Last sunrise until September 2015

Also the last night until February. Next post will be from Antarctica, could be a few days to a week depending on weather and internet! 

New Zealand Day 2

I ran into the holy grail of cheese stores today. It's called the "Cheese Mongers" and it is glorious.

Just look at this wall of cheeses. This is my new favorite place. They even make their own bread (also amazing).

They make sandwiches at lunch time with the fresh bread, chutney and lettuce (and cheese of course)!

I sat by the river, read my book and made some friends.

Ice Flight

This week I have gotten a flu shot, gotten my computer cleared for the USAP (US Antarctic Program) network, and packed my boomerang bag. A boomerang bag is the only bag you get back if the flight "boomerangs" and is unable to land in McMurdo due to a change in weather. I picked up my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear (there was over 30 lbs of gear!).

My flight is now scheduled for Saturday!

Sheep barricade!

New Zealand

I arrived in New Zealand yesterday, took a shuttle to the hotel in the city center, right near the famous church. Christchurch is still in the middle of recovering from the major earthquake in 2010. All buildings are in somewhere between abandoned, half standing, demolished, empty lot, repaired, or brand new.

The city is full of little gardens, parks and squares that make for very pretty walks to wander around (while dodging construction sites). The botanical gardens were beautiful.

There are lots of coffee shops everywhere and they all boast some sort of large "Builders Breakfast". They have amazing Chai tea. I had a bagel with cream cheese and pesto at one across the street, it was delicious.

The church with the colorful triangles is the temporary one finished about a year after the earthquake. It is called the Cardboard Cathedral because it is made out of gaint cardboard packing tubes (you can see them in the ceiling), plastic and the metal from shipping containers. The floor is heated concrete and the natural lighting and innovative construction makes for a very different, minimalist look.

The the re-start mall is entirely made from shipping containers, which was transformed in to really cool looking space for small restaurants and shops.

The famous old church is around the block from where I am staying. It really shows the destruction that happened here. The front of the church fell down about a month ago. I have overlayed a picture of what it used to look like on top of the ruin that is there now. Even without the front and the tower the church is still very impressive.

Fire Fighting Picture

Diesel fire fighting:

Week 2: Fire Brigade Training

Everyone on the winter crew has to decide to be on the fire brigade or on the trauma team because in such extreme isolation we have to relay solely on the training and strengths of the crew, there is no evacuation or any possible transportation for about nine months.
I decided I would be part of the fire brigade because crew members on the fire brigade need to remain clean shaven throughout the entire year (easy for me and most people like to grow their beards for warmth in the winter).
 Fire training is at the Denver Fire Academy for an entire week. The first day we were issued "bunker gear", boots, and a SCBA harness. We learned how to correctly don the gear which includes a flash hood, jacket, pants, boots, mask, harness, air bottle, and gloves as modeled by the other Research Associate (RA) here.

We completed a multilevel crawling maze made from 2''x4''s in a shipping container in full gear without air bottles, general hand tool usage, forcing entry, and the "worm hole" crawl. The worm hole is a long pipe that starts at about three feet in diameter and shrinks to sixteen inches. This is a requirement to graduate from the Denver Fire Academy (not necessary for us, but why not try it?). At sixteen inches you can't crawl, it is more of a toe push and elbow shuffle for the last five sections of pipe.

We also learned search and rescue techniques and rescue drags. We did a short obstacle course which includes two roughly 1'x1.5' rectangles and a pipe which we navigated in full gear on air. Being on air with limited visibility makes the feeling of claustrophobia a little more heightened but I completed it successfully.

We learned the fire prevention and safety capabilities of the station and what our actions and responsibilities are in regards to station and aircraft fire fighting. There will be weekly fire training session and monthly fire drills as well as a mass casualty incident drill twice a year.
We covered different kinds of fires and how to approach them, ventilation, flow path and many other things. We practiced putting out several fires with extinguishers and discussed different scenarios.

Interesting fact: There are only ten LC-130 planes in the world and they all belong to the US Antarctic Program. These are the largest planes in the world to be outfitted with skis. In 1973 a LC-130 crashed at the South Pole, it is buried at the end of the skiway (ice runway), everyone survived.

 

Source

   

First Week of Training

This first week of training consisted of an orientation, meeting the management, introductions, lots and lots of team building. We did quick orienteering course and hike. Learned about effective communication by verbally navigating a hiking trail for someone who was blind folded.

We had a full day of generally safety and OSHA training. We went to a ropes course where the station electrician took this awesome picture of me jumping off a telephone pole.

We had another whole day of Myers-Briggs personality profiling and positive communication and how to deal with people you can’t stand.

On Saturday we took the cog rail way up to Pikes Peak for fun and for a little altitude awareness. The altitude difference between Denver and the peak is about the same difference from McMurdo to the South Pole. 

A Little Background + Travel Plans

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole station is about at 9,300 feet in elevation (but feels higher due to the thin atmosphere), and sits on about two miles of ice. The average monthly temperature for the austral summer is -18°F (-28°C); in the austral winter, the average monthly temperature is -76°F (-60°C). The pole experiences one day that lasts the entire year. This means one sunrise, one sunset, and about six months of darkness.

The station has a gym, green house, sauna, galley, music room, craft room, labs, a store, post office, and a berthing wing.  

What am I doing?
My job title is Engineering and Science Support Associate, which means I help run about 10-15 experiments for different universities and grantees. These experiments involve ionosphere, magnitospere, cosmic rays and a variety of other things. I will also be on the fire brigade team, work in the green house, as well as perform other station community duties.

How will I get there?

Denver>Dallas>Sydney>Christchurch

I pick up my cold weather gear in New Zealand. 

Next leg is to McMurdo for “Happy Camper” snow survival school. Then another 3.5 hours by plane (the plane has skis!) from McMurdo to the South Pole.

Fun Facts From the First Day

Fun facts from the first day of training:

• 1418 people have wintered at the South Pole between 1957 and 2014
• The current record for most winters experienced by one person is 10 winters (and it's held by two different people)
• Oldest winterover was 74 during the 2011 winter
• Youngest winterover was 19 during the 2008 winter
• First woman to winter was in 1979
• A total of 197 women have wintered at the Pole.

There are only 3 women wintering over this year, that makes me about the 200th woman to ever winter over in all of human history. I'm also the youngest person on the winter team this year. All of the people I met today seemed like a very interesting people with lots and lots of fantastic stories. I'm very excited to start this adventure (and pretty nervous too).  It is still up in the air whether I will be able to update this site fairly regularly because my internet connection will be intermittent so we will shall see what happens.