My Antarctic Anniversary

Me on Deception Island last December, looking at a nice up-close iceburg (that I later went swimming around)

A year ago today, I landed on Antarctica on Deception Island, up in the peninsula. A year ago today, my fascination/love/obsession with the ice began. What was supposed to be a fun vacation has turned into so much more- a true Antarctic adventure, that after all this time is still going strong.

Antarctic Thanksgiving

So I have survived my first Antarctic holiday. Working in food service, we had to work on the day. I thought I would really hate spending Thanksgiving at work but I actually really enjoyed the day itself. It was really fun to see everyone and just be in the middle of all the fun hustle and bustle and excitement.
Since it’s a holiday, the community gets an extra day off, so we celebrate it on Saturday so that people can have Saturday off and then their regular Sunday off. The prep for it was insane, but there were a lot of volunteers coming in to help all week which was really nice. Plus the entire kitchen staff worked on the day, so it was a little crowded, but very well staffed. We got to eat at 1:30, and then the community had seating’s available at 3, 5 and 7. They could stay for 1 and ½ hours, and then we had to turn over the whole house in a half hour for the next seating. The night workers also had a dinner at midnight.
The general consensus was that the food highlight of the day was the crab legs. They were so big that they hardly fit on the trays. My favorites were the chocolate covered strawberries and all the traditional turkey stuff.
I have to admit, this was my favorite day of work. It was really fun, and I think we all enjoyed the day as much as the community did. I’m looking forward to doing it all over again in a month for Christmas!

The internet is being weird today, but I will hopefully be able to add pictures to this post later!

The Pressure Ridges

Lots of interesting things going on in Antarctica these days. Primarily, I went to the pressure ridges, and saw seal babies!!!

The pressure ridges are where the sea ice, which is about 8 feet thick, meets the ross ice shelf which is 300 feet thick. They crush together and push the ice out of the water, and create these weird formations. Its basically plate tectonics, but with different kinds of ices. We got to go on a tour and walk through all of the pushed around ice.

I admit, Antarctica always feels like a different planet when you get far enough out of town, but walking through these was reallllly like being on a different planet.

It was amazing to see. McMurdo is to the right of and behind that hill on the right, to give you an idea of where the ridges are in relation to town.

I have also started to make field lunches as part of work. Basically, I make the bagged lunches that people take on flights and out on day trips when they go around the continent. Its a lot of fun actually, and I have become quite the sandwich professional.

One thing that was interesting in the galley was veterans day. We have a lot of military people around, I think I have talked before about how its a deployment here for them. On veterans day, a small table was set up very nice, with a bible, and a wine glass, and a candle, as well as normal table setting things. This was for the missing soldiers all over the world. I had never seen this done before, and it was interesting to kind of just look at that table all day and think about it. I wanted to take a picture of it but I wasn't sure it would be respectful. It was a good experience to see though.

I have been here over 3 months, which is unbelievable. Time really makes no sense anymore.

LDB, Arrival Heights, Ob. Tube, and Discovery Hut

I had a very busy day and a half off this week. On my day off, I went out to the long duration balloon facility, or LDB for short. It is about 6 miles from the base out on the ice, and from there you have a beautiful view of the whole island, and can see Erebus, the volcano, with smoke coming out of the top.

The facility is still starting up since its early on in the season, and scientists who are doing atmospheric research with balloons are starting to come. That night I went on a tour of Arrival Heights and the Cosray building, which are two scientific centers studying particles. The Cosray research has been going on since 1960, and is the longest running thing here.

The next morning, I went out to the Observation tube. Past Hut Point out on the sea ice, there was a tube put in that goes under the sea ice and has a little glass room at the bottom so you can crawl down and see what everything looks like under the ice. It’s really neat to see what the ice shelf looks like from the bottom- its covered in crystals. Plus, climbing down the tube gives you a really good visual of how thick the ice really is, about 15-20 feet.

Waiting to go down was really a morning at the Antarctic beach…the sun was shining, we were walking on the frozen ice waves, and we could hear the skuas in the background (which sound like seagulls).

We had to wait awhile to go down the tube, and got to meet a group of people heading to the pole. They were delayed here for a few days, and wanted to see as much as possible during their stay. I ended up giving them a tour of Discovery Hut, the hut at Hut Point, since I am a historical hut guide. This was my first tour, so it was very exciting. Actually, it was my first time inside this hut, so that was exciting as well. It is still full of stuff leftover from the explorers.

This was the first hut built in Antarctica, by Scott in 1901. Although it doesn’t have as many artifacts as Cape Evans, it holds many different pieces of history, as many different explorers used it over the years. It also holds a lot of seal blubber. The hut was primarily used for storage, meat butchering, and as a theater. It was fascinating to see, and really nice to realize how the hut that used to be the portal to the Antarctic (most explorers at least used this particular hut in one way or another) is just a stroll away from where the largest Antarctic community is now, and still serving as the gateway to the Antarctic, as most people come through here to get anywhere on the ice. All in all, another set of wonderful adventures in Antarctica.

The Disconnect with Reality

Today I stayed home from work with a cold. There’s not a whole lot you can do here while you are sick, besides watch TV and try and get better. I never watch TV here, except the occasional movie on one of the movie channels, but I ended up watching the news this morning, which was interesting. We have the armed forces television channel here, so I got to see the nightly news (morning here is last night in the states). It finally hit me how much of reality I have been missing. Like, for example, the Chilean mining crisis. Life here sometimes doesn’t feel that different then life in America, in a very small secluded community somewhere very cold with beautiful views, but we are so very far away from everything, and really don’t come into too much touch with reality (for example, me knowing nothing about this Chilean miner thing until today).

Watching the Armed Forces Network was interesting as well. All of the commercials are aimed at deployed forces. Some were about how to deal with the stress of being deployed. Lots were messages from people in the states to soldiers thanking them for their service. I admit you feel a little odd watching this stuff down here, because even though we are technically “deployed” (and get a newspaper called “Stars and Stripes” for deployed troops) its not like we are actually in similar situations to troops in Iraq or Afghanistan, or anywhere else. Antarctica is a truly unique place.

Things are pretty much the same around here. I went to a science lecture on climate change, which was really hard to grasp, but somehow the ozone hole is playing a small role in protecting Antarctica from suffering the disastrous effects that climate change is having in the Arctic- how’s that for ironic? And that the sea levels are rising not just because of melting ice but primarily because water takes up more space when its warmer. Pretty interesting stuff, overall. Its always nice to go to these science lectures and learn about what is going on in the scientific work on the base…or the work of the entire continent even. I found this lecture really neat because it talked primarily about the peninsula of Antarctica, which I visited on the cruise last December. It even cited scientific work done with ice cores that was done at Verdansky, a Ukrainian station where we got to stop at while on the cruise.

Lastly, the Skua are here. But they deserve their own blog post, once I can take some proper pictures of them.

My Thanksgiving Day

Because I work in the kitchen, I have to work holidays, and so they give us another random day off that month. So, my thanksgiving day was today. It was weird to have this extra day…I will have 2.5 days off this week, which may not sound like a lot, but down here its ridiculous. I have no idea what to do with this amount of free time anymore. I went on two hiking trips today One was the Cape Armitage Loop, which goes down to Scott Base and out onto the sea ice.

It’s very close to the pressure ridges, which is where the sea ice meets the ice shelf. The two ices crush together and it looks like churned up snow.

There are seals that hang out by them as well. Later on I went up to Hut Point, and watched a windstorm off on the ice.

This morning I started my part-time job at the video counter. It’s really fun to do something in the community that is out of the galley, and its fun as well. Its also a way to make myself get up earlier and enjoy more of the morning before I have to go to work. I am also going to start volunteering in the library in the morning once a week. They like to have things open in the mornings so that people who work night shift have a chance to go to things. I am starting to appreciate the nice morning hours more and more, since those are more peaceful than the rest of the day. Population is now over 1,000 people, and to say it is hectic is to put it mildly.

Because it was my thanksgiving I tried to think of all the things I was thankful for, and it was nice to remind myself about how happy I am that I am here. I am getting to see so much and experience so much. I love life here, and all of the adventures it has given to me.

Iceburg and Cape Evans!!!

Last night, I got to go on the most exciting recreation trip, out on the sea ice to see Cape Evans and a huge iceburg. These are the vehicles (called deltas) that we took out there.

It was so great to get out on the ice and away from town for a bit, and really experience the environment and take in the beauty of it all. This picture is taken at about 9 at night by the way, to give you an idea of the sun's height in the sky. There are no more sunsets now.

We went to go see Cape Evans, where Scott stayed before going to the pole. It looks like he left 20 minutes ago, and is coming back any second. Everything is still where it was left, and it is so cool to look around inside. Its really creepy and bizarre actually, like you are going back in time. Its astounding to think that people lived in this hut for a year and a half. Here is a picture of a penguin they had killed and had on the table, and a British newspaper from 1908 that they were reading.

It was such a cool place to go and see. You could walk around the land around it, but I was so absorbed with the hut that I stayed in it the whole time. But, here is what it looks like from the outside. At the top of the hill on the right is a cross, and a dog skeleton tied to it. The story goes that the survivors in the hut saw their ship coming for them from the hill, shot their dog and ran for it, leaving everything inside as if they were coming back moments later.

Cape Evans was simply amazing to see, but my favorite part of the trip was seeing this huge iceburg that was on the way out there. We drove over the ice to get to Cape Evans, and there was this giant iceburg kind of in the way. We got to walk around it and just explore which was awesome. I now want to learn how to climb glaciers, or some such thing.

They gave us ski poles to poke around so that we wouldn't fall down any cracks or crevasses (although I still fell in a small one). The iceburg is moving, very slowly of course, but there are still lots of cracks and fissures in the ice around it. We got to touch it, and investigate the cracks and crevasses in the burg itself, which was absolutely incredible.

It was so, so much fun, and so amazing to see. To give you an idea of the size of it, it took about 40 minutes to walk around, and here is a picture of us walking next to it.

My picture doesn't even reach the top of it!

This was one of those unforgettable, beautiful, epic Antarctic days. Life is simply amazing here.