Better Than Fair Cookies

Remember the chocolate chocolate chip cookie recipe I have been refining and making for years? Well, I am entering it in the County Fair. You know, the County Fair, the one with kiddie rides, pig wrestling, and ending with the raucous Demolition Derby.

My goal is to attain official Renaissance Woman status. Not only do I live the life I live, but I can make a wicked cookie!

I meant to enter last year, but didn’t follow through. This year, my latent competitive nature erupted and I am entering the best cookies ever made: two versions. One includes chocolate chips for the Chocolate Chip Cookie class, and the other is chipless and will compete in the Drop Cookie class.

I took great pains to make them just right, even sifting the lumps out of the sugar. It was great fun; I found myself laughing at myself more than a couple times at the silliness of the whole thing. The chipless cookies first: bake ten and enter the best six (six are required). They had to be entered on paper plates; fortunately we had some old ones lying around in a drawer.

I tried a new strategy to find the balance between getting them cooked through, but not letting them crack nor collapse much. To get an idea what other than taste might be considered by the judges (no doubt County Extension Office agents, 4-H leaders, and former Future Homemakers of America members), I read about how flowers are judged, including things like “cultural perfection”. Translated to cookies, I take that to mean they look perfect as well as blow the socks off of true chocolate lovers. I hope the judges appreciate full-blown chocolate, and are not stuck in the rut of traditional chocolate chip cookies.

To my dismay, they came out a bit bigger than normal, so my plates were too small. Bummer, as I’d glued a short stack together to make a plate sturdy enough for my cookies.

Off to Safeway I rode on my trusty town cruiser. I decided to maximize my chances of winning by selecting the plates tastefully trimmed with a Patriotic theme, to prove that I am a full blooded Patriot Woman, which should appeal to the County Fair crowd (what could be more American than the County Fair?). My keen sense of competitive strategy easily accepted this disingenuous move in the name of winning (something… anything!).

So I arranged the six cookies on the their respective plates, sacrificed shiny new ziploc bags to each, and packaged them up. To protect my precious entries, I decided to walk over rather than pedal, carrying the plates wrapped in a towel. Soon into my walk, I realized that the warmer cookies were on the bottom. I peeked. Alas! Four of the six were squished. Intolerable, certainly no longer Fair worthy. I turned around. Fortunately, I had some dough left in the fridge. I also devised a new technique for packaging: invert the remaining plates over the cookie plates.

Entering was interesting in itself, and not because they lost my pre-registration form. I got in line behind a kid entering the Refrigerator Art class, and was followed by a man pushing a wheelbarrow with a bale of sweet scented hay. Gotta love the County Fair.

It was also interesting trying to get information about when the judging results would be available, versus when the entries would be on display, and when one could pick them up. Clearly these three older gals assumed I had some idea of how things work (including Fair language). I felt like a dork! As I pressed for the hours they are open and found that almost none fit, they asked me what I do. When I told them I work as a climbing guide, they kept looking at me with no particular expression, and said nothing. But my cookies looked great.
I think next year I’ll enter the Demo Derby.

Cookies Part 2, a week later.

Funny that after entering, I found myself surprisingly invested in how they fared in the competition! But I reminded myself to keep my perspective and just enjoy the fact that I entered.

One day I returned from work and my wonderful housemate Krissi told me she visited the fair exhibition hall, and saw a plate of my cookies with a ribbon. Cool! Soon she told me the ribbon was blue. She didn’t see the other plate anywhere, but confirmed that this one actually had my name on it.

Days later I was able to get over there and indeed found the blue ribbon plate: the drop cookies (no chips) as expected instead of my non-traditional entry in the chocolate chip class. But then I found my plate of choc choc chip cookies also with a blue ribbon! How cool was that?

Then I looked around a bit more carefully at the shelves covered with numerous types of sweets. Among the many blue ribbons were others in the exact same classes as I’d entered. In fact, there were 7 entries in the choc chip cookie class, five of which had blues, and the remaining 2 were awarded red ribbons. Both drop cookies entries sported blue ribbons. Hmmm.

What kind of competition was that?!

I took some photos (excluding, of course, the OTHER blue winners), then pedaled back home. A curious call to the Fair office revealed that they judge using the Danish System. Huh? In the Danish System, each entrant is based on it’s own merits. Oh. How progressive!
So I am competing against myself. How sweet! But I already KNEW I had ass-kicking good cookies…

But at least now I have not only one blue ribbon, but two, to prove my homemaking talents in addition to the rest of my skills. Good thing I didn’t get any red ribbons! Look out, Martha Stewart.

Well, the Danish System is much easier and faster for the judges, and cheaper for the Fair, esp as the ribbons do not have the year printed on them. And given that taste preference varies so much among people and the lack of prescribed qualities for each kind of cookie, it really does make sense.

It turns out that ‘yes’ the entries were available for recovery after the Fair ended, but only until 2pm the next day. I arrived the following morning (the first time I’ve been off during their hours).

I was able to pick up my ribbons, but my cookies had been thrown out. What a crime!

On my way into the now-empty Exhibition Hall, I passed a trash can overflowing with Fair detritus. Realizing my little treasures were probably in it, I began excavating. Dying flowers, wilting lettuce, banana bread and many other sweet delights still wrapped on their plates… Ouch! Rose stems. More cookies, but not mine even down at the bottom. All this compostable material going to the landfill!

Further sleuthing revealed one more trash bin on the other side of the room. My cookies were near the top, five left of the original six per plate, in nearly perfect condition. Yea! I also snagged a pecan pie.
I walked out of the place once again laughing at myself, this time for digging through the trash for my silly cookies (and taking the pie). Just a bit of rinsing and the sticky-dessert-goo on one of the plastic bags disappeared, leaving my packaged cookies still quite presentable, patriotic-themed plates and all.

I kept a few of the choc choc chip cookies, and then combined the rest onto one plate to bring in for the office folks whom I had told of my ribbon the day after Krissi had seen that I won. Of course I had to add Official Legitimacy by attaching one of the ribbons to the plate!
The computer guy at our office is collecting video footage of each of us talking very briefly about anything. When I showed up with the cookies, he pulled me aside to get me on video showing off my little treats and the bright blue ribbon. Quite silly… and fun for all.
Despite being a week+ old, in the office, the cookies were short-lived. I neglected to mention that I got them out of the trash.
In case your county fair is competitive, here is the recipe so you can enter them and see what how well your local judges appreciate chocolate:

Set the oven at 350 degrees
In a large, thrift-shop bowl, combine:
A stick of butter (softened, and best if organic)
1 cup white sugar
½ cup dark brown sugar (no lumps!)
Add: 2 eggs (organic)
½ tsp vanilla
And beat it well.
Then add:
1-½ cups unbleached white flour (organic)
1 cup cocoa powder (organic)
¾ tsp baking soda
½ tsp salt (distilled from the ancient seas on Mars)

Once that is all mixed, throw in a bag of bittersweet chocolate chips.
Get your hands oily so that you can roll the dough into little round balls about 1-¼ inch diameter without it sticking too much, then set the balls on the pan, squashing them only enough so they won’t roll off when you pick up the pan.

I like how the cookies come out best when the dough has been refrigerated (which I do so that I can make them fresh weekly or so!). If the dough is cold, you can roll the little balls without having much dough stick your hands. When the dough is room temp, the cookies will be larger (as with what happened when I made them for the fair) and less tall. This way, they have less surface area so are even more moist and tasty.

I bake them for only 7 minutes. This is enough to be cooked (as verified by local County Professional Cookie Experts), but also enough that you can later put a couple in the microwave for 12 seconds and have them hot and gooey all over again without overcooking. Yum!

Oh yeah, without the chips they are called "The Power of Addiction", and with choc chips, they are "The Power of Addiction, Squared".
Enjoy! And let me know if you find a way to improve them.

Alaska Range adventure

Hello-hello,
I am back from spending 4 weeks in the Alaska Range with Larry, and about to start work (Now that it‘s finally sunny here, more or less!).

We drove Larry’s gas guzzling, luxurious van north from Denver, where we went through the medical process for Antarctica, then up through Montana and to the Alcan highway. The Canadian Rockies are as spectacular as they look in photos, esp. that time of year. With a stop at Liard Hot Springs, we passed through the Yukon and arrived in Larry’s (adult-life) hometown in SE Alaska about 4 days later. After he gathered up his gear, we continued north, having to go through Fairbanks because the road to Anchorage was washed out. Eventually, after thousands of miles and having seen moose, elk, caribou, a fox, woodland bison, "stone" bighorn, and a bear (Larry also saw a wolf), we arrived at our final destination of Talkeetna, Alaska (“A quaint little climbing town with a drinking problem”). Gas prices in parts of Canada were up to the equivalent of US $3.80 per gallon. Oww.

Soon were boarded a little prop plane and flew onto the Ruth Glacier with well over a hundred pounds of food for four weeks in the field.

The Ruth Gorge is well-known for it’s steep rock and challenging mixed routes on stellar granite surrounded by huge glaciers, especially on the Moose’s Tooth massif. We, however, had no such aspirations for a number of reasons not the least of which was our relative lack of fitness. Rock climbing, especially with Larry healing from 3 broken ribs, in Arapiles didn’t do much for our mountaineering strength despite our efforts to train by carrying packs on steep terrain.

Our goals were quite modest. We simply wanted to check out the area, get some fun routes/peaks in, ski tour, get in a few turns, and otherwise enjoy ourselves.

We basecamped near the airstrip and started with a couple of refresher classes for Larry on skills like single-rescuer crevasse extraction. Given his overall competence and experience, I was not surprised how quickly and thoroughly it became clear that I had nothing to worry about.

Neither of us skis especially well, so skiing downhill roped up provided “opportunities” for “intense concentration” for the second person in particular. Somewhere lies a balance between not catching up and damaging the rope with a ski edge, and not slowing down, which results in hitting the end of the rope and getting launched forward while the first person is suddenly yanked from behind. Good humor.

Not far from camp were some nice slopes that everyone skis unroped (just don’t ski into one of the 2 crevasses!). It was really fun to actually get in some turns; sometimes the snow was excellent, if heavy. Numerous days we’d go out and make up for having missed ski season by being in Antarctica. It was fun to still remember, more or less, how to telemark.

We averaged a couple weather days per week, but that was fine because it meant we could lounge around in the tent, read, eat, and remodel/maintain our snowcamp, which turned out to be a significant project due to the warm temperatures. We had great views, especially to the north, and many times a day listened to gravity interacting with geology and glaciology on the surrounding peaks.

One morning we climbed a straightforward snow peak called Barrille, right near camp. It was a lot of fun and we left early enough to need crampons, thereby avoiding the wallow that other teams suffered by leaving later during this warm weather. On top we enjoyed incredible views down the Ruth Gorge and to Denali, Hunter and Huntington as well as a Gyrfalcon circling high overhead.

On other days we ski toured into the NW Fork of the Ruth Glacier to check out the widely known SW Ridge of Peak 11,300’. It was a great day in terms of weather, skiing, and getting a look at that route, which has largely melted out, and the north side of Huntington with it’s hanging glaciers. We also scoped out our intended route on Mt. Dan Beard.

Starting the day we planned to climb Dan Beard, which we expected to take a couple days, the weather closed in. Instead of the peak climb, we decided to head over to recon the Moose’s Tooth despite the weather (and just to get out of camp). On the glacier, we saw wolverine tracks… very cool! We wondered what the critter was doing as there certainly doesn’t appear to be much to eat, at least not yet, up here.

When we were in the crevasse field approaching the base of the West Ridge we became socked in and the light completely flattened, leaving us unable to see the snow bridges over the crevasses. Then it began to RAIN! We were at 5,100’ and it was only May 12th; this was wrong. We were quite dismayed not only at the rain soaking our ski skins, but how it weakened the bridges over the crevasses that we couldn’t see.

We turned around and headed home to make quesadillas.

Worse than the small amount of snow the system brought was the warm temperatures. At times it didn’t quite freeze at night at our 5,700’ camp, so the climbing conditions were rapidly deteriorating. Not to mention the increase in avalanches.

Soon we made plans to get a flight over to the Denali basecamp on the Kahiltna Glacier to the west, where we hoped the higher elevation would make for colder temperatures and better snow conditions. The Talkeetna air services use that airstrip for their “glacier landing” scenic flights and many other climbers were coming and going, so it was easy enough to get a flight.

It was only 1200’ higher there, but it was still freezing hard at night, so the snow was quite nice for climbing, at least if you got up early enough! We were nearing the solstice, so the days were long, nights were dusky as most.

Kahiltna Basecamp is large encampment, with dozens of tents and caches from many expeditions representing numerous continents, and also a National Park Ranger quonset hut. The basecamp manager Lisa has her own hut and coordinates the airstrip activity.

The basecamp is situated at 7,200’ at the foot of Mt. Hunter, a major Alaskan peak with no easy routes to the summit. Basecamp sits between Hunter (14k‘), Denali (20k‘), and the also massive Mt Foraker (17k’). The “Alaska Factor” dramatically applies here: it’s hard to conceptualize the scale of the terrain (and no trees as reference points). The many kinds of avalanches that frequently release appear to fall in slow motion because they are falling so many thousand feet.

Predictably I saw a number of people I know, mostly guiding, and we also enjoyed seeing some of our Antarctic friends, including 2 guys from my department (and on the Ruth, a friend we met from Arapiles!). The social scene was fun, when we chose to partake!

Our first day on the Kahiltna we skied 4 miles to the most unnoticeable choss heap in the Alaska Range. Here we are, amid the most spectacular peaks in North America, and what do we climb? Some obscure tiny slag pile called Farine. Enough time had passed since my last scree slog that this one was actually fun enough. There was even one spot where we actually had to climb a short section of very steep snow-- yee haa! Plus, it was a good opportunity to see how well crampons work on tele boots on rock, which turned out to be quite well. I didn’t wear my mountaineering boots again on the trip.

One day during unstable weather, we took our approach shoes and scrambled up the west ridge of Mt Frances, a granite, mostly rock peak next to camp. We turned around when we needed a rope, which was also when the weather began closing in and snowing. It was really fun to move on rock, nice alpine rock, and be light and fast. A number of alpine plants were in bloom, most notably, Purple Mountain Saxifrage. It was a treat to see plants (why does that rarity remind me of Antarctica?).

We had planned to climb Mt. Crosson, but closer examination revealed that the rock was much like that of Farine. Having had our fill of scree/talus, Larry renamed Crosson “Chossen“, and we instead turned our attention to an appealing peak a mile from camp.

The elongated south ridge of Denali ends as a peak at 12,200’, which consists of some of that nice granite, but is mostly steep snow and glacier travel to the summit. It looked like fun.

At our 3am wake-up time, it was foggy, but at 5am, the weather had cleared so we packed up for our late start. We moved efficiently through what we thought was the crux: a long section of steep snow not far above the saddle. We were surprised to find that the steeper rock on the ridge was not passable on the side that was out of sight from camp as we’d hoped. Our pace slowed quite a lot as we picked our way through the steep, loose rock and weak snow around to the side of the ridge.

By the time we got to the easier upper slopes, we wondered whether we might end up having to bivy! We certainly hadn’t packed for it, but could make it work if need be. The last couple thousand feet took awhile as it involved exhausting post-holing, finishing up on weak snow on steeper ice to the west summit. Clouds surrounded us so we didn’t see anything, and our wet items froze in the chill. The main summit was another half mile away of low angle post-holing and only a few hundred feet higher. It was getting late, so we contented ourselves with the west summit. After brewing up and drinking over a liter of water each, we headed down, arriving back at our skis after midnight.

The ski home was surreal in the dim light and fog, blue-grey crevasses silently sliding past, giving no sense of their distance from us; we had no depth perception. I could only see our trail by the holes my ski poles had left on the way up. The steeper slope made for its own adventure, making turns in the faint light, unroped on this hill we knew well.

The climb had taken us 19 hours! Funny to think how much less time 5000’ can take on easier terrain, especially without the deep snow wallow.

We finished up our expedition with a ski tour up the Southeast Fork of the Kahiltna, under the famous and beautiful Moonflower Buttress of Hunter. We checked out a route on the Kahiltna Queen, adding that to our long list of potential climbs for a future expedition to the Alaska Range.

Before driving to Anchorage in Larry’s van, we had dinner with a college roommate of mine, Diane, and her family. We were joined by another friend who works with both Diane in Denali NP and Larry on the ice. ‘Twas a fun way to end a really nice month together.

PHOTO

Working on my alpine hair style

PHOTO

Hiding out from weather in the Alaska Range, May '05

Arapiles, Australia, home, and beyond

Well, if I’m going to develop this into something of interest for the people in my life, actually using it beyond being on the ice might help.

Larry and I spent most of 5 weeks in Arapiles (uh-RAP-uh-leez), Australia. Arapiles—Tooan State Park is a world class quartzite-sandstone climbing area located on the agricultural Wimmera Plain, in the state of Victoria, which is in the SE part of the continent. Melbourne, at 4 hours away, is the nearest big city.

Arapiles is a most wonderful place to be, climb, and recover from the highly structured and very busy life working for the US Antarctic Program. The weather was very warm, but it was dry heat, and there’s always shade to be found. Every day was climbable, including the days when it rained: the rain was light and of short duration. The dominant tree there seems to be the gum tree, or eucalyptus, and there are all sorts of other smaller trees making up the "mallee" ecosystem.

I was again fascinated by the avian population, both their voices and their plumage (it seems either one or the other is dramatic). The local magpies sound like drunk meadowlarks, and they are everywhere with their many calls and songs, strutting around with attitude in their crisp black and white. Australian ravens have a very entertaining call as well. The parrot species are spectacular, one being red, green, and yellow, with a mostly red with some blue species as well. The galahs are also brightly colored, as are the green lorikeets, who in particular fly around in very noisy flocks. Each day we saw most of these characters and others around camp and out by the crags, where we also admired Australian Kestrels (falcons) whipping around the cliffs.

Did I mention seeing kangaroos, sometimes hopping by, visible from camp? They are funny, with such huge powerful hindquarters and tails, and little tiny arms and hands. And little deer-like faces. Sometimes we saw the joeys (young) in mom's pouch. We also enjoyed echidnas, which look like a small porqupine with less threatening-looking quills. And some cool Big spiders and a large lizard called a "stumpy", but no animals to really be concerned about in terms of poisons and the like.

The climbing deserves its reputation. A partly metamorphized sandstone with a very high quartzite content, the rock is exceptionally strong. The long routes there are only 4 pitches or so, and one can walk off of most off the crags. And most everything is in walking distance, yea. We didn’t have a car and didn’t miss it.There are a lot of steep routes with huge holds, a few slabs, and the cracks eat stoppers like I eat dark chocolate.

One can visit as long as one wants, and the camping fee is a whopping $2/day including bathrooms with flush toilets, a centralized dishwashing sink, trash removal and recycling bins. There aren’t designated camp sites, just a big area where people pitch their tents, cover them with UV tarps if they aren’t under the pines, and stay as long as they want. Like I did last year, a lot of folks show up alone, meeting people there to climb with. It’s a fun, laid-back scene with lots of interesting people from different continents.

Nearby is a pond for use in case of wildfires, and it’s open for swimming. And on Sunday afternoons the adjacent organic farm opens their stand and sells wonderful fruit and veggies. Town isn’t far away either, and it’s easy to get rides with people if you can be a bit flexible in your schedule.

Larry didn’t climb for the first few weeks because of his healing ribs, and I found other people to climb with. We did spend a lot of time together doing other things, and sometimes he accompanied us to the crags. Quite enjoyed seeing some folks I met last year, and also meeting new people.

It can be an interesting game finding good partners. At this point I don't worry too much about how safe someone is in terms of me taking care of myself, partly because one figures out to start on easy routes to see how good someone's else systems are (ie I am not worried that I might fall). There are some very interesting characters out and about!

To minimize fitness loss, esp with our upcoming Ruth Gorge (Alaskan climbing) trip, we often loaded up our packs and schlepped up and down the only steep (though short) trail down from the top of "Mt Arapiles". We also did a bit o' yoga, read, and otherwise relaxed.

Some of our Antarctic friends showed up, which was great fun. We'd all go to a crag, Larry included (everyone needs a peanut gallery), and climb in pairs, swapping routes, and generally having a good time. Nice to hang out with people separate from the ice.

In the latter two weeks, Larry started climbing, leading some easier routes. It was fun to finally climb with him.

Arapiles last year was my first rock climbing trip (as opposed to mountaineering) internationally. Fun to figure out a new rating system. I used it to my psychological advantage, memorizing their system compared to ours in a way that encouraged me to get on harder routes. The numbers overlap, so I'd focus on the lower US rating that matched the local rating. Think it helped a little, but it definitely highlights how mental climbing is. Many details highlight how incredibly mental climbing is. That is part of the draw (that and the feel of a good hand jam).

It's amazing how quickly time goes by on such a trip. Days melt into each other, and then it's time to leave. Too soon we headed back to the US, where Larry visited his family, and I visited my folks and friends.
Now I'm back home getting organized for the Alaska Range (and from having been out of the country for 6 months).

Tomorrow he arrives in his van from MN, and in a week we'll drive to Alaska, stopping briefly in SE Alaska, where he has long lived. We are scheduled to fly onto the glacier April 30th, and plan to be there till the last week or so of May.
Neither of us is very fit (his now-healed ribs didn't help, plus rock climbing and visiting friends doesn't exactly create the kind of fitness we'll need), but we'll have fun. Our plan is to get info on various routes and peaks, see what's in condition, and go from there as opposed to having any particular goal.

Cheers, Susan

PHOTO: Kangaroos

Kangaroos, a mom and a big joey (nursing) at Arapiles, Australia, a fantastic rock climbing area.

PHOTO: Mt Erebus Volcano, seals, penguins

A friend took this shot of 12,000' active volcano Mt Erebus (Ross Island, Antarctica), Weddell seals, and a couple Adelie penguins on the sea ice.

PHOTO: Emporer penguin

Emporer penguin on the Ross Sea, Antarctica

SAR peak climb, crevasse, penguins, historic hut

Hello-hello,

Shortly after I hit 'send', I'll be on a C-17 headed north to Christchurch, NZ, a week before I was originally scheduled. In the Dry Valleys recently Larry severely injured his ribs and is being sent north early. The official reason I was also switched is to assist him with luggage and also general life to facilitate his healing. We'll hang out for a bit in Christchurch eating green things, smelling green things, watching animals, and just... being.

Then we'll head to Melbourne and hang out with a friend there for a bit, and see when we can go to Arapiles to see how climbing goes.
Here is the rest of my final update.

Our local meteorologists inform us that Punxsutawney Phil, the official Groundhog, saw his shadow back in Pennsylvania last week. Am I right in thinking that means another 6 weeks of winter? I hope that's good news for you. Maybe the mountains will get some more snow soon; I wouldn't mind getting a few turns in in mid-April.

We are distinctly not headed toward spring. It hasn't become particulary cold yet (teens and 20's, but mostly sunny), but it is definitely chillier than it was just a few weeks ago. More obvious that summer is ending is all hustle and bustle around town now as The Vessel (the cargo ship) has arrived and is being "offloaded" (why it's not "unloaded" I don't know). Many depts are now on a 12-hour shift and the offload/onload is expected to take about a week. It is quite a process. Being driven all around town are lots of forklifts and trucks, some very old looking ones from the Navy era and only used for this process. The USAP flies in some guys who I think are in the Navy and are cargo specialists here to help with the offload. Plus a road-watering truck to keep the dust down. The dirt here is volcanic (Mt Erebus), quite dusty and gritty.

I believe there are something like eleven million pounds of Stuff being unloaded, and about 8 million pounds of trash, recyclables, and more Stuff will be loaded to be "retro'ed" back to the US. The Stuff is in "milvans", big orange shipping containers about half the size of the tractor-trailers on the interstate.

Our department is not involved whatsoever with the offload, and indeed a few weeks ago our quiet time of the season began. There is very much a seasonal cycle here, officially ending with the Vessel Offload, and different depts are crazy-busy during different times. There is a pre-season from mid-Aug to the end of Sept in which supervisors and others invade the winterovers and begin setting up for the science season. Two from our dept arrive then and teach Refresher courses, a very-cold Happy Camper course or 2, and do things like set up the sea ice hut, and the road out to where the sea ice camps will be. Then the most of the rest of us start pouring in early October. Beakers (scientists) also start arriving. After a couple trainings for us, our dept is in full swing with Happy Camper courses, Sea Ice courses, Altitude, Glacier Travel (wish there were more need for these), and GPS classes. Additional tasks include things like setting up the acclimitization camp partway up Mt Erebus.

The beakers are very busy getting their gear together from many departments. There is an unbelievable amount of stuff they need, including things like spill kits for hazardous waste (mostly fuel), HF radios, and others things one wouldn't normally think about, so all those departments are busy getting gear ready for the expeditions. The field carpenters go out and set up the big field camps, the helos start flying, and pretty soon the LC-130's begin to arrive so they can start flying to the South Pole Station. Meanwhile the smaller planes (Twin Otters) fly down from Canada through S. America and Pole, arriving here in time to take people out to the far away camps where they can land on non-prepared snow surfaces.

The main part of the season has projects constantly starting and ending as well as new people arriving and needing our classes; work stays quite busy for us through December. The Secondary SAR team is selected by mid November, and biweekly trainings for them begin (alternating with biweekly trainings for the Primary team... if there are enough of us in town!). By November, penguins show up in the greater McM area, much to everyone's delight. Around Christmas, the runway is moved off the sea ice and farther away onto the shelf ice as the sea ice deteriorates. News of the icebreakers start to circulate, and this year the higher-ups stressed heavily about whether they'd have to offload the cargo and fuel ships from somewhere out on the sea ice. The sea ice courses end, the sea ice camps come in, and later the sea ice is officially closed to travel. Beakers with later season projects are still arriving, keeping everyone busy. A few skuas start to show up.

You might remember that skuas are large brown gull-like birds that scavenge, aggressively sometimes, sitting outside the galley waiting for naive people to walk by carrying food. Just the other day I saw one successfully grab a sandwich from a very surprised woman who, if she had acted aggressively toward the bird to reclaim her lunch, would have been breaking the Antarctic Treaty. I think the skuas know this!

During January, most of the camps are closing down and people are returning to McMurdo will all their gear in need of sorting, cleaning, and returning to various departments. Some of it goes to Science Cargo, where they package equipment and other stuff so that it can fly safely in terms of reality and also NSF (FAA?) regulations, either into the field or back north. With fewer field commitments, our department finally has a chance to catch our collective breath. Also during January, the Coast Guard icebreakers show up, having rammed their way in from the sea ice edge, which this year was a very unusual 60 miles, and we have "Coasties" around town. This season we had one USCG icebreaker and they were finally able to contract a Russian icebreaker to replace the other USCG breaker that is having engines replaced. A commercial tourist ship or two follow the channel into the McMurdo Sound and the passengers get tours of town, checking out us 'locals' much in the same way we rubberneck the real locals: wildlife.

Some folks have left, including my friend and roommate Jean, and winterovers are flying in. My new roommate is a winterover in the Supply Dept, so they are busy getting going for the transition into the long cold dark bleak winter season. We provide them the half-day long Winterover Survival Training: basically a Refresher course slanted toward winter.

A few weeks after the icebreakers show up, news of the fuel ship arriving near the ice edge floats around town. It takes, I think, about 5 days of hoses running from the ship to the fuel tanks to unload the tanker, which also refuels the icebreakers.

Our dept is greatly relieved to have a reduction in our responsibilities at the end of the season, esp. this year because we effectively lost one guy for 5 weeks. The NSF (Nat'l Sci. Found) tells groups whether they need a "mountaineer" on their expedition. The grantees (beakers) decide whether to hire their own (NSF approved, and often former people from our dept), or if they prefer they can use us: the Field Safety Dept. One of us had to spend 5 weeks replacing a project-specific mountaineer who had to leave because his wife died in a car accident, so we were really strapped for much of the season. Often of the 6 of us, only 2 would be in town at a time. So when this time of year rolls around, we can relax a bit and work on maintaining and improving our systems and such... a welcome break esp as no one wants to begin their post-ice vacation completely trashed.

Something else we can work on this time of year is further Search and Rescue (SAR) training. We go out in small groups including our Kiwi team members from Scott Base and with whom we trained pre-season in NZ, on what we call Multi-day SAR Trainings. These are really climbing trips (!!), with the real bonus of terrain familiarization and more importantly to me: to get a sense of where people are with skills in technical terrain. It's also valuable to go through the process of preparing a trip, USAP-style, much like the beakers go through, making us more efficient in the event of a SAR.

For "my" multi-day this season, 5 of us returned to an area in the Asgard Range, in the Dry Valleys region, that I went last season with two others. Last season the trip organizer was really burned out (the guy who had a nightmare 4 weeks on the South Pole Traverse), unmotivated/cynical, and not much of a climber anyway: a rescue ranger instead. The Kiwi guy was quite inexperienced and, far worse: not especially motivated. Fortunately the weather provided an excuse for the climbing that didn't happen (argh!), so I didn't have to explain to our boss what was really going on. Needless to say, I was quite looking forward to returning to Mt Obelisk and actually climbing it with fun people.

This time we had motivated folks, another guide-type who saw the same line to climb, and others who were psyched to develop their skills. We also had the weather, yea. It was really fun to teach/guide my good friend Barbie who is the Physicians Asst, SAR medic, and also teacher of wilderness medicine (WMA). The route involved steep snow, scrambling on rock, a lot of exposure, and a little bit of rock hard enough to rope up for. It was a blast, and at 14+ hours, a long day especially as none of our jobs promote fitness of any sort! (I can hear your sarcastic comments already.) Nice not to have to worry about getting benighted on a long climb.

After our rest day, our helo pick-up (heli-climbing!) was postponed so we scrambled up another fun peak with more amazing geology. Sandstone that weathers into fantastic forms called ventifacts (like Utah, but an order of magnitude more dramatic and widespread), on top of and mixed in with basalt. The Dry Valleys region is truly magnificent... and includes the glaciers pouring off the Plateau into the upper sections of the Valleys... stunning.

Another really fun adventure occurred after work one evening (again, nice to have endless light. Except when one is trying to sleep.) I had not been to the Imax crevasse this season, the crevasse that was once used in an Imax movie and that we take the secondary SAR team (selected community volunteers) into as part of their training.

I went with Larry, who had not been there before. It was a 30+ minute snowmachine ride, then we rope up and walk another quarter mile to the entrance. It's on the lower slopes of Mt Erebus, about where our peninsula juts south from the volcano itself. It's open at one end, about 40' high to the bridge overhead, and maybe 150 yards long, ending in a broken section where it's cracking in the opposite (left/right) direction and deeper than the floor we're walking on. This end is partly open to the sky, and there are places where large blocks have fallen and are bridging the deeper cross cracks. Beautiful. And as it hadn't been visited in awhile, there were 1" flat layered (faceted) crystals lying on the narrow floor. These crystals are gorgeous and surprisingly strong/thick. And the colors, the muted blues and whites... fantastic. Quite cold too.

We have to be super discreet about such boondoggles. You can imagine how much this kind of thing could cause resentment. A lot of boondoggles happen throughout the large Science Support Division; we have much more access than people in Operations. Our dept is not alone in such treats, but ours tend to be more dramatic because we have even more access (and technical skills, responsibility) than most.

Larry works as a science carpenter and spends a fair amount of time in the field as well. When they are done with their work and awaiting helo pick-up, they get to do things like check out the ice caves caused by steam vents up on Mt Erebus. This is the coolest exploration I have NOT had... I am envious! But he also has to spend time in the dusty shop making things for beakers; I have more variety and time outside, so I don't whine too much!

In fact, he is away now for ten days in the Dry Valleys taking down three different camps. They work hard and fast so that they can get out on hikes up peaks there. It's been fun to see his pictures of the places and camps going up/down, and he appreciates seeing my pictures of the South Pole Traverse and my other work situations/locations. Another way to learn more about how things work around here.

There are official boondoggles, called "morale trips" for folks whose job is always in town (like the galley, or janitors, esp). I just worked one to a spot very near the Imax crevasse, called "Room with a View". It's basically a knoll on the glacier, with a tent in case we need it, and great views. We just go out there and hang out (frisbee anyone?) till people are done taking pictures and are bored. But it's always fun to get out of town. However, having become a snowmobiling guide, my self-esteem has taken a dive.

One project I've been heading up is cleaning out the old FSTP (our dept) building. NSF has a long term plan to reduce the footprint of McMurdo and also make it more efficient and professional; we are funded by Congress, after all. Part of that was consolidating various Sci Support depts into this big fancy (it's all relative) Science Support Building as of last season. Evidently during the pre-season, FSTP moved out of the old dive building rather quickly, leaving both useful items and a mess behind. Now we have to clean it up, and me being someone with a particularly strong aversion to throwing away useful items, I am the one to organize it. Yee haa. It has been interesting to get a feel for the history of our program, which has become a lot more professional under the current leadership (including no more boyz club attitude... yea!).

I much enjoyed a Sunday Science Lecture a few weeks ago on the Taylor Glacier in the Dry Valleys. This is the glacier on which I helped the glaciologists (the Seattle gal with the 120 cornrows in her hair) place their instruments on the vertical face and that my high school classmate works on as part of the Long Term Ecological Research Project (nationwide, if not worldwide). It was great to learn more about it in an organized and structured way. Surprisingly, perhaps, that when one is immersed in the details of a project, it's hard to get much in the way of the broader information. This was a not-to-miss lecture for me.

Other fun events include the MAAG, the McMurdo Area Art Gathering, an alternative event, not sanctioned by Rec or anyone official. Last year, the MAAG bra show was a major hit. I was in the field, but saw the photos of the incredibly creative bras people came up with. It was a fundraiser for breast cancer research. This year, Jean my former roommate contributed a collage, "The Women of Antarctica: From Hardhats to Pearls". It was a collection of photos of local gals at their worksites, but dressed up. When we were in Christchurch before coming down, she and I bought fancy dresses at a thrift shop. In this town, one can wear whatever one wants to parties and social events (drag is popular), and it's fun to feel attractive every now and then. At the Taylor Glacier, I posed in my strapless formal in front of an ice cliff, surrounded by my gear. My high school classmate was out working that day and we had fun over the radio joking about who stood up who for the senior prom twenty years ago. Nevermind that we didn't know each other back then. Fun in Antarctica.

Oh yeah, last time I wrote so much about the South Pole Traverse that I didn't get to talk about Cape Royds, an exposed point of land north of here on Ross Island, directly below Mt Erebus, meaning not on our peninsula. Cape Royds is the site of an Adelie (uh-DELL-ee) penguin rookery and also Shackleton's 1908 hut, preserved by the cold dry climate and more recently the Kiwi's Antarctic Historic Preservation Society.

I had been out there last year before the Adelies had arrived, and was with the photographers (Artists and Writers in Residence Program), who had the difficult-to-obtain key to the hut. The key is tightly controlled by NSF not so much because of vandalism/theft (I think), but because the warmth and moisture we bring inside increases the rate of deterioration of the many artifacts. The AHPS has a monitor inside for humidity, and a book for visitors to record the time and length of their visit so they can determine how much affect visitation actually has. Decades ago, the hut was packed full of snow before the AHPS removed the snow and made it visitable. They have labeled some items and added notes as to the uses of parts of the hut, the people, etc (it was well over a year ago that I was in there!). Cool.

The inside of the hut is fascinating. It appears they left fully expecting to return. There are reindeer sleeping bags, wool clothing, and fur boots, all of which are of course what we consider highly inadequate for such conditions. There are many kinds of canned foods, including Ox Tail Soup, "Specially Prepared for the Invalid". Hams still hang on the wall, the stove and furniture are there as well as photos of British royalty, science equipment, tools, and personal effects. Really gives one a visceral appreciation of how they lived, what they endured, how truly hardy these people (men) were.

This visit we did not have the key so were limited to checking out the food stores outside (jars of salt, rusted open cans of beans and unidentifiable foods), the pony stall with straw bale, and dog kennels, and other storage around the outside of the hut. There are a couple seal carcasses left. Apparently the AHPS has found anthrax spores around the pony stall, but no one has become sick from visiting the hut. It is also related to why all animals and plants have been prohibited from Antarctica in recent years: to protect the wildlife and ecosystems from destructive microbes.

We also checked out the Adelies, who were in the egg incubation stage of their reproductive cycle. The rookery is a Special Scientific Study Area and signs prevent people from walking among the penguins. We could however, get close enough to watch them (a smile breaks across my face as I write) take rocks from each other's nests to add to their own, doze while incubating, and otherwise be penguinos. The unpaired males seemed to hang together and extend their heads and flap their flippers in the oh-so-sexy "ecstatic display". And we watched a few (of the hundreds there) head out to or back across the sea ice to the water.

Adelie penguins often run, unlike their larger cousins the Emporers (our only two species). They put their flippers (wings?) out, their heads forward, and run along with their flippers flapping. They are most entertaining, esp. when they come up to a ledge or other obstacle where they abruptly stop. They have white eye-rings which give the impression of facial expression, so when they bow their heads to inspect an obstacle below with a look of mild consternation, it's quite amusing. When it's an up-obstacle, they pause, evaluate, and suddenly spring upward and land on the ledge, higher than one would believe they could. How they do that on such tiny legs is anyone's guess.

Emporers, by contrast, cannot run. Penguin Ranch beaker Paul Ponganis confirms this and says it has to do with their leg skeletal structure. They instead (another smile) keep their flippers at their sides, very dignified, but then waddle on stiff legs. It's a very rhythmic waddle with their heads and bodies swaying to counterbalance their stride. Also very entertaining. There eyes are not visible at a distance, and the orange line along the edge of their bills give them a look of serious concentration... again, wonderful.

Sometimes they lay on their bellies and push along with their claws; this is called "tobogganing". Penguins of both species have been seen dozens of miles from open water, alone, walking along. The Taylor Valley team watched one march right past them doggedly headed up the valley, no doubt to his death. The researchers have no explanation for this. Last year an Emporer hung out far from the ice edge by the ice runway road for weeks, just hanging out. An Adelie took a hike through town last month.

I think penguins are so endearing largely because their walk is so incongruous with their plumage; both are extremes. We see their very elegant tuxedo and think, "dignified, sophisticated". However, we then see them waddle with an expression of concentration (Emporer) or run with a wide-eyed look and flapping flippers (Adelie), and think "toddler". What a hilarious combination. If their coloring matched their gait, they'd have much less respect. If their gait matched their plumage, we might not identify so easily with them, they might seem less accessible and instead aloof. That's my take on penguin charm. Other ideas?

People have been seeing orcas from the air (the helo techs and pilots don't have a bad job either), but I have not yet. I have photos of them and penguins from the common drive so can send some to anyone interested.

This is long enough that it's a blessing that the iceberg B-15 (B-15A and C) has not yet done anything exciting. It is still about 7km or so from the Drygalski Ice Tongue (see last message), and we continue to watch.

We have fresh food these days. What a treat a banana can be :-) This morning at breakfast a gal at an adjacent table asked if she could borrow our paper. As there was no paper on the table, I was baffled until she pointed to the pepper. She is Kiwi. Good to start getting used to their pronunciation again! Sometimes I really have a hard time understanding.

Love and spring freshness, Susan

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

Happy New Year to all,

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

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

Thanks, Mike C---

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love and salad, Susan

Dry Valleys, South Pole Traverse, dead penguin, sea ice

Happy Post Thanksgiving Coma,

So, finally I write. As you might suspect, life here has been rather busy; so what else is new. As you pass out noticing how long this is, be relieved to be reminded that it's been well over a month and will be another 5 weeks before you hear from me again!

Today is the day after Thanksgiving in your neck of the planet. I hope you all had a fine Thanksgiving and didn't eat to that painful point.

Last week I returned from two weeks at a camp in the Dry Valleys, next to Blood Falls.

Review: You may recall that the Dry Valleys exist because the mountains keep the plateau ice from covering them up. Plateau ice does flow in, but the area is so dry (plus summer "heat") that they valleys are extremely desiccated and essentially nothing changes. Mars related research goes on here; the area is unique in the world and highly protected: not only is poop packed out, but even all urine is collected. It's best not to even blow one's nose onto the ground: adds organic matter, of which there is very little and can effect future research. You can imagine the procedures for fueling stoves and how the carpenters collect all their sawdust when they work here.

There are amazingly intact mummified seals that are carbon dated to 5000-9000 years old. Nothing breaks down here: the ultimate freeze drying. Here is only the tiniest of life: microbes, some of which live in the interstices in the rocks, yet a thriving ecosystems of various microbes under the 15' of ice on the lakes. There are some algae and even some visible non vascular plants, like lichens, in a very few spots.

I was supposed to work with this group for a week before switching out with another from our dept, but one of us had to fill in unexpectedly elsewhere and it made sense to keep me in the field the second week. Blood Falls is named for an orange flow coming out of the toe of the Taylor Glacier, see:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2003/11/031105064856.htm .

The project involves placing ablation stakes and tilt sensors on the sides, and seismometers on and near the glacier, to measure calving and strain. (This team is mostly women.) They are also drilling a number of cores. At the terminus, these glaciers have vertical sides 20-30m tall even, usually, unlike glaciers in most other places; hence the need for Field Safety people.

The Taylor was chosen because it most mimics tidewater glaciers by ending in a lake (the West Lobe of Lake Bonney) and for other reasons as well. Some of this research is part of the Long Term Ecological Research going on worldwide (UN related??) and is related to climate change.

Much research occuring here relates to other ecosystems. The example I'm thinking of is seals. It is far easier to study seals than Yellowstone's wolves and grizzly bears; the Weddell research here is closely tied to my home ecosystem. Many patterns apply to different species and systems, and a Sunday Science lecture recently highlighted the similarities between the ecosystem in which seals play a part and in Yellowstone.

Back to the Taylor Glacier project. This group has their own "mountaineer", a former member of our dept, who is with them through most of their six weeks in the field. One of us switches out periodically as further support.

It was probably the most fun project I'll do all season. Not often do we actually get to do exciting things like hang ropes, skills related to what we do and love in our other lives. I assisted in the drilling on both the faces. Two of us (a mountaineer and a scientist) are on the face at a time and the drill is tied in from above.

The most novel part was using a motor-head (like for a chainsaw) with a 2.5 meter bit attached, 2" diameter, to drill the holes from one-meter depth to the two-meter needed. We had problems with the augers and at one point had to hand drill from .5m to a meter. The holes are at 10 degrees down from horizontal and it was a humorous and gymnastic challenge to get enough leverage on the hand drill for the other person to be able to crank it and get it going. Some hack saw (contain the shavings!) creativity got the augers to connect and we were back in business with the power drill.

For anchors, we used V-threads in the ice like we do in climbing with ice screws (drill out two holes to make a v-slot and run a piece of rope through) but with the 2" wide 1m long hand drill, so they were most burly (the rope would fail well before the ice).

This was, however, only two days of the work (days that went, incidentally, to midnight and 2am respectively). The rest of it involved finding and maintaining the access onto the glacier (Blood Falls can work but it's better not to because of it's uniqueness as well as it's scientific value; do check out that website above), selecting sites for both the faces and drilling, setting them up, arranging for the helo loads of science equipment to get onto the glacier sites, etc.

Interesting how field science actually happens. Two of our crew work for Ice Core Drilling Services and were there to run the drill, which is the very same drill in the slides some of you saw last June. Another was there to install the seismometers.

Science groups don't necessarily have all their own science equipment (not to mention all the camping gear and food that the USAP provides). The USAP is one of the easiest for researchers to work within because the USAP essentially provides everything: inexperienced researchers can work in remote and hazardous settings, which can be interesting. In other places, like the NSF Office of Polar Programs (of which we are part) Greenland program, the scientists have to provide much more of their own gear, expertise, and resources, drawing more experienced and organized researchers.

This project had a grand total cargo weight of 15,000 pounds; that was not a typo. I was astonished to see, over that first week, more and more equipment come in. They have a lot of "basic" electronics, including 80# batteries to hold solar power. Many of these camps (not the deep field, at least) are fully decked out with wireless internet, which often works even. But most of the weight was the gear to go up on the glacier, for example six 150# wood boxes custom built here in town by the science carpenters to withstand multiple Antarctic winters to house data-loggers, more batteries to receive power from the attached solar panels (at least until the long dark night arrives), and all dozen long wires coming up from each cliff face. The drill is 1500#, and the long white-painted steel pipes going into the holes on the face weren't exactly light either. We had a chainsaw to cut the ice, however Erik and I got pretty into hacking away ice where needed. This stuff was flown onto the glacier in sling loads that the helo tech put together.

One of the other people was Thomas, my high school classmate. He and his grad student set up 3 cameras below the glacier to take 9 photos a day, until the polar night, of the toe of the glacier. Each camera needs similar attendant equipment as the equipment on the glacier.

What a scene!

A few weeks ago I spotted a penguin, my first of season, lying down on the sea ice during a sea ice course. We approached gingerly, only to find the feathered fellow had only hours ago perished. We checked out this Emporer anyway, noting how deep the feathers go for insulation (1-1/2 to 2"), looked at the reptilian feet, and otherwise appreciated being as close as we'll ever get to a penguin.

One of the penguin researchers caught wind of our find and requested the bird. The next sea ice course found me distracted with a more unusual agenda, but we also did drill some cracks as expected.

We knew not to post the photos we took on the intranet because if we had touched the penguin, dead or not, on our own volition I would have been busted under the Antarctic Treaty and would have had to get the scientist to get me out of hot water.

Paul Ponganis, Principal Investigator at the Penguin Ranch, said that the bird had died of hypothermia from starvation, that the body weight was about half what it should have been (despite feeling a bit heavy to me!). Apparently this is a highly unusual occurence (not sure exactly what details: time of year? location? etc?) and they were psyched to send the body to the Scripps Institute of Oceanography for dissection.

The Penguin Ranch has an observation tube down under the ice that I'm hoping I'll be able to get into this Sunday (my last chance). I've seen footage of penguins swimming and it is phenomenal even on a screen. I'll only be able to leave, to use a snowmachine, for real purposes, so we'll have to drill a crack or two to justify this potential "boondoggle". We shall see.

Speaking of sea ice, the ice is still close to 100 miles out. This is the most locked in McMurdo Sound has been in memory. It's not an issue of weather; hardly: it's been super warm this season. It's because of that massive iceberg still blocking the current that would otherwise break down the sea ice.

This year one of the ice breaker ships is having an engine replaced, and they haven't been able to contract another, so they're talking about having to build a road across the ice to offload both the fuel ship and the cargo vessel, both of which arrive in February. This would be a big deal, a decision made at NSF in DC and requiring emergency funding. But the ice might break out... who knows.

This year our dept doesn't have a road flagged all the way out to Cape Royds (north, site of Adelie penguin rookery and one of Shackleton's huts) because of a large active crack near the Barne glacier. This one actually does need monitoring, so a Sunday sojourn to measure it has real value this year.

Before I went out to the Dry Valleys, I was doing my Sunday yoga session when my pager went off. This was the first SAR call-out I've been here for. It was a late check-in from a field camp. Like most everyone, I knew not to be concerned because it's easy to be late for a daily check-in on certain days. As we headed over for the briefing, the follow-up call came in that they had indeed called in.

I have a personal reason to completely understand and forgive them, but I wasn't inconvenienced enough (or concerned enough) to have anything to forgive. The thing about SAR here is that there is a good chance we'll know whoever it is that we are taking care of, which would add an additional component to a rescue that I would not experience working SAR near home with the patients being strangers.

By the time you find time to actually read this, I will be out on the South Pole Traverse (I leave Monday). I am scheduled for 5 weeks, including 2/3 of our 2-day weekends (the holiday season. Again). The resupply flight will include dynamite which cannot be flown with passengers, so they can't bring out someone else to replace me, but they are flying another guy (not our dept) in on Dec 22nd. Four weeks was the max stay last year with the SPT (fewer had been planned).

The South Pole Traverse, to refresh, is the "building" of a "road" (a track in the snow) to the South Pole, about 800 or 1000 miles to supply fuel and if it's done early enough, some of the construction materials for the new South Pole Elevated Station (replacing the famous dome). This should eventually pay off in terms of flights to the South Pole, assuming the shear zones on the ice shelf and glacier up to the plateau don't need "remitigation" too often.

This is a massive project and a real engineering challenge as the machinery is super heavy and the snow is, well, snow. Highly variable, changing year to hear, and overlying glacial ice with the expected crevasses. A phenomenal amount of money has been sunk into the project (it was originally funded directly by Congress) and it's one of those government projects that "has" to succeed (at any financial cost?) once the investment is started. Not unlike a war.

The crew consists of 4 or 5 heavy equipment operators and mechanics, someone from our dept (Field Safety), and a (rotating) engineer from CRREL, which is the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab based in Fairbanks. A lot of research is being done via this project, which is indeed unprecedented. Already papers have been published about using the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) to identify crevasses (which they then "mitigate": blow up the bridge and then fill in with snow) and other specific research on mobility and snow/crevasse movement.

I went out with our guy who is covering the first shift and two CRREL guys for a day of training with the GPR. The training went well: crevasses seem generally reasonably easy to see and as it's a computer program on Windows, I could get around pretty well within it, yea.

I genuinely like the crew. The heavy equipment operators and mechanics all seemed friendly/warm if not also fairly open. I felt accepted and do not anticipate any stress with them. I'm sure it helped that we were working in my area of expertise, not theirs. I didn't get the feeling any of them had gender issues. I can deal with gun and killing-things talk I'm warned of (one or two individuals); that's not unlike tuning out endless chatter among teenagers about movies or partying. I have been strategizing on how get some personal time, even if it's within the cramped living module.

I will be spending much time in the Piston Bully vehicle with the CRREL guy, alternating between driving and staring at the GPR screen on the laptop suspended from the ceiling and surrounded by a darkening curtain. The GPR unit is mounted on a 20' boom that reaches out front and they've always been able to stop well before driving over a bridged crevasse.

We will also be analyzing the snow periodically. Last year, the snow was hideously soft and loose and they were bogged down heavily and didn't get nearly as far as hoped. Many changes have been made in the equipment for this year.

When I arrive they will have just made it to the end of last year's progress. This means I'll also be involved in flagging the route at quarter mile intervals with the snowmobile behind the vehicle. I am sure project manager will be the third person involved in the PB driving, GPR reading, and flagging team.

We are there as safety experts, esp when we have to rappel into blown-open crevasses to report on dimensions and directions (which might be a lot going from the Ross Ice Shelf up the Leverett Glacier at the south end of the Transantarctic Mtns.

We will be working 12 hour days every day of the week. Last year out of 66 days, there were 2 during which visibility prevented progress, so they worked on other projects instead. That was their time off.

I have been less than well this past week after picking up "the crud" after getting back from the Dry Valleys. As you can imagine, illness here in particular travels like wildfire in a hot dry wind. I have been taking advantage of my roommate, the Education Coordinator, for her stack of videos about Antarctica. Many exist and I've been somewhat of a slug lately, with a special friend, watching penguins and leopard seals and Weddell seals and a few whales and early explorers and learning about the ecosystem created by sea ice and icebergs breaking off from the shelves (floating glaciers as opposed to frozen ocean water)... fascinating. Jean and I won a drawing and thereby have a vcr in our room. I believe they pipe in some sort of tv programming here as well as the Armed Forces Radio channel or something like that too.

Tomorrow Sir Edmund Hilary will give a presentation in the galley which I am certain will be most well attended. He was a major part of the first traverse of Antarctica in 1957 using modified (tracks) farm tractors, one of which is in the Antarctic section of the Canterbury Museum in Christchurch. NZ's Scott Base (about 8% as big as ours) is just a couple miles away and they are building some facility that will be named after Hilary when it is completed in a few years. You might have realized how old Hilary must be (the Everest summit was in '53)... which is why they're getting him down here before the facility completion. In fact rumor has it not to expect too much from his presentation as he is not getting on quite so well these days. I plan to attend.

Thanksgiving for us is today, Saturday, so we get a two day weekend (our first, and one of three all season). People are tired and despite the nice weather I don't think a huge number of people are out hiking or skiing Ob Hill or the Castle Rock loop.

There are three dinner shifts, and I have been thinking that we could go in for the first, then come back for the third and have more pie. Hmmm... we shall see what they do to mimimize this obvious plan.

Have a wonderful holiday season, enjoy the solstice on the completion/start of yet another trip around our sun, and I'll be in touch again when I get back at the beginning of the New Year.

Love and warm holiday and new year's wishes to all, Susan