Back in McMurdo...

It’s weird to be back in a group of 1000+ again after being in the intimate and quiet environment of a camp. Here is a picture of the C-130 Hercules aircraft, or Herc, that took us from Patriot Hills back to McMurdo. (I’m posing with some toy horses that my sister and brother-in-law sent to me-you guys rock!). We also arrived at Patriot Hills in a Herc. Hercs are the largest aircrafts with retractable ski-wheels (you can see them in the photo) and they are frequently used in Antarctica because they can carry so much weight but are still capable of short takeoffs and landings. It’s something incredible to see them land up close. When we landed at Patriot Hills, we did what is called a combat offload (although I’m supposed to say that they “drifted” the cargo because combat offload sounds too reckless or something). Basically we chucked a bunch of giant pallets of cargo, each about 3 meters cubed, out the back of the Herc just after the landing. I actually had no idea it was going to happen. We landed, and then all of the sudden the back of the plane opens up and all of the pallets start to tumble out onto the ice. The pallets are nested in these sort of grooves on the floor of the plane, so when you load and off-load they hook in and slide along the grooves, like how a roller coaster car slides along a track. Normally it’s a slow process, but to see it happen while moving, with these giant pallets just sort of gently crashing out onto the ice is shocking. My mouth dropped open and stayed open the entire time. It was fantastic.

Incredible Person

I met some really incredible people at Patriot Hills, and one of them was Marc De Keyser. Marc works in comms (communications- works the radios, sends/receives info about flights, weather, etc.) at Patriot Hills. This year he WON the marathon there. People from all over the world pay big bucks to come to Antarctica and run that marathon, and Marc, someone who works at the camp, won it. The top photo is a close up of Marc at the marathon. He is such an awe-inspiring person and runner. Winning the marathon in itself is incredible, but get this: next season he’s going to run from 80º to pole, running half a degree a day. That’s 31 miles a day for 20 days. 31 MILES A DAY FOR 20 DAYS!!!! IN ANTARCTICA! And not just Antarctica like coastal Antarctica, we’re talking Antarctica like 80º to the South Pole Antarctica, like get frostbite and lose fingers and chunks of your face Antarctica. He’s incredible. Got to be one of the top 5 most amazing people I have ever met in my life. He’s very humble, and was shy when I almost blew my top at hearing his stories. You can’t help but be amazed by him. The bottom photo shows Marc finishing the marathon. The guy in the wheelchair on the right did the marathon as well. I’m sure another incredible person. Unfortunately he wasn’t there when we arrived so I never got the opportunity to meet him. There are some genuinely impressive people in this world.

Patriot Hills!!!!!

I’ve just arrived back from Patriot Hills camp. It was a wonderful experience, and I miss it already! Our science was a success, and the experience in general is one that I will never forget. I kept up with the blog writing while there, but because of the difficulty in uploading to the internet from camp, I’ve waited until my return to McMurdo to make the entries live. They are all included below, unchanged. Pay no attention to the dates, I’ve just put in dummy numbers to get the entries to align properly.

I am officially at Patriot Hills! I hope I can give this experience justice. It’s an incredible place with incredible people. Don’t get me wrong, McMurdo is great, but staying at a camp, even a camp as big as this, is a completely different experience. Mike tells me I love it here because I don’t have any friends in McMurdo, maybe he’s right! I’ve always had a hard time making friends, I’m such a quiet person. ;) Whatever it is, I love everything about this place. Above is a quick little map to show people exactly where the Patriot Hills camp is in relation to McMurdo. I’ve stuck the South Pole in there too. The distance from McMurdo to Patriot Hills is about 2000 km.

My affection for this place grows with every day. When the winds are howling at 60 miles an hour, I love it. When it’s so dead calm that you can hear someone’s boots crunching in the snow across camp, I love it. I love getting up in the morning, or any hour of the night really, and looking out and seeing the mountains, seeing the sun. I love the way the skidoos smell. I love the sound of the Twin Otter taking off and landing at all hours. I love chatting and washing dishes with people after meals, and I love the fact that everyone speaks different languages and has different stories and histories that they are willing to talk about. And I love the fact that we are actually getting our science done!!! Above is a photo taken from the Twin Otter showing the Patriot Hills camp. The actual “Patriot Hills” are to the right. You can see the tail end of a ridge sticking out, marking the end of the range.

Our science is going incredibly well. We’ve had a dedicated Twin Otter here, with two crews, so we are basically operating 24 hours a day as long as the weather is fly-able. The above photo was taken by Thomas, and shows the underside of the Twin Otter we've been using at Patriot Hills. Thomas takes some pretty fantastic photos. Even the pilots were salivating over this one. So at any rate, as I've said, the science is going well. Because we're trying to work 24 hours a day, there is pretty much always work to be done, even if you aren't actually out installing a site. For this reason, and simply because I don't want to miss anything, I haven’t had a proper nights rest since being here. I mostly just take 2 or 3 hour naps a couple of times a day, but surprisingly, I’m not tired at all. My body is physically tired, but I think that’s mostly from all the heavy lifting and working in high winds. When I do sleep, it's in my tent, which is shown below. Sorry it’s a bit messy. For those of you who know me well, can you spot Puppy and Tomato Pillow? You can see we’ve got actual mattresses to sleep on, and a little bedside table. I’ve got a thermometer on my alarm clock, and the range in temperatures has been between about 82 (only one day, other than that I haven’t seen it over 65), and about 28. It’s not the greatest sleep when the temperature is 28, but for the most part if the sun is out, the temperature inside the tent is between 50 and 60. Really comfortable actually.

Safety first. Here is a photo of Mike and I installing a GPS monument at a place called Pecora Escarpment. You can see the red harnesses we are wearing around our waists and legs, and the blue ropes we are tied into. That’s because we are actually on the edge of a cliff with a massive drop off just behind us, so we need to be roped-in to work. Peter and JR, our mountaineers, set up an anchor system just off the rock, and the blue ropes you see connected to us are tied into that anchor. So in the event that one of us topples over the cliff, we’re brought to a safe halt and Peter or JR can fish us out. We were lucky this day, because the weather was beautiful. About -18C (0 Fahrenheit) and hardly any wind. On a windier day it’s much easier to lose your balance when a strong gust rolls through, and it really becomes important to be roped in.

It’s a very humbling experience to realize you are weaker than the air surrounding you. To have to fight to take a step forward because the force from the wind is so powerful, it’s something incredible. Capturing this feeling in a photo is difficult, but I think the two above photos can give you an idea of what I'm talking about. Abel took both of them. They are both showing the Twin Otter staging area, only the top photo is without wind and the bottom with. In the photo with wind, you can see how everything is sort of fuzzy. That’s from all the snow whipping across the ground surface and up and over the ridge crest. The winds in that photo are about 30-35 miles per hour. Abel and I were prepping some batteries today, and the gusts were up to 60. One of our windiest days here so far. In general, the past 3 or 4 days have been pretty intense. That kind of wind makes simple tasks a challenge, and really takes a toll on your body just fighting to stay stable when working. To prep the batteries today, Abel and I had to open a wooden box, about 3ft by 3ft, and take out 22 batteries, each weighing 72 pounds. The concept is easy enough, but we got annihilated because it was so windy. Just getting the top of the box off was a ridiculous challenge. You’ve basically got a giant wooden sail. Once that thing is free from its screws, it wants to whip up full force and fly away at 60 miles an hour. Then after you manage to get the top off and lodged inbetween something before it smacks you in the face, you have to immediately jump into the box and hold down half a dozen odd sheets of cardboard (from the previous batteries already removed from the box -each battery comes in cardboard) that are quite eager to fly off into West Antarctica. So finally you get the box top off, get all the cardboard pinned down, then you have to actually lift the batteries out and get them into a tent 50 meters away so you can work with them. All of this in 60 mile per hour wind gusts, and snow flying EVERYWHERE. I was completely soaked. It was like someone was taking a bucket of fine powder snow and throwing it in my face every 10 seconds. Into my ears, my nose, into my mouth, down in-between every single layer of clothing, frozen in my hair. Simple tasks like this become complete pandemonium when you factor in the weather. But to be honest, it’s actually quite fun. Don’t get me wrong, my description isn’t exaggerated, but the truth is, the shear chaos of it makes it entertaining! It’s fun to be in wind that powerful. You can lean back into it, like you are sitting in a recliner, and be completely supported by the force from the wind behind you. As long as the work is still possible, it’s a great time.

This is a photo of the dining hall tent at Patriot Hills. We ate meals here, and when we had down time, a lot of people would hang out here and read, socialize, play games (the camp has a stock of books and board/card games). This photo shows some of the people form our group sitting at a table on the right, Abel is on the left playing the guitar, and if you can see it, the girls in the back are Malin, Patti, and Paola, Patriot Hills staffers. Some of my best conversations were spent washing dishes with them and others after meals. Really incredible people, with unique backgrounds from all over the world.

The food at Patriot Hills is nothing short of fantastic. Especially after eating at McMurdo for so long. Lots of hearty stews, pastas, fresh fruit like pineapple, melon, avocados, fresh baked bread every day, incredible deserts. We are spoiled here for sure. This is a photo of a typical meal. It was Indian this particular night. Clockwise from top, there is some saffron rice, some chutney, a lamb curry, chicken curry, some sort of potato deliciousness, a fried shrimp medley of sorts, and some naan bread. Sorry my Indian food terminology isn’t more advanced. Bascially, it was all yummy.

Sometimes you don’t really need an explanation, but here it is anyways: this is a photo of Thomas after an install at a site called Wilson Nunatak. Mmm-mmm-mmm.

Just a good people shot of Eric on the left, myself in the middle, and Abel on the right. This was at a place called Windy Pass, just a short skidoo ride from Patriot Hills. There is another mountain range behind Patriot Hills, and you can see it in the background of this photo. Stunningly beautiful area.

The Patriot Hills staff works incredibly long hours, 7 days a week. No days off. However, every once in awhile they get the rare opportunity to take a “night off” and get some recreation in. It was our luck that once of these occasions happened to occur last night, and also that they were nice enough to extend the invitation to us to join in the fun. This particular event was sledding and skiing. During the day, some of the Patriot Hills staff took a snow cat (I think this is the name of the machine, it's kind of like a snow plow on steroids, used to groom the snow) up a large snow ridge extending off the mountains behind camp, and groomed a skiway down the side of the ridge. It was like a resort! Most of our group was tired and decided not to go, but Thomas and Mitchell and I couldn’t resist (in truth, I have been sick and probably should have stayed in and recovered, but who can resist?!?!?) It was SUCH FUN. Really a once in a lifetime opportunity. Flying down the mountain in these little teeny plastic sleds made for toddlers, getting completely plastered in snow and wiping out at every other turn (at least I was!) What’s more, we had first class skidoo service right back to the top of the mountain after every run. What more could you ask for?!?! Seriously??? Sledding down a groomed skyway in the middle of Antarctica? It was fantastic. I’ve got a photo of each of us, Mitchell is in the top photo, I'm in the middle, and Thomas is below.

The folks at Patriot Hills asked us to take a group photo before we left, and this is a copy of that photo. Clockwise from the left: Peter, Don, Abel, Patrick, Mitchell, Audrey, Brian, Mike, Thomas, The Dog, and Myself. The Dog is our beloved pet skidoo, slightly past it’s glory days, but still a rugged and trustworthy friend that we all grew to love. Unfortunately, Bob, Eric, and JR were already gone, and are not included in this shot.

Off to Patriot Hills...

I hope to be off to Patriot Hills soon. Patriot Hills is a camp in West Antarctica where we will be camping while installing 6 permanent GPS stations. We have been trying to get out to this camp for two weeks now, but bad weather and a variety of other issues have kept us from getting out sooner. HOWEVER, we are scheduled to fly tomorrow morning, and it looks like we've got about a 50% chance of getting there this time, so I thought I should go ahead and put up a post saying that I will be out of email contact until the end of January. I've probably just jinxed it and we won't even get out, but just in case, that's the scoop. At any rate, other that radio communications, we will only have satellite phones, so no internet. If I have time tomorrow morning, I will put up a map of where we will be going. I really hope we fly tomorrow!!! I am incredibly excited to go this far into West Antarctica, and anxious to get the bulk of our work started. Also, in the past when I have done research in Antarctica, it has always been out of McMurdo, which is basically a small functioning city. This will be Antarctica proper! I'll take lots of photos and put everything up when I get back. Stay tuned....

Group Photo

We took a group photo last week. There are 13 of us in all, including both the seismic and GPS group. In this photo, one of our mountaineers, JR, is missing. I’ll try and get a photo of him in soon. From left to right: Eric Kendrick, Robert Smalley, Patrick Shore, Peter Braddock, Brian Bonnett, Don Voigt, Abel Brown, me (Stephanie Konfal), Mitchell Barklage, Thomas Nylen, Audrey Huerta, and Mike Willis. Eric, Mike, Abel, and myself are from Ohio State. Peter is the husband of my advisor, Terry Wilson, so he is also from Ohio State in a way.

Here is a picture of my boots! Those spiky things on the bottom are crampons, for when we work on ice. A lot of our sites this year will be on nunataks surrounded by ice. Sometimes the ice is covered by snow->ok for walking, but other times it’s just exposed blue ice. In these cases we need crampons to get anywhere without falling over, especially when hefting a 72 lb battery.

We had a slight “event” a week or so ago, when our group was at a site called Mt. Paterson. Yes, only one t. Mount Paterson is about 550 miles west of McMurdo, somewhat near the coast. I would have put a post up about this earlier, but it was a somewhat sensitive issue. Enough time has elapsed now, and I think it is important to talk about, so I’m putting up some photos. In short, we had a plane crash in the Basler. If you have read previous posts, you will know that a Basler is a fixed wing aircraft, slightly larger than a Twin Otter, and therefore capable of carrying more weight. It uses skis to land, just like a Twin Otter. I wasn’t on the flight, another member of our group, Bob, ended up taking my place. There were six people from out group total (3 GPS, 3 seismic) and 4 people from fixed wing (pilots, mechanics). Basically, they had finished work, and were attempting to take off. Unfortunately, there were some issues with the take off, and the wing of the plane ended up clipping the ground. The plane spun around and crashed. Among other things, the landing gear sheared off, the props were broken, and the belly of the plane got smashed in a bit. The above photo shows the Basler after the crash. You can see how the props are bent, and the damage to the underbelly of the plane.

I got a call in my dorm room at about 6 am, informing me of what had happened to my group. I went and got Peter (our mountaineer) and we headed down to Mac Ops (stands for McMurdo Operations) to get more info. The entire “event” actually went quite well, considering the situation. We were in contact with them via satellite phone, and knew that everyone was ok. Their weather (for the moment) was stable, although they were a bit hungry. The original rescue plan, with a Twin Otter coming from the South Pole, and a second Twin Otter arriving from McMurdo, went as planned, and everyone was back in McMurdo within 24 hours of the crash. Additional backup plans including a supply air drop were also organized, and it was clear that no matter the situation, everyone was going to make it back fine. I was really impressed with the overall execution of the rescue, and with everyone involved. It’s good to know there is such a prepared and skilled group of individuals down here to mitigate events like this. The photo above shows the landing gear that was sheared off.

This is a photo of Eric at Westhaven earlier this year. Eric was involved in the Basler crash, and recently wrote an account of some of the events for a Dispatch article (only you Columbus-onians will know what that is.) I wanted to include part of Eric's account. Here it is, unabridged:

The takeoff started normally. At Mount Paterson, as is typical at the places where we install our equipment, there is no runway. We land and takeoff in our ski-equipped airplane wherever the snow is adequately smooth that the pilot thinks those procedures can be done safely. Antarctic winds shape the snow into long ridges called "sastrugi". The pilot has to choose his takeoff and landing areas so as to avoid sastrugi large enough to damage the landing gear.
At Mt. Paterson, as our plane accelerated to takeoff speed, the bumps occurring as our skis crossed the sastrugi seemed to me at first to be nothing out of the ordinary. But as we continued to build speed and the bumps got harder, I braced my left arm against the seat in front of me so that I could be ready in case something happened. I estimate we were travelling close to 80 miles per hour when, after another hard bump, I saw the left wingtip hit the snow outside my window. Immediately the plane spun to the left and we went sliding. I put my right hand over my head to be ready to cushion my fall in case the plane were to flip over, but we came to a stop after just a few more seconds of sliding and bumping over the sastrugi.
My initial thoughts were I was glad that the plane had not flipped over, and I was relieved that I saw no fire. My next thoughts were that we should quickly disentangle ourselves from our collapsed seats and then get out in case a fire were to start.
After getting out of the plane, we called back to McMurdo on our satellite phone to explain our situation and to notify them that no one had been seriously hurt. At that point, we expected that it might be three or more hours before a plane could reach us, but we knew that since no one was badly injured, there was no need to risk an immediate rescue mission until all options had been considered as to the safest and most efficient way to get us out.
We were lucky that the weather was good, but we hoped that a plane would arrive before weather conditions deteriorated, since otherwise we might be stranded there for days. I think all of us are very aware of the dangers that our work entails, and we all work hard to minimize those risks. I think many of us have had "close calls" before during field work in remote areas, I know I have. The risks aren't unique to Antarctica. I love this work, and accidents like this are part of the territory. My main concern after the accident was that an airplane critical for our field work this year had now been wrecked. Without the DC-3, accomplishing this year's mission is going to be a lot more difficult.