South Pole Day 2

 This vault holds one of my experiments, when something goes wrong or there is a power outage I shovel it off and climb down and take care of the issue.

This is building has one of my experiments in it, I will walk there everyday to check on it. walking on the snow sounds like you are walking on Styrofoam, its a really weird scrunchy noise because the ice/snow stuff is so cold it doesn't clump or compact it just kind of hardens into an ice crystaly hollow sounding thick layer of scrunchyness, I don't know how to describe it. 

Another one of my experiments, This one looks a certain interesting parts of solar radiation. 

 Walked down the escape hatch from the fuel tank warehouse under the snow.

 Ice crystals! Even though it was around -38 F outside I never felt cold. The ECW gear does a great job!

 This is the food storage warehouse, also under the snow. it is between -55 and -66 F in here year round. Ice crystal formed on my eyelashes while walking through.

 This is what the warehouses called "arches" look like from outside. They house the power plant, rodwell (water), food storage, machine shop/garages, fuel tanks, and some other things.

 The station from outside. Arches to the right.

It's been a busy two days trying to learn how to do my job, I will work tomorrow (Sunday, my only day "off") because there is so much to learn and so little time until my predecessor leaves.

Also on a side note, the food here is great!

Arrival to the South Pole

Flight was great, we crossed the trans-antarctic mountains, very smooth approach and landing. I got to go up onto the flight deck and take pictures.

The internet is very slow but I will still try for a post a week. The station is awesome!

McMurdo Day 4

Delayed again because of more bad weather. Got to go on a tour of the McMurdo RA's experiments today. Very interesting stuff, some of her experiments are the same type of thing that I will be doing. I also got to do helicopter transport training, sea ice training, and field camp safety train. Very interesting stuff. Here are some pictures from today.

 You can see the sea ice road near the bottom of this picture.

 This is Ob hill (the one we climbed two days ago) from higher up on the island.

 This is a lab that contains similar experiments to the ones I will run.

 If you look closely at the picture above you can see an iceberg in the top left quadrant.

 The truck we took to go see the experiments up in Arrival Heights (the part of the island that overlooks McMurdo Station)

 In the survival bag there is enough to sustain two people for three days. This includes two sleeping bags, a tent, two hypothermia wraps, a shovel, an ice saw for cutting ice blocks (to build wind walls and things), freeze dried biscuit rations, chocolate bars, a stove for melting snow, a pot, cups, spoons,fuel for the stove, a few extra clothing items, small sleeping mats, tea and hot chocolate (maybe a few other things I forgot).

 There are a few old projects and funny sculptures around Mcmurdo, including this old snow Motor-Ski and a large metal troll under one of the foot bridges.

 Many of the trucks have tracks or big tires to deal with the rough terrian around town

This is the T-shirt rendition of a sign in the galley reminding people to not hog the limited supply of fresh fruits and vegtables. I had some falafels and tahini sauce for dinner today. 

More McMurdo Views

Very clear night last night, this was taken at around 11pm. The picture below is the same mountain just at about 1pm today instead. 

 Very clear day today as well, flight got delayed until wednesday. This is the view across the McMurdo sound, edge of the Ross ice shelf. The large mountain above is Mount Discovery.

The water here comes from the bay through a distillation plant. I had baklava for breakfast and a chickpea tomato stew with rice last night. 

McMurdo Adventures

Today we climbed "Ob Hill" as in Observation Hill. This the hill that Scott's men used to climb to look out over the Ross ice shelf and look for Scott returning from the pole.

 I climbed Ob hill with two stewards, the other RA and the heavy machine operator. We pretty much make up the youngest crowd of the summer crew.

 About half way up large clouds started rolling in and by the time we were heading down it started to lightly snow.

 All of McMurdo Station from the top of Ob hill.

 The cross on top of Ob hill was placed there by Scott's crew after it was discovered that Scott died on the return trip from the South Pole in 1911.

After climbing Ob hill we went to the station coffee shop. There is also a movie lounge in the same building. It is very cozy and nice.  

 After the coffee shop we went on a tour of some of the labs. This was the touch tank, the crab looking thing is a sea louse, the yellow guy is a sea lemon. There was also a fish, nudibranch,star fish and anemone. The water was -1 degrees (same as the water in bay beneath the ice). The lab is running experiments on the effects of ocean acidification and warming.

 This is part of the galley, the food was very good and there were a lot more options than I was expecting. The galley is pretty packed around meal times. There is a clock in the dinning hall that has a map of Antarctica and all of the numbers are marked with a big N for north.

 After lunch we walked down to see Discovery hut. This is the hut that Scott built in 1902.

 We found a seal!

Erebus bay is a Weddell seal breeding ground in a month or so there will be many seals in this area. The penguins will also start their migration in the next few months, I am a little too early to see that, but maybe I'll be lucky on the way back next year!

 The view across the bay to mainland Antarctica.

 Great day! The temperature was about zero degrees fahrenheit but with wind chill felt around -21 F. With big red I never felt cold, just around the face a little, nothing really that bad though. You can always check the weather conditions on the screens in the galley and in the lounges and also on the internet for McMurdo and for South Pole.

I'm scheduled to fly to Pole sometime in the next three days, so excited!

Arrival in McMurdo

We took a C-17 from Christchurch to Mcmurdo.

I got to go up on to the flight deck and look around. 

The runway is out on the permanent ice on the Ross ice shelf. You have to take a big passenger tractor about an hour across the ice shelf to get in to town.

 It was about -9F when we got off the plane, with the big red I hardly felt the cold. ony my hand got a little chilly taking pictures.

 This Mount Erebus and Mount Terror. Mt Erebus (left) is an active volcano, its is unusual for it to not have a plume of smoke.

This is the passenger tractor. These pictures were taken around 11:30 pm.

Observation hill, hopefully I will climb this later.

This is the view across the Ross ice shelf from Ross island that McMurdo is on.

The airfield is out there on that ice.

More pictures to come!