Life at WAIS

I think it was said best that our monotony is someone else's adventure. Each day was filled with shoveling snow, putting up rac tents, eating, and playing cards. To us, this was just a typical day, but to everyone back home this was an adventure (you seem to lose that every now and then).

Evening entertainment typically involved playing cards after eating a huge meal. I learned how to play Cribbage, Pitch, and Rummy. I have to say, Pitch was the hardest to learn, but I had the most fun with.

One day we decided that we were going to have a day off and that it would be nice to give the cooks a day of rest. Tirzah and I (the two GAs) volunteered to play cooks for the day. It was a lot harder than I thought it was going to be to feed 21 people three meals. The highlights of the day included making "Magic" bars and a sheet cake that was the map of the camp. People really appreciated it, but working 12 hrs on your day off can take its toll on you.

On thing that was fun to do was to have races when you couldn't see the horizon. You didn't race to any point in particular, but with no reference point, and and not seeing contour with the flat light, you would run until there was only one person standing. This picture shows how white things can be. One night I tried talking Tirzah into a race which she declined, moments later I stepped off the 2 foot snow drift next to the outhouse and landed flat on my face. She reported, "I win."

One of my favorite parts of camp life was the outhouse. Under each little shack was a 5-7 foot hole dug into the snow and ice. After someone used the outhouse, their droppings would freeze. At some point in the future someone else would use it and their droppings would land on top of the first and freeze. After this is repeated for a week or two, you have a 5 foot poopsicle (edited for younger viewers) coming up from the floor (I wanted to take a picture, but never did). After these stalagmites get too tall, they take the poopstick (also edited for younger viewers) and knock it over. The other fun part of the outhouses was the poems and fun puns. Some of my favorite puns were "WAIS'ed away again in Margaritaville", "We have a WAIS to go", "These are the WAIS of our lives"...

Each morning after donning our ECW to leave our tent, I would dump my pee bottle at the yellow flag and then return to my tent and dig it out before heading to breakfast. Some mornings, my tent was really buried from the drifting snow.

One interesting part of camp life was the freezer cave. This is were all the frozen food is kept. The cave was fully stocked from last year and was full of wonderful food including ribs, stake, seafood... I had to dig open the door a couple times to help pull food for the galley. By the time I left, the Carps (Carpenters) were building an extension to the door to help prevent it from being buried by drifting snow.

Life at WAIS was full of hard work, that was instantly rewarded by a spectacular view and great company (picture below of Andy and Andy our Fulies). I don't have pictures, but we were even visited by three birds while I was there. I guess this is normal, but remember that available food is 200 miles away.

I'll add more on this wonderful topic of WAIS when I get a chance. I let you know about the science that will happen there and about how to build a rac tent.

Drifting

I am back in town and I have a lot to share. If the first day in Antarctica was the best day of my life, then I knew things could only get worst from there. Well I was wrong, I now have a new best day of my life and that started when the skis of the LC-130 touched down on the landing strip at WAIS camp.

On Thursday the first of November we boarded our aircraft and left for our remote field camp. Our flight took approximately 3hrs during which I got to ride in the cockpit and see the vast sea of ice below. One of the highlights of the flight was when the load master took out a box labeled "explosives" and started fiddling with some dynamite looking things. I asked the other GIB (Guy In Back: National Guard people that don't ride in the cockpit) what he was doing. I was informed that they were the igniters for the JATO (Jet Assisted Take Off). Since this was the first LC-130 flight into WAIS this year, they weren't sure the runway was going to be good enough to take off again. So four rockets were mounted to each side of the back of the plane. If the pilot didn't get enough speed to get the nose up, he would hit the switch and these eight rockets would kick to life and push the plane into the air. After landing I waited in anticipation as the plane tried to take off, but unfortunately, they made it on their second try without the JATO.

Just before landing we were informed that the weather at WAIS was marginal and that if two landing attempts where unsuccessful, we would divert to Pole. Well, we made it and it was an amazing experience. To unload the three pallets of cargo, the pilot did a drift offload also known as a combat offload. After opening the rear door, the load master pushes the ramp pallet out the back, a lever is then pulled which releases the next two pallets as the pilot hits the throttle. The pallets slide out the back and land on the runway to be picked up later. You have to check out the cool video below, it starts with the pull of the lever.

I can't describe it all, but when we got there, there were two heated modules still stuck in the winter berm (the man made elevated platform where they store everything for the winter) that had been opened by the six person crew that arrived the week before. After our arrival, the population doubled to 15.
The second morning there, we woke up in our tents to a horrible storm (Gramma, you may not want to read this next part). The wind was so strong I thought my tent was going to blow away with me in it. After getting on all of my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear, I dug out the snow in my vestibule to my tent, and met the other campers at the outhouse. The tenting site was about an 8 minute walk down a flagged route to the winter berm (safety of heated buildings and food). The walk was a little sketchy as we went flag to flag following the route. Each flag is 15 steps apart except for at the end where someone pulled a couple flags to use for another project. Here the last two flags were about 25 steps apart. The wind and snow was so bad that we all stopped at the second to last flag wondering where the next one was. I have to say, it was really cool to see the power of such a storm. Below is a common rainbow seen around the sun almost daily. The background is the winter berm and the new cargo line created from the cargo removed from the berm the week before.

That is all I have for tonight, but I'll try to keep updating on my WAIS trip. As far as news goes, I received my guitar in the mail and it is better than I could have dreamed. However, Dad and Linda, the package you sent is still not here (there is no rhyme nor reason as to which mail gets here first).


To Be Continued...

The Today Show

Well, I'm still here, and so is Ann Curry from the Today Show. I don't know the details, but if you go to the link I'll add at the bottom, you can see video of their trip here. So far I have seen the video from the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) in Christchurch. Apparently she arrived this afternoon in McM and will do a short thing here before heading to Pole. Follow the Today Show to learn more. I thought this would be a good way for people to see the process. I won't have TV at WAIS, so you'll all have to let me know how it is. I'll warn you now, that she has already over dramatized it a little, but the video is good.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21487380/

Life is still great and every day is full of smiles. I may be headed to WAIS tomorrow, but we'll see how it goes. Cheers!

Standby

And the Red Sox are World Champions! Alright. What a great year it was for the sox! Below are a few things I've been up to lately. I hope you enjoy the pictures and the short stories.

Last week I had to spend a day working out at LDB (Long Duration Balloon Launch). I didn't do anything cool but did get to shovel a bunch and make some people upset when I took a picture of their payload they were building. I guess the flash isn't good for the electronics. Woops! LDB is about 20 minutes from station out on the McM ice shelf. In the picture, the two tall buildings are payload buildings where scientists put together fancy electronics to take sophisticated readings in the atmosphere (okay, I have no idea what they do). I do know that they cost millions of dollars. What happens is a large balloon will carry the payload up into the sky for a length of time. Eventually a small charge will blow the payload (scientific equipment) from the balloon and a parachute will return it safely to the ice below. A second charge then detaches the payload from the parachute so it doesn't get dragged around by the high winds. Scientists then recover the equipment and analyze the data. I guess this will happen in January. This field camp has water trucked in from McM, a large generator for power, and a couple other scientific buildings. This is a picture of the inside of the galley at LDB. The lasagna for lunch was great, but we ended up having the same thing back in McM for dinner. Oh well, you can't win them all. The woman I worked with all day, Ann, skied to the South Pole back in 94 with three other women. How cool is that.I spent Saturday helping change the big gym into a party room. It was a lot of fun and I got to meet more great people. So the question everyone wants to know is, did I meet my ice wife? Well, unfortunately I did not, but I still had one heck of a great time (maybe a little too great, because Sunday wasn't as fun). I made my tiger costume myself out of old runway flags. I have to say I did a fine job. I even remembered to cut a little pee hole for draining adult beverages from my system. The other fun thing about the night was beer was only $1. Above is a picture of myself and Sarah. Sarah is a shuttle drive and has become a good friend. I told her I have a parrot for her pirate costume in the mail, but there is a back log of 20,000lbs of mail in Christchurch. It didn't make it in time.This was a fun picture of Audrey and Sarah giving me a kiss on the cheek. For some strange reason, I have a lot of these types of pictures.
Hey Amber, this picture is for you! This is Cindy, Amber's friend form Last year. For those of you who don't know Amber, she is an amazing friend that helped me get a job down here. She has quite the reputation and any time I mention her name, I instantly have a new friend.

On Sunday (your Saturday), I nursed a hangover by watching the Red Sox win game 3. Gallagher’s, a bar across the street, was open for people to watch the game. There are a few sox fans here, so I was in good company. They had free wings, mozzarella sticks, burgers, chips... for us to enjoy as we watched the game. People kept offering me drinks, but I politely turned them down.

Before the game started I found out that a woman had fallen from her bed and was unconscious. Her roommate found her and the fire department was called into action. The sad news is that they had to med-evac her to Christchurch on the LC-130 I was suppose to take to WAIS today. I hope she turns out okay. I overheard some firefighters saying they were about to intibate (sp?) her meaning she was still unconscious. What a horrible way to leave this place.

After the game, I had to finish my laundry and get ready for bag drag. Bag drag is as fun as it sounds. Everyone about to depart from McM drags their bags up to building 140 and gets weighed in. There were a bunch of people there, people for the two flights to Pole and our backup flight to WAIS. Most of it was just waiting for our time on the scale. We do fly by FAA rules, so no liquids or sharps in our carry ons (however nobody checks).

This morning it was too cold at Pole to fly (has to be >-50F) as it was -56F. This means that our flight was on for WAIS. The only issue was that power was out down on the ice runway. SO they delayed our flight until 1000 when we caught a shuttle down to the ice. After 30min of sitting in the shuttle talking to shuttle driver Naoma (good friend) we were told to go into the galley and wait. Well a couple hours went by along with a lunch of burgers and curly fries to be told our plane was broken and we were now on standby for the evening flight to Pole. I was very excited because this meant I got to watch the Red Sox win the World Series! Well, it warmed up at Pole, so we are now on standby for the flight tomorrow morning.

As always, I love this place and I love the people. If I were to write a fairy tale, I would write one about the last 3 weeks of my life!

South Pole Travers

Okay, before I create any confusion, no I am not going to the South Pole. However, today I got to work with the SPT team as they make their preparations to head south. A few years back, Ric Campbell got this great idea that instead of flying all the supplies to SP (South Pole) that they should create a road there and drive it. So after many years of mapping a route through the crevasse filled areas, they arrived at a "safe" route. Although there has been 3-4 attempts, only one was successful. The project was on hold last season, but they are kicking it off again and I got to join in on the magic. The plan is to have eight people drag twelve 3,000 gallon fuel bags to the pole. This round trip endeavor over the semi established route will take an estimated three months and the crew will return with Pole trash and Pole pooh. Not only will the team need to take the fuel, but they will also have to take all their own living supplies to be fully self sufficient during their journey.

While I worked with the crew I learned a lot about what will take place and I took some pictures. So here is some education on the SPT.

Above you see large tanks that will be used to fuel the pulling equipment not to mention the heating and generator as well. I'm not sure how big each tank is, but as you can tell, there is a ladder going up the side of each one. Each tank is mounted on large skis and connected together to create a long "pony parade." I believe there are a total of 8 of these tanks that will be used.
I really liked this little rig. This read vehicle is a Pisten Bully. I get to drive these around town and out on the sea ice. Attached to the front of the vehicle is a long boom with a sonar head. Bill will be driving this thing in the lead. The idea is that the sonar will pick up any crevasses before they are driven over with the equipment If a Crevasse is found, they use a hot water drill to drill a hole through the snow bridge. They will lower explosives and blow the bridge up. They then take their heavy equipment and fill in the crevasse until it is safe to cross.
NOTE: A crevasse is a large crack in the ice shelf cased by the snow and ice moving and flexing as it passes over the surface below. Wind then covers the crack with a snow bridge and hides the danger below. Often skiers or mountain climbers start crossing a snow bridge not knowing it is there until it gives way and they plummet to the bottom sometimes hundreds of feet below.
In the back ground you can see a huge tractor looking thing, this is a Case Quad Track. It has a 14L engine and is quite the workhorse as it pulls a load of up to 150,000lbs. That is a lot of weight.
In the picture above you and see the Case Quad Track in front of this giant sled. The sled has two 3,000 gallon fuel bags on it. I got to help strap these puppies on as the Fuelies (the fuel people) filled them with gas. Three of these sleds will be chained to the boom you see in the front of the picture meaning one Quad Track can pull 18,000 gallons of gas. The only issue is that in some spots they have built "bridges" across crevasses and they are worried that these sleds may slide off. However they are working on this issue to prevent dumping a few tons of gas into our nice clean snow.
The picture above is where I spent most of the day working. This is the food trailer. The door to the left is frozen foods while the door to the right is dry goods. I lugged 4 pallets of frozen food and 1 van load of dry goods into this trailer. I have pictures of all the food stacked up but I can show you those another time. I can say that these people will not go hungry!
This is the inside of the living quarters. Straight ahead is a bedroom with four bunks, and directly behind me are another four. You can see the sink, but running water is created from a 5 gallon pail under the sink with a pump in it. Water is created by shoveling snow into a box on the front of the utility sled. The box holds about 50 gallons of water and has a heating coil in it. The snow shoveled in quickly melts and is pumped to the showers and bathroom. The water can also be lugged from the utility sled to the living quarters to use in the sink. I don't know what happens to the waste water, but my guess is that it goes directly to the ice below.

I hope this was as interesting to you as it was for me. Tomorrow is the big Halloween party and my costume is all ready (I made it my self). I leave Monday for WAIS so I may not talk to anyone for a couple weeks. Take care and go Red Sox!

Getting Ready To Find An Ice Wife

I'll try to get pictures up soon, but I've had some issues with it. Well the last few days haven't been as exciting, but I still love this place. On Saturday I got paid to drive around all day and GPS the roads. This involved driving a Mac Track on all the local roads and trails and pushing a button at each turn in the road. Since the roads (and trails) are on glaciers, they move from year to year. To help out the SAR (Search and Rescue) team, each year the roads are updated on the computer. I use to think the O'Briens had a steep driveway, however after driving down the trail from Castle Rock, I'll never think twice about their drive again. The pictures don't do it justice, but it was one heck of a ride down tilted to the side and going down a very steep hill. When you hit the breaks, the back tracks would slide out forcing you to keep going. Plus the bottom of the hill was marked by a huge crevasse where you get funneled over a snow bridge they made with a snow cat.

Saturday night was fun, they had the Banff Mountain Movie Festival in the Galley. It was really cool watching the short movies on extreme and adventurous activities. I loved the climbing and skiing movies and can't wait to do some more of it when I get back home.

Sunday was my "day of rest" and I was able (after a few tries) to call home and talk to Big Skip. I wanted to tell him about my up coming trip. As I have told some of you, sometime this week or next, I will be flown out to WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet) to help open (dig out) a remote field camp. Because of the nature of the field camp I won't be able to update my blog for the two weeks I'm there. I don't know when I'm headed, but I should be gone by the middle of next week depending on the weather. While at WAIS, I'll be sleeping in a tent trying to stay warm as temps drop to -40F. Sounds a little chilly to me, but this is why I came.

I hope I don't leave for WAIS until after this Saturday. This Saturday is the famous McM Halloween party. This is the night where single workers find their "ice wifes." I'm not joking about this. Girlfriends here are considered ice wifes and if you don't find one by Halloween, your next chance is at Xmas when the labor pool flops and night workers go to days and day workers go to nights. I thought it was worth sharing this interesting fact with you all and keep your fingers crossed for me.

On Monday I did food pull for the galley. Picture how much food it takes to feed 1,100 people for a week. That is how much food I handled. Now picture how much food it takes to feed 1,100 people for 6 months and 200 people for 6 months, that is how much food is in the warehouse. I didn't get any pictures of it, but I'll try to get back and get some. I had to do things like pull out 220lbs of pork, and 180lbs of chicken... I saw more dead animals than I ever thought existed. Not to mention seeing tofu in 10lb blocks, or 75lb boxes of beef, or hundreds of half gallon cartons of eggs. It was so cool. (sorry Diddy, I pulled this from the email I sent you)

Weather on Monday was Condition 1 everywhere except on Station and at the Ice Runway. This means that traveling anywhere besides right in town was forbidden. In town it was condition two which is a little breezy, but the temp was warm. However, the wind piled snow up on all the steps I just shoveled. I guess being a snow shoveler in Antarctica has some job security.

Tuesday wasn't as much fun as I was hoping it was going to be. I was suppose to go out on snowmobiles to map cracks on the sea ice. However the weather was still a little iffy so instead I was inside all day helping clean up the gear room for the SAR team.

I hope every one is doing well. If there are any questions people have please email me (although it may take a while for me to get back to you). Some things I plan to cover in the future are pictures of Mt. Erebus (the active volcano, peeing on the yellow flag, and life on station. Alison, when I get back from WAIS, I plan on walking the town and take a bunch of pictures of the "everyday" type things to better fill you in on how life works. I also plan on putting together a "day in the life of a GA" post. One of the posts I'm going to get a kick out of is funny signs on station. This one may not be fully appropriate for younger viewers, but everyone else will get a real kick out of it. Go Sox!

I'm A Happy Camper

The last few days have been packed full of fun. Tuesday and Wednesday were Happy Camper school. An yes, "I'm a happy camper." This class is intended for anyone who travels off the station. Since my job will drag me to very cool and remote places, this class was mandatory. After learning some basic survival information, 20 of us loaded up onto a Delta (huge bus) and headed to a spot on the ice shelf just south of Scott Base (the NZ base just around the corner from McM). I wouldn't say we roughed it but, it did make us use some of our knowledge.

In the course we learned how to set up a base camp, set up a Scott Tent, Mountain Tent, Snow quinsy, survival trench, and make a wind break. We cut a ton of snow blocks from our quarry (as seen in the picture) and built a huge wall around "snow mound city." I didn't want to sleep in a tent, so I dug a deep hole in the snow and slept in that. I stayed warm and slept well that night, but the design of my hole made it very difficult to get in and out. Things that kept me warm at night included my "P" bottle (for just what it sounds like), a bottle of hot water, candy to fuel my internal fire, sleeping pad, big red (the jacket) for a pillow, and a nice warm sleeping bag. Some people enjoyed the night out while others froze.

In the morning, we got up and broke down camp. The instructors came at 0800 to help us haul our gear to the I-hut on the ice shelf. In the warmth of the hut we learned how to use an HF radio which is like nothing I have ever seen before. The picture above is us setting up the antenna. I was told HF radios work in the same way HAM radios do. After we set it up, we called MacOps to get the weather forecast for the night before. We found out it was about -20F. These radios are what I will be using in the remote field camps to talk to people in town. Anyone in the field must report in daily at a predetermined time with MacOps to ensure safety.

We also did a drill where someone "went to the outhouse in condition 1 (bad storm) and is now missing." We needed to go find this person. To simulate this, we all wore buckets on our heads to limit our visibility. Using ropes and wands, we located our victim and hauled him back to camp but not before taking a good picture (I'm the guy without big red on).

After I got back to McM, I took a sauna, shower, and changed into my clean cloths that just arrived from Christchurch (yeah). I then went bowling with a bunch of friends. The bowling alley here is the last manually set one in the world, or so I've been told. So each lane has a person sitting above the pins. After you bowl, they hop down, pick up the "dead" wood, and roll the ball back. If you get a strike or spare, they hit a chime in the back that instantly brings a smile to your face. I don't know what my score was, but I cleaned up with 4 strikes and 2 spares.

After bowling we had a little get together for my friend Megan who left for Black Island. She will be stationed at the Com Center on the other side of McM sound at a camp filled with her and the camp manager. She will be in charge of cooking and cleaning but I joked with her telling her that she should be called "assistant manager" since she is the only other person there. She left this morning via helicopter but will return every few weeks to do laundry. She will get mail once a week, so we plan on sending all kinds of fun stuff out to her. At her going away party, we did Tim Tam Slams where we sucked hot coca through a Tim Tam cookie like a straw. After the hot coca hit your mouth, you quickly chuck the whole cookie in. The cookie then dissolves in your mouth in a rich chocolaty burst. I recommend it if you can find any Tim Tams.

Today I did my first real work. A storage building at Willey Air Field needed to be moved but the inside was filled with snow (since it doesn't have a floor snow drifted in). Matt and I headed out to the site with Rhoda and started shoveling. It took most of the day but we got it done. I got to drive on the ice road a bunch and even use the radio a little to communicate what was going on. Once again, I don't think life could get any better! Shoveling snow may not be fun, but shoveling snow in Antarctica looking at helicopters fly by an active volcano is a blast. Well, I'm off to open mic, I hope everyone here can handle my "music." Cheers