Tall Tower

Our team has been busy prepping for our trip to Tall Tower. We completed all of our training and have gathered all of our camping gear (i.e. tents, sleeping bags, etc.) and food. Gathering our gear and food was a bigger task than I had anticipated and it took us almost three full days to complete.

There will be four of us traveling to Tall Tower - myself, John Cassano (my boss, an atmospheric scientist), Ben Jolly (a Kiwi atmospheric scientist), and Susan Detweiler (our mountaineer). As I mentioned in a previous post, Tall Tower is about 100 miles away from McMurdo and we will use the South Pole Traverse road to get there. We will be traveling by snow mobile, with each of us driving a snow mobile with about 1200 lbs of gear attached to the back. This seems like a lot of weight to be carrying, but almost half of this weight is fuel alone. We are estimating that we'll get about 7 mpg on this trip (as you can imagine, a 1200 lb load can really diminish the miles per gallons), so we need to haul a decent amount of fuel to get to Tall Tower and back. Additionally, each sled will average about 50 lbs of food, 150 lbs of science equipment, and 500 lbs of gear. Two of our snow mobiles and loaded sleds are shown in the picture below. It took us about 8 hours today to get all of the sleds loaded and attached to the snow mobiles.

Two of our snow mobiles with loaded sleds attached to the back

We are unsure of how long it will take for us to drive from McMurdo to Tall Tower. We were originally estimating about 6-8 hours, but after driving the snow mobiles with the sleds on the back we think it will take a bit longer. The NSF snow mobile speed limit is 25 mph and we'll need to stop often to make sure people are warm, fed, and hydrated. Once we reach Tall Tower, we'll need to setup camp. This will include setting up our tents - 4 mountain tents for sleeping, an Arctic Oven for a working-community tent, and a Scott tent for a bathroom. We will also build a snow wall to protect our camp from the almost persistent winds that occur at Tall Tower. At some point we'll start melting snow and cooking some dinner. I have a feeling that this will be a long day and that we will all sleep well in our tents, no matter how cold they may be.

Mountain tent - this is similar to the tents we will be sleeping in

 On the left is a Scott Tent - this will be our "bathroom"

Our plan is to leave fairly early on Tuesday (your Monday) morning. At that point, I will no longer have access to internet and therefore, will not post to the blog for about two weeks. Although, I will have my camera and computer with me, so I'll take plenty of pictures and post to the blog when I return. I will miss you all for a couple of weeks, but I am looking forward to sharing my adventures with you when I return.