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

Happy New Year to all,

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

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

Thanks, Mike C---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and salad, Susan