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