Sea Ice

I know I have written a bunch in the last couple days, but this place is very exciting and I enjoy sharing my experiences. Plus I'm headed to "happy camper school" for two days so won't be able to update anything then. Additionally, sorry Dad and Linda that I haven't called, it seems the only time I have free is in the middle of your night.

My first day of "work" was great. Since we work a 6 day work week, I had to work on Saturday. However this was our day of sea ice training. What this means is that since my job requires me to travel in work vehicles on the sea ice, I need to learn how to read and assess cracks. We started the day off with learning about new cracks, working/active cracks, pressure ridges... in a class room. After about an hour of theory, we loaded up the Hagglund to travel to the ice. A Hagglund is a tracked vehicle as seen in the pictures made up of the main cab, and trailer that is towed behind. After contacting MacOps to let them know where we were headed, how many of us there were, and when we would return, we left the primary road to the ice runway and headed in the direction of Mt Erebus (the smoking volcano on Ross Island). Shortly after turning onto the flagged route, we saw a huge seal but I wasn't able to get a picture.

We headed north for about 1.5 hours until we came to our training site. The site was chosen because a route was established to the future site of the penguin ranch early last week. After a couple days of windy weather, Fleet Ops (they drive the big rigs) tried to drag ~4 huts out to the site when the driver noticed something funny in the ice and lots of signs of wildlife. Wildlife can indicate a new crack as it offers access to the ice surface. The driver ditched the huts and returned to McM not wanting to chance it with the chilly waters below.

To evaluate the ice, we dug a trench through the snow to the ice surface across the area in question. We then drilled a hole about every meter or so down the trench using a cool drill made from a weed whacker engine. The drill bits are 1 meter long, so after we drilled each of the first holes, we added another bit to the end to extend it another meter and revisited each hole until we hit water. we then used a cool measuring tool to see how thick the ice was. We found that across the area, the ice ranged from 4+M (very thick) to less then 1M. We mapped the crack and came to the conclusion that this was the boundary where the old sea ice from last year (that never went away) met the new ice that formed this winter. Long story short, the driver made the right call, but it was still safe for us to drive over it with our Hagglund. However the wildlife seen at the area were penquins and these little birds can wander a long way from open water.

We also were able to learn about Fata Morgana. This is a cool phenomena where everyone can see something that isn't really there. At one point, we saw 3 pillars of ice standing up, a minute later we turned around and there were now thousands of pillars of ice making a ~5 mile trail across the bay. Everyone could see it, although it wasn't really there. What causes this is when there is cold air on a calm day, the moisture reflects up whatever is on the ground. Its kind of like movie projector showing you whats on the ground. I highly recommend researching this on the Internet. I have never seen anything like it before.

Other cool things that I have done include have prime rib for dinner (two helpings), drove a Pisten Bully (snow cat), drove a Mac Track (Ford F-350 with tracks instead of tiers), climbed Ob Hill (that's me in the picture), shoveled some snow, yoga in the chapel, and much more. So far, I love this place, I love my job, I have great new/old friends, and there isn't much more that would make me any happier. I now fully understand the "Life is Good" slogan. Cheers.