Board games clean up and B1 Lounge

The board game Risk with some local additions (check the bottom of the board)

At South Pole Station, we have a few rooms dedicated to recreation because all work and no play makes folks grumpy. We have 2 lounges with TVs, one with a pool table, a library, and a winter-only coffee bar lounge in our galley. 

The photos from today are of the B1 Lounge. It has a pool table, darts, books, and an enormous shelving unit of board games, card games, and puzzles. Each week, there are a couple board game nights, which I am super happy to get be playing.

To date, I think we have played Kingdom, Splendor, Spades, Rummikub, Dominion, Plunder, Hanabi, Monopoly Deal, Phase 10, and likely a couple more that I cannot remember. If will be interesting to see how that list grows as the months continue. If anyone has some scans of Dominion Expansion packs, some folks are avidly wanting to try them out.

The B1 Lounge

The board games.

Our puzzles, jigsaw, 3D, and mind teasers.

Card games and more board games.

Passover Seder

 

Being down at the South Pole can be tough. We miss a lot of annual events that we are used to celebrating with existing friends and family. While there are only two Jewish folks that I know of on station, 17/41 showed up to celebrate Passover on Monday. It was a pretty cool to see so many people come out. 

We did not do the full 4-5 hour meal. We skipped over lots of parts, but the heart of it was all there. The cup for Elijah, inviting him in with the station door open, the stolen afikoman, and, perhaps my favorite, raw horseradish root instead of horseradish for the Maror. Wow, that really cleared up the sinuses. Thankfully, KLS has been preparing me for years for this by feeding me raw garlic cloves.

2024 South Pole Passover Seder

Before sunset - March 20/21st

I just found a few lost photos from just before sunset on March 22nd. 

 

The first one is from March 20th, two days before sunset. The sun was hugging the horizon and we were looking like we were going to have an amazing display of colors. Instead, about 16 hours after that first photo, a storm rolled in. No colors, no visibility, no nada.

 

March 20th

March 21st

It's been a tough week. At the start of the week, I was feeling sick and scaled my workouts way back. Then, we had a bunch of network changes that caused a ton of extra work. In the long term, it will be worth it. In the short term, I'm tired. Just as we wrapped up those network changes, we lost power for the third time since I arrived here in February. The power plant generators are being fixed and improved for the long haul, but there have been some hiccups along the way. I am really grateful to have finally arrived at the weekend.  My weekend kicked off with a movie and winning trivia with Mark D and Andrew W.

2:45pm - how much light do we get in the afternoon?

At 2:45pm, this was taken from the same location and direction as the morning photo.

Without any fancy camera tricks, it is quite dark outside. At 2:45pm, the photo above is pretty much accurate of what the human eye can see. You can maybe make out a bump that is a building. 

Technically, we are in astrological twilight, which means the sun is 18 degrees below the horizon. The other twilights that we already passed are civil twilight (6 degrees below the horizon) and nautical twilight (12 degrees below).

In two weeks, we'll be in full dark.

One of my fellow winterovers between plumbing jobs, one of the Buff Boiz Karpet Kinz, Rawlynn E.

8:45am - how much light do we get in the morning?

 

The view from the elevated station at 8:45am.

 

When we take photos of auroras, we usually use long exposures to make the auroras pop more. It makes it look like there is more light than there really is.  I wanted to show folks what things really look like right now so here is a photo from 8:45am this morning. From the elevated station, about three stories up, I pretty much can't make out the near by snow or even the buildings in the distance unless there is a light on the building.

Personally, this is my first slower week at work. I am glad things are slowing down a bit so I can take a little more time for myself and get centered. Hopefully, I can find more time to get outside.

First Aurora Australis!!!!!!!

Auroras over the South Pole observation deck. All the boxes are some of our food for the winter that we are storing there because our elevator broke.

We saw our first Southern Lights / Aurora Australis today (aurora borealis is in the northern hemisphere). 

Just after lunch, someone said there were auroras outside. Catching them can be a fluke now because all of the windows are boarded up. I was getting ready for a nap, but mustered the energy to throw on a jacket and head outside to see the first auroras of the season. I am using a new camera and have not figured out all the settings yet. Figuring them out in the cold and dark wasn't as successful as I would have liked. I headed back inside after a quick five minutes to thaw out and run my hands under warm water.

Auroras over top of the South Pole station.

Auroras over the South Pole summer camp from the A4 exit.

After a few minutes getting dressed properly, getting some hand warmers, and messing with camera settings, I switched to another view point for the auroras with Andrew W and Brian K. I still struggled with the autofocus, but captured a few moments of beauty in the sky. If you haven't seem them before, they are like vertical clouds dancing in the sky. The fainter ones are often mistaken for clouds until you get to know what you are looking for. They are truly one of my favorite part of winters down here. I can watch them dance for as long as I can stay warm.

This is supposed to be a high aurora activity year and the South Pole is right under the aurora 'rings' where they are most active. I am very, very hopeful for them this winter.

Looking over at B1 berthing from A4 berthing.

Brian K catching his first view of auroas this winter.

Sunset - March 22nd. The sun won't rise for 183 days.

The view out my berthing window to the geographic Pole. Look for the big flag between the two building on the left. 

The sun set for the one and only time this year on March 22nd at 6:41pm. We did not get to see it because it was unbelievably cloudy that day. Around 3 days later, the clouds finally broke and we had some amazing colors on the horizon. We won't see the sun again for 183 days when it comes up around the fall equinox - September 21st or 22nd.

 Looking out to our skiway (runway for planes with skis).

A diagram that helps explain why the polar regions have extended periods without sunrises or sunsets.

I thought sunrise and sunset would be like McMurdo where the sun rose and set each day for a month or so before dropping behind the horizon for good. However, because the Earth’s axis of rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees with respect to the path of its orbit around the Sun, the North and South Poles only get one sunset a year.

The office

My office

Despite the fun adventure side of this job, I am really here to work and this is where the work happens. My desk is the one you can see the monitors on. I share the office with a network engineer who sits on the right. We both cover as a help desk for anyone that walks in the door.

The computer lab right outside my office.

Right outside our office is a computer lab. Most work centers don't have enough computers for all their employees so some come here to do small tasks. Others use it to stay in touch with folks back home. However, the program now lets laptops and cellphones connect to the Internet when the satellite is up so most folks use that to keep in touch with the home front. That is a huge change from when I was on the Ice 12 years ago. Back then, you were really disconnected except for email. Due to some major Internet upgrades, you can now use video chatting like FaceTime and Zoom.

I don't know all the details, but we don't use starlink here. They are using it a little bit at McMurdo. They have tested it here. One person said that it interfered with the science, someone else said it didn't. I don't what is accurate, but having non-stop Internet here would really change the experience for better and worse.

HIIT and closing up the windows

I am struggling to find the time to write the way I used to that really got into the nitty gritty so for the time being I am going to just put some random photos from each day.

 Weekly HIIT class in the big gym

Every Tuesday, our carpenter Andrew runs a HIIT class in our big gym. We have steady group of 4-6 that come out to suffer a little bit, try to stay in or get in shape, and try to keep off the 'Freshman 15' that can easily happen to us in our all you can get cafeteria.  This week we worked through some criss-cross jacks that felt like Irish dancing, goblet squats, sit ups, push ups, lumber jack swings, kettle bell squat lifts, and tossing the medicine ball.

Rawlynn was kind of enough to get a photo of me in the class doing my best lumberjack swing

The big event of the day was the boarding of all the windows on station because of the science that goes on in the dark of winter. We have some very sensitive cameras that would have their data corrupted by having even a single window unblocked. Everyone is issued head lamps with red lights so that they don't mess up the cameras' data.  My view of the geographic pole was good while it lasted.

Given the exacting nature of so much of the science, you might think that we board the windows up with custom blinds or something fancy. Nope. We use cardboard that folks have taken a utility knife too. Lots of them are decorated with fun photos of past friends, dogs, and beautiful places.

My room with a boarded up window.

Until tomorrow . . . hopefully

Frozen water

 

 

 On March 27th, I left my water bottle on the window sill after after an emergency preparedness drill. The next morning, the water wasn't completely turned to ice, but it was close. Maybe 80%. Somehow, despite this, my room remains way too warm for me. Other folks, have styrofoam and turn their window sill into a mini refrigerator.

First week at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

I remember my first week in Antarctica, way back in 2007, being amazing. There was so much to see, do, and learn. Unfortunately, my first week Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station kind of sucked. 

  A little bit of that was physical because I went from sea level and 49% humidity to 9,306 ft and 0% humidity in under a week. The elevation and dryness effect everyone differently, but it can be a major problem. Apparently, they have had folks overexert themselves, get very sick, and have to be sent home within a week or two of arriving. They don't let folks carry their bags in from the plane to station. They avoid the longer sets of stairs. After having some amazing runs in New Zealand and at McMurdo station, I was told that I couldn't use the gym for seven days.

  The lack of moisture in the air makes your body dry out faster than usual. It is easy to get dehydrated. They hammer drinking enough fluids to help deal with the big environmental changes, but that just means you spend the night waking up every 1-2 hours to stumble down the hall and pee. Some folks skipped the stumbling and just use a pee bottle. These Nalgene sized bottles are very commonly used down here, but usually in the field. If you do get to sleep, you get the treat of waking up to a Kleenex full of blood every morning. So you end up physically exhausted, dried out, and sleep deprived. Not fun.

 If that wasn't enough, they also have COVID protocols that no one told me about. You have to spend the first 5 days in an N-95 mask unless you are in your room or in a conference with the other 'quarantined' folks. With so few people on station, keeping people from getting sick (COVID or otherwise) is really smart. I just wish I had know about it ahead of time so I could temper my expectations.

A different way of looking at the world

When I was on the Ice before, I worked as a PC Tech. In the states, I work as a programmer and do a little sys admin work on the servers our code runs on. However, my role for this deployment is as a system administrator. I have the background to figure things out, but trying to learn the nuances of our system while also figuring those general things out was a lot. The entirety of my first week was spent taking it physically easy while drinking from the fire house of knowledge that was the summer system administrator. There were so many things that I was shown, but wasn't able to dive into. He said he would have preferred a month for a proper handover, but I was coming in late and he was on his way out. We had 4.5 days. Luckily, he remains available via phone while the Internet is up.

I am definitely looking forward to getting up to speed and settling in.

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These last photos are from 2006 and are not mine, but I thought they were fun to share. They are of a C-17 air dropping supplies. I assume this was just a proof-of-concept because it was daylight out so they should have been from the summer when planes can land, but I'm not sure.

C-17 airdrop supplies at the South Pole.

Airdropped parachutes landing on the ice sheet.

My brother is at the South Pole too!?!?!?!?!

 Within about an hour of landing at the South Pole, I was given a radio that I am expected to carry at all times. After reluctantly carrying a cell phone back home, it's kind of funny that I am in one of more the isolated places on Earth, but carrying something bigger and heavier. We always have them on us for to call for help or to respond to emergencies. I'm not great at carrying it al the time yet, but I am getting better.

Normally, a radio would not be worth posting about it, but the orange radio says Tait at the top and Brotman 220 just below it. The box says the same. That's my brother! Welcome to the South Pole, Tait! Super random.  The 220 is my radio channel.

This is just a silly photo from the TAIT company web page, that feels like an oxymoron.

The South Pole, finally, but which one!?!

I FINALLY MADE IT TO THE SOUTH POLE! 

 

The 2023 geographic pole marker with a compass with all points facing North also celebrates James Cook as being the first known person to cross the Antarctic Circle on January 17th, 1773.

I finally made it the actual South Pole on February 9th, but which one? There are actually three.

The first South Pole that I visited was the geographic South Pole located at 90 degrees South latitude. This is the Southern most point on Earth. If you draw a line through the Earth from it to the geographic North Pole, you create the axis that the Earth spins around.  Each summer, they hold the 'Race Around the World' that goes around the pole. It's silly, it's fun.

This geographic pole does not move, but the marker for it does. The station that I am working on and the marker for the pole are both built on an ice sheet that moves about 10m a year. Every January, they put up a new pole marker that is about 10m farther from station to mark the real location of the geographic pole.

The ceremonial South Pole marker

The pole at the ceremonial South Pole marker

The next South Pole that I visited was the ceremonial South Pole, just 700m away from the geographic South Pole. This area is specially setup for photos and only moved when it gets snowed it. It is a pole with a reflective ball on top. It is surrounded by the twelve flags representing the twelve nations that signed the original Antarctic Treaty – Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Chile, France, Japan, New Zealand, Norway, South Africa, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

A map with the location of the magnetic South Pole marker

The final South Pole is the magnetic Pole, just off the coast of Antarctica in the direction of Australia. The magnetic Pole is also a shifting target. This map shows how it has move over the last 120 years across East Antarctica. I am pretty sure I won't ever be visiting that one, but you never know. If you were to go to that, your magnetic compass should actually point north in every direction.

A collection of the oldest geographic South Pole markers 

 

 A collection of the newer geographic South Pole marker, sadly missing a few. 

 

A replica of this South Pole marker has been on my desk for the better part of a 15 years. This original marked the pole my first on the Ice.

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A close up of the oldest South Pole markers.

Flight to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station

One last Adelie Penguin at Willie Field near McMurdo Station before we head to where no critters lives.

Our flight to the South Pole was pretty uneventful. My bags were already checked in from flying to McMurdo. All I had to do was weigh in with my carry on gear and catch a shuttle ride out to Willie Field on the Ice Shelf. From there, we milled about, used the bathroom, ate some delicious cookies at the airport galley, and got on our plane, a LC-130 Hercules. The plane is a custom fit of the C-130 Hercules with skis, which lets it land on softer snowy runways.

 A close up of the LC-130 landing gear.

The US Air National Guard LC-130 Hercules planes are equipped with skis for landing on the ice.

This flight was pretty much the same as the one on the C-17. People along the side, cargo in the middle, and lots of waiting. The one small difference as a passenger was the bathroom facilities. Instead of a small unlit airplane toilet, you get a curtain, and what I thought was just a garbage can.  On the flight, there were 2 of us wintering at the South Pole, one person heading up for a week of work, and ~7 distinguished visitors (i.e. military brass) who head up to the Pole for an hour of photos and shopping at the store while the plane refuels before heading home.

The front inside of our LC-130 Hercules.

In the photo above this one, you can see a white curtain on the right. Behind it is one of these 'toilets'.

The first part of the flight is pretty quiet over the Ross Ice Shelf. There isn't much to see. However, depending on where you are going, you are likely to cross the Transantarctic mountain range. The mountains offer up one scenic vista after another and kept me on my feet as long as I could see them.

Flying over the Ross Ice Shelf. This is what a lot of the flights around Antarctica look like.

If you are lucky, you get to travel along the mountains.

Map of Antarctica with the Transantarctic Mountain Range circled.

Close up of the Transantarctic mountains

Another view of the mountain from our tiny plane windows

After about an hour of flight time, we cross the mountains onto the Polar Plateau. From there, there isn't anything to see but the white beyond for as far as you can see. At that point, we all just settled in for the last hour and bundled up a little bit more because this flight was definitely colder that the one to McMurdo.

The last bit of fun on the flight was the Air National Guard practicing a cargo drop when we got near the South Pole. To try and minimize their time on the ground, they sometimes just drop palettes out of the moving plane. Those tracks just allow them to roll right out the back and onto the snow a few feet below. Unfortunately, I flubbed the video to show it going out the back. Instead, you get the same first blinding view of the area around the South Pole that I got.

Our first view of the South Pole area just after the cargo drop.

The back of the LC-130 after the cargo drop.

Next up, the Poles! No, there isn't just one.