A different season on 'the ice'

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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