jules in antarctica: December 2010

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.