Flag Lines and Winter Quarters

Sunset is a month away and temperatures are still pretty warm so it's the perfect time to put up extra flag lines. It's important to put these lines in so when visibility is bad you won't get lost. My flags are placed between 10-15 steps apart, some people prefer them closer that that and others are fine with 40 feet apart. It all depends on the person and how necessary it is to be able to get to the end destination in bad weather.  Flag lines are a big team effort, it would take forever to lay a flag line on your own.

 I needed a flag line between to two buildings I walk to often (SuperDARN/ARO) and also from SuperDARN back to the station. Other people run experiments out at ARO so I didn't have to put the ARO-Station flag line in.

 The process for putting in a flag line is: someone walks the paces and keeps the straight line, someone drills the hole for the flag with a cordless drill (it's good to have a second warm battery, they die really quickly in the cold), someone pulling a banana sled with flags, someone pulling the flags from the banana sled and placing them in the line. The flag lines we put in are about 3/4 of a mile and it took about an hour and a half to complete.

 This is my new room for the winter! It's so big! I had to move rooms because in the winter we don't have enough people to fill all the berthing pods, so we turn the heat down to just above freezing in one pod (A-4) and use it as storage. I lived in A-4 for the summer, my new room is in A-1. When things get slow maybe I'll talk about the station layout with a map.

 And I have a window! I have binder clipped a towel to the frame and a sheet on top of that to block out the light (I like that better than the cardboard pieces that are normally used for blocking light).

 Giant desk! The map of Africa was a given to me by a really good summer friend who is now enjoying traveling around New Zealand.

This is my awesome view. You can see my flag line to SuperDARN (tiny building on the right) and the geographic south pole a little above the last flag on the left with the American flag. The vents in the snow are for the fuel storage arch and the power plant. I can also spy on the winter smoker's shack and an out house. We have several liquid only out houses around the backyard, they are all basically glorified funnels that run into steel drums, and (more importantly/unfortunately) are not heated.

Sastrugi Tsunami! There aren't too many cool snow formations left, we are in more of a snow accumulation phase right now, the sastrugi will be back again at the end of the winter.

 

If you have any questions, comments or ideas for something I should write about when things get slow (or just want to say hi) comment here, email me or text me, it's always nice to hear from people!