reader, so guess who was stuck behind the darkening curtain for the 5 weeks! Jim's job was partly to gather snow strength data (lots of Rammsonde Penetrometer measurements) to figure out how much snow over a bridge was enough (a ratio of thickness to width of about one to one is generally considered adequate). He also gathered data on over-snow mobility, focusing on the varying forces created and on the designs of the sleds carrying our living and energy (generator) modules, food room, freezer (yup), two milvans which are like truck containers, and numerous tanks of fuel.

The Pisten Bully ride was often rather rough depending on the angle of the sastrugi (wind carved snow: irregular, often tall, sometimes so hard that boots wouldn't leave tracks).

At times the ride was violent, including head banging even at 3mph. I couldn't see past the curtain so could not see the bumps and anticipate them. Early on I resorted to duct tape to compensate for having failed to bring a sports bra. I only let Jim, my driving buddy (progressive, married, father of 2 women), know about this, and he didn't turn me in when others made comments wondering where the duct tape was going. I devised wrapping styles that allowed for breathing, but duct tape each day, even over a regular bra, takes its toll on skin. Finally I thought of the ace wraps in the first aid kit; quite an improvement. I cannot relate to wishing I was better endowed.

I secretly welcomed the crevasses, usually covered by bridges that were at least 8m thick, because they were something of interest on the screen. Our goal, however, was to not mitigate or cross any crevasses no matter how well bridged and instead to find a route around, which we did.This meant basecamping (the term "camping" is used rather loosely here) for a day or two at a time and lots of reconning with Jim or the Project Manager. At one area, we ran a multi-day search pattern covering about 70 miles. One 5 mile stretch showed 67 crevasse images, and the total was around 500. Evidently GPR use on glaciers is quite new so there isn't much information on how to interpret the images; they do not present like a crevasse actually looks. This meant we had to figure it out based on their experience in the shear zone last year. We casually named the different forms and a few times part of the crew set up a hot water drill to see how thick the bridges were so that we could "ground truth" what we throught we were seeing on the screen.

Before drilling, Jim and I used the GPR to find the "strike", the orientation, of the crevasse so the team could drill a cross section of holes. I started a library of saved GPR images for future educational use and had the idea to mark the hole locations on the screen image as we ran the antenna past each hole at the required speed. This would allow for correlation of the actual depths with what we were seeing on the screen.

The hot water drill involves a generator, heating elements, a large tub into which snow is shoveled, and then 120' of hose ending in a 1m x 2" copper pipe with a perforated cap (like a showerhead). They just lowered the drill at the speed at which 150 degree F water melts snow, till it broke through, or not, into the void. They also measured the crevasse depths: 130' was about the deepest of the 5 or 6 crevasses drilled.

The best part of reconning? Getting dropped off on the way back so I could then skate ski to camp. I had skate skied 3 times ever, so was in the steepest part of the learning curve out there. The rough snow surface and wind were often quite challenging, while the snow in the fresh vehicle tracks was unconsolidated and like skiing in deep sugar. But it did get me some alone time, active time, outside in the real world, and out of hearing of machinery, and over time I did actually come a long way in learning to skate ski. To ski the semi prepared surfaces here near town is a real treat in comparison. I skied quite a lot on the traverse, and think it saved my sanity.

*We experienced some excitement discovering that not all crevasses showed up on the radar. Fortunately, at those times we were out reconning and the Project Manager was on board so he realized that it was not incompetence that led to our breaking through. The first time he and I unknowingly crossed a 4' wide bridge that collapsed as we were leaving it. That bridge varied from 3' to 3" in thickness. The vehicle engine is up front and the track is 9' long so all we experienced was a particularly violent lurch as the back end went down but then came right back out as we pulled out. Turns out that the crevasse was just visible on the surface. We were left on the far side; some crevasses out there extend for a couple miles. With some exploration, we found an end where we could easily get across. In the probing and shoveling, I found a crevasse-hoar crystal about 4-5 cm across. Gorgeous. We took it back for Judy.

Most of the crevasses we saw were associated with another shear zone created where the polar ice sheet splits into glaciers to squeeze through the Transantarctic Mountains, pouring 9000', over many miles, off the plateau. From there these massive glaciers spill out over the Ross Sea and merge at different speeds/volumes to become the Ross Ice Shelf, which flows north to the mouth of the Ross Sea and sheds icebergs into the circumpolar current.

These bergs, which may persist for years, feed the world's richest ocean ecosystem nutrients from the dust and dirt (and meteorites, another area of USAP study) collected over the eons. The people, dogs, sleds, Shackleton's ponies, and camps (Scott) that met their ends on the Ross Ice Shelf or in it's crevasses during the historical age a century ago, have/will become part of icebergs that get caught in the circumpolar current, finally breaking up and releasing their loads of organic matter (and from the USAP, shit like drifted over fuel caches: lost drums full of aviation fuel).

Some of these bergs might be as big as B-15 that made national news when it broke off the shelf in 2000, another natural event that affects our little world tremendously. Despite a third of it breaking off last season, B-15 remains massive. Recently the scientists have connected seismographic readings, picked up as far away as Fiji, with the movements of the berg (no, I'm also not drinking a margarita now either) as it bangs around. The quieting of the active and very close volcano Mt Erebus (12,000') in the past few years coincides suspiciously with the seismic activity; there is some thinking that the berg bangings have been slowly releasing the energy in Erebus that was building up into small steam and bomb eruptions.

Would you believe that the ocean is dimpled like a golf ball surface? Don't ask me how they measure that. Until recently the Big Berg was stuck sitting in one of these dimples. A berg a third of the size of CT now was stuck in an ocean dimple all of 2.5cm (one INCH) deep. Recently it's been on the move toward the Drygalski Ice Tongue, a glacier sticking 50 miles out from the northern part of the Transantarctic Mtns. There is some concern the berg might hit the tongue, pivot and ground against Beaufort Island, further blocking currents that have led to this years massive sea ice coverage in McM Sound. I continue to be amazed at this place.

So, back to McMurdo. There are people here of many talents, and many offer their skills to the rest of us, including massage therapists who bring down their tables and make extra cash in their free time (bliss). Awhile ago we went to an evening class on Argentine tango, taught by a very engaging and humorous fellow who works for NASA and runs the T-3 study going on (T-3 is a hormone that has to do with how we respond to light and cold... this is yet another story that I know little about). To an undetermined degree he is Argentine, and I think he has both a medical degree as well as a PhD; but I do know he sure can tango. About 40 people learned that there's more than one way to tango and got started with the basic steps. Quite entertaining... his teaching style as much as trying to coordinate my feet with the funny music. And yes, it does indeed take two.

Fear not, I recently found out that the Rec Dept is funded by alcohol sales, not Your Tax Dollars At Our Play, via the National Science Foundation. I know you were stressed about that. The fact that there are 6 Rec employees and lots of rec facilities, including all the exercise equipment... well, there are also three bars in addition to the store selling booze. Many people here party as hard as they work.

Just before heading out to the SPT, I had my final opportunity of few this season to visit the Penguin Ranch. The sea ice officially closed during my absence and the camps have come back in a bit earlier than normal. Larry hadn't been to Cape Royds, home of an Adelie penguin breeding colony and also Shackleton's 1911? hut, so we did pull off the trip that I referred to last time. We did actually do what we were supposed to to justify this otherwise-boondoggle. We investigated a recently opened sea ice crack off the tip of the Barne Glacier, which comes down off Mt Erebus, patron saint of Ross Island, and floats partway into McMurdo Sound. The crack was wide enough that we had to look around a bit to find a place where it was less than a third the length of our snowmobile tracks. We also found two newer active cracks further north and brought back that info for the sea ice guy in our dept.

The Penguin Ranch, a research camp, is set far enough back from the sea ice edge that the dear little (not so little) pengweenos cannot swim back to the edge and escape. A corral surrounds a large drilled hole in the sea ice, and the penguin ranchers kidnap some Emporers from elsewhere (16 this year), and make them live at the ranch for a month or two while their diving behavior and physiology are examined. Small cameras and speed instruments are glued to a couple of the penguins' backs, but the researchers don't like photos taken of the instrumented birds because of potential bad public relations; penguins are well loved here and worldwide. For good reason.

The highlight of the ranch, from our rubberneckers' point of view, is the observation tube, a 20' or so deep pipe about 3' diameter with rebar steps inside. It hangs in another hole in the ice and ends in a space just big enough for two to sit surrounded by windows slowly being grown over by algae-inhabited ice crystals. 'Twas a real treat to see the penguins, awkward on land, in their element speeding like graceful living torpedoes through the empty looking water. Empty except for hexagonal ice crystals, flat, solid, thin as can be, and of varying size (up to a cm?), floating gently suspended in the water.

The ice crystals making up the base of the sea ice were covered with an orange brown algae that will feed krill. The Antarctic krill population seasonally outweighs the Earth's human population five times over and supports the tremendous amount of fish and marine mammals who eat either the fish or the krill itself (baleen whales). This is a very important ocean ecosystem. The annual sea ice is the most significant seasonal cycle of the planet both for it's size and biological impact.

Anyway, we also watched a seal checking out the penguin hole, but not for long. Then she came right up to the ob tube window, suspended vertically and motionless in the water, staring at us with her big brown eyes: wonderful. (Could have been a Far Side cartoon: us in the cage.) They too are remarkably graceful in the water.

Seals visibly recoil, so we're told, when they approach a hole only to have sharp-tipped feathered torpedoes flying down into the water, and penguins can't necessarily differentiate a harmless Weddell seal from a leopard seal, one of their major predators, so they typically don't use the same holes. Weddells can dive deeper and longer than any other animal(?) so they can come far into McM Sound despite heavy sea ice coverage, which brings me back to the email message above. This year there were more hidden cracks than usual so that science group (seal metabolism studies) couldn't keep their seals so changed the kind of data they collected.

The sea ice warmed dramatically during December's heat (above freezing a lot, so I hear) and thinned to the extent that the icebreaker had an easy time getting in despite the additional mileage they had to break through. You might recall that in Nov, whether the icebreaker could get through all the sea ice this year (and then the fuel and supply vessels) was of serious concern as far north as the D.C. offices of NSF. The Coast Guard icebreaker is stuck here with mechanical problems (daily leaking 10 gal of oil into McM Sound, keeping the Environmental Dept busy) The diver/welder/mechanics are stuck in Christchurch).

We are awaiting the Russian icebreaker contracted late in the game; this job takes two ships in a "normal" year. The channel is so long this season that there is concern that it won't clear in time for the fuel ship (wind blows the ice north, but there's a bend in the channel too this year) or that the ship won't be able to turn around and they won't back up in the floating ice chunks for fear of propeller damage.

One quickly learns to not worry about what might happen here, esp. as we have our hands full working with whatever current unpredictable event we are experiencing. Many of us love the mystery of what will happen next here; it isn't boring. Definitely a good place to learn patience, flexibility, improvisation, problem solving, and to be at peace with not knowing what will unfold next. Also a good place to learn that fake hair, blue sometimes, gets braided-in to add volume when people get their hair corn-rowed.

Well, this is getting pretty long and you have more important things to do, so I think I'll wait and describe the Adelie penguin breeding colony and Shackleton's restored hut on Cape Royd's for the next installment of Susan's Antarctic Adventures.

If you are interested in more about almost anything I write about you'll get the official version: more accuracy and detail about the research projects and local phenomena, and a slightly sanitized view of McMurdo, you'll find it somewhere in the Antarctic Sun website. The Sun is "for the friends and family... of USAP participants" and it's the source of much of our overall info on the projects going on and iceberg and similar situations that highly affect operations.

Now it's Tuesday and sunshine is beginning to replace the storm. Yesterday out on the shelf ice, I found almost a foot of new snow, much more than I'd expected. Much of the snow melts here on the ground, but it was fun to have it floating down and feeling like a quiet spring storm in the high country. The Kiwi ski hill, a rope tow up a low hill and run off an old truck, more or less ran on Sunday. It's been a week since flights came in and I'm told this length of storm is unusual. We keep busy with long term projects, the ones that normally don't get done, but I'm looking forward to getting back up to speed. We are all drooling at the thought of fresh food. One could fund their post-ice travel by selling a single apple these days.

Love and salad, Susan

Dry Valleys, South Pole Traverse, dead penguin, sea ice

2004-11-27T21:22:00.000-07:00

Happy Post Thanksgiving Coma,

So, finally I write. As you might suspect, life here has been rather busy; so what else is new. As you pass out noticing how long this is, be relieved to be reminded that it's been well over a month and will be another 5 weeks before you hear from me again!

Today is the day after Thanksgiving in your neck of the planet. I hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving and didn't eat to that painful point.

Last week I returned from two weeks at a camp in the Dry Valleys, next to Blood Falls.

Review: You may recall that the Dry Valleys exist because the mountains keep the plateau ice from covering them up. Plateau ice does flow in, but the area is so dry (plus summer "heat") that they valleys are extremely desiccated and essentially nothing changes. Mars related research goes on here; the area is unique in the world and highly protected: not only is poop packed out, but even all urine is collected. It's best not to even blow one's nose onto the ground: adds organic matter, of which there is very little and can effect future research. You can imagine the procedures for fueling stoves and how the carpenters collect all their sawdust when they work here.

There are amazingly intact mummified seals that are carbon dated to 5000-9000 years old. Nothing breaks down here: the ultimate freeze drying. Here is only the tiniest of life: microbes, some of which live in the interstices in the rocks, yet a thriving ecosystems of various microbes under the 15' of ice on the lakes. There are some algae and even some visible non vascular plants, like lichens, in a very few spots.

I was supposed to work with this group for a week before switching out with another from our dept, but one of us had to fill in unexpectedly elsewhere and it made sense to keep me in the field the second week. Blood Falls is named for an orange flow coming out of the toe of the Taylor Glacier, see:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031105064856.htm .

The project involves placing ablation stakes and tilt sensors on the sides, and seismometers on and near the glacier, to measure calving and strain. (This team is mostly women.) They are also drilling a number of cores. At the terminus, these glaciers have vertical sides 20-30m tall even, usually, unlike glaciers in most other places; hence the need for Field Safety people.

The Taylor was chosen because it most mimics tidewater glaciers by ending in a lake (the West Lobe of Lake Bonney) and for other reasons as well. Some of this research is part of the Long Term Ecological Research going on worldwide (UN related??) and is related to climate change.

Much research occuring here relates to other ecosystems. The example I'm thinking of is seals. It is far easier to study seals than Yellowstone's wolves and grizzly bears; the Weddell research here is closely tied to my home ecosystem. Many patterns apply to different species and systems, and a Sunday Science lecture recently highlighted the similarities between the ecosystem in which seals play a part and in Yellowstone.

Back to the Taylor Glacier project. This group has their own "mountaineer", a former member of our dept, who is with them through most of their six weeks in the field. One of us switches out periodically as further support.

It was probably the most fun project I'll do all season. Not often do we actually get to do exciting things like hang ropes, skills related to what we do and love in our other lives. I assisted in the drilling on both the faces. Two of us (a mountaineer and a scientist) are on the face at a time and the drill is tied in from above.

The most novel part was using a motor-head (like for a chainsaw) with a 2.5 meter bit attached, 2" diameter, to drill the holes from one-meter depth to the two-meter needed. We had problems with the augers and at one point had to hand drill from .5m to a meter. The holes are at 10 degrees down from horizontal and it was a humorous and gymnastic challenge to get enough leverage on the hand drill for the other person to be able to crank it and get it going. Some hack saw (contain the shavings!) creativity got the augers to connect and we were back in business with the power drill.

For anchors, we used V-threads in the ice like we do in climbing with ice screws (drill out two holes to make a v-slot and run a piece of rope through) but with the 2" wide 1m long hand drill, so they were most burly (the rope would fail well before the ice).

This was, however, only two days of the work (days that went, incidentally, to midnight and 2am respectively). The rest of it involved finding and maintaining the access onto the glacier (Blood Falls can work but it's better not to because of it's uniqueness as well as it's scientific value; do check out that website above), selecting sites for both the faces and drilling, setting them up, arranging for the helo loads of science equipment to get onto the glacier sites, etc.

Interesting how field science actually happens. Two of our crew work for Ice Core Drilling Services and were there to run the drill, which is the very same drill in the slides some of you saw last June. Another was there to install the seismometers.

Science groups don't necessarily have all their own science equipment (not to mention all the camping gear and food that the USAP provides). The USAP is one of the easiest for researchers to work within because the USAP essentially provides everything: inexperienced researchers can work in remote and hazardous settings, which can be interesting. In other places, like the NSF Office of Polar Programs (of which we are part) Greenland program, the scientists have to provide much more of their own gear, expertise, and resources, drawing more experienced and organized researchers.

This project had a grand total cargo weight of 15,000 pounds; that was not a typo. I was astonished to see, over that first week, more and more equipment come in. They have a lot of "basic" electronics, including 80# batteries to hold solar power. Many of these camps (not the deep field, at least) are fully decked out with wireless internet, which often works even. But most of the weight was the gear to go up on the glacier, for example six 150# wood boxes custom built here in town by the science carpenters to withstand multiple Antarctic winters to house data-loggers, more batteries to receive power from the attached solar panels (at least until the long dark night arrives), and all dozen long wires coming up from each cliff face. The drill is 1500#, and the long white-painted steel pipes going into the holes on the face weren't exactly light either. We had a chainsaw to cut the ice, however Erik and I got pretty into hacking away ice where needed. This stuff was flown onto the glacier in sling loads that the helo tech put together.

One of the other people was Thomas, my high school classmate. He and his grad student set up 3 cameras below the glacier to take 9 photos a day, until the polar night, of the toe of the glacier. Each camera needs similar attendant equipment as the equipment on the glacier.

What a scene!

A few weeks ago I spotted a penguin, my first of season, lying down on the sea ice during a sea ice course. We approached gingerly, only to find the feathered fellow had only hours ago perished. We checked out this Emporer anyway, noting how deep the feathers go for insulation (1-1/2 to 2"), looked at the reptilian feet, and otherwise appreciated being as close as we'll ever get to a penguin.

One of the penguin researchers caught wind of our find and requested the bird. The next sea ice course found me distracted with a more unusual agenda, but we also did drill some cracks as expected.

We knew not to post the photos we took on the intranet because if we had touched the penguin, dead or not, on our own volition I would have been busted under the Antarctic Treaty and would have had to get the scientist to get me out of hot water.

Paul Ponganis, Principal Investigator at the Penguin Ranch, said that the bird had died of hypothermia from starvation, that the body weight was about half what it should have been (despite feeling a bit heavy to me!). Apparently this is a highly unusual occurence (not sure exactly what details: time of year? location? etc?) and they were psyched to send the body to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography for dissection.

The Penguin Ranch has an observation tube down under the ice that I'm hoping I'll be able to get into this Sunday (my last chance). I've seen footage of penguins swimming and it is phenomenal even on a screen. I'll only be able to leave, to use a snowmachine, for real purposes, so we'll have to drill a crack or two to justify this potential "boondoggle". We shall see.

Speaking of sea ice, the ice is still close to 100 miles out. This is the most locked in McMurdo Sound has been in memory. It's not an issue of weather; hardly: it's been super warm this season. It's because of that massive iceberg still blocking the current that would otherwise break down the sea ice.

This year one of the ice breaker ships is having an engine replaced, and they haven't been able to contract another, so they're talking about having to build a road across the ice to offload both the fuel ship and the cargo vessel, both of which arrive in February. This would be a big deal, a decision made at NSF in DC and requiring emergency funding. But the ice might break out... who knows.

This year our dept doesn't have a road flagged all the way out to Cape Royds (north, site of Adelie penguin rookery and one of Shackleton's huts) because of a large active crack near the Barne glacier. This one actually does need monitoring, so a Sunday sojourn to measure it has real value this year.

Before I went out to the Dry Valleys, I was doing my Sunday yoga session when my pager went off. This was the first SAR call-out I've been here for. It was a late check-in from a field camp. Like most everyone, I knew not to be concerned because it's easy to be late for a daily check-in on certain days. As we headed over for the briefing, the follow-up call came in that they had indeed called in.

I have a personal reason to completely understand and forgive them, but I wasn't inconvenienced enough (or concerned enough) to have anything to forgive. The thing about SAR here is that there is a good chance we'll know whoever it is that we are taking care of, which would add an additional component to a rescue that I would not experience working SAR near home with the patients being strangers.

By the time you find time to actually read this, I will be out on the South Pole Traverse (I leave Monday). I am scheduled for 5 weeks, including 2/3 of our 2-day weekends (the holiday season. Again). The resupply flight will include dynamite which cannot be flown with passengers, so they can't bring out someone else to replace me, but they are flying another guy (not our dept) in on Dec 22nd. Four weeks was the max stay last year with the SPT (fewer had been planned).

The South Pole Traverse, to refresh, is the "building" of a "road" (a track in the snow) to the South Pole, about 800 or 1000 miles to supply fuel and if it's done early enough, some of the construction materials for the new South Pole Elevated Station (replacing the famous dome). This should eventually pay off in terms of flights to the South Pole, assuming the shear zones on the ice shelf and glacier up to the plateau don't need "remitigation" too often.

This is a massive project and a real engineering challenge as the machinery is super heavy and the snow is, well, snow. Highly variable, changing year to hear, and overlying glacial ice with the expected crevasses. A phenomenal amount of money has been sunk into the project (it was originally funded directly by Congress) and it's one of those government projects that "has" to succeed (at any financial cost?) once the investment is started. Not unlike a war.

The crew consists of 4 or 5 heavy equipment operators and mechanics, someone from our dept (Field Safety), and a (rotating) engineer from CRREL, which is the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab based in Fairbanks. A lot of research is being done via this project, which is indeed unprecedented. Already papers have been published about using the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to identify crevasses (which they then "mitigate": blow up the bridge and then fill in with snow) and other specific research on mobility and snow/crevasse movement.

I went out with our guy who is covering the first shift and two CRREL guys for a day of training with the GPR. The training went well: crevasses seem generally reasonably easy to see and as it's a computer program on Windows, I could get around pretty well within it, yea.

I genuinely like the crew. The heavy equipment operators and mechanics all seemed friendly/warm if not also fairly open. I felt accepted and do not anticipate any stress with them. I'm sure it helped that we were working in my area of expertise, not theirs. I didn't get the feeling any of them had gender issues. I can deal with gun and killing-things talk I'm warned of (one or two individuals); that's not unlike tuning out endless chatter among teenagers about movies or partying. I have been strategizing on how get some personal time, even if it's within the cramped living module.

I will be spending much time in the Piston Bully vehicle with the CRREL guy, alternating between driving and staring at the GPR screen on the laptop suspended from the ceiling and surrounded by a darkening curtain. The GPR unit is mounted on a 20' boom that reaches out front and they've always been able to stop well before driving over a bridged crevasse.

We will also be analyzing the snow periodically. Last year, the snow was hideously soft and loose and they were bogged down heavily and didn't get nearly as far as hoped. Many changes have been made in the equipment for this year.

When I arrive they will have just made it to the end of last year's progress. This means I'll also be involved in flagging the route at quarter mile intervals with the snowmobile behind the vehicle. I am sure project manager will be the third person involved in the PB driving, GPR reading, and flagging team.

We are there as safety experts, esp when we have to rappel into blown-open crevasses to report on dimensions and directions (which might be a lot going from the Ross Ice Shelf up the Leverett Glacier at the south end of the Transantarctic Mtns.

We will be working 12 hour days every day of the week. Last year out of 66 days, there were 2 during which visibility prevented progress, so they worked on other projects instead. That was their time off.

I have been less than well this past week after picking up "the crud" after getting back from the Dry Valleys. As you can imagine, illness here in particular travels like wildfire in a hot dry wind. I have been taking advantage of my roommate, the Education Coordinator, for her stack of videos about Antarctica. Many exist and I've been somewhat of a slug lately, with a special friend, watching penguins and leopard seals and Weddell seals and a few whales and early explorers and learning about the ecosystem created by sea ice and icebergs breaking off from the shelves (floating glaciers as opposed to frozen ocean water)... fascinating. Jean and I won a drawing and thereby have a vcr in our room. I believe they pipe in some sort of tv programming here as well as the Armed Forces Radio channel or something like that too.

Tomorrow Sir Edmund Hilary will give a presentation in the galley which I am certain will be most well attended. He was a major part of the first traverse of Antarctica in 1957 using modified (tracks) farm tractors, one of which is in the Antarctic section of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. NZ's Scott Base (about 8% as big as ours) is just a couple miles away and they are building some facility that will be named after Hilary when it is completed in a few years. You might have realized how old Hilary must be (the Everest summit was in '53)... which is why they're getting him down here before the facility completion. In fact rumor has it not to expect too much from his presentation as he is not getting on quite so well these days. I plan to attend.

Thanksgiving for us is today, Saturday, so we get a two day weekend (our first, and one of three all season). People are tired and despite the nice weather I don't think a huge number of people are out hiking or skiing Ob Hill or the Castle Rock loop.

There are three dinner shifts, and I have been thinking that we could go in for the first, then come back for the third and have more pie. Hmmm... we shall see what they do to mimimize this obvious plan.

Have a wonderful holiday season, enjoy the solstice on the completion/start of yet another trip around our sun, and I'll be in touch again when I get back at the beginning of the New Year.

Love and warm holiday and new year's wishes to all, Susan

Sea Ice & Happy Camper classes, season overview, LINKS

2004-10-18T23:18:00.000-06:00

Hi folks,

I hope life in your neck of the planet is going smoothly. Is it getting cold yet? How much snow in the high country? What are the fall colors like this year? I do like to hear. The complete lack of vegetation here is part of the magic, but also leaves the soul hungry for the company of other forms of life.

It's good to be back here. Today is Sunday, our one day off, and this morning I did my long yoga session followed by brunch (a veggie omelette and a waffle: we're not exactly roughing it here). Last night was the '70's disco party (can get costumes from the Recreation office), but I opted to stay home and read "Mawson's Will" an engaging polar survival story instead. Boring I am :-)

I am rooming with my friend Jean, who is the Education Coordinator. She organizes the Intern Program for college students coming down here, the twice weekly science lectures, a series of classes offered (credit and non-credit), the National Geographic type movies that are shown weekly in the coffee house, and a number of other mini-programs. When school kids send packets of letters, they land on her desk and she finds people to answer them...

She is an interesting and dynamic person and easy to room with; I had an excellent roommate last year as well (fortunately most of us have outgrown the behaviors we subjected our college roommates to). This year I'm in a somewhat nicer dorm: both of my wardrobe/closet doors shut, there are hooks on the wall for our gigantic red jackets, and best of all the hall lights can be turned off so that one may stumble to the bathroom (which is also nicer) at night without fully waking up.

The weather has been quite warm and calm. Temps ranged from -17F (ok, that's cold, but it's all relative) up to 19 degrees, closer to the week's average, and not cold, esp when the sun is up, which is most of the time. It's generally been clear and often calm. This time last year was more normal: storms (the wind chill is as brutal as the solar radiation is hypnotizing), cold; more like what one might expect for the Antarctic spring. This has been nice, but it's also a bit disappointing.

Part of the draw for many of us is actually experiencing the challenge of being here. I have to say I do appreciate situations that demand more from me; there is something very elemental in the simplest tasks taking more time and effort, the focus of life slows down a bit. But most likely we'll have some of that too here in town sometime. The six weeks before we arrived were quite cold. Last year there was more snow around town, esp on the roads. Have to say I find this relative lack of snow distinctly disappointing too.

Sure is different the second time around: tremendously easier. I am glad I didn't realize how overwhelmed I was last year. The difference is striking and much enjoyed. This year there are no new people in our department Field Safety Training (6 of us total), so we all jumped back in and essentially picked up almost as if we'd only been away a month. There is one guy returning from having taken last year off (and two from last year are not here, but will likely return again I'm guessing). He is a Kiwi, has guided for US companies (incl on Everest) and has a ton of USAP experience. He's a good fellow and it's been fun getting to know him a bit. Now he's the one on the South Pole Traverse, and his wife works as a physical therapist in Medical.

I taught two Happy Camper (officially "Snowcraft I") courses this week, the overnight "survival school" in which we cover the skills necessary if people get stuck out of town and have to use the gear in their "survival bag" until they are rescued. We have an area outside of town on the shelf ice (glacial ice floating on McMurdo Sound) where we conduct most of the class. The students put up polar and normal winter tents, build quinzees (mound snow shelters), igloos upon occasion, and survival trenches in an area called Snowmound City.

We wimpy Instructors stay in a quonset-style hut a quarter mile away; the students have a radio and check in. The students range from scientists on their first year down here, through people in support departments who will spend time out of town, and if there's space, in-town people can come out with us. For some, this might be their only out of town adventure of the season (I hope I'm wrong about that). I also enjoy being out of town for the night as well as getting to know more folks. Return folks are required to take a one day Refresher course at the beginning of each season.

On this last course, the snow where I built the survival trench was absolutely exquisite, perfect styrofoam snow, the kind we dream about for climbing. The most perfect I've ever experienced. It was crisp, dense, and cut clean and sharp; sawing through it took some real effort. It cut in perfect corners and held an edge, not unlike styrofoam insulation. Wonderful for building: all the blocks came out fully intact and it was easy to move them around without damage and trim them precisely to fit. Glorious. But just two meters away, where the students were quarrying for their snow wall, the snow was soft and more difficult.

I also taught a Sea Ice course, a one day class designed to provide students basic knowledge about sea ice (which is fascinating, by the way), and also the skills to assess whether they can cross a crack en route to their destination. The concern is less that one will fall through (the ice is generally a couple meters or thicker now), but that later in the season one might cross a crack with the wind to one's back, then find that one is 'going with the floe' toward New Zealand. Or cracks are hidden by drifted snow.

In years past it wasn't unusual to put a vehicle partially in the drink (with occasional fatal results), but in recent years the 30" rule has changed that. A sea ice scientist described why 30" is ludicrous overkill, but then, we are working for a corporation that answers to the government and it's not our decision anyway. Congress (which funds the National Science Foundation) and Raytheon Polar Services stockholders do not look well upon death in the Antarctic.

This year the ice is out really far out this year, far north of the large island we are one (Ross), all the way north to the Drygalski Ice Tongue, a 15 miles wide and 50-60 mile protrusion of glacial ice coming off the mainland far dozens of miles north of us. The massive ice berg that calved off the Ross Ice shelf (over the Ross Sea) in 2000 (and made the national news for it's enormity), though split into two, is still blocking some of the currents coming into McMurdo Sound. The berg(s) block some of the swells and warmer water that would otherwise slowly break up the ice. Aerial imagery shows another one on it's way to cracking off, and we will accompany the glaciology team at times while they put in seismometers and other instruments near where it's cracking.

The sea ice is at its maximum now and effectively doubles the size of the continent (which itself is 1.5 times the size of the US), and by February, the end of our season, it will have broken/melted back quite dramatically, allowing penguins and seals easy access to the McM sound area. The seals come up now anyway through the sea ice cracks, and some of the seal research groups are already out camped on the ice doing their research.

The Adelie peguins, who nest here on Ross Island to the north on Cape Royds, are not here yet and the Emporer penguins, who spent the winter standing in a tight group on the ice with an egg then a chick on their feet under their skin flap, are still at Cape Crozier, on another arm of Ross Island (the center of which is Mt Erebus, a 12,700' active volcano, always steaming far over our heads), but we are unlikely to see any for awhile. Later, Adelies will later nest on the land at Cape Crozier.

That same berg has dramatically reduced the Emporer population at Crozier because they nest on the sea ice attached to the island and the Ross Ice Shelf, and the berg has banged against the shelf crushing the Emporer's nesting area. There were zero chicks in 2001, when just a few years prior there were 1200. This year there are more penguins there so they are hoping there will be also more chicks. The chicks are hard to count when still on a parents feet under the skin flap, but later the parents will leave and then it's easy to make the count.

The remaining day of this week was spent not training, but being trained (often more fun). This season the helicopters operations people invited a bunch of us Science Support people (many depts that directly support the scientists, as opposed to Operations, who run the infrastructure) to learn how to rig the cargo loads that the helos haul underneath. Last year in the field I got to be the one to crouch a couple times under the large hovering helo and clip the cargo cable to the hook under the belly of the roaring monster as we moved a camp... that was exciting. But knowing how to rig the various types of loads of course helps me feel more competent and be more useful in the field.

That afternoon we had helo "step-out" training, getting out of and into a hovering helicopter with a litter (stretcher) and packs as we might have to do during a search and rescue (we are the Primary SAR team and train one day a week for this). Last year we just did it as a dry run on the helo pad because the weather wasn't allowing flights. This time we did it live, on the flat, then on a low angle rocky slope and a low angle snow slope to simulate the types of terrain that we might have to do this on if the helo cannot land where we need to be dropped off. The helo people also recorded the weights of our SAR packs and our own flight weight, which is how much we weigh with all our warm clothing on. My flight weight, which includes pockets full of various items, is almost 25 pounds over my body weight! Fortunately it's distributed in such as way as to not feel like it's suffocating me. It does, however, make getting into high vehicles interesting.

Some of you may recall last year how blown away I was by the various pieces of ancient heavy equipment that I had to learn to drive to transport large numbers of people (happy campers) across snow and sea ice. Each machine is different in terms of where all the fluids are and other things to check as well as in how to start it, so last year I took extensive notes which have greatly helped.

What I'm finding more interesting is how normal it feels now to drive a mammoth rig, lumbering along at 10-15 mph, my head up to 10' off the ground. It's just as well they're slow as it could be easy to get into big trouble with such a heavy behemoth: difficult to slow down as well as get it to move in the first place. Our "Nodwell" that we use for Happy Camper is not-well again, so we have a Delta from Recreation until the Heavy Shop gets it running again. That's the most massive one, with a ladder to get up into it. It's wheeled, not tracked; the tires are almost 6' tall and about 2.5 feet wide.

I have to say I miss the Nodwell, with it's inability to track straight, with the two levers coming up off the floor for steering and braking and the ever-clanking steel track. Much of this machinery was built in the '70's and still says "U.S. Navy" from when the Navy ran this place for the NSF. Only about 5? years ago did private industry take over the contract.

This year I will actually follow-through on my previous plan to take photos of these vehicles and send a couple along to you. Perhaps this part of the job is the most "out there" to me. I do get a kick out of sometimes seeing contruction/destruction heavy equipment being driven by women, some of whom are quite small... breaking the stereotypes.

Nice to see people again; a lot of really cool folks down here. It really is a tight little community with all the benefits and bummers of living in a fishbowl.

The snow still makes all those marvelous crazy squeaking funky sounds. It's such a pleasure to walk across the mostly firm surface (out on the snow on the shelf ice) listening to how the tone and pitch of the squawks and creaks change, especially over the hollower areas which add a level of reverberation or percussion to the music. It varies spatially, often at just the right distance where it changes noticably each step, but not so fast as to be jerky or awkward. Wonderful.

[Now it's Monday morning. I went to the science lecture last night, which was an unusual one: Common Mammals and Birds of the McMurdo Sound Area, which was natural history (descriptive, not science, which is highly focused and is about testing a theory). It was packed with listeners and very interesting and included identification and new discoveries about orcas (3 species?), Minke whales, another whale I've never heard of, 3 kinds of seals including how leopard seals hunt, and of course our beloved penguinos ("pen-GWEEN-o"). Also, an aggressive scavenger flying bird that will show up later around town (squa), and all white snow petrels which most of us don't ever see. But it was a great lecture, one I hope they'll do again if the get a lull in the more scientific presentations.]

Well, my eyes have about had it from staring at this screen, so I'll let you get back to whatever you were working on before I interrupted.

Love and squarky sounding snow, Susan

I found this via a websearch. It isn't related to us officially, but is worthwhile:

http://www.antarcticconnection.com/antarctic/info-index.shtml
Antarctic photo library:
http://photolibrary.usap.gov/
And our weekly newspaper though it appears they haven't started the online summer page yet:
http://polar.org/antsun/index.htm#
NSF Office of Polar Programs:
http://www.nsf.gov/od/opp/antarct/start.htm
area map, with the Dry Valleys (highly unique) on the left side:
http://www.niwa.co.nz/pubs/wa/11-3/map_island
map of part of Ross Island and our peninsula:
http://www.geocities.com/~kcdreher/ross_is2.html
And the map we use a lot, the one some of you saw at the slide presentation in Boulder last spring:
http://www.geocities.com/~kcdreher/ross_is2.html

Christchurch Boomerang, October 5, 2004

2004-10-05T13:00:00.000-06:00

Hi the few,

Antarctic adventures begin already.

After four hours in the air, word came down that we were turning back (a "boomerang" flight). We were hoping they were joking, but knew better.
The first plane that landed on the ice runway left an 8"deep trench 1000' long that needs a bit o' work before another plane can come in.

Apparently this is fourth year sea ice (fairly old) and it has a 9" layer over a weak area, so they have to fill in all the holes with fresh water, give them 24 hours to freeze, then test each one with something heavier than heavy equipment (which they have).

They had a wooden boomerang on board that the crew photographed one of their guys with. Cute.

The weather has closed in, which would preclude our arrival anyway. I am ready to be down there, not hanging out in Christchurch, but there are far worse places to be stuck.

I'm trying to absorb the colors and scents of the many flowers, the songs of the birds, the dogs... and of course the Thai food.

Our pay is not affected. In fact, on delay days we get the same per diem cash to cover accomodation and food, much of which the resourceful among us hoard for post-ice travel. Not a bad deal.

Antarctica is a good place to learn to let go to attachmentto plans! So, I'll let you know when we land. On the ice.

Love to all, Susan

SAR training in NZ, more about McMurdo life

2004-10-03T13:46:00.000-06:00

Hi all,

I hope this finds you well and looking forward to the cooling weather.

I am in Christchurch, NZ at the International Antarctic Centre in preparation for heading back to the Antarctic for another season on "the ice". I am surprised how familiar this city feels, and am enjoying seeing our crew again. It's a lot different, smoother of course, second time around. More mental energy left for other things.

We leave your-Monday morning and I anticipate being there just over four months again.
You might remember that McMurdo Station is home to about 1100 people in the summer. It looks like a mining camp with industrial buildings and with all the pipes on the surface, but we do live indoors, can go to the coffeehouse, the gym, the hair cutter, or play sports or music or use the crafts room or bouldering wall or... it's a full on town of interesting and varied people. About one third of the population is new people, and I am of the average age. It's about 2/3 men, and includes a disporportionally large lesbian population.

Most people are from Colorado, where Raytheon Polar Services Company is located, but WA and Alaska are also very well represented. I think about a third of us are National Science Foundation Grantees (scientists), and there are also a number of NY Air National Guard guys floating around later in the season. NYANG is the contractor for large planes.
The US Antarctic Program is a part of the National Science Foundation; "your tax dollars..."

When we get there we will have some darkness during the short night, but in not too much time the sun will always be up. We are at 77 degrees south. It's cold down there now (well below zero F), and the sea ice is at its maximum, but all of that will change in the coming months. It'll even get above freezing for a few weeks. There'll be times that it's colder outside your window than mine. (smirk)

I have the same job in Field Safety. There are six of us in our department and the gender ratio, well, I'm the only woman (and am the first in a few years). We have some really good guys (a Buddhist, and other granola-sympathisizers) with a lot of experience. As last year, I feel very welcome. Everyone works a six day week, 9 to ten hours a day. In our job, we often work longer hours, but then we also get out of town (which is everyone's craving), routinely... a real bonus and most of the reason to be here in the first place. Many people hardly ever can get out of town.

We spend a lot of time teaching classes to the scientists ("beakers") and others, such as snow camping, sea ice safety, glacier travel, GPS, and the like. We also accompany some of the scientists out into the field for up to a few weeks at a time in a safety manager role. Our third responsibility is search and rescue, for which we train one day per week.

We arrived in Christchurch over a week ago to train in search and rescue with our counterparts at the Kiwi base just 2 miles from us. We all work together in the event of a call-out... definitely makes sense to combine our resources though our station is an order of magnitude larger than theirs.

Our home in the South Pacific is Ross Island, located at the edge of the Ross Sea, an enormous bay covered with a plate of floating glacier, the "ice shelf". On our peninsula is a four mile flagged route for skiers or hikers, ending at Castle Rock, a crag big and steep enough that in years past fatalities have happened there. Not only do we train for snow rescues and crevasse extraction, but we also work on getting someone up or downrock cliffs as well. This, of course, is fun. We spent two days at crags near town working with the toys and systems, and also spent 3 nights at a ski area (think Colorado circa 1960... cool!) working on snow. We also reviewed a lot of first aid, which I also quite enjoy. It was a fun training with great folks.

Once again I absolutely loved watching green parrots soaring just above us in the high alpine. You can imagine how graceful they soar (ha!) as they scope out whose pack they'll rip into if given half a chance. They also perched on the rail outside the hut, watching us through the window, hoping we'd leave one open (they actually come in and cause an astonishing amount of damage; we saw photos). They strut with"attitude". But it sure is funny to see a parrot in the snow. They are orange under their wings, so suddenly colorful in flight.

Then two of us taught a Refresher course at the International Antarctic Center here by the airport. It was a reveiw for the helicopter staff, and the first course ever taught pre-ice. You can probably imagine how crusty and cynical the pilots and other long time ice-heads can be having to be told once again how to stay warm, fed, and sheltered in an emergency, especially by second year punks like us. Fortunately, they refrained from copping the attitude we were braced for and it was even fun. We work with them a lot and it's valuable to have a good rapport going. (Flying in helicopters is another bonus of our job).

We have today off and most of tomorrow, yea. Today involved buying a lot of avocados and fresh fruit at the local weekend street market to take down there with me. "Freshies" will probably not be a huge priority on the first few flights. The season is starting 4 or 5 days later this season, probably because of availability of the NY Air National Guard. We are competing to some degree with military needs, which as you know have changed lately. The later season start has many of the scientists stressed (it's a short season anyway considering how difficult it can be to gather data in such a challenging place), and everyone will hit the ground sprinting this year in particular. Planes will be filled with people and equipment, not salad!

This is the third year of the South Pole Traverse. It's an immense project to squash a route in the snow 800 miles to the SouthPole. The new Pole station requires much in the way of heavy construction materials, so if they can free up all those flights, then the flights will be available for science. The route crosses crevassed terrain, wicked deep loose snow in places, and has been a, uh, "challenge" for those involved (hard core mining engineer and heavy equipment operators). They figure it will take 30 days for the convoys to reach the Pole and 20 to get back.

Last year most of our guys hated it for various reasons, but our boss has taken many of our complaints to the Traverse people, and there should be some significant improvements. This season, I too will have to be involved. Sigh. But I know it's the price I pay to get to be down here again. I believe I am scheduled for five (5) (cinco) weeks out on the traverse, just after Thanksgiving to NewYear's.

My job will be scientific snow assessment (cool), sittingin the cab staring for endlesss hours at the Ground Penetrating Radar to watch for upcoming crevasses, and first aid as needed. We will work 12 hour days.

I don't know if they'll allow tofu on the Traverse; I think I'll hide five weeks worth in my enormous parka. I'm told by our guys who went down last year that I'll hear a lot about guns and killing things. I'll just quietly practice yoga in the corner. Right.

Well, that's plenty for now.

Love and wild places, Susan

Great White Expanse, Dry Valley, hs classmate, icebreaker ships

2004-01-04T01:46:00.000-07:00

Hi all,

Remember how I said early in the season that I dreaded the idea of leaving? I went on to say that I expected that I'd be ready for it by then because of the natural flow of the season here anywhere. Well, I will be. Not that I don't want to return, it's just that a break, a long break, will be very much savored. Plants, animals, fresh food, my own schedule. Climbing.

I am exhausted. Not so much from immediate lack of sleep, but from what will soon be four months of a very structured lifestyle in which much energy and time goes into work and, in the field, simply living (as manyof you know).

My 3-plus weeks on the east Antarctic plateau was mixed. It is interesting, in it's own monotonous way, to be in a place that is flat andwhite out to the horizon for a complete 360-degree view. Between shoveling out caches, inventorying food, fuel, and other supplies, calling inweather reports, trying to get 25 year old snowmachines to run (little luck), and trying to stay out of the hut when one of the engineers was watching endless versions of the tv show "Friends" on disk while he worked, I hiked out beyond view of camp into the Great White Expanse.

I walked into the wind, the cold-flat version of walking uphill first, and did find that there is still a distinct sense of orientation out there. The wind blows and the sun cast shadows on the uneven, wind-carved snow,changing direction only slowly. At one of the three sites I could actually see that the plateau fell off toward the Weddell Sea, many miles distant,and rose ever so subtlely toward the pole 300 miles away. It was high and cold (warmest was 18F, coldest -23F), but the wind was reasonable and we mostly had sunshine, so it was not the awful time it could have been.

I did, however, made a serious error that at the time I thought could cost me my job next season. I forgot to call in one evening for our daily check-in (called in late next morning). Fortunately significant errors were made by the acting McMurdo Station Manager in his response, so the plane assigned to fly over to see if we were no more than a smoking crater (hut propane problems), didn't actually leave the ground. Other parts of a rescue were mobilized as well; many people were involved directly or indirectly. In addition to scaring people, search-and-rescues divertresources from science. It's bad enough when a scientist does this (happens a few times a year), but when a member of the primary Search andRescue team, who also works in Field Safety, makes such an omission, it is quite embarrassing for the whole department. Our boss makes a big deal about professionalism and the fact that "credibility creates opportunity"; for us opportunity means getting out into the field.

When I called in and asked to talk with my boss, he was really nice (though I distrusted it). I think he knew that if he came down on me I might have asked for an immediate plane ticket back to New Zealand.

Anyway, I took this mistake hard. Really hard. In fact I was surprised how wracked I was. The rest of that week in the field was awful. Unbenownst to the 2 engineers I was working with (I lived in a tent, notthe 8'x16' hut), I cried a fair amount (but still did my job!) in frustration with myself and with a system that only recognizes, so I was sure, mistakes and not the previous 3 months of good solid hard work.

Given the nature of my work out there, I had plenty of time to think...and dwell. I concluded the intensity of my reaction reflected the depthof several things: how much I wanted to come down to the ice and do this job, how hard I have worked for 3 months, and how commited I have been to doing the best work I can. I was a mess. I truly dreaded returning to McMurdo and facing my world.

This stress was draining. Getting back to town was initially traumatic.

However, it seemed that people knew that I was less than pleased with my oversight, and were amazingly supportive (and some told stories of mistakes they made early in their ice careers). In fact, I was astonished how much my work team and friends, even those I don't know well, rallied for me. Several people said that their depts had found some glitches in their responses so were improving their systems as a result. And the engineers from the field made it clear to the powers of US Antarctic Program that there were a number of extenuating circumstances, which were indirectly the responsibility of the Program, that led up to my missing the call though of course it was still my mistake. Rick wrote a letter to my boss on upto the Station Manager to put the missed call in context with both that whole (exhausting, stressful, and distracting) day as well as my performance for the other 21 days out there, weeks during which we and worked every day, not taking any holidays or other breaks.

So, I survived, my future here is not in jeopardy, and life goes on.

Soon after returning, I was assigned a field job that I think I was given largely as an antidote for three weeks on the plateau and what I put myself through that last week. I got to spend 3 days in the Taylor Valley, one of the incredibly unique (Mars-like: for real) Dry Valleys of Antarctica. My job was to keep 2-3 scientists, one of whom was the previously mentioned high school classmate and friend of an old friend, safe while they stuck flags into the edge of the Taylor Glacier. I even got to setup a rappel for said classmate so he could put stakes in down the side of the glacier. Then of course I let them top-rope climb the same face. Cool. Actually using some real skills, rather than using about 2% of my skills. You know it's bad when I'm psyched to take someone top-roping!

It was a fun scene there at the Lake Hoare "camp" (full-on hut, camp manager; well established). Thomas had had his high school yearbook sent down, so we had fun looking through that. That time was half our lives ago; we both agreed that we are improving with age. Plus it was like being in the mountains. It WAS being in the mountains! Peaks, crags, talus, scree, glaciers, creeks (yeah, running water in this banana belt of Antarctica)... mummified seals (carbon dated from about 5000-9000 years old) many miles from the ocean, and I even saw some vegetation! It was a microbiotic crust like in the deserts of North America, and a bit of lichen... a veritable forest. I took a photo (I bet you can't wait to see that one).

And to get from the camp to the glacier, we commuted by helo. Bizarre: they pick us up in the morning, having flown the 40 minutes from McMurdo, set us down on the glacier, go do other work, then pick us up in the afternoon and deposit us back at the hut where we unload all the science gear (fortunately it's heavy: justifies not carrying it ten miles). I flew back on a Coast Guard helo, which are allowed to fly over open water, unlike "our" helos.

For the first time in my life, I saw...whales. Whales. Mostly Orcas (killer whales) and a few Minke. They were... how to summarize? Magnificent. They were cruising the ice edge, looking for seals or penguins to chomp, and the pilot turned the helo partly onto it's side and spun a circle over a couple different sets ofthese gorgeous and powerful creatures of the salty world. Wow.
So, as you can tell, I am feeling refreshed. I needed it.

Two Coast Guard Icebreaker cutters recently left. The night I arrived from the plateau I watched them finish plowing through the ice the rest ofthe way to the ice pier that has been being "built" for the last few months. It's the world's only ice pier, several acres in area, very thick ice I am sure as it never gets to melt, and it's managed to make is stronger, deal with tides, etc. It was something to watch this enormous ship back up a 100 yards or so, then plow forward into the ice, crunch crunch, riding up a bit, then backing up again. They accidently took a piece out of the pier (got a photo of that too).

I just happened to get to go on board with some workmates. The guy who runs their shop is a Search and Rescue fanatic from WA state: exactly the kind of rescuer who terrifies backcountry people/climbers (ALL enthusiasm, but essentially no skills or fitness; but at least he didn't have an attitude). He invited us (SAR team) down to "trade patches". Someone dug up a handful of patches describing who we are (our dept/SAR/Antarctica),and this guy gave us patches of the US Coast Guard Cutter Polar Star.

He was rather entertaining in his unbridled excitement over how cool our patches are, how psyched he was. Apparently there's a whole culture of patches, Search and Rescue and/or military... interesting. And, we got a brief tour of the ship. As you can imagine the engines are large, the hull thick (Two inches. The ice was up to 14' thick), the structure specialized. Steep stair-ladders, hatches between floors (when closed, you climb through a narrow round hatch in the big-door hatch)... hard to get a real feel of the size of the ship because all the spaces inside are so small, so compartmentalized, even the engine rooms. There were two of these ships here, hanging out for awhile in the channel they made.

Right after I leave the even bigger supply ship comes in, an annual event. It will leave with a year's worth of trash (including barrels of urinefrom the dry valleys. One carries pee bottles while out in the field. NOTHING is deposited on the ground there to preserve it for future science and because there is essentially no organic material there, but there are bacteria that like in the interstices in the rocks: very unique place, nothing breaks down (mummified seals), it doesn't rain, research to shed light on Mars is conducted here...). All the dry food we'll eat next season, which was bought almost a year ago, will arrive (fresh for sure) as well as everything else they don't want to spend the money to fly here.

The fuel tanker, loaded with 7.5 million gallons of fuel, is sitting out there to refuel the ice breakers, probably the USAP science ship that just pulled in, and then it'll unload the rest into the many mega fuel tanks here in town for the next year's worth of heating and transportation.

So there is now a channel from the open sea all the way (a few miles) into the ice pier. Today the wind picked up from the south and blew most of the chunks of ice out of the channel, so now we actually see the water of McMurdo Sound. Given all the ice, this is a big deal. And now the whales (whales!) are likely to come in to feed. I hear there is a telescope set up in the library upstairs in the laboratory...

This past week I worked two Happy Camper courses. There are far fewer now as most scientists are in the field, but I do think they bring more town people onto the course. For many, getting out for a night of this course is a highlight of their summer. A perspective worth remembering.

It's a lot different around here now. We can run around in light jackets (except for today's wind), the snow has sublimated from the roads, the channel, the snow consistency has softened a lot... Time moves along.

I happen to be the first of our team to leave, the others follow close behind in succession. There are still a few field parties going out, but most are wrapping up their seasons. In a couple weeks the helos stop flying and the need for field safety people quickly falls off. By mid-february, most summer people will be back in Christchurch, soaking up the warmth and vegetation (what a place to return to from down here!). The winterovers are preparing for the transition, while the rest of us discuss post-ice plans. And we often ask each other about coming back next year. Our department will lose 1 or 2 positions based on the completion of a couple projects, but it's too early to really know who will actually return. I certainly want to; we shall see what happens.

Next week two other primary SAR team members (one from the Kiwi part of our team) and I head out to climb a peak for training in the Dry Valleys. YES, I did indeed say CLIMB a peak! It won't be super technical (can you imagine how bad it would be if we needed rescuing!?). I must say I am somewhat lacking in energy given how late it is in the season, but I've been focusing on getting a lot of sleep, and I'm hoping that the location and the activity itself (training, mind you) will provide it's own energy.

Some answers to questions that have filled my inbox, and remain unanswered as I'm more behind than ever. I spent the solstice, Christmas, and New Years on the plateau. I was at the Pole for part of the solstice...cool. Christmas consisted of my putting 3 pieces of milk chocolate each in Joe's boot and Rick's glove, and New Year's comprised the cd movie Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (fun tongue in cheek humor) and some kahlua and mixed with nonfat milk made from a powder. Both days we worked, but that was ok.

No, Kelly, I didn't make any resolutions. Except perhaps, never to miss another check-in call!

Skate skiing. I went to considerable effort to obtain the gear, but have been away so much and so busy otherwise that I've only been out a few times. I don't exactly have it mastered, but I've figured out enough to see how fast and fun it could be. I suspect more time will go into that when I spend a winter in the north again, though I am considering leaving my skis downhere for next year.

No, Mike, I have not wrecked any large machinery, nor have I run over any penguins or squashed anything else of value. Funny how normal is has become to pilot these monsters, the level of comfort one develops despite how exotic and weird something is at first!

So, this will be my last mass mailing from the ice. I suspect I'll write once about peak climbing in NZ and again in late March about Australian rock climbing.

Post-ice plans have not evolved much. Guessing a week in Christchurch to recover, walk around the botanical gardens, eat fresh food and only fresh food, find guidebooks, partners, and formulate a plan. Still thinking 2-3 weeks climbing alpine routes in the Mt Cook area of NZ, then 3-4 weeks in Australia climbing rock in the sun at Arapiles. I do not have partner yet, but it'll work out.

By the way, there are all sorts of jobs available down here; there's something here everyone can do (beyond dishwashing), so let me know if youare curious...

Start with polar.org

Love and safe adventures indoors and out, Susan

South Pole Station, Antarctica, December 12, 2003

2003-12-12T01:39:00.000-07:00

Hi family and friends, old and new, mostly far away,

I hope you all are having a nice holiday and solstice season: not too much stress. In keeping with my solstice letter tradition (which I’m not keeping this year), here is the crucial information I'm sure you've been eagerly awaiting:

Winter solstice occurs on December 21st for those in the Cascades and Sierras, at 11:04pm. For those in the Rockies, it’s on the 22nd at 12:04am. Rejoice in the Return of the Light and the Rebirth of the Sun!

I’ve made it to the South Pole. As we left for our flight here, on the infamous military cargo plane: LC-130 (ski equipped), they thought we might have to boomerang because of the weather at Pole. However, we had enough fuel to fly circles over Pole for an hour to see if the weather would break before we’d have to fly the 3 hours back: the boomerang. Lucky we were.

Upon arrival here we were supposed to switch to a smaller plane to head out to one of the Automated Geophysical Observatory sites that very same afternoon. Anyone with polar experience will immediately recognize that as a plan to, uh, not to be counted upon. That was 3 days ago. We are scheduled to fly this afternoon if the weather at the site clears up and stays clear here. The weather here is fine now.The South Pole is an interesting place. Culturally, at least.

Biologically, it’s not a place. Geographically it’s windy flat white snow surrounded by hundreds and hundreds (or more) square miles of more windy flat white snow. The only difference is that when you stand there, suddenly you are no longer spinning around the Earth’s axis. Because we evolved being used to spinning, we don’t recognize that we are. Those who actually felt it were driven crazy long before they were able to reproduce so their genes did not perpetuate. When you stand on the precise pole you are actually NOT spinning, so the balance function in your brain that cancels out the spin nowmakes you think you are indeed spinning. This makes you dizzy so you have to step back onto the spinning part of our dear planet to not feel like you’re spinning. Odd phenomenon.*

Culturally this place is more what one might expect of Antarctica. It makes McMurdo look like Seattle. There’s the old station: the huge geodesic dome, housing smaller buildings which appear to be little more than modified, orange truck containers (the ones you see on the interstate). It’s the classic South Pole Station, well photographed. The floor is snow, dirty hard snow. There are five holes in the tope of the dome, through which diffused light peeks and moisture escapes, though it appears most of the moisture condenses on the walls in frost and icicles. It’s actually quite surreal. It feels like what a space station might be like, or something out of a sci fi movie. Or maybe some artificial almost-town set up like for a museum scene.

Sound is absorbed. The subdued light, the quiet except for squeaky walking on the snow, the ice crystals and icicles dangling. Someone might go by towing a paper-clad (moisture is not a problem here) bag of flour on a little sled headed to the galley in the New Building. That there is hardly anyone around adds to the strange feeling. Cave-like. Much stuff is stored in here in addition to a variety of facilities. Attached to the Dome are a several long buildings they call “arches” which makes them sound classier than they feel. They are galvanized half-pipes, rather large, and house all kinds of mechanical facilities. They too are covered in hoar frost on the inside and have that same space station feel.

The walkways are grates, both metal (like ski areas) and plastic to manage snow accumulation. Not that is snows much here; it just blows and drifts; all these old buildings are mostly buried. Between the arch buildings are little narrow tunnels, emphasizing the whole underground surreal feeling.

This morning I was shown the tunnels from the galvanized tower (the “beer can”) of the new station over to join into one of the arches. These tunnels are lined with all kinds of heavily insulated pipes; very industrial. When there’s a heinous storm in mid-winter here, one can avoid actually going out into it: a real safety issue.

The Dome/arches is like no where else, at least that I’ve ever been. Very unique. When you go inside the container-buildings, everything is different. All the doors here (only some in McMurdo) are full-on freezer doors. And like McMurdo, the buildings have entry-rooms (never locked; for emergency escape from being outside) before you get into the actual building. They buildings are quite warm, cozy, and occupied; quite the contrast to the outside. Low ceilings add to the cave-like feeling.

The interiors of the buildings are well decorated. Anyone who doubts our psychological connection to plants and animals need only observe the volume of realistic looking artificial plants, photos of plants and landscapes, plastic plants stuck in the snow behind a little garden-type fence in the snow under the Dome, a realistic fake-fish tank with ‘fish’ swimming around, and even a very life-like looking stuffed animal Golden Retriever lying on the couch (startling).

McMurdo is well decorated with landscape and plant photos and artificial plants, but not as much as this place! Then you might also notice some of the posters. One reminds folks to get their time sheets in promptly. It informs you that “Every day your time sheet is late, God kills a kitten. Please, think of the kittens”. Sad-faced kittens, one running from two strange tiny robots, emphasize the point. Then in one of the bathrooms is a poster, commercially produced and humorously illustrated, advocating wiping one’s asshole (using that specific word) at the necessary time. It elaborates on the social benefits of such behavior and emphasizes how little time and effort it takes. The home page for the station website includes a countdown of not only how many more days the station is open (for summer), but also the number of remaining hours and minutes. Hmmm.

Yup, an interesting place. Strange.

Can really see how people who have been here awhile must have very intense mixed feelings about the eventual loss of the Dome and moving into the much more comfortable (higher ceilings, big windows in the galley…) new elevated station, which I believe will eventually house everything, at least everything that needs to be inside. And to think of wintering over down here; darkness and incredible cold for months. Intense. Not enough time here to get a real sense of the people. About 200 here at Pole, 1150 at McMurdo.Water is very tight down here. They melt snow and showers are limited to 2 minutes twice a week.

McMurdo desalinates seawater and they don’t seem to care much about water use.

The new station will be enormous and is big even at this stage. The Dome is being drifted in so the new complex is up about 10’ on steel posts. The wind scours underneath so it’s not expected to drift in over the decades. They are eventually going to fully move out of the Dome and take it down and off the continent (back to the US, like everything else). Everything here is flown in. Everything; all in the name of being the scientific leader of the world.

Another massive project underway is the South Pole Traverse. A snow-road for heavy machinery is being built all 800 or so miles to the pole. It crosses ice shelf shear zones, crevasses, a steep long glacier to get through the Transantarctic Mountain Range, and every year the shear zone moves a bit more, opening up new crevasses. They blow up the thick snow bridges over the crevasses and then fill in the crevasse with all the snow. Someone is my dept goes along with them to assist and to keep them out of trouble.

Anyway, they plan to use this road, scheduled to be completed by end of next summer, to haul in construction materials so they can free up the planes to support science. The drive is expected to take 20 days out and 10 back. The scale of projects here is astonishing.

This is from yesterday: In 45 minutes I have plans to meet with the two AGO guys for our photo shoot at the ceremonial South Pole. They are into helping me get my headstand photo, which should be entertaining. As I’m only going from building to building, I can wear sneakers around here so don’t have to deal with the mega-hot (when indoors) boots that make it difficult to get into a handstand because of their weight. So in sneakers, I should be able to pull this off. I hope it’s not windy.

The ceremonial pole is only about 70 meters from the geographic pole. The geographic pole slowly moves over time (which is why noting the year of the declination reading on a map is theoretically relevant). That plus the movement of the ice sheet, which is super thick here (many thousands of feet), makes it easier to just mark the current location with a post topped by a benchmark with, among other things, yin and yang (!) on it. They move it every year on New Year’s Day to its current location (which has already been determined and flagged off). They leave the official pole and flags from the 12 Antarctic Treaty nations in one place. The flags surround the pole in a semi-circle, and are placed so that to get all the flags behind the short pole and it’s shiny mirror globe on top, you just also happen to include the new station in your photo, not the Great White Expanse. Politics even at the farthest reaches of our little planet. We are the only country with a presence in every time zone in the world. Interesting.

It’s cold here. McMurdo is getting to be above freezing… a real treat, while this place is today –11 F. I hear it’s never been over something like 7 degrees F here. Brrr.

It’s also exceedingly dry. The big hazard here, despite the cold, is fire. If one did start, not only would everything go because of the aridity and wind, but people would then be left without shelter. They say that if the power went out in the winter, they would have four hours before everything started to freeze… forever. There is zero transportation in or out of here for many months. A scary thought; no doubt they have quite a lot of structures in place to keep the power running as well for survival (a huge stash of tents, shovels, and food/stoves?) as if the buildings burned down.

It’s really good to be out of McMurdo. I’ve been in my mid-season slump, though a better phrase would be mid-season “non-high” because it’s still awesome to be down here. As some of you know I spent 11 days waiting to get flown up to Mt Erebus, an active volcano right there on Ross Island (McMurdo location). There are all kinds off interesting ice caves, the crater and lava pool to check out from the hut once one has acclimatized at the lower camp. I was scheduled to spend two nights at each with some volcanologists/geologists, but was pulled out before getting to the interesting part (the hut area). This was very disappointing; however it was a good decision on my boss’s part based on tight scheduling and this project. We have a lot going on.

So hanging around town, working, but not at the same engaging level (or outdoors, which is quite significant) as normal, getting sucked into the town social vortex, wore on me. No time on the sea ice, which is on it’s way out, which means camps are closing, the ice runway will be moved, etc. No wildlife in awhile either.

Also I wasn’t psyched about this project (maybe I’m still not), which was not supposed to include Pole time (yea that it has!). It was NO pole time, and 3 weeks of very cold white flat time: shoveling out equipment and taking weather observations 3x/day… yee haa. Accompanying this project (as safety manager: altitude, cold, injuries) is a form of paying one’s dues in my dept. Plus, I’d miss a two day Christmas break, several Sundays (our day off), and esp. New Year’s: the big festival here (music and I’m not sure what else; an outdoor gala of sorts) with another 2 days off.

When I get back, I’ll only get one day off despite having missed about 6. But we get out of town unlike many people. We also get out of town to a wide variety of sites. I dare not complain, (at least in public!) At least I’ll get my mail sent to me with resupplies. So, I was not having the best time of the season. Getting some time here has helped a lot. We come back through Pole en route to the next two sites. We have no time planned here at Pole, but we know what that doesn’t mean. Let me know if there’s any South Pole paraphernalia you just can’t live without. South Pole Station chapstick anyone? SPF 15, and it’s cheap.

There are “official” (looking) South Pole Station rubber stamps that you can use in your passport (also for McMurdo), which is fun. One is also the one they actually use to for USPS mail.

I left town mid-season, but when I return in early January, it’ll be almost the end, only another 5 or so weeks left. I’m sure the energy and topics of conversation will be different… FLASH it’ll be over. So I’m trying to be very aware of that so not surprised and wondering where the season went. When I’m shoveling and shoveling and inventorying stuff at the AGO sites in very cold and heinous wind chill, I’ll remind myself to enjoy it as the season is about to end. Then I’ll have to go to NZ to climb peaks and then to Australia to climb rock in a t-shirt in the sun. Darn.

Later: Mission Accomplished! I did it! Phew. Managed the headstand at the Ceremonial South Pole. Having reached my goal for my Antarctica Adventure, I am now free to leave (bummer). Must say I was a bit nervous about it because of the minor stink I’ve been making about it for 4 months now. Pressure was on. I knew if I failed in my attempt, I’d never get sponsorship again* and would lose all my friends.

I almost feel like I cheated because I didn’t do it in my big boots (not that that was the goal). I had assumed I’d need to wear them to stay warm enough here (with the blood all going to my head!), not realizing that the ceremonial pole is close to the buildings. I practiced in them and had figured out another way to get up, but hadn’t wired it yet. But I did it well enough. The crux was finding a flat spot near the pole. Got some help finding my balance when I got up, but was able to hold it for awhile and come down smoothly. Joe has a good digital camera and took a d-photo which he’ll send to me so I can clog your inbox with it.

Gotta have goals.

Well, I’m starting to get cold feet about sending off this excessive and elongated blabbering. But as usual I’ll send it anyway. Have a wonderful holiday season; be sure to get outside a lot!

Love and the sun circling high overhead like a buzzard, Susan

*Yet more bs from sd

headed off for Erebus, quick note

2003-12-03T01:36:00.000-07:00

Hi All,

Well, it looks like I might be headed out for the long-ago mentioned volcano, after 13 days of being stalled by weather (and a weekend). However, of course, one never knows, until she is actually disembarking from the aircraft, whether she will actually reach the destination. The first two flights of our group have taken off, and it's looking promising.

I am more relieved than I thought I'd be. It's way past time for me to get out of town, back in the field. And I've been getting sucked into the social scene vortex; it's fun on one level, but not why I came to Antarctica. So glad to be going. If it didn't (doesn't) go today, I will lose it to another because of what I'm scheduled for next (running out of time). I really want to get up on this mountain although it's unlikely I'll have the time I'd like to check out the ice caves and all.

So, hopefully you will not hear from me for 4-5 days. Maybe I'll get stuck up there (heartbreaking). A day or two after I'm supposed to get back I head out to do some less than glamourous (paying one's dues in my dept) work at some Automated Geophysical Sites up on the plateau of east Antarctica. Cold, high, white, flat, yee haa for two weeks (plus, depending on weather...).

If I'm lucky I'll get to acclimitize at Pole (yeah, the south pole, where my goal is that headstand) for a few days ahead of time, but if I get stuck on Erebus, that might count for my acclimitization.

Anyway, you will be free of my messages for a few days at least. I hope. You hope!

Be well, and eat lots of good chocolate.

Love to all, Susan