Tall Tower Guests

As you can imagine, any contact with the outside world was kind of a big deal at Tall Tower. During our two week stay, we had two such encounters. The first was when a skua (the Antarctic equivalent of a seagull) flew into camp and the second was when a Twin Otter came to pick up Ben.

The skua visited us on Friday January 17^th. John, Ben, and I were working in the Arctic Oven. All of a sudden Suz says, “Hey, there’s a skua out here.” So we all ventured out of the tent to check it out. The bird flew around camp for a bit. He tried to land on our tents a couple of times, but wasn’t able to. Eventually, he landed next to John’s tent. He hung out for a few minutes and then was off. It is rare for a skua to travel this far onto the ice sheet. My guess is that he was looking for food, since skuas are definitely the scavengers of Antarctica.

 Skua next to John's tent

The Twin Otter picked up Ben on Monday January 20^th. It was a beautiful morning with light winds and partly cloudy skies. To be honest, Ben got lucky. I think this was the only day that we had weather nice enough for an Otter to fly into camp. Once the Otter landed, we loaded up Ben’s snowmobile, sled, an empty 55 gal drum, a full 55 gal drum of premix, and a bunch of other random camp items that we did not need. The Otter was pretty full by the time Ben crawled into the back of it.

Twin Otter at Tall Tower

After Ben and the Otter departed, it was just Suz, John and I at Tall Tower until we packed up camp and headed back to McMurdo on Sunday January 26^th.