Happy Holidays from the whole Peaches family

One of my bandmates had some extra time on his hands :)

My new look....

This past Saturday, my band, Porn Spill, performed at a private party. Although, we didn't publicly advertise the party, word of mouth got out to enough people that the place was packed! It was a wonderful night of funk music, dancing, sweating and high energy. The music sounded great (I must admit) and the band played better than we've ever played. The other smash hit of the party was a photo booth in which people could be really silly. Here are some photos......

Boom Boom

Tasty Crumbles

Mashed Potato

Curtis E. Flush

Jimmy Large

My alter ego....Peaches Delite

Getting mauled by my biggest fan

To Kish

Hey, Kish....we know you're reading and we'd like to email you but don't have your off-ice email address. Could you please send it to us at our usap.gov address?

Boondoggles!

We've had lovely weather here in McMurdo. It's been sunny and unseasonably warm (18 degrees F/-9 degrees C). That might not sound warm to you, but with all of the sunlight, the lack of wind and the absence of an ozone layer, it's down-right balmy! We've done some great little hikes and Michiel is doing a 2+ hour run every Sunday afternoon.

Aside from the weather, both Michiel and I have been blessed with some amazing boondoggles. Last week, I was invited on an aerial survey of 2 emperor penguin colonies by DC-3 aircraft with a science group that has been researching emperors for over 20 years. The skies were blue and the views were incredible. We did much of our flying over the ice edge (where the permanent ice shelf meets the ocean) and the formations of ice and icebergs were fabulously beautiful.

The Cape Colbeck emperor colony hadn't been visited in 13 years and the last survey counted 5,000 chicks and 10,000 adults. The researcher, Paul Ponganis (from Scripps in La Jolla, California), didn't know how many critters to expect so he was overwhelmed when we found the colony and he estimated 10,000 chicks and 20,000 adults!





Cape Colbeck






Penguins and Poop. Very hard to get good photos with a normal camera!










Beaufort Island - site of a small emperor penguin colony (approx. 200-300)

Today, Michiel is out on a helicopter ride out to the dry valleys, an area of Antarctica that is situated in such a way that it gets no snow or ice. Photos from that trip will be coming soon.

Celebrating Obama!

Last night, many of our delighted community members joined in celebration of Obama's victory. Prepared for a joyous party, the smart ones purchased champagne from the store the day before and can to one of the lounges ready to pop the cork.

The final word was announced on the internet and NPR radio at about 5:05 pm local time and many people spontaneously shouted, jumped for joy and hugged. We took a group photo, which someone emailed to CNN. It is on their website at: http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/05/world.reaction/index.html Click on the 3rd photo of 4 in the upper left hand corner.

Apparently, the photo also made it onto the air on CNN when one of the reporters held it up as her favorite pic of people celebrating around the world.

Here's a copy of it:

Michiel and I are on the right-hand side.

Apparently, the photo also appeared in the NY Times. We're famous!

Cool Presentations

One of the highlights of life in Antarctica is the Sunday Night Science Lecture, or in the case of last week's lecture...the Sunday Night Not-So-Much-Science Lecture given by a BBC photographer and producer who are working on a 10-hour series, called "Life". "Life" is a follow- up to the wonderful "Planet Earth" series but this one will focus on critters rather than environments and eco-systems. It is due to air in the States in 2010 and in England (maybe the Netherlands, too???) in late 2009.

The presenters didn't talk much about the footage they are working on here except to say that they are using a very expensive camera called a Cineflex mounted under one of the helicopters. The Cineflex minimizes movement and provides excellent aerial footage of our vast landscape. They are also doing lots of underwater/under-ice, time-lapse photography of some of our large and weird sea creatures. Cold work, for sure.

The real highlight, though, was hearing the stories about how some of the amazing sequences in Planet Earth were filmed - such as the first images ever taken of snow leopards in Pakistan and the polar bear emerging from her snow den with 2 cubs. We really felt like we were in the midst of celebrities and the packed dining hall filled with "oohs" and "ahs" as we viewed the footage.

Science from the ice. AGAP

Here's a link to a yahoo website with info on one of the science projects:
AGAP

Our address in Antarctica

The latest rumor here on the ice is that next year the NSF is going to put a stop to our ability to receive packages. So this year might be the last year. For those of you who'd like to send us mail (or packages) while we are on the ice, here's our address:

Michiel Gitzels, RPSC
McMurdo Station
PSC 469 Box 700
APO AP, 96599-1035
USA


ps
A lot of stuff is not allowed to enter New Zealand or to be sent by mail (alcohol). Here's a useful link:
NZ customs

Back on the Ice

We've returned to McMurdo for another Antarctic summer! It's nice to back and see old friends. By now we've already passed the date of the last sunset. Continuous daylight from now on.
Current weather:

Open Mic Night in Denver

I took a short trip to Denver for training before heading back down to Antarctica and as luck would have it, almost all of the Porn Spill band members were in town. The guys thought it would be fun to do an Open Mic night at a local wine bar called Vines. The bar is an upscale locale that features hundreds of premium wines and specialty cocktails, including an Antarctic Freeze (or something like that), which is a vodka drink named for one of our ice colleagues who frequents the bar.

Lacking a set of bongos or a conga drum, I pounded on a 5 gallon bucket. Our 4 song performance got rousing applause....maybe because we packed the place with our workmates. The other patrons were a little non-plussed to see a 5-person act (plus bucket) squeezed into the corner of their swanky establishment.

Here are a couple of mood-lit photos.....

Katmai National Park (Bearfest)

For several years, we had been talking about going to Katmai National Park, home of a large population of brown bears and to the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. The park is only reachable by float plane or private boat from the small town of King Salmon, Alaska (normally, a pretty pricey option) but we have an ice friend who works for Katmai Air, the flight service that handles the float plane traffic. Tom was wonderful in providing us with good advice on when to come, where to hike, how to prepare and we were treated as VIPs by the staff of Katmailand who referred to us as “Friends of Tom”.

My 40^th birthday was as good an excuse as any to make the trip – as well as the accumulation of Alaska Airlines frequent flier miles, which made the flight from Anchorage to King Salmon free of charge. The additional fact that the bear population is at its highest in September during the week between my birthday and Michiel’s clinched the deal.

We arranged to spend a week at the park with 3 days camping within the electric fence at Brooks Camp and 4 days backpacking out in the Valley of 10,000 Smokes, the site of the largest volcanic eruption in recorded history (1912). Landing on Naknek Lake by float plane was smoother than expected and we floated toward shore, watching the bears roam the rocky beachfront, completely unperturbed by the plane or human traffic.

After attending the mandatory bear protocol lecture and video presented by the National Park Service we got settled in the campground. The area protected by an electric fence is a fairly natural (ungroomed) wooded area with one structure for food and aromatics storage (garbage, toiletries) and another for gear. Three lean-to structures sheltered picnic tables for cooking and food prep, which was a blessing not only because of the rain, but, more importantly, because of the incredible winds that gusted to over 50 miles per hour and created white caps on the lake. The winds were so strong on the first day that we almost didn’t notice the biting flies that are the bane of one’s existence on the Alaskan peninsula. (Once the winds died down, however, the flies were back in full force, and we were extremely grateful for the head nets that we borrowed!)

Within moments of arriving at the campground, a large boar (male) bear sauntered along the beach, just a few feet from the electric fence and we got our first (of many) up close views of these incredible creatures.

During the day, we spent our time at the camp at one of the raised viewing platforms or walking between them. The pathways are the scariest part of being at Brooks Camp as the bears roam freely. The Park Rangers do a good job of monitoring the camp and try to stop traffic when bears are present but occasionally we would stumble upon a sleeping bear or, in a couple of instances, a pair of male bears sparring. Michiel had a harrowing moment when a huffing bear backed onto the trail just feet away. He quickly realized that the bear wasn’t huffing at him but at another bear. Yikes! He backed away stealthily, heart pounding. But really, the bears weren’t at all interested in humans, they were solidly focused on eating salmon, sleeping and establishing or reinforcing the hierarchy of the social structure through sparring.

At one of the platforms at the Brooks River floating bridge, a park ranger gave commentary and status updates on which bear was where and a bit of background on the gender, age and history of each bear. There was almost always a park biologist present, as well, who was focused on recording the activities of each bear. The bears were given code numbers in order to attempt to avoid anthropomorphizing of the bears’ behavior, but nicknames were almost always used by the rangers and photographers. “Oh, there’s Sadie with her two cubs, Tundra and Maggie. Tundra has made an incredible recovery from the deep wound she had around her eye earlier this summer,” was something we overheard one of the photographers uttering to anyone who would listen. We quickly discovered that the only negative to being at Katmai (we could withstand the wind, the rain, the bugs and the cold) was the obnoxious photographers with their tripods and massive lenses. They would set up on the platforms in the morning and camp there for the entire day, leaving only for meals at the lodge. While viewing, several photographers asked, “Are you shooting?” as if to say “if you aren’t taking photos, get out of the way so I can!” Of course, this just made me want to take up more space on the platform by wearing my backpack and spreading out my elbows.

Escaping the Mega-Lenses

We did manage to escape the photographers by heading out into the back country of the Valley of 10,000 Smokes. Access to the valley is by bus tour (23 miles) and we arranged to take a bus out on one day and return with a different tour on the way back. The day we arrived in the valley was misty and rainy and we were in no big hurry to get out into the rain so we took our time eating lunch in the small visitor’s center. The center sits on a hill overlooking a deserted and desolate valley of pumice, ash and deeply carved river gorges. We couldn’t see much of the valley on that first day, but as soon as the rain eased, we descended through autumn-colored woods to the valley floor.

Aside from the beautiful fall colored fireweed, which begged for taking more pictures at every other step, our first obstacle was an extremely cold river crossing (aren’t all Alaskan river crossings cold??). We had gotten a good briefing from the ranger on where to cross but the river looked pretty high and fast so we spent a while scouting for a better crossing location. We ended up crossing at the recommended spot where, at least, the river bottom was level. The screaming didn’t last long….in just a few minutes after we reached the other side of the river, our feet were no longer stinging and we changed our socks and shoes to continue into the lunar landscape. We both concluded that heavy cursing really helped deal with the stinging cold of the water.

We spent the next couple of days marveling at the colors of the pumice – lavender, orange, brick red, sulfurous yellow – it was beautiful but also haunting. It was almost as if we had discovered the remains of a Roman mosaic. The sky above us changed so quickly that at one minute the clouds filled our vision and in the next, the strong wind parted them to give us glorious views of the snow-covered peaks bordering the valley.

On our second night, we stayed in an old US Geologic Survey hut on a windswept hill. The outhouse was an old A-frame structure. The constant winds had long before taken the door off which was okay with me. The views of the mountains across the valley made for an outstanding excuse to leave the protection of the hut for a bathroom break.

Fortunately, the day we were planning on viewing the site of the 1912 eruption was bright and sunny, with large patches of blue skies. We made the short hike to the saddle overlooking Novarupta and were treated to unbelievable colors, geologic patterns and a smoking plug of lava. Hard to believe that that little plug produced such a massive amount of smoke, ash and pumice (estimated to add up to 6 cubic miles). The wind nearly knocked us off our feet, but we stayed long enough for some photos and to take in the views.

On the way back to our first tent site, we were surprised to see a brown bear on the hillside not too far off the valley floor. He was about one mile from our camp site and his presence reminded us that we weren’t on the moon. We had been using a bear-proof canister for our food and aromatics and we’d been practicing good camp craft by cooking far from our tent, but his presence and the lack of an electric fence, made me a bit uneasy that night. The wind direction was in our favor and the bear was traveling in the opposite direction, so we, gratefully, have no further excitement to report.

After our backpacking trip, we returned to Brooks Camp for another couple of days of bear-viewing before returning to Anchorage, then Hope.

We were going to upload some bear movies, but are currently unable to do so because of the limited bandwidth. Maybe we will succeed in doing so a little bit later.

Yukon Adventures

Hurray for Adventure Alaska Tours!
After joining Sheri on her first camping tour of the season (which was very much fun) I got to on another Adventure Alaska Tour (this one). This time with guide, Patrick, taking us to the mighty Yukon river. A long drive to get there, but well worth it. Fall was coming and the colors of the vegetation were getting more beautiful every mile we drove.

Our base was in Eagle, which is a lovely little old town on the border of Canada.


From there we drove to Dawson (Canada), a well preserved and famous gold seekers town, to begin our downstream paddling. Awesome weather, beautiful views and meditative peace and quiet greeted us for most of the 4 days we were on the river. I had packed a considerable amount of cold weather gear, but luckily we were blessed with some gorgeous sunny days and we hardly needed our rain gear at all. Unfortunately, the one day that I decided to paddle the canoe by myself was the one day that the wind was blowing very hard. Despite going downstream, it was very hard work and I eventually had to relinquish the boat to Patrick.

Update from AK

First an update on Blogarithm...if you would like to receive an email when we update the blog, you now need to sign up with www.rssfwd.com. They purchased Blogarithm and it seems that the migration of old Blogarithm accounts didn't go so smoothly.

We've been back in Alaska now for a month and we're exceedingly busy. I'm leading tours again for Adventure Alaska Tours and Michiel is busy with a host of big projects, including putting in a large garden and greenhouse at the home we are staying in, staining cabins, cleaning, chopping and bundling wood and many other things. He's also done a lot of fishing already this summer, including 2 (failed) attempts at king salmon (in his defence, he was the only person in the boat to get anything (a sockeye salmon) on the first trip and he was the only person to hook a king on yesterday's trip.) He was successful at landing a couple of halibut so we've got some nice fillets in the freezer.

Our friend, Sandra, from the Netherlands will be here tomorrow for 3 weeks and she will be joining us on an Adventure Alaska hiking tour. We'll get some photos up when we can.

More Family Time

We've just left the Netherlands after three weeks of (mostly) family time and probably the nicest stretch of weather I've ever experienced in the country. It was fantastic to be able to go out for long bike rides in the country and really get to see the farmland and lovely homes in the area near Rijnsaterwoude (where Michiel grew up and his father still lives). For much of the time, the skies were blue, the sun was shining and the storks, herons, swans, ducks, goats, cows and sheep were frolicking - a glorious time to be in Holland!

For one week of our time there, the entire family rented a couple of bungalows in a holiday park. We played lots of games (including laser tag, a newspaper fashion show and casino night), ate incredible ethnic food (prepared each night by one of the siblings) and celebrated Bonpa's (my father-in-law) 80th birthday with a day out in the Biesbosch National Park. Our day in the park included a horse and cart ride and a boat tour of a water area that has long been managed by dikes.

Here is a collection of photo highlights:


Celebrating Marilyn May's 6th birthday



Bonpa and his sister, Marion


Ton and Oneida on Queen's Day (thus the orange shirts)


All contestants in the newspaper fashion show



Team one: Seneca, Wilbert, Gwendolyn, and Ton


Casino night: Seneca, Marilyn, Joey, Gwendolyn and Tonny


Marie-Birgitte and Anne-Charlotte


Cocktail hour: Marie-Birgitte, Wilbert, me and Chantal


Ethiopian food!



The brothers-in-law: Bart, Perry and Ton