WAIS

This sign should probably read, "Welcome to WAIS - I hope that you do not plan to leave anytime soon."

WAIS = West Antarctica Inland Site

Shelley and I headed out to WAIS last Monday. We flew out there on a C130 with our cargo. It was great because the pilot let me sit upfront in the cockpit for the landing. When I first got up there I looked out the front window and was worried that we would never be able to land in all of the cloud cover. It was a solid sky of white clouds. It took be about 5 minutes before I realized that it wasn't cloud cover and was in fact the snow covered ground. It is amazing, you can see white in every direction. Imagine being stranded out in the middle of the ocean with water as far as you can see in every direction. If you replace the water with snow and ice, you're stading in the middle of WAIS. Sometimes it is even difficult to determine where the sky ends and the ground begins. The horizon just looks like a blend of beautiful white to blue transistions.

The pilot motioned to me and said, "Do you see the white light out there infront? That is the field camp." We could see the field camp from probably 100 miles away. It literally looked like a white blip in the snow. The landing was smooth on the snow runway.

The plan was for us to service the Kamiko-Slade site that is about a mile outside of WAIS. This site was not transmitting and needed to get back on the air. Then we were suppose to wait for the Twin Otter to show up to service our Erin and Elizabeth sites which are south of WAIS. Both of these sites needed a tower raise. Then we were planning to fly back to McMurdo with the Otter. We would stop at the Siple Dome field camp so that the Otter could get fuel and we could raise the tower at our site there.

As I said, that was the "plan". We ended up batting a .250.

The afternoon that we arrived we got our mountain tents set up. This is quite the process because in order to secure the tent from blowing away, we had to dig down in the snow and anchor the tent with bamboo sticks. Here is a picture of my tent the first night that I was in WAIS. Notice that my tent is sitting very nicely on top of the snow.

Just a few days later, after high winds and blowing snow. My tent was no longer sitting nicely on top of the snow.

Luckily, I had an idea that this would happen and was able to get out to my tent in the afternoon and dig it out. It was better than finding it when I went out to go to sleep that night.

Below is a picture of the galley, where we ate our meals.

The galley is a Jamesway tent. It is a semi-permanent tent that is used for the entire field season and then taken down and stored for the winter. It is nice because it has two stoves used to heat the Jamesway and a full kitchen in the back. Camille and John were our cooks and the food was great.

The second morning at WAIS Shelley and I went out to Kamiko-Slade and replaced the electronics, moved the instruments up on the tower and checked everything out. We heard later that night from our team back home that the station was transmitting. That was our one success for the trip.

Later that day, the Twin Otter that was scheduled to make it to WAIS was cancelled due to bad weather at Siple Dome. From Monday to Thursday we waited for a Twin Otter to show up, but bad weather at either Siple Dome or WAIS prevented it from flying. After Thursday, we decided to cancel our work out of WAIS and head back to McMurdo. We have 4 more sites to visit out of McMurdo that take priority over the tower raises out of WAIS. It took 2 more days before a C130 had sufficient weather to fly to WAIS, land and take back off. Now we are back, have showered, no longer have to use an outhouse and can sleep at night without having to hide our heads inside of our sleeping bags to keep our noses warm (the temperature ranged from -15 deg F to 0 deg F).

"Tent City"

Pegasus North

Last Sunday, John and I went out to Pegasus North to reinstall the instruments that had been removed earlier in the season. This AWS is at the end of the Pegasus runway so it was nice because we got to see a C17 land. You can see the TransAntarctic mountain range behind the station (note - if you click on the picture, you can see it in full screen). We had incredible weather and spectacular views.

In the picture above you can see the size and significance of Mt. Erebus. The brown section infront of the volcano is the piece of land that McMurdo is on. On the right side of this land you can see Ob Hill. McMurdo is tucked into the small cove in the front. This view shows how small McMurdo is in the grand scheme of Antarctica.

Here is a picture of the C17 that we saw land. I love the mountains in the background. You can see the amount of cargo ready to be loaded onto the plane. The amount of cargo that can fit into these planes is amazing. Later that afternoon, Matthew flew out on this C17 to head back to Christchurch.

Twin Otter

I apologize that I have some catching up to do on the blog. I will get to more on that in the next post. Before Shelley and I went out to West Antarctica, we had a day trip out to the Vito and Emilia sites. These sites are farther away than the ones that we were visiting at the beginning of the season. Therefore, we got to fly on a Twin Otter. These planes are great. You can see in the picture above that they are ski planes. The pilots are a fun bunch out of Canada and have great accents. In these planes, the cargo is loaded right into the cabin with us and the seats fold down from the sides of the wall. We had a great flight out to Vito. We flew along the edge of the ice shelf and could see the open water of the Ross Sea. The darker blue part in the middle of the picture is the ocean. I could see an iceberg floating out there.



At both sites, Vito and Emilia, we did tower raises. Due to snow accumulation, the towers on our AWSs need to raised every couple of years (how often depends on the site location) in order to keep the instruments above the snow. This involves removing all of the instruments from the tower, adding a 7' tower section to the top of the existing tower and then reassembling the instruments. We were lucky that we had two morale people to help us on these tower raises. The morale group are a list of people who work in McMurdo and do not have a chance to get out into the field. If we have extra room on our trips, we can take a few people from the list. We had Levonne and Jason to help us and they were great! Here is a group pic.

AWS in the News

There is a new study out on Antarctica. The study used some of our automated weather stations for its research. It nice to know that what we are doing is useful.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090121144049.htm

Penguins...ALMOST!!

John, Nick (he works for Aerosonde which will fly an unmanned aircraft over Terra Nova Bay in September for one of John's other projects) and myself hiked up Hut Ridge Trail last night. Just past Scott's Hut we could see penguin footprints on the ice. Therefore, I know that they are out and about. Now I just need to catch them at the right time. I am not sure how well the resolution will come out on the web, but here is a picture of the footprints on the ice.

From the top we got a great view of Erebus. It was funny because when Matthew and I hiked this a couple of weekends ago, I did not even know that Erebus was back there. It was too cloudy to see anything. So this was a pleasant surprise at the summit.

We took advantage of the low sun angle to get a good shadow picture from the summit as well.

Back to penguin searching. To be continued....

Linda and Ferrell

Last night John, Shelley and I headed back out to Linda and Ferrell. This time we flew in an A-Star helicopter called the "3-6 Hotel". Our first trip, the day before, was in a 212 helicopter (these were used in the Vietnam war). The weather was hit and miss during the trip, but we were able to make it to both AWS sites.

At Linda we attempted to fix the electronics, but it seems that there must be something else not working. We replaced the old electronic box with a new one that we know works and it is still not transmitting. Therefore, it looks like we'll have another ride out to Linda. Shelley also dug a snowpit for one of her projects. Here is a picture of the Linda site with the A-Star helo.


After Linda, we headed over to Ferrell. At Ferrell Shelley fixed the ADG, which measures the amount of snow accumulation at the site. We also dug another snowpit here.


The light there was pretty flat, but it was cool because the clouds were causing the sky to give us the closest thing that we will see to a sunset for quite some time. Here is a picture of John enjoying it.

Helo Ride

Yesterday John, Shelley and I got out for a helicopter (aka helo) ride. It was a "ride" because we never got to our final destination, the Linda and Ferrel AWS sites. We took off, but the fog/clouds were so bad over the ice shelf that the pilot could no longer see the horizon to tell which way was up. It was a fun ride though.

Here is a picture of White Island and you can see some of the fog infront of it.

Here is a picture on our way back to McMurdo where the ice shelf meets the sea ice. There are some seals surrounding the meltponds.

Launching a Weather Balloon

Last night I had the opportunity to stay up and launch the 12Z weather balloon out of McMurdo. The observer, Carol, was nice enough to allow me to do the actual launch. Luckily for me, it was not too windy outside. As you can see, the weather balloon is quite large and she mentioned that once the winds get up to about 30 knots, the launcher will feel a little like Mary Poppins. Unfortunately for my balloon, the GPS went out on it's ascent and another balloon had to be launched. Fortunately for Matthew, it meant that he got a chance to launch one as well.

Battery Boxes

I have been doing some work that does not include running all over the continent. In the lab I have mostly been building battery boxes, as shown above. This includes a lot of soldering and connections of electrical parts. I ran into a few gliches, but I think that I have the process down now. I can assemble plugs onto cable wiring, solder i-hooks onto wires and even assemble the battery without making too many fireworks. I even used a voltmeter to test the system out after it was assembled and believe it or not, it works!

Willie Take Two and Three

A couple of days ago Matthew and I headed back out to Willie Field. We got to take snow mobiles out to the site. We put the training to good use and had a lot of fun. The reason that we had to go back is that it seems that a lot of our cargo and instrumentation will be arriving late to McMurdo. Therefore, we continue to take apart the AWS sites that are close and easily accessible so that we can put those parts at sites that we must fly to. Once the new parts arrive, the plan is to reassemble what we've disassembled. So we went out to Willie and took down the official AWS. Here is picture of the site while it's assembled. We have to climb the tower to install/disassemble the instruments. I love my job!


Shelley and I went back to Willie again today. We needed to take the transmitter out of the other test site. We took the Pisten Bully, which is always good for a laugh. It seems that some seals have followed Oden in. We saw about 30 seals on the way out and back. We also got to see a C130 land at the Willie Field Runway.

Hiking

I've had a chance to do some hiking here in McMurdo. There are a few nice hiking trails around town that you do not need to sign out in order to hike.

Observation Hill (aka Ob Hill)



This is a hike up a small hill that looks about 750 ft over McMurdo Station. I did this hike by myself on a very clear, beautiful day. I had a good view of Mt Erebus with it's plume against the blue sky.



And I got a good bird's eye view of McMurdo...



Overall, it was a great first hike in Antarctica!


Ob Hill Loop

This is a trail that goes around Observation Hill. Shelley and I did this loop after my COMPs exam. I needed a break and some fresh air to clear my mind. The walk is nice because you get around the hill and closer to the sea ice. We saw two seals laying out on the sea ice, sunny themselves. One of them moves it's tail around a bit, but other than that they seemed quite lazy and content. When we came around the far side of the hill we saw that the ice breaker, Oden, was on its way into the McMurdo Sound. Oden comes through in order to break up the ice before the large cargo ship will come in with many of the goods for those people who will be wintring over. I have heard that sometimes the icebreaker has to go back and forth up to three times to make a clear passageway. I am excited to see what happens because I have heard that sometimes penguins and whales will follow the ice breaker in. On the last part of this walk, Shelley and I got to see a helicopter take off and fly almost directly overhead.

Hut Point Trail

Matthew and I did this trail this past weekend. This trail goes over to Scott's Discovery Hut, which was built in 1902 by the British "Discover Expedition" led by Captain Robert F. Scott. The people of this crew were the first to step on land in the McMurdo area. The outside of the hut is in pristine condition. I was surprised that it has held up so well. I was a little spooked when I saw a dead seal lying on the front porch. Matthew explained that the explorers used to burn the blubber from the seals for warmth. Due to the cold conditions, the seal has not deteriated at all. It was amazing. We continued to walk past the hut up to Arrival Heights where we encountered many skuas. Skuas are known for their dive bombing powers when any pedestrian is carrying food.



We also got a better view of Oden...


I am hoping to get back out to this trail again sometime soon to look for penguins and whales following the icebreaker in. Hopefully I'll have more pictures to follow.

Melis

Snow Mobile Training

A couple of days ago John, Shelley and I got to go to snow mobile training. It was really fun. Our instructor, Toby, taught us how to fix the engine in case we broke down out in the field. Luckily for us, two-cycle engines are not too complicated. We can now change the spark plugs, change the belt and check the fuel line for clogs. Then we got to go out on the ice shelf and test out the sleds. Manually starting the sled was the hardest part for me. It's like pulling the rip cord to start a lawn mower, but doing so on slippery ice. Once we all got the engines going, we went out for a ride. Toby took us through an obstacle course and then we went out on the open road and got the sleds up to 50 mph. Needless to say, it was a good day!

Melis

Pisten Bully

The day after snow school Shelley and I went out to the AWS site at Willie Field. At this site there is an official weather stations and a test weather station. Our job was to remove the instruments from the test station so that they could be used in another location. To get there, we took one of Antarctica's most luxurious forms of transportation, a Pisten Bully. As you can see in the picture above, this vehicle is great for the snow. It was snowing, windy and cold that day, but we were toasty warm inside the Pisten.

Rollin' Heavy

Morning after sleeping in the snow trench

Inside of snow trench

The first that I learned at snow school is that "we roll heavy" in Antarctica. This means that when we go into the field we bring as much gear as we possibly can. Taking a helicopter, Twin Otter or C130 to a campsite is the Antarctic equivalent of car camping. After hearing this, I felt much better about my 3 bags full of gear.

We started off the class going over basic safety information in the classroom. From there we took the "Delta" which is a large two part vehicle with tires that are taller than I am. The students were sandwiched into the back with 10 people on each side staring at each other. While traveling over the transition from the land to the ice shelf each side had a turn of being tossed into the laps of the people across from them. One guy just yelled out, "I don't like roller coasters!" It was quite amusing.

The "Delta" took us out onto the ice shelf and dropped us off about a half mile from the "i-hut". I believe that this structure is also called a Jamesway. It's kind of like a permanent, very large tent. It has a stove, kitchen, beds, etc. This is where the instructors slept, I'll get to where we spent the night in a bit. So we hiked into the "i-hut" which some of the students weren't too happy about. I thought it was pretty amazing. It was a perfect blue sky, about 40 deg F and we were completely surrounded by snow, ice and mountains. I don't think that I could have been happier. At the i-hut we learned about camping stoves and how to use them. Luckily for me, it was the same stove that Tom and I own. After this we headed out onto the ice about a quarter mile from the i-hut.

This location is where we would be spending the night. We learned how to setup Scott tents. These tents are shaped like a tee pee, have very heavy walls and are suppose to be very good in the windy Antarctic environment. We also learned how to setup mountain tents, which are basic four season tents. The interesting part was how to stake the tent down. We had to dig holes in the snow, wrap the tent guidelines around a bamboo stick, bury the stick and then use a slip knot and a trucker's hitch to cinch the tent down. It was quite the process, but very effective. We also got to build a snow wall to protect out campsite from the strong southerly wind blowing in. Next we piled all of our gear into a large heap and covered it with snow. We left this to snow hardened so that we could later build this into a Quincy snow hut/cave. Before leaving, the instructors showed us how to build snow trenches and a snow kitchen to cook dinner in. The instructors then left and told us that by 8:30 am we had to be all packed up and ready for pickup.

We boiled water and had some dehydrated meals for dinner. Then the group started working on the Quincy snow hut. We had to dig a hole in one side of it to pull all of our bags out of. We were excited because we were thinking that about 5 people would be able to sleep in the Quincy. After we got all of the gear out we found out that it would only hold 2 to 3 people. The people who eventually slept in the Quincy continued to dig a tunnel into the Quincy. From what these people said, it was a lot of work for a one night stay, but would probably be worth it if someone was staying for 4 or 5 nights.

A few other people, including myself, started to build snow trenches to sleep in. There were not enough tents for people to sleep in, so it meant that someone was going to have to sleep in the snow. In total, there were 5 of us that stayed in trenches. Each trench varied quite a bit. Some people made very elaborate trenches with beds, shelves, etc. Most of these people had trouble cutting snow blocks large enough to act as a roof. (oh right, I forgot to mention that our clear sky had disappeared and it was now overcast and snowing. For my snow trench I dug a 2'x2' hole in the ground. From there I dug out an area underneath the snow for me to lay down in. After that I needed to find a way to build a cover for the 2'x2' opening. I tried to use snow blocks, but each of these broke on me. I had the sleep kit that I will eventually use in West Antarctica and it had a tent in it. So took the rainfly out of my bag and used that to cover the opening to my trench. It might have been cheating, but I like to think of it as being creative. I slept very well in the snow trench and stayed very warm.

The next morning we had breakfast, packed up and were ready for our 8:30 am pickup. We had a few more things to learn and a few scenarios to go through. For instance we had to walk around with white buckets on our heads in order to simulate whiteout conditions. It was quite funny. We also used HF radios to call the South Pole and to get a weather forecast from MAC OPs in McMurdo. HF radios are straight out of the tv show, MASH!! I am convinced that we are using left overs from the Vietnam war. The HF radios weigh about 10 lbs each and you have string the antennae out over bamboo poles (it looks like Christmas lights). I must say that as amusing as this way, the radios worked extremely well. And if nothing else, I got to talk to the South Pole and that was pretty cool.

Once we made it back to McMurdo we had to watch a few videos in the classroom and then practice putting on helicopter flight helmets and seatbelts. I hope that I will have the opportunity to fly in a helicopter. As you can imagine, after class I was very excited to take a shower and to change into some dry clothes.

I miss you all!
Melis

Off to Snow School

I am off to snow school this morning. I have about 3 bags of gear packed and ready to go. This is not like the light gear backpacking that I'm used to. All that I know so far is that we will have one hour of classroom training and then we head out to the field. I believe that we will be trained on some things out there and then the instructors will leave us for the night. It should be fun. I'm really excited. I will report more when I get back.

Melis

Life on the Ice

Me, John, Matthew and Shelley at Willie Field

I am really enjoying being in McMurdo. I don't even have to cook or do dishes. It's fabulous!

The past couple of days we have spent unpacking the cargo that was shipped down from Wisconsin. This mostly includes different parts and tools for building and repairing the weather stations. For the time being, we are just organizing this equipment until we have a better idea of which field sites we will get flight time to go to. Therefore, we currently have some downtime until we know when and were will be flying. I have been taking advantage of this time to study for my COMPs exam and to explore the base a bit. I hiked up to Observation Hill today. The views were incredible. I could see McMurdo, the New Zealand base, the Pegasus runway, Mt Erebus and the TransAntarctic Mountain range. I am hoping to have a chance to walk over to the New Zealand base tomorrow. It is located about 2 miles down the island from McMurdo.

Oddly enough, I had a chance to go to church this morning. There is a chapel in McMurdo and masses for different denominations are held throughout the day. There were about 10 people at mass and therefore everyone had to sign up for a job to do throughout the mass. I got to be the "Welcomer". It was fun.

That is about all that I have for now...

Melis

McMurdo Station

Me inside of the LC130 (the "L" at the beginning of the name means that the plane has skis)

LC130s at the runway at Willie Field

We have arrived in McMurdo. The flight down was much better than I expected. The C130 is definitely a military, cargo plane with seats made of webbing. Although the forecasters had predicted heavy turbulence, the flight was surprisingly smooth. The views were incredible and I even got to sneak up into the cockpit and take a few pictures. Everyone on the plane was really nice. All of the crew was out of Scotia airbase, so it was nice to talk to some people from back home. I even ran into an old GE co-worker. I guess that it is a small world. Landing on the ice shelf was incredibly smooth. Walking on the ice shelf is interesting because you are standing on snow, but you do not sink down into it, yet it is not ice. It is difficult to explain. We had an incredibly clear day and there was a good view on Mt Erebus (the southernmost active volcano). I could see the "smoke" stack against the clear blue sky. This was a good opportunity for me to test out my new camera because we had a delay out on the runway. All of the service vehicles were stuck and could not pick us up. McMurdo has now had 13 or 14 days straight of above freezing temperatures, which is very rare. Therefore, the "roads" were melting and slushy, hence the vehicles being stuck. Eventually, "Ivan" the terrabus came to our rescue. Once I can post pictures, I'll post a picture of Ivan. The tires are larger than I am and it can probably fit about 40 people on the bus. My nephew, Zac would love this mode of transportation.

Eventually we made it into McMurdo. It's a fun little "city". I'm still learning my way around because every building looks the same. We got some dinner, some sleep and then breakfast. I am now off to Outdoor Training, where I will learn where I can and cannot walk, hike, bike, ski, etc. Sounds like fun to me!

Miss you all!

Melis