Leaving the ice

  It's been almost a year since I arrived in Antarctica. Although most of my time here was spent patching drywall in building 155, I have been lucky enough to see and do some amazing things, and meet so many incredible people. In two days I will be in New Zealand, eating fresh produce and trying to wrap my head around what I was doing here for the last year.

  The first flight of winfly came in about six weeks ago, changing the dynamic of winter. All sorts of new people looking all tan and happy wandering around. It was weird. Two days later was the first sunrise. I got to take a trip out to the runway to see it. It's hard to describe the feeling of seeing the sun for the first time in four months. I was also lucky enough to get to go out for a day flagging a road on the sea ice. We went all the way out to Cape Evans and got to go inside Robert Scott's hut. I remember as a kid seeing pictures of Scott's hut in National Geographic and thinking how cool it would be to go there. Well, I actually did. It was amazing. Seeing all the artifacts that were left there and knowing how few people ever get to go there was the highlight of my Antarctic experience. The only problem was that my camera battery died right after I got there. Lucky for me, two of the guys I was with used to be professional photographers and gave me some awesome pictures. On the way back I saw the most spectacular sunset of my life. It was a good day.

  So here I am, packing my bags and saying my goodbyes wondering when I will be back here. I had a contract for next winter remodeling building 210, which is what I was supposed to be doing this winter,   but it just got put on hold again. I now have an alternate contract for next winter. We'll see what happens. I can honestly say that this was an incredible experience and I do want to come back, maybe not for a full year next time. Winter does do strange things to your brain. You get a lot of memory loss and a thousand mile stare. I think it's due to vitamin D deficiency. The funny thing is, you don't realize it until new people show up. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed my blog. If you want more info on McMurdo station, check out www.mcmurdo.usap.gov. There is a lot of interesting stuff about the US Antarctic program. If I get it together, I'll do another post with a bunch of pictures of this season. Hopefully I'll be on a beach somewhere on a tropical island.   

Full moon over Observation Hill

Iceberg at Cape Evans. This broke off the Erebus glacier tongue. Photo by Deven Stross.

Most amazing sunset ever. Photo by Deven Stross

First sunrise at the airfield

Scott's hut  

Sunset at Scott's hut

Me inside Scott's hut

Me in front of Mt Erebus

Nacreous clouds. 

The Hagglund in front of a sundog on the way to Cape Evans. Photo by Deven Stross.

Winfly is almost here

  The first flight of winfly will be here in two weeks. Everyone is excited because today we found out we will be getting fresh produce! I would do almost anything for a fresh salad at this point. It seems crazy that the winter season is almost over and that I will be going home in a few months. It's hard to believe I've been here for almost a year. It's been busy around McMurdo lately. The runway needs to get set up, buildings need to be opened, and I still have 20 rooms to remodel before October. We have our last two day weekend in a few days. One of the benefits of working here in the winter is that you get one two day weekend each month. Two of my friends are having their wedding ceremony on Saturday and it should be quite the party. You can't legally get married in Antarctica, but they decided to have a party anyway. Fun fact: Even though you can't really get hitched here, you can begin divorce proceedings.

  The weather is getting worse lately. The runway has been -40 for the last few days and the wind has picked up a lot. August is always the coldest and windiest month. Everybody hopes for a condition 1 storm so we can get a day off, but the station almost never goes con 1. Only if there is blowing debris that could kill you does con 1 get called. There has been a storm here that blew a sheet of plywood into  a building like a knife.

  I've been trying to sort out all my photos from this winter and I will make an effort to post more of them. In the meantime here are some photos of the aurora australis, the moon, and our station winter photo. 

Daylight is returning!

 

 

 

  It's funny when I think about how long it's been since I have seen daylight. I'm actually suprised that constant darkness has not bothered me at all, though on a clear day you can always see a faint glow on the horizon, which for the last month has slowly increased each day. Yesterday around 13:00 I could even see the outline of Mount Erebus. It won't be long until we have full daylight for part of the day and only a month until the first sunrise. Another odd thing is how much warmer it is than I expected. The ambient temperature is usually only about -10, though it has gone down below -30. Only when there is a strong wind does it get really bad. -100 wind chill kind of sucks. It is also only four weeks until the first flight of winfly, when we hopefully will get fresh produce and mail, along with about 75 new people who will most likely infect us all with whatever nasty viruses they picked up on the flights here. Oh joy. Winfly (winter flyover) is the official end of the winter-over season and a reminder to us that we will no longer enjoy the luxuries of wireless internet, a hot tub, having no competiton for time in the band room, and other small benefits of winter. The only thing that really matters is if we will have to get a roommate or not. There is talk of letting us keep our single rooms until mainbody, but there is always talk.  

  Overall, this winter season has been great. I really can't remember the last time I had this much fun. Almost every weekend we have some sort of party to keep our morale up. We had a huge party for the 4th of July, a mid winter dinner party both here and at Scott base, a medieval party at the waste barn, Scott base had a birthday party for the queen, and this coming weekend there is a party at the south pole traverse shop where both my bands will be playing. All this along with a host of other activities during the week leave me with little to no free time, which is better than being bored at a frozen outpost at the bottom of the world.

   



It's winter and it's cold

  It's been an interesting season so far. Two weeks ago we had an emergency medical evacuation after the power plant mechanic had a heart attack. It took a lot of people working around the clock for a week to get the runway ready to land a C17 to get him out. The day before the plane came in (one day ahead of schedule) my coworker and my boss were notified they were fired and getting sent home on the plane, along with two firefighters. Replacements were hired, but since the flight went ahead a day early, they could not get here on time, neither could the load of fresh produce.

  The last sunrise/sunset was on April 24th. I got to go on a trip out to castle rock on the 23rd, however, the sun was directly behind Mt Erebus so I didn't get to see it. I did get a few photos of sunlight on the Mountains. We still had normal day and night for a short while, but each day gets shorter by about a half hour. As of today, it didn't get light until noon and was dark again by 2:00. Soon it will be dark out 24 / 7 until mid July. People are starting to take vitamin D supplements.

  One amazing thing about winter here is the auroras, as well as the stars. There is quite a bit of light pollution on the base, but a short ride out of town takes care of that. I don't have any pictures yet, but I will try to post some soon.

  McMurdo has a radio station which along with our TV and news feed, is run by the American Forces Radio and Television Services, AFRTS, yes, it is pronounced A- farts. It only broadcasts for about a mile, but we have an impressive catalog of records here. From what I hear, it is the last remaining vinyl collection on any US base. Every other Wednesday evening I have a radio show, The Vinyl Frontier, where I dig through the record room looking for obscure titles and such.

  As for work, I spent the first six weeks of winter painting the Helicopter hanger. I'm very happy not to be a painter anymore. I think I can still smell xylene fumes emitting from my skin. I'm now back to remodeling the second floor of building 155. There are about 40 rooms to finish by winfly. I got my work cut out for me. 

 McMurdo in the winter

 my trip to see the second from last sunset

 Scott's hut, and the sun on the Royal Society Mountains

 The carp shop after a wind storm

 The helo hanger 

 radio studio

 record library

a sample of what you might not expect to find 

Winter at McMurdo

 So it's been a while since my last post. Sorry, been busy. A few weeks ago the last plane left McMurdo station while those of us staying for winter watched while drinking champaign. There will be no other flights until late August, which means we receive no mail or fresh produce, and the 143 of us here are stuck with each other. All in all, there is a fun crew of people here this winter and enough activities to keep us from going completely insane. Every other Wednesday is trivia night, karaoke on Thursdays, and I will be hosting open mic night starting next month. There is a gym with basketball and volleyball nights and a lounge with shuffle board and pool. There is also a craft room.  Multiple people host movie nights and we even have a radio station here where I will be DJ once a week. Many of the work centers host parties as well. 

   One of the more interesting things about winter is how quickly the days get shorter. When I got here in November there was 24hrs of sunlight. The first sunset was February 20th and since then we've been losing about a half hour of daylight each day. The sun will set for the last time in mid April and will not rise again until August. Kind of creepy, although I will get to see a fantastic display of stars and auroras. 

  There are four of us carpenters here this winter. Myself and another guy got hired on to finish the remodel project I was working on this summer, and to paint the interior of the helicopter hanger. I've spent the last few weeks up on a scissors lift scrubbing 40 years of grime off steel beams in preparation for painting. We had some strong winds the other day that were so cold that our cleaning rags were freezing to the inside walls. Speaking of freezing, we had our first condition 1 storm a few days ago.  The weather here is divided into conditions 1,2, and 3. Condition 3 means there is no restrictions on travel. Visibility is greater than 1/4 mile, winds are less than 48 knots, and the wind chill is warmer than -75 F. Condition 2 means you are allowed to walk between buildings, but you need to check out with the fire house to go anywhere else. Winds are 48- 55 knots, visibility is greater than 100 ft, and the wind chill is -75 to -100. Everything is still business as usual as far as work goes. When condition 1 is called, you are not allowed to leave the building you are in. Winds are greater than 55 knots, visibility is often less than a few feet, or the wind chill is in excess of -100 F. Funny thing about the weather here, the last storm was condition 1 everywhere else on Ross Island, but magically went to condition 2 only within the area of McMurdo station during work hours. Here are a few photos taken around McMurdo this last month.

 

Everyone on the deck of the chalet watching the last plane leave.

Ship offload in late February

Sunset over the Royal Society Mountains

Weddel seal

The black specks are Orcas

Penguins!

Winter is coming

So if you don't know yet, I will be wintering over in Antarctica. I was offered the job a few months ago  as long as I could pass the physical and psychological evaluation. The psych eval was a strange experience. It consisted of sitting in a room with about a dozen other winter over hopefuls taking the most ridiculous true/false test I have ever seen. There were all sorts of questions about hearing voices or whether or not you like to watch animals suffer, would you rather be an auto mechanic or a floral arranger, and other strange questions which made people laugh out loud. A few days later I had a one on one interview with a psychologist who read a series of questions to me which took less than ten minutes. Needless to say, I passed the psych eval. What surprised me was the number of people who didn't. Everything seemed good to go for winter, until my supervisor informed me that the dorm remodel job I was going to do got cancelled. It turns out not all of the materials made it onto the cargo ship. Oops. Now about 16 people were out of a job for winter, my supervisor included. Lucky for me he hooked me up with another job painting the inside of the helicopter hanger, then when that is done I will go back to the current remodel job I'm working on. So... crisis averted. Since I'm wintering over, I was allowed to take one week of R&R in New Zealand. The problem was, there were so many people leaving for the season who had priority over those of us on R&R, I kept getting bumped from my flight, which made it impossible to book a hotel. This problem was compounded by the fact the C-17 (the big cargo jet) was not flying due to the runway conditions. After five days of getting bumped from my flight, I finally boarded an LC-130 Hercules for an 8 hr flight to New Zealand. The 130's are a 1960's era cargo plane outfitted with skis and are very cramped inside. After arriving in Christchurch I spent the night at a hotel with a few other carpenters. We immediately went out to dinner to get any sort of fresh produce we could since it had been before Christmas the last time we had any. Mmm... salad. The next day I took a bus down to Akaroa and stayed at a farm hostle, then went hiking for a few days around the banks peninsula. It was absolutely amazing. There are a lot of sheep in New Zealand. Most of the peninsula was pasture with a few patches of forest reserve. The shoreline was incredible. After the hike I went back to Christchurch to find out every hotel was booked. I managed to find a scary boarding house with paper thin walls, stains on the floor, and crumbling plaster. There was also a note on the outside of my window informing residents to knock on it if no one answered the doorbell. I left early the next morning after waking up to my neighbor coughing up a lung. I was able to find a room at a very nice backpacker hostle and spent the day getting supplies for winter, mostly Scotch. This morning I got on the C-17 for a 5 hr flight back to Antarctica and here I am, ready to spend the next six months in the Antarctic winter.