Happy South Pole Anniversary, Robert F Scott...

South Pole, January 2008"The Pole. Yes, but under very different circumstances from those expected ... Great God! This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have laboured to it without the reward of priority." - from the journal of R.F. Scott

On January 17th, 1912, Robert F. Scott, Edgar Evans, Lawrence Oates, Henry Bowers, and Dr Edward Wilson stood at the Geographical South Pole.

They were staring, disappointed, at the flag and tent left behind by Norwegians Roald Amundsen, Helmer Hanssen, Sverre Hassel, Oscar Wisting, and Olaf Bjaaland - who had arrived at the pole one month earlier. 

One month later (February 17, 1912) Scott's team would all be dead - their last miserable days spent starving and frostbitten, lying in a tent only 11 miles from One-Ton camp - ostensibly their salvation had they made it there.

If you want to read about their journey, you should.

I recommend Apsley Cherry-Garrards' "Worst Journey in the World". It took me four years to read it. I began it in October of 2008, and put it down several weeks later, finding it dry and un-exciting (but still possessing a useful historical summary of Antarctic exploration during the late 19th century and early into the 20th century). I picked it back up again this past October, when I found I could get it for free on my Amazon Kindle. I polished it off in a Herculean effort in the Churchill and Holyoake Ranges this past season: When I wasn't up on a ridge of Cambrian limestone looking for trilobite with Lars Holmer the members of the Swedish Polar Research Secretariat "Hot fossils in a cold land" expedition, I was safely ensconced in a -40° down bag in my Scott Tent, soaking up Cherry-Garrards horrific narrative as fast as I could tap the "next page" button.

The first time I stood at the South Pole was January of 2009. I arrived there in an LC-130 in three and a half hours from McMurdo Station. It was -35°C and the hairs in my nose were frozen within minutes of stepping out of the airplane. We stood at the ceremonial pole for 10 or 15 minutes, taking photos of each other, and of the south pole station, lurking 100m away to... our... North?... 

The new South Pole Stationthe Geographic "true" South Pole marker, with the old dome in the background.

I hardly thought about Scott, Amundsen, or Cherry-Garrard's book that was gathering dust back in my dorm room in McMurdo. I just snapped photos of the pole marker, the stilt-supported station, the decomissioned dome, and lots of hulking yellow heavy equipment pushing snow and cargo around. The steady, loud whine of four turbine engines on a revved up LC-130 was always there in the background to remind me that I only had 30 minutes to take some photos, run up the "Beer Can" enclosed starewell into the station, and buy a T-shirt, bottle of booze, and/or postcard before slowly sprinting (The South Pole is nearly 3000 meters above sea level, so no one sprints that fast) down the stairs and back to the waiting airplane for my three and a half hour return flight to McMurdo.

Inside the new station. En route over the Beardmore in an LC-130

Our flying route took us down the Beardmore Glacier, the same route used by Ernest Shackleton and his polar party on the Nimrod Expedition of 1907-1909, as well as by R.F. Scott on his ill-fated southern journey in 1911/1912.

Cherry-Garrard described the frightening difficulties of traveling up (and down) the Beardmore glacier with sledges and ancient equipment. My bird's eye view of their route impressed me but certainly did not make me ever wish to attempt a similar feat - especially without todays luxurious equipment and navigational aids like GPS.

Cherry-Gerrard was part of the first "return party" of the Terra Nova expedition. He and three others turned back - per Scott's orders - from the top of the Beardmore Glacier, near Buckley Island. Buckley Island is not far from the Dominion Range, where I spent a couple of days searching for Precambrian basement rocks with Dr John Googe et al - when we were based at the CTAM camp in 2010/2011.

My second trip to the South Pole was only days after the visit to the Dominion Range and I was of course accompanied by Dr John Goodge, Dr Jeff Vervoort, Dr Mark Fanning, Tanya Dreyer, and CTAM camp guru Bija Sass. We actually visited the pole twice that day. The first visit was 20 minutes long (long enough to put 600lbs of jet fuel in a Ken Borek Twin Otter). We spent the day searching for samples near Mt. Howe (the southernmost piece of exposed bed rock in the world). The late John Rees was our pilot, and he returned us to the South Pole in early evening - with just a bit of reserve in the gas tank. We were all tired, so we ate dinner in the South Pole cafeteria. I remember having pasta with shrimp with a side of broccoli and cauliflower, washed town with a tall glass of pulpy orange juice. I was wearing a T-shirt. The windows in the  galley offered a good view of the Ceremonial pole (the one surrounded with flags) and the true geographical pole a hundred meter behind. The outside temperature was between -35°C and -40°C. I imagine neither Scott nor Amundsen dined as well as we did when they were each sitting in the same spot. Amundsen probably ate fresh dog. When I finished my dinner, I filled a bowl with three scoops of real ice cream. I washed it down with a cup of hot cocoa, before wandering back outside to the South Pole marker with Bija to get a "hero shot". If you don't know what that is then you'll just have to go down there to find out. When I finally got my boots laced back up and my jacket re-zipped, Bija and I stumbled back to our waiting Twin Otter to join the rest of the crew for a two-hour flight back to CTAM. Our flight route took us past the Dominion Range, Buckley Island, and of course a low pass of the Beardmore Glacier. Isn't it spectacular?

 The Beardmore from a CTAM-bound Twin Otter. We are looking north, down-glacier, past places that Apsley Cherry-Garrard described as places where each team got lost.

The South Pole station is run by the United States Antarctic Program, and exists to serve and support scientific research. The primary research projects happening at the South Pole are related to atmospheric science (the air is clean and more similar to pre-industrial revolution air than anywhere else in the world), Geomagnetic field research, and astronomy ( in particular - researching Cosmic Microwave background radiation - left over radiation from the Big Bang). Without a doubt, the most impressive, famous, and expensive science effort at the pole is IceCube. IceCube is a gigantic neutrino detector - encompassing a cubic kilometer of polar ice. It is capturing and studying neutrinos released from the galaxy's more catastrophic events (supernovas, collisions, etc...).

View of the station a tourist sees before they are refused access.
Given that the South Pole is an objective to be reached by all of those who follow in Amundsen and Scott's footsteps, tourists frequently arrive at the station by foot or by Twin Otter. ALE (Antarctic Logistics and Expeditions) runs trips to Vinson and the South Pole and elsewhere every year. I imagine this year - the hundredth anniversary - is exceedingly busy. I have mixed feelings about the location of the South Pole Station. Anyone who chooses to arrive at the South Pole outside of the "realm of science" is greeted harshly by the USAP - as in an unwelcome guest. I imagine the stark, austere landscape that Amundsen and Scott each beheld, and now when you stand in that exact same place you are surrounded by semi-permanent buildings, red and green flags, and big yellow vehicles with loud reverse beepers. The location chosen by the USAP is bviously a political. Atmospheric science, geophysics, astronomy, and other forms of research could just as easily be done 15km away - just over the horizon. But alas, the big station, with its' airfield, vehicles, and endless strips of "retro gear" (another term for "trash too expensive to remove right now) will be on the south pole for quite some time: drifting to the north at about 20 feet per year.

 Self portrait - with John Goodge and company in the background.

Antarctica part 5 - the Churchill range

On November 17^th, in our camp at the bottom of the Holyoake “ridge”, I woke at 5:00am to start calling in “hourly” weather observations to McMurdo. An “hourly” is a quick, standardized weather observation that includes wind speed and direction, temperature, dew point, sky coverage, and ground definition. If the sky is clear it’s quite easy: alarm goes off at ungodly hour, I crawl from sleeping back to door of Scott Tent with Kestrel pocket weather meter in hand, I do downward-facing-dog to exit the door; I stand up outside, take the weather readings, and crawl back in – all in less than 5 minutes. I call Mac-ops on the HF radio, and report my observations; I set my alarm for a 50 minute nap, I go back to sleep, only to repeat again 6 more times on the hour until the Otter is inbound. So this time, 5:00am, I find it a little depressing because the wind is blowing at 40 kts, and it’s actually hard to stand up outside, let alone conceive of how a small airplane could negotiate such a stiff, turbulent, katabatic wind  to arrive at our camp. It seems as if half the eastern ice sheet is now airborne, bouncing along, grain by grain, drifting in between our tents.

Hour by hour I call in my “hourlies”. Each time I wake I think how fruitless it seems to try to get an airplane into such a windy, mountainous spot. I never give the sturdy Twin Otter enough respect.

We pack up our camp starting at 7:00am… We are soon told on the radio that the Otter is inbound, and ETA of less than an hour.  It takes four of us to wrestle a Scott Tent down out of the wind.

At the appointed time, someone sees it… “There’s the OTTER!” - their voice barely audible over the wind.

The airplane buzzes around for a while. We are convinced the pilot is about to pull the plug and fly home. The plane disappears. I’m about to call Mcmurdo to hear of our fate. Then someone spots it again – this time taxiing over bumpy, sastrugi-covered glacier a mile away. 

Against all odds (and against a robust headwind) the Otter arrives, and we stuff it with our cargo. It takes two flights to move us to the Churchill Range, where we land in an almost wind-free environment. The difference is staggering, and now we can hear ourselves think! The Otter returns to Mcmurdo with Paul Myrow and 600 pounds of lower Cambrian trilobites, isotopic samples, and bulk samples of various limestones and siltstones on board. But we are left with a hefty resupply of food… More frozen steaks, salmon, rice, cereal, and two bottles of Tabasco! - well stocked for another several weeks of posh Antarctic living - and then some...

The crew erects Scott Tents, mountain tents, and our fairly flimsy toilet tent in record time - taking advantage of the calm conditions. We settle in to our first night at the new site, planning our attack for the next week of fieldwork.

The goal at this new site is the same: Collect limestones containing small shelly fossil material from the lower Cambrian in order to make more clear the sequence of evolutionary events leading to the development of the more familiar taxa that emerged during the later lower Cambrian.

We spend the better part of a week scrambling up two different ridges – each one within 3 miles of camp. Compared with the last camp, where we were pulling trilobite heads out of siltstones by the fist-full, this rock seems devoid of any larger well-preserved fossils. Despite this, the team bulk-samples different litholigies on both ridges, Lars Stemmerik does a section of painstakingly detailed sampling for isotope geochronology, and Christian Skovsted scrambles where none have dared to scramble before – in the hopes of recovering some reclusive trilobite samples. When the work is finished after a few days, a blessed spell of high pressure just happens to depart the McMurdo area, making way for the Central Trans-Antarctics, Ross Ice Shelf, and McMurdo region to be covered by a warm, moist,  but calm low pressure system. We spend one extra week (not altogether uncommon in Antarctica) sitting around, eating extra food, reading books (I finished Worst Journey in the World by Apsley Cherry-Gerrard), working on the best lowe-visibility glacial landing strip in the world, and walking up any piece of exposed rock within three miles of camp.

Finally on Monday, November 28^th, perfect weather allows a KBA Twin Otter to pluck us out of our camp and back to Mcmurdo, where showers, beer, food, and departure paperwork await.

Another Antarctic field season in the bag... I've added some photos of the Christchurch Range camp below.

Airborne view of Ross-age folding between the Holyoake and Churchill Ranges

Crevasses on the Starshot Glacier

The team at the new Churchill Range camp.

Dr Lars Holmer staying hydrated in our kitchen "Scott" tent.

We climbed two different ridges from our camp in the Holyoake range. This is the view looking east from the top of one of them. The two peaks in the distance are called the "Cupcake Peaks". The glacier flowing east is called the "Entrient Glacier".

Alternating intertidal (light-colored) and offshore marine (darker) limestones near Mt Moa.

It's almost as cold as it looks... An afternoon squall dusted our ridge with fresh snow, and motivated us to wear as much clothing as possible... In the image above, Lars Holmer takes one last search for fossils before calling it a day.

Lars Stemmerik and Christian Skovsted searching for fossils near our camp in the Churchill Range.

View of our camp, looking south, towards Mount Moa.

There was a distinct pleasure in being able to wash and dry dishes while sitting outside the Scott Tent at night.

Lars, with the Entrient Glacier and Cupcake Peaks in the background. What a successful season of geologic sampling in Antarctica ought to look like...

A real-life unstaged high five when the Otter arrived to pick us up (we had been stuck there for an extra week).

McMurdo-bound in the back of a Twin Otter, and thoughts turn to showering. On our way home, we flew over the Byrd Glacier, the world's biggest valley glacier.

Antarctica part 4 - the Holyoake range

Almost nothing ever happens ahead of schedule in the Antarctic. Typically, flights are delayed by days, sometimes weeks. On my first trip to Antarctica, I spent 9 days waiting in Christchurch to come down. On my second trip to Antarctica, my return trip to Christchurch was weather-delayed by 8 days.

Anyway, I guess its the law of averages - we arrived in McMurdo on October 27th - A friday - and managed to leave McMurdo a week later - on November 5th. That's just enough time to finish training, pack food, prep cargo, print maps, etc... without being too slapdash.

All of our cargo and our motley group of six passengers were stuffed into two twin otters. The total weight of people plus gear was 4200 Lbs. That's not really a lot when you think about it. 6 big fellas with heaps of down clothing on, plus personal sleep kits and backpacks, etc... weighs about 300 Lbs each. Our skidoo weighs 400Lbs, and add in another 150 Lbs for fuel... That leaves 1900 Lbs remaining for tents, stoves, glacier gear, shovels and saws, toilet buckets, wooden rock boxes, and a helluva lot of food. We took up every allotted pound of weight. No one ever goes into the field in Antarctica without less than about 2 weeks of emergency food (in case bad weather delays your retrieval), and about one book per week. We stuck to that formula, but to the bare minimum. For books, I took an Amazon kindle - the first time I've ever done so in a cold mountain environment. It worked flawlessly.

We flew 2 hours to the Holyoake Range - a small sub-range of the Churchill Range - a middle-sized range tucked into the Trans Antarctic mountains between the mighty Nimrod Glacier and the even mightier Byrd Glacier. Our camp was placed on a trifling tributary called the Errant Glacier. The Errant would easily dwarf the Kahiltna or Aletsch glaciers.

Now many people who read this might notice that I've spelled our location H-O-L-Y-O-A-K-E. Some might be more familiar with the Holyoke Range of Massachusetts. However, our little mountain range was named for the Rt. Hon. K.J. Holyoake - who was once upon a time the Prime Minister of New Zealand, and who looked very favorably upon IGY-era Antarctic exploration. That's all I know about him.

November 5th is early to be in the Trans Antarctic Mtns. We feared cold. But when we landed on the butter-smooth Errant, we found calm, mild conditions.  During our 1.5 hour wait for the second otter, Travis and Lyndsey - the KBA otter crew -  basked in sunshine, drank cocoa, and watched us erect our Scott tents. - We were blessed with 24 more hours of nice, calm weather. By mid-day of day-2, it was blowing a gale. We had 20-40 knot winds for every day we were there - except for two. Temperatures ranged from a balmy -7°C down to a chilly -19°C. But at least it was always sunny.

Above our camp a sinuous ridge of steeply dipping Cambrian carbonate rocks extended up to a plateau to our (grid) east - towards the ice shelf. The ridge was flanked by glaciers. One glacier was directly above us, and it was mostly crevasse-free. This became our daily commute to "the Holyoake ridge". Paul Myrow was our veteran of this site. Together with John Goodge, Paul had noted the basic stratigraphy of this site a little over 10 years ago, working on previous studies by A.J. Rowell in 1988.  At the bottom of the sequence lie beds of Shackleton limestone - tortured, tectonized black offshore deposits with nothing of interest to the naked eye until one moves farther upsection.  Dip was near-vertical and perpendicular to our ridge. Traveling up-ridge is the same as traveling up section - the rocks keep getting younger. The limestones are now interrupted by the occasional shallow reef sequence, containing abundant archaeocyathids (primitive, reef-building sponges). Above the uppermost reef, siltstones interbed with thin nodular limestones, grading into pure, trilobite-rich siltstones and mudstones for about 75 more meters before slamming into the base of the Douglas Conglomerate - an abrupt and spectacular contact indicating rapid uplift and drowning of shallow marine facies: i.e. - the onset of the violent, Gondwana-wrecking Ross Orogeny of the middle Cambrian.

Once our team spotted the archaeocyathids, they knew they were on target. These old critters only existed for a relatively brief window in geologic time. They first appeared around 530 million years ago, but they were all but gone by 515 m.a. One problem with our rock sequence was that it was extremely sliced up by more recent faulting and shearing - to the point where it repeated the sequence over and over again along some parts of the ridge - like a geologic Bill Murray's Groundhog Day.

We found trilobites below and above and together with the archaeocyathids. We collected hundreds of pounds of exquisite trilobites specimens, now in wooden boxes on the way to some specialists in California for more precise taxonomic I.D. The team bulk-sampled the rock at every major lithological change, hoping to collect phosphatic fossils from early brachiopod ancestors - tommotiids. For more about the tommotiids, and the controversy over their origin (and the origin of brachiopods), you can read a short description about them on wikipedia. On the references cited at bottom, note that most of the authors were present on this Antarctic expedition.

When it comes to these small shelly fossils, only time will tell. The bulk samples are being sent to Sydney, AUS, where Glenn Brock will soak them in ascetic acid (vinegar) until the limestone matrix dissolves, and the phosphatic shelly fossils fall to the bottom of the bucket. These microscopic fossils will be analysed with Scanning Electron Microscope. The goal is to fill in the gaps and sort out exactly how brachiopods evolved into their currently accepted phylum.

Overall we spent 10 days at this site, piling into the skidoo and siglund sled every morning, traveling 3 miles over bumpy sastrugi to our parking spot, and walking up a really steep hill of scree to the land of many trilobites. On November 17, Another Twin Otter arrived in the midst of 40kt gusts and blowing snow, and transported us - taking two trips - to a new site in the Northern Churchill Range. Stay tuned - that blog post is coming up next.

Airplane camping at the Holyoake Range.  

Rare: sighting two otters in one place in the middle of nowhere, AntarcticaOur daily commute took us 2.5 miles to the base of this ridge. Here, Paul Myrow begins fossil hunting on day 1. Lars and Paul looking at the first Archaeocyathid fossil.

We couldn't have done better picking a scenic place to work. Typical good weather working conditions... Paul and Lars are walking across a 30m thick reef layer at the upper end of the lower cambrian. Typical cold and windy working condtions - the Big Red's stayed on all day. Thh meter stick is for Lars Stemmeriks isotope sample collection. Dr Glenn Brock and a rare, complete trilobite.Camp Life: We chose to eat outside during rare lulls in katabatic wind. On a melt pool near camp.... This will be slush in late December. Lars, Paul, and more 50cm isotope sampling on a windy day.

Retiring to the skidoo at the end of another windy work day.

The site of much sample collection

Antarctica 2011 Part 4 - last minute training...

This week has been all about getting our cargo into the system. Everything we take into the field must be checked, packed, sealed, labeled, and weighed, before it is "TCN'ed" into the cargo system (In Mcmurdo, TLA's - three letter acronyms - can become verbs).

Once our cargo is in the "system", we'll all know how much it weighs, and how much space it takes up, so that we'll know if it will all actually fit on the two twin otters that are being provided for our transportation out to Field Site #1: The Holyoake Range.

We've nearly wrapped it up. But with the weather being as good as it is (the storm is long gone), we've taken the last two days to do some glacier travel and crevasse rescue training while still enclosed within the "safety net" of the Mcmurdo system. Earlier today we traveled out to the Silver City icefall to stroll around with crampons on, and to practice rescuing backpacks from crevasses.

A few photos...

Lars H (in black) watches Lars S(in red/black) practicing his self-belay and self-arrest techiniques. Christian (green) and Paul (red) watch from the background. Thats Mount Erebus way back there...

Glenn Brock lives in Sydney, so it took him a while to get used to living and traveling on so much snow.

Christian Skovsted up close and personal with some of the blue ice from the Silver City icefall.

These are Paul Myrow's old Koflachs from the 1998/1999 season. I was shocked that so much wear and tear could be put onto a pair of boots in one season. Paul explained that it was all about the sharp, abrasive limestones and fissile shales and siltstones - tearing rubber off your boots piece by piece...

L to R: Lars S, Christian, and Paul working on a bit of crampon technique in the Silver City icefall.

We parked the Hagglund at Happy Camper, and walked across the edge of the Ross Ice Shelf to the top of the Silver City Icefall with a rope on.

Julian Hanna, from FSTP, leads half our team down from the Silver City Icefall. The crevasses are quite easy to see here - in the distance behind Julian. Castle Rock is at the far upper left corner. Erebus in the background.

Antarctica Part 3 - a small storm...

Today is Monday. The weather outside is awful.

In McMurdo terminology, weather conditions are divided into three categories:

Condition 3 - "Situation Normal". You may go about your business outdoors with no travel restrictions

Condition 2 - High winds, low temperatures, or poor visibility (or some combination thereof) prevails. There are restrictions to what can be done outdoors. Travel in field environments is obviously discouraged.

Condition 1 - Even higher winds (>55kts), lower temperatures (<-75°F with wind chill) and/or even worse visibility (<100m) is encountered. It doesn't reach condition 1 that often around here - though high winds on the edge of the ice shelf and out on the sea ice can easily restrict visibility.

Today is is Condition 2 in McMurdo and the road to Scott Base, but it's Condition 1 everywhere else... Not much to do outside, although I did manage to get a bit of cargo packed...

Some photos...

Every entryway into Crary is like an airlock. In bad, early season weather, one could see why...

The Galley (Building 155) is the blue one. Photo taken from the sundial bridge between Crary and the GalleyA lonely commuter braves the winds on his way to lunch. The building at left is Building 165 - housing Mac-ops, fixed wing, SFA, Mac-weather, etc... The Building at right is the "JSOC" building... "Just Slightly Off-Center"The weather may suck, but at least the work is hard... Martha Story has worked down here for the BFC for many years... Here, she's helping me locate fuel and bamboo flag-poles during the height of our lapse into Condition 2.