Christchurch, NZ to McMurdo Station: Antarctica 2010/11!

Disembarking from the C-17 at McMurdo's sea ice runway. I just checked my frequent flyer miles balance  with American Airlines. 12,600 miles were just added to it. Hmmm... Its that time of the year again - I must be in New Zealand - correction - Antarctica! Our C-17 flight from Christchurch to McMurdo just arrived a few days back. I spent two nights and two days in Christchurch - gathering the usual assortment of Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, walking around the botanical gardens, and looking at the remaining building damage from the September 4th magnitude 7.1 Canterbury quake. Aftershocks have occurred on a daily basis. I was woken more than once by a shaking bed and shaking hotel room.

Inside the tightly packed C-17 from Christchurch, New Zealand to McMurdo Station, Antarctica

I'm down here for another quick season. This time I've been hired to work for a team of four geologists led by Dr. John Goodge from the University of Minnesota in Duluth. Dr. Goodge is accompanied by Dr. Mark Fanning, Dr. Jeff Vervoort, and PhD student Tanya Dreyer. I'm the field mountaineer for this project (G-503). The team is searching for chunks of Eastern Antarctic basement rocks that have been drug (grid) westward by the East Antarctic Ice Sheet, and deposited in moraines on the far eastern fringes of the Central Trans-Antarctic Mountains. Its a very sleuthy project - akin to finding needles in a haystack. More on that later.

The rocks we want to collect will be heavy. We need rock boxes to get them home. We also need these rock boxes to get our food to a deep field camp. Here, one of McMurdo's support staff helps me band and prepare 75 rock boxes for transport.

McMurdo Station and McMurdo Sound, from the back door of the Science Support Center.

My job title may say "Field Mountaineer" but for now I'm just the logistics person until the group gets on the ground (I showed up five days early). That means prepping gear, getting food ready, requesting helicopter support time, scheduling meetings and training, etc...  Not much "mountaineering" going on right now at McMurdo Station. Just prep work.

If all goes well we'll be in the air in a few days, searching for Precambrian granite and gneiss clasts in moraines within the Convoy Range, near the Allan Hills (famous spot for both meteorite-hunters and a spectacular petrified forest).

Eventually, the goal will be to fly to CTAM, about 550 miles south of here (about 300 miles or so from the South Pole) and use it as a hub to reach another 10 or so field sites and up to two smaller field camps. From there, we'll use skidoos to roam around hard, blue ice on the fringes of the Eastern Antarctic Ice Sheet where it abuts against the Central Trans-Antarctic Mountains - searching, once again, for old, transported remnants of the Eastern Antarctic crystalline basement. Stay tuned...

Happy winter solstice!!!

Erebus blows steam and smoke at over 12.400 feet above us. 

Today is the longest day of the year. We've had 24 hours of sunlight since mid-October, but today we have 24 long hours of sunlight. 

We are celebrating the sun's highest circle in the sky over the austral summer this evening. At work today, I slathered on an extra thick layer of sunscreen. Nick and I went out on the sea ice for the day. We are in the process of taking down all the flagged sea ice routes that grantees and other McMurdo workers use to travel between MCM and destinations out in McMurdo Sound. The ice conditions have deteriorated to the point where we have closed all sea ice routes except for the road to the airport. Now FSTP is charged with removing the hundreds and hundreds of bamboo flag poles lining the routes at high frequency. 

Here are a few random shots from yesterday:

 

Crevasse patterns on Erebus

This Weddell seal has the right idea of what to do on a nice, calm, warm, summer solstice - lie around and sleep... A creature after my own heart. 

Nick and i couldn't resist camera mayhem at work today. Shutters were clacking open and closed many times a second. 

Grrrrr! I like eating snow!!!

zzzzzzzzz......

Nick with the lower flanks of Erebus behind. His sled is full of dozens of flags from our deflagging mission. 

Nick, closer up. 

Skiing the horizontal: skate skiing near McMurdo.

In the lands of infinite whiteness surrounding Ross Island, there is little relief. Anything steep enough to ski is usually riddled in crevasses, and would require mechanized means to approach. The NSF and powers-that-be frown upon recreational behavior that could be construed as "reckless". Understandably, it would be most embarrassing for those of us on the search and rescue team to get ourselves in trouble, only to need the assistance of our fellow SAR members...

So the challenge is to make skiing the horizontal fun. One plus is that there is no shortage of flatness here. In five minutes out the door, I could be on the sea ice down below town. Five miles of flat skate skiing would get me to the edge of the McMurdo ice shelf, and the land of Happy Camper and Willy field. With good skate technique, five miles can go by quickly. Danny and I have been trying to learn (well, he's new at it) or relearn (its been ten years for me) how to skate ski. The V-1, V-2, and V-2 alternate have been challenging us. I think I am finally starting to get the basic strokes, but I am pushing the limits of my own balance. I am far, far, far away from catching Per Elofsson, but the joy  of skating the William's field road on a calm sunny Sunday borders on euphoric. The views are spectacular, the excercize is thrilling after 60+ hours of work, and the conditions on a good day rival those of groomed skate tracks at home. When I am not skating, I am thinking about when I will be  able to skate again. 

Danny showing the happy campers some finer points of block - cutting. 

 

Danny skates with Erebus in the background. 

The Kiwi icefall and Erebus

Danny grabbed a few shots of me and my sloppy technique. 

Danny heading back to the I-hut with White Island in the distance. I drove the snowmachine back. 

When the wind blows around here, the skate skis get shelved in favor of our kites and traditional backcountry set-ups. With a reasonable sized kite and a breeze of 10 or so knots, one can glide at a speed of 15-20 knots depending on snow conditions and wind direction. Last sunday Nick and I kited the Willy Field road. I moved at a blistering pace of 2MPH most of the time, as the wind was simply two calm for my small 5m2 kite. Nick had more fabric to pull him along, and so left me in the dust. 

Nick on Willy Field Road.

A Basler, an Otter, and for Hercules... All sitting at the busiest airport inside the arctic circle. 

Putting away the kites at willy. 

On a more recent Happy Camper earlier this week, Brian and I worked together. I brought my skate skis of course, betting that the winds would be too weak to kite. Fortunately for me, when I was skating the wind was dead calm. I traveled a few miles, socialized with my happy camper crew, and returned to our I-hut. Brian had been working on dinner - pan-seared salmon with a blackberry and orange-marinated onion sauce, accompanied by a veggy stirfry and quinoa. We eat well at the instructor hut. When I got back there though, the breeze had picked up and Brian was arcing middle-speed turns and long reaches between our hut and the happy campers. Mt Erebus was right behind him. I couldn't resist, so I grabbed the camera and ignored dinner for a while. 

Castle rock loop, the local recreational walking/skiing route, is visible in the background. 

Brian on another reach past the I-hut

Happy Camper and the Silver City Icefall in the background. 

Mt Erebus

Brian celebrates a good day of work, and a good night of skiing and feasting. 

The great thaw: Springtime in the McMurdo Dry Valleys

Looking up the Taylor Glacier...

Mud season has arrived in McMurdo. My tried and true white croc's aren't so white anymore. The volcanic mud and debris that makes up the foundation of McMurdo has finally begun to thaw. Steaming puddles of standing water and slush make up a gauntlet of which one must run when crossing from one building to another. The Skua's are out now too - no doubt prepping to tear my breakfast out of my hands as I am running from the galley to the Science support building for my morning meetings (often one minute from being late). 

My time at Lake Hoare camp passed smoothly and seamlessly last week. We lost internet when I was there, so I did not have an opportunity to blog again after my previous entry, and now this week is as busy as usual. Danny and I will be on another happy camper starting tomorrow. 

I will just keep remembering my time at Lake Hoare the way one might remember a particularly good beach vacation. The quiet at night was unforgettable. McMurdo, for its small size, still has a helluva lot of urban noise. Helicopters shake windows by the hour, heating systems provide a depressing monotonous hum in most buildings. Heavy tracked vehicles groan up and down the dirt road between town and the sea ice. A chorus of reverse beeps always seems to reverberate through town. 

The dry valleys are everything but that. It was as if the area we camp in is acoustically endowed with the power of noise cancellation. Absolute... deafening... silence....

Most of our last work days were as calm as the nights. We had a particularly memorable 7k walk down the Taylor Glacier - all on sparkling blue ice. Not a single step was on a level plane. Even though the glacier was predominantly flat, the nature of its sun-cupped surface insured that every time a cramponed foot was placed on the ice, my ankle bent in a new direction. With crampons removing a foots' ability to bend, a lot of power gets transferred to the heel. I spend all summer long wearing crampons on my feet for guiding work in Chamonix. I walk for miles and miles with crampons on every week. But for some reason, walking a few miles down the Taylor glacier did more wear and tear on my leather-boot-clad feet (maybe that was a mistake!) than an entire summer of guiding. 

The lower we got on the glacier, the more interesting the terrain got. We dropped down crystal  blue steps of ice, Liz surfed a nice pipe, and Hassan and Liz both were ecstatic to see running water  - its a big deal around here. They are focused on mass-balance - or input and output - of glaciers. And when liquid water starts to finally form and flow down the surface of the glacier, one can know intrinsically that the glacier's loss of mass is now accelerating towards it's maximum for the year. 

Sunday at Lake Hoare was relaxing. I slept till 9:00am, had some cereal, watched a DVD, then went for a several hour power hike up Mt Rae, overlooking the Canada Glacier and Lake Hoare. There should be some images below. Enjoy!

Hassan and the lower Taylor Glacier

On a free moment in the afternoon, I gave two scientists, Anika and Magic, a ride across Lake Hoare to a trail back to their home base at Lake Fryxell.

From Mt Rae there are great views of Lake Hoare Camp. 

I took a self portrait while creeping along the ridge up Mt Rae. 

A new camp on Lake Bonney - below the terminus of the Taylor Glacier. 

Walking down the Taylor Glacier

Somewhere low on the Taylor Glacier, in this photo Hassan and Liz have just spotted this season's first liquid water flowing across the ice surface.

Only a few km left to go...

Liz is studying Cryoconites: google it if you want to read more. They are found all over the place on all of the Taylor valley glaciers. Here is one that drained out of a crack in the ice. I was able to fit in it. Liz always suspected that there was a core of organic debris supporting a basic life form deep inside the cryoconites - here is proof. 

Here is a beautiful, clear, blue, cryoconite near the terminus of the Taylor. Doesn't look like an eye?

The best way to commute to work in the morning....

Life in the valleys (the dry ones of McMurdo that is!)

Ahhh, living the good life. 

Helicopter-assisted field-work isn't so bad. A big, noisy machine flies you to the top of a specatular, remote mountain in Antarctica. You walk down the mountain, collecting data and/or samples along the way. The Helicopter picks you up, flies you back to a comfortable place with wifi, heat, and catered food. Not bad at all! And though our excersise is only "down-hill" it's WAY better than hanging out in McMurdo!

Today the three of us flew up to the base of the Howard glacier. We kicked our survival bags out of the helicopter there (for the return flight) and continued to the top of the Howard Glacier, where the pilot said good-bye and headed off to fly a busy schedule. 

We stuck to the same program as the past few days; measuring the amount of snow gained up high as compared with the amount of ice lost down low. At the bottom of the Howard Glacier, a small step ice was just steep enough to warrant the use of a rope. Out it came, and in a few minutes we were back at our survival bags, waiting for Marco the pilot to come pick us up. Less than an hour afterwords, it seemed, we were back at Lake Hoare where Rae and Sandra had baked up nachos for dinner. Our other dinner companions, an American named Robyn, and three kiwis named Azlin, Ian, and Heigl, all munched food and passed around beer. Their group of four are busy diving in Lake Hoare, just a few hundred yards away. They are studying plant life growing on the bottom - in an environment that is so incredibly depleted of nutrients, and extremely low in kinetic energy  that life is at its absolute limit of existance. The environment at the bottom of some of these lakes is analogous to what it was like on earth when life first formed - only a little colder. In addition, it offers a glimpse of what opportunities life might have to evolve in environments such as prehistoric frozen Martian lakes, and the water below the frozen surface of Europa (Jupiter's ice-covered watery moon).

Life at Lake Hoare camp is cold from about 3:00pm, until 9:00 pm, during which time we are in the shadow of Mt Rae. Now, at about 9:30pm, the sun is shining on us again from the head of the Taylor glacier, and it is just about possible to walk around outside in nothing but a long sleeve shirt. I think I might wander out down there soon and look at ice bubble patterns. 

Farewell for now. 

-DT

An aerial view of the Canada Glacier and Lake Hoare camp, barely visible where the glacier meets Lake Hoare on the left side of the image. 

The view south from the head of the Howard Glacier. The large valley glacier is the Ferrar Glacier, the large mountain back and right is Mt Lister - the highest peak in the Royal Society Range at over 14,000 feet. 

Hassan and Liz tying in at the drop-off point. Mt Erebus smokes in the distance on Ross Island. 

Hassan packing up the slow-shoes, thankfully we didn't need them. 

A zoomed in view of Mt Lister

When ablation stakes melt out or are otherwise blown away, new holes are drilled and new stakes inserted. Here, Hassan and Liz man the Kovacs drill. 

Heading down the Howard Glacier. In the distance, the Canada Glacier spreads once it enters the Taylor Valley. Mt Rae is in the center distance (in the Asgard range). Suess glacier plunges out of sight on the left. 

Looking northeast into the Taylor Valley. Canada Glacier on the left, Commonwealth glacier in the distance on the right. 

Like Mars, but with snow patches. 

Hurry up and wait: once we made off of the Howard onto our survival bags, all we had to do was wait for the chopper. 

Beer and Nachos - staple of any Near-field Antarctic research camp. 

Liz at left and Rae at right laugh at my geekyness behind the other side of the lens. Sandra can be easily identified because she is covering her face.