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

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

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

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

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

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

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.