New Years Eve, Antarctica Style

For New Years Eve here in Antarctica the main festivity was “icestock”, which is basically McMurdo’s version of Woodstock.  All week long they had been preparing/setting up for today’s big event.  There was a stage, bleachers, and a few booths set up just outside of the main dorm room area, and we had several different bands play throughout the night.  Despite the fact that there really aren’t too many people here in town, I was surprised d to see how many decent bands they were able to put together for the concert.  The show lasted from about 6:00pm to 1:00am, but because it was so cold people tended to filter in and out throughout the night.  They also roasted two full pigs for ten hours, and barbequed some hot dogs and burgers, etc. 

So I guess once again all I can say is that I never thought I would be bringing the New Year along side a bunch of hippies and nomads in the middle of Antarctica, but all in all I must say that I had a pretty good time, and surprisingly they really did manage to put together a decent show. 

Christmas in Antarctica

Christmas in Antarctica was a lot different than back home to say the least.  They do their best to try and put up some decorations around town and all, but no matter what they do, it just doesn’t seem to have the feel of Christmas.  In fact, for Christmas Eve this year I spent my night (if you can call it night) hiking to the top of Castle Rock once again with a couple of buddies.  I will say this though, never in my life would I have guessed that I would be spending Christmas on the top of a huge cliff in Antarctica, that’s for sure. 

On the other hand, it was nice to get some packages from back home, and Christmas dinner was awesome!  They served all kinds of food including lobster, steak, duck, lamb, mashed potatoes, etc…and the list goes on, not to mention all of the desserts, so that was probably the highlight of Christmas for me this year.  It was also nice to have a two-day weekend this weekend, and because its New Years next week, we should be getting another long weekend next weekend, so that should be nice.

Other than that, I just wanted to wish everyone back home a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! 

Castle Rock



In the last few weeks here at McMurdo the temperatures have continued to go up, and therefore so have the outdoor activities around town, hikes, etc.  So Sunday morning we decided we were going to head out to Castle Rock, which is pretty much the only hike in the area that I hadn’t attempted since I have been here.  The hike is a total of 7 miles (round trip), and in order to attempt it, you have to check out a radio with the fire department and schedule a departure and return time before you can leave town.  If for any reason you are not going to meet your return time, you are required to radio ahead and update the firehouse, otherwise, if you are more than two minutes late, the search and rescue team is called into action and it becomes a pretty big deal.

Approaching Castle Rock

So anyways, we started out at about 10:00am.  The trail is marked the entire way by a line of flags that head directly to the base of castle rock.  The hike is deceiving in that you can see Castle Rock itself almost from the time you start, but no matter how long you walk, it never seems to get any closer.  The first quarter mile of the trail took the longest because it was covered in melting snow and ice, so we found ourselves constantly stepping in large puddles of slush, but after we got through that first section it went relatively fast.  It was a bit cloudy on Sunday, but the weather was really nice and was probably in the high 30’s or low 40’s.  Along the way to Castle Rock there are two warming huts that are set up, just incase you are out there and you get stuck in a storm, you can use these huts for shelter.  So after a little over an hour of walking we finally reached the base of Castle Rock.  Castle Rock itself is pretty cool landmark to see, it’s a huge cliff formation that sits towards the base of Mt Erebus.  We hung out at the bottom for a little while before heading around to the other side to meet up with the trail that takes you to the top of the rock. As we continued to get higher, the trail continued to get steeper and steeper until we were almost vertical, at which point there were ropes that had been anchored into the side of the rock that we used to help pull ourselves up.  Along the way to the summit, there were some amazing views in every direction.  From this point it only took us about a half hour to get to the top of the cliff itself, and on top the views just continued to get better.  So after hanging out on top for about an hour or so, we decided to head back down.

All in all I would have to say that Castle Rock is by far the best hike in the area, and the fact that we only saw two other people the entire day made it even better.  We are already talking about going up again in a week or two, and possibly even camping, so I guess we’ll see how that goes.

A Hard Days Work

Since I got home from WAIS a few weeks back I have been working on our NPOESS crew running 3” and 4” Ridged conduit for NASA.  Running ridged conduit is hard, but interesting work.  I had run some ridged in the past, but hadn’t worked a whole lot with some of the bigger stuff until now.  There is a lot of math involved in the bending and unlike working with EMT, each piece really has to be planned out ahead of time and bent to an exact degree in order to make everything screw together properly.  The journeyman in charge of our crew does have a lot of experience, so it has been nice to be able to work on the project and to have the opportunity to learn some new job skills. 

 NPOESS is short for National Polar Orbital Environmental Satellite System, and we have been running the power for a new satellite that is supposed to be put in next year.  It is my understanding that the satellites are used to monitor and study climate and weather.  So between the four of us, we have ran several hundred feet of ridged within the last couple of weeks.  All of the work is on top of a ridge and it is extremely cold, windy, and basically miserable about 99% of the time.  By the end of the day I am usually covered in oil, wind burned, sun burned, sand blasted, frozen, and exhausted from carrying around and spinning on 100lb sticks of conduit….the joys of Antarctica!  We are just finishing up however, and it is now time to pull wire, which hopefully will go smoothly tomorrow.  Although it has been hard work, it makes for the days to go by faster and it is pretty cool to be able to work on another project that is going to be used for science.

 

Observation Hill

Last night around 8:00pm I decided to go for a hike up Observation Hill.  Ob Hill is probably the most popular hike here at McMurdo and because it is so steep, it makes for a good work out.  I had already made the climb once earlier in the season, but two of my buddies were going up for the first time so I decided to join them.  The hike itself only takes around an hour round trip, but it is really steep, and is basically straight up hill the whole time, and the whole way you are walking along steep ledges and loose jagged lava rock. 

 At the top of Ob Hill there are awesome views in every direction, and you can look out and get a good look at Mt Erebus, White Island, Black Island, and in the distance we could even see the open water, which is rumored to now be about 20 miles north of McMurdo.  A little later in the year a huge “ice breaker” ship comes in and smashes up all the ice surrounding McMurdo, this is when there is a chance of seeing more marine life, like killer whales etc.  The Ice Runway/airport is also in the process of being relocated to the Pegasus runway, which is several miles further out.  They do this every year around this time to make way for the thawing Ross Sea before the ice starts to crack and break up. 

 There is also a cross that has been placed at the top of Observation Hill that has been there since 1913.  The cross was put there to commemorate captain Scott and his party, who lost their lives on their return journey from the South Pole almost 100 years ago.  So, we found a place out of the wind and hung out up there for about an hour or so before making our way back down to the dorms.  Overall not a bad hike, next on the agenda is Castle Rock, which is quite a bit further, and takes you closer to Mt Erebus (the volcano).  So I am going to try and do that one on Sunday depending on the weather.

MCI Drill

Every year here at McMurdo they have a staged MCI (Mass Casualty Incident) drill, so that in the event of a real disaster, the community will be prepared.  The medical facility here is very small and can only support a handful of patients at a time, so in the event of a bigger accident or disaster, a good portion of the community gets together to turn the firehouse into a backup hospital area where injured patients can go in the event of an emergency.  That drill was scheduled for today, and since earlier in the season I had volunteered to be a “stretcher bearer”, I had to jump in and help out as well.

So anyways, today at 1:00pm the alarm sounded and everyone was called to spring into action and participate in this drill to simulate a real disaster.  This is actually a pretty big event here in town, a lot of people get involved, and they actually shut down work for a couple of hours.  There are several different groups assigned to different areas…you have the stretcher-bearers, who transport patients from the vehicles into and around the hospital, there is also a security crew who keeps things under control and prevents unauthorized people from entering the firehouse/hospital, and then you also have a group in charge of playing the victims.  Well, they go all out with the victims, they are all assigned different roles and even put on make up and do their best to act out their parts/ailments.

So anyways, this all lasted a couple of hours and was pretty chaotic, but I did my best to help out by transporting the “patients” to/around the area.  The funny thing is, with all the planning that goes into this thing, it really does feel a lot like you would expect an actual emergency situation might feel like.  This all came about a few years back when there was a plane crash over Mt. Erebus and there was no plan in place to handle the amount of injured people, so all in all, I guess its probably a pretty smart idea to run these drills, plus I got the afternoon off of work, cant argue with that!

Working in WAIS

Last Friday they sent me out to lovely WAIS, a.k.a. the “Western Antarctic Ice Shelf”.  So on Friday morning at 9:00am, the seven of us…two electricians, a lineman, and a couple of “GA’s”, boarded the C130 and headed out.  Flying on a C130 was a cool experience, it is a little smaller than the C17 we flew in on, but the interior is similar and is basically the same set up.  Before we took off, one of the crew members asked my buddy Jacob and I if we wanted to ride in the cockpit, so we headed up there and we were able to sit right behind the pilots and experience the whole flight first hand, which was really awesome.  WAIS itself is about 800 miles into the continent from McMurdo, and the flight takes around 4 hours.  As we took off from McMurdo, we flew over Black Island for about ten minutes, and were able to check out some mountain views, but after that, it is just plain, flat, white, as far as the eye can see for hundreds of miles.  So after a few hours went by we set down on an icy runway in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by a few “Jamesways”, and a group of tents in the distance.

The doors opened for us to exit the plane and we were greeted by high winds, low visibility, and temperatures in the neighborhood of –20F.  We grabbed our bags and were led to the “Galley”, which is a small Jamesway set up where all the food is served and is the main meeting area in WAIS.  We were then given some lunch and met the people in the camp, which included a handful of mechanics, carpenters, GA’s, and some camp management.  After which, we followed a trail of flags about 100 yards into the horizon until we reached “tent town”.  This is where all of the tents are set up and is basically home for the duration of our time at camp.  So I proceeded to set up my tent, which is not the easiest task in below zero temps, but I was able to get it staked down really well and the set up went fine.

The next morning, the weather had cleared up a bit and we had a meeting with some of the mechanics and camp management to go over the tasks we needed to take care of, and tried to come up with a plan and prioritize some of our workload.  The main reason we were sent out was to work with the lineman and provide power to the town and connect the drilling arch to the generator power.  The drilling arch is the building that contains the big drill that the scientists use to drill down into the ice and take core samples, which allow them to study climate change, etc.  The trouble is, this building is almost completely buried with over 40ft of snow, and until they dig it out, the only way to access it was by using an extension ladder set up through a small space at the top of the building. 

 So we proceeded to put a full day of work in on Saturday, and aside from some of our parts missing, everything went relatively well.  As it got later in the day the weather continued to get worse and the winds continued to pick up.  So I headed to my tent and tried my best to get settled in, but between the brutal cold temps and the wind blowing, I could tell right away that it was going to be a long night.  We were given two sleeping bags; one mummy bag and a rectangle bag as well, so between the two bags, I really didn’t get too cold, though it was a pain getting in to the tent and getting ready for bed.  The toughest thing for me was the wind, and the light.  The wind blew so hard those first couple of nights that it sounded like I was sleeping inside of a freight train, and much like Happy Camper training, it was tough to wake up at 2:00am and be blinded by the light shining through the tent.

When I woke up Sunday morning the weather had actually got even worse and the visibility was pretty poor.  I was able to follow the flag line back into town without any issues, but because the weather was now in “condition 2” we were not allowed to work, and everyone ended up staying indoors and basically reading magazines the whole day, which made for an extremely long, and boring day.  According to the weather report with the winds the temps dropped to around –35 to –40F, which is a new Antarctic low for me.

Walking to my tent from the outhouse in "condition 2" weather, WAIS. Wind was a little Brisk!

Luckily after that first initial storm came through the weather turned around a bit and we were able to start plugging along pretty well.  Between the lineman, Jacob, and myself, we had the town power up within the next couple of days and then we moved on to the arch.  The arch was actually really cool; we went down into this building completely buried by snow with a couple of flashlights and even though there was no wind it was still –20F.  Inside the arch it looked like a place where you might find some kind of Antarctic experiment gone wrong, or some kind of a creature, or alien, reminded me a lot of the movie “The Thing”, pretty cool  So, we inspected the electrical panels to ensure everything was ready for power and gave the go-ahead and fire up the generator. 

So after a few days of work we had pretty much accomplished everything on our list ahead of schedule, and even though we were originally scheduled for two weeks, we were able to catch a ride home this afternoon on another C130 that was bringing in supplies.  WAIS was cool to see, and wasn’t bad staying there for a week, but it would be rough to stay there until February.  It is brutal cold and windy, and not much to do other than work.  Too bad I wasn’t able to stick around to see the drill up and running, apparently last year they drilled down to the 2-mile mark.  It’s nice to be back at McMurdo tonight, hopefully I will be able to catch up on some sleep.