Capt. Splash on Ice

Extended Stay

2009-10-15T15:35:00.000-07:00

Twin Otter making its way over to our "terminal"

Temperature: -46.0C
Wind Chill: -63.5C
Wind Speed: 11.1 kts

So, everybody was pretty happy to see the Basler and the Twin Otter land at the beginning of the week. I'll have to retract my earlier statement when I said the Otter fueled up and followed the Basler to McMurdo. The plane and its crew wound up staying at Pole for a couple days due to mechanical issues...Yikes!

They worked the plane away from the fuel pit, and parked it close to the Cargo office so the pilots and mechanic could work on it. Some of our crew assisted them as well, providing heaters, and an old parachute that provided a little bit of shelter from the winds!

The mechanic had a pretty good idea that he knew what the problem was, and the fix was pretty easy. Once he got the wing pulled apart, and swapped out the engine parts he needed to, Julian, Lexi and Lyndsey (sorry if I butchered spelling here) put the wing back together, and were looking at the following day to try taking off.

Because I know absolutely nothing about engines...and even less about them in planes, I figured it would be a good idea to offer my assistance. Before long, Julian had me up on a ladder by the wing unbolting one of the panels he needed to get into. I am ashamed to say that the little panel opening just above the ladder was what he had me working on, and it took a painfully long time for me to get anywhere with it....but I was "helping"!! I have never gotten to partially dismantle a plane before...Julian, thanks!!

I went absolutely nowhere near technical with my descriptions, so if there is something any of you three want to elaborate on, please feel free! If I botched your names, too, let me know...it's all fair game!

The Otter and its crew made it safely to McMurdo, and as soon as the weather is favorable, we will start increasing our population on station. Planes will start flying in sometime in the next couple days as long as the conditions are right, and summer will get underway down here. It will be great to see some new faces, and that was confirmed by the fact that nobody minded that the Otter was grounded here for a couple extra days!! I'm really glad the plane had its issues once they were on the ground here, and not somewhere between here and the coast!

You three take care...we'll see you in MacTown in about three weeks!

Cheers-
Capt. Splash

The Crossing Beacon is Lit!!!

2009-10-12T19:16:00.000-07:00

View of the Day

Temperature: -56.0
Wind Chill: -69.9
Wind Speed: 5.2 kts

These were words none of us had heard in about nine months..."The crossing beacon is lit, please stay clear of the skiway". We haven't seen a plane since February, and we got two in today!!

The first was a Basler, running recon to see what conditions were like down here. All they were doing was checking to see that they could start sending planes in with passengers. So, they landed around 1:30 this afternoon.

Logan, our station manager went out to greet the crew

and we set about the task of refueling their plane, so they could make the rest of their journey.

As soon as they landed, it seemed like they were gone again, heading towards their final stop on the coast, McMurdo.

Then, it was the Twin Otter's turn to land. About thirty minutes after the Basler left, the Twin Otter came in on final approach.

Once it taxied to a stop outside our fuel pits, we loaded it up with fuel for its trip further south (if you can believe that! We are on the very bottom of the world, and yet some things are still south of us!!)

There was contemplation of the Otter crew staying at Pole overnight and continuing on in the morning, but the weather conditions today are too favorable. As soon as they get the fuel they need, they will head on to McMurdo as well.

We haven't seen a plane or another soul for nine months, and there was some contemplation of smuggling ourselves on board either of the two flights, but now both flights are gone. We are all still here, though, left with the fact that in a few days, our station population will more than double for the first time since February! This could get pretty interesting....

To everybody back home...take care and we'll see you soon!
Cheers-
Capt. Splash

More Balloon Launches!!

2009-10-09T17:38:00.000-07:00

today's view

Temperature: -57.8C
Wind Chill: -81.2C
Wind Speed: 15.2 kts

Okay, I'm a slacker! There's a lot to catch up on, too...guest ozone balloon launchers, power plant watches, station openings...

One of the SPT (South Pole Telescope) scientists came out to watch a balloon launch, probably didn't expect to be a part of the launch, but then that's the beauty of this place...opportunities are where you find them!

Good old Ross is holding the balloon, while Cully is at his usual post, holding the payload. The payload is a radio package that will send temperature, pressure, and ozone data back down to us during the launch.

When Ross releases the balloon, the wind will take it pretty quickly. Cully has a lot of slack on his end, so he'll run under the balloon until the balloon has enough lift to keep the payload from slamming into the ice!

The balloon is off...

and we watch it as it disappears in a matter of a few minutes! You can barely see it in the upper right of the second pic. The visibility was pretty bad that day. A week later, Cully and I launched a balloon that rose up to just under 30km, and we could still see it at 27km! Yeah, some days down here are just perfect!!

I wound up going out to SPT, to hassle the guys as they tried to repair part of their telescope. Here's Ross as he troubleshoots a bit of the inner workings of the telescope's heating system.

Ross and his supervisor, Erik, going through a couple additional possibilities to fix the issue before Ross and I leave and head back to the station, because you don't want to make this trip more times than absolutely necessary!!

I can't help but think of Darth Vader with this picture of Ross and Erik!

What I might do is break up this blog, stop this one here, and do the power plant portion in a couple days...

The season is coming to a close, and we are about a week away from receiving our first visitors for the summer...which means I'll be seeing scenery in another color other than white before too long!!

See everybody soon!!
Capt. Splash

Brightness on the Horizon

2009-09-14T20:07:00.000-07:00

visual of the day

Temperature: -58.2C
Wind Chill: -77.7C
Wind Speed: 9.7 kts

I don't think there are any stars left in the sky. All we have now is the light from the sun on the horizon. But it sure makes the walk out to ARO a lot easier! This weekend, if you read Cully's blog, we saw around 40 kts of wind. I wound up wandering out to ARO along with Cully, and his pictures show this a lot better than mine do, but there was very limited visibility this past Saturday...

when this is a better day for seeing where you are going!

The sun is really trying to come up down here, but it will still take some time before we actually see it.

A couple weeks ago, we had a situation with our building heater...just that it wouldn't come on! After a little trouble shooting, the problem was discovered. A fan belt broke, and once we got that fixed, the heater was back in business. I suppose if we didn't get the heater fixed, the inside of ARO might have looked like the outside,

I thought about taking a picture the day I write a post, so you all can see what we see, and it bears a striking resemblance to what you can see from the NOAA webcam down here. The sky is bright enough that we have put that back up, and it is transmitting. You might only be able to see still shots, but throughout the summer you should be able to see some activity!

Google: NOAA South Pole Webcam, and you should get taken to it.

Hope everyone continues to have a good year! Take care!

Cheers-
Capt. Splash

Misc. Duties and Tower Shots

2009-09-10T01:34:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -49.7C

Wind Chill: -72.6C
Wind Speed: 18.8 kts

I didn't intend to leave August out of the blog completely...it just happened! Sorry folks, I'm not trying to imply nothing note worthy happened all last month. I just didn't get any pictures of anything going on! There were a few final aurora pictures that I will throw in here a little later on.

There are a few things that I do down here that fall outside the realm of my original job description, but they are jobs that I enjoy being a part of. One of them is a monthly maintenance task that was given to our heavy machine operator, Boyd, but that's a thankless task to do alone, so I usually try to make myself available, help him out...dipping fuel tanks.

We do this every month to make sure that the amount of fuel left over matches what we expected. There are five tanks (three on the ground, and two above them) in each bank, and nine banks.

That's a lot of dipping...and that's just in the fuel arch. We have twelve tanks out at the edge of our station, what folks affectionately call "the End of the World".

The last couple months, a couple other winter overs have tackled the fuel arch, and Boyd and I have gone out to get the emergency tanks at the end of the world.

Some of the tanks are the right size to put a measureing stick down inside, get the reading that way. There are five, though, that require a tape to be dropped down inside, which takes a little longer to get the reading. Problem is, if the wind is blowing, any extra time up on those tanks seems like an eternity!

The last couple times we have gone out, though, there have been extra hands, helping write down levels which helps us out tremendously!!

The sunlight is starting to creep over the horizon, and a few days ago was the last opportunity to catch the glow from the sun on one side of the station and the setting moon on the other. I almost missed it, too. I had to get up to the top of our tower, and got half the moon as it was dipping below the horizon.

The Doc, Ella, stitched together some of my panoramic shots into a couple nice images...thanks Ella!!

Some of the shots came out pretty blurry. I had to slip off the mittens to take some of the shots, and the tripod I was using was slipping through the platform at the top of the tower...but I figure for -95F and 20 knot winds, these pictures didn't come out half bad!!

There's more to follow, and I can almost guarantee there will not be as long a stretch until my next posting! Hard to believe that in a couple months from now I will be comfortable in considerably less clothing...man, this year went by fast!!

With the sun coming up, I am starting to look forward to new folks arriving on station, as well as my next adventure (still need to figure out where and what that will be!), but there is still plenty left to do down here, and I will try to keep everyone up to speed. One of my last shots of ARO, the Milky Way and an aurora...

As promised, I leave you with a couple aurora shots from last month, and the early stages of the sunrise...

Everybody take care, see everybody soon!

Cheers-
Capt. Splash

Curries & Turkey....Because We Can!!!

2009-07-19T20:14:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -56.4C
Wind Chill: -78.1C
Wind Speed: 13.1kts

This past weekend was crazy with food! Our resident SPT (South Pole Telescope) scientist, Ross made plans to make some curry on Saturday, and I was able to swing by the galley and get some photos of him, as well as others, working on various items to add to the table! Tripp and Erin were back there, working on a glazed tart...

there's your glaze...

and there's your tart!

Ross was working on his curry, and he had three different curries that he made that night. There was a chicken curry, veggie curry, and a spicy chicken curry!!

I even got mixed up in it a little bit, stirring up what I could!

Cully knows how to make naan bread,

so he set about making plenty of bread for everybody!

We feasted that night, between the curry and the dessert! The next day didn't let up at all on us either. Ella, our doctor on station,

decided that turkey, stuffing,mashed potatoes & gray, asparagus, cranberries...and 9 pumpkin pies (along with a loaf of pumpkin bread) were in order!

I'll back up a little bit...our aurora tech, Jonathon, was talking about how the hens we get for dinners and lunches are great, but that they were so small. Ella decided to fix that...and Johnny got his turkey!!

...actually, we all got some of that turkey!

We hit a record for the year so far in terms of temperatures this weekend...-96F ambient temp! What better way to deal with those kinds of temperatures than to load up on curry, followed the next day by a Thanksgiving meal that reminds you that home is where you make it! I might not want to leave this place in three months!!

Hope all is well up north! Cheers-

Capt. Splash

Tents and Tournaments

2009-07-10T21:53:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -55.5C
Wind Chill: -78.0C
Wind Speed: 14.7 kts

Two weeks ago, a couple of us took a few days off of exercise induced activities...we were going to try and face the cold in the Scott tent that got set up right after the Midwinter celebrations. We met in the galley, made some Ramen, got another thermos full of hot water for hot chocolate, raided the cookies and Snickers stash, and went outside with our sleeping bags and provisions.

Once everybody had taken their walks around the tent, taken whatever pictures they were going to take, and got into both of the -40 rated sleeping bags, we were too tired to think about food, so we tried to get some sleep.

This proved difficult while in bags that wouldn't zip all the way up, as the cold air would work its way into the warmest part of the bag....and fester there. Around 3 o'clock in the morning there was a repositioning of the bags, and since everybody was up anyway, the struggle to get the bags completely closed continued since we didn't have to worry about waking anyone at that point. This made for a warmer night, and we were able to get some sleep before 8 o'clock rolled around. That is probably something that I will do again before the winter is over...believe it or not, it was actually a lot of fun!

Two months ago, a pool tournament started, and it wound up coming down to me and one of the carpenters, Bill Stiner. Our match was best of seven games, and I got to the fourth win before Bill. I walked away with $120 and Bill was able to add $90 to his wallet...either way you look at it, that's a lot of Snickers bars at $0.80 apiece!!

The time continues to crunch away down here. It's already pushing the middle of July...won't be too much longer before we start seeing sunlight again. Hard to believe that the year is mostly over. There are still a few things to look forward to before the sun comes up, and it will be here before we know it!

Hope everyone is continuing to have a great year up north, and I hope to see most of you in a much warmer place! Take care-

Capt. Splash

Midwinter Festival

2009-06-28T20:05:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -57.4C
Wind Chill: -74.2C
Wind Speed: 7.2kts

Okay, a week has gone by, figured it would be a good time to update you all on something that Cully already has about five days earlier! Midwinter Festival...and, yes I will probably use a couple of Cully's photos, too!

Midwinter Festival is a time for a lot of us to realize that we are halfway through our stay down here...and it's a time for the rest to know that they passed the halfway point a while back! Just like Sunset Dinner, the place was decked out with a single long table, bottles of wine,

the lounge had appetizers while we waited for everyone to assemble...

and then it was time to feast! Started off with a salad,

and then came the soup course...pumpkin, with a sour cream swirl. Of course the galley staff had a tribute to Cully and I, which was evident when I got my bowl...

The rest of the meal was delicious, with surf & turf as a main course...a sight to behold

followed by one of the most decadent desserts I have seen...Baked Alaska!!

Dinner was delicious, and I took the opportunity later that night to get a photo with some guys that decided to model their hair style after mine...

The following day, the gym was transformed into a carnival, with games strewn all over the floor...ring toss, putt-putt golf, tarot readings...pretty cool.

Then came the auction,

and there were many items to bid on, from snickers bars, bags of Doritos...to a pie in the station manager's face!

I wound up bidding on a hand made flute, made by one of our heavy equipment operators out of a cherry tree on his property back home...sold for $240. I figured I was justified since the bag of Doritos went for $66!

Soon to follow came the concert, and there was a lot of talent up there! We listened to some vocals to start off with,

and that was followed by the electric guitar groups. The last group, in particular, was really good, and played a lot of high energy music.

During their set, they requested my presence on the floor (and this is where the talent ends...) to dance for one of their songs. Those of you who know me, know I don't dance, well or otherwise, but for some reason it seemed safe to act like a raving lunatic in front of everyone...

apparently there is a u-tube posting, and I'm sure I'll be revealing that to you when I find out what it is! At the end of the night, some kind folks helped polish off the brew, to keep from having to store it of course, and I caught some interesting shadow work...

That weekend was extremely draining, but it was well worth it for what we got to experience!

Since then, we have had some pretty awesome skies, and I hope you enjoy the skies as much as we do down here...as well as some of Cully's entertainment!

Hope everyone is safe and doing what they enjoy!
Capt. Splash

Auroras and Competitions

2009-06-18T23:37:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -55.6C

Wind Chill: -74.6C
Wind Speed: kts

Just a quick note to let folks know I am trying to get reaquainted with my camera again. Last week, before the moon dove under the horizon for the next two weeks, I was able to snap a couple more aurora pictures from ARO.

Our pool competition is nearing regular completion play...before the finals start, and right now I am sitting pretty good. I seem to have lost some of my game, though, so we will have to see how the next couple weeks play out....

On a lighter note, I have some unexpected news! Some people down here entered a photo competition out of Tasmania, celebrating midwinter in the southern hemisphere. They sent in a couple shots, and waited a couple weeks to find out if they had been selected as one of the finalists. The photos are about the size of a sheet of paper when they are printed out, and the finalists have the option of having those prints be shown at another gallery in Australia. A couple friends talked me into entering a couple of my pictures, and I just found that the one of Cully launching one of our ozone balloons got selected!

We'll see where this goes, but I am really glad I got talked into submitting into this competition!! Looking forward to seeing what the outcome is...so far three of us from the station became finalists...our sous-chef, and our PA also got selected!

Midwinter Festival is coming up on station as well, delicious food, live music, and games will be the order of this weekend. I will try to snap a few shots of some of those good times! In the mean time, take care and we'll keep the rest of the real world up to date with the goings on down here!

Capt. Splash

Resurrection!!!!

2009-06-07T20:04:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -65.1C
Wind Chill: -84.6C
Wind Speed: 8.1 kts

Cully's a genius! Over the weekend, he ripped my camera apart, and fixed it! Now the sensor isn't blocked anymore, and it will actually take the picture!!

When I went out to work the next morning, I decided to spend a little bit of time on the roof, and in front of ARO, familiarizing myself with my camera again. I happened to be up on the roof while the Lidar was in the middle of its rotation, so I got pictures with a couple different laser angles.

The Southern Cross was right above the building, so that was a good follow up...

While I was outside, a small aurora showed up, so I went to the front of ARO and, with the moon being as bright as it was, tried to figure out exactly what shutter speed to use...I could have possibly overexposed these pictures

Taking a look at the pictures once both myself and my camera had defrosted, I realized that the pictures were a tad bit on the blurry side. Thinking that I might have actually damaged the lens during the camera's premature dismount off the tripod, Cully took another look at the camera. He readjusted the manual focus ring on the lens, labeled a couple set points, and handed the camera back. These were a couple pictures that I took yesterday...

I need to spend some more time with the camera outside, weather permitting of course, but I'm really happy with what I have so far!

Thank you Cully!!!

Hope everyone is staying warm!
Capt. Splash

Birthday Shenannigans

2009-05-29T21:37:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -53.5C
Wind Chill: -71.5C
Wind Speed: 9.3 kts

Okay, I can't put this off anymore, the birthday was over a week ago! I'm still trying to hassle people for race pictures, so hang in there...

Last Friday, Francis, one of our chefs, made a very modest, quite small cake for my birthday, and was instrumental in providing the decoration above the frosting!

I thought the cake was awesome, but there was no way I was going to be able to have a single piece. I need to watch my figure after all!

I did, however, have a piece off the top, and got lucky with a chocolate piece. Fran had alternated layers with chocolate and vanilla, with chocolate pudding between layers...truly a delicious concoction!

That night, it was into one of the movie rooms for a couple movies that I will never say no to watching...Jaws and Finding Nemo! Poor Emily had never seen Jaws before, so we had to follow up with something a little more enjoyable for her! I must say, though, she took it well. I walked over to her to ask her a question right as Jaws started...and she screamed! That being the reaction I was going for, I returned to my seat to enjoy the rest of the movie.

The following morning, we had a balloon launch, and a couple extra people showed up just before the launch to send some birthday wishes up with the balloon. By the time folks were done signing the payload the balloon would be carrying (they even let me sign it), it was time to tape it closed and send it up.

We attached it to the bottom of the balloon,

and after I paused for a couple more shots...

we sent it on its way.

Later that day, I got to enjoy a batch of fudge that was also a part of the birthday(s). You might recall me saying earlier that I wasn't a big fan of fudge...this recipe has got me worried about my fighting weight! I got a good sized box full of bite-sized pieces...three layers deep!...my worry is that I am almost into the third layer already!

A couple weeks ago, it was a beautiful night, the sky was really clear and the wind was down a bit, so I climbed the tower, and before I decided to drop my camera off the tripod a few days later, took a panorama of the area from ARO over to MAPO and SPT. The moon is right above the station, The Dome, and the summer housing. I still have to play with settings a little, but with a little help from the Doc, it turned out okay...

Hope everyone back home is doing well!
Capt. Splash

Cinco de Mayo

2009-05-05T23:42:00.000-07:00

Temperature: - 56.7C
Wind Chill : - 76.2C
Wind Speed: 10.1 kts

Yeah, I know, I'm a little past the 5th of May, but when I wanted to post this last week, I took the liberty of saving two pictures and deleting the text, so I'm playing a little catch up here.

Cinco de Mayo down here just proved to me that it doesn't matter where you are...if people want to celebrate something, they will find a way to do it! The galley was adorned with both good food and festive decorations! We were surrounded by tortillas,

big hats,

and cutouts of figures that looked frighteningly similar to David Hasselhoff!!

To finalize our tribute to the day, there was a jalapeno eating contest...

and there were two brave souls...Eric and Ross.

...Cully didn't enter the contest...he just really likes jalapenos!!

...and they were off! Ross put up a considerable effort during the contest, and it looked like he might have pulled it off,

but in the end, it was Erik that won the day, with the final numbers being Ross: 13 Erik: 20

Later on in the week, one of our temperature sensors on the tower decided to give us incorrect data, so Cully took it down one afternoon, and brought it inside to take a look at it. It turned out that the instrument was working just fine, but the fan inside the casing had stopped running. Cully switched out fans, and he and I wandered out to the tower to put the casing back over the instrument.

It wound up being a one-person job, but I tagged along anyway, so I could practice freezing fingers, and working on camera settings.

Within a couple minutes, Cully had the housing back on,

and we stumbled back inside to make a couple observations of the moon, and collect a couple air samples.

That took us to the weekend, and a 5K race through the inside of the station, but as I was "running" in the race, I don't have any pictures. As soon as some of them get shared, though, I will post them and tell you how the race went!

In the meantime, stay warm!

Capt. Splash

ANZAC Day

2009-04-26T22:45:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -61.3C
Wind Chill: -84.2C
Wind Speed: 12.9 kts

This past Saturday, we had a unique treat! We celebrated ANZAC Day down here. The ANZACs (Australian and New Zealand Army Corps) fought during WWI, and on the 25^th of April, they are remembered and honored in various ways. Some people actually pay their respects in Gallipoli, where the ANZACs fought alongside British troops against Turkey. Others will have tributes in their own home towns, remembering those who fought during that war.

On station this year, our population includes one Australian and one New Zealander (also affectionately called a Kiwi). They decided to celebrate ANZAC Day down here, and we combined the winter retiring of the station’s ceremonial flags with their dawn tradition!

Our PA took the lead, printed up literature on the history behind the day,

had paper poppies available for folks who showed up for the tribute,

and spent a couple hours in the galley working on Anzac biscuits to have with our tea or coffee after the flags were brought in.

Saturday morning came, and around 6am, people gathered in the Galley, waiting to grab poppies, hand warmers, cameras…whatever they wanted to bring with them. At 7am, we bundled up, and went outside…to be greeted by a fantastic aurora!

Once everyone made it to the Ceremonial Pole, we recited the verse from Laurence Binyon's ‘For the Fallen’

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old:

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

This was followed by a minute of silence,

then we took the flags from the Pole and brought them indoors, where biscuits and hot drinks waited for everyone! A couple days earlier, the biscuits were made…there were a couple different recipes,

and by the end of the day, all the biscuits were devoured…so I guess they were really good!

The day continued like any other Saturday, with the exception of the evening, with a screening of “Gallipoli”.

It was awesome to be a part of someone else’s traditions and ceremonies this weekend, and I think a lot more people showed up for the ceremony than anticipated, but that’s the great thing about this community!

I will leave you all with an awesome shot that Cully took of the sky following the ceremony…hope everyone is staying warm up there!!

Capt. Splash

Auroras, Looney Tunes and Ping Pong

2009-04-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -53.4C
Wind Chill: -74.6C
Wind Speed: 13.6 kts

Okay, so not quite the week in, week out I thought it was going to be...sorry, I have to play a little catch up here!

Let's go back a couple weekends. Sunday morning, around 830, about eight grown men and women actually got up on their day off, and proceeded into one of the lounges to watch some DVDs. Everybody had a yearning for Bugs Bunny

...so there we were for about three straight hours watching old classics, from "The Barber of Seville" to "The Scarlet P-P-P-Pimpernel". It was awesome!! I think the LepreKhan would have been pleased!

Now we are up to about a week ago...last Sunday, where we had a ping pong tournament, and any and all could participate. It was a knock down, drag out tournament that lasted all morning.

There were plenty of upsets, a few Cinderella stories, and by the time it was all said and done, Bill Stiner walked away with a good chunk of the purse. The morning was full of pancakes, ping pong, and fudge that was made by our PA. It was a combination of light and dark chocolate that was tasty enough to get me to change my all around opinion of fudge!

So that was a weekend ago. Later on in the week, Cully and I launched the first of our plastic balloons to collect ozone data. This was a fun one, though...it was still a dual launch with the meteorological department, but it was a dual balloon. Two plastic balloons tethered together.

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the actual launch, but hopefully there will be some this week when we do the same type of launch again.

The past couple weeks have been good opportunities to take pictures of some auroras,

so I will leave you with some shots that I have been taking, to try and get the optimum settings when the really spectacular nights skies show themselves....

Sunset Dinner

2009-03-27T02:15:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -50.3C
Wind Chill: -69.0C
Wind Speed: 11.3 kts

One of the big traditions down here, and one that a lot of people look forward to, is sunset dinner, which we had on the 20th. Since the sun was supposed to start setting that week, it gave us the excuse to dress up, and have, yet, another outrageous meal down here! The meal also came with a roaring fireplace...you can see depicted by the computer screen above the table!

Part of the tradition, as well, was to remember those who had lost their lives while working down here. There was a smaller table set aside for three individuals, with food and drink at each setting, and their pictures, which are normally hanging in the main hallway on station, were brought into the dining hall as well. The three men that joined our meal had different times that they had worked down here, ranging from 1966 up to the year 2000.

While the dinner was supposed to mark the sunset, and potentially the best time to take some pictures, we didn't really get out and start shooting some pretty spectacular pictures until a few days later...

The shots at Spoolhenge were awesome a few days ago,

as were the shots taken out at ARO a couple days later.

We figured that was the last time we were going to see the sun, since the next couple days were obscured by a lot of cloud cover, especially around the horizon. We were pleasantly surprised, however, when yesterday we looked outside and found a very distinct glow right at the horizon. A couple of us grabbed cameras, extra gloves and hand warmers, and headed out towards ARO. The wind wasn't blowing too hard, so I felt it necessary to climb the tower and see about some pictures from up there.

Needless to say, when I got up to the top, and finished snapping pictures, I took some time to clean off some of the instrumentation that had been covered with flying obstacles!

The shots at the bottom were just as spectacular, especially with the formations of drifts in the foreground...

At this point, fingers were numb, and camera batteries had just about been exhausted, so it was time for a trip back indoors for a nice cup of hot chocolate! We'll see what the next couple of days have in store for us....

Capt. Splash

Old Pole Closure

2009-03-19T03:23:00.000-07:00

Temperature: -55.8C
Wind Chill: -76.5C
Wind Speed: 12 kts

This is the year it finally happened...the NSF decided to close, or cave in the entrance to Old Pole. Old Pole is not the Dome that scientists, workers, and other Polies vacated when the new station went up. Old Pole was where everybody lived before the Dome was built. Right now, due to snow drifts, it sits under about 20 feet of snow. NSF thought it would be best, since this place is constantly shifting and the buildings below the ice might not be structurally sound, that it would be safer to collapse the entrance to keep people from trying to go down to Old Pole and see how they used to do it back in the day.

Last week, on Saturday, a crew of us went out to take out a culvert that indicated the entrance to the old station. We hooked a cable from the dozer to the culvert, and well...

hauled it right out!

We then proceeded to try and fill in the remainder of the entrance, and smooth out the area around the hole.

Unfortunately, we hit a snag...our trusty dozer, "Pearl", found a pocket of loose snow and proceeded to sink on us!

When we tried to pull her out....

okay, not really. We were just pulling the tow cable out for the other dozer. We hooked up to her back, and tried pulling her the way she had come, but the problem got worse. Luckily, the treads on the sides of Pearl are wider than the cab, so Boyd had no problems getting out of Pearl, should she start to sink more.

Since backing out wasn't working, we tried hooking the second dozer up to her front end, and pulling her out that way, but that didn't fix the problem either.

What finally fixed the issue was bringing one of the loaders over, and digging a sloped path for Pearl to work her way up.

That finally fixed the sinkage factor, and Pearl is content inside the machine shop. We decided it would be in our best interest to let nature take over and fill in the space we created on her own. Didn't really want to risk finding another pocket!

I will leave you with this image...the sun is beginning to set down here, and we are getting ready to see some really beautiful skies!!

Take care
Capt. Splash

Skiway Flags

2009-03-05T02:28:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -49.5C
Wind Chill: -65.1C
Wind Speed: 7.8 kts

Aside from the booze lug, that also took place last week, we had to pull all the flags off their posts marking the ski way and its approach. There were two teams of three that went out in LMCs, which are transports on tracks instead of tires. Weeks, Jude and myself were in one LMC,

while the other housed Chrissy, Nathan and Ross.

Before we could leave, we really needed to make sure we took the right tools for the ski way...

and then we were off...out of the garage, and headed towards the ski way.

The other LMC was charged with gathering all the flags on the north end of the ski way, which left the south end for us to head for, which was fine by me. The south end started about four miles away from the station. I was actually going to leave the South Pole!! It was nice being out away from the station for a bit, because once we turned around to look back at the station, we could hardly see it!!

yep, you can kind of see the station to the right of the bend in the tracks! But, really, aside from the station...there's not a lot out here! We took some time to take some pictures of the area,

but then we had to get down to business...which is harder to do in Big Red than you would think!

To be honest, we did have to pull flags all day last Friday, and we did. Unfortunately, none of that is documented!

On the way back, Weeks gave me a shot at the controls of the LMC, which took a little getting used to. Both tracks operated independently of one another, the right track had a little more power to it than the left track, and the throttle kept slipping to a slower rpm, so it was a constant juggling act to keep the LMC straight, but it was still fun to drive....and what could I possibly hit out here!?

I still continue to do things down here that I know I can't do anywhere else in the world!

Capt. Splash

Fuel Line Haul

2009-02-24T01:36:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -41.9C
Wind Chill: -56.9C
Wind Speed: 9.1 kts

About a week after the last plane left, it was time to haul in all the fuel hoses for the winter. After all, we aren't going to see another plane for eight months! The first day wasn't too bad, we worked on the smaller hose lengths right next to the flight line.

The second day, however, all we had left was the line that went from the terminal all the way around the station, and ended by the Dome. That was quite a cold day! I actually put on my Carhartts for both of those days!

On this day, we needed the help of one of the heavy machine operators. We wound up using about four of these spools, and the first two were doubled up with hose! One person was directing the machinery, there were up to four people around the spool, keeping it rolling,

and then the rest of the crew would run in front, making sure the fuel was out of the line left to roll. Any remainders were waiting to spell whoever needed it.

I felt a little guilty taking pictures while everyone else was working on the line, so I gave the camera to Emily for a bit...

When the rolling was done, we split tasks, and some of us made sure that the fuel line was draining into a container as we rolled up the last of the hose. While we were capping our end...

a couple people worked on closing the connection the hose was attached to.

Once the line was on the spool,

there was time to gather another drink for the road...

and realize that we were done!!!

The crew that held on til the very end...

(from left: Emily, Steele, Robert, Erik, Ross, me, Dave, and Damien in front)

(Boyd, the Heavy Machine Operator)
Those not pictured, but definitely helping out, were Monte, another Erik, and Genevieve.

Once all was said and done, Boyd took the spool off into the casually growing expanse of white!

I don't think I have ever slept so soundly that after either of those days! But, it is done...until eight months from now, when we have to drag all that hose back out! It won't be nearly as rough, though. All the fuel is out of the lines, we just have to drop it and connect hoses. The worst is behind us!

A couple of us, myself included, sustained small amounts of frostbite on our fingers and faces, but aside from that, no major problems with prolonged exposure to the elements! Bring on the winter!!! :)

*on a side note, this past week, I think we touched -90F for a brief time, but I am still looking at Celsius to see where we wind up on that scale this winter!

Capt. Splash

Station Closing

2009-02-16T04:12:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -44.2C
Wind Chill: -59.4C
Wind Speed: 8.7 kts

Station Population: 43

That about wraps it up for the summer. The last six people left this afternoon, and now there are only 43 of us left. Our second doctor came in on the first flight this morning, and the other six left about an hour after that!

That really stinks, too, because I wanted to say goodbye to the Fuelies and didn't get out to the flight line in time. I was down in the fuel arch, transferring fuel from the plane to one of our storage tanks for the winter. During the first flight, Cricket(Kristina) was down in the arch with me, but for the second flight, I made sure that the fuel was going to the right tank,

that we were getting fuel from the plane, which we could tell by looking through the site glass,

and that the valves that needed to be were opened!

We transferred 2900 gallons of fuel, and when I got the call to close valves again, I did, and beat feet to get out to the flight line...but when I got there, they were already loading passengers onto the plane, so I got to watch them walk away!

I had already said my farewells to Dan, since he left on Saturday

(from left) Cully, Logan, Dan, Erik, Cricket

but I didn't get to see Cricket or Buttercup(Andrew) off.

Hopefully I will see them again next summer on my way out!

Once they were loaded, it was time to bid the last plane for eight months goodbye!

It didn't start to sink in right away, and probably still hasn't yet completely, that we were looking at the last flight. So far, this was the normal routine for the pilots to follow, but then they circled,

came in from behind the station,

and did a final flyover above us, and then headed towards McMurdo!

All that was left to do was watch it fly away, and then head back home, where the moon was visible above the station.

Looking forward to the winter season with a pretty solid crew of people down here. Sure the galley is a lot quieter now, but the group will be a lot closer, and we have already had our first bonding experience...watching The Thing, once we were sure there was no way for us to get another plane in here!

Capt. Splash

Fuelie Forever

2009-02-10T03:20:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -42.6C
Wind Chill: -59.9C
Wind Speed: 12.3 kts

I took a little break today around 11 o'clock to go down to the flight line. Two of his crew and I went to wish him well. The guy on the left, Dog, and John on the right came out to see off Travis, or Moose, as his friends liked to call him.

I was on the flight line for a couple reasons, though. A couple of us have gotten Fuelie training for opening next summer, and I wanted to come back out to see if any of the previous week's information had sunk in! While I was there, though, I got some pretty good shots of planes and what I would be doing in about eight months.

don't worry, the plane will get a little closer than that. I just liked the shot of it landing.

The first two flights that I got to hang out for, Dan was in charge of getting the fuel line out to the plane. The Engineer on board would actually hook up the fuel line, but there is a second cable that Dan is carrying that acts like a ground so there isn't a lot of current built up between the plane and our fuel line. Those propeller blades are still moving!

Dan will follow the Engineer out to the plane, they will hook up both lines, then Dan will come back to the pump house, make sure there is positive flow. When the Engineer gives the "high idle" sign, Dan will engage a booster pump that we use for the C-130 Hercs, ramping the flow up close to 200 gallons a minute! While the flow is going, the Engineer has the thankless job of sitting under the wing, watching the flow, and making sure everything is going according to plan. While he does that, our Cargo department either adds cargo to the plane's payload, or takes off cargo for us, which, with any luck is either mail or freshies!

When they have offloaded enough fuel (usually around 3000 gallons), Dan will go back out, and pull our lines back towards the pump house.

Once the fuel has been offloaded, any passengers are loaded onto the plane, and the plane gets ready to take off. One of the steps with this I noticed (actually was told about and then noticed) is they check the mechanics of the skis on the plane, before they go anywhere, by lifting them...

setting them back down, and at that point they are a couple minutes from getting underway. Today, we had three flights around noon, and I stayed to be an extra pair of hands for the first two, which was fun...but the third one was where I think I got to do a lot more! Cricket, the Fuelie Supervisor, had me run through setting up the fuel lines, opening appropriate valves, closing others, in order to get the fuel from the plane to our fuel arch for winter. She checked my work, and everything was good to go. I then got to go out to the pit, and help her bring in the plane. I got to do this before R&R, too, but this time my camera didn't freeze!

At this point, it was time to head back to ARO and do some afternoon daily checks, but I got in a little Fuelie time today, and that was a lot of fun. I really like the days they have, even if it is one of the colder jobs on station. They get to play with C-130s, Baslers and Twin Otters! What a deal!! Our second day of training, we fueled a Basler. Those pictures are coming...

Take care
Capt. Splash

U-Barrel Fiasco

2009-02-09T03:50:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -42.6C
Wind Chill: -57.2C
Wind Speed: 8.5 kts

Alright, I know I owe some of you an explanation as to what happened when the Waste Department came out to ARO. For those of you that don't know the whole story, I will explain. Several years ago, the ARO building used to have plumbing in it, then there was a very unfortunate, messy situation with the holding tank, so we decided to get rid of plumbing and put in a barrel with a hose leading up to the bathroom on the second floor. The theory was simple...when the barrel is full, remove it from the hose, add another barrel in its place and repeat the process. No problem.

Fast forward to 2009, the barrel has been removed, replaced, and Waste has been called to come collect! They show up with a loader and I start to signal the driver to come forward, but I have overshot, putting the claw to pick up the barrel behind it. I signal for the driver to back up, which they do, but the claw catches the back of the barrel, pulling it off the pallet it's on, and dangerously close to the edge of the loading dock. Not wanting a spill, I grabbed the barrel, but I couldn't keep it from tipping off the loading dock. Unfortunately, it pulled me over the edge with it! I had enough time, though, to avoid the barrel and jumped away from it, landing on the tangerine in my coat. I discovered that later when I noticed mush in my pocket. There was a lot of good news, though. The barrel lid stayed on, there was no spill, and the barrel didn't roll underneath ARO...that would have been a pain!! The other good news was that I didn't land on or underneath the barrel. When the loader operator realized I was okay, they were regretting not having a camera. I knew better than to go after a 55 gallon drum, but I really didn't want to find out if the barrel was going to survive the drop...luckily it was soft snow!

I hope you found that amusing. Cully has almost talked me into recreating it so he can get a couple pictures!

Capt. Splash

Departures and Open House

2009-02-09T02:38:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -42.3C
Wind Chill: -56.4C
Wind Speed: 7.9 kts

We have had a lot of people leave over the last week and a half.

Last week, we hit under 200 population here for the first time all season! A lot of really fun people left, and good friends, too! The bad news is that they are gone now, but the good news is we will probably see a lot of them again next summer!

The first to leave were the Ice Cube Drillers...some of them were people that I had met before,

but a couple were folks that I met once I got down here...like the Swedish Bikini Team!

Some of the time a group of us would go out to say goodbye to a lot of people

and sometimes a group of us would say goodbye to one person.

In about a week, only Cully and Robert, in the tan jacket, will be left...Flint was who we were saying goodbye to (to the left of Cully), Sheri left today (far left) and Paul leaves later this week. The plan is to line 'em up,

load 'em up

and take off

Hopefully, we will see a lot of those people in about eight months! In the mean time, Cully and I threw an Open House out at ARO for whoever wanted to see the place, what we do, just come and hang out for a couple hours. We had a really good turnout, too.

Quite a few people showed up, ran through a great majority of our drinks and food, went on a couple of tours of the building, and generally had a good time! The turnout was better than I could have hoped for. It was a pretty fun night.

I had also let it slip to a few people there that I had recently gotten promoted, about the middle of January, and one of those people was our winter over site manager Logan, who is sitting down in the back corner of this picture...and yes, Kevin is really standing in front of an open window in Antarctica! There was no other window open, so no cross breeze...all good! Kevin, Bill (standing with the bottle) and John, seated in the front of the picture, are all siding carpenters so they have the coldest job on station. I spent the day under the station with their crew during my R&R and it was a lot of fun, but boy was it cold! John was actually our bouncer for the night, but he was pretty bored, with all the scientist-types around!

Logan hauled me out in the middle of the room about halfway through the night, turned down the music, and made sure that everyone at the party realized that I had gotten promoted, which I was not expecting but was really cool! But he even went one better than that. The following morning, I went into the galley for brunch, and a couple people, who had not been out to ARO, came up to me and congratulated me on my promotion as well. When I went over to a table to talk to some of my friends, they started singing "For He's a Jolly Good Fellow"! I was questioning my sanity when I glanced up at the TV monitors in the galley that scroll through daily weather, safety announcements and flight schedules. At the bottom of the flight schedule screen was an announcement that I had gotten promoted, so he made sure everyone that was on station knew about it. People are still congratulating me! It was off the screen when I had my camera again, but this basically paraphrased what everyone else got to see.

The last week has been pretty interesting. The winter overs are anxious to get the winter started, and I am too for that matter. We are all looking forward to the station being at a population of 45 instead of 270, which is where it has been for the last three months. On the other hand, we have been around the summer crew for that long, every day. It will be, and has been, bittersweet on the flightline, watching friends take off. The station has a lot more people to lose, and by Sunday, we will have watched our last flight take off. Looking forward to station closing, and the winter over screening of "The Thing"!!!!!

Capt. Splash

Balloon Launches and Air Samples

2009-02-05T03:21:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -38.6C
Wind Chill: -52.6C
Wind Speed: 8.9 kts

I'm sending this blog out to a class of kindergartners out in Louisville, Colorado. Hello guys and girls from Fireside Elementary!! Hope you are having fun learning about a couple very cold places on earth.

This entry is to show a little of what we do while we are down here. Once a week, this time of year, Cully, who I work with down here, and I will send a balloon up in the air that has equipment on it to measure the ozone layer. What we are interested in is the air from 15 to 25 kilometers above us here at the South Pole. At certain times of the year, there will be less ozone than others, and the instruments tell us what those amounts are.

Here is a shot of Cully getting the instrument ready to attach to the balloon. We have to make sure the instrument is working before we can collect information.

Cully has the balloon inflated

and we are ready to attach the measuring instrument to it. We have to take it outside for a couple minutes, again, to see that it is working...and even down here, Cully needs to look both ways before going anywhere!

Once everything is attached and ready to go...we let it go!

In the winter time, we will send up a different kind of balloon that will work better in the cold.

The information coming back from the balloon during its flight will tell us how the ozone amounts are changing, and this is important because the ozone layer is protecting us, and we want to make sure it stays up there to keep protecting us!

One of the other things we do down here is collect air samples to see how clean the air is. Antarctica has the cleanest air in the world, so we look at the air here, and compare it to other places around the world.

Even though we need to collect this important information, there is usually enough time to enjoy the fact that we spend every day in the snow!

Fireside Elementary, I hope you boys and girls have a fun day!!

Marc (Capt. Splash)

I Love My Job

2009-02-03T10:20:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -39.9C
Wind Chill: -53.1C
Wind Speed: 7.5 kts

The word of the day is Boondoggle! Strange word, but it is an excuse to get out of the office and do something different. You might also see someone on a boondoggle that just goes along for the ride. My boondoggle came last week, in the form of a medivac! The PA and the Doc were dealing with a person who had some chest complaint issues during his stay at Pole, and they decided the best thing for him was to get to sea level. Those two have had a couple other people that they have sent out of Pole, and one very tired skier (Todd Carmichael)...so far they have been batting a thousand in terms of whether or not they can treat a person here, or whether they need to send them on their way.
Wayne saw me passing by medical, and pulled me into the lab, asked if I wanted to be an extra pair of hands for a medivac happening later that night. We were tranporting someone to McMurdo, and Wayne assured me that it was only a boondoggle if nothing went wrong. If there were complications with the patient, then he wanted someone else along to help out. Naturally, I agreed! It meant that I got one more night in McMurdo, and got to see friends an extra time!
The trip out was uneventful medically, but I got sent up to the cockpit once again for quite a view!

The crew told me about these guys, here, The Seven Dwarves...

we got to follow some of the ice flows...

and the view was inspiring not only to those of us that don't get to see it all the time...but it even caught the attention of those that do!

The morning we left McMurdo, the clouds were also putting on quite a show for us

I got back to Pole the following day, so it was a quick trip, but it was kind of nice to get away for a few hours!

A couple days after I got back, a few of us got together to go through the process of fueling/defueling the planes that come in. Normal procedure is that when the C-130 lands, it has extra jet fuel stored that it transfers into our holding tanks, which will supply us for the winter, which is nice, since we need heat! Since the "Fuelies" are leaving for the winter, they went over their tasks with a couple of us, so that we could work on the first planes coming in at the end of this winter, before the Fuelies showed up again.

Last week, I got to actually help unload the fuel from the plane. This week, I will be down in the fuel arch, filling up fuel tanks. Outside was fun, though, I got to park the plane again, and then communicate with the flight crew during the fueling process. The fuel chief, Cricket, and I ran the fuel hose out to the plane, and when it got hooked up, there was a lot of this...

while we offloaded about 3000 gallons of fuel!

Cricket standing by to wait for the flight engineer to signal that he was cutting off the fuel, and that it was time to grab our lines.

Cricket with the pickup...oh, yeah...the props are still going

and the walk back!

...seriously, who gets to do this?!?!? :)

Last week a few people left the station that have either been here a while, or were part of the siding crew that finished putting on the siding for the station this year. One of the guys, Jake, who has worked with Cully up in Summit, Greenland left,

as well as one of the old winter site managers, Andy

We sent them off in style, the same way Jerry Marty left, with a tribute from the carpenters.

The last person going through the tunnel was a siding carp, Mark, otherwise affectionately known as "Kiwi"

It's been a good summer season, lot of interesting people down here. In a couple weeks, it will all be over...and the REALLY interesting people will be left! This has been one heck of a trip so far, just waiting to see what happens next!

Cheers-
Capt. Splash

New distractions!!!

2009-01-25T03:37:00.000-08:00

Temperature: 28.9C
Wind Chill: 42.2C
Wind Speed: 9.9 kts

Well, I thought I had procrastinated enough to where I wasn't going to get a camera down here that would take decent pictures. Wouldn't you know I was wrong!! While Cully and I were on vacation, Evan filled in for us, and on his way out of Christchurch stopped by a couple camera stores and purchased a camera that he, Cully and I had talked about over the weeks he was here. He found a really nice camera, got two stores in a price war with each other, and handed the camera off to my last hope of getting anything down here before station closing! I just got the camera from Geoff, who is down here to work on the instrument measuring CFCs down here.

So, as promised, I have a few pictures from Snowhenge that you might have seen on Cully's blog already, but I had to try out my camera!

The Easter Island tribute was pretty good, as were the animals, and the RV next to the gas tank (the nozzle already has been put back indoors)...

my favorite, though, is Calvin & Hobbes!!

I got out to ARO, and I still didn't want to put the camera down, so I fired off a couple shots of a group of scientists from Boulder that are taking water vapor measurements while they are here for two weeks.

We have a good portion of tourists that like to come down to the South Pole and camp out, literally...I like to call them squatters!

but some of them do come in style!

We had another (smaller) movie night out at ARO tonight. I had missed the first half of ALIENS on Friday, so I made a few other Polies suffer through what I thought to be the best movie in the series! I went out a little early to set up, do a couple other chores around ARO before people got there, and the tower called to me. I figured...why not!

(I like the zoom on this camera!)

Here's a shot of ARO from the tower, with the water vapor buildings in the background. Man, I can't wait for the sun to come out. It should have about another month before it starts to noticeably get darker, so I should have some time!

There was absolutely nothing worthwhile in this blog entry, save for the fact that I understand now why Cully wouldn't let his camera out of his sight!!

2009 Antics

2009-01-21T04:38:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -32.3C
Wind Chill: -45.7C
Wind Speed: 10.3 kts

I know, I know, it's been a while, but I think I have everything in one place to add to the blog this time. I want to start with New Year's Eve because, sure, a lot of people get to go outside, run around in a park somewhere in the sunlight, maybe fly a kite...but who gets to do that at the South Pole??? The PA down here, Wayne, was out one day while I was walking back from ARO, and asked if I wanted to try flying a kite down at the bottom of the world....

That was pretty cool, it had been a long time since I had flown, and then it was a single line kite! Wayne got a really cool shot of me and the old Dome, too! Fast forward a few days to Evan's arrival, mine and Cully's replacement while we go on R&R! Evan came in on the Herc that I was leaving on to go to sunny McMurdo. Yours truly got to bring the Herc in to park! There's something new I don't get to do every day!

We got to McMurdo, and there was a lot of relaxing to do. A few of us went out to Castle Rock, which is a hike a few miles away from station. We stopped by the firehouse, got a radio, checked out with those guys, let them know what time we were thinking we would be back, and then we set off.
The trip was great, found a couple "apples" to stop at, get out of the wind for a few minutes, recharge and then we were off again!

The weather would come and go, some minutes, it would be nice...

and others it would look like this!

We finally reached Castle Rock,

and took to it like monkies to a banana! The hike up was pretty interesting, and a couple places needed some climbing aid, but we reached the top...and had a great view of....nothing!

Once we reached the top, there was nothing to do, but head back down, and back to town, which was on the other side of the peak on the left.

When we got back to our room, we found that little had changed since we had left...

but our R&R was coming to a close, four of us were going back to South Pole the next day, so packing consumed us for about ten minutes, and we looked forward to our last more-than-2min-shower! My first day in McMurdo, I had a shower that lasted about 20 minutes, got out, toweled off, hung the towel back up and got back in the shower for another ten minutes...why stop at twenty minutes?!?!

The ride back to Pole was unique, as I got invited to ride up in the cockpit with the crew! They gave me a headset, so I could talk to them, listen to air traffic...really made the three hours go by quickly! When we got back home, Cully wouldn't let me come back to ARO until Monday, so I had some time to myself. After a couple days in the station, I realized I needed something to do, and went to talk to the siding crew. Over the weekend, on Saturday, I got to hang out with those guys, help them out for a day!

Granted, I wasn't trained to get up in the scaffolding, but I did get to help them when they moved it, and got to spend the whole day outside, shuffling gear around, cutting siding. It was a great day, and made me appreciate warm meals so much more!

Our winter over manager went on his R&R the following week, and had me fill in for him in the event of an emergency. Normally, I am closer to the scene of an incident, relaying information up to him. While he was gone, someone else was on scene, relaying information to me....hypothetically of course. Wouldn't you know we would have a spill three days before Logan came back from vacation! Everybody responded well, the leak was contained, and after a while all that was left was clean up. We had a couple people that needed to get out of wet clothes, shower up and report to medical, but no further followup was necessary. I felt a little detached since I was well away from the spill, and the teams on the ground had things well in hand. About the only thing I did was make sure that the folks involved initially were trading out with fresh individuals, so nobody got overly tired. Logan got back from R&R and when I told him I felt like the fifth wheel on a bicycle, he said, "Now you know how I feel!" He and I were both pleased, as the actual event went smoother than the last drill we did!

I will try to get pictures of Snowhenge before they tear everything down, smooth it over, but the henges got turned into sculptures, and Cully's came in second! A pretty good rendition of Calvin and Hobbes, I think!

Hope all is well with everyone back in the real world! There is only about another month left here before station closing...then it's about 45 of us with no airplanes again until late October, early November! It's going to be a great year, too, lot of cool people are staying for the winter!

Capt. Splash

Seasonal Activities

2008-12-30T13:25:00.000-08:00

Temperature: 24.0C
Wind Chill: 28.9C
Wind Speed: 7.0 kts

So many times, we miss the opportunity to go to mundane events, like races, just because we don't think they will be very entertaining....the Race Around the World on Christmas morning is just such an event, where normal folks get outside in regular temperatures and do normal things...like race!

Some of us decided to run,

others to walk, bike or ski,

and then there were those select few that decided to take the track in style!

one of our resident "Fuelies", Dan tried yet a different approach!

even Batman made an appearance...

The race itself lasted three laps around parts of the station, and a couple miles later it was all over, and we all headed inside for a late breakfast and a continuance of the festivities!

Today, right before Todd left, Chrissy and I took a trip out to the tent where his sled was housed, and signed the pig before he left.

Wandering outside the station, one can also see Snowhenge! These blocks of ice were strategically placed for the New Year, and in a few days, they will be fashioned into works of art which will be displayed in another posting.

Finally, what started off Christmas morning, followed by the 5:30pm lowering, was the flag ceremony that traditionally started down here 1999. A Vietnam veteran was working down here, and he wanted to pay tribute to POWs and veterans who were MIA from that era. They started the tradition of raising the black POW/MIA flag down here then and continued it ever since. The reason for it being done on Christmas... for those Americans being held in the camps, Christmas Day was the time when they were let out of confinement to send and receive mail, talk to/share time with/hold other Americans that they were captured with. It gave them the opportunity to partake in some of the freedoms that they thought it necessary to fight for. I took part in the raising and lowering ceremony so I don't have many pictures, except for this one

but the flag was signed by all the veterans, reservists, retired and active military personnel on station this year. After it was lowered, one of the Polies will take it back to DC, where it will be presented at the Vietnam Memorial. When I get access to more pictures of this ceremony, I will try to get them on here a little quicker!

Well, that was Christmas Day for me. Just a few things were going on...and I didn't mention anything about the daily routine at ARO!! :)

Take care everybody and have a Happy New Year!!

Capt. Splash

Trekkie of a Different Kind

2008-12-24T11:08:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -20.9C
Wind chill: -32.0C
Wind speed: -11.7 kts

Monday December22nd, we had a newcomer join us at Pole. His name is Todd Carmichael and he spent the last 39 days to get here. His journey was a long one, starting at the coast of the continent and working his way to the center of Antarctica, Todd was armed with only a sled full of his provisions, a couple phones, a GPS device, a pair of skis, and the determination to be the first man to not only ski to Pole from the coast, but to beat the record previously made by Hannah McKeand back in 2004!

Todd needed his determination and resolve from the very beginning. In his mind, he had his trip split up in three different sections. The first being the distance from 80S to 82S, the second was from 82S to 88S, and the last leg 88S to 90S. Within the first several miles, Todd lost both his skis. His bindings broke, but he decided to continue on. The previous year, he had joined a group of people trying to do the same trek, but weather was one of the obstacles that kept him from finishing his goal. This year he didn’t let his skis stop him. The weather did worsen for him, and while he was trying to set up his tent in gale force winds, one of the tent poles flew up and broke his goggles. This was a bigger problem for Todd than for most…this pair of goggles were his prescription pair.

As if this wasn’t enough, Todd’s hand that he had been dealt was stacked against him further with a couple more tough cards. A little further into his journey, he negotiated not just one, but three crevasses that gave out on him while he was trying to cross over them. At this point, one would have all the sympathy in the world for Todd if he chose to turn back and try the trek another day. Todd, on the other hand, was determined to see this trek through to the end, and he didn’t want to try and negotiate the area of crevasses again, so he pressed on. Further into his journey he realized that he had caught up to the pace of the previous record holder and his resolve strengthened with that knowledge, as well as with the phone calls back home to his wife and family. Another tough card was in his hand, though, when both of his phones and his GPS died on him. At this point, all he had to guide him was dead reckoning with the help of a compass, and the idea that once he got to Pole, all his troubles were behind him. Back home, his wife and family lost contact with him when the phones went down, but he had told everyone that he would arrive at the station on the 21^st, Argentina time, which was Monday the 22^nd South Pole time, so she had it set in her mind that she would hear from him then.

During his journey, Todd used his sled as a companion, as he had no one else with him. His sled, he refers to as the pig (as the sled with all the provisions started out weighing about 250 pds.), provided someone for him to talk to, as well as to try to motivate to help Todd pull his burden of provisions.

(at one end of the pig is the compass he used when his GPS failed)

Naturally, a lot of people hearing this story couldn’t help but think of “Wilson” in Castaway, and given the circumstances, it made all the sense in the world. Todd had a couple more cards to get through. He had it set in his mind that he was going to break the land record and he had brought enough food to last him through that time. He was a few days away from Pole, and he realized that his fuel container for his heater had ruptured, and contaminated his food supply. All he really had left at this point was water. He could, however, see the station in the distance, so he kept pushing forward, towards Pole. He figured he was about 5 miles away from the station when he realized he didn’t have the strength to continue pulling his sled, and it took a lot of deliberation before he finally unclipped himself from it, and made the all-or-nothing walk the last few miles. When he made it to our ski way, he stayed on one side of it until a couple of Polies, John and Leah, made their way out to him.

He was concerned that he wouldn’t be able to find his way back to his sled, but the sled was brought closer to the station, and Todd made it to the South Pole marker, beat the previous ski record, and started the process of getting some food into his system.

All told, Todd started his trek at 230 pds, travelled over 600 nautical miles, dealt with all the roadblocks, and arrived at South Pole 39 days later, weighing 178 pds. He has frostbite on his face and toes, but what really concerned the medical staff here was the damage the cold air did to his lungs. They put him on an anti-inflammatory medication that has helped him out a lot, and the feeling is that there will be no permanent damage either to his lungs or from the frostbite.

(Wayne and Ella with Todd the day of his departure, Christmas morning)

Todd was up in the galley this morning and hit each of the meals. I got to talk to him for a while, and we talked about his treks, my diving, as well as my time in the Corps, and even talked about what instrument I am going to learn how to play while I’m down here! Todd is a fascinating individual to talk to. He has been going on these treks for a while now, and has crossed all of the deserts, and can finally check Antarctica off his list. His next challenge?….he has enjoyed life as much as he possibly can, but he wants to relive it again, and what better way to do that than through the eyes of a child. He and his wife are going to adopt a girl, and go through some first times…again.

I can’t do his story justice since I spent the last 39 days in a heated station with movies and very slow internet capability, but please visit his blog. He sent daily updates back to his brother, who updated the blog for him while he and the pig were making history! His website is:

todd.carmichael.com

You never really know what your day is going to hold down here, but it never winds up just being a typical day! Best of luck to you Todd!!

Capt. Splash

End of an Era

2008-12-21T10:29:00.000-08:00

Temperature: -26.7C
Wind Chill: -38.9C
Wind Speed: 10.8 kts

This past Saturday, we had to say goodbye to a gentleman that has been coming down to the ice for the past 40 years! Jerry Marty is the NSF (National Science Foundation) representative down here, and he has been instrumental in getting the new elevated station off the ground, as well as figuring out things like capacity requirements for the old housing facility, the Dome. He has definitely seen a lot of changes and it is a shame to see him go. I stopped by the party they had for him the night before, which was really cool. He signed one of the sensors that the Icecube project will lower down into one of the many holes they have drilled into the ice...talk about writing yourself into history!! One of the workers here also went down to the shop and designed a cribbage board for Jerry and his wife (just a little nostalgia there, since Jerry and his wife would have nightly games with their friends when they both wintered over many years ago!) I didn't get to spend a lot of time talking to him, but he would usually bring the DV (Distinguished Visitors) by ARO for a quick tour of the facility. Naturally, I had to blink when the picture was taken...wonder if he will come back just for another photo op?

A lot of people showed up to send Jerry off in style. A group of construction workers made a column on either side of him and Jerry walked through crossed tape measures out to the plane. The crowd was impressive considering there were only eight people on the plane!

We also said goodbye to another friend of ours, Brooke, who previously worked in the Boulder office with her husband, and is now finishing an advanced degree in Canada. She came down to Pole for a week to help us set up a second Dobson instrument. The one that we were using before has been down here for four years and is ready to be sent back to Boulder for recalibration. The week flew by, and before any of us knew it, Brooke was on her way back to McMurdo. Today, she is heading back to Christchurch to meet up with her husband for Christmas!

Three other folks that were on that same flight with Jerry and Brooke also made a stop out to ARO this past Saturday.

Ron, Mary and Lisa came out about an hour before their plane landed, and did a quick interview with Cully and I. They said that it might take a week for the webcast to be posted, but gave us a link to check it out once it was posted. That link is:

http://icestories.exploratorium.edu

I think I saw a couple thousand people on the other side of that camera lens, but overall, I think their time with us went well! :)
Unless you all beat me to it, I will try to let you know when the webcast can be viewed!

Our meteorological tower got extended by about ten meters last week, so it is now up to its intended height of 30 meters. Unfortunately, the extensions came in silver instead of the alternating white-orange that would have made the tower look like one complete structure!

Once a week, and especially in the winter time, Cully and I are going to have to climb the tower to check all the instruments, make sure they are working, fans are still operating, nothings stuck, things like that. I'm a big fan of heights (sarcasm at its best!), and was not happy when the tower was only 20 meters, but I'm planning on coming to terms with my fears. Cully is patient! I did manage to snap a couple pictures while the fingers were still working...

These other pics are from a few days ago as well. A twin otter plane took off normally, and then decided it would be a good idea to swing the plane around and fly right into the Clean Air Sector. He buzzed Cully and had just flown past ARO when Cully called me on the radio and told me to snap a few shots of it. These pictures got sent to our science support team, and I'm thinking that the pilot hasn't heard the end of it yet!

Hope everybody is well, and that you have safe and Happy Holidays!!!! In a day or two, there will be pictures of SnowHenge...

Capt. Splash

Farewell BICEP

2008-12-09T09:41:00.001-08:00

Temperature: -27.9C
Wind Chill: -42.7C
Wind Speed: 15.9 kts

I have to play a little catch up here. We had an air sample day a few days ago, and the winds were right, so Cully and I went out to the Clean Air Sector behind ARO, and set about getting our flasks ready to collect air. A lot of the prep for that was already done inside, so there wasn't much to do but wait...

and wait....

before too long, we had our samples and it was time to head back in, box them up and finish our day. A couple days before that, even, we had another balloon launch, which went fairly well. I am thinking we have another launch coming up Thursday.

Last Monday night we had a party out at the BICEP facility. These guys are using a telescope to look at our past. They are trying to see all the way back to the origins of things...Big Bang in particular. I was talking to one of the scientists yesterday, and the closest they can look is 400,000 years ago! That seems like a chunk of time to me, but they are still trying to figure out how to look back even farther! There are a couple theories on how the universe expanded. One is that it expanded at a regular flat rate, and linear. The other is that it happened at a different rate, and non-linear. The telescope is trying to look beyond 400,000 years and the answers to the theories the scientists are trying to find revolve around what temperatures they are able to detect from that time period. If they can determine what temperatures were prevalent, they can come closer to answering how the universe developed.

Some of the instrumentation was dismantled before we got to the party, as these folks are leaving early next week. They have done all the data collection they can for right now, and now they have to figure out what they have. While the lab itself made for a great party backdrop, people went up onto the roof to check out the telescope itself,

as well as the surrounding area. Note that the building in the distance on the left of the picture is ARO, give you some idea as to the spread of the facilities down here!

Wayne, the PA for the summer down here, and I went up to the roof to check out the goings on of the party from space. I caught a shot of the telescope from the lab out, and got a more inward view as well!

The telescope itself reminded a lot of us of the bomb that Slim Pickins rode down at the end of Dr Strangelove, and it didn''t take much to convince one of the Polies to re-enact the scene....

After a while it was time to call it a night, and we could have either caught a ride back to the station,

or hoofed it home in preparation for another glorious sun-filled day!

Hope everyone back in the land of color is enjoying themselves!
Capt Splash

Not Your Typical Day

2008-12-04T09:31:00.001-08:00

Air Temp:-29.9C
Wind Chill:-42.8C
Wind Speed:10.6kts

Holy heat wave Batman, it's warm today! Think I'll work on my tan today! The wind was blowing a lot more yesterday. I think gusts actually got up to close to 20 kts! Granted, a couple days of activities are going to be lumped together, but I think you get the idea that any and all things are possible on a given day! We found out from the Cargo dept that we had some empty boxes they were going to deliver to us. This was good news for us since we could continue to get rid of air sample flasks that had accumulated over the past winter. The loader came out, dropped off the boxes, and we set about making sure they weren't packed too
badly with snow.

Cargo came out a couple hours later with some extensions to our Meteorological Tower. Brian, Cully and I set about getting the pieces off the pallet,

and then after sufficient thawing we went up the existing tower to take a look at the instruments and what the weekly maintenance of those required.

That night it was time for Wiffleball! My first attempt at the game since...oh I don't know when! I don't think it went too badly, either, lot of fun. As I said, crazy things happen on a given day, in the middle of the game, the gym door busts open and our visual senses were assaulted by very colorful, masked individuals that had assumed the roles of their alter-egos. The Antarctic's version of Power Rangers showed up to get in on a little of the Wiffleball action, and then, as quickly as they appeared...they were gone!

That was a couple days ago. Last night was Volleyball night, and we wound up with some serious four on four games that made a lot of us hobble back to our rooms when the games were over! All in all it was a good night. Made up for the morning...Cully and I continued our quest for the Ultimate Ping Pong Player of the Year Award with a couple more games. It's going very badly for me, but the year is long and I am hoping to have a revelation on how to actually be competition for him! It reminds me of the summer-long bouts of UNO I used to have with my grandmother (who happens to still retain the title of Extreme Uno Champ of the World), the only difference is I used to stack the deck when I played her and I can't seem to figure out how to do that with Cully!

I will leave you with a shot that Cully took while up on the tower looking down at ARO. Everybody back home take care, and as we are, I hope you are looking forward to safe and
happy holidays coming up!!

Capt Splash

Ice Cube Drill

2008-12-02T09:59:00.000-08:00

Regrettably, I do not have any pictures of this drill, but the dreaded day had finally come! It was actually supposed to be done yesterday, on Tuesday, but the folks on the drill site were going to start drilling that day, and asked to switch the drill to Monday. Management agreed in the hopes of catching us off guard, but by the time Thanksgiving Dinner rolled around on Saturday, everybody knew about the day switch! Ahhhh, small communities!!

The call came over loudspeaker and radio around 8:10 in the morning that there was a fuel spill and at least one person down out at the Ice Cube drill site (that started the drill). Cully and I were out at ARO starting our day, which was good since it gave us a chance to see how long it would take us to get from ARO out to a site as far away as Ice Cube. He and I were about halfway back to the station, and first responders were already on scene. I didn't feel too badly about not being there in a hurry...found out later that by the time the first responders showed up, one of the other drillers on site had grabbed the "victim", pulled him into a building to get him out of the cold and the first trauma responders were assessing and attending to the victim while a couple others were dealing with the spill.

The scenario was that there was a person driving a loader, took his eye off where he was going, and ran into a fuel container and punctured it. In his haste, he tried to get out of the vehicle and stop the spill, but slipped on the ice and sustained a head injury...unfortunately falling into the spill, so he was being covered with fuel (again, part of the scenario). One of the site workers found him, and got him out of the spill and into shelter. That's when we all started showing up. When I got there, the victim was minutes away from being transported back to the station, where the Doc was ready with a team of people to get him from the vehicle up to Club Med on the second floor of the station. The spill had stopped and the fire team and the Hazmat person on site were containing that, making sure it didn't spread. The person that was controlling the scene until I showed up set me up pretty good. When I was able to take control from him, the coordination of the different teams was set up, all I really had to do was keep the station manager appraised of the situation as it continued to develop, and then call the drill over, and start getting people back to the station.

The whole drill took about 45 minutes to complete, and I think the teams did a really good job, given the fact that everyone is spread out over a pretty good area. ARO is about 1/4 mile from station, and Ice Cube is about a half mile beyond that, so everyone got on scene pretty quickly in my opinion, and that was about what we heard from the debrief at the end of the scenario. Heck of a way to start the morning, though! sheesh!!!

Weekend Warrior Training

2008-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

Temp:
Wind Chill:
Wind Speed:

EPP Training (Friday afternoon)

This room is a smaller version of the Main Power Plant that we have on station. Right now, under normal circumstances, the station and everything around it is fed power, heat, computer access by the Main Power Plant. If an event occurs that completely shuts down the Main Power Plant, we are going to need to get down to the Emergency Power Plant, get the generators warmed up and running, so we can maintain life support systems.

A few of us got together with the engineers and electricians to go through the steps to get that fired up.

It was definitely a coordinated effort…the engineers could get a generator turned on and warming up, and then it was the electrician’s turn to make sure that the right breakers were activated.

There was another step in the process, too. Another technician had to make sure that the glycol, our heat exchange system, was flowing the right way, and actually heating/cooling the right areas.

It was a great process to go through, and get familiar with what would need to happen during such an event!

Thanksgiving Dinner (Saturday evening)

Although we hit Thursday before everyone back home, we didn’t really sit down to celebrate until Saturday, but it was definitely worth the wait! Earlier on in the day, I made my way out to ARO to find out Cully had gotten there earlier on in the morning, and had done all the morning work before I showed up (that’s the bad news about sleeping in!!) We stuck around until early afternoon, I made a few Dobson measurements in the afternoon, since I slacked in the morning, and then we came back to the station, where we found we had about two hours before appetizers. Sooooo....it was game on!

Cully and I wheeled the ping pong table into the gym and proceeded to get through nine games before both of us had enough! I did better than my earlier performance, but the day went to him at 5-4. I did realize I didn’t have to continually return his serves to his strong side, I could shift to the other side of the table! Once I figured that out, I rallied to win a couple more games. It could be a long winter!

Hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!!!

Capt Splash

Happy Thanksgiving!!!

2008-11-27T09:45:00.000-08:00

Temp: -38.0C

Wind Chill: -47.3C

Wind Speed: 4.3 kts

Happy Thanksgiving, everybody!! We are going to have our dinner Saturday evening, but best wishes to everyone!

Today we had a balloon launch scheduled, and Cully and I hit the schedule from two different sides. I wandered over to ARO to take care of the morning daily routine.

Downstairs we have a gas chromatograph, we affectionately call “Big Blue” that is measuring halocarbons (CFCs and HCFCs) in the atmosphere, and it has carrier gases hooked up to it that help the flow of those halocarbons through the instrument so they can be properly identified.

The other instrument downstairs is measuring CO2 in the air. It also has carrier gases that help send the CO2 through to be analyzed.

Once these two instruments have been checked, along with the gas levels in the bottles that are hooked up to them, I went upstairs to check on the instruments upstairs. There are a few different particle counters that were checked to make sure they were operating normally, after which I went over to the Dobson instrument to take a few ozone measurements. This can be done by either measuring the amount of ozone from the ground to space, through a hatch we conveniently placed on the roof, or through a periscope that obtains a direct reading from the sun, in which case we will wheel the Dobson over to the window that gives us that direct path, depending on the time of day. There are wavelengths that the Dobson instrument reads that are characteristic of ozone, and the amount of interference the instrument detects at those wavelengths will quantify the amount of ozone there.

This is a good day to do a Dobson reading since the balloon launch should corroborate that value. When I got to the BIF (Balloon Inflation Facility), Cully had warmed up the pump for the instrumentation we were going to attach to the balloon, he had inflated the balloon, and we were almost ready to launch. We finally attached warmed batteries to the pump to help keep it warm as long as possible on it’s trip up into the stratosphere, and then it was time to let ‘er go!

After that we prepped a couple more pumps for the next couple launches and got ready to go to lunch. Cully wound up back at ARO while I got to spend the afternoon going through Emergency Power Plant procedures, basically familiarizing us with how to activate the emergency power system if the main power shuts down. We got all the theory and the identification of different generators, control panels as well as water and glycol heat exchanging paths…tomorrow we go through the practical application. What this means is that I am going to try to talk Cully into letting me do a lot of the morning daily checks since I won’t be there in the afternoon! The good news about being in a meeting all afternoon: I got out of house mouse detail this week…woo hoo, no scrubbing toilets until next week!!

Our day got extended a little bit longer than normal today since our supervisor, Brian, came in this evening around 1015. He was scheduled for the earlier flight, but nobody at the station got word of a few of the passengers getting bumped to the later flight.

Oh well, there were three folks on the earlier flight that got a tour of the whole operation, The Dark Sector, Ice Cube, and they ended with us, so Cully and I gave them a tour of ARO, gave them a couple vials of the cleanest air in the world. They were military gentlemen, too, so they dug the station patches we gave them as well! Brian’s plane arrived, and after a trip to the galley to grab some food, we all decided that it was time to end the day. Brian had started his travel in New Zealand a little after midnight the night before! Tomorrow’s another day….although you wouldn’t know it, the sun still hasn’t set!

Cheers-

Capt Splash

A Day in the Life Of

2008-11-26T10:32:00.001-08:00

Temp: -36.0

Wind Chill: -47.4

Wind Speed: 6.5 kts

A typical day at work for Cully and I is to walk over to ARO, run up to the solar instruments on the roof, make sure that wires aren’t tangled and that they are actually tracking the sun. If they are off by a little, then we have to adjust them. That usually takes about five minutes, and then it’s indoors to make sure that the internal instrumentation is working properly. We usually have a little bit of time to get caught up on business email from around the station, as well as our contacts back in Boulder. It’s usually pushing lunch time so we head back for some warm food…and a couple games of ping pong of course (I’m not mentioning a lot about the war that has started between Cully and I because his lead has increased quite substantially, and I don’t want to talk about it!) J

When Cully and I got back from lunch, we had to try and get a few boxes of samples ready to ship back to Scripps. What used to be an open cargo area for us yesterday is now packed with crates full of air samples that Amy and Johan (our predecessors) had sampled over the winter, but could not ship out. Don’t worry, we’ll do the same thing to our relief next year!!

….and yes, he was actually outside for a few seconds dressed like that, along with gloves and a hat, of course! Not me! I had on jeans, long sleeved shirt, gloves and hat! I’m going to use the fact that he was moving as my excuse why the picture is so blurry!

Cully had a fire drill to go to, so I finished the last Dobson measurement for the day, and came back to the station for dinner. After that, I got sucked into a very brutal, networked game of Battle Field 2 with some friends. Four computers linked together with people set about trying to destroy one another…nothing builds camaraderie like annhialation! Unfortunately for me, I forgot I needed to check one of the solar instruments later on in the evening, so I went back out to ARO, fiddled around for a little while with that, and then came back. On the way in the second time, I decided to feature my shadow in a couple pics.

These were taken around 1030 last night, but they are about the only time this year that my shadow would have made it into the picture with the Dome. I really need to get myself a different camera!! J

Tomorrow I am slated to help out in the galley making pies…should be interesting!

Ice Cube

2008-11-25T09:28:00.000-08:00

Air temp: -36.1C
Wind Chill: -49.1C
Wind Speed: 9.3 kts

Oh boy, do I need a different camera! This was the first shot that I took on the way out to the Ice Cube site, and regrettably it was my last. The batteries that I had just replaced decided to die on me when I tried (yet again) to get a picture of one of the project's starter holes. Ice Cube is in the process of drilling 80 holes in various locations on their site. The holes are drilled to the bottom of the ice layer, 9,000ft down, and sensors are put in place to start giving the scientists feedback on what they are studying...which I will go into at a later date. It's how I keep you interested!

What we were doing yesterday was walking through both the drill site with various Ice Cube drillers, and the building that is housing all the electronic support for the project. " We" refers to the emergency response team that is going to conduct an emergency drill on site early next week, so what we were doing was getting familiar with the location, as well as contacts once we got on scene. All this is supposed to make the drill run smoothly. I'll let you know how that turns out!

We almost had a real drill this past weekend. After a fun filled couple hours of volleyball, one of the other scientists and I were walking down the hallway, on our way to the kitchen when he smelled something burning. We followed it to the laundry room, and luckily there was already a couple people in there. They smelled it, too, and one of the guys unplugged the washing machine (took care of the potential fire), and the washer was set aside until it could be repaired. The problem, you ask? The person using the washer, who now has smoky clothes for another week, overloaded it and their clothes jammed the free-moving spinner. I'm just glad someone was in there doing laundry at the time! It reminds me of a time, back home...well, mom and dad remember that story, we'll leave it at that!

Capt. Splash

Air Sample Day

2008-11-24T13:55:00.001-08:00

Air temp : -35.6C
Wind chill: -51.3C
Wind speed: 12.8 kts

Okay, so the air sample was actually taken yesterday, but by the time we took the sample, the internet was down for the day!
Cully and I had a morning full of daily checks to do out at ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory). We decided to head back to the station at about 1230-ish for some lunch, after which we got pulled towards the direction of the gym, where a lonely ping pong table sat, just waiting to be played! Cully and I decided last year that if I wound up on the ice with him for a year, that there would be an epic battle over the table....scoreboards, T-shirts, trophies, everything! Right now, the game tally is pretty close, but it's a long year, anything can happen. We'll keep you posted!
After we recovered, it was time to head back out to ARO and take some air samples. I went the long way, around the old dome, and then on towards the Clean Air Sector.

I wanted to get a couple pictures along the way. Unfortunately, I waited too long and the snow had blown over the majority of what I wanted to show you, but I'm sure they will happen again, and get bigger as well. If you have followed other Antarctica blogs, you might have heard about sustrugi, but as the wind blows the snow around, it forms some pretty interesting shapes (as well as walking obstacles) when it finally stays put. I found some sustrugi that was developed by somebody's footprints. The person's weight compacted the snow, and the wind blew around the footprints...pretty cool!

I caught up to Cully on his way out behind ARO where the Clean Air Sector is located, and he went through the steps of retrieving air from that location. The trick for us, so we didn't contaminate the sample, was to turn on the pump inside the case and stand downwind for about 10 minutes. When Cully was ready, he went up to the case, having already exhaled all the air out of his lungs (so that if he did anything right by the samples, he would breath in rather than out), opened the box and started the air flow into the flasks, and then hustled back downwind to start breathing again. Two to three minutes later, he went back to the case to turn off the pump. Once the pump was turned off, he could start breathing again, and close up the flasks and come back inside.

Yesterday was a pretty normal day, but today, we are walking over to a project site called Ice Cube, to get a familiarization tour of the area. We are going to have an emergency drill sometime on the 2nd of December on that facility, so we figured it would be a good idea to head over there and see what we could use to our advantage. Let you know how the walk through goes tomorrow!

Capt Splash

South Pole

2008-11-21T09:38:00.000-08:00

Temp: -41 deg C

Wind chill: -51 deg C

Well, here I am, Capt. Splash arrives at South Pole! A few of us that had gone through training together got to spend a day or two in Christchurch. Unfortunately, we only got to spend those two days, then it was on to the ice.

We got stuck in McMurdo for about ten days due to weather conditions both at McMurdo and at Pole, which led to us taking a few opportunities to do some climbing up Observation Hill,

as well as helping out some of the scientists that were involved in observing the animals under the ice. Some of the life was like animals that I had seen before, sponges, anemones…but then there were things like this!

There was also time to venture off the base for a few hours. There was Scott Base, the New Zealand facility that was about a half hour walk away. A few of us went to some ice caves nearby that were awesome to be in.

(there is a disclaimer here, though. I have never been inside an ice cave before so I have no basis for comparison!)

Anywho, our ten days were up, and we had harassed McMurdo enough, so we begrudgingly got on a Basler, (note that the smoking snow on the other side of the plane is an active volcano, Mt Erabus) and flew for about four hours before we touched down at beautiful South Pole!!

Pole has an elevation of about 9,000 feet, which sounds great until you start to climb steps…after a couple stops you make it to the second level of wherever you are, and it starts to sink in where you are! There is a lot of science going on down here, and what the NOAA technician, Patrick(Cully), and I will be working on will deal with the atmosphere. We will run and maintain instruments that will monitor trace pollutants in the air, launch ozone balloons throughout the year, as well as collect our own air samples that will either be sent back to the US for analysis, or overseas where we have collaboration from other organizations.

While there is work to be done, there is also time for relaxing, taking a load off, or just down-right having some fun!

Things went at a pretty fast pace for the first two weeks. We had an emergency drill to conduct the day after we got here, as well as absorb as much information from the two people we are replacing down here as we could. Since we were delayed getting down here, though, the week and a half to two week turnover lasted about five days. We did have some help from an old winter-over that is back in the main office in Boulder and he just left a couple days ago. Things have started slowing down somewhat, and I am getting into a rhythm here. I am looking forward to heading into 2009 down here, and am ecstatic that I don’t have to live out of a bag for a while! This is going to be an interesting year, and I hope that people stay with either this blog or Cully’s blog into next year. We’ll try to let you know what we’re up to!