The Stream Team

Today was spent, like many Antarctic days, trying to fit something into an area much too small for it (see "making sleep kits at the BFC").  In this case, it was pounding metal stakes into a rock-solid streambed.  Sounds simple enough, except for here, there is no soil.  We're on an island of volcanic rock, with pulverized volcanic rock (called "fines") as our dirt.  Anything below 4" deep is either permafrost fines or solid rock.  Wonderful :) We needed to anchor these stakes 12" deep into a flowing stream, so they would support a probe that recorded velocity.  We also used the stakes as beginning and end markers for our velocity tests (really high-tech - we floated a pingpong boll down a section of stream and timed it).

Rosa does have extremely cool equipment used for stream profiling.  Her super hi-tech profiling device consists of a wire frame with thin wooden poles that drop down to the bottom of various points in the stream, forming a mirror image of the streambed on the bottom.  We hiked all around the town looking for drainage patterns and mapping them out, and hiked way above the town to the snowfields at the beginning of the drainage basin, in order to identify the source of the streams.  To the left is me holding the stream profiler, which we took pictures of its pattern while in the stream.  The adjacent picture is Rosa looking out over the town.

Rosa is working with CRREL (Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab) and the Corps of Engineers' main goal is to assess the erosion patterns of streams and ditches passing through town.  "Soil" is somewhat of a resource here, since the ground on this island is mostly rock or ice.  Rosa and her teams' report will help the NSF make better planning and engineering decisions about how to improve the layout of the base.

Dry Valleys wrap-up

to view the full Lake Bonney photo album, click here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30396637

Lake Bonney was a blast.  My boss, Barb, informed me that Dry Valleys gigs were really special for GA's, since usually the BFC girls get to go there, not our department.  I do feel very fortunate to get to go on this gig, as I got to spend a week with some great people in a beautiful place, learning lots of new stuff.  For example, I can now drill holes in really deep ice and melt them to a preffered diameter using special equipment.  I can safely drive a 4-wheeler on said ice and remain in control (huzzah!) and carry passengers and cargo.  I can pack and wrap a helicopter slingload using cargo straps and cargo nets.  I can, indeed, sleep in a tent and not shower for a week with little loss of face, seeing as everyone else smells as bad as I do.

To those of you at Lake Bonney, thanks for the great week and letting me be involved in your scientific research, if only in a small, labor-mule type way.  Good luck with the rest of the season!

My life in Mariokart

Nash, Geoff, and BK: this is for you.

For the last few days, my mind has kept going back to Friday nights in college, where all my runner friends had practice the next day and couldn't drink, so we played video games like Donkey Kong and MarioKart.  I have nothing specific to say about Antarctica with respect to DK, but holy shit, I feel like I am in a MarioKart game.  Right now I'm at a field camp next to a frozen lake, the middle of which is very bumpy and hard to walk/ATV across.  However, the edges of the lake melt seasonally and stay completely smooth.  We use ATVs to get around on the lake, and though we have chains on the tires, we fishtail around every corner of the jagged shoreline and spin cookies when we park.  It feels exactly  like a MarioKart racetrack, and you guys would love it.

Our work site is about 2 or 3 miles from camp, and we take the ATV's from camp along the edge of the lake to the site in the middle of the far side of the lake.  I have to go back and forth several times a day, and each time it's like doing my own little virtual reality of those Friday nights at C of I.  When I get back, I'll be able to kick ass at MarioKart!

to view the full Lake Bonney photo album, click here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30396637

Lake Bonney Day 3

Highlights include:

• Dragging some generators back and forth again, due to either mechanical problems or hoses being melted into the ice
• Chipping out hotsy hoses from the ice (in conjunction with turning them back on) to be able to remove them from the ice
• Visiting the Blood Falls camp, where we were informed that there would be extra food and drink we could bring back once they packed up their camp.  Much excitement.
• moving the portable Hotsy (in 3 boxes, plus the generator) from West lobe LTR to East lobe LTR sites. It took a few trips on the 4-wheeler and banana sled.

Also, I've been trying to figure out how to describe what it's like to be surrounded by a bunch of glaciers.  The glaciers in Taylor Valley look like merengue, or semi-molten marshmallows, pouring over the ridges.  Not completely molten, b/c it has crusts and cracks in it, but it looks like it was in the middle3 of being thick slush when it decided to freeze....

Lake Bonney Day 2

Highlights of the day:

• Moved a shit ton of fuel barrels
• Moved a generator from bot hut to the LTR (Long-Term Research) hole in the ice, discovered that the bot hole had frozen up too much to let the bot into the hole, and had to move it back to the bot hut.
• Started drilling at the West lobe LTR site, but did it with a dull drill bit, so it took us 45 minutes to drill about a foot into the ice (we should have been down two feet or so by then).  Then it was suddenly dinner time, and Maciek and Jim went back after dinner to drill out the rest of the hole.

The Dry Valleys

to view the full Lake Bonney photo album, click here: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=30396638

On Saturday afternoon, just as I was about to finish my afternoon of data entry, my boss Barb called me and asked on short notice if I'd be willing to fly to the Dry Valleys for a week to help out in the Lake Bonney camp.  One of their support staff strained his back and had to fly to McMurdo.  He'll be back in camp while I'm here, but needs to take it easy, so I'll be his workhorse and follow him around to do all the heavy lifting.  So this morning (Monday), I got on a helicopter, flew across McMurdo sound and into the Dry Valley region.  The pilot, Dustin, flew me by the Dailey Islands and pointed out Uberuaga Island, the one named after Jules!  It was really neat to put a face island to the name.

Holy hell, it's so cool here.  I'm in the Taylor Valley, just on the coast of mainland Antarctica. The Taylor Valleys are in the Dry Valley area, so called because they're situated in a way that only the mountains (and glaciers) around us get snow, and the valleys themselves are full of frozen lakes, but they're all just volcanic soil deserts and foothills.  I'm currently sitting in the Jamesway of the Lake Bonney camp, which is a couple of semi-permanent buildings right next to the lake shore, with small mountain tents scattered around the hillside.  The hillside reminds me a little bit of the final scramble up to Mount Dhoom in LOTR, where Frodo and Sam throw a blanket over themselves to hide from the Orc army passing by.  

Aaaaaannnnnywho, nerd parenthesis aside, the Dry Valleys are the shit.  Pictures to come soon, but since I didn't know they have WIRELESS INTERNET (!!!!!) here, I didn't bring my laptop.  The scientists have solar-powered wifi routers that I'm assuming connect to a satellite.  This proves that McMurdo doesn't have to be as lame and internet-retarded as it is, they just choose to have it that way.  

Today I got to assist with a dive into Lake Bonney.  We cut an 8ft diameter hole into the ice (12 ft deep), and Vicky went down in her scuba gear to scope out the hole.  The ultimate plan is to put in the team's huge underwater robot (the same size as the hole), so the robot can scope out the lay of the underwater land.  This AUV (autonomous underwater vehicle) is a possible first step in making a similar one to go and scout Jupiter's moons for fresh water.


We'll see what tomorrow brings!

Antarctic Acronyms

USAP - U.S. Antarctic Program, the United States' presence in Antarctica; sponsored by the NSF
NSF - National Science Foundation, the U.S. gov't branch sponsoring our program
GA - General Assistant, my job title (Operations GA)
WAIS - Western Antarctic Ice Sheet, 800 miles southwest of McMurdo.  I'll be going there in less than a month for a two-week field camp stint.
BFC - Berg Field Center, the dept that provides all the gear and food for field expeditions (tents, pee bottles, sleeping bags, backpacking food, etc.)  Part of our GA tasking has been to work in the BFC food room, repackaging bulk food for field deployment (trail mix, dehydrated potatoes, etc.)
VMF - Vehicle Maintenance Facility (also known as the Heavy Shop) operates on light vehicles like F-350's (yeah, for us that's a light vehicle) as well as heavy equipment and all the tracked vehicles.
FEMC - Facilities, Equipment, Maintenance and Construction.  Kind of like the Physical Plant, repairs stuff around the station, does long- and short-term projects.  If something in your building breaks, you call FEMC.
MCI - Mass Casualty Incident.  If something explodes and a bunch of people get blown up, or a plane crashes, or various other injurious disasters happen, you've got an MCI. Also, I'm apparently signed up as a volunteer stretcher-bearer in the event of an MCI.
SAR - Search and Rescue.  If you get lost out somewhere or caught in a storm or fall in a crevasse, SAR will come and get you.
SSC - Science Support Center.  In the SSC you'll have the Motor Pool, the science cargo, and field safety training.
POC - Point of Contact; sometimes your supervisor or maybe the comms person in your dept.  They keep you informed of important information, and if you head out of town and check out with MacOps (our station-wide comms center), you have to have a POC that knows what you're up to.
SVB - Survival Basics.  Used if you need to, you know, survive here in a storm or something.
FNG - Fucking New Guy; a newbie to Antarctica.
POG - Passionfruit Orange Guava, a juice mix famous in the galley for its deliciousness.
HW - Human Waste.  Literally, shit.  Gained this vocab in my day working in the Waste Dept.
FW - Food Waste.  Part of our waste management system here.  Everyone sorts their trash into very specific bins. 
PL - "Plastics". Part of Waste Management.
NR - Non-recyclables.  Waste Management.

Happy Camper

For the full photo album of "Happy Camper," go to
 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012034&id=143700020&l=af0a31820f.  

This weekend was my "Happy Camper" course, which is a two-day, one night training out on the Ross Ice Shelf (aka middle of nowhere).  Though we could see the kiwi base, Scott Base, in the distance, there was nothing of civilization but a blue Jamesway called the I-hut, where our instructors slept, a shed that held our tools and sleeping bags, and an outhouse.  Red and green flags circled the Happy Camper area, letting us know that there were no crevasses nearby and it was safe to walk. 

The purpose of Happy Camper is to simulate a survival situation in Antarctic weather conditions, and teach campers how to use survival bags (filled with a tent, shovel, sleeping bag, dehydrated food, stove etc.) and how to build snow shelters to survive for a few hours or a few days.

We rode a Delta (ENORMOUS vehicle to be carrying people in, you have to climb a six foot ladder to get in) out to the Happy Camper site, where they dropped us off to die to practice survival skills.  I promptly fell asleep in the Delta, as I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and was crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with people I didn't know in a rollicking vehicle.  I snuggled down into my coat and got a bit of shut-eye, and was a little disappointed to find that the camp was only 15 minutes away from station, which ended my nap quickly.

After getting to camp, we erected a Scott tent (right) and Megan, one of the instructors, showed us how to anchor it down using Dead Man anchors, which involve burying a short bamboo pole in a notched pit the snow and wrapping string around it, so the string comes back out of the snow and you can hitch it back to itself using a trucker's hitch (which I didn't know how to do before, but is amazingly efficient and awesome.) 

Next we built a Quinzhee, which is a snow shelter/cave shaped like a beaver dam made out of snow.  You stack all your bags in a big pile (for us was 20 huge duffels), cover the bags in snow, then dig out the mound and pull the bags out.  The snow keeps its shape, and you dig from underneath to keep the wind from blowing in.  It's really cool.

Some people also slept in snow trenches, which they dug out of the ground and covered the openings with slabs of snow. I might add here that the Antarctic snow, at least on the ice shelf, is extremely hard-packed and dry, lending itself perfectly to awesome construction projects.

We also set up 4-season mountaineering tents and build snowblock windbreak walls around them, and dug a kitchen trench and cooking area where we set up our stoves to boil water (to make food out of dehydrated backpacking dinners).  Will, Chris and I (the first 3 GA's to arrive on the Ice out of our 9-person crew) ended up manning the stoves, as many other people were busy building trenches for the night or walking around trying to keep warm.  I chose to sleep in a Scott tent (the tall, pyramid-shaped ones), and our four bodies warmed it to between -10 and 0 degrees F throughout the night (toasty!).  The next morning, I dragged myself out of my tent to go pee, which was good because I don't know if I would have gotten out of my sleeping bag for any other reason.  

After making oatmeal for breakfast, we all met back in the Instructor Hut, a semi-permanent blue Jamesway , that would serve as our classroom.  The instructors talked about minimizing risk when outdoors in Antarctica, and we learned about VHF and HF radios.  VHF is like a normal CB radio that truckers have, or like a handheld walkie talkie radio.  HF radios are for long-term, long-distance camps or like ones you see in war movies where it's a big box and you talk on a telephone handset.  They're both pretty sweet.

Next was the Buckethead drill, where our group put 5 gallon buckets over our heads to simulate a whiteout condition (no visibility and inability to hear much.)  One of the instructors went out in the direction of the outhouse and we had to organize a search party tied to a rope to go rescue him.  We ended up finding him by using a sweeping technique with two people at the end of our rope, but Dylan the instructor said that we got lucky and many groups don't find their lost man in the drill.

Arriving back at McMurdo and climbing into my bed in the heated dorm room felt soooo nice.  The dorm is heated to probably 70 degrees and feels way too hot most of the time, but right then it was very welcome.  Happy Camper was a great experience, and I think the important thing I learned wasn't necessarily how to survive in the cold, but that I should try my best to NOT get stuck out there during a storm!

Cheech

It wasn't until experiencing the Christchurch (Cheech, Chch) Botanic Gardens in their springtime splendor that I undersood where the term "floral print" came from.  The city obviously takes great pains to maintain this beautiful park area, and it is, dare I say, more beautiful than the Boise one.  That may be owing to a high desert climate in Boise, and an English influence here in Chch. 

I found that though the YMCA (my accommodation) is strikingly absent on Ice people, it is literally next door to the Botanic Gardens, Arts Center and the Canterbury Museum (which is free and awesome).  Right below the Y is a care called Robert Harris Coffee Roasters, and is undeniably cool.  It reminds me a little of Flying M back home, but silghtly less indie.  Having a bage and coffee there this morning was quite delightful, as they played both OCMS' "Wagon Wheel" and Josh Ritter's "Harrisburg" I think once Josh and I get back and have a little more time to explore the music scene, we'll find ti quite to our liking.  I also need to get ahold of Piper Trulock, a friend from C of I that promptly moved here after graduation.  She's working at a beer bar! 

Pictures to come.

Toodles,

Lael

Denver...

I don't really know if I could ever live in a bigger city than Boise, at least a bigger American one.  The main reason isn't even because of huge cities, tons of traffic, throngs of people downtown.  More than anything else, is the astonishing amount of urban and suburban sprawl. Our hotels in "Denver" (or is it Littleton, Aurora, Centennial, etc.????) are in the middle of an area that can be best described as the Eagle/Meridian hybrid of franchises and 6-lane streets, like the corner of Chinden and Eagle road multiplied a thousand times.  It's awful.  The hotel rooms are really nice, with their own kitchenette, a couch, full-size desk, and a better continental breakfast than I've ever had at home.

The Denver orientation is going alright.  I know more now about 100% fall protection (full harnesses must be worn at heights, of 4 feet or more) and I know how to safetly erect a scaffolding (theoretically).  Today was the General Deployment orientation, and they ran through some really relevant information, like payroll, insurance, and, most excitingly, TRAVEL!  Lynn Dorman from the Travel dept. started her presentation out by saying "Hey guys, you have the most extreme commute in the world!"  That's true, we do have to travel a few thousand miles...

We had pizza for lunch two days in a row at Orientation (blehhhhh, not good pizza either) and after eating a frozen dinner from the hotel store for dinner last night, my body was hating me.  So I went to "JOY", the Japanese bistro/sushi place next to the hotel and had a couple rolls.  I absolutely hate going out by myself in any fashion, whether it's to a movie, coffee, shopping, and especially out to eat.  So I was delighted when I walked into the sushi place to see another GA on my crew, Chris, eating dinner there with his girlfriend.  She'll be a GA at the South Pole, but doesn't deploy until later in October.  They're bummed that they couldn't both get hired at Pole (Chris is in McMurdo with me) because they might not see each other for about 4 months.  I've only been away from Josh for two weeks and I'm already going crazy!

"I think tomorrow is going to be a hungry day," Chis prophesized, and I think he's gonna be right.  After our morning training, we're dropped off at the Denver airport with our baggage, and get left there until our flight at 4:30.  No lunch provided, and not even the opportunity to go outside of an airport for the next 36 hours or so...so I'm hoping to snag enough hotel breakfast food in Ziploc bags to tide me over in the first airport, at least.  After that, it's airplane food and clif bars for me!  (trying to save my per diem).

The next time you hear from me, I'll probably be in Christchurch!