Men wanted, long hours, low pay

We finally made it to WAIS Divide to start the field season. The first task was to set up the hot-water drill we use to produce shot holes for our seismic experiment. I "designed" and built the drill some years ago and, while it is hardly a technological wonder, it does the job. We can drill to 20 meters in about 20 minutes.

The down side is that the drill was shipped to McMurdo a year ago in anticipation of last field season then left for a year in the cargo yard. Not good for any equipment.

We have had a litany of BD* items and it has taken two-13 hour days to get it running. Somehow, after dinner last night everything fell into place and we were in drill mode. Today is Sunday so we started the day late; 8AM instead of 8AM. Wait, what? Should be a short day; finish at 9 or 10 tonight. Nice day off, eh.

Sometime after lunch I thought of the add Shackleton placed in the paper; loosely paraphrased "Men wanted for Antarctic venture; long hours, low pay, chances of success slight." He had a line down the street the next morning.

*BD; Bravo Delta, not working, broken. Slightly better than TU.

Another season, another buck and a half.

The start of season 18 was less than auspicious. A snow squall in State College caused our flight to be diverted to Harrisburg. We were landing in Dulles as our LA flight was leaving (on time of course) so Nick and I spent Thanksgiving evening at an airport hotel. The burger was mediocre at best.

We arrived at LAX with 12 hours to spare, 4 hours before we could even get a boarding pass and go into the terminal. It was uphill from there; we got into the Qantas lounge (thanks Joni) and the Sydney flight was empty.

Arrived in Christchurch at 5 PM and reported for our clothing issue at 5 AM; the third time in a row with 12 hours or less in Christchurch. By 6 I was ready to check in for the flight and get breakfast (and coffee), but no; we had a flight brief at 6:25 and boarded straight away. No breakfast, no coffee. Kiya was looking worried. She and Nick would be locked on an airplane with me for 8.5 hours and I had consumed no coffee.

The flight was one-of-a-kind. My first trip on SAFAIR; the only commercial C-130 in the world. It lived down to our expectations.

Not the most uncomfortable trip I have ever had though (that would have been on an old C-141) and I only had a splitting headache for two hours. See, I'm even smiling. We landed at Pegasus airfield and an hour later were sitting in the NSF's Chalet being moved to tears by "the Marshall" (Don't listen to the rumor mill).

The weather and food have been good though, and we have jump through all the hoops, dotted all the tees. We are ready for a Tuesday put in flight to WAIS Divided, "Jewel of the West Antarctic".

Coming out of the field

It has been a roller-coaster of a day starting at 5:45 when we started getting ready for a flight transportation we knew would never happen. We are still flying LC-130s out of McMurdo because of the condition of the ice-runway, and only 40 at a time are going north. With a whole station to move as well as other bases that rely on our flights, it is a mess getting north.

We had bag drag last night but were told we would likely not fly because the Italians from Tera Nova Bay were going north. The only way we would fly is if they had weather bad enough to cancel their flight to McMurdo. Beautiful weather this morning. The blessing was that when I got back to the dorm the sun was shining on the Royal Society Range across the bay, and the icebreaker was working the sound. It was a beautiful sight and photos don't do it justice.

When I got to my room and set up shop (I gave up my office) I had another surprise. The NSF press release on WAIS Divide came out and there is a photo of me (taken by my good friend Giff Wong) with the release, and it made the banner on the NSF front page. The link is here;
http://www.nsf.gov/news/news_summ.jsp?cntn_id=126761&org=NSF&from=news
but it can also be found on the NSF.gov home page. A great honor. Second only to the honor of cutting the drilling cable this season at the end of a great, and highly successful project.

Lots to talk about from the season. It was one of my best seasons (17 now; I need to figure out how to edit my own blog page). First, I am looking forward to getting home. Too long in the field...

Frodo at the Journy's End

The third of the Lord of the Rings trilogy was on the other night and I caught some of it between hockey games. It was the scene where Frodo, Sam and the other two Hobbits have returned and are in the pub. It’s in either the Shire or Downton Abby, I always get those two mixed up. Anyway, they bring their beer to a table, sit down and look around. And I know that LOOK. They have been away and the world has swirled around them, and they might as well have been on the moon. It matters not that they have slain the dragon (both figuratively and literally) or have had great adventures.

Many of us have felt the same way upon our return from Antarctica to "The World". Like in a Colin Hay song, we only slay the dragon in our dreams, but the stuff we saw, and the things we did; no one can take it away from us. Turns out no one can understand it either. Take the picture above. Sridhar, Ginny, Huw and myself having dinner on the trail. It’s around midnight and we were doing a camp move by traverse about 80 miles. Ian took the photo. We had dehy (a dehydrated dinner with 400% of your month’s salt intake in one serving). It was on Whillans Ice Steam (83º40’S, 145ºW). We arrived at the new location around 3AM and pitched a couple of tents, then slept in. How do you relate this experience to anyone? Huw and I drove back to the old camp the next day for another load, camping out along the way.

The picture below is a Twin Otter near the Dufek Massif (82º36’S, 52º30’W) in the Pensacola Mountains. We were installing a seismic station. This is a million miles from nowhere. It took an airdrop of fuel (picture of the barrels below) and some slight-of-hand with fuel barrels to even get there. The only question I am likely to hear though is “Did you see any Polar Bears”. Really? Polar Bears? That’s the best you can come up with?

Maybe that’s why some of my Ice friends choose not to even mention that they work in Antarctica. It’s sometimes more trouble than it’s worth. I’ve found myself in that situation. Like when a loved one mentions to someone that I work in Antarctica and I get a blank stare. At lease with your Ice friends you can share “the look” then raise your glass and have a toast, no words needed.

Digging Antarctica

 

There is something odd about going to Antarctica to shoveling snow. Talk about your job security! Dig out, the wind blows and drifts form, dig out, and repeat. It is an inevitable part of life on The Ice. Sometimes, if you are lucky, you have a piece of heavy equipment and a good operator like Mark or James. More often than not you only have a shovel or are digging out tents or fuel bladders where heavy equipment should not go.

The shovel is also known as a D1. My favorite is the short handled, square ended steel shovel (not a stinking grain scoop). Good shoveling is as much an art as it is effort. I know very smart people who could not dig a hole in the snow to save their lives. As much of every shovel full goes back in the hole as goes out. There are very strong people who just don’t get it; the snow flies all over the place. You have to know when to use it to chop and how much snow to take on each swing. Too much and it doesn’t go where you want it. Too little and it is wasted effort. Lots of subtlety to it.

One of the trickiest tasks is digging your way out of a tent from inside. If your door does not have the proper orientation to the wind (and this season, mine did not) the door becomes drifted in. The trick is to open the zipper from the top enough to get your hand out and push the snow away till you can get your shoulders through the hole and dive out. If you can’t get the zipper open the trick is to go back to sleep and hope someone misses you either at breakfast or at muster. With luck, they like you enough to send someone to dig you out.

Any takeoff you can walk away from...

I’m pretty sure the adage is “any landing you can walk away from is a good one” but sometimes it doesn’t work that way. Most pilots will tell you that landing is harder than taking off. I flew in Twin Otters for many years with a pilot who had a different take on this. He maintained that landings are easy; you are flying and you don’t want to be flying. Takeoffs on the other hand; you are not flying and you want to be. That’s not so easy. That has been my experience as well, at least with one aircraft. 

Fully one third of my takeoffs in a Basler have ended badly. A Basler (officially a BT-67) is a converted DC-3 or the military version, the C-47 with a large cargo/jump door. The conversion included turbo-props and new avionics. The Baslers we use in the Antarctic are fitted with skis as can be seen in the photo above. They are usually attached. Enough people have asked me the story that I thought it was time to write it down.

We finished installation of a seismic/GPS Polenet station at Mt. Patterson, 350 miles north of Siple Dome Camp (SDM), and about 1:30 in the morning were ready to head back to SDM. It had been a long day and the six science team members had missed dinner because of the late launch from SDM. The takeoff went badly; we got in the air but the left wingtip dropped and caught the snow. The landing gear tore off and we hit hard enough that the seats all tore loose. We plowed a lot of snow and came to rest in about 100 yards. All 10 of us walked away from the takeoff. Fortunately, the weather was good. It was about 20 hours before a pair of Twin Otters arrived to bring us back to McMurdo. Meanwhile though, much to our dismay, not only was there no coffee but there was no food in the “survival” bags. We had fishing line and hooks, plenty of stuff to enable us to start a fire, even wire to make snares. Everything you would need to survive in the Arctic, just no food (or coffee). The aircraft was been repaired that season and returned to service, and here is a picture of the same plane this season at WAIS Divde.

Radio Handles

Everyone should have a good radio handle. I don’t. This season at WAIS Divide we had Lancewa (pronounced with a faux-French accent), Nightingale (our Nurse Practitioner), Papa Xray (shortened from P90X, the guy is a beast and wintering at South Pole this year), Drama (right in the picture, short for Jonny Drama AKA, Mom) and Hollywood (left in the picture, short for…oh, you don’t want to know, but also known as Dad). Even our heavy equipment had radio handles; Delta Quattro for the D4 dozer, Peanut Butter for the Pisten Bully and Mother Tucker for the Tucker SnoCat. Radio handles are like AT thru hiker trail names. You can’t make one up yourself, it is bestowed upon you. You can’t ask for one; that’s the rule. It is an organic process and just sort of happens. Sometimes it is just the person’s name like K-nut or R-becca, or derived from their initials like Taco Nacho. Sometimes the name stands on its own (try “Leo, Leo, Leo, how copy?”. It works.) The best ones have a story behind them like Hollywood’s. Ask the next time you see him, he loves to tell that story!