Leaving

Ready to go onboad flight P004R, a Herc LC-130

After two weeks of watching planes come and go, my turn finally came. The twenty of us were originally scheduled to go out on Saturday, but the flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems. Monday morning, we woke up to the flight being delayed almost immediately, so no one was holding there breath fro getting out. But, the plane came, a couple of hours late, so we said our goodbyes to the five winter-overs still at Pole, and headed to McMurdo.

We got to McMurdo in time for dinner, which include real, rathere than powdered, milk for the first time in nine months. It was so good. McMurdo is a lot bigger than Pole (there are almost 1,000 people here right now), so things were busy and the cafeteria was a little bit overwhelming.
  
After dinner a couple of us went exploring. It's been in the teens here for temps, so it is the warmest weather we've had for a long time. I hiked around in jeans and a long sleeve shirt, which was great after a season of running around in Carhartt's and boots.

The mountains across the bay from McMurdo

We hiked out to Hut Point, which was a walk I had taken when I got here 9 months ago. This time around the bay was iced over, so no whales. There were seals, though.

The seals are getting ready to have their pups, so they weren't
very active.

We also hiked up Observation Hill, which had an amazing view of Mac Town.

This morning we did a 9 mile hike out to see Castle Rock and Scott Base (the Kiwi base about a mile and half from McMurdo).

Castle Rock in front, with Mt. Erubus smoking in the background.

Bag drag this evening and then flying to CHC tomorrow afternoon, if all goes well.

Be home in a couple of weeks. See everyone then!

First Flight

First flight coming in for refueling

 Exciting happenings! We had our first flight come in on Friday. It was a Basler on its way from Canada, via Rothera (British station on the Antarctic peninsula below Chile), to McMurdo for the summer.

They were only here for about an hour, just stopping to refuel. But they brought treats for the Polies:

Precious cargo. Delicious, precious cargo.

 Apples all the way from Punta Arenas, Chile. And a couple of bags of yellow onions. There were enough apple for everyone to get one, and they went fast when they got put out at dinner. I guess everyone was pretty excited about our first fresh fruit since February.

We were initially scheduled to get two more planes in over the weekend, but we had some bad weather blow in and the flights were cancelled. But the weather today is beautiful, so the planes should be coming in this afternoon. Then, if the weather holds, we'll get our first C17, along with about 20 new faces, flying in at the end of the week. That'll also be when we start saying the first of our goodbyes, as the first couple winterovers to redeploy will be heading out at the same time.

In preparation for summer, we've been doing major cleaning all over the station. A lot of us have also had to move into smaller rooms from our long-term quarters, to make room for the people who'll be here for the summer. When the summer folks get here, they should find everything spotless and shiny.

See, spotless and shiny.

Edit: Forgot to add that the Basler took our ballots with them when they left. So, my absentee ballot is now on its way to Minnesota. Yay!

Oktober

Winterovers 2012, with the doomed Scott crew

Welcome to October. With only a couple of weeks left before most folks head home, we've been busy getting the station ready for summer. The station itself is getting a deep cleaning, and most of us have started to move from our winter rooms, to one of the smaller rooms, so the summer people will be able to move in to there rooms right away. The plane runway has also been groomed and flagged, just in time for our first planes to come in on Wednesday. We're expecting three small planes, a Basler and two Twin Otters, on their way from Canada to McMurdo.

Earlier this month we celebrated Oktoberfest with Robert, our resident German. He provided Bavarian-themed decorations and German music.

Dancing to Robert's German music

 and he and the galley crew made German food for dinner, chicken and brats and sauerkraut, along with huge pretzels.

We've also had a number of people brewing beer throughout the season, so we had plenty of that to go around as well. I think I liked the Coffee Stout best, but the Raspberry Ale was pretty good, too.

South Pole homebrew: Raspberry Ale, IPA, Barley Oat and Quinoa, and Coffee Stout

This last week Sven Lidstrom, of IceCube, joined Steffen and I for part of our LHe delivery to BICEP, and he got some great pictures:

Getting the sled into position

Lower Fatman down from BICEP2

Getting Fatman onto the sled

Driving back to cryo for the fill

Those of us doing the torch run finally made it to McMurdo. We actually ended up overshooting running out into the ocean about a hundred miles. The final tally for individual milage was very close, with Carlos and I contributing the most, 333 and 337 miles, respectively. Top three got prizes, which was exciting. I got a gift certificate to the Ledge Swing in Queenstown, NZ, so I'm going to have to try to squeeze that in to my vacation plans. I also made it to McMurdo on my own this weekend. I probably would have made it sooner, but I didn't start tracking my individual milage until about a month and a half into the winter.

Bright

Looking out from Cryo. Kind of looks like an alien landscape.

Sorry about not posting in a while. Things have been getting busy lately. As you can see, the sun is up, which is exciting and uplifting. And with the sun has also come weather. We've had two storms since sunrise, neither of which were bad, but made for poor visibility and lots of wind. And anytime it hasn't been storming, it has been unseasonably cold (e.g. in the -80s and -90s). Someday we'll get warm temperatures and sun at the same time. It'll be amazing.

At the beginning of this week, we had September emergency drill. Since the weather was warm enough to run vehicles, the drill was out at cryo, which was a little bit stressful for me. Lots of running around, making sure none of my equipment got damaged as the fire and medical teams wandered around trying to take care of our two casualties.

Jay, getting ready for the drill. "Intestines" made from latex glove fingers
stuffed with cooked chicken, and then covered with fake blood.

The scenario was that the LN2 plant exploded, causing a cryogen leak. Jay suffered a head injury and evisceration, while our other patient, Jim, got hit in the arm with flying debris, causing a fracture.

Fire team dragging Jay to safety, through the fog-filled
cryo building.

Other than that excitement, I've been busy at cryo, trying to get things ready to hand over to Flint once he gets here on the 27th. I did the preventative maintenance on the LN2 plant, which was a lot like changing the oil on my car, except messier since whoever designed the machine put the oil inlet in the most awkward spot possible. I finally emptied out the first LHe dewar, boiling off the last 100L or so and pumping that into the gas tanks. I'll probably start boiling off the second dewar in a week or so, since the NSF would like to pull the dewars as soon as possible, in order to make room of a new experiment.

Outside of cryo, I've been keeping busy trying to plan my vacation. I got my ticket info last week, so that has made planning a little easier. Right now, I am scheduled to leave Pole on  Nov. 2nd (1 month and 1 day away!), but since weather tends to be extremely variable this time of year, I've been told not to make any solid plans until the 15th. If I get off the ice before then, great, that'll mean time to do some hiking and rafting. After the 15th, I'll be picking up a bike in Auckland and heading down the east coast of the north island, with a 32K trail race on the 17th, which I am really looking forward to. On the 23rd, I'll head home, making it to St. Paul by the 26th, with a layover in AZ to visit my grandma.

With leaving a little more than a month away, I've realized how quickly the last eight months have past. It has been an incredible experience, and I am glad that I decided to come down here.

One of many beautiful sights at the South Pole, the early morning sun
over cryo.

Sunrise

Almost full light out in the dark sector. Also, check out the snow
drift, MAPO Mountain, that built over the winter. It is about as
tall as I am.

So, we’ve had a fairly eventful couple of weeks here. The equinox is on the 23^rd, so it is almost fully light out, at least when the weather is good. I switched back to day-shift at the beginning of the week, which was a little rough in terms of sleep, but it is nice to see people and feel like part of the community again. We’ve also started getting ready for station opening. The runway has been groomed and flags have been placed marking out the crossing zone (between the station and the dark sector), and for where the South Pole Airport will get placed once it gets dragged off the berms. Let’s see, the window covers came down on the 10^th, so we’re not living aboard a submarine anymore. That has been great, particularly at dinner. At that time the sunrise has moved into view, and since the windows are tinted, the colors tend to be intensified, making for some pretty surreal oranges and pinks in the sky.

In decent weather, we get colors like this.

For Sunrise weekend, this is what we got. You can see a vague outline of the
station, about a 1/4mi from cryo, where I took the picture.

We celebrated Sunrise this last weekend, with Sunrise dinner on Saturday night. A group of us kicked off the long weekend by setting up the drive-in movie theater in the gym.

Lots of sci-fi/fantasy showing this weekend.

Sunrise dinner tends to be less formal that the other winter holidays, so this year’s theme was a 50’s-style greasy spoon, complete with the bus-boys/servers dressed like greasers. 

My dinner table, with menus/games and crayons.
L to R: Chris (not pictured), Jared, K-ris, Heather, Doc, Guy, Tracy, me (not pictured)

The projector had also been set up in the galley, so Grease played during dinner. JP also debut his short film, “A Warm Place”.

Blue Moon (a picture post)

Early dawn at the south pole

So this week was a blue moon, which means that it was the second full moon of the month. Down here, we did didn't get a great view, since it was pretty cloudy, but here is what it looked like:

Other than that, an uneventful week. The sky is brighter and all but the brightest stars are gone. We've had some days with incredible color.

Dark sector silhouettes

Another day of sunrise over the station

Twilight

A few last auroras before it gets too bright

We had our first (and hopefully only) power outage of the season this week. Outages aren't unheard of, and we've been lucky so far this winter. The generator only failed for about 30 second, so not long, but long enough that I got to run out to cryo to check on the compressors just as I was getting ready for bed. And then I got to hike out to MAPO to restart one of the experiments I'm monitoring. So, a late morning, but I did get treated to this on my way out to MAPO.

Flaglines in the early morning

Along with a beautiful skyline, the lack of wind and "warm" weather (~-60F) made for a pretty nice walk. And things are definitely getting brighter. In fact, if you look closely, you can see shadows (which are, admittedly, partially due to the moon being up right now). We are officially in nautical twilight. Another couple of weeks and we'll be in civil twilight. Then sunrise!

Other than that, we had our monthly ERT drill this week. Not particularly exciting, although we did lose our dummy patient, who was asystole when we got to the scene. But our other patient survived and is doing fine.

The pole marker with the sunrise, moon, Mars, Saturn, and Spica
in the background

The moon behind the power plant

Blog note: I also wanted to point your attention to a new link, South Pole Tumblr. It has pictures, and a few comments, that don't make it onto the blog.