Hola amigos/as y familia,
Happy Halloween. I hope you are well.
I am in Punta Arenas, Chile on my way to Antarctica.
Funny how thrashing about with my Spanish and planning for time on the ice erodes my plan to focus mostly on my home-area life for the next few years. Traveling and working in amazing places has a way of thoroughly engaging and challenging me. But then again, so does climbing and other adventuring, just in a different way. However, my rough plans are to be home only around 8 months a year anyway, so it's not a matter of one type of lifestyle or the other. So much to experience and learn in this crazy life!
The company leadership is setting the "right" tone and saying the "right" things for the most part as well as making us feel welcome. Off to a good start. Interesting to learn a bit more about the politics involved in the Antarctic Treaty and how it's been managed over the decades. Am appreciating a view of the ice from a non-governmental/corporate perspective (not to imply that the NSF-USAP has been dishonest).
My ice background has made an incredible tremendous difference in what it feels like to start with this company. To understand the language, systems, the realities of working down there and to know what questions to ask has made this much less stressful entry than in 2003. Yee haa!
I feel at home with our team partly because I already know 3 folks from Exum and a couple others from my time in McMurdo. Our staff represents about 15 countries so it's been fun learning about different cultures and deciphering all the different dialects, accents, and phrases.
Speaking of which*, astonishingly, much of my meager Spanish has awakened after 8 years of hibernation. I love getting to actually interact a bit with patient locals and trade language-teaching with some of our Chilean staff. *ha
This company, "Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions", has several components, one of which is wholesaling Vinson trips to private guide services (such as Alpine Ascents) who then get their own clients, have their own guides, etc.
ALE also owns ANI, which "retails" Vinson climbs directly to climbers. As ALE-ANI guides we also act as rangers on the mountain, maintaining the fixed ropes, coordinating the radio communications, reminding groups of Treaty environmental requirements, relaying weather forecasts, managing the basecamp from which small aircraft (Twin Otters from the same company as the USAP uses) fly people back and forth to the main camp Patriot Hills. Seems to be the best company to guide Vinson for. This year I think we have about 135 Vinson climbers, making it the most popular trip though skiing the last latitude degree to the South Pole is also popular.
[Mt. Vinson, 16,050' high, is the reason so many people are willing to shell out $35 grand to be cold: simply because it is the highest summit on the continent, one of the "Seven Summits". Climbing the Seven Summits has become a popular goal for those of, uh, "significant" means and little time (or... skills).]
The stories that I've been hearing about some clients and what they'll hide in order to summit (frostbite, injuries, medical conditions) are a little daunting even though this company regularly turns down potential clients (who then show up on the mountain with other companies). I'm amazed how many highly-publicized "solo" ski trips have made to Pole... with a photographer or even a GUIDE along (even hauling the person part way behind a snowmobile). The photographer and/or guide somehow never show up in the photos and video distributed to the media and sponsors. How naive I am: it really should, however, be of no surprise that people bring their "stuff" with them no matter how far afield they venture. As you can well imagine, stories abound.
Patriot Hills, in addition to serving Vinson climbers, also supports other ANI trips such as people being flown to the USAP South Pole Station for a 3-hour tour and t-shirt purchasing session, and people skiing to Pole from the edge of the continent: LONG hard trips. People even fly in for the marathon run. ALE's Patriot Hills also supports numerous other private trips and governmental projects that need logistical support (some projects are science: in fact the USAP occasionally contracts with ALE).
There are only 2 penguin clients this year, so I won't be working that trip. (Also, no Ellsworth Mtns clients either). Right now I'm on for two Vinson climbs then basecamp manager, but with the changes of plans based on weather-delayed-aircraft, I know not to "expect" that to actually happen. Whatever I'm assigned, I'm sure it'll be fun and I'll learn a lot.
Patriot Hills maxes out at about 80-90 people and has a reputation as serving the best food in Antarctica. People sleep in normal tents but on nicer mattresses and there's some sort of shower facility for limited use. Laundry is sent out on the weekly flights from the large plane, the Russian Illushin-76 that ALE contracts with for flights to/from the ice. Overall it sounds much like any other large field camp I've been to, minus the science.
The idea of real recreational activities such as skiing and climbing being not only legitimate, but the goal is a bit of a mental shift... a refreshing shift. Skis as part of our work gear! (even if just for slogging around upon) There aren't much in the way of rules around personal recreation, but of course there are heavy expectations in the way in which it is undertaken... for good reason. Time and energy will the issues around recreating. It appears the Norwegian cook staff have brought kite skiing down here; I am looking forward to seeing that.
I'll spend nearly all my time, however, at Vinson basecamp with about 15 other guides (most of whom are on the mtn at any given time), and a cook(!).
I don't fly onto the ice for another week so have some time to sort out which of the local dark chocolates is worthy of taking to the ice. How is it that I visit countries that don't "do" chocolate very well?
Would you believe there's a climbing gym here in Punta?! 'Climbing gym' is a relative term, but it has half the rules and twice the character of any gym I've heard of. They get points for creativity and resourcefulness; definitely a kick... and a good work-out.
My email messages will wait for me on my Yahoo acct so feel free to send whatever you'd like, especially holiday letters with attachments, photos of you with your sweetie, family, pets, friends, and whatever your current adventures may be: re-doing the kitchen, surviving the holiday season, or getting out and about in whatever capacity. !Muchas Gracias!
On the ice I will be able to receive two emails a week to the ALE account and send out four; beyond which I will be charged. There's no internet access down there; the connection is very slow and there is only one computer for staff email anyway.
[Incidentally, I am on Facebook. I'm trying to find someone to post updates I send from the ice to this blog and then put a little note on my Facebook profile that there's an update here. If I cannot get anything posted while on the ice, I'll do so when I get home in early January.]
Love and Icy Breezes, Susan
The company I'm working for:
http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html
Photo of Vinson basecamp:
http://exposedplanet.com/index.php?showimage=220
Of course, YouTube for Vinson basecamp etc etc:
http://noolmusic.com/youtube_videos/to_at_mount_vinson_base_camp_in_antarctica.php
A 2005 science expedition that flew in from McMurdo-Pole on the planes (LC-130) used over there. This year no NSF-USAP groups and only two science projects (other countries) out of Patriot Hills. But it does give one a sense of Patriot Hills, despite not being a recreational trip which is the vast majority of ALE's business:
http://mitchell-antarctica.blogspot.com/2008/01/patriot-hills.html
pbase.com/antarctic_suze photos won't be updated till January.
Humorous Spanish-to-English translation of the week: seen on a box of condoms while waiting in line at the cashier in the grocery store. That particular type of condom was described as "Sensible".
I had to think about that one for a moment and concluded that it's probably more accurate than what they actually meant.
;-)
November 01, 2008
October 24, 2008
Guiding climbers in Antarctica: something different
Hi All,
I hope this finds you savoring the cool fall days and enjoying the crunchy leaves. It's been wonderful to be around for this much of autumn for a change.
After five seasons working as a field instructor for the US Antarctic Program, I'm going south from an entirely different angle and for a much shorter season. I'm going to be guiding climbers on Vinson (one of the Seven Summits: continents), other peaks, and potentially penguin-watchers for a private company called Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (partly British). I hear many of the clients are European. Can you believe it costs $35,000 USD to climb Vinson! And with the economy as it is...?!
http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html Click on Adventure Network International, the company they bought. The Ellsworth Mtn Safari sounds like a lot more fun than Vinson; hopefully I'll get a variety of trip types.
I'll be flying through and training in Punta Arenas, Chile and working out of a large camp called Patriot Hills near the Ellsworth Mtns and Ronne Ice Shelf (Weddell Sea). Patriot Hills is much more like what one imagines when thinking of Antarctica than McMurdo is: a lot like a major USAP field camp such as WAIS. I'll be sleeping in a normal tent for the whole time which is another good reason not to be down there for six months again!
I'm looking forward to seeing a new part of the continent and a different field operation. A nice feeling to be going into their scene with so much Antarctic field experience.
They run a "Last Degree" ski expedition on which they ski the last latitude degree to the South Pole. I hope to work that trip and then get to visit my friends at Pole! That would be a kick after skiing across the Great White Expanse for however long ("Look! More snow!") One friend already promised to sneak me and my clients fresh cookies ;-)
I'll only be down for about 10 weeks which will be nice as it will allow me to work a winter ecology (and ski, avalanche) course here in the Tetons for Prescott College in January. I am looking forward to getting back to my roots and developing additional winter employment options, esp locally. I must say, however, I have mixed feelings about coming directly home from the ice rather than spending time in South America...
I'm not done with the USAP and expect to return hopefully next year as a mountaineer/guide contracted by specific science groups for the duration of their project. These would be shorter contracts and would allow for more guiding for ALE as well as home work and play.
I don't think I'll be able to post the occasional update on this blog because we'll have such limited bandwidth that normal websites won't be accessible. Because this Antarctic program is so much simpler than the enormous and complex USAP, I will have far less to expound upon so will write short messages as per last year.
This will be more the classic Antarctic experience... I'll be in the field the whole time to varying degrees.
I recently enjoyed my first fall climbing trip in years, albeit a short one. Spent almost two weeks in the Indian Creek and Moab (Utah) area enjoying delightful and challenging sandstone crack climbing. Visited with several friends in Moab, mountain biked a couple times on the famous Moab slickrock, and overall much enjoyed being out car camping and climbing again. I so love the simplicity of the lifestyle.
I hope you have a wonderful end of the year and I look forward to hearing from you sooner or later :-)
Love and Wild Winds, Suz
I hope this finds you savoring the cool fall days and enjoying the crunchy leaves. It's been wonderful to be around for this much of autumn for a change.
After five seasons working as a field instructor for the US Antarctic Program, I'm going south from an entirely different angle and for a much shorter season. I'm going to be guiding climbers on Vinson (one of the Seven Summits: continents), other peaks, and potentially penguin-watchers for a private company called Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions (partly British). I hear many of the clients are European. Can you believe it costs $35,000 USD to climb Vinson! And with the economy as it is...?!
http://www.antarctic-logistics.com/index.html Click on Adventure Network International, the company they bought. The Ellsworth Mtn Safari sounds like a lot more fun than Vinson; hopefully I'll get a variety of trip types.
I'll be flying through and training in Punta Arenas, Chile and working out of a large camp called Patriot Hills near the Ellsworth Mtns and Ronne Ice Shelf (Weddell Sea). Patriot Hills is much more like what one imagines when thinking of Antarctica than McMurdo is: a lot like a major USAP field camp such as WAIS. I'll be sleeping in a normal tent for the whole time which is another good reason not to be down there for six months again!
I'm looking forward to seeing a new part of the continent and a different field operation. A nice feeling to be going into their scene with so much Antarctic field experience.
They run a "Last Degree" ski expedition on which they ski the last latitude degree to the South Pole. I hope to work that trip and then get to visit my friends at Pole! That would be a kick after skiing across the Great White Expanse for however long ("Look! More snow!") One friend already promised to sneak me and my clients fresh cookies ;-)
I'll only be down for about 10 weeks which will be nice as it will allow me to work a winter ecology (and ski, avalanche) course here in the Tetons for Prescott College in January. I am looking forward to getting back to my roots and developing additional winter employment options, esp locally. I must say, however, I have mixed feelings about coming directly home from the ice rather than spending time in South America...
I'm not done with the USAP and expect to return hopefully next year as a mountaineer/guide contracted by specific science groups for the duration of their project. These would be shorter contracts and would allow for more guiding for ALE as well as home work and play.
I don't think I'll be able to post the occasional update on this blog because we'll have such limited bandwidth that normal websites won't be accessible. Because this Antarctic program is so much simpler than the enormous and complex USAP, I will have far less to expound upon so will write short messages as per last year.
This will be more the classic Antarctic experience... I'll be in the field the whole time to varying degrees.
I recently enjoyed my first fall climbing trip in years, albeit a short one. Spent almost two weeks in the Indian Creek and Moab (Utah) area enjoying delightful and challenging sandstone crack climbing. Visited with several friends in Moab, mountain biked a couple times on the famous Moab slickrock, and overall much enjoyed being out car camping and climbing again. I so love the simplicity of the lifestyle.
I hope you have a wonderful end of the year and I look forward to hearing from you sooner or later :-)
Love and Wild Winds, Suz
April 30, 2008
Kilauea Volcano Exploration
I sat on a ledge less than 50m from the action. Orange blobs of lava shot starward as ocean waves crashed into the hot lava, flowing out of sight but reflected in the tremendous steam/gas clouds rising and roiling above this violent meeting of molten earth and super-heated sea. Stunning. The photos show orange streaks, but what I saw was the actual blobs flying, some of which trailed mini-plumes of gases like meteors with streaming tails.
The sounds were vividly alive: waves crashing, lava hissing, and blobs taping lightly as they landed in front of me and faded into blackness.
I headed to Mt. Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii in search of hot lava, wanting to experience it up close and personal. I’d been "turned on" to live volcanoes a couple years ago on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.
I rented a hatchback and lived in it at free campgrounds, cooking farmers’ market fare on my campstove. I enjoyed a relatively cheap trip with maximum flexibility and spontaneity; totally my style.
The exact locations where lava flows on the surface change almost daily, and officials imply that more places are legally closed than actually are. I understand the importance of this for the non-outdoorsy public; however, it required a lot more work on my part.
It was a sleuthing project involving talking to as many people as possible, assessing their reliability, comparing maps (some of which aren’t current due to lava destroying and creating), learning to interpret the USGS daily volcano report, figuring out which laws were enforced and how, which sites and access points are high profile, and trying to read between the lines coming from the mouths of well-trained Park Service rangers.
The action this year is outside of Volcanoes National Park. The lava flows in hidden tubes on its way to the ocean entry points where the official viewpoint is located. It flows down a hill through a defunct housing development; only an island of forest and a couple ruins remain. To safely manage the public, the state Civil Defense provides a well-guarded official veiw-point quite a distance from the ocean entry points, open limited hours.
Being comfortable walking on loose uneven surfaces has it’s advantages, allowing one to easily use more distant access points: less obvious to law enforcement.
Choosing a legal parking spot within the park, I hiked in black clothing (camo) across an older lava flow for 2.5 hours out of the Park to get to the large tree-island in the defunct subdivision. I skirted the lower edge of the trees, admiring the many “tree molds”: holes in the lava from where it had surrounded trees before burning them up. A fleet of helicopters on flight-seeing tours, research tasks, and occasionally law enforcement demanded attention. I was trespassing and probably also breaking some other broad-brush law designed to bust terrorists like me within a quarter mile of the flow.
The increasing smells of gases, tree soot, and the cooling lava itself informed me that I was approaching the current smoldering flow. When the lava had recently flowed on the surface, the wind blew the gases and heat into the adjacent forest, scorching it and providing me fairly easy, if hot and sooty, uphill travel. More importantly, the trees provided cover for the increased number helicopters flying close above as I was adjacent to the steamy flow. I hid behind trees, dashed from cover to cover, and did my best to avoid being seen. Most pilots are renegades not likely to bust me, but I sure wasn’t willing to take any chances.
I wanted to cross the flow to confirm that there wasn’t any surface exposure along the other side. Fortunately there were pauses in the helicopter flights, so I went for it, hustling across fresh lava, some of which was nasty loose a’a lava, for my first time. It was an exciting dash through the gases along a rough and circuitous route. At certain spots the intense smell and heat suddenly increased, instantly turning me in another direction, my pulse rising as I increased my exposure time. I made it across with the same cotton-mouth feeling I get when leading hard routes!
The rainforest-thick vegetation and that awful, loose, sharp a’a lava made for a heinous descent along the far edge (ok, sandals didn’t help, but at least the socks did). My dash back across at the base of the hill, hours later, was much more relaxed because the hot lava seemed to run deeper under the surface and I had a better feel for the risk.
In hopes of finding a lava “break-out” near where it emerged from the deep, I prepared for long hikes from a basecamp into a closed area. I planned three nights to give myself enough time to try different routes in my quest. The campsite lacked water, so ahead of time I hiked in to cache four gallons, get a feel for the terrain, where exactly the trail closure began, and the amount of law enforcement coverage. Because I would have to have a camping permit, they would know I was there; what else would I be doing there for that much time?
Later I backpacked in for the blitz. Knowing I needed a lot of darkness, I went to “sleep” at 5:30pm for my 9:30pm alpine start. The moon was so bright I didn’t use my headlamp for a long time; much easier to see distant terrain silhouettes.
When I arrived at the edge of the old flows at the base of Pu‘u O‘o (a small peak along the rift ridge and source of current flow; in the photos), I was lured by the promising orange glow in the gas clouds arising from top of the ridge, appearing to reflect the hot red stuff just below. I headed straight up there, only to find that my speed dropped dramatically as I discovered what the locals call “shelly” lava, “breakable crust” in ski lingo. I felt like I was moving fairly quickly but realized that although my body was in constant motion, I really wasn’t making much actual progress. Evaluating the surface failure potential of each step, recovering balance from collapses, and dodging the weakest surfaces made for a highly circuitous, inefficient route.
As I ascended, the orange glow shifted location and I realized it had never been coming from Pu‘u O‘o, but from the break-out a good distance on the other side. I started to traverse to the far side where I knew the lava began its descent to the sea. This meant going into the gas plume, which had disadvantages… eyes stinging, a coughy feeling in my throat… potentially much worse. Depending on how intensely the wind blew, I alternated between the traverse toward the compelling orange glow, and bailing for the trees, irritatingly out of sight a mile+, where I might(??) be able to travel faster and in better air, but it would be an even longer approach (miles).
Now the rock had changed, becoming talus that frequently disintegrated, from decades of the acidic plume, when stepped upon. Slow! But finally I could see the bright orange of a lava break-out… in the far distance. At one point the glare intensified as the lava appeared to be shooting up out of the fissure. Beautiful even at a distance. Argh! How I wanted to be there!
It was getting rather obvious that I wouldn’t have time to get there and back by daylight, esp since after daybreak, I would have to take an off-trail, much slower route back the last few miles so I couldn’t be seen on the closed trail.
Eventually I made it to the trees where I found forest too dense to travel in for daytime cover (damn). I began the long traverse back on the old but solid lava, following the highly irregular lava-forest edge (circuitous, yet again), back around to where it intersected the trail I left to approach the mountain. Clouds obscured the moon, rain didn’t help, and in the faint beam of my light, I saw a hazard I hadn’t yet encountered: volcanic ash partly covering deep “earth cracks” in the underlying lava-rock, like snow covering crevasses. Hmm.
An hour after daylight I made it back to camp. Later I hiked out, having accepted that it is just too far to access the break-outs from this side. Damn! But it had been a good effort; appreciated getting a real feel for the different kinds of lava terrain here.
From a scientist on Mt Erebus, I had a name of a local volcanologist who invited me to go into the field with him and a class. I learned a lot about assessing active volcanic risks and without the fear of getting busted, thanks to Ken’s permit. It turned out that I was far more cautious than I needed to be that earlier day (no surprise).
Around 4am, Ken led us out to admire the lava “ocean entries” in their illuminescent glory. We sat admiring the flying-lava-bomb show through sunrise, at which point I could see large chunks of fresh lava floating in the water, orange in the middle and steaming heavily before cooling and disappearing. Floating steaming lava! How crazy is that?!
Soon it was time to head to a small skylight (hole in lava tube ceiling) radiating such intense heat/gases that we approached from upwind. Ken took samples of the dangling lava-cicles with a steel cup mounted on a long metal rod.
Through the skylight, you could see the flowing incandescence down in the lava tube. We threw in rocks to see the lava surface and flow rate, which otherwise aren’t discernible because of the brightness. It was amazing to watch the rocks gently received in the viscous flow, maybe flowing 4-5mph? A head-sized rock would smoothly submerge or nearly, while smaller ones rafted along peacefully in the 1800F degree flow out of sight.
On another early morning I returned to this same ocean entry. The site looked different, further out into the ocean. New lava had created new land, some of which might later break off and fall into the sea on its loose base.
I moved in pretty close, enough so that when a big wave sent a lot of incandescent blobs overhead, I reflexively went into the mode learned on the Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus to avoid getting hit. A couple tiny blobs landed nearby… a bit too close for comfort. Very interesting location: alive and dynamic, commanding of great respect.
Then I saw it, slow moving orange nearby, intensely bright at the tip… an actual break-out, what I’d been hoping to encounter. And better yet, it was below a meter-high ledge that provided protection from the fiery heat as the lava creaked and popped and slowly oozed and crept my way. Absolutely mesmerizing. And the smell of the lava itself was even more intense than usual: a sharp metallic smell, one that stayed on my skin for a short while afterward. Fascinating to see how the fantastic shapes of cooled lava form, and how irregularly it flows, sometimes stopping in one place only to break through somewhere else where it had been slowly cooling. Clearly a lot of pressure behind the flow.
The sound alone was captivating. It truly creaked and snapped and popped and groaned; strands of glass stretching and breaking on the surface of the slow-mo flow. So alive, earth and rock being born right in front of me, uncontrollable on the big scale; the very tip of a direct conduit through the crust deep down into the mantle of the earth. ‘Twas a magical, encompassing, wildly multi-sensory experience, one I am most definitely not ‘over’.
In daylight the surface of much of this pahoehoe flow might have appeared dark, but it was in it’s vivid orange glory at this hour. It was so intensely hot that I tied a bandana around my face and worried a bit about my camera.
Many of you know that my sole goal in going to Kilauea was to stick a stick into hot lava. Finally I found the real thing, but WHERE WAS MY STICK?! How easily I could have brought one to that site, argh! Life is about improvisation, right? As the luscious lava creaked and glided just below my ledge, I quickly reached over with a rock to bang on the hot orange tip of the flow. Amazingly I had to whack it pretty hard to dent the surface. Fun!
That half hour was distinctly the highlight, but definitely not representative of my overall experience.
I met a really cool biologist who works on alien species in the Park. He had done his thesis near where I live with a scientist I know from Antarctica. Later we went for a hike and I heard about the issues, complications biological and political… as well as general local info and lore. The summary is that Hawaii has been as destroyed as anywhere on this planet because of invasive species wreaking havoc; quite a story, and much energy goes into minimizing further damage. I helped him walk his dogs in the rain and had dinner with him a couple times. It was nice to have a friend there, someone to answer questions and process my experience with.
The current volcanological excitement in Hawai’i is the recently-started gaseous eruption of a vent in the main crater on Mt. Kilauea called Halema’uma’u (got that?). It’s spewing tons of ash and toxic gases that caused the Park to close when the winds changed. Thousands of people, mostly in tour buses, had to leave. I was on a hike that day in a remote part of the Park so didn’t find out until I saw the note on my car. I was far from the gas plume, in great air at the far end of the road. I put the note back in its bag and under the windshield wiper where I’d found it, and made dinner at the back of the car. Ended up sleeping in the car right there, having concocted a reasonable story in the highly unlikely event I was found.
The next day I left the Park and went down to the eastern coast, to delightful steam caves mentioned in the guidebook I borrowed from the local library. There I met a local who directed me to a coastal state park where I could safely camp for free.
On a walk the next morning I discovered that wild coconuts do not look like the fibrous brown ones you see in a store, and that they are very difficult to open by hand. Soon I met a Hawaiian who answered my questions about how to tell if a coconut was ripe and how open one. Imua was super kind and friendly in an innocent way; a treat to hang out with. After awhile I followed him to his house where we used his giant hook to pull down coconuts. He showed me how to chop them open with a machete: MUCH easier than the rock-bang and wrestle-peel method. We spent some time opening them, drinking the “milk” inside, and getting into the ‘meat’, which was soft and slippery, a lot different than I’d seen; tastier too. It was really fun to see how coconuts develop, to get a sense of them. They were brought by the early Polynesians, but are not an overtaking, destructive introduced species.
Later I went to another coastal park and found lava tubes long enough to require two headlamps. If one died, you’d have a very difficult time trying to get back out.
Lava tubes are everywhere and super interesting; I quickly learned to always carry leather gloves and at least one headlamp in my pack. [As a precaution I made a habit of leaving my pack clearly visible from the air (when possible) just outside the cave I was exploring.] Some caves sport a variety of features created by the river of lava that once flowed within and the tremendous convective gas currents rushing across the lava and out through skylights. Over the centuries after the lava flow ceases, various microbes colonize the tubes. In some tubes you can stand and walk quite easily for a hundreds meters or more, sometimes dodging roots, maybe seeing one of the blind cricket species that evolved there, or slime molds, bacterial coatings, and minerals deposits. It’s important not to touch the features.
I was pretty motivated to check out all the variations and channels I could reasonably fit into in all the lavas tubes I found throughout my explorations. Always the question: to squeeze through and hope it will widen into another wide area? To take the risk of having to shimmy and crawl backwards, clothing snagging on everything, because the tube stayed small? Even a casual practice of yoga has many benefits.
It took me awhile to understand how the Park Service manages visitors and lava tubes. They consistently but very subtly discourage tube exploration, subtly in order to avoid drawing attention to the caves. This is for very good reason because of the fragility of the features alone (never mind the safety issues). The Park has developed a huge, nearly featureless tube through which thousands of people walk every year. In the smaller caves or narrower channels in the backcountry, I didn’t see evidence of exploration. At times I even had to temporarily move rocks to worm my way through.
One cave ended at the cliffs above the ocean, tall basalt cliffs upon which the waves slam so hard they make the rock you’re sitting on at the edge actually vibrate. The first time I felt that I almost dropped my camera while leaping away.
Anyway, big waves sent water pouring through unseen cracks in the roof of the cave I was in, but it flowed out through other cracks.
Then around the corner in a tight chamber I came upon… old human bones. Startling.
It was a burial site, of which I later learned there are many. The very incomplete skeleton was accompanied by a bit of wood ash and glass beads near the head area. The bones looked quite friable.
Much to wonder about. Who? Circumstances? When?
Deep in that tight dark cave, alone, I definitely considered the implications of disturbing (by simply being there) such a site. Hawaiian religion is alive and well; what did the volcano goddess Pele think? I didn’t touch anything nor take any pictures.
Later that day, after yet another really interesting cave and time to think about the burial site, I returned to take a more clear inventory of what I saw, wanting to remember it well.
Eventually I caught wind of the Kazumura Cave, the longest lava tube on Earth, some 40 miles, steep overall, 5 centuries old, and heavily researched as far as lava tubes go.
I paid $20 cash for a private four-hour tour through a mile long section of this cave. The guide was a guy my age living with his parents in a rural rainforest housing development over this lava tube.
Harry and his parents are absolute characters, the ultimate Mom & Pop scene. They bought the land and as they hand-cleared a place for a house, they stumbled upon an opening to this amazing cave. They educated themselves and developed it minimally with a heavy emphasis on preservation of the delicate features, some of which are very rare. Lava-falls limit how far one can easily travel up or down the cave, and they have a locked gate at their entrance, a response to vandalism.
Their tour business isn’t strictly “legal” because the cave doesn’t officially exist, or does it?… Ambiguity surrounds ownership and liability: agencies making silly and contradictory laws over who has rights, or simply ignoring caves altogether to avoid liability. But it clearly exists in the scientific world; it even has bits of marked survey tape along the walls as reference points.
The business has no real website, no email, no real marketing. The family is very protective of the cave and won’t allow groups of young kids in. These folks aren’t exactly the most, uh, “diplomatic” or “professional” in talking to would-be cave explorers who have certain expectations. Their stories are rather entertaining.
Hawaii seems to draw a lot of “independent, alternative” types, much like Alaskans but less hardy. Harry and his mom Ellouise were so unusual, opinionated, friendly, and chatty that I stayed another hour.5 just to listen.
I highly recommend the tour. Despite being very critical of academia, Harry has learned an impressive amount of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, and fluid dynamics. He has spent untold days studying the cave and consulting with endless numbers of experts who have helped him figure out how the formations were created and identifying the different biological features. I didn’t catch everything he said, but I learned a lot and had a ton of fun anyway.
A couple mongooses and even a wild pig (both extremely destructive aliens) long ago found their way into the cave… but not back out. We saw their remains, and even the outline of the pig’s body on the floor where he lied down for the last time. Wild!
Throughout the trip I’d been scoping out the details for a stealth approach of the Halema‘uma‘u crater, that new eruptive site that caused the park closure. A webcam and other instruments from the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, overlooking the crater, keep careful watch of the eruption. Someone is on duty all night, discretion is advised. I developed a plan: a parking place and approach other than the obvious sneak-access favored by most scofflaws (locals).
Fortunately, my skills for running around in the dark, with minimal headlamp use, figuring out off-trail routes were improving. Route-finding is a lot harder when one needs to avoid the use of a light and there aren’t many large-scale land forms to navigate from.
Hidden in black clothing, I found the balance between being upwind, out of plume, and somewhat out of sight of the observatory, as I positioned myself at the crater rim overlooking the fiery pit 400 feet below. Once again, the sounds were fantastic: a loud, deep, irregular whomphy breathing as the crater coughed out clouds of ash and nasty acidic gases like sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Occasionally I could peer down into the upwind end of the pit just enough to admire the interior wall illuminated by the molten magma lake hidden by its own incandescence and glowing plume.
It’s powerful to experience landscapes in a multi-sensory, all-encompassing, intimate way. So real, so engaging; full presence… our planet in all it’s glory.
Then for a moment, the wind shifted and gave me a lungful of visceral comprehension of how all those people died in 1790 when a plume engulfed them. As I quickly headed upwind from the toxic gases, I was abruptly stopped by burning eyes accompanied by the far scarier sensation of burning lungs. It was merely one second’s worth, one breath, before the wind pushed the plume back. Because of its brevity I was grateful for the experience; a sharp reality check on volcanic hazards.
I do believe that now and then, one has to put a metaphorical toe, just a toe, over the edge of any given hazard to feel out where that edge actually is, to understand the risk on a gut level, not simply intellectually. This is known as getting experience, real experience, the kind one doesn’t get under the protective wing of the Park Service. Or a guide.
All and all it was an amazing 3 weeks. I learned a ton and had a blast.
Photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze
The sounds were vividly alive: waves crashing, lava hissing, and blobs taping lightly as they landed in front of me and faded into blackness.
I headed to Mt. Kilauea on the Big Island of Hawaii in search of hot lava, wanting to experience it up close and personal. I’d been "turned on" to live volcanoes a couple years ago on Mt Erebus in Antarctica.
I rented a hatchback and lived in it at free campgrounds, cooking farmers’ market fare on my campstove. I enjoyed a relatively cheap trip with maximum flexibility and spontaneity; totally my style.
The exact locations where lava flows on the surface change almost daily, and officials imply that more places are legally closed than actually are. I understand the importance of this for the non-outdoorsy public; however, it required a lot more work on my part.
It was a sleuthing project involving talking to as many people as possible, assessing their reliability, comparing maps (some of which aren’t current due to lava destroying and creating), learning to interpret the USGS daily volcano report, figuring out which laws were enforced and how, which sites and access points are high profile, and trying to read between the lines coming from the mouths of well-trained Park Service rangers.
The action this year is outside of Volcanoes National Park. The lava flows in hidden tubes on its way to the ocean entry points where the official viewpoint is located. It flows down a hill through a defunct housing development; only an island of forest and a couple ruins remain. To safely manage the public, the state Civil Defense provides a well-guarded official veiw-point quite a distance from the ocean entry points, open limited hours.
Being comfortable walking on loose uneven surfaces has it’s advantages, allowing one to easily use more distant access points: less obvious to law enforcement.
Choosing a legal parking spot within the park, I hiked in black clothing (camo) across an older lava flow for 2.5 hours out of the Park to get to the large tree-island in the defunct subdivision. I skirted the lower edge of the trees, admiring the many “tree molds”: holes in the lava from where it had surrounded trees before burning them up. A fleet of helicopters on flight-seeing tours, research tasks, and occasionally law enforcement demanded attention. I was trespassing and probably also breaking some other broad-brush law designed to bust terrorists like me within a quarter mile of the flow.
The increasing smells of gases, tree soot, and the cooling lava itself informed me that I was approaching the current smoldering flow. When the lava had recently flowed on the surface, the wind blew the gases and heat into the adjacent forest, scorching it and providing me fairly easy, if hot and sooty, uphill travel. More importantly, the trees provided cover for the increased number helicopters flying close above as I was adjacent to the steamy flow. I hid behind trees, dashed from cover to cover, and did my best to avoid being seen. Most pilots are renegades not likely to bust me, but I sure wasn’t willing to take any chances.
I wanted to cross the flow to confirm that there wasn’t any surface exposure along the other side. Fortunately there were pauses in the helicopter flights, so I went for it, hustling across fresh lava, some of which was nasty loose a’a lava, for my first time. It was an exciting dash through the gases along a rough and circuitous route. At certain spots the intense smell and heat suddenly increased, instantly turning me in another direction, my pulse rising as I increased my exposure time. I made it across with the same cotton-mouth feeling I get when leading hard routes!
The rainforest-thick vegetation and that awful, loose, sharp a’a lava made for a heinous descent along the far edge (ok, sandals didn’t help, but at least the socks did). My dash back across at the base of the hill, hours later, was much more relaxed because the hot lava seemed to run deeper under the surface and I had a better feel for the risk.
In hopes of finding a lava “break-out” near where it emerged from the deep, I prepared for long hikes from a basecamp into a closed area. I planned three nights to give myself enough time to try different routes in my quest. The campsite lacked water, so ahead of time I hiked in to cache four gallons, get a feel for the terrain, where exactly the trail closure began, and the amount of law enforcement coverage. Because I would have to have a camping permit, they would know I was there; what else would I be doing there for that much time?
Later I backpacked in for the blitz. Knowing I needed a lot of darkness, I went to “sleep” at 5:30pm for my 9:30pm alpine start. The moon was so bright I didn’t use my headlamp for a long time; much easier to see distant terrain silhouettes.
When I arrived at the edge of the old flows at the base of Pu‘u O‘o (a small peak along the rift ridge and source of current flow; in the photos), I was lured by the promising orange glow in the gas clouds arising from top of the ridge, appearing to reflect the hot red stuff just below. I headed straight up there, only to find that my speed dropped dramatically as I discovered what the locals call “shelly” lava, “breakable crust” in ski lingo. I felt like I was moving fairly quickly but realized that although my body was in constant motion, I really wasn’t making much actual progress. Evaluating the surface failure potential of each step, recovering balance from collapses, and dodging the weakest surfaces made for a highly circuitous, inefficient route.
As I ascended, the orange glow shifted location and I realized it had never been coming from Pu‘u O‘o, but from the break-out a good distance on the other side. I started to traverse to the far side where I knew the lava began its descent to the sea. This meant going into the gas plume, which had disadvantages… eyes stinging, a coughy feeling in my throat… potentially much worse. Depending on how intensely the wind blew, I alternated between the traverse toward the compelling orange glow, and bailing for the trees, irritatingly out of sight a mile+, where I might(??) be able to travel faster and in better air, but it would be an even longer approach (miles).
Now the rock had changed, becoming talus that frequently disintegrated, from decades of the acidic plume, when stepped upon. Slow! But finally I could see the bright orange of a lava break-out… in the far distance. At one point the glare intensified as the lava appeared to be shooting up out of the fissure. Beautiful even at a distance. Argh! How I wanted to be there!
It was getting rather obvious that I wouldn’t have time to get there and back by daylight, esp since after daybreak, I would have to take an off-trail, much slower route back the last few miles so I couldn’t be seen on the closed trail.
Eventually I made it to the trees where I found forest too dense to travel in for daytime cover (damn). I began the long traverse back on the old but solid lava, following the highly irregular lava-forest edge (circuitous, yet again), back around to where it intersected the trail I left to approach the mountain. Clouds obscured the moon, rain didn’t help, and in the faint beam of my light, I saw a hazard I hadn’t yet encountered: volcanic ash partly covering deep “earth cracks” in the underlying lava-rock, like snow covering crevasses. Hmm.
An hour after daylight I made it back to camp. Later I hiked out, having accepted that it is just too far to access the break-outs from this side. Damn! But it had been a good effort; appreciated getting a real feel for the different kinds of lava terrain here.
From a scientist on Mt Erebus, I had a name of a local volcanologist who invited me to go into the field with him and a class. I learned a lot about assessing active volcanic risks and without the fear of getting busted, thanks to Ken’s permit. It turned out that I was far more cautious than I needed to be that earlier day (no surprise).
Around 4am, Ken led us out to admire the lava “ocean entries” in their illuminescent glory. We sat admiring the flying-lava-bomb show through sunrise, at which point I could see large chunks of fresh lava floating in the water, orange in the middle and steaming heavily before cooling and disappearing. Floating steaming lava! How crazy is that?!
Soon it was time to head to a small skylight (hole in lava tube ceiling) radiating such intense heat/gases that we approached from upwind. Ken took samples of the dangling lava-cicles with a steel cup mounted on a long metal rod.
Through the skylight, you could see the flowing incandescence down in the lava tube. We threw in rocks to see the lava surface and flow rate, which otherwise aren’t discernible because of the brightness. It was amazing to watch the rocks gently received in the viscous flow, maybe flowing 4-5mph? A head-sized rock would smoothly submerge or nearly, while smaller ones rafted along peacefully in the 1800F degree flow out of sight.
On another early morning I returned to this same ocean entry. The site looked different, further out into the ocean. New lava had created new land, some of which might later break off and fall into the sea on its loose base.
I moved in pretty close, enough so that when a big wave sent a lot of incandescent blobs overhead, I reflexively went into the mode learned on the Antarctic volcano Mt. Erebus to avoid getting hit. A couple tiny blobs landed nearby… a bit too close for comfort. Very interesting location: alive and dynamic, commanding of great respect.
Then I saw it, slow moving orange nearby, intensely bright at the tip… an actual break-out, what I’d been hoping to encounter. And better yet, it was below a meter-high ledge that provided protection from the fiery heat as the lava creaked and popped and slowly oozed and crept my way. Absolutely mesmerizing. And the smell of the lava itself was even more intense than usual: a sharp metallic smell, one that stayed on my skin for a short while afterward. Fascinating to see how the fantastic shapes of cooled lava form, and how irregularly it flows, sometimes stopping in one place only to break through somewhere else where it had been slowly cooling. Clearly a lot of pressure behind the flow.
The sound alone was captivating. It truly creaked and snapped and popped and groaned; strands of glass stretching and breaking on the surface of the slow-mo flow. So alive, earth and rock being born right in front of me, uncontrollable on the big scale; the very tip of a direct conduit through the crust deep down into the mantle of the earth. ‘Twas a magical, encompassing, wildly multi-sensory experience, one I am most definitely not ‘over’.
In daylight the surface of much of this pahoehoe flow might have appeared dark, but it was in it’s vivid orange glory at this hour. It was so intensely hot that I tied a bandana around my face and worried a bit about my camera.
Many of you know that my sole goal in going to Kilauea was to stick a stick into hot lava. Finally I found the real thing, but WHERE WAS MY STICK?! How easily I could have brought one to that site, argh! Life is about improvisation, right? As the luscious lava creaked and glided just below my ledge, I quickly reached over with a rock to bang on the hot orange tip of the flow. Amazingly I had to whack it pretty hard to dent the surface. Fun!
That half hour was distinctly the highlight, but definitely not representative of my overall experience.
I met a really cool biologist who works on alien species in the Park. He had done his thesis near where I live with a scientist I know from Antarctica. Later we went for a hike and I heard about the issues, complications biological and political… as well as general local info and lore. The summary is that Hawaii has been as destroyed as anywhere on this planet because of invasive species wreaking havoc; quite a story, and much energy goes into minimizing further damage. I helped him walk his dogs in the rain and had dinner with him a couple times. It was nice to have a friend there, someone to answer questions and process my experience with.
The current volcanological excitement in Hawai’i is the recently-started gaseous eruption of a vent in the main crater on Mt. Kilauea called Halema’uma’u (got that?). It’s spewing tons of ash and toxic gases that caused the Park to close when the winds changed. Thousands of people, mostly in tour buses, had to leave. I was on a hike that day in a remote part of the Park so didn’t find out until I saw the note on my car. I was far from the gas plume, in great air at the far end of the road. I put the note back in its bag and under the windshield wiper where I’d found it, and made dinner at the back of the car. Ended up sleeping in the car right there, having concocted a reasonable story in the highly unlikely event I was found.
The next day I left the Park and went down to the eastern coast, to delightful steam caves mentioned in the guidebook I borrowed from the local library. There I met a local who directed me to a coastal state park where I could safely camp for free.
On a walk the next morning I discovered that wild coconuts do not look like the fibrous brown ones you see in a store, and that they are very difficult to open by hand. Soon I met a Hawaiian who answered my questions about how to tell if a coconut was ripe and how open one. Imua was super kind and friendly in an innocent way; a treat to hang out with. After awhile I followed him to his house where we used his giant hook to pull down coconuts. He showed me how to chop them open with a machete: MUCH easier than the rock-bang and wrestle-peel method. We spent some time opening them, drinking the “milk” inside, and getting into the ‘meat’, which was soft and slippery, a lot different than I’d seen; tastier too. It was really fun to see how coconuts develop, to get a sense of them. They were brought by the early Polynesians, but are not an overtaking, destructive introduced species.
Later I went to another coastal park and found lava tubes long enough to require two headlamps. If one died, you’d have a very difficult time trying to get back out.
Lava tubes are everywhere and super interesting; I quickly learned to always carry leather gloves and at least one headlamp in my pack. [As a precaution I made a habit of leaving my pack clearly visible from the air (when possible) just outside the cave I was exploring.] Some caves sport a variety of features created by the river of lava that once flowed within and the tremendous convective gas currents rushing across the lava and out through skylights. Over the centuries after the lava flow ceases, various microbes colonize the tubes. In some tubes you can stand and walk quite easily for a hundreds meters or more, sometimes dodging roots, maybe seeing one of the blind cricket species that evolved there, or slime molds, bacterial coatings, and minerals deposits. It’s important not to touch the features.
I was pretty motivated to check out all the variations and channels I could reasonably fit into in all the lavas tubes I found throughout my explorations. Always the question: to squeeze through and hope it will widen into another wide area? To take the risk of having to shimmy and crawl backwards, clothing snagging on everything, because the tube stayed small? Even a casual practice of yoga has many benefits.
It took me awhile to understand how the Park Service manages visitors and lava tubes. They consistently but very subtly discourage tube exploration, subtly in order to avoid drawing attention to the caves. This is for very good reason because of the fragility of the features alone (never mind the safety issues). The Park has developed a huge, nearly featureless tube through which thousands of people walk every year. In the smaller caves or narrower channels in the backcountry, I didn’t see evidence of exploration. At times I even had to temporarily move rocks to worm my way through.
One cave ended at the cliffs above the ocean, tall basalt cliffs upon which the waves slam so hard they make the rock you’re sitting on at the edge actually vibrate. The first time I felt that I almost dropped my camera while leaping away.
Anyway, big waves sent water pouring through unseen cracks in the roof of the cave I was in, but it flowed out through other cracks.
Then around the corner in a tight chamber I came upon… old human bones. Startling.
It was a burial site, of which I later learned there are many. The very incomplete skeleton was accompanied by a bit of wood ash and glass beads near the head area. The bones looked quite friable.
Much to wonder about. Who? Circumstances? When?
Deep in that tight dark cave, alone, I definitely considered the implications of disturbing (by simply being there) such a site. Hawaiian religion is alive and well; what did the volcano goddess Pele think? I didn’t touch anything nor take any pictures.
Later that day, after yet another really interesting cave and time to think about the burial site, I returned to take a more clear inventory of what I saw, wanting to remember it well.
Eventually I caught wind of the Kazumura Cave, the longest lava tube on Earth, some 40 miles, steep overall, 5 centuries old, and heavily researched as far as lava tubes go.
I paid $20 cash for a private four-hour tour through a mile long section of this cave. The guide was a guy my age living with his parents in a rural rainforest housing development over this lava tube.
Harry and his parents are absolute characters, the ultimate Mom & Pop scene. They bought the land and as they hand-cleared a place for a house, they stumbled upon an opening to this amazing cave. They educated themselves and developed it minimally with a heavy emphasis on preservation of the delicate features, some of which are very rare. Lava-falls limit how far one can easily travel up or down the cave, and they have a locked gate at their entrance, a response to vandalism.
Their tour business isn’t strictly “legal” because the cave doesn’t officially exist, or does it?… Ambiguity surrounds ownership and liability: agencies making silly and contradictory laws over who has rights, or simply ignoring caves altogether to avoid liability. But it clearly exists in the scientific world; it even has bits of marked survey tape along the walls as reference points.
The business has no real website, no email, no real marketing. The family is very protective of the cave and won’t allow groups of young kids in. These folks aren’t exactly the most, uh, “diplomatic” or “professional” in talking to would-be cave explorers who have certain expectations. Their stories are rather entertaining.
Hawaii seems to draw a lot of “independent, alternative” types, much like Alaskans but less hardy. Harry and his mom Ellouise were so unusual, opinionated, friendly, and chatty that I stayed another hour.5 just to listen.
I highly recommend the tour. Despite being very critical of academia, Harry has learned an impressive amount of geology, mineralogy, chemistry, and fluid dynamics. He has spent untold days studying the cave and consulting with endless numbers of experts who have helped him figure out how the formations were created and identifying the different biological features. I didn’t catch everything he said, but I learned a lot and had a ton of fun anyway.
A couple mongooses and even a wild pig (both extremely destructive aliens) long ago found their way into the cave… but not back out. We saw their remains, and even the outline of the pig’s body on the floor where he lied down for the last time. Wild!
Throughout the trip I’d been scoping out the details for a stealth approach of the Halema‘uma‘u crater, that new eruptive site that caused the park closure. A webcam and other instruments from the Hawaiian Volcanoes Observatory, overlooking the crater, keep careful watch of the eruption. Someone is on duty all night, discretion is advised. I developed a plan: a parking place and approach other than the obvious sneak-access favored by most scofflaws (locals).
Fortunately, my skills for running around in the dark, with minimal headlamp use, figuring out off-trail routes were improving. Route-finding is a lot harder when one needs to avoid the use of a light and there aren’t many large-scale land forms to navigate from.
Hidden in black clothing, I found the balance between being upwind, out of plume, and somewhat out of sight of the observatory, as I positioned myself at the crater rim overlooking the fiery pit 400 feet below. Once again, the sounds were fantastic: a loud, deep, irregular whomphy breathing as the crater coughed out clouds of ash and nasty acidic gases like sulfur dioxide and hydrogen sulfide. Occasionally I could peer down into the upwind end of the pit just enough to admire the interior wall illuminated by the molten magma lake hidden by its own incandescence and glowing plume.
It’s powerful to experience landscapes in a multi-sensory, all-encompassing, intimate way. So real, so engaging; full presence… our planet in all it’s glory.
Then for a moment, the wind shifted and gave me a lungful of visceral comprehension of how all those people died in 1790 when a plume engulfed them. As I quickly headed upwind from the toxic gases, I was abruptly stopped by burning eyes accompanied by the far scarier sensation of burning lungs. It was merely one second’s worth, one breath, before the wind pushed the plume back. Because of its brevity I was grateful for the experience; a sharp reality check on volcanic hazards.
I do believe that now and then, one has to put a metaphorical toe, just a toe, over the edge of any given hazard to feel out where that edge actually is, to understand the risk on a gut level, not simply intellectually. This is known as getting experience, real experience, the kind one doesn’t get under the protective wing of the Park Service. Or a guide.
All and all it was an amazing 3 weeks. I learned a ton and had a blast.
Photos at pbase.com/antarctic_suze
January 04, 2008
Huge deep field camp, SAR call-out
Hi all,
Happy Belated New Years; can you believe we’re almost through the first decade of the new millennium?
I spent Christmas and New Year’s at a deep field “camp”. It’s so large, 60 people, and so well outfitted (3 cooks, full industrial kitchen, showers, internet, hard-shelled buildings) that it’s more of a station than a camp. I hear it’s bigger than the stations of all the other Antarctic nations and it’s larger than the US station Palmer on the Antarctic peninsula . Maybe they just call it a camp because it’s seasonal and temporary.
It’s located on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS is the camp name) and it’s a long term (7-10 years?) ice core drilling project on the Great White Expanse (ie nothing but snow and sky all around). West Antarctica is of great interest in this time of climate change and this location was chosen for the ice having a “high resolution”, meaning a lot of ice representing each year so an unusual amount of data can be extracted from it.
The high resolution ice core also means it snows a lot there. This year in general has been characterized by consistent unstable weather. As many flights (helo and plane) have been cancelled/postponed as have gone on schedule and major changes have been forced on many projects. Such is Antarctica .
A highlight of my season was being at WAIS for the densest white-out I have experienced down here. People routinely refer to storms in which “you cannot see your hand in front of your face”. This, however, I believe is complete bunk. The only time that is true is in caves or in the deep forest on a cloudy new moon night. However, it doesn’t have to be that intense to be problematic!
I helped lead a group out to the tent area beyond the end of a flag-line. It turned out, that making a human flag-line beyond the real flags, toward the tents, didn’t work. We had to have people only about 20-25’ apart to make sure we could see them often enough to be sure we wouldn’t lose anyone. Elizabeth and I were out at the end and had too much time when we couldn’t see anyone or anything else, so we aborted that plan and had everyone return to the main buildings where everyone spent the night.
The coolest part was the static electricity that the wind created (measured 58mph tops). In my damp leather gloves I got a good static shock every time I touched another person: that was novel! The other funny thing was that when someone opened the upwind door of the buildings (downwind doors drifted in), the wind blew in so hard that sometimes the pressure made our ears pop.
I was there to support a much smaller multi-year project just getting started. A team from Penn. is looking at the Thwaites Glacier grounding line. This glacier puts out more ice than any other on the continent and whether the grounding line, from which it extends out onto the ocean, is glacial till (loose) or solid rock has much to do with how the glacier is likely to respond to warming temperatures (ie how fast it cuts loose and flows out). Much of West Antarctica is actually below sea level so rising oceans stand to de-stabilize the already dynamic and active ice of this lobe of the continent. East Antarctica , which is twice as large, appears far more stable and the ice rests mostly on ground above sea level.
The team I was working with was going to do a seismic survey to assess the rock (ie explosives) and place a couple dozen differential GPS receivers on this enormous glacier to track movement rates as related to tides. We were basing out of the WAIS camp before actually going camping on the Thwaites Glacier. It turned out that the crevasses on the lower Thwaites extend a lot further up than the satellite imagery suggested, so we had to select camp a lot further up than they expected/wanted. The camp and work area we chose was entirely crevasse free which obviously facilitates their work. On the other hand, in helping them choose this logical location, I put myself out of work. Damn. (On the other hand, roped-snowmobile travel for crevasse terrain is a sketchy activity at its safest). At least I did get to help install all of the GPS receivers over 5 Twin Otter flights in 2 days; that was fun.
Most of our time at WAIS involved being on weather-hold for flights. Recently, use of the Basler, the DC-3, ended for the season due to an incident during take-off from a remote site. No one was hurt, but the plane is still out there (my high school classmate was onboard so I’ll have to get the real story from him sometime). They’ve built a camp at it to fix it so they can fly it out soon. This plane was to be our put-in plane, so its temporary demise put us and other projects even further behind. After getting back from WAIS, I was repeatedly scheduled to fly out there to run the ground penetrating radar over a section of the glacier to make sure it was crevasse free so they could land a LC-130 (“Herc”, big) there to put in a recovery camp. After weather cancelled the flight for the 6th consecutive day, they changed plans because it was just getting too late, and used the small Twin Otters. What a scene, (what a weather year!).
If there’s one thing one learns here, its flexibility, to be able to go with the flow, to accept the current permutation of the plan without stress or expectation. “Tentative” is THE operational word down here even more than usual. I don’t even ask many questions any more. By the time someone finds the answer, the plan has changed again anyway. I just wait, show up when told, and when I hit the ground, I know what to do: that’s my scene. They pay me the same to wait as to actually do something.
Anyway, the down time at WAIS was wonderful, in fact I think it’s why I’m not burned out or overly exhausted now. I shoveled a lot of snow to earn my keep, but otherwise read a lot, worked on personal computer projects, skied a bit, and did some yoga. It really was much needed R&R, esp as I arrived here August 20th, well before my usual early October arrival.
So 16 days at WAIS constituted my field time this season unless something magically appears as the season winds down. This is a radical change from previous years, esp last year when I had an inordinate amount of (real) field time partly filling in for an injured colleague. I was the sea ice person this year and worked on the sea ice a lot, but the project that was considered at the ice edge wasn’t actually at the edge this year so we didn’t see the sea animals they did last year. Definite bummer.
Many people spend their entire seasons trapped in McMurdo: I dare not to complain. (Or am I?)
On the other hand, no way would I sign up for such a job. How freakin’ spoiled am I?! Someone slap me, quick!
Every season has been different; the variety has kept it interesting. I have made the most of being in town in terms of yoga, working out, skiing, ice skating, and riding my bike... all of which are rewarding. Obviously I have not been spending time emailing. That’s a lot easier, as many of you know, when one’s job doesn’t include time in front of a computer. (Yeah, slap me again.)
Seems NSF is funding more and more enormous (and long-term) projects: WAIS, another massive seabed drilling project called ANDRILL, a neutrino capturing project at the South Pole (called ICECUBE), and a international collaboration survey of a buried mountain range in East Antarctica (AGAP). (Any of these can be found via internet search.) It might be my imagination (or my season) but it appears that the kind of smaller projects in more technical terrain, the ones we mostly support, are on the wane.
I don’t know how long it’s been since someone stayed in this dept, Field Safety Training, as an instructor (not as supervisor) for 5 seasons as I have. I sure have a lot of Antarctic field experience, both deep and local and in a variety of Antarctic landscapes (it’s more varied than you’re thinking!).
There still seems to be plenty of field work for contract mountaineers, many of whom are former members of my department; it’s great having them around when they’re in town. They contract directly with an NSF science project and spend their whole time with that group. They don’t get to see as many places as we do, at least over the years one might spend in this dept. But if one gets on with a fun team in fabulous terrain (prob. a geology project), it would be well worth it. And it's a shorter season so allows for being home for part of the winter.
After all these years… I still haven’t had my fill of time outdoors.
I did get to respond to an actual SAR call-out last week for the first time, yea. It involved a snowmobile accident a half hour flight from town. Only 2 SAR members were sent out due to helicopter availability/capacity, but we were able to handle it easily enough with help from on-site folks. I was the incident but Matt has tons of USAP SAR experience and we worked well as a team. The weather involved high winds and blowing snow (of course), but the pilot was able to get in and out both times so it worked out fine.
Nice to finally be both in town and available for a call-out. All that training, especially here, but also over the years with outdoor education and guiding… a lot easier to take it seriously when one actually gets to use the skills occasionally (but not on someone in my group!). A good learning experience. The patient will fully recover from the injuries. The patient, incidentally, is also a friend of mine. It was really nice to be there to help him when he really needed it.
Larry was been out at AGAP on the E. Plateau since after I left for WAIS, but got back last night. Great to see him again.
Post-ice, he heads home for knee repair and I go climbing again in Arapiles. After a potential trip in search of hot lava on a certain island in the middle of the Pacific, I’ll head home for another season working in the mountains. I’m quite psyched about that. Larry will probably work science support in the Arctic this summer.
Ok, I’ve been blabbering quite enough. I’ll end this hear so you can go do something useful with your time!
Huge thanks to all who have not given up on me despite my inability to email you personally. Double gratitude to those who have included me on holiday updates and photos. It means more to me than this mass mailing can actually express.
Best of the new year, and the SNOW SNOW SNOW in the Rockies and Cascades. Send me powder shots! (ha ha) Make me drool more than I already am! Hey, we actually got a temperate-type snow storm the other day, six inches of a Sierra-cement snow! Snow to walk in and make snowpeople… novel! Snow falling from the sky (as opposed to being blasted horizontally by the wind) makes most people here happy, well, at least those who aren’t trying to go somewhere.
Stay in touch in whatever format works for you. I will be here (the big Here, not necessarily any particular geographic 'here').
Love and wild winds, Suz
Happy Belated New Years; can you believe we’re almost through the first decade of the new millennium?
I spent Christmas and New Year’s at a deep field “camp”. It’s so large, 60 people, and so well outfitted (3 cooks, full industrial kitchen, showers, internet, hard-shelled buildings) that it’s more of a station than a camp. I hear it’s bigger than the stations of all the other Antarctic nations and it’s larger than the US station Palmer on the Antarctic peninsula . Maybe they just call it a camp because it’s seasonal and temporary.
It’s located on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS is the camp name) and it’s a long term (7-10 years?) ice core drilling project on the Great White Expanse (ie nothing but snow and sky all around). West Antarctica is of great interest in this time of climate change and this location was chosen for the ice having a “high resolution”, meaning a lot of ice representing each year so an unusual amount of data can be extracted from it.
The high resolution ice core also means it snows a lot there. This year in general has been characterized by consistent unstable weather. As many flights (helo and plane) have been cancelled/postponed as have gone on schedule and major changes have been forced on many projects. Such is Antarctica .
A highlight of my season was being at WAIS for the densest white-out I have experienced down here. People routinely refer to storms in which “you cannot see your hand in front of your face”. This, however, I believe is complete bunk. The only time that is true is in caves or in the deep forest on a cloudy new moon night. However, it doesn’t have to be that intense to be problematic!
I helped lead a group out to the tent area beyond the end of a flag-line. It turned out, that making a human flag-line beyond the real flags, toward the tents, didn’t work. We had to have people only about 20-25’ apart to make sure we could see them often enough to be sure we wouldn’t lose anyone. Elizabeth and I were out at the end and had too much time when we couldn’t see anyone or anything else, so we aborted that plan and had everyone return to the main buildings where everyone spent the night.
The coolest part was the static electricity that the wind created (measured 58mph tops). In my damp leather gloves I got a good static shock every time I touched another person: that was novel! The other funny thing was that when someone opened the upwind door of the buildings (downwind doors drifted in), the wind blew in so hard that sometimes the pressure made our ears pop.
I was there to support a much smaller multi-year project just getting started. A team from Penn. is looking at the Thwaites Glacier grounding line. This glacier puts out more ice than any other on the continent and whether the grounding line, from which it extends out onto the ocean, is glacial till (loose) or solid rock has much to do with how the glacier is likely to respond to warming temperatures (ie how fast it cuts loose and flows out). Much of West Antarctica is actually below sea level so rising oceans stand to de-stabilize the already dynamic and active ice of this lobe of the continent. East Antarctica , which is twice as large, appears far more stable and the ice rests mostly on ground above sea level.
The team I was working with was going to do a seismic survey to assess the rock (ie explosives) and place a couple dozen differential GPS receivers on this enormous glacier to track movement rates as related to tides. We were basing out of the WAIS camp before actually going camping on the Thwaites Glacier. It turned out that the crevasses on the lower Thwaites extend a lot further up than the satellite imagery suggested, so we had to select camp a lot further up than they expected/wanted. The camp and work area we chose was entirely crevasse free which obviously facilitates their work. On the other hand, in helping them choose this logical location, I put myself out of work. Damn. (On the other hand, roped-snowmobile travel for crevasse terrain is a sketchy activity at its safest). At least I did get to help install all of the GPS receivers over 5 Twin Otter flights in 2 days; that was fun.
Most of our time at WAIS involved being on weather-hold for flights. Recently, use of the Basler, the DC-3, ended for the season due to an incident during take-off from a remote site. No one was hurt, but the plane is still out there (my high school classmate was onboard so I’ll have to get the real story from him sometime). They’ve built a camp at it to fix it so they can fly it out soon. This plane was to be our put-in plane, so its temporary demise put us and other projects even further behind. After getting back from WAIS, I was repeatedly scheduled to fly out there to run the ground penetrating radar over a section of the glacier to make sure it was crevasse free so they could land a LC-130 (“Herc”, big) there to put in a recovery camp. After weather cancelled the flight for the 6th consecutive day, they changed plans because it was just getting too late, and used the small Twin Otters. What a scene, (what a weather year!).
If there’s one thing one learns here, its flexibility, to be able to go with the flow, to accept the current permutation of the plan without stress or expectation. “Tentative” is THE operational word down here even more than usual. I don’t even ask many questions any more. By the time someone finds the answer, the plan has changed again anyway. I just wait, show up when told, and when I hit the ground, I know what to do: that’s my scene. They pay me the same to wait as to actually do something.
Anyway, the down time at WAIS was wonderful, in fact I think it’s why I’m not burned out or overly exhausted now. I shoveled a lot of snow to earn my keep, but otherwise read a lot, worked on personal computer projects, skied a bit, and did some yoga. It really was much needed R&R, esp as I arrived here August 20th, well before my usual early October arrival.
So 16 days at WAIS constituted my field time this season unless something magically appears as the season winds down. This is a radical change from previous years, esp last year when I had an inordinate amount of (real) field time partly filling in for an injured colleague. I was the sea ice person this year and worked on the sea ice a lot, but the project that was considered at the ice edge wasn’t actually at the edge this year so we didn’t see the sea animals they did last year. Definite bummer.
Many people spend their entire seasons trapped in McMurdo: I dare not to complain. (Or am I?)
On the other hand, no way would I sign up for such a job. How freakin’ spoiled am I?! Someone slap me, quick!
Every season has been different; the variety has kept it interesting. I have made the most of being in town in terms of yoga, working out, skiing, ice skating, and riding my bike... all of which are rewarding. Obviously I have not been spending time emailing. That’s a lot easier, as many of you know, when one’s job doesn’t include time in front of a computer. (Yeah, slap me again.)
Seems NSF is funding more and more enormous (and long-term) projects: WAIS, another massive seabed drilling project called ANDRILL, a neutrino capturing project at the South Pole (called ICECUBE), and a international collaboration survey of a buried mountain range in East Antarctica (AGAP). (Any of these can be found via internet search.) It might be my imagination (or my season) but it appears that the kind of smaller projects in more technical terrain, the ones we mostly support, are on the wane.
I don’t know how long it’s been since someone stayed in this dept, Field Safety Training, as an instructor (not as supervisor) for 5 seasons as I have. I sure have a lot of Antarctic field experience, both deep and local and in a variety of Antarctic landscapes (it’s more varied than you’re thinking!).
There still seems to be plenty of field work for contract mountaineers, many of whom are former members of my department; it’s great having them around when they’re in town. They contract directly with an NSF science project and spend their whole time with that group. They don’t get to see as many places as we do, at least over the years one might spend in this dept. But if one gets on with a fun team in fabulous terrain (prob. a geology project), it would be well worth it. And it's a shorter season so allows for being home for part of the winter.
After all these years… I still haven’t had my fill of time outdoors.
I did get to respond to an actual SAR call-out last week for the first time, yea. It involved a snowmobile accident a half hour flight from town. Only 2 SAR members were sent out due to helicopter availability/capacity, but we were able to handle it easily enough with help from on-site folks. I was the incident but Matt has tons of USAP SAR experience and we worked well as a team. The weather involved high winds and blowing snow (of course), but the pilot was able to get in and out both times so it worked out fine.
Nice to finally be both in town and available for a call-out. All that training, especially here, but also over the years with outdoor education and guiding… a lot easier to take it seriously when one actually gets to use the skills occasionally (but not on someone in my group!). A good learning experience. The patient will fully recover from the injuries. The patient, incidentally, is also a friend of mine. It was really nice to be there to help him when he really needed it.
Larry was been out at AGAP on the E. Plateau since after I left for WAIS, but got back last night. Great to see him again.
Post-ice, he heads home for knee repair and I go climbing again in Arapiles. After a potential trip in search of hot lava on a certain island in the middle of the Pacific, I’ll head home for another season working in the mountains. I’m quite psyched about that. Larry will probably work science support in the Arctic this summer.
Ok, I’ve been blabbering quite enough. I’ll end this hear so you can go do something useful with your time!
Huge thanks to all who have not given up on me despite my inability to email you personally. Double gratitude to those who have included me on holiday updates and photos. It means more to me than this mass mailing can actually express.
Best of the new year, and the SNOW SNOW SNOW in the Rockies and Cascades. Send me powder shots! (ha ha) Make me drool more than I already am! Hey, we actually got a temperate-type snow storm the other day, six inches of a Sierra-cement snow! Snow to walk in and make snowpeople… novel! Snow falling from the sky (as opposed to being blasted horizontally by the wind) makes most people here happy, well, at least those who aren’t trying to go somewhere.
Stay in touch in whatever format works for you. I will be here (the big Here, not necessarily any particular geographic 'here').
Love and wild winds, Suz
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