Back on the Ice!

I left the U.S. on the 3rd, got to New Zealand on the 5th, and was on my way to Antarctica by the 7th (really the 8th, we left just after midnight). It was craziness before I left. I had to take my final exams early, finish class work early, plus I was trying to get stuff together for the project, finish up some research stuff, etc. It was a bit nuts. But I made it down ok. The photo above is from the flight down. I hope you can see the guy with the yellow clear bag over his head. Not your typical commercial flight safety briefing. Something about putting some gas mask or something over your head in the event of an emergency. Unfortunately the exact life-saving justification was lost on me, given I was trying not to laugh at the entire production. No disrespect, but seriously, it was really funny. That big yellow thing is some generator or something that was getting shipped down.

I managed to snap a shot of the C-17 this year, in the photo to the right. Ginormous. It’s a nervous excited thrilling feeling stepping off the plane and breathing in Antarctic air again. I know that sounds cheesy, but it’s so true. This place is amazing. You see those mountains for the first time and it takes your breath away. I literally gasp. It’s like being on a completely different planet. I thought maybe some of the excitement would be gone since this is no longer my first time down, but it’s been just as incredible to see everything again.

I go running outside as often as I can, and every time I get to the top of the hill between the U.S. and New Zealand bases, there is this incredible view looking out over the ice shelf and the mountains. It’s an area sheltered from the wind, so sometimes it’s completely quiet. No cities to make noise, no buzzing lights. You almost have to stop dead in your tracks and just take a moment to respect it. It’s such a wow factor. All by myself, completely engulfed in it. When the sun is out, there’s this incredible contrast between the bitterly sharp blue sky and the perfectly sterile white ice shelf. I wish the pictures could do it justice. It’s a total body experience. It’s like you’re blanketed in the mountains, like you can almost drink it in. The air is so unbelievably clean and cool and sharp, contrasting with the softness and warmth from the sun, it’s like a drug. I never take a camera with me running, so I don’t have a photo of that exact view (maybe one of these days I’ll take one…) but the photo above is similar. It has that same sensation of extreme contrast between the sky and ice. I took it last week on my first helicopter flight out this year.

The weather hasn’t been all that great this year. Some people speculate it’s related to it being an El Nino year, causing a lot of low pressure systems to come through. We had an opportunity last week where the weather was good, so we took advantage of it and flew both during the day and night. The goal of this field season is the same as the last; to deploy GPS systems on bedrock, so we can understand how the bedrock is moving. Only now the project is called POLENET, involves more countries, and includes other types of geophysical observations, like seismic as well. I am still involved with just the GPS side of things. Some of the sites we are going to this year have never been visited before. For all of the sites, the idea is to make things “permanent”, in that they will operate year round. We’re going to use helicopter, twin otter (a type of fixed wing aircraft), and also Basler (another, even larger type of fixed wing aircraft) aircrafts this year. I've never been on a Basler before, so that will be exciting! When we are within 200 km of McMurdo, the U.S. base station, we use helicopter support to reach our sites. That’s what we used last week. We started with a site called Westhaven Nunatak, leaving at about 8 in the morning. Westhaven is about 180 km to the south from McMurdo. Weather was great, about -20 C and a light wind (yes, this is great weather for this location!) Every site we do this year will have 20-24 batteries, which each weigh about 75 pounds. There is also an aluminum A-frame, solar panels, the GPS antenna, monument, tools, etc. Each site, not including tools, is about 2,100 pounds. In short, it’s a lot of weight to heft around at high altitudes, especially if you have to go uphill. Fortunately, for Westhaven, we were able to sling load (when the helicopter transports cargo via a cargo line below the aircraft) the batteries. A HUGE help. Above is a photo of the Westhaven site, showing the batteries getting dropped off by the helicopter. We won't be able to sling load for any of our sites supported by Twin Otter or Basler, which is all the rest except for one!

We actually had to stop at another site close to Westhaven to finish up some work, so by the time we got back to McMurdo, it was about 8:15 p.m. A long day with a lot of physical activity. One of the helo techs brought down dinner for us and we ate in the hanger before going back out 45 minutes later. It was SO nice to have a hot meal. I only had about half of a frozen bacon sandwich all day, and probably burned about a billion calories, so it was a treat to have a warm meal before going back out. Here’s a photo of my leftover bacon sandwich 4 days later (I forgot about it in my coat pocket.) Like a piece of petrified pork poop. The bacon is brittle after being frozen and thawed so many times. Mmm mmm mmm.
We were all pretty exhausted after 12 hours in the field, but the weather was good and we wanted to take advantage of it, so we were back in the air by about 9 p.m., this time to a site called Brimstone Peak. Brimstone is about the same distance away from McMurdo as Westhaven, only to the north. The site install went well (although we will need to go back to finish up one more item) and the weather was great again. About -20C and not too much wind. Really ideal conditions for 7,500 ft. but still tiring to move all that equipment….quick lesson for those who don’t know…the way oxygen works at altitude is that as you get higher, the pressure decreases. Basically this means that your body has to work harder to pump oxygen from your lungs into your blood. That’s why it’s harder to breathe when you are at high elevations. So here’s the catch: the barometric pressure decreases as you move away from the equator, and guess what, Antarctica is about as far from the equator as you can get. So in short, the pressure is much lower here, which equates to being at higher elevations. That means when you hoof around 75 pound batteries at 7,500 ft. here, you get pretty winded. The above photo is from Brimstone Peak. It shows Eric (on the right) and Joe installing the monument that now holds the GPS antenna.

For both Westhaven and Brimstone, we had to stop at fuel and equipment caches. The equipment weighs too much to take with passengers to the sites, so it must be put out near the site first, and then picked up along the way. Fuel is stored in 55 gallon drums throughout the Transantarctic Mountains for when aircraft need to refuel away form a base on long trips. This requires digging out the fuel drums, rolling them over to the aircraft, tipping them up, and fueling. Each drum weighs about 450 pounds. At the start of the day before getting to Westhaven, we were all moving the fuel drums without any real difficulty. But by the last fuel cache some 20 hours later, I could barely even budge one. I felt like a cripple! It was ridiculous. I was shocked. It’s just so exciting to be out there, and so great to be getting the work done, you don’t realize how sore your body is getting. I couldn't even open the bathroom door the next day! I had to turn around and push it with my back. It really was a long haul, but absolutely fantastic. It was wonderful to be back out at a site again, and of course incredible to get to see the mountains from the helicopter. This photo is of us at a fuel cache, gives you an idea of the size of the drums. Dustin, the pilot, is shown on the right, and that’s me by the fuel drums.