Training and the South Pole!
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First off, this last weekend we celebrated Halloween with a huge party in the gymnasium. It was a blast! I was IceBeard the Pirate accompanied by an owl, a penguin, a tiger, the bearded lady, and multiple other unique costumes. there seems to always be something going on every Saturday night, since the majority of us have Sunday off.
So this past week was chocked full of training. On Monday, a group of us headed out for sea ice training. This consists of digging the snow out of cracks in the annual and multi-year sea ice, then drilling each different part of the crack to see how thick the ice is. We do this to decide whether or not we can drive certain vehicles across the crack without the risk of falling through. They do these measurements twice a week and store the data to track trends and to warn the other drivers. In the picture above we are trying out the old manual drill, but we later used a 2-stroke drill.
During this excursion I saw my first penguin! It was probably an adelaide penguin, but it was too far away to tell for sure. We also stopped by the ice cave on the way back to the station. This particular cave is a crack in the toe of the Erebus glacier tongue with sea ice as the floor. When these glaciers (fresh water) meet the sea water they float and can extend out away from the land for quite a ways. They don't necessarily calve off icebergs right as they meet the water. Anyway, the ice cave was kind of little because the sea ice is at its maximum right now. The snow crystals had the walls pretty closed in.
The next day, I was sent off to happy camper school (Snowcraft I training). We boarded the big Delta transport in town and headed out past Scott Base (the New Zealand base) and on to the Ross Ice Shelf. We gathered in the Instructor's Hut and got lined out for the next 24 hours. We then all headed out to Mound City (remnants of old happy camper camps) and set to work. First we set up the two Scott tents then began building wind walls out of snow blocks.
We also began building a Quincy. We began by piling our gear and shovelling a bunch of snow on top of it, packing it down between layers. After we had about 1.5 feet of snow on it, we let it sit for about 3 hours so the snow could refreeze into its new shape. We then started tunneling in from underneath to access our gear. We pulled all the gear out and widened the snow cave that was left behind. After a bit of work, we had a very suitable shelter for a night in the Antarctic. Two others and I slept in the Quincy and I actually got a little too warm. I suppose I only needed two hot water bottles in my sleeping bag instead of three. The next morning we ran through some scenarios such as what if your vehicle broke down on the ice and you had to use the survival bag, and what to do to try to find someone in a white out. We learned how to operate an HF radio. I tried to hail South Pole but no one picked up, so I contacted McMurdo instead. The whole happy camper training was a blast and made us all feel like little kids making snow forts and such. Very fun.
Spent the next few days working on inventoring RAC tents (modular tents for field camps) and setting up a Weatherport tent, another type for field camps. On Friday, I headed out to Pegasus runway with a surveyor to set some more control points for the new ski-way out there. The big C-17 and some other aircraft have wheels that need a runway, but the Hercs (LC-130s) are ski-equipped so they need a snow runway or ski-way.
Saturday morning, I caught my flight to the South Pole! All other flights got cancelled because of the weather in their destinations, but the Pole was clear so we got out of McMurdo. There were only 10 of us on the flight and a lot of cargo. As to be expected the Pole is cold, but not too bad. Its been around -45 and a windchill of -73. The sun is shining and you can see for eternity out on the horizon. Flat white in all directions with the exception of the drifted snow forming sastruga. I finally have my own room compared to the 25 bunk room in McMurdo. I gained 10000 feet since leaving McMurdo, and I am still acclimating to the change. Was a bit light headed when I first came in, but now I am feeling better and my pulse is still down (which is a good thing). I walked out to the geographic South Pole and reached it at 19:19 on Nov 7th. That's all I have for now. Sorry about the long blog, I had to get caught up! Stay warm!
