Antarctica in the News

December 14th marks the 100 year anniversary of Norwegian, Roald Amundsen's arrival at the South Pole.  In honor of this historic event, hundreds of tourists are descending on South Pole Station - by plane and on skis.  Additionally, the Prime Minister of Norway will make his way there to do a live broadcast back to his country (which the folks in our IT Department are working hard on supporting).  As you can imagine, there is a lot of media coverage. 

Perhaps you've already seen or heard reports on Antarctica on the TV news, on NPR radio or in magazines.  With the anniversary celebrations and the scientific research about to start at Pine Island Glacier, an ice sheet that is dangerously close to cracking (calving) off a giant iceberg - this is a big year for Antarctic public relations.

For a sample of the kinds of activities going on in the adventure travel world, check out the website of Antarctic Logistics Associates (ALE) which is one of the largest adventure tour operators in the Antarctic and a company that one of my British friends from France is working for this season.

CBS News in the US put together a nice piece of video about the South Pole - complete with footage of my current Pilates instructor, Hillary.  The reporter, Josh Landis, was working at McMurdo for the Antarctic Sun newspaper when I first started with the program in 2000.  Check it out here:  http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390504n&tag=mncol;lst;1

The most current edition of the Antarctic Sun has an article about the anniversary activity.

Rolling Stone magazine did a fabulous lead article last year about disappearing ice sheets which focuses quite a bit of attention on Pine Island Glacier (PIG).  There is a field camp and several helicopters heading out to this remote, windswept and (supposedly) miserable location any day now.  It is hugely high-profile, especially because a giant crack in the glacier appeared this Spring.  http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/on-thin-ice-20100922



NASA satellite image

It's quite an exciting time to be down here!

Erebus Glacier Tongue Camp

On a calm, warm and sunny Saturday, I got to spend a half-day as a guest Communications Technician.  One of the sea ice research camps, Erebus Glacier Tongue Camp, was closing up for the season and the buildings were about to be dragged back the 10 miles (or so) to station.  Not that the Comms Techs NEEDED assistance.  This was a small task, but travel off station requires two people (for safety reasons) and on beautiful days, the people who do fun things for work try to offer a seat in their vehicles to folks like me who don't get to leave town very often.

The sea ice camps all close right about now.  The annual sea ice is getting too thin to support the structures anthat have been placed there to support science throughout WinFly (Aug-Oct) and early Mainbody (Oct-the first wekend in December).  The camp we visited supported 7 scientists who are engaged in long-term Weddell seal studies.  Needless to say, the building where they disrobed after tagging and probing seals smelled pretty awful!

Our job was to remove the antennae, telephones, wireless router and any other IT gear from the 5 structure camp.  I was amazed at how comfortable this place was.  They had two heated spaces for sleeping (2 bunk beds in each), a big outhouse with insulated toilet seats and an incredible view of the active volcano, Mt. Erebus, from the urinal, a work/science structure (with the bad stink) and a kitchen building with a big view of Erebus through a picture window next to the dining table.  Furthermore, since camp was so close to the Station, the scientists could easily return to their rooms in town to do laundry, take showers and attend big parties.  Sounds perfect to me!




The view of volcanic Mt. Erebus (notice the smoking plume from the top) from the camp.

  

Thanksgiving Morning

Thanksgiving morning in McMurdo always falls on a Saturday.  We don't get the real Thanksgiving Day holiday, but the closest Saturday and Sunday are days off and we celebrate Thanksgiving with our annual 5K running race at 10:00 AM.  The Turkey Trot almost always brings out some great costumes and a variety of attitudes and seriousness about racing.  Here are some shots from this year's event. 


The starter turkeys

 



The start and finish line are at the Chapel

 

Completely overheating with my 4 layers of clothing

 By the way, it's definitely a benefit being over-40 in these races as my "competition" consisted of a group of 9.  I think I came in fourth in this grouping after a very poor performance, multiple lace tyings, dead mp3 player and fighting a cold.

WAIS Divide for Thanksgiving

Michiel won't be spending the rare two-day holiday weekend with me in McMurdo this year.  Instead, he is out at the WAIS Divide field camp installing their email server.  WAIS stands for West Antarctic Ice Sheet and WAIS Divide is a multi-year camp primarily focused on getting ice cores for scientific research.

Rather than trying to explain it, I'll let these videos, one of which is narrated by my friend, Gifford Wong, tell the story.

http://science360.gov/series/WAIS+Divide/bba68a0e-1005-484d-a343-cb458621a1a6

How Not to Land A Plane in Antarctica

On October 8, 1970, a Lockheed Constellation aircraft flown by the US Navy in support of Operation Deep Freeze (the official name for the military support to the Antarctic Program) was carrying 80 passengers from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station.  It was the first flight of the 1970 season and the weather that day was, well, not conducive to landing.  The aircraft, named "Pegasus", made six low passes and the pilot attempted to land in zero visibility with winds gusting to 40 miles per hour in 90-degree crosswinds.  No one was killed; only 5 people on board were mildly injured.  The starboard wing was torn off completely and the tail unit was broken.

The plane was attempting to land at Williams Field, which is several miles away from this area on the permanent ice shelf.  The crash site is now adjacent to our permanent ice runway called (not coincidentally) "Pegasus" and serves as a destination for occasional after-work morale trips.

The environmental group has plans to remediate this site (meaning:  disassembling the plane and shipping the parts off-continent), so I decided that it was finally time to get out there.  Getting to Pegasus field involves a one hour drive in a Delta, which can be bumpy and uncomfortable, but there was nothing else going on this past Saturday evening, the skies cleared up on the way out and I got to sit in the front cab, so it was a really pleasant road trip.

Pictures of the Pegasus Plane.  They had a lot of snow this winter, so the plane was even more buried than prior years.

The view of the Trans-Antarctic Range from the Pegasus site.  So peaceful...