McMurdo 1955

After one month, I am finally catching my breath and finding time to blog again.  In the past four weeks, the population has doubled and will nearly triple (from WinFly) in the next couple of weeks.  This has been a huge shift in my understanding of what winterovers go through (on a much bigger scale!) when the first flight of WinFly arrives. 

It doesn't take long to get into a rhythm here and to get lulled into the peacefulness of a small population.  Our lives during Mainbody, when the population can soar to over 1150, get focused on planning and scheduling everything.  Even he most mundane things like going to the gym or going to the dining hall have to be carefully planned so that you don't go right at noon or 5:30 pm.  We even get to the point where we don't go to lunch on the half hour or hour because it's too crowded.  After 6 seasons of this behavior, it was an exceptional treat to go wherever I wanted, when I wanted.  All that ended on November 3.

Since then, I've been teaching 3 or 4 software training classes per day and spending the rest of my work time providing software assistance one-on-one or editing the McMurdo intranet.  The station is full of people trying to get to their field camps, the South Pole, Australians (heading to Casey, one of the Australian stations), Italians (heading to Terra Nova) and loads of scientists wishing to get out into the field to do their research.

The weather and the condition of the sea ice this year have made it difficult for anyone to get anywhere. There are giant cracks in the ice where we would normally have an ice road and this has meant that many scientists now need helicopter support to get to locations they would otherwise drive to.  We've also had many days of blowing snow and near white-out conditions which mean that no one goes anywhere!  Right now, 24 Australians are sleeping in "man camp" (a big bunk room) because we can't get a flight out to their station.  Meanwhile,  other program participants heading south have been stuck in LA and elsewhere while the Qantas fleet has been grounded.  There's always a challenge in this program - for many, that's what keeps them coming back year-after-year.  It's never the same!

Another thing that CERTAINLY has not stayed the same over the years is the condition and the look of McMurdo.  Today, I discovered some photos taken in McMurdo in 1955.  They did not have any of the same safety or environmental concerns that we do today and had very different rules.  Back then, dogs were used for pulling sleds.  No one is permitted to bring animals to Antarctica any more - especially when they discovered that dogs were passing along the canine distemper virus to seals.

Today, we'd never be allowed to scamper around the sea ice in those conditions!

We still have a chapel but it doesn't have a picket fence!  Nor is it a quonset hut.

The one thing that hasn't changed...

Note the beer cans.