Antarctic 2002/2003 Travelogue

Monday, 28 Oct 02, 10 PM, 10000m above the Pacific Ocean

Well, I suppose this is as good a time as any to start writing. I'm on the plane from LA to New Zealand. It's been pretty hectic lately, and this is the first time in months that I've had a few minutes to myself that aren't committed to meeting some deadline.

I had a wedding about a month ago. Kristin and I and about 75 family and friends gathered in Talkeetna for a weekend celebration. It was probably the best weekend of my life, and I could not ask for a more perfect celebration or a more perfect wife.

The several weeks preceding that weekend were filled will resolving last minute details that likely should have been dealt with months earlier. But other more pressing deadlines prevented it. The several weeks following the wedding were spent resolving last minute details with this trip to Antarctica, which likewise should probably have been dealt with months earlier. But that seems to have become the nature of my life in the last few years, hopping from one deadline to another. I suppose it's really been the story of my life, what I've been trained to do since I was little. In any case, it doesn't feel unusual, though the pace is perhaps quicker and the stakes much more impressive sounding.

As I packed for this trip, I recalled my first glacier trip. I spent weeks planning and packing. I had all of my stuff laid out on the bed two weeks before I left, and shopped and packed and repacked daily. That was for a one week trip not more than 20 miles outside of downtown Anchorage. Now I'm off for several months over 500 miles from the village of McMurdo, which is thousands of miles from anywhere. I began packing the night before my departure.

I don't mean that to sound cavalier, but just to mention something that I noticed about myself. When I left NJ 13 years ago to spend the summer in Alaska, I had never before gone camping. Before I left I had read stories of adventure in the Arctic and wondered who these people were and how they got there. I had even made some faint-hearted and failed attempts at getting involved in some of those trips. But now it seems I am one of those guys, I know who those guys are and how they got there, and it wasn't by writing faint-hearted letters.

All trips are different for their own reasons. This trip is different because I'm voluntarily separating myself from the most important and precious thing in my life - my wife. I've had my share of extended trips and girlfriends left behind, but I've never before experienced anything like this. Kristin and I are the perfect match for each other; or at least she for me. Being with her is like eating peanut butter ice cream, smoking dope, having sex, and watching Fletch all at the same time, and all the time. I could spend the whole day with her just lying in bed, or walking in the woods, or working on the house, for months and years on end, and never want for more. Unfortunately, I also feel compelled to screw things up by keeping the world safe from global warming and ignorance, though it's probably more a mixture of vanity and habit at this point. I think the real goal of this trip, for me, is determine whether I want to keep going on trips like this or get a 9 to 5 job in the post office.

The nominal goal of this trip is say something intelligent about the short-term future and recent history of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet and the ice streams that drain it. Or something like that. I really don't know all that much about it. But I do know how to blow shit up and record the echoes, as well as how to have a good time in the middle of nowhere at 30something below, though I'm not sure which of those qualifications is more important.

See the pictures!

Wednesday, 30 Oct 02, 4PM, Christchurch, New Zealand

The plane trips were uneventful, though long. While waiting in the airports I bumped into a number of people I knew and met some of the people on our expedition. Raytheon, the contractor that handles logistics and support for the US Antarctic Program, issued everyone hot pink bag tags, so it's pretty easy to tell who's headed in the same direction. When we arrived in Christchurch (after about 24 hours of traveling for me), a group of about 20 scientists and support staff gathered at the Raytheon desk to receive their accommodation and deployment information.

I'm staying at the Windsor B&B, downtown. It's a nice place, with showers down the hall and only one electrical outlet in the room, but it's clean and the people are friendly. Once we got settled in, Bruce, Leo and I went for a walk about town to do some last minute shopping and sight seeing.

Bruce is an electronics engineer and Leo is a new graduate student, both of whom are part of the same project team that I'm in. Bruce built a bunch of the equipment we'll be using this season. He seems like a competent, knowledgeable and friendly guy. I think this is Leo's first big expedition and first ice seismic project. He also seems like he'll be fun to be around the next few months. While shopping we all ended up spending and buying more than we anticipated, but everything here is essentially half price due to the exchange rate, so it's hard not to get carried away. It's the kind of thing where if you think it might be useful, might as well get it because it's only a few bucks and there wont be a second chance. There do seem to be plenty of outdoor stores here, with great bargains to be found. So we stocked up on a few extras today, primarily gloves and hats and accessories. The kinds of things that turn a tolerable situation into a pleasant one.

It's all a little weird for me really. I've grown pretty accustomed to being in charge and handling all of the details, but on this trip I'm neither in charge nor barely aware of the details. This makes deciding what type of gear to bring difficult. The more people I talk to, the less confident I am about the issued gear. One of the awkward things I've noticed thus far is that we wont receive the clothing that we will be issued until tomorrow afternoon. If they don't have the type of stuff that I'm used to or feel I need, there is little time to shop afterwards because stores here seem to close at 5 PM and we leave 6AM the next day. My biggest concern I have at the moment is boots - will they have decent ones in my size?

Tonight we're going to get together at the Dux de Lux for a few beers then decide where to eat and continue drinking. Christchurch seems to be a beer drinking kind of town. The people all seem friendly, everything is cheap (to us), there are parks and sunshine, lot's of restaurants and pubs, and seemingly lot's ways to entertain oneself. So it could be worse.

See the pictures!

Friday, 1 November 02, 4PM, Christchurch

The Dux de Lux has turned into the default meeting location for everyone in our group. 'Our group' at this point consists of Bruce, Leo, Paul, Dave, Kurt, Jeff, and another grad student whose name I have momentarily forgotten. Leo and Paul are grad students working with Sridhar at Penn State. Dave is a PI at Univ of Texas Austin. I've known him for almost 10 years, and my funding to come here came through his part of the grant. He is nominally here to work on Taylor Glacier with Kurt and Jeff, and is struggling to avoid coming out with us afterwards. Taylor Glacier is in a much more scenic location than the ice streams we are going to, but not nearly as much fun, I'd say.

The first night in town we drank some good microbrews at Dux de Lux, then headed out to an Indian restaurant that Bruce had been to before. It turned out to be the worst (or best!) Indian food in town, as it was called the Monkey's Paw Thai House. Apparently Bruce enjoyed the microbrews a bit more than we did. The food was actually pretty reasonable and the beers kept flowing, so everyone was in pretty good spirits. By the end of the night, however, lack of sleep, jet lag, and BAC combined to make most of us pretty groggy on the way home. Always thinking ahead, however, I freshened up for the walk by first taking a nap on the cushy sofas that surrounded our table.

The next morning, Thursday, was another beautiful day. I actually made it up in time for the second B of the B&B and we plotted some strategy for the day, which largely consisted of filling time until catching a ride to the CDC (or Clothing Redistribution Center). Leo and Bruce went to the local museum, where an Antarctic exhibit was on display. I split off and did a little last minute shopping and emailing and saw some of the sights, before arriving back at the hotel just in time to miss the van to the CDC. Fortunately Bruce, Leo and Paul missed the bus too, so another was ordered and we arrived just a bit late.

Once there, a lecture was in progress on why it's important to wear clothes in the Antarctic. Actually, everyone working there was very friendly and the whole clothing ordeal turned out to be much less bureaucratic and fascist than I imagined it could be (or that it would be if run in the States). After the introduction, those who hadn't been down before watched a five-minute video, which largely emphasized the point to try everything on now, because this was our last chance to exchange anything. We were then led to a large warehouse-type room and given two bags of clothes that had already been pulled for us based on our sizes and project needs. The clothing system was better than I expected, and I was generally satisfied with everything. I also learned that being tall has its advantages, as most of the re-used clothes tend to shrink and thus to get the full size issue meant getting a brand new pair. They were also happy to let me take both bunny boots and their felt boots. I'm glad I brought my own hats and gloves, as well as extra long underwear, but I was later able fill a small box with my own stuff that I'll leave behind at the CDC while away.

On the way back, I sat in a van with a bunch of people I hadn't met before. Some were going on a snow machine traverse to the South Pole, looking for new ice coring locations and measuring snow properties along the way. Others were doing radar work elsewhere near Lake Vostok. It was neat to hear what was going on. One of the people there was a school teacher, who was also keeping a journal, and I thought it would be interesting to have a page full of links for everyone on the continent who was doing that.

Once back at the room I consolidated and repacked everything, so as not to have to do it at 4 AM. Our plane was scheduled to leave at 7AM, which meant arriving at CDC at 6AM. They require everyone to wear their issued expedition gear to get on the plane. It seems a little silly, but it's not a bad idea. We're signed up to travel on an C-141 cargo plane. This is no airline jet, but a noisy, cramped military plane where everyone sits facing each other in jump seats. It could be worse I suppose, but few people look forward to the experience. One of the joys of such travel is the fact that either the plane will land at McMurdo or it will turn around and come back to Christchurch, but this decision often isn't made until 4 to 6 hours into the flight. That is, one can basically spend all day flying and get nowhere. For days and weeks on end.

I headed down to the bar around 6 PM and met up with everyone. It's a nice place, with a large outdoor patio (typically filled with people) and many indoor rooms and bars. They serve mostly vegetarian and seafood there, which is not bad but not nearly as good as their beers. That night I ordered their Indian curry, feeling somewhat let down from the night before.

It being Halloween, we scoured our brains for something appropriate to do. New Zealanders aren't big on the tradition, but they are big on finding any excuse to party, so there were several options available from the local pubs and clubs. Unfortunately, most everyone opted for an early night to finish packing and get some sleep before our early flight. Paul, Leo and I decided a better strategy might be to simply stay up all night and sleep on the plane. We further theorized that the local nudie bar likely had the best costumes to offer, and I think that we were largely correct. Though sometime around 3 AM I'd say Leo won the costume and dancing competition hands down. It was his birthday after all.

The B&B we're staying at has about 40 rooms and is run by a friendly group of people who have owned it for 25 years. They are well used to the Antarctic crowd, and act as surrogate USAP personnel by providing us with lots of useful information about what we are supposed to be doing and when. For example, the CDC calls them in the morning and let's them know if the flight's been cancelled, and they then go to every room, wake us up, and tell us to go back to sleep. That is, of course, only if you're in your room at 4:30 AM when this happens.

In any event, there was no flight this morning, and we all had the day free to do as we please. Or sleep. Not having hotel reservations, however, proved slightly problematic as new guests were arriving. But the people here simply asked that we double up in our rooms to make some extra space. So, after making it to breakfast (second day in a row!), we consolidated and repacked ourselves. Then slept for a while.

I began aimlessly wandering around town about noon, and wound up in Cathedral Square, which is considered the heart of town. Even at this time of day, the square was packed with people and sideshows and vendors, as were the streets themselves. It felt like a holiday, and I wondered if Kiwis based their holidays not on a calendar but on the weather. What a better system that would be - just look outside and if its nice, blow off work and have a street festival. A highlight for me on the square this day was a small stage show, where a guy dressed in a bright yellow cowboy outfit was singing the theme song to the Love Boat. Despite the absurdity of it all, he had a large audience, which inadvertently prevented me from asking who his tailor was.

On the streets I bumped into Bruce and then Jeff who were likewise independently wandering about aimlessly. Jeff and I headed back to the park near our hotel to fly one of my kites, but the wind was too erratic to do much. Our first clue should have been the dust devils blinding us as we stood about or the fact that every tree was blowing in a different direction, but it seemed like we should be doing something outside. Afterwards I worked on trying to my satellite phone to work as a modem, but still couldn't make it work. Hopefully the techs in McMurdo can have a look at it and figure it out for me. Now I'm just killing a few minutes before dinner. There's been some noise being made about finding a bone fide Indian restaurant tonight, as well as perhaps another half-price Halloween celebration, but even the concrete plans are still pretty fluid at the moment…

See the pictures!
Love Boat Theme - MPG clip - 2.7 MB

Sunday, 03 November 02, 10:30PM, McMurdo

As we deplaned on the sea ice in front of McMurdo, we were told by our greeters not to fart around taking pictures of the plane but to get on the bus immediately because the Halloween party was about to start and they didn't want to miss any of it. Having been to that party now, I understand their concern.

The last night in Christchurch was fairly low energy and comparatively tame. The next morning's departure was not scheduled until 9AM, which gave us time for a decent night's sleep. As we filtered into the lobby and breakfast, word came down that there would be an hour delay, so we were able to eat a leisurely breakfast. Turns out in New Zealand they serve bacon slightly differently. The bacon is two pieces of regular bacon surrounding a piece of Canadian bacon. It tastes pretty good, though I think their pigs are still like ours and can't be turned entirely into bacon.

We eventually made it out to the CDC, where we got dressed in our ECW gear (Extra Cold Weather (?)), a requirement for boarding the plane. The plane was a C-141, which is small jet cargo plane. Unlike the LC-130s, it has no skis, so must land on a reasonably solid surface, in this case sea ice. We sat around while they palletized the cargo and loaded it on the plane, then watched a safety video on working in Antarctica. The seats on the plane were arranged along the length of the plane in four rows, perpendicular to normal seats, such that your knees bumped into the person directly across from you. If you worked things out correctly with your opposite neighbor, however, you could actually get more leg room than normal plane (which isn't saying much these days). Women sat towards the front, where the toilet facilities were slightly better than a bucket, and men towards the back, nearest the bucket.

The plane ride was relatively uneventful. There was only one window, and I was not near it, so for all I knew we were on our way to Poland. It is hard to describe the seating arrangements as comfortable, but I managed to sleep most of the way. The flight lasted about 5 ½ hours, and I was relieved to hear that we were actually going to land and not have to fly all the way back. Once on the ground (or sea ice), we were treated to views of blue skies, white mountains, and a grayish town. We boarded a very macho looking bus and headed for in for dinner.

Before turning us loose in McMurdo, we sat through an introductory briefing about do's and don't's, how to find our rooms, where we're supposed to be in the next few days, etc. It didn't last too long, as the staff wanted to get some dinner before the galley closed, perhaps in anticipation of not wanting to drink on an empty stomach.

Halloween is the first big party of the year here. As I soon learned, all holidays occur on Saturdays here, as Sunday is the only day that most people have off. I think I like the Kiwi system better, but I'm not in charge. Yet. Anyway, on the way to our rooms ghosts, goblins, and Wonder Women scurried back and forth making last minute house calls. We were fortunate enough to arrive in time to stock up at the liquor store before it closed, so we relaxed in our room in building 155 for a while, watching the activity in the hallways.

About 9PM we went up the hill to find our bags, and I dug out costumes for Dave and I. I donned cowboy attire and slung a loaded bottle of Glenlivet in lieu of a handgun. Dave wore a hat leftover from our wedding's costume party and went as DaveHelga. We headed for the gymnasium to be greeted by hundreds of very happy trick or treaters.

The weight limit for personal baggage to McMurdo is supposed to be 75 pounds. However, someone managed to get a serious sound system down there. This was no oversized boom box, but a professional speaker system likely drawing more than 50 amps (and judging from the number of times the circuit breaker tripped, probably more than that). The entire gym (slightly bigger than a basketball court) was jammed with party goers dressed in a wide variety of costumes, all writhing to the music (possibly because the floor was shaking from the speakers). To say the situation was somewhat surreal would probably be an understatement, and the few pictures I took do not do the event justice. Here we were at the bottom of the planet, and a fully-equipped rave was going on in full force.

I felt a bit as though I was in high school and had just snuck into a fraternity party. Not having the chance to have met anyone beforehand, I had no reference for how they had changed from normal appearance. I could only imagine that the vast majority of the group were camp staff, and I tried to imagine who filled what positions. Here were the runway groomers, the aircraft schedulers, computer networkers, the carpenters, and firemen that kept the place going. There are lot of pretty serious and high stress jobs here, and clearly some steam needed to be released. Fortunately Sunday breakfast begins at 10AM.

At breakfast I met up with the rest of the group that rounds out the team. Sridhar and Andy I had talked with briefly at dinner the night before. But here was Peter, a Kiwi mountaineer living in Ohio, and Bob, a seismic guy, and Ash, another mountaineer with 23 field seasons on the continent. We made plans to leave for a snow machine excursion at 11AM. Our project received 8 brand new snow machines, which needed to be broken in. Some might call breaking them in by traveling up the coast to the old explorers huts and penguin rookeries a boondoggle, but I would call such people simply jealous. In any case, it was a beautiful sunny day, with air temps just below freezing, and we headed out in search of important new scientific discoveries.

Along the way we encountered a solitary penguin, obviously late for an important date on the other side of the island, and a few seals, obviously hungover from the night before. We passed by Scott's hut and headed straight for Cape Royds, were Shackleton built a hut next to a penguin rookery. Along the way we were treated to nice views of Mt Erebus and passed by glaciers descending its flanks and entering the now frozen ocean. After a few hours of this we arrived at the rookery to find several hundred penguins having a cocktail party. They busily chatted away, taking little notice of us, except for the occasional stray that wandered up to ask where the bathroom was.

Another group, who took advantage of the sunny day to also conduct some important scientific business, already unlocked the hut. Inside we found original boxes of crackers, cookies, and the like from Shackleton's 1910 (?) expedition. The place was well maintained and perhaps the best museum one could hope to find. Here 20 or so men spent the winter, with no satellite phones linking them to the outside world, no LC-130s resupplying them with fresh fruit, and no diesel generators shaking 1 meter woofers to the beat of MC Hammer. But they could also eat the penguins and seals, which is currently frowned upon.

There's no doubt, we have a pretty cushy life compared to them. But I wonder what they would think of us. On the one hand, our cushy lifestyle comes with the price tag of reduced freedoms (like not being able to make penguin stew), but on the other hand it comes with the increased freedoms of turning what would have been a major expedition for them into a pleasant Sunday outing with no fear of calamity for us. Could be worse.

After dinner, Sridhar and I went to the Crary lab where he had commandeered a bit of work space to check out the seismic gear I had brought. This is a marine seismic system that I adapted for use on ice. The plan was to try it out on some lakes in the Dry Valleys, where we'd like to measure sediment thickness and distribution, in relation to some coring efforts. Unfortunately, I can't tag along on the project until after I go through the local snow survival school that ensures that I know how to zip up my sleeping bag. That process takes two days, followed by a one-day crevasse rescue class. In the meantime, Sridhar, Andy and Don are going to spend a two days on the lakes, weather permitting. Once I'm done with snow school and if the system works and if we stuck in town for a while, we'll take another trip to the Dry Valleys with some of the more sophisticated equipment to try again. The lakes are about an hour from here by helicopter.

After that we took a trip to the coffee house, which is the mellowest of the local bars, serving hot drinks, wine and port. Like any coffee house around the world these days, one can connect to the Internet. Not that connecting up is difficult here as there are dozens of connections and terminal clusters, but it did seem a bit like technology out of control. Andy and Peter joined us after a while, but we called it an early night and I got my first full nights' sleep in a while. And missed breakfast.

Thursday, 7 Nov 02, 7:30PM, McMurdo

I've learned a lot about the US Antarctic Program over the past few days, as well as had a chance to explore beautiful downtown McMurdo.

All people traveling into the field from McMurdo are supposed to take a class called Snowcraft 1, aka Happy Camper School. The purpose of the class is to help ensure that people know how to set up a tent, build an igloo or snow fort, operate a stove, and use the radios. It's a two day class with an overnight in between. There were 18 happy campers in our group, most of whom had never been winter camping before and at least one who perhaps had never made a snowball before.

The class was actually reasonably well run. The instructors were actually pretty down to earth and weren't painful to listen to. They perhaps also realize that everyone working here for the first time must take the class, regardless of how much experience they already have.

That last point is one of the limitations of the USAP, seems to me. Many of rules and requirements here are not for my benefit, but for the benefit of the staff. For example, all personnel getting on the planes or helicopters are required to wear their issued parkas, boots, and pants. That is, you can't just wear any old warm clothes, but only the issued gear. More importantly, the reason for this is not that the issued gear is better than your personal gear, but that it only takes the staff milliseconds to determine that you are adequately dressed. This isn't a bad thing necessarily, but it says something characteristic about the place. And I'm continuing to learn many other characteristics as well.

The expeditions I'm used to are closer to the climbing trip end of the outdoor spectrum, where everything that you really need can fit into a back pack and that when the chips are down you can walk or ski as a self-sufficient unit. Things work differently here. Everyone in Antarctica goes car camping. Or camping via skidoo, helicopter or LC-130. That is, your issued gear cannot be carried on your back and is intended to be carried by vehicle to your destination. If you have a problem, you're not supposed to walk home, but use the radio to call for help and a vehicle will come get you. That is, field work here is more like city life than the field work I'm used to. When in trouble, don't deal with it yourself, call 911.

So that was my biggest revelation during Happy Camper School - don't worry, big brother is here to help you, and in fact insists upon it. Again, I'm not complaining, but it is such a huge difference from working in Siberia that I'm still having difficulty understanding and accepting it.

The class itself was actually pretty fun. After some introductory remarks, we boarded a large tracked vehicle and headed to the ice shelf on the other side of Scott base (the Kiwi base). We played in the snow and built snow forts, set up some tents I had never seen before (and hope I never have to carry!), and had some time to fly kites. The other campers were all a lot of fun and I think everyone had a good time. Perhaps the most exciting part of the trip was when one of our stoves exploded and nearly burned down one of the nice tents.

I wanted to sleep in the Scott tent because I had never done so before. This worked out well because most people wanted to sleep in the igloos and little tents. So I climbed in first and started heating water on the stoves as a means to surreptitiously claim some space in there. I set up two of the little back pack stove (only found in the emergency survival bag, not for typical use in the field) and got some water going. I noticed that one of the stoves wasn't holding pressure and tried to go out several times. Rather than try to fix it, I shut it off and gave it to someone outside the tent and asked for the third stove as a replacement. Some time went by and asked for the third stove again. I set up the new stove next to the first one, pumped it up, and started it up. A few seconds later, the main gasket blew and a vigorous aerosol stream of gas shot out, and began spraying fuel all over that side of the tent. As luck would have it, the stream was pointed away from the other stove, else a flame-thrower would have been borne. I politely asked everyone else in the tent to get the fuck out immediately, turned off the fuel supply to the other stove, and put my finger over the hole, hoping that the flame on the other stove would go out before my hand caught on fire. Fortunately it did and we ended up with a slightly smelly tent instead of a very breezy one. The incident was caused by three factors: miscommunication (some one handed me back the same stove I handed out), carelessness (I didn't look closely enough to figure that out), and a curious feature of the USAP.

Millions if not billions go into the program, but most of the money goes into dorms, labs, other city life accoutrements, and the support thereof. The field gears is often marginal and usually hit or miss. These were some manky stoves that should have been thrown in a crevasse years ago, but this is not where the big money goes. Some of the field gear is first rate, but the survival kits are marginal. The big red parkas are warm and great for going from one building to another, but they're not very functional for field use in crevassed areas. My sleeping bag is rated to -40, but it's old enough that the fibers no longer have loft and would perhaps today be rated at 0 or -10F. And so it goes on. I haven't met any experienced people that aren't aware of the deficiencies, but that does not seem to have helped solve the problem. What I have found, though, is that everyone is pretty helpful and friendly. Just like at CDC, the BFC (Berg Field Center) was happy to swap out gear when asked. Their unwritten policies makes some sense - issue your bottom of the line gear first, then those who don't know better will take it, and those that do will ask for better. Except for perhaps the stoves, none of the gear is inadequate; it's mostly a matter of comfort, utility and efficiency. No sense serving your beer drinking company your finest port if they find a cheap one tasty.

Once back in the city, I met up with some of the Christchurch crew and we had dinner and drinks. A new plane load of people had arrive that day, and I knew several of them. Twit is a Kiwi living in Seattle who I've known since my earliest glacier field work in Alaska. He's joining Dave, Jeff, Kurt and Andy on Taylor glacier. Hajo showed up from Fairbanks to do some sea ice research. It was his first trip too, and we shared some of our mutual impressions of the differences between Arctic and Antarctic research. Later that night we visited one of the three local bars. This was a pretty large one, and when we arrived a very crowded and animated bingo game was in progress. We stuck by the bar like kids in a candy store. Alcohol is cheap here.

This night we also learned that the diameter of a vein in Leo's forehead is proportional to his BAC. We came close to making it explode, but stopped short because we would then have to clean up the mess. We also learned that there is a late night dinner program here - mid rats - that is intended for the late shift workers. Unfortunately someone stands guard making sure that actual late nighters eat first, but we found there was still plenty of food left afterwards. No sense waking up for breakfast after that.

Costs here are pretty impressive and similar to New Zealand - basically everything is half price and your dollar goes a long way. The flip side of that is that drinking on the job is simply not tolerated. I haven't gotten much exposure to the staff side of McMurdo, but I'm increasingly getting the impression that a pretty tight ship is run here. Several people have been politely asked to leave the continent since I've been here for various reasons. Luckily I have only a few more days in town before going into the field, where big brother's grip is slightly less constricting. Not that it's really slowed us down much, but it's the principle of thing really. Speaking of going into the field, we had our first official group meeting today.

At this meeting I gained a much greater appreciation for the shitpile I've stepped into. Sridhar began the meeting with an overview of our game plan while pointing at a map: "We are hee-ah. The enemy is hee-ah. And the tea biscuits, are hee-ah". That about summed it up, until I asked him what the spatial scale of the map was.

There is another group out here who are traveling from Byrd camp to the South Pole, a journey of about 1100 km. I thought that sounded pretty impressive until I learned that our trip would be about 2500 km. This is roughly like driving from NJ to Florida, and back, on a highway with potholes the size of the Washington monument, while driving a motorcycle in a blizzard. But on the upside, there's no traffic or drive by shootings. I knew that we were working on both Ice Streams D and C, but I assumed that we were working somewhere near the divide and that our traveling would be somewhat like day or weekend trips. On the contrary, once sorting and caching our gear at the main camp at Onset D, we will be going on a month-long gypsy caravan trek with 10 snow machines towing about 20 sleds, blowing up as much shit up along the way as we can. The longest legs are about 250 km, which is a two or three day journey, if we're lucky. This is going to be an impressive journey to say the least, and not one likely to be repeated any time soon.

The meeting itself was pretty good. We discussed a lot of the logistics, safety and camp life issues and I think everyone came away with an improved sense of what the next few months will have in store. Perhaps most importantly, we each received an order list for booze. An officially printed form listed all of the alcohol available on base, along with prices per CASE. I believe that there may be a number of important scientific research questions on this continent that I should begin writing proposals for.

After the meeting, we adjourned to the lounge outside the conference room. Here, on the upper floor of the Crary lab, we are treated to some of the best views from McMurdo in perhaps the most civilized environment. We made tea, ate biscuits, and reclined into the sofas and cushy chairs that filled the room to discuss matters of highly intellectual scientific significance - at least when anyone else was within earshot.

Afterwards we broke off to take care of minor pressing concerns (at least in my case), had lunch, and then met again as a group for some crevasse rescue refreshers. Here we tried on our harnesses, assembled our slings and prussiks, and climbed up and down ropes. Peter and Ash ran the show. It was all the standard stuff, but always a good idea to brush up on the techniques and shake down the gear and tailor it to our individual needs. Tomorrow, weather permitting, we'll find ourselves some holes and fall into them.

See the pictures!
Crevasse training - MPG clip - 1.5 MB
Nodwell - MPG clip - 2.7 MB
SnowVolleyball - MPG clip - 2.9 MB

Sunday, 10 November 02, 7:15PM, McMurdo

The weather over the next few days was marginal. Temperatures here are fairly warm, always above 0F and occasionally perhaps above freezing. The wind seems to be the biggest variable to comfort. Thursday night the wind picked up pretty well, such that it seemed like a blizzard at times. Apparently around the corner towards Scott Base, the winds were much stronger. Hajo was out there going through snow school that night, and apparently they got hammered pretty hard. We decided to put off our crevasse rescue practice until the weather improved, which turned out to be today.

It was a beautiful, sunny day with little to no wind. We returned to the ice shelf near happy camper school, where someone had used a bulldozer to dig a large trench to simulate a crevasse. Mt Erebus and Mt Terror shone brilliantly in the sunshine behind us, with wisps of vapor emanating from Erebus’ active crater. We had a good time jumping into the hole and having our partners hoist us back up. After a while of that, we tossed an old snowmachine into the hole and hoisted it up too. I’ve never traveled roped on snowmachines before, but Peter and Ash are the mans with the plans (or men with the plen?). The combined glacier travel experience of our group is pretty high and everyone is very safety conscious, so I think we all feel pretty reassured about our collective ability to deal with any problems in the field. I spent some time relaxing and reflecting in the lounge of the Crary lab over the past few days, and I realized that this was the first time in over six months when I’ve had several consecutive days of no deadlines or commitments to deal with; several days now stretching into weeks. I think that may explain the feeling of exhaustion I’ve had lately and my ambivalence towards doing anything productive, like write papers and proposals in my free time. I get the impression that even though I’m awake, my brain has slowed down to a minimum functioning level to recharge my batteries. And I guess I’ve had some steam of my own to blow off. Fortunately Christchurch and McMurdo have offered plenty of opportunities for that.

Friday night was a wine tasting event at the coffeehouse. Several well dressed volunteers stood behind tables set up with a variety of wines, and for five bucks you could have a glass of six of them, and even get your glass rinsed in between. One woman ran the vehicle pool, another worked in the water plant, one dealt with surplus equipment exchange and reuse, another in the Crary lab. I never made it over to the whites. By the end of the event, quite a large crowd had gathered and much pleasant conversation was made. It’s nice when you can have a party where the music isn’t so loud that you have to shout.

Saturday night was a beach party at Gallaghers, the non-smoking bar. Not having a hawaiin print shirt, I fashioned a lei from duct tape, zipped the pant legs off my nylon pants, and donned my beach hat for the occasion. The bars are about 20 meters from the dorm I’m in, so it’s pretty convenient and no need to dress warmly. The costumes inside were not nearly as creative as for the Halloween party, but most in attendance found something worthy of the theme. I was slightly disappointed that there were no drinks with umbrellas available, but again it was a fun crowd, with opportunities to both dance or talk or watch people pass out. The place reminds me somewhat of the Russian towns I’ve been to. The physical setting is similar, with low rolling hills covered with snow. The buildings are largely the industrial-looking type, either as a barracks or mining shacks. The alcohol is copious and cheap. The people are largely the same types you find everywhere, except these speak English so you can actually carry on a conversation. And because our backgrounds are so different, there is usually something to talk about. I find many people here I already now, or that know someone I know. Our snow school instructor lives in Haines, many of the construction guys have worked in Alaska, and many of the scientists are from UAF.

Other than that, I don’t really have to much to say about McMurdo, except perhaps that it’s way overkill for the actual scientific support it is nominally intended to provide. McMurdo is a fully functioning city, with its own physical plant, oil reserves, waste-water treatment plant, and air traffic control tower. It is filled with carpenters, plumbers, welders, divers, administrators, engineers, janitors, barbers, cooks, and the like. Most of the people in town know very little about glaciers and have no direct role in scientific research. While all of these services and personnel are required to run a fully functioning city in a responsible manner, what is not at all clear to me is whether such a city is required to support the science going on here. It’s all great and wonderful to have, but if you divide the amount of money and resources spent here by the number of science projects, it is sobering. And here that’s no minor feat, though useful in the morning.

Several large cardboard boxes arrived in the main hallway yesterday, filled with copies of a telephone book-sized document that contained newspaper clippings related to the NSF’s role in Antarctica. They ranged from science descriptions, to stories of small-town schoolteachers who tagged along with an expedition, to stories of independent travelers running into conflicts with the bases. My favorite article described an outfit called Adventure Networks Inc (ANI). They are the only commercial company landing planes on the continent. They take in tourists, climbers, photographers, etc, as well as provide logistical support (like radio comms and emergency landings) to other private groups, such as those skiing to the pole or climbing mountains. They get substantial and open grief from the USAP’s higher ups, who apparently feel that no Americans should be here unless they are under their protection. They make a valid point that they don’t want to divert resources to the search and rescue missions of non-participants, but at this stage of investment here, it might be that they should rethink their mission. I mean, if they opened the place up to cash-paying tourists, they could further justify their existence and offset our tax burden. The Kiwis are apparently much friendlier to those who just skied across the continent without support, and I can’t imagine that a little friendliness from the USAP is going to break the bank. When you consider how much food is thrown out every day, how much fuel goes towards luxury showers, and how many planes go out with space available, I find it hard to believe that helping out a few skiers occasionally is going to set some precedent that is going to hurt the program. And providing moral and perhaps shared logistical support to groups like ANI will help ensure that NSF isn’t the only group around that can provide search and rescue or housing for adventurers. I mean, we memorialize the huts of people just like that from 100 years ago, why shouldn’t we give their modern equivalents some credit?

It’s no big secret that the money spent here is not for science but to maintain a large presence, and a fully functioning science city could be converted into a fully functioning military city in the space of a week. My fear, though, is that because the science façade exists, that scientists will be held accountable for the luxuries that are essentially forced upon us. I’ve talked with several researchers who’ve said that this is indeed the case you get a proposal funded, then USAP logistics rewrites your proposal based on the support they want to provide that year, then you get hung out to dry for doing a different project that cost millions more than your initial estimate. Getting hung out to dry in this case may not be fatal for a career, but conducting research in the Antarctic is difficult enough without being made to feel like a slimeball in exchange for your hard work.

I thought about what it would be like to run a science expedition through ANI, and guessed that it would probably cost at least 10 times less than through McMurdo and the USAP, perhaps even 100. Of course the services are substantially less too. Still, I think it would be a kick to snub the USAP once and carry out a project through ANI, just to make the point clear the USAP’s approach is great, but it does not have to be done like this to be successful, and it could be done much more efficiently in other ways. On the other hand, there would be little point in doing this, because the savings would not be passed on to the science community to fund new projects, but rather into some other US boondoggle to maintain global military and economic superiority. But it would likely be fun nonetheless.

I can hardly complain though. The food is great, the buildings are warm (or hot!), and there’s little to worry about physically. We can take showers whenever we please, eat or drink to excess, and let the staff take care of most everything related to living without lifting a finger. The rooms are perhaps a bit crowded (four bunks to about 250 sq ft, in our case), but indoor space is at a premium, and its much more spacious than any tent we would have set up. It’s somewhat like being a freshman in college again, with new people to meet in the hallways, parties to go to, gossip to liven things up, and of course science to learn.

They have many activities scheduled to keep people busy here, including a lecture series. Several times a week, visiting scientists will give a lecture on what they’re doing here. Tonight’s talk was given by Twit on research closely related to ours on the West Antarctic ice streams. It was given in the galley, which is much like a large, modern cafeteria. They have a rear-projection screen set into the wall and a speaker system. The place was packed 20 minutes before the talk started. It was neat to see that everyone was so interested. The originally scheduled talk was to be given by someone else, but bad weather prevented last week’s Christchurch plane from arriving until later tonight, and the speaker was onboard.

Other things to do include watch TV. I don’t have one in my room, so I’m not really sure how many channels are available, but I watched the end of a science fiction movie on one of the TVs in the hallway after the lecture. They have stations which continuously broadcast camp information, such as weather, flight information, and the like, and TVs are set about that relay this information. It is also available on the internet at www.mcmurdo.gov, along with lots of other information. There are a number of computer clusters located around town, though finding an open terminal that works is challenging, and the speed is hit or miss. There are also phones in every room and in the hallways that can access outside lines, though again actually getting an open line can take an hour.

It’s still a beautiful day outside, even though is after 10PM now. I took a little walk after the end of the movie in just a thermal top and a shirt with no hat or gloves, and felt fine. I understand that most people at the New Years party last year were just in T-shirts. My understanding is that though the weather is warmer then, that the town actually gets much grimier due to the volcanic dirt that blows in the wind and that rather than track snow inside everyone tracks grit. So we are perhaps seeing the town at its best now. At the moment we’re scheduled for a Wednesday departure. We’ve got one or two more flights of our gear scheduled ahead of us, and once they’re in, we’re next. The trip feels more and more real, and I think once we get out on the snow I’ll be ready to put a spring back into my step and regain that clarity of purpose that I rarely achieve outside of field work.

See the pictures!
Rescue Training - Andy Falling - MPG clip - 2.1 MB
Rescue Training - Don falling - MPG Clip - 3.2 MB
Rescue Training - Leo holding - MPG Clip - 1.6 MB
Penguin Colony - MPG Clip - 1.8 MB
Walrus - MPG Clip - 2.6 MB
Pistenbully - MPG Clip - 1.5 MB

Wednesday, 13 November 02, McMurdo

We’ve basically been on hold for the past three days, and likely the next several. On Monday, with good weather, it seemed that a Wednesday flight was a pretty good possibility. Most of the cargo had been already packed, so there really wasn’t much to do. Sridhar and Don seemed to keep busy with minor matters, but the rest of us began seeking out busy work. Something I’ve found pretty much endemic about being on hold for an airplane in the field is that most people will not use that time very productively. There just seems to be some sort of inertia that develops that makes your bags hard to unpack and your other projects seem too distant to deal with. I started catching up on some papers to read, but found myself dozing off. The more intelligent members of the group just went directly to bed, or didn’t even get out. It still being a nice day, I took a walk up the nearby Observation Hill.

Ob Hill is one of the few places you can walk to outside of town without telling big brother (though he likely knows). It is great place to get a view of town, Erebus, Scott Base, the sea ice and the ice shelf. I had the place to myself for a few hours, and was glad for the exercise. A motivated person could probably climb it in 10 minutes, but I was in no hurry and took pictures along the way. I took a map of town as well to get a better sense of where everything was. That night was pretty uneventful. The bars were closed and my liquor closet empty, and it was good to get some sleep.

The next day our group made the bag drag list. If it seems out of hand to check in to the airlines 2 hours before your flight, try checking in the day before. That’s bag drag. You bring all of your stuff to cargo, where it is weighed, then you take back your carry on bag containing what you need overnight. If you’re flight gets put off a day, then you’re without your stuff for a day. And so on. Our check in was 7PM. I spent the latter part of the day packing up, organizing gear into stuff sacks labeled Month One and Month Two and stuff I’d like to have if the plane gets delayed. I’m still not sure where the confusion came from, but in any case our flight got moved from flight 5 to flight 8, meaning that two more cargo flights to our location were still preceding us. Poor weather Tuesday night meant that both would have to leave Wednesday, meaning that if we did get out it would not be until the evening, and only if we were lucky as the weather seemed to be deteriorating. So rather than take our stuff away indefinitely, our bag drag was rescheduled until the next day. This seemed to be some cause for celebration, as the coffeehouse was packed that night.

The next day, today, brought more ground blizzard and a cancellation of all flights and our bag drag was then postponed indefinitely. Everyone seemed to use this fact to catch up on sleep. After a late breakfast, I explored town a little further and came across the exercise room. There were few people there, but plenty of hi-tech equipment. It felt good getting some exercise. I burned 384 calories. Another curious thing about not having much to do is how very long it takes to do small things. Everything that I have accomplished here thus far could probably have been done in a single day, if that was all the time that I had. Simple things like sending an email or making a phone call can turn into an hour’s work for inexplicable reasons. I think I’m just going to stop checking my regular account because it seems to lead to more frustration than its worth.

The lack of anything productive to do means also that there is also more time for screwing around. Since everyone has the same clothing here, there is real danger of inadvertently swapping clothes. Each red parka, therefore, comes with a Velcro name tag. At least when you’re outside, it’s like being at a conference where everyone is wearing a tag: “Hello, my name is …”. After a while it gets a little much. I therefore made good use of the Crary lab facilities to print out some new name tags for my jacket. My favorite is the one that says “I’m with stupid-”. This was good for hours of fun, taking pictures of friends standing on my left. The popularity of programs like photoshop, however, can lead to the joke backfiring.

See the pictures!
Shad Kite-Flying - MPG Clip - 1.8 MB
Shad Dragged - MPG Clip - 1.5 MB

Friday, 15 November 2002, McMurdo, 1PM

We’re still here, and likely will be throughout the weekend. I think I hit bottom sometime around Wednesday.

I’ve fallen into a routine now that actually feels pretty comfortable. I sleep through breakfast, wake around 9, get some juice, check the weather and flight boards to see what’s happening, head to the exercise room for an hour or so, shower, sauna, then eat lunch. After that it varies, but I’ve actually been getting some work done.

I think every once in a while I need to just experience intense boredom. It’s not that there is nothing to do around here, it just something about visiting the dark side for a while to remember to put the rest of life into context. Having been through that, I feel like I’m ready to get back into action and start working again. I got a small proposal out yesterday, wrote some text for an application for work in ANWR next year, corresponded with a few prospective graduate students, etc. Today I hope to flesh out a new proposal for work on Lake E.

Mostly I work in the 2nd floor of the Crary Lab, where there are cozy chairs and other scientists hanging out. Today I’ve been talking with some of the drilling guys about ice coring and how screwed up the ice coring office is. Every five years the NSF contract comes up for an ice coring organization, and each time the resulting organization manages to become buried in controversy and inefficiency. Apparently the current contract is not much different. One of things I find most amusing about it all is that whichever university gets the contract, they always seem to end up hiring the same people to actually get the work done in the field. The problem may result from the fact that these contracts are so large that the main players involved care more about getting the contract than actually doing the work. I think it would be a kick to see the people who actually care about the work actually be in charge.

I’ve also had the chance over the past few days to also hang out with people that I would otherwise never talk with. In small camps, like less than 10 people, you somewhat automatically include everyone in the same group and get to know them, whether they are the lead PI or the camp cook or the guy that makes the machinery work. This is one of the nice parts of field work. In Fairbanks, which is a pretty friendly place, I don’t often have Fred Meyer’s check out clerks over for dinner. I never felt like a particular prejudiced person, but when it comes down to it I tend to associate with a pretty narrow group of well-educated and like minded people. In McMurdo, the situation is somewhat in the middle. The place is just large enough that you’re tempted to simply politely smile at the kitchen staff as you get some food, but just small enough that you run into these same people at your dinner table or in the bar or in the adjacent dorm room or even as a roommate. That is, you cant really be anonymous here. More often than not, the person next to you is not a scientist but a support staff and the facilities are not segregated. It’s kind of like being in college, where everyone eats, lives and studies in close proximity, but people are divided into different majors, including vocational ed. Most of the people here are largely not sure what to think about global warming, have never actually camped on a glacier, and don’t typically associate with scientists. It may sound funny to read about, but it is definitely an unusual circumstance for me.

I’ve yet to meet anyone here that I didn’t like and that doesn’t have some personal commitment to doing a good job. I’ve talked with plumbers, electricians, metal workers, janitors, cargo handlers, and carpenters, and have had many enjoyable conversations. At first it seemed like I was mostly meeting younger people that were here for the fun of it and the opportunity to save money and travel, but I’ve also gotten to know older people with families for whom this is a real job. I haven’t yet started to feel guilty about taking advantage of the what town has to offer without productively contributing to it, but I think I would feel guilty about not doing the best job I could on the science itself, should we ever get to do any.

The weather here hasn’t been too terribly bad, but bad enough that the planes have been grounded. We haven’t been posted for bag drag the rest of the week, and today our two cargo flights didn’t even make it onto the hopeful list. That likely means that we are likely here until Monday at the earliest, since Sunday is largely a day off for most people. Shad and I went down the transition between land and sea ice yesterday and flew kites for a while. It was a pretty strong wind and had the tendency to drag us around, but it was fun nonetheless. Wind chills were likely in the 30 to 40F range, but if all goes well our backs are to the wind most of the time. These temps may sound cold, but for just walking from building to building I typically don’t put on a hat or gloves and am only wearing thin nylon pants. The actually air temp is probably between 10 and 20 F and if you’re out of the wind it’s actually fairly pleasant.

Last night Dave and I went down to Scott Base, the New Zealand station. It is significantly smaller than McMurdo and has a much different feel to it. They’re buildings are all connected by hallways, and it is requested that everyone take off their shoes in the entryway. I got the feeling like I was walking around in an aquarium and when I looked through the windows I expected to see fish swimming by. I don’t know how many projects they have going there, but the size of the camp seemed to be more what I was expecting or seems appropriate. I am of course ignorant of most of the details of either camp, but clearly there are some efficiencies that come with running a smaller program. Thursday night was American night, and the only time when Americans can come hang out without an invitation. When we walked into the bar and asked for three beers, the cost was $1.20US. We handed the guy $2, but he couldn’t make change, so he handed a dollar back. Our total bill was less than the usual tip, and tipping isn’t standard in New Zealand. There was little doubt at this point why Americans are only allowed in once a week.

Saturday, 16 Nov 02, McMurdo

Last night I attended a meeting of McMurdo citizens concerned about constitutional rights in Antarctica. Apparently a small anti-war protest was held about a month ago, where about 70 people walked through town carrying a banner that said ‘Not in my name’, asking Bush not to wage war with Iraq in their names. A day or two later, the camp manager held a meeting with a few of the organizers and told them that any future protests or demonstrations would lead to the removal of those participating from the continent. The local weekly newspaper wrote an article about this protest march, and this article never made it to press. Many of the people participating in the march are part of a political discussion group, in which many other issues are discussed. They store their files, pictures, and schedules on the common hard drive here which all can access, as do many other groups and individuals. Apparently the IT manager was directed to have those files removed and asked one of the technicians to do so. This technician refused, as it was not in violation of USAP policy to have personal files stored on the common drive, and it was in fact encouraged. He was told that if the files were not removed by a certain date, a few days later, that his employment would be terminated. In a similar event, someone tried to post information on how to properly send in write-in votes for the November election. Despite their being no political bias or even political information, these files were also not allowed on the common drive. Apparently the only files allowed are pictures of drunk or half-naked Halloween party-goers. In any case, these events brought to a boil many issues that had apparently been simmering for years regarding the constitutional rights employees in Antarctica.

Several days ago several employees later had another meeting with the camp manager (who may actually just be the lead Raytheon boss, I’m not sure about titles), where more clarification was requested on these issues. No new information was made available, except perhaps a reiteration of the consequences of non-compliance with Raytheon policy. The employees suggested that while a small anti-war protest may not make national news, that a larger protest claiming that the NSF denies the right to free speech and lawful assembly in Antarctica probably would. This consideration apparently prompted a number of phone calls between McMurdo, Washington and Denver (Raytheon’s base).

I thought the meeting was very well run. There were no inflammatory types like me trying to stir up trouble, but a number of well-intentioned people voicing their concerns and wanting to determine the truth in a non-confrontational way. Those at the smaller meetings also made it very clear that these were not confrontational or antagonistic meetings, just a clarification and delivery of Raytheon policy. One of the many problems with this situation is that we seem to be in a pretty unique situation. NSF is nominally in charge of everything here, and they keep an NSF representative on base at all times. But NSF contracts with Raytheon to do everything. Raytheon then hires employees to actually do the work, but most of these people are paid by the hour. So the question becomes, who’s life is it after 5PM? The USAP program declares that it will provide recreational and computer facilities for personal use to both employees and grantees, and clearly provides them with housing, food, etc without cost. So do employees become just citizens abroad after work? What about grantees who have signed no Raytheon paperwork?

There were only a few researchers at the meeting, and those more or less running the meeting made it clear that they did not want to involve the scientists and let this issue disrupt the work here. But besides having a low tolerance for bullies, this issue really strikes a cord with me and perhaps most scientists. As a huge defence-oriented company, I have little to no trust in Raytheon and expect no less from them. I hold the NSF to a much higher standard however. I mean, these are the people funding science, which is nominally about discovering and disseminating the truth about things. This means we are supposed to speak the truth as we see it even if the truth is uncomfortable or makes bad press spin. If I want stand-up in the courtyard (which by International treaty belongs to no one) and voice my opinions on the quality of the scrambled eggs at breakfast, will I be forcibly removed from the continent? What if I voice my disagreement to NSF policy over the internet? Should they have the right to read my emails? Where does the NSF in Antarctica draw the line between freedom of speech and freedom to work in Antarctica? Apparently some decisions are due to be announced today, so I’ll know more then.

In other news, Ash was flown out to Christchurch this morning. Apparently he had some chest pains yesterday and the local medical staff decided it would be good for him to get some extra tests from a large hospital. It is currently unclear to me how this, and our current delays, will affect our trip.

Sunday, 17 November 02, McMurdo, 9PM

This morning after brunch we drove a pick-up truck across sea ice, ice shelves, and glaciers, halfway up to the steaming crater of Mt Erebus. Well, it may not have been halfway, but it seemed pretty close. There is an overlook locally known as Room with a View, which is on the shoulders of Mt Erebus. To get there, we borrowed a pickup truck that had been modified with snowmachine tracks instead of wheels. It handles pretty nicely and had no trouble getting us to our destination. One of the nice things about being a glaciologist is that trips like this are work as well as play. From this location you could see the Erebus Ice Tongue, a glacier that stretches out into the sea ice. You could also see many ice falls and large crevasses, and have a great view of the volcanoes. I gave Kristin a call on my satellite phone to tell her I wished she was here. On the way back we swung past the Pegasus runway, which wont be in operation until after the sea ice runway becomes unstable. This runway was apparently named after Pegasus the plane, which is slowly being covered with snow since a crash in the 1960s (no one was killed), though pieces of it are still protruding above the surface.

After our excursion we packed and made ready for our latest bag drag. Here we take all of our stuff to get weighed, and leave everything except our carry on bag. If we’re lucky, tomorrow we’ll be at Onset D. But there is still a lot that can change. The current plan is that Don, Shad, Peter, and Andy will go in tomorrow on a twin Otter, a much smaller plane that has a wider window of operation than the LC-130 that the rest of us will go in on. That way they can begin unpacking and getting some of the GPS work started. Our flight depends on a Pole flight getting cancelled tomorrow. Paul is hoping that the Pole flight goes and bad weather sets in at Onset D, because his girlfriend is coming in from Christchurch on tomorrow and he would like some overlap with her. There is also no guarantee that the Otter will make it all the way and might get weathered in at an intermediate point, and that the LC-130 might pass over it such that we would get there first. It seems likely that in any event, our group will be split into at least 3 parties tomorrow.

We also heard from Ash in New Zealand today. The current theory is that his chest pains were precipitated by some high blood pressure medication prescribed to him by doctors in McMurdo. He went into the hospital with the sniffles and they routinely check blood pressure. Finding his a bit high, they gave him some pills. A day later he has chest pains and they fly him out. Not only this, but they insisted he be strapped to a stretcher for the 8 hour flight. When he arrived, he got up to pee and returned to find an ambulance stretcher waiting for him. These people also insisted he be strapped down, and nearly dropped him trying to load him into the ambulance. He is still going to have a few more tests tomorrow, but it looks like he will be returning on one of the next flights, hopefully in time to catch the last of our cargo flights.

A number of us have also got the sniffles. With everyone eating out of the same cafeteria, it’s not hard to imagine that germs spread fast. A number of people have been diagnosed with bronchitis, but given Ash’s experience, this diagnosis may be questionable. If we don’t fly first thing tomorrow, I may go get checked out. At the moment I’m sitting in the laundry room. Apparently Sunday is laundry for most people and I could have picked a better time. On the bright side, it’s all free, including the soap.

See the pictures!
Trac Pickup - MPG Clip - 1.5 MB

Thursday, 21 November 02, Onset Delta, 8PM

We arrived at the blinding white hell of Onset D about 1PM on Wednesday.

I got the call from Sridhar about 5:30AM, saying to get our shit together in two hours. Fortunately most of our gear had been loaded two days before. That Tuesday I was actually getting into a work groove, with one proposal and half of a paper finished. Unfortunately I seem to have caught the McMurdo crud the week before, and had a pretty sore throat and congested head, otherwise I might have finished the paper. After a last call on the cheap phone to my wife, I headed towards the bus that drove us to the sea ice runway.

Things proceeded smoothly and we were airborne quickly and without a hitch. On board was our group, still minus Ash, plus two riggers working on the camp's communication systems, plus a bunch of cargo. The flight lasted about 3 hours and was uneventful. After landing, the rear cargo door was opened and the pallets allowed to roll out the back of the plane onto the snow. We deplaned and got our first view of the ice stream and the camp.

Onset D, the region where Ice Stream D begins, is a fairly flat, featureless plain of bright white snow. Except for the camp, every direction looks like the others. The camp itself is pretty deluxe. There are two jamesways set-up. The larger one is about 16 feet wide and 50 feet long and is used as the galley. It has tables, chairs, oil stoves, propane water heaters, electric water heaters, a toaster, a microwave, blenders, and more. The camp staff includes, among others, a mechanic and a cook. The food here is even better than McMurdo and once off the plane we were treated to brunch, then discussed some plans for the next few days.

The first project was finding our tents and sleep kits and getting our accommodations set up. It was a nice day, though the wind was steady with occasional snow. Air temperature was about 15F. Once everything was tied down, we began unloading the pallets and sorting our science gear.

Because everything is shipped on the LC-130 cargo planes, all of our boxes are arranged on large pallets that fit tightly into the fuselage. While some prioritization of gear is possible, the pallets themselves are filled by the loadies behind the scenes. So an important part of getting started is to make sure that everything has arrived before the last plane shows up. We've had about 8 flights already, and at least two more are coming. At least a few of these flights are camp materials and gear for the team that will be drilling our shot holes at OnD. Fuel was another sizeable contribution to the loads. Because there are no gas stations out here, we have to create our own. We need gasoline for generators and snowmachines, diesel for heaters and planes, and white gas for stoves. Eight new snowmachines took up a fair amount of space. And the science gear itself, an impressive set of piles, composed the rest.

Gear offloaded from the planes is arranged in lines that are more or less in the direction of the prevailing winds. Blowing snow, rather than falling snow, is the biggest threat to things getting buried. Arranging pallets and boxes in lines ensures that you have a fighting chance of finding things that get buried, and also helps keeps blowing snow from finding a place to land. We have quite a few long lines of gear. After a few more hours of sorting gear followed by a great dinner, we headed for bed. Though temperatures were about 0F outside, I think we all stayed warm and comfortable through the night.

The next morning we finished dinner about 7:30AM and headed out for a day of sorting gear. It was sunny and warmed up throughout the day. Our clock time is several hours behind sun time, so the sun was already fairly high in the sky by the time we began. I spent the morning with Don and Andy moving barrels of fuel into groups that will be flown out ahead of our traverse and cached at our future camps. Then I basically just wandered around the cargo lines the rest of the day, helping out whoever was needing a hand. Not having packed any of boxes, I couldn't really do much in the way of planning or management, and often there wasn't much to do as Don, Peter and Sridhar needed time to think about what needed to be done next. By the end of the day, however, we had resorted most of the gear, charged most of the batteries, gotten some of the GPS work started, and found almost everything that we were expecting.

Tonight we had a fantastic dinner. I think I had three platefuls. We're expecting another plane to land within the hour. This one will have most of our remaining gear, plus a crew of 6 people from the Ice Core Drilling Service, which used to be PICO. Once we survey in all of the shot holes here, they will drill the holes while we travel away to Ice Stream C. We will have two caches of food, fuel and equipment on Ice Stream C, where we will spend about a month. Here we will have our own drill for shot holes, though it will not go as deep, and we will do all of the seismic work while we travel. Once we return, hopefully most of the deeper shot holes will be complete here so we can complete the work on our return.

I thought a bit about the differences between the Arctic and Antarctic programs while schlepping boxes around today. My experiences in Arctic projects has been that the PIs and students do essentially everything, from making cargo boxes, to scheduling flights, to cooking the meals. This is slowly changing, but it is essentially still the case that there is no centralized infrastructure that even remotely resembles McMurdo in function. When I go from place to place, I lift my own boxes and when one is missing I can tell pretty quickly. In the Antarctic program, if my boxes aren't labeled properly, they can easily get lost. Here, the division of labor requires a full on tracking system for every detail. Flights and support needs are scheduled a year in advance, and their progress is tracked through time. Some type of system like this is clearly needed, as literally hundreds of people are involved with handling dozens of science projects. But each person handles only a small piece of the puzzle, and significant coordination therefore must accompany the process.

Perhaps most interestingly, something much less obvious must accompany the process as well. Much of what gets done in the Arctic gets done after hours by graduate students and faculty. These people have a personal investment and interest in the outcomes and pretty limited budgets, so we all do what we have to get the job done. When budgets are less limited and an infrastructure takes over everything except the science itself, these new cogs in the wheel don't have the same level of commitment to an individual project. That is not to say they are unprofessional, in fact far from it in the case of the USAP. But it does mean that people expect to have a life outside of work, and rightly so. However, having this life means that if a job takes 100 hours a week to complete, then you typically need two people instead of one. And that means that you need twice as much food, twice as much entertainment, twice as much bunkspace, etc. And this is perhaps what largely leads to the huge infrastructure - not only do we need all those people to do the best job possible, but we need to keep all those people happy too.

I've already described many of the comforts that can be found in McMurdo, though perhaps just scratching the surface, but the trend continues even in the field camps. I was talking with someone earlier in the season who said that camp set-up had been slowed down because the weather delays prevented the electrician from getting out there. I couldn't imagine why an electrician was needed just to run a few extension cords from a generator. Then I walked into the jamesway and saw all of the appliances and equipment. Not only kitchen stuff, but loads of radio equipment, satellite equipment, bulldozers and snowcats. The generators run full time and the lights don't flicker when you turn on the toaster. While people are fairly conservation minded here, the fuel supply is essentially limitless compared to even these high loads. This is my first time here, so there are all just preliminary hypotheses, but my impression is that these camps are largely designed by the staff for the staff, and it just works out conveniently that it makes the scientists comfortable too. None of this is meant as complaint. If the money that went into the logistics was being taken out of the science budget, then it might be a complaint. But I get the feeling that any money saved in logistics here wouldn't go into more science but into some other government boondoggle, so may as well go with the flow and make the best of it. So despite all of its bureaucracy, hand holding, and big brother aspects, I have to admit that working in Antarctica is pretty deluxe.

Friday, 22 November 02, 8PM, OnD

I woke up this morning feeling like I had been run over by a Tucker.

Somewhere along the line in McMurdo I picked up some sort of virus that doesn't seem to want to leave. Must be they don't like the cold and prefer my throat. In any case, when I woke up my throat felt so thick and dry that a tootpick couldn't pass through it and my back made me aware of every vertebra. Unfortunately the night before I had left my water bottle in the galley, so I couldn't take any pills while in bed so that I could wait until they kicked in before getting up. I stumbled into the galley and sat in a corner drinking my tea and popping pills, wishing everyone else was as miserable as I was. After breakfast we began sorting gear again. After an hour or so of this, I felt pretty reasonable. It was cloudy and snowy, but the exercise, human contact, and motrin made my less aware of my aches and pains. Don, Sridhar and I rearranged the last of our fuel drums for various caches in the morning, then we split up into different tasks.

I tried to take it easy the rest of the day by dealing with electronics in the jamesway. We have some iridium modems that should allow us to talk with various instruments remotely, but I couldn't figure them out. I think my com port must have died along with my fan (which is always on now) and my CD drive (which only works occasionally). Sridhar, Andy, Bob, and Paul took off after lunch to install some passive seismometers a few kilometers away. There's seems to be some suggestion that earthquakes may shake things loose under the ice that relate to speed, as well as looking at ice-related noise to see where it is coming from and how it relates to ice motion. Anatoly, who showed up at the last minute to replace another member of our group that couldn't make it at the last minute, spent the day working with his radar system. Bruce spent the day making cables for people and replacing chips in his shot boxes. Apparently a minor programming error in the chips caused them to cease working between 0-1AM, 10-11AM, and 8-9PM, an intermittment error that took a fair amount of head scratching to figure out. Shad and Leo spent the day marking shot hole locations with the GPS. This is the only real work we have to do here before we leave. Today was the first day when the GPS system was fully functional, and they got about 8 out of 60 kilometers of lines done. In the next few days, we can get the other receivers working and split into teams to finish things more quickly.

It turned out to be a beautiful sunny day in the afternoon, with temperatures above -10C and no wind. This is warm enough to walk between tents with no jacket or hat. I took advantage of the lack of wind and warm temps to sort out my personal gear and consolidate it into handy sized units for our traverse, now that I have an idea of how we will be traveling. After that I helped Don move more boxes around for the Twin Otter loads. The Otter made about 5 trips today, hauling mostly fuel to our ice stream C caches, but also starting in on some of the food and science gear. The plane can haul about six drums of fuel at a time, and we probably have 30 or so. We found out today that Ash was on his way back to McMurdo finally, and he should hopefully show up here tomorrow.

It was a pretty mellow day for me today after the rough start. But all thoughts of McMurdo are now distant memories and we are finally under way and firmly in the field. Things have settled down enough now that the evenings can be spent relaxing with a few drinks, but my throat is still sore enough that I decided to head to bed early and rest up. I typing away in my Scott tent now and might fire up my Russian language program after I'm done so that I can practice with Anatoly.

See the pictures!

Saturday, 23 November 02, 8:15PM, OnD

It was another productive day.

Shad and Leo continue to be the heroes as they are completing actual science tasks by surveying in shot holes. They've got about 1/3 of the holes surveyed so far. Tomorrow they and two other (TBA) will go on an overnight trip to survey another ½ or so of the total, leaving the remaining bit for Tuesday back in this area. Bruce and Anatoly each got most of their radars put together today and will likely be able to test them tomorrow. The hot water drills seem functional and will likely get tested tomorrow as well. After generally helping out in the morning, I spent the afternoon reassembling the powered parachute I brought along. If the weather is good tomorrow and I'm not out surveying, I hope to start testing and tweaking it.

My health has improved a bit I think, but it's tough to tell whether it's just the drugs. I went to bed early last night and am trying to do the same tonight. I think sleep and liquids are likely the best cure. It's tough not to want to push as hard as everyone else, especially since we've never worked together before, but everyone seems pretty understanding and feels its better to get healthy now as we have a long season ahead.

We heard from Ash tonight. He's stuck in McMurdo. He got so far as taxiing out on the Twin Otters before they cancelled the flight due to weather. Though this was likely the case, there are hidden dynamics with aircraft scheduling here as well. Generally speaking, there are no flights on Sundays, as that's the general day off, and the Twin Otter guys have a reputation of not wanting to spend their Sundays stuck in the field. So even though the was a weather cancellation for the flight leaving McMurdo coming to here, the Otter that was here decided to fly back to McMurdo tonight 'before the really bad weather hit here'. It was snowy with marginal visibility today, but still a couple of cache flights were completed. It doesn't really set us back too far to have a delay, but it would be nice to have that over with. We're still waiting for some more fuel from the LC130 anyway.

The reason for the two different aircraft is related both to aircraft performance and aircraft politics. The Air National Guard flies the LC130s. Though they can land almost anyway, they only want to land on groomed runways that are marked with flags along their length. The Twin Otters are a much smaller plane and the pilots are willing to land in ungroomed areas. So, for a camp like ours, it means that vehicles and people need to fly out on the Twin Otters first, groom a runway, and get the LC130s in with the rest of the gear. These runways are 2 miles long. Else, the LC130s could have carried palletized loads and made most of our caches in one or two flights, dropping a pallet or two at each site. The current method is likely puts the LC130s at less risk, but adds a significant delay and cost to the program.

Sunday, 24 November 02, 5:15PM, OnD

I'm house mouse tonight.

Sundays, though not truly a day of rest, are treated at least as a slower moving day. I went to bed early last night and slept late tonight, still trying to shake my cold. It was a pretty windy and snowy morning and not much was actively going on by the time I got to the galley. Shad, Leo, Sridhar, and Paul were preparing for an overnight trip to one of our more distant lines, though the weather threatened to put their departure off by a day. I spent the morning making sure our radio and phone gear arrived in one piece and that the batteries were charged, in the comfort of the galley. I spent some of the afternoon messing around with the powered parachute. I attached the buggy to one of our nansen sleds and hooked the kite onto it so that I could adjust the kite strings. I've got the batteries on charge now, and might give it a go after dinner. We take turns helping out the cook and keeping the place from decaying into a muck pile, and tonight it's my turn. Fortunately, it's the cook's day off, so there's not much to do except stay warm and write emails.

Our email system here is a GOES satellite hookup that is functional for about 4 hours a day. There are a couple of laptops hooked up to it, and it's funny to see the galley temporarily transformed into an internet café on top of 2000 m of ice in the middle of nowhere. Transmission rates are pretty slow, but it's handy enough for text. While nobody's looking tomorrow I'm going to try to send some pictures. I think the movies will have to wait until I get back to McMurdo.

See the pictures!

Monday, 25 November 02, 9:30AM, OnD

It's been a slow day for me so far. I spent the morning washing dishes and cleaning up the galley, and thinking that I'd rather be at home. I've been gone close to a month now. I don't regret coming out here. It's a great opportunity to do some research that builds on my prior expertise and a great chance to see how USAP operates from the inside before getting my own projects going. Still, I wish it were only for a month, as I'd be on my way home now. I probably shouldn't dwell on it much as we really haven't gotten started yet, but I haven't yet felt the rush that comes with getting stuff done in the field. Part of it is not having the prior investment or responsibility to succeed, part of it is being sick, but part of it is likely my life in general. On other trips, I guess I felt like I had nothing to lose by being away and that part of the reason for going was to keep from being bored, and to keep from dwelling on the fact that I had nothing to lose by being away. Now, I feel like being here is keeping me away from my home and my wife, where I could stay contented forever.

The past few days has certainly given me a greater respect for the staff people. They work really hard without ever really seeing or understanding what it is we're doing; people don't work that hard unless they believe in what they're doing, but it's something of a blind faith for them. I understand what we're doing pretty well, and at the moment I don't feel as motivated as they do. I must not be drinking enough. An undocumented side effect of having an especially sore throat and cloudy head.

As for group dynamics, everyone gets along fine and there is essentially no friction. While there are different subcomponents of the project, basically everyone is here for Sridhar and there is little source for competing goals. I'll add more on people and projects later. Now it's time for a little work.

Tuesday, 26 November 02, 6PM, OnD

I slept about 12 hours last night and woke to a blizzard.

As blizzards go, this one was pretty mellow. Temperatures were around 20F, but the winds were around 20mph, kicking up snow and reducing visibility. But with a wind shell, it was actually fairly comfortable working outside. My cold seems to have become substantially diminished over the night. In morning I mostly helped Don and Peter move stuff around. We're getting the last of our stuff out of the cargo lines and into our sleds. We've got 20 sleds that we're pulling with 10 snow machines.

Four of the sleds carry only our two hot water drills. Andy and Ash worked on constructing a floor board system to help hold the drill pieces in place on the sleds. These pieces include a couple of hot water heaters, fueled by diesel, along with a gasoline powered pump, a water tub, and a bunch of tubing. To run it, we keep throwing snow in the tub, melting it into the water that's already in it, then heat it further before it goes into the tubing that gets stuck into the snow, melting its way downward. The idea is to drill down about 20 m like this, then drop some dynamite in and run. In the afternoon, Don, Andy and I fired one up to test it out. I mostly stood there holding the hoses to keep them from spraying hot water or glycol everywhere, but at least my hands stayed warm.

After lunch I helped Bruce rig up his radar. He's still got a ways to go, but it's coming along. He's mounted a large cage made from PVC piping on top of a nansen sled. The cage holds out his antennaes on the bottom, and on the top contains a wire mesh that resembles a clothes drying rack that reflects the energy downward, increasing the signal strength. The cage is about 3 m on a side. It's a little floppy, so should be interesting to in operation. His radar is designed to penetrate through the entire ice thickness and reflect of the bed below.

Anatoly also has a radar. His is higher resolution but does not penetrate as deeply. He has also has mounted it to a nansen sled. Nansens are a wooden sled with all of the parts lashed together with string and ropes. The idea is that almost anything that breaks can be repaired in the field, and the sled itself is flexible, bending over the snow rather than rigidly bashing over it. Anatoly is Russian. I talk to him in Russian as best I can, but he always replies in English. So I don't think he realizes how poor my Russian is yet.

Sridhar, Paul, Leo, and Shad came back from their trip today. They spent the last two nights out surveying in the upper seismic line that runs transverse to ice stream flow. Things seem to go pretty well and they got all 35 km or so finished. Because the sky and snow are white, it's pretty tough to figure out where you are and which way to go when it's snowing. Fortunately GPS navigation is pretty slick, as long as you know what coordinates to head to. The snow machines guzzled a lot more fuel than was expected, and there was some concern they would run out before making it back. The real story seemed to be the food though. Apparently they let Leo pack the food, and he doesn't have much snow camping experience. So it was one pack of oatmeal for breakfast, candy bars for lunch, and one dehydrated meal for dinner, leading to some grumpy campers. Fortunately, Peter and Ash were in charge of food for the trip, so hopefully we'll stay a little fuller. If camp life here is any indication, I suspect we're all going to go on diets once back in New Zealand.

Worked seemed to end a bit early today. Mostly now its testing stuff out and loading up to go. So Bruce and Anatoly have the most to do as they are the farthest behind. Testing the seismic equipment to determine the optimum shot hole depth is the last major equipment task for the rest of us. It seems that we are shooting for an early morning Friday departure, giving us a day and a half or so. This date might have something to do with Thanksgiving being on Thursday, a20# turkey in the freezer, and Flora being the cook here.

Wednesday, 27 November 02, 10:30AM, OnD

After another 11 hour nap, I awoke to find my cold largely gone, the wind very strong, and the entire group assembled at breakfast for the first time.

With Ash back among us and the survey group back at camp, we are all together for the first time. The decision to leave on Friday morning now seems final, and today we are trying to consolidate all of our gear into various sled loads. The wind is pretty strong, reducing visibility to a few hundred meters, but it is pretty warm so it's not really uncomfortable outside as much as annoying. The seismic testing has been cancelled, as strong wind introduces too much noise into the system. Anatoly, Peter and Ash just left to for the final testing of Anatoly GPR. Bruce is still working on getting his system going. It turns out that he will not make it on our traverse. We are about a week behind schedule, and he was going to leave in early December from the beginning. So he will stay here until Monday or so and continue to mess with the radar, hopefully leaving it behind in working condition. I think it will probably be a slow day for the rest of us, as much of the remaining work has to wait until the wind slows down. I may fool with the powered parachute in the smaller jamesway today if nothing much else happens.

It is a remarkable thing really how much getting rid of a cold can improve one's disposition. I feel a 1000 times better and much more lively. Not having worked with anyone here before, I'm sure many of them were beginning to wonder whether it really was my health or whether I am just a load in general. Probably both, but at least I can hide it better when I'm healthy.

See the pictures!

Friday, 29 November 02, 11PM, Ridge CD

After a sunny Thanksgiving and a little powered parachuting, we hit D road.

For the first time in several days, I awoke to the sound of no tent pieces going flap in the wind. As I walked from the tent to the galley, it became clear that this would be a good day to test the powered parachute. Unfortunately I had already signed up to help Shad install some GPS stations, so the flying would have to wait until the afternoon.

One way to figure out how fast ice moves is to stick a pole in the snow, put a GPS antenna on top of it, and let it sit there for a few weeks recording position. This also requires a fancy GPS receiver, some batteries, and some solar panels. Shad had everything ready to go except the solar panel mounts, which I helped with. The general idea is to have them face North, not let them get covered with snow, and not let them blow away. So after a little fiddling with poles and mounts, we set one station up at camp, which is on the fast moving ice of the ice stream, and left to set another up about 15 km away on the ice sheet, which moves considerably slower. How much slower is what we're trying to find out. It didn't really occur to me until we had gotten underway, but this was the first time I had left camp since we arrived a week before. It might seem funny, but I really didn't have a sense of remoteness and vastness of the place until that side trip. Something about being in a camp, albeit small, with lots of tents, cargo, and small buildings just made the place seem like a snow covered parking lot on the edge of town. But once out of view of all that, where all there was to see was snow to the horizon and a blue sky, I felt like I had finally entered Antarctica. That is until we came across the line of survey poles Shad and Leo had set up the day before, bisecting the wilderness for miles in every direction.

At the end of that line we set up the receiver. I didnt feel like we were moving any slower, but that's allegedly story. Unlike the lower parts of the ice streams, the interface between ice stream and ice sheet here was basically undetectable. Lower down, huge shear margin with gaping wide crevasse separate the two. The onset regions are different, presumably because they are moving slower. Crevasses do exist though. Shortly after Shad and Leo finished for the evening while creating the first survey line, which runs down the length of the ice stream, the Twin Otter pilots noticed that the flags were getting fairly close to what looked like some crevasses. Rather than continue that line, Shad, Leo, Paul and Sridhar took off on their several day trip for an upstream line. In the meantime, Peter, Don and Andy went to examine the remainder of the intended line where the crevasses may be. They got about 150 m further before a snow bridge gave way beneath Peter's snowmachine. Fortunately he had enough momentum to carry him across, but now all three were on the wrong side of the hole. They roped up and began crossing at another location where the bridge was firmer, intended to charge across it. Unfortunately they had trouble working up any speed. With all three machines roped together, it wasnt really clear until later that Don's machine was out of gear and that Peter was actually towing him. But these were not the monster crevasses shown in Imax movies, so it was more of a joke than a problem. Nonetheless, the experimental plan was adjusted so as not to need extending the line any further.

Anyway, once Shad and I were back at camp, Sridhar gave the nod to get the parachute flying. By this time, the sun was out in full force and it actually became quite hot. This caused the snow texture to change considerably. I had hoped to groom a runway by dragging an air force pallet loaded with fuel drums behind the Tucker, but the tank treads sunk in so deep now that the pallet didn't smooth them out. These pallets are solid smooth metal. So smooth in fact that they are a hazard to walk across; but normally they make a great grooming device. Fortunately Spore and Al, two of the camp staff, were able to improvise and in the end I got a huge, smooth surface from which to work.

The reason I was so concerned about smoothness was based on my experience in Fairbanks. I had installed skiis on the landing gear to reduce friction. Unfortunately, when the buggy was given full throttle it became impossible to steer, as small perturbations caused by bumps in the surface would divert the buggy faster than it could be steered back. At full throttle on skiis on a smooth surface, this thing is going 50 mph within several feet. This time I decided to just use a ski on the nose gear and let the rear gear remain as wheels, hoping that it would track better. After a few tests it became clear that this worked. As Shad and I attached the parachute to try a flight test, all work stopped at camp as everyone crowded around the runway with their cameras. The first (and only) test flight in Fairbanks had the buggy airborne with 10 meters, and I expected roughly the same here. So we go the engine started, held open the parachute, and gave it full throttle. The chute inflated, the buggy tracked straight, and all systems looked good. Unfortunately, it did not go airborne. Instead, it ran straight through the crowd at the far side, causing people to jump for cover. Fortunately no one dove down hoping it would fly over them.

We tried several more times, with similar results. We even tried flipping the propeller over, thinking that perhaps I had it on backwards, which is easier to do than it probably sounds. In the end I decided to install the rear skiis, thinking that it simply wasn't going fast enough to lift off. Unfortunately for whatever the reasons, we couldn't get the engine started again once the skiis were on. So I temporarily gave up, brought the buggy into the warm jamesway and put the batteries on charge, hoping that the heat and amp hours would solve the problem. By this point we were all down to single layers and no hat or gloves, and it was hard to be upset on such a nice day.

The atmosphere was somewhat festive above and beyond the nice weather. It was Thanksgiving, and we were all looking forward to more of Flora's great cooking and many good toasts. It was also our last day in camp, and the first day in several that we were able to work outside without being grumpy about it. Finally all of the sleds were being filled up and loads tied down, giving shape to the previously irregular piles of gear. The last unclaimed snowmachines finally found owners and began being customized to suit driver preferences. It was also a good opportunity to do some last minute packing, so that the evening could be enjoyed to the fullest and bedtime could be stretched to the longest.

Thanksgiving dinner proved to live up to the anticipation placed on it. I snagged a huge turkey drumstick, and there were all the fixings one could hope for. Everyone brought out their best bottles and there was plenty to go around. For desert, we had our choice of at least 6 different types of pies, and essentially all we could eat of them as they were duplicates of each.

After dinner, the weather remained nice, though colder, and I decided to give the powered parachute one last try. I got the engine started, attached the parachute, and let her rip. This time a much smaller crowd was in attendance, and all stood behind me. To my pleasant surprise, the buggy tracked very well on the skiis. Unfortunately, that's all it did. This time I let it run off the runway and continued to apply full power. As it vanished into the distance, we could occasionally see it catch some air as it hopped over sastrugi. The nose wheel remained largely off the ground, so I could only steer it by turning the kite. I got it about halfway around when all of a sudden it rolled up into a ball and stopped moving. Spore and I chased it down on a snow machine and discovered that one of the servo steering arms had caught on the snow, broken off, and run into the prop. This buggy is of poor design and mediocre quality. It's a long story, but essentially the person I bought it from screwed us over pretty royally in many ways on this project. In any case, this crash, though perhaps not fatal, put an end to further testing until our return from ice stream C near Christmas.

Morning brought more good weather and a bustle of activity. By the time I got to the galley, most had finished breakfast and were packing away bits of turkey and pie for lunch. Soon tents were coming down, bamboo tent stakes gathered and boxed, and final sled loads arranged and hooked up with drivers. I got fitted with one of our two gypsy wagons. These are 6' x 10' units on sleds, that resemble the old conestoga wagons of the west because of their arched fabric roofs. We use them for mobile work rooms, as well as storage and anything else we can think of. Other sled loads consisted of hot water drills, fuel drums, crates of food, etc. Everyone began by towing two sleds, though later Sridar and I, both towing wagons, pawned our rear sleds off on others because they towed so poorly and we could not see them behind the wagons.

Eleven of us are making the trip, riding 8 brand new Scandics and 2 older Alpines, leaving one person to ride on the sleds. Before we left we organized some group photos. I was disappointed because I wanted to arrange the snowmachines behind us such that we could get both the people and the gear in the shots, but Sridhar didn't seem to be interested in going through the maneuvering effort, so we just sat on a sled as Doug from the camp took a picture with all of our cameras. This set me off in a pissy mood for the first part of the trip, for really no good reason. Sometimes things like that make me think that I'm a total control freak. Sometimes they make me think that I just need to change my socks.

Though not as warm as the day before, it was a great day for driving. The snow was nearly perfect as well. We headed off at about 10 mph and drove for about 10 minutes before stopping and checking our loads. More or less everything seemed fine and we were all in good spirits, or were at least faking it well. We continue on in a ragged, strung out fashion, with several lanes of traffic at irregular intervals. As we became more familiar with our loads and more comfortable with the terrain, we gradually began increasing our speeds. We stopped every so often to snack, pee, and let everyone catch up. As the day wore on, and the temperatures dropped, our breaks became shorter and less frequent, and our speeds increased. We were burning gas at a faster rate than anticipated, about 5 mpg, and I think were all secretly grateful we talked Peter into bringing the extra drum of fuel. After our last fill up, Peter, who led the way, didn't stop again until our tanks were nearly empty and we had arrived at the halfway point. By this point we were pretty much wearing everything