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

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