Trip to Byrd Camp in West Antarctica

In early January I had another "quick trip" to a field camp.  Although this time, two nights turned into seven nights as can happen easily when on these trips.  We waited several nights in a row, for a plane to leave McMurdo 8pm, 9pm, 10pm, 11pm, and midnight-- only to be called with a cancellation due to a mechanical issue with the plane (ok, one night we did have poor weather/ visibility at camp).  I duly appreciate the layers of attention and protocol for allowing planes to fly safely on this continent, but sometimes it can be mysterious as to why it's so hard to get somewhere.  So I kicked off the year, Jan. 3rd, at Byrd Camp which is a three hour flight from  McMurdo via an LC-130 Hercules plane.  Byrd is in the middle of West Antarctica and the camp is supporting about 30-40 staff and science grantees.  

Weather coming in to camp

Weather arrived, it lasted about a day.

The grantees at Byrd work on the Polenet project which studies ice sheet data in Antarctica and Greenland (http://www.polenet.org/).  They are based here, but fly smaller planes out to different sites to set up GPS and seismic recording stations.  During my visit, they were a bit behind on flights due to weather at various locations, so they were also pacing around waiting to really get to work.

Passing time.  I'm yellow.

I found this in the Galley in the middle of West Antarctica.  I can't get away from this place! 

Byrd camp is set up a lot like the previous camp I was at, CTAM, although it began last year and will probably continue for a few more years.  There is another camp called WAIS (Western Antarctic Ice Sheet) only about 80 miles away from here and they mostly support ice core drilling (a huge project and they just finished their goal of the second deepest ice core sample from 3,332 meters!).
 

There is also the very beginnings of a new camp past WAIS at Pine Island Glacier (PIG).  This year is dedicated to staging the camp so it can be set up for next year.  That translates to a ground traverse of heavy equipment vehicles pulling cargo and fuel bladders from Byrd to PIG. 

It has been in the last several years that traversing is becoming a viable means of transportation for the US Antarctic Program.  The South Pole Traverse from McMurdo has about 3-4 successful seasons, and the new PIG traverse is the next biggest one that I know of.  Pulling fuel via large tractors is actually more cost effective than flying all the fuel needed to support camps (or the Pole).  To back up a bit... fuel is shipped down on a large tanker ship to McMurdo at the end of every summer season.  This fuel is stored and used in town, but also needs to get to the South Pole and 3-4 major field camps, get delivered to various fuel caches in the area, as well as support C-17, LC-130, Twin-Otter planes, Basler planes, and helicopters.  This season's South Pole Traverse brought almost 100,000 gallons of fuel to the Pole- saving about 28 LC-130 fuel delivery flights.

So, while I was at Byrd, the PIG traverse came back from PIG to load more cargo and fuel for their next PIG trip (all of which was originally flown out to Byrd from McMurdo).  The traversers, although pretty excited about the unique opportunity they have, actually say driving is...
pretty boring.  It's of course flat, white, and relatively dull without scenery to look at.  They know where to go via GPS and the three of them just follow in a line.  This part of the continent, the plateau is pretty stable.  (I know that the South Pole traverse heads over the Ross Ice Shelf and up a glacier through the Transantarctic Mountains to the Polar Plateau which have areas of crevasses which need to be monitored with Ground Penetrating Radar to cross safely).  Part of the real work with traversing is making sure that vehicles stay working and the hauling system doesn't break down.  Every year they try to improve the hauling technology to keep friction and drag down to a minimum and maintaining flexibility for riding over sustrugi or rough snow.  Turns out the weather on the way to PIG is generally very nice, but the actual camp location is very windy and tiny bit miserable (note to self for next year-- skip PIG camp).

This is what it looks like when the traverse gang showed up

The various traverse components

Fuel bladders

Looks just like Little House On The Prairie!

 

Back to town.  The view of Ross Island and McMurdo (where the dirt is) from Pegasus airfield on the ice shelf.  Mount Erebus is in the background. 

 It was nice to get back to my friends in town. 

 

 

Happy New Year!

It’s nearly January and I’m almost through with my contract.  Thoughts of post-ice travel are popping up but I have to focus on working for about six more weeks.  Life on station is going well and even though we have lots of people on station, life is still bearable (minus a few brief beer shortages).  November rolled by quickly.  December moved a little slower, and January will probably creep along in the anticipation of February’s freedom from the ice.  Both Thanksgiving and Christmas holidays were spent with two-day weekends and a lot of lazy hanging out with friends (our typical work week consists of 9 hours per day, 6 days per week).  There were about 4 different town parties this past week leading up to Christmas, so I’m pretty tired as well.  Luckily next weekend is also a holiday weekend and I can rest then.  Or continue to party..?

Here are some photos of the observation tube that was installed just outside of town as quick recreational activity in November.  It’s the tube that used to be installed at “Penguin Ranch”, a seasonal science camp several miles away and you might recognize it from Werner Herzog’s “Encounters at the End of the World”.

Paul and Emily talking with someone below.  It's about ten or twelve feet of ladder down to the bottom of the tube.

The tube has a lock and key we must check out from the Firehouse dispatchers to keep tabs on who is out on the ice. 

It is a bit freaky down here.  But the tube is frozen solid in about 10 feet of ice (this was end of November and they took it out a week later).  There is barely room for two people.

I saw some fish and jellyfish down here.  Someone else was lucky enough to see a seal. 

 

Early December I got the chance to go to a field camp to draft up the final construction as-builts.  The camp is called CTAM for “Central Transantarctic Mountains” and is located on a small plateau, literally in the middle of the mountains near the Beardmore Glacier.  There will be about 130 science researchers working and traveling through the camp this season.  I was there before they arrived, so I can’t comment too much about what they will be studying, but it should involve the geology and glaciology of the region.  Lucky that I was there for the last Sunday before the scientists showed up and the camp staff took us on a small recreational trip into the local hills.  The scenery was amazing and the hills had so many diverse and beautiful rocks.  Brown, white and blue are the typical natural colors on this continent, but the rocks give insight to some other colorful past.  Leaf fossils are spotted in the rocks, but you have to search for them and occasionally you might see an entire forest floor imprinted into the rock.  I’ve heard murmurs of scientists also looking for meteorites and dinosaur bones out at CTAM this season, but no confirmations of anything yet! 

Camp consists of tent buildings that have a solid floor structure and structural ribs with a durable tarp.  The tents are heated and have electricity as well as plumbing in the galley tent.  We use fuel and a generator to keep camp running.  It seems like a lot of work for a camp that will last a little over 2 months, but we've got to be able to keep the researchers working while they are here.  The plan is to deconstruct and remove the entire camp before February.   

The LC-130 flight in from McMurdo takes about an hour and a half. 

The runway is groomed with large machinery. 

We sleep in tents with a very warm sleeping bag rated to -40 degrees.

Sunday excursion up to the hills.

Taking a sled ride behind the snowmobiles.

Rock towers.

Rocks.

Rocks.

Rocks.

Town is starting to fill up with people and get busy.  I’m still scanning drawings.  There is still a bit of sunset over the Transantarctic Mountain Range at night.  I’ve just moved to a different dorm with my friend Emily and we’ve actually got a pretty large room for us and all our friends to visit.  When winter-over friends leave, as they do this time of year, they give you food, furniture, room décor, half finished bottles of booze.  Our room is the coziest I’ve been in so far.  Yes, yes, for a silly dorm room.   

Here is an aerial view of town with some of the places I go.  The commute is not bad.

An evening view of town early October from half way up Observation Hill.

A few weeks ago, I went to a training class to learn about working and traveling out on the sea-ice outside of town.  As a recap, McMurdo is at the end of a peninsula on Ross Island and I am on solid ground here.  Just outside of town, McMurdo Sound is covered in about 4 to 8 feet of ice for most of the year.  There is a permanent ice shelf several more miles away to the east and south which is similar to the sea-ice, but it is much deeper and a permanent fixture of the landscape.  The nearby sea-ice builds up over winter and some of it will start to melt and break up in December and January.  Currently, there are planes landing on the sea-ice and several roads leading to science camps studying seals, penguins, or using underwater robots to study the ocean. 

The sea-ice is carefully monitored for quality of ice, temperature, thickness, and cracks by professional surveyors as well as field safety personnel (survival/mountaineer guides).  There are established roads and camp locations which makes it easy to study and anticipate the seasonal patterns and changes of the ice.  Weather, nearby land or ice masses, and ocean currents all affect how the ice moves in this region.  Some of the ice completely melts away, especially aided by the end of summer ice-breaker ship that breaks open a channel for ship access to McMurdo.  This ice will refreeze for the next year being very strong and even throughout (the shipping channel eventually refreezes into the following year’s sea-ice runway).  Some of the sea-ice melts and weakens, but not completely.  This ice is a bit more temperamental and uneven due to subsequent years of ice melting and freezing on top of each other- not the best conditions for roads or a runway.    

I couldn't find the most recent map, but here is an example of how the surrounding area gets used and monitored. 

Although the professionals know what they are doing, it is important for the rest of us to be educated if we are going to be working or traveling on the sea-ice.  The heavy vehicle operator that grooms the nearby roads has this training to assist in the monitoring of those areas, as does the driver who takes a group of people out for a recreational trip, or the carpenters that go to fix a door on a science camp hut.  The safety record out on the ice is really good and incidents are rare due to the amount of attention to these areas. 

In addition to the classroom presentation on what to look for and experience on the sea-ice, we also went on a trip about 10 miles away to “profile” a known, seasonal crack in the sea-ice.  Fun!  To profile a crack you need to be able to drill holes into the ice and measure its thickness, measure the width of the crack, and use a rule-of-thumb formula to determine whether it is safe to cross the crack.  I first imagined these cracks to have straight up and down sides to them and maybe they were 4” wide, maybe they were 12” wide. Not all cracks are alike, and they can be really subtle or really pronounced. 

Crack.

Shoveling out the crack to see the whole profile.

At this time of year, the cracks will have several layers to them as they continue to re-freeze within the crack, creating a stepped effect.  The crack is passable by vehicle if the center, shallow part of the ice is greater than 30” deep and has a width less than the width of 1/3 of the vehicle’s wheel or track width. 

Hand drilling through the ice until you hit water.

Gas powered drill goes faster.  We got about 36" of ice in the middle of this crack. 

The drills are either hand cranked or can be powered with a small gas engine.  The 2” wide “bits” are not sharp except for the very end, and they drill through the ice easily with a little elbow grease.  The lengths of the bits are 1 meter and you can connect the lengths together when you absolutely need to know the entire thickness.  The tape measurers are weighted to sink into the water and have two different pulls.  Pull the tape itself and the weight will stop on the underside of the ice, easily for reading the tape.  Pull the cable and the entire thing will come back up through the hole.

After our class profiled the known crack, we drove out further (it was determined safe!), off the established road to get some ice measurements where a science group studying seals wants to travel in this area (to get to more seals).  We drilled about 10 more holes and the ice measured to be about 54” deep.  That was just some basic info and the field safety professionals will come out soon to investigate further.  The trip was fun and it was fairly warm out there with little wind.  The trip overall was about 4 hours as it is slow going in a large vehicle over the ice. 

Inaccessible Island

 More drilling.

The ice is about 2 feet below drifted snow in some locations.

Ross Island's Mount Erebus and me. 

Hello—

Needless to say, I did not write anything on this blog last year. It was a combination of me being busy, lazy, and also not sure what to write about the second time around. I hope this year is different and I think I will have some new experiences to share.

I arrived in McMurdo Station on August 22nd and will be here until approximately mid-February 2011. There were 7 flights that brought employees down in August for the season that is called “Winfly” (Mid-Winter-Fly-In). Most of us are here to bring the station up to a high-functioning level for the Mainbody season that starts end of September. My typical job as the facilities draftsperson does not start until Mainbody, but I have a special project for Winfly that was funded separately. For about 6 weeks I will be scanning a lot of old building plans that live in McMurdo and never been digitized. It’s a pretty nice gig to be able to deploy early and get to see the town at a colder, darker, quieter time of year. I know a lot of people who spent the entire winter here and it is also nice to see them before they leave within the next month.

Winter- March to August, turns to 24 hour darkness, pretty cold, population approximately 250.

Winfly- August to September, slowly turning light out, still pretty cold, current population 500.

Mainbody- October to February, all daylight, cold, average population 1,000-1,200 (and I hear we’ll even exceed that this year).

From what I hear, the winter was a pretty drama-free season with mild weather actually (average winter temps are -15F + windchill). Right around now, the temperature probably averages around -30F with wind chill that can hit -70 degrees F. This weather isn’t uncommon in October, but it is definitely more consistent during this little springtime of August and September. Once summer starts peaking, temperatures vary but usually stay up above freezing and can even get to be around +30F.

About every 2 days, after little storms pass, we get great skies, long sunsets, and bright stars during the ever-decreasing dark night.

Never left?

I am back after leaving 20 months ago. It surprisingly feels like I never left. Now I've been here for just over a week and have fallen into step with the routine. Early wake, work, galley meals, dorm life, 1000 people, cold (brr), trying to exercise, safety meetings, boots, friends, science lecture, anti-bacterial gel, decent bedtime. I will write more when I learn to fall out of the routine again.
But we got salad nearly every day!

2009 - 2010

Update for the new season coming soon...

last week here on ice

I am beginning my last week in McMurdo. My official departure date is February 11th, but there are some scheduling issues with flights and I may get bumped up a few days. At this time of year, we get ships here to bring us supplies and fuel for the next year. There is a Swedish icebreaker that came to break a channel through the remaining sea ice to McMurdo (see satellite photo above), but it has also been escorting the other ships through some ice much farther north of here. The fuel vessel has come and unloaded about 7 million gallons of fuel already, a research vessel has been here for a few days, and we're still waiting for the delayed cargo vessel. There are US Navy and Kiwi Army folks here to help unload the vessel on a 24 hour operation and some regular Raytheon crews will then work to organize the cargo around town and get the year's solid waste, etc. back on the vessel. Because there are an additional 70-100 people that need to get out of town before February 23rd, when the summer season ends, the station managers are calling for folks to be ready to leave if they are not involved in these operations. Its a busy time with people coming back into town from field camps, people coming through town as they leave the Pole, and people leaving about every 2 or 3 days. I did not make it to Pole-- a combination of an over-population at Pole this year and a lack of urgent work for me to do down there. Oh well.


Lately I have been sick, as there was a flu outbreak and I was at a party in a stuffy room one night before most of us got it. It seemed as if everyone was really healthy for awhile, but when new flights of researchers come in, we can see the illnesses spread. Now I am still fighting a nagging cough and taking it relatively easy with my energy.


I did go on an overnight camping trip. The recreation department hosted some overnight trips to the camping spot where outdoor snow school is held (aka Happy Camper). I did not go to Happy Camper because my job did not require me to go out into the field camps. So, about 10 of us (including 2 field educated trip leaders) took some Pisten-Bullys (see vehicle photo) out and made our own camping adventure. My friends and I were thinking of just spending the night in the main gathering tent to facilitate some late night games and light drinking, but then Kelly found a "quincy"-- a snow cave that was left over from a recent Happy Camper group that made it. She dug out the entrance and it was large enough to sleep 3 of us comfortably. The quincy was beautiful inside, more fun than the permanent tent, and much warmer than sleeping in a regular camping tent like some others did. At night and in the morning we all gathered to heat up water and chat in the main tent, and we were all pretty worn out from setting up camp do much but stare at the tarped walls. The weather changed alot and you can see it in the group of photos below. One of the photos is of a block wall made by a camper, probably weeks ago, now curled by the wind. At snow school, people learn to take hand saws to snow and make wind barriers. The snow is easy to cut and light to pick up, I tried some myself. Also, note outhouse. I don't know how deep it is dug, but we are out on the permanent ice shelf, so whatever is there, is pretty well contained.

Here are some shots of us helping the weather center launch a weather balloon. This is typically done twice a day in the summer and it takes two people to release it so volunteers are welcome to help out.

Also, McMurdo hosts an alternative art gathering and people either bring items or reuse unwanted items around station to create work. Here are a few samples. The photo of the bike is done by two snowmobile mechanics that took an old broken snowmobile and turned it into a "chopper" -- with the front ski and the back track. the chopper runs well and was the highlight of the show. I do not know who made the painting, but it was titled "goodbye christine" which was a reference to one of my roommates that got fired and sent home just before the art show (it seemed to be a questionable firing with a little bit of drama and controversy involved, it makes the painting pretty hilarious). Overall a pretty interesting show, and interesting for something else to do on a Saturday night.

Photo of IceStock... New Years Day outdoor concert featuring about a dozen of the town musicians and groups. It was a cold, snowy, and windy day and lots of people showed up. There was also a chili cookoff and lots of coffee and Baileys for the crowds.

I'm soon off to New Zealand for several weeks and then a trip home to California. Please write me if you have any advice on New Zealand, I'm looking for hiking and beaches.