Dichotomy

One  of the things that struck me most about Antarctica, and that still walks with me, is the strong sense of dichotomy of this experience.  We left Salt Lake City in the midst of a snowstorm.  This is what my house looked like at the time.

Home: Snowing. Cold. Blowing.

The snow was cold  and slick carrying my suitcase out to the car, so I wore my winter Sorel boots to the airport, and my big winter coat.  But I knew we were headed to New Zealand, where it had been 70 degrees that day!  And Antarctic New Zealand was going to be issuing us multiple pairs of boots.  So to minimize my luggage (ha ha!  traveling with electronics requires some biceps for sure!) I left my boots and coat in the car and wore my favorite sandals on the trip to New Zealand.  This turned out to be an extremely comfortable arrangement.

Dichotomy: Traveling boots and sandals

We rode one plane after another, like a time and space machine, carrying us to a totally different world.  And indeed, it was.  As we flew into Aukland and then Christchurch, New Zealand, it was a tropical paradise!  Lush, brilliantly green farms stretched out below is, edged by beachs and PALM TREES?!

Christchurch, New Zealand: Brilliantly green, beautiful!

The next morning, we went to Antarctic New Zealand (wearing my sandals) and were issued our cold weather gear — about 40 pounds of it!  This was SOOO weird, so unreal.  We had left snow, arrived in a tropical paradise, and were headed out to a frozen world we had never seen before.  The airplane was definitely a space travel machine, and we could have been on a different planet as far as I could tell.  We suited up in our Antarctic gear and hung out by the palm trees and the pool, just because it was so strange, indeed!

Extreme Cold Weather Gear and Palm Trees.

PALM trees????!

Wow.

The next morning, we put on our cold weather gear, sweltering and sweating in the lovely New Zealand weather.  And we boarded our next space travel machine with several other scientists — headed for Antarctica, a frozen world that for me had just been pictures.

Flying in over Antarctica, we first saw sea ice, floating as huge chunks.

And then the frozen world that would be our home for the next few weeks.

Antarctica -- Volcanic mountains overlaid with ice, sometimes as much as 5 miles thick.

Antarctica is a place of stark BLACK and WHITE — Black volcanic rock and white ice or snow — a place of contrasts.

Fire rock turned to sand.

Snow Toes

Even the animals are black and white.

We worked under the watch of Mount Erebus, an active volcano that last erupted in 2008 and is now enshrouded with thick, frozen ice.

Mount Erebus, frozen volcano billowing plumes of smoke.

For me, this was the ultimate ‘Fire and Ice’ experience.

And then, more dichotomy, we turned it all around again. When we returned to New Zealand, we took a train to Arthur’s Pass and hiked to the most beautiful waterfall.

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

This trip was an experience in Black and White, Fire and Ice, Tropical and Antarctic, the ultimate dichotomies.  It was Stimulating and Exhilarating!  And a little bit confusing.

Ice Pressure Ridges and Seals

When ice freezes, it expands, and when it freezes across the ocean, it expands too.  The expanding ice has to go somewhere, so it basically ripples and folds into pressure ridges near the land, in this case in front of Scott Base.  This creates a magnificent wonderland of ice that is a photographer’s dream!  It also makes spaces for seals to come up out of the water to sun their giant bodies.

To see photos and videos of our trip through the pressure ridges, and a couple  of our favorite seals, click HERE.

Fun with photos!

Let an Undergrad help !

A comfortable seal enjoying the sun.

To see photos and videos of our trip through the pressure ridges, and a couple  of our favorite seals, click HERE.

A Kiwi Farewell

The C17 we rode home in. Wow! That is one BIG plane!

For more photos and videos of our C17 ride, click HERE.

We left Antarctica today.   Our flight left at 2:40 in the afternoon (that is 14:40 at Scott Base).  After a lovely breakfast of fresh bread thanks to Scott Base’s incredible chef, and a nice salad/sandwich lunch, we gathered our remaining bags, and suited up in our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear for the last time.  As I pulled on my most familiar black overalls, and felt the weight of their straps over my shoulders one last time, I thought of the comfort of the small pocket where I have carried by Blistex sunscreen all of these many days, the mechanical pencils that froze up in the snow, and the cameras cuddled in the coverall pocket to keep them from freezing up in the blowing snow.  As I laced up my huge boots, I thought of the snowy ice where we had walked, the cracks we had stepped over, and the dusty volcanic trail I walked last night to the top of the mountain above Scott Base.  As I pulled on my ECW parka, the fluffy fur so soft against my cheek, I remember the tremendous comfort of tucking my chin and cheeks into its gentle space, escaping the raucous wind rasping crystals of ice across my face.  As I put my sunglasses on the top of my head, I remember the beautiful see-forever Antarctic sun that never goes down (this time of year).  And when I tucked my worn black windproof gloves into my pocket, I think of the excitement and thrill of creating a method for measuring ice that wasn’t here before, of the trials and the re-trials, and the challenges and the sheer Cheshire-cat joy when success finally peeks over the research horizon. I am glad I can take these gloves home with me, because they have touched more of Antarctica than I have.’

Our happy team is headed home! Antarctica was actually a very difficult place to LEAVE. We loved our camp K131. We loved Scott Base. We were excited to go home, but it was also difficult to leave.

We had washed up our own breakfast dishes in the water efficient washing system, and taken them from the washer to the pile where they will be used for the next meal.  We had stripped all of the sheets off our beds, preparing them for the young women who care for us all at Scott Base, putting them by the washer so the bunk rooms we had cozied up in were readied for another small troupe of incoming scientists, artists, visitors, journalists, and more.  In the morning, someone was running the vacuum and mopping up the floors.  Everyone helps here.  We, the ‘visitors’ help.  The CEO helps.  The staff at Scott Base bend over backwards to help you in every way they can.  (If you are 15 minutes late checking in from an outing, Gideon will get a page, and their search will be on …. Remember to check in, that is for sure!)

Russell the Ram donning his Antarctic gear for the last time ... riding home on the C17.

As we leave, the staff collect by the door, distributing hugs, well wishes, hand shakes, and cheerful banter.  The lead officer of the base is the last one we shake hands with as we go out the refrigerator-style door and down the metal steps to the crunchy ice that is a little lower than when we first came.  We board a red windowed van with extra high suspension and extra large tires.  Our driver, it turns out, has lived in Sugarhouse, very near the University.  He has a Texas accent, that is his home state. Everyone waves as we leave, and we wave back.  Our friend, Greg, is video taping our exit, and Tim stands beside him, both in front of the green wanigans that have been our home.  We wave happily at them as we go by.

We drive up the hill, overlooking the pressure ridges where we walked in a winter wonderland and saw two large seals just yesterday.  We can see the extra ridges as the ice presses against the shore in cold expansion.  We pass the antennas at the top of Crater Hill, antennas that David and I now know more about, thanks to a generous tutorial from Tony the radio engineer.  We enter McMurdo base, which is run by the Americans.  Scott Base is run by Antarctic New Zealand.  The close proximity of these two bases (they share many critical support systems, an ice air field and flights, and even a few TV channels) was chosen to enable the excellent collaboration we have experienced between the American and New Zealand teams.  We enter a metal building, where we are checked off to be sure we are the right folks going the right place (good thing, no flights going anywhere else today!), and we board ‘Ivan the Terra Bus’, a huge bus hoisted off the ground on huge struts with tires whose huge treads leave tracks nearly 4 feet wide.   Many other American scientists join us as well.  They are dressed in red, the assigned clothing for the American system.  The Kiwi (New Zealanders fondly call themselves Kiwis) clothes we have been wearing are orange and black.

We drive through the streets of McMurdo on our way to the airfield.  McMurdo is many separate buildings, most of them brown metal, that hold bunks, garages, laboratories, and even a store.  It seems like a small town compared to the smaller Scott Base (where all of the buildings are linked together by hallways so you can reach every place on base without re-tying your ECW boots!).  There are several  yard areas with wooden packing crates, a small wooden building where someone has added green wooden cactus, and people wave at us as we pass.  How can anyone resist waving at Ivan the Terra Bus!  Others have told us that McMurdo is different than Scott Base, but they haven’t quite described it in the way that we now feel it.  McMurdo feels kind of like an Old Western Town, and I almost expect an outlaw to jump out with six shooters!  It is a military base, used for science.  Perhaps it feels that way because we have not lived here and made it our quiet home.  The other scientists joining our plane from McMurdo seem to have developed the same family that we have on the ice.  Ice can bond things together.  Things like people.

Scott Base is quiet, so quiet and peaceful.  The sleeping rooms are separated from the work areas, and they are kept darkened round the clock.  They are the ONLY dark places in Antarctica right now, I think!  When you enter or exit your room and the main door, you close the door very quietly, gently folding back the door knob so that the click is quiet as can be.  Someone is likely to be sleeping there, having worked a long night.  With so many people, strangers by definition but friends by purpose, living in such close quarters, having a calm and respectful living place helps bring us all together because we are not irritating each other apart.  And somehow this quiet respect extends beyond the metal walls and insulation of the warm and cozy Scott Base.  It extends to how everyone here treats the only continent in the world that we have not messed up.

'Door art' was not uncommon in Scott Base. This is the room that Joyce and Cindy shared, duly decorated by David.

We move out onto the ice, driving bouncily towards the huge US AirForce C-17 awaiting us on the ice.  It is HUGE!!!!!!  Its big belly is going to take us and our equipment and gear, and all of the other scientists and their equipment and gear and even a few artists and musicians and THEIR equipment and gear back to Christ Church New Zealand.  (Last night Dave Dobbyn, a favorite Kiwi singer, entertained us with his guitar at Scott Base.)  There are no boarding passes, the security check is just asking everyone to remove the sharp things from their bags, and no beeping scanner for tickets (just a pleasant young man checking our names off on a clipboard).  We walk across the ice in our ECW boots, wave at Ken who has the video camera, and walk up the stairs into the huge aircraft.  The guts of the tremendous aircraft are wide open!  We can see the air vents for the engines, the wiring as it courses down the ceiling of the plane.  Everything is open visible metal, and it really is cool!   There are no windows except a few portholes that are not next to anyone’s seats.  David, Joyce, Ken and I have pull down seats on the side of the plane facing into the center.  It is more leg space than we have ever had on a commercial flight!

We drive a long distance to the runway, and we imagine we know where we are going because of where we were when we came in.  The plane turns, facing into the wind, winds up its 4 huge whirring engines, and races down the ice runway we imagine beneath its huge wheels.  We are airborne in a large leap, and our ears pop and whistle.  The plane is noisy.  There is nothing to absorb the sound of the engines and the air rushing by as the plane tears through the atmosphere high above the ice-filled ocean.  We were just down there measuring that ice and looking up in amazement at the planes (even this very plane!) just a couple of days ago.

On the plane, I take out my lunch bag, carefully packed at Scott Base by the chef and a helper or two, all people we now know, and enjoy.  There is a nice homemade sandwich on thick slices of home baked bread, an oaty bar (!!!! We ate BOXES of oaty bars in our camp, and it makes me remember the red zippered food boxes and how excited we all got to rummage through them for our favorite discovered treats.) , an apple (FRESH fruit, such a luxury flown into a frozen continent) and two nice homemade cookies wrapped in saran wrap.  I have the overwhelming sense that this was a lunch made with love.  I feel embraced again, as I have felt so many times already in the icy volcanic Antarctica.  I have the sense that I am leaving more than a place.  I am leaving an entire continent.   Drilling, measuring, sleeping on, resting and playing and working and thinking on her frozen ocean ice, I feel like she has become home very very quickly.

Part way into the flight, it is warm, and everyone starts to doff their ECW gear. First the big boots, laces now tied neatly together beneath my seat.  Next the outer jacket I am sitting on to pad my seat.  Then the overalls, the weight easing off my shoulders.  Finally on with the tennis shoes.  I have even taken my socks off, and it feels so good!  We know that in a few hours we will be back in New Zealand, which felt totally tropical when we were last there.  Paul Woodward (Woody) will pick us up at the airfield and help get us to our local hotel.

Thank you, Kiwi Antarctica, for such a warm welcome and a warm farewell!

We are on our way home.

For more photos and videos of our C17 ride, click HERE.

Edmund Hillary had Moxie

Moxie is a cola-like beverage from my home state of Maine.  It stands for all of the wild, gutsy things people with moxie do!  It’s a pretty macho drink, and mostly it is guys who like it.  My dad said it would put hair on your chest, and I believe that is true.

Sir Edmund Hillary had Moxie when he started Scott Base and moved into Antarctica as if humans could live and work there in relative comfort and safety.  An experienced and well organized mountaineer, Hillary was the right man for the job.  It was fun to tour the start of Scott Base, Hillary’s Hut, now ensconced for preservation in the Kiwi green.  This old base now serves as the emergency ‘last resort’ in the event Scott Base suffers a fire.

The little building on the left houses the orignal Scott Base hut.

This is one of Edmund Hillary's original ice axes. He is happily driving his favorite tractor, forever remembered in the Scott Base sun room.

For more pictures of the Hillary Hut, click HERE.

For more pictures of Scott Base today, click HERE.

The board game of Polar Exploration, in Hillary's hut. How cool is that?!

Frozen in Time: Scott and Shackleton

Wind Vane Hill at Scotts Terra Nova Hut

One of the most significant experiences of our trip to Antarctica was visiting the Shackleton ‘Nimrod’ hut at Cape Royds and the Scott ‘Terra Nova’ hut at Cape Evans.  These two famous explorers braved the then-uncharted Antarctic in the very same places that we were living and working.  Visiting their huts was an amazing experience of being ‘frozen in time’, as if the guys would be coming home for dinner at any moment.  Except, in the case of Scott, we knew that would never be true.  The ghost of Scott haunted me, and I still cannot understand the reasoning behind the passion that drove him to lead his men ‘into the great white alone’.

There is much available on the internet that you can read about the adventures and misadventures of these brave explorers:

Ernest Shackleton

The Nimrod Expedition

Robert Falcon Scott

The Terra Nova expedition

Ernest Shackleton

Captain Robert Falcon Scott

Shackleton’s Nimrod Hut

Ernest Shackleton's 'Nimrod' hut. Everything was literally 'frozen in time' as they left it

The Nimrod hut is being restored. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4185851.stm

The kitchen in the Nimrod hut was well-appointed with a wide variety of foods and a cozy cook stove.

Many of the crates that make up this bedroom 'set' were stamped with the expedition name, much like our equipment was stamped with K131.

Darned wool socks ... Just like them, we had to get out our sewing kit several times while we were there to make repairs and alterations to our gear.

Mr. Joyce in the Shackleton party was the dog handler. Not sure what local joke led to this original graffiti. For our team, who were constantly joking and joshing and laughing together, it seemed pretty clear that the Shackleton crew were also playing and laughing together. Not also the upside down writing on the lower box that advertises the Antarctic Nimrod expedition.

Boxes and crates were left stacked in the snow around the hut, still filled with provisions for the shore party.

An axe, some straw (probably for packing), a rusted metal box, and some white frozen blubber dot the rocks near the Shackleton hut. My guess? I think they were using the axe to hack away at the frozen blubber from a recent or not so recent catch, when they left it in the snow and lost it or left before using it again. The place seemed eerily as if Shackleton and his men had just gone out for the afternoon and would soon be back for supper.

For more pictures, click HERE.

Scott’s Terra Nova Hut

Wind Vane Hill at Scotts Terra Nova Hut

Scott's Terra Nova Hut

Another well appointed kitchen at Scott Hut.

Parts of an old weather station.

Yum, yum, yum!

Pony horse shoes! The ponies were used to haul the sledges, but they didn't work out all that well. They slipped on the ice, their feet sank into the soft snow, they kicked their handlers, and they fell into crevasses.

The laboratory. Scott's expeditions were scientific explorations in addition to gaining fame for himself and the British empire.

The VERY BAD DAY anchor from Shackleton's misadventure with the Aurora, that floated away. Read more about it here http://www.jamescairdsociety.com/shackleton-news.php?id=103858

For more pictures, click HERE.

When we returned to Christchurch, there was a fantastic exhibit — Into the Great Alone — at the historical museum.  They had 85 original photographs of the expeditions, plus the black and white ‘silent movie’ that was based on those photographs and original movie footage taken on the expeditions.  Watching Shackleton’s great ship, the Endurance, crushed to bits by the ice … Watching Scott’s men, at first singing and dancing and playing with the dogs and ponies, then strongly shouldering into the sledges as the trekked optimistically towards the elusive South Pole, later exploring Admunsen’s tent, the crushing blow that they had been beaten, all the while knowing that these men never returned to the wives and children they wrote of in their diaries… After seeing these photos and video, much of it in places we had just been living and working, places we now recognized, places that felt a sense of belonging … this was very humbling, haunting, thought and emotion provoking.  The world is a very, very, very big place.  Less than a hundred years ago, this place that we had just been, cocooned in a safety net of radio links and emergency support equipment, had been truly wild and free and rough and lonely, a place that tempted and teased adventurous men to risk everything to be the first to reach the bottom of our huge, wonderous earth.  This was a haunting experience for me, one that has rattled my cocoon a bit, one that has made me think and explore … What would be worth risking my life for?  What would I defend, want, do, desire so much that I would knowingly risk all that I have and all that I am and all that I ever will be for that one passion?  What is my life worth, and what can I do with it?  What do I most want to do with this one precious life I have been given?  When I tell my friends and family that this trip changed my life in ways I hadn’t anticipated, this is one of them.  I returned with a strong sense that life is worth a great deal because of what you can do with it.  I have always set out to make a difference in the world, and the haunting touch with these early explorers reminds me yet again in a way that touches me deeply that my life is here and now the only way I will ever have to make a positive difference in the other lives around me and the world in which they live.   That is the passion for which I can, will, and do risk the precious clock-ticking hours of my time.  Captain Scott wrote with brave and nakedly sincere words in the frozen days he knowingly awaited death in an icy tent with the wind howling to carry him away.  Those words will touch anyone who reads them, all in different ways.  Thank you to Captain Scott for reminding me again that a good life has a great passion, and reinvigorating mine.

Find out More about Antarctic Conservation of these historic sites HERE.

Getting excited to view new Antarctic data

By Adam Gully · December 7, 2010 · 

In just a few more days, the Antarctic expedition team will begin their trip home.  When they get back to New Zealand and finally Salt Lake City, familiar items will be reintroduced.  Cell phones, facebook, reliable email, and money will all be remembered.  They will no longer be isolated.

Besides a few penguins stowed away in their luggage (ha), they will also return will lots of new valuable data on percolation, conductivity, and permittivity.  I am very excited to look at this data.  When I accompanied Professor Golden to Antarctica in 2007, we returned with some great data.  However, this time they brought down some new instruments that are able to do some new experiments.  Among these new instruments is a cross polarizing setup that will give accurate assessments of the crystal structure of the sea ice and an electronic device that is much more sensitive and has a broader range of frequencies.  Hopefully these have helped obtain even better data than what we gathered in 2007!

Until that time, to remember my own experience of coming home, I will eat a “normal” hamburger (without a beet and egg, which the New Zealanders and Australians love) and maybe some Mexican food (which they don’t have)…  both of which I dearly missed while I was in Antarctica.  However, they will definitely find that the adventure, experience, and data were worth it!

About the author

 

Adam Gully.

I am a graduate student in mathematics working with Professor Ken Golden. Since I was an undergraduate, I have been working on the mathematics of sea ice. In the fall of 2007, I was fortunate enough to take part in the SIPEX (Sea Ice Physics and Ecosystem eXperiment) with Professor Golden. http://www.sipex.aq/

Fire and Ice

By Cindy Furse · December 6, 2010 ·

Antarctica in its spring time is a supremely beautiful, wild, rugged landscape.

Mount Erebus, our resident volcano, towers above our camp on a sunny day yet disappears completely in the snow. The summit elevation of Mount Erebus, is 12,448 ft (3,794 meters). Photo credit: Cindy Furse 

Today the sky is blue, and light clouds slowly meander across it. Mount Erebus, apparently a very calm volcano, rises easily above us, gently wafting steam into the blue sky, like a small and gentle cloud at its peak. The frozen sea on which we live and work is a gentle, flat base for the mountain valley in which we find ourselves.

The black volcanic cliffs at Cape Royds drop sharply to black sand beaches. The sea ice is starting to break up here. Last week there was some open water, so this week the ice has overlaid and refrozen in magical patterns for as far as we can see. Photo credit: David Lubbers 

Two days ago we visited Scott and Shackleton’s huts and a penguin colony to the north along the coast. Where we are working is an ice sheet and everything is snow ice white. On the coast where the huts are, the wind has scoured away much of the snow, leaving their volcanic rock windswept and exposed in a dusty, rough rough rough rough landscape. If you walked barefoot on these very frozen beaches, one step would shred the undersides of your bare feet. The 2″soles on our extreme cold weather (ECW) boots insulate us from both the cold and the lacerating roughness of this beach. They also make it rather difficult to navigate its boulders and we hike a mile or so along its cliffy edge. Below us, the sea is frozen into silence. The waves move only microscopically. The tides show only in tidal cracks that push sometimes dangerous ever-changing plates of snow against the frozen beach, and draw back into wide tidal cracks. Don’t worry. The Haaglund in which we rode here is an aquatic vehicle with bilge pumps to draw out the water in case it falls in, and a roof window to climb out of it the water gets above the height of the door. When you are walking, just pay attention and step or jump over the cracks. The frozen sea meets the frozen beach and we scramble up a steep ascent of ice and volcanic rock, to look down on a magnificent vista of ice sheets you can see right through, layered on top of each other as they melted and floated and refroze only to melt and move again. A few seal holes are home and access to a few contented seals who have lazily beached themselves to enjoy the sun. They barely flop a flipper at us as we go by in the Hagglund or on foot. Their immense blubbery shapes seem about as cumbersome as our ECW boots on the land, but in the water they have the freedom to glide and twist at great speed. The ever-changing frozen sea is below us, below us down a steep cliff. Behind us is a landscape, almost like what I imagine the moonscape may feel like, of frozen volcanic boulders, interspersed with snow and ice, carved by the winds into wild, icy twists of black and white.

This is what my eyes see.

It is -8.5 C with a wind chill factor. The wind scours this valley, sandpapering us and everything else with gentle ice sand that is rough and abrasive in the wind. I am bundled up in three jackets, layered, plus two pair of gloves, a light polypropylene layer and a windproof outer layer (my favorite gloves this trip). I wear glasses or goggles for my eyes, and my nose runs. I am warm, except for a few edges of my cheeks or nose that accidentally find themselves in the path of the rasping ice wind.

This is what my skin feels.

Our base camp is run by Antarctic outfitter, scientist, and legend, Dr. Tim Haskell. The green shipping containers are outfitted with heated lab space, electricity, bunks, and a small kitchen. We sit on a 2.5 meter thick sheet of first year sea ice that makes a perfectly flat valley surrounded by volcanos, ice sheets and glaciers. Photo credit: David Lubbers 

The huge generator engine in our camp thrums gently, constantly, steadily. The scientists here, us included, need electricity and support for our experiments. We (Cindy, Joyce, Ken, David) are drilling ice cores and measuring their electrical properties, temperature and salinity. Malcolm and Sean are measuring electrical properties from an array they buried under the ice months ago. Greg and Joe are surveying the imperceptible shifting of the ice sheet. Sam and Alison are measuring the minute ice waves that the ocean below produces on our otherwise immobile ice

The sea ice we are studying has channels of brine (silver channels from left to right in this picture) making up columnar ice in the first meter or so and a jumble of platelets (flat ice pieces about 1-2” in diameter and 1mm thick) nearer the bottom. We brought out a core of ice, and Pat Langhorne, New Zealand Physicist and leader of the Sea Ice Group at the University of Otago, sliced it and made it thin enough to shine light through so we could see the crystal structure. Photo credit: Ken Golden 

surface. Pat and Stefan are making beautiful glass-like ice plates where we can see the ice crystals in our cores. The thrumming generator is also the rock of support for the heat our fingers crave, that our bodies need. I cover my ears from the wind. Sometimes when I come inside I think I still hear it. When we walk or ski away from camp, just a short ways, all of these sounds go away, except the wind. That is when this place is most beautiful, when its remote ruggedness is most embracing. Sometimes a fat grey sea bird called a ‘skewa’ (in that marvelous New Zealand speak) flies near. Twice we have heard them call, a bit like a sea gull. The skua is a curious and unafraid creature, trusting us, and hoping we will give it bits of food. We do not, but we think warm thoughts in its direction. It is unimpressed and takes flight.

This is what our ears hear.

The generator provides the electricity to make hot tea to warm my fingers and dinner to warm my very hungry belly. And Tim, the camp legend, bakes fresh bread in a bread machine each morning. That is a small spring miracle when a loaf arrives each morning. The food boxes here have an unpredictable assortment of crackers, cheese (good, aged, cheddar), soups, pasta or rice, cereal, powdered milk (that actually dissolves in water, unlike that dreck of the same name in the states), oatie slices (a local granola bar), cookies, sauce packets, a bit of frozen meat, frozen or dehydrated veggies, and back packing food packs. Putting meals together for 13 hungry scientists is a bit of a trick, but everything tastes good here. It is almost dinner time, and a magnetic smell of warm calories with a nameless sauce draws the camp of researchers together, shuffling gently in our heavy boots. The scientists laugh, joke, and exchange ideas and thoughts about their test results. Everything tastes good here.

This is what my belly feels.

Our noses are uncooperative in this frozen climate. I discover that my only major packing flaw was lack of several boxes of Kleenex. Never mind, there is TP, but it is a bit raspy, like the wind. The smell of fresh bread is a delight. Hot black tea is an important comfort food. There is chamomile, too. I think I will try that today, as the 24 hour sun and brittle cold keep me highly charged, energetic, alert, awake, intense. Fresh coffee is brewed almost constantly. Dinner always smells good.

When we visited the penguin colony I was a bit surprised at their smell. Not so nice. Kind of stinky. I guess that an entire rookery of hundreds of small penguins, nesting and pooping on their city streets, in the same rookery grounds for the last hundreds of years, is likely to have a bit of a smell, even in the frozen cold air. There were also several dead penguins in the Scott hut, shot over a hundred years ago, waiting all of these hundred years to be eaten for dinner. They were still frozen, but didn’t smell particularly appealing either.

Mostly, though, my frozen nose just seeks the shelter of my neck gaiter and balaclava. It will thaw out back in New Zealand where I remember that it was quite a tropical paradise this time of year.

When white light shines through a crystal of ice, it is polarized along the axis of the crystal. If the crystals are oriented in random directions, as they are in this sample of platelet ice, a polarizing lens shows the direction of each group of ice crystals with a different color. Photo credit: Ken Golden 

These are the senses that my body experiences in Antarctica, but they do not fully describe the experience here. There is more. The sheer roughness of this place is expressed in the wildness of the Erebus volcano with its plume of gentle steam emerging from its quiet, frozen peak, barely hinting at its boiling internal fire and the sheer explosive power of the molten magma that spewed forth the coarse, rough, cutting sand in the black volcanic beaches against the frozen sea, the black volcanic rock tumbled about in the lunar landscape behind it, almost devoid of wind blown snow, and the occasional misplaced granite boulder tossed miles into the sky to land on this beach barely earth moments ago. This is a wild place, a rough place, a place where rugged remoteness is everywhere except for the tiny dot of our warm camp. The experience here for me is an embrace of fire and ice, like a man’s rough stubble rubbed against a woman’s soft cheek. It is a rough embrace that draws me close and enters my soul. The fire, the ice, the wildness of it all … Antarctica engulfs me in its rough embrace.

Rough Embrace

Ice Mountain, Erebus, towers over me,

Volcanic Fire in its hot belly.

Wafting gentle smoke into the frozen air,

Molten Magma churning invisibly beneath the frozen sea.

Ice Sea laps into broken waves of blue ice on

Black Sand Beaches, burning my skin

As grains of sand mixed with ice crystals

Burn, Rasp, Grate in the frozen sea wind.

Ice crystal prisms, fragile ice slices from beneath the ice sea,

Make lacy rainbow beauty beneath the polarizers,

Kaleidescoping, magically drawing me deep

To where platelet ice floats in the briney black sea.

In the night, I dream swimming through the ice crystals,

Midnight sunlight casting brilliant lances of light through the ice glass,

As the blazing electric current I have become dives, tumbles, bends,

Coarsing through salty brine rivers and twisting between the frozen platelets.

The fire and ice dichotomy that is Antarctica

Grasps me roughly in its blazingly cold embrace,

Kissing my skin, my eyes, my fingertips

With ice that turns my heart, my soul, my mind to Antarctic fire.

About the author

 

Dr. Cindy Furse is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. She is also the Assoc. VP for Research.

Measure for Measure: we get down to business

By David Lubbers · December 1, 2010 ·

Ken coring sea ice.

Celebrating our first successful ice core.

Early core resistivity measurements.

We took our first measurements today (ed. 11/29/2010), and it was incredible to see what determination and a good set of minds can accomplish.  We worked out a lot of the problems in our measurement system, but we still have a little bit to go before we are entirely satisfied with our methods.

Our group, as you may well know, does not only consist of the people here in Antarctica.  We are very aware of the system contributions provided by those that, sadly, were unable to join us.

Our team is comprised of two specialties collaborating, both electrical engineering and mathematics.  I am part of the electrical engineering team.  The team is headed up by Dr. Furse, and is composed of myself, David Lubbers, and two other students, Erik Gamez and Jacob Hansen.  Erik, Jacob, and I are all electrical engineering undergraduate students.

If you have been following this blog, you will no doubt be aware that we have tried to carefully plan and extensively test our measurements prior to our presence on the ice.  Having arrived here and started the process of testing our methods here, we have found a few things that seemed exceptionally well done prior to our arrival.

Prior to our departure, Erik spent a lot of time testing and performing simulations regarding the behavior of four wire resistivity measurements.  These tireless efforts allowed us to quickly assess the quality of the measurements we were taking, and allowed us to locate any potential sources of trouble in our measurements.

We have an entire barrage of equipment for use in our measurements, and each item has specific settings that must be meticulously set and checked prior to each measurement to ensure we are performing our measurements correctly.  Fortunately we had a large set of laminated cheat sheet that were organized by Jacob Hansen.  These cheat sheets have proved a valuable addition to our experience here.

Although it is too soon to know with certainty that the data we are collecting is reliable, we have worked through several of the inevitable kinks of a new measurement method, and are pleased with our initial progress.  We are hoping to have a mountain of data to sort through on our return, but at the moment we are happy to have started our measurement, and thankful for all the support we received prior to our departure.

About the author

David Lubbers.

I am an undergraduate student in the Electrical Engineering department. I am currently working on my senior project, which will take me to Antarctica. I am very excited for this trip, and thankful for the University of Utah for helping make it happen!

KSL Outdoors radio show goes way outdoors…to Antarctica

By Valoree Dowell · November 30, 2010 · 

Listen in to weekly updates on the Math-pedition with Tim Hughes, host of KSL Outdoors. The program airs Saturdays from 6:00 to 8:00AM on 1160 AM in Salt Lake City.  Skycall Communications provided the Antarctica team with a satellite phone and aims to connect with the team weekly while on they’re on the ice.

Ken Golden on KSL Outdoors | 11/13/10

Cindy Furse and David Lubbers on KSL Outdoors | 11/20/10

U Research Team on KSL Outdoors | 11/27/10

Math-pedition on KSL Outdoors | 12/04/10

Math-pedition on KSL Outdoors | 12/11/10

12/18/2010 (whole show)

 

0:02

Zipping Around Antarctica!

By Cindy Furse · November 29, 2010 · 

Joyce, Cindy, David arriving in Antarctica

November 19, 2010 — Today we zipped around the Antarctic Peninsula to our new home on the sea ice in the shadow of Mount Erebus.  It was about a 30-40 minute ‘drive’ along a ‘road’ to our camp.  The drive was a fantastical adventure in a Pisten Bully – a track vehicle that zips along in bumpy good time on the ice.

Check out the photos of all the AMAZING cool vehicles we saw HERE.  There are several videos, too!

The Pisten Bully is an alternative to the Hagglund. It has metal tracks.

Pisten Bully tracks are metal. They feel really weird when running on ice!

Going out to our camp were Ken, Joyce, David, and me plus two other researchers – Gary and Erin – plus our driver, Gideon.  We each had a large black duffel bag with our winter gear, a large black duffel bag with our sleeping bag, a carry-on sized green tote for our incidentals, plus a few pieces of science gear not already packed in those bags and a 5 gallon container of distilled water.  We also carried three large bags of survival gear, enough tents, stoves, sleeping bags, and food for everyone who was with us to survive for 3-4 days until the weather clears.  With as quickly as the weather can change around here, this is an important safety guideline … never leave without your full winter gear and never leave without enough stuff to really camp out a storm.

Never leave home without it! 

This Pisten Bully has a cab for the driver and passenger, and a large back that can carry 10 people.  At first we thought  we might get all our stuff in just the Bully, but there was just too much.  So Gideon hooked up a trailer, and we put most of the stuff in there, leaving room for the rest of us in the back.

It looks like the ice is smooth when you are quite far from it, but there are a lot of places it is still very bumpy.  The tides occur in Antarctica the same as they do in other parts of the ocean.  But these tides push up the ice into ridges all along the edge of the sea ice.  These ridges can be small and gentle or broken and rough.  The small and gentle ones didn’t look so hazardous at first, but since they often end up below the level of the ocean, the water can percolate up through the ice or through cracks, and then freeze on the top making a very very slippery slope.  The broken ice that is rough has all kinds of cracks, so you have to be careful there too.  The Pisten Bully traversed all of these different types of ice with bumpy, noisy, rattly good nature, as we zipped, lurched, bounded, and bumped along at about 10-20 miles per hour.  It was really exciting as we watched the Antarctica we had flown over just a couple of days before unfold before us.  We even popped the sky roof open and stuck our heads out the top to enjoy the view (and the coooold wind first hand).

Mount Erebus towers above our camp

Our camp, and our travels, are on a road across the ocean of ice.  The ice is relatively flat, which means it it looks flat when you see it from a distance and pretty wavey when you are right on it.  The road is maintained several times a day by huge huge tractors towing graders behind them.  They zip along at 20-30 miles per hour, and it looks like their drivers are having a ton of fun.  There are also all kinds of Pisten Bullys and the occasional Hagglund (an amphibious carrier similar to the Bulley but capable of also traversing open water).  Many of the vehicles have tracks like the Bully and Haaglund, and others have large, wide wheels.  Seems like everything is larger here!  There are also lots of snow mobiles, a few vans (with high suspension and large wheels), and several kinds of tractors.

Road Grader pulling an ice fishing shack.

The road is marked with red and green flags.  Hazards are marked with black flags that mean ‘Danger!  Keep away!’.  Blue flags mark fuel lines, hoses that are run above the ground. The ground here is always frozen, and you can’t dig through it, so these all important fuel lines cannot be easily buried.  The flags eventually become so tattered from the wind.   Crossed flags mean some sort of ice transition (bumps and possible cracks or crevasses).  Two vertical flags means time for a turn.  Three parallel flags means the start of the road or trail.  Flags are on high poles, maybe 6’ or more off the ground.

Our ride in the Pisten Bully was so much fun, and we will get another similar ride going home in a couple of weeks.  We took several videos for Mrs. Corlett’s class, and will send them to you when we get back.

Right now we are ‘out of touch’ on the ice, but are sending this back to Scott Base and then to you with another scientist who is headed there tomorrow.  We got our lab all set up and made our first measurements.  There are a lot of little things to work out, and I will write about that tomorrow, but so far, things are going really well.

Joyce is going to write to you about what it is like to live at a Scientific Camp in Antarctica.  It is a lot of fun, both from what we are getting to see and do, and from the other scientists who are here too. Russell the Ram sends his love. He has been resting up after such a busy trip yesterday, and he seems to be having a lot of trouble going to sleep.  It is as bright at midnight as it is a noon.  The sun never goes down, just does circles in the sky.

Almost midnight and still as light as noon! The sun never set the whole time we were there. It was the start of the Antarctic summer.

To the rest of our team back at home …. Wow, and thank you!   Every time we turn around, we are so aware of your great help in preparing for this adventure, and we find so many little and large things you have done to make this research successful.   Thank you to Erik, Jacob, Ryan, Bryan, Christian and Adam!

And to our families and friends … We are all excited to be here, healthy and doing well.  The weather is lovely.  It is strikingly beautiful here.   Perhaps the most striking part of this adventure for me is just how tiny we really are, standing  in midst of this huge expanse of frozen sea.  How huge and vast and expansive and magnificent and how very, very, very precious our earth really is.

About the author

Dr. Cindy Furse is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the U. She is also the Assoc. VP for Research