Koalas and kangaroos!

The heat wave in Perth kept us from venturing into the capital city of Western Australia, except to go pick up our camper, which Michiel dubbed "Camperoo".

Michiel in his nightly cooking ritual.  Yes, I'm spoiled...but I do all the driving!

We stocked up on provisions and headed north out of built-up civilization to our first and one of the best stops of the trip, a small, little-known National Park called Yanchep. We arrived in late afternoon in time to see the Western Grey kangaroos start to get active for the evening. They were unafraid of humans and allowed us to get close enough to sit in the shade and observe them for quite a long time.

The koalas at Yanchep were not yet stirring from their daytime slumber so we returned at 7 AM the next day to see them in all their cuteness. Here is a sample of great shots Michiel was able to get:

Western Australia

We mercifully escaped Christchurch a couple of days after the earthquake and joined dozens of extra people in the check in line at the Qantas counter at the airport. Many of them had no luggage to check in as they were forced to abandon their belongings in quarantined hotels. This was the case for many of our friends and Antarctic co-workers who, to this day, have still not received their baggage.

Qantas had brought in larger aircraft to handle the added passengers and were, as always, VERY free with the disbursement of alcohol which inevitably led to lots of frivolity amongst certain groups of passengers....notably the Australian earthquake clean-up specialists sitting all around us who had been working 3 month stints in Christchurch since the very first quake in September. We gathered from the intensity with which they were downing the chardonnay that they had seen some pretty harrowing things. They were good fun, though, and we had a very entertaining flight to Sydney.

From Sydney, we unfortunately had to transfer from the international to the domestic terminal which is not in walking distance and requires a transit passenger to pay for a shuttle bus. Awful airport. I recommend avoiding it if you can.

From Sydney, we flew across the island continent to Perth, which is roughly the equivalent to flying from NY to LA. After our "excitement" in Christchurch, sleepless nights of aftershocks and series of flights to Perth, we arrived in the evening and were met by a lovely and gentle shuttle driver who whisked us off to our stifling hot backpacker hostel in Fremantle.

We rested for the next 5 days in Fremantle and attempted to acclimatize to the unbearable heat. Day after day of 100 degrees F/38 degrees C was what Lonely Planet calls in it's guidebook to Western Australia: "enthusiasm-depleting heat". Indeed, it took all of our reserves to leave our air-conditioned room and go out for a swim. We did our best, though, and even went for a day of bike riding and snorkeling (disappointing - but then again, maybe I was just "enthusiasm-depleted") at Rottnest Island, which was named by the Dutch after the native quokkas, which they thought to be rats.

Quokkas on Rottnest Island

Drie Molenloop 10,5k - the Three Windmills Running Race 10.5 K

On a gorgeous, and I mean gorgeous second Easter day (the Dutch celebrate the first and second Easter days - ask someone else for an explanation....), Michiel joined me for a running race through the polders and the village of Aarlanderveen, a sweet little place where his sister and her family live.  The sunshine, the windmills, the green fields, the lambs, geese, cows and their little ones, the paragliders overhead and the spirit of the crowd made for a perfect race day.  Getting water during the race from our niece, Marilyn May and enjoying an after-race brunch in Almamia and Perry's garden were additional perks.

Most importantly, my pace was a respectable 5:52 per kilometer with a finish time of 1:01:40.  I'm fine with being a slow runner as long as I'm not last!  In this case, though my slow start had us in last place for the first 3 kilometers, we passed 18 people along the route and I managed to get 121st out of 141 (20th in the ladies division).  To be fair, though, Michiel was 122 and I'm sure he would have run faster if he was by himself.  Thanks for the support, Michiel!

Sorry...no photos except for those on the official website.  Here is a link to the results:  Results
Scroll down to the 10.5K results or do Ctrl F and type "Sheri" to find me.

CTAM Field Camp - Revisited

CTAM from the air

The field camp that I supported this past season in Antarctica (named Central Trans-Antarctic Mountains or "CTAM") was not only an incredibly busy hub of activity (19 different science groups, plus two helicopters and small, fixed-wing aircraft flying in and out and around the site) but also an amazingly beautiful spot in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.  The highlight of my otherwise difficult season was getting to go to CTAM for a long weekend.

Twin Otter, Herc and Helo

Traveling to a field camp involves a nearly one hour drive to the Pegasus Airfield and then a flight (in this case of one hour and 30 minutes or so) in a Hercules LC-130 military aircraft.  On our first attempted flight day, we had almost no visibility with blowing snow.  We boarded the aircraft, made a small circle on the ice, parked and sat in the runway dining hall for another couple of hours before the decision was made to scrap the flight.  We transported back to McMurdo for the night and tried again the following day.

Our gang of 7 - all people from McMurdo who had been supporting CTAM in some way (logistics, flight operations, providing general labor) - was made up mostly of people who had never been to a field camp before and who were over the moon to be getting an opportunity to visit the camp we had heard so much about from the dozens of people who had been there before us.  (NB. as the person who coordinated their flights, it seemed to me that there were hundreds of them.)

The ever popular JUMP photo

CTAM was a one season camp and was known to be not only scenic but also run by a fun and energetic group of camp staffers (the people I was lucky enough to work closely with, although from afar.)  It also didn't hurt that the science being conducted there was of a  variety we could all understand and get excited about - meteors!, live plants!, dinosaurs!

Lystrosaurus Skeleton

Accommodations at the camp consisted of a mountain tent erected on packed snow and ice and staked down with bamboo poles.  We came to the camp equipped with heavy winter sleeping bags, fleece liners for the bags, a thick ensolite pad to insulate us from the cold of the ice and to insulate the ice from the heat of our bodies. Long term campers added thick cardboard boxes to the floor of their tents to further insulate the ice.  If this isn't done, the ice under the tent becomes pitted and very uncomfortable to sleep on.

Tent City

Amazingly, with the clear blue skies and 24 hours of sunlight, the temperature inside my tent in full sunlight got up to 60 degrees F/16 degrees C - conversely, on the day when it was overcast, it was 20 degrees F/-7 degrees C, which was a big challenge for me and my poor circulation.  Thankfully, there's no limit to the number of hand and foot warmer packets you are permitted to use.

While at the camp, I got to be reunited with all of the science groups I'd helped get through the logistics system of McMurdo and, more excitingly, got to see their fossils and samples. I also really appreciated how hard the camp staff work and how challenging the conditions of camp can be. To a person, they treated us all like honored guests and took great care of us.  A couple of staff members treated us to a fabulous outing on the recreation route where we traveled by snowmobile to a great look-out.

Rec Route transport

View from the Recreational Route

It looks like a bunch of rocks but every one of these had a fossilized leaf or twig from more than 250 million years ago when Antarctica formed a part of Gondwanaland.

Wind sculpted rock formations on the Rec Route

We hope that the highlight for the staffers as well as the science groups was the dance party we organized for them...complete with sound system, lights and costumes. I think the fact that the music went on until 5 AM was a pretty good sign that at least some people were having a ball.

Here is a link to an article written by one of the science groups at CTAM for the New York Times.  http://scientistatwork.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/05/deep-in-antarctica-three-big-challenges/   About halfway down the page, there are further links to other posts by Jeff Vervoort and John Goodge.  These are all about CTAM and McMurdo.   Here's a link to the slide show that goes with the blog postings:  http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2011/01/21/science/20110121-antarctica.html 
  

The Dining Hall or "Galley" Structure.  Note that the entire camp was built AND removed during a 4 month period of time.  Really impressive!