South Pole Dome history

This year is a special year for those who have worked at South Pole station. The old station, the Dome, is coming down. I believe part of it is being taken to a museum, but most of it is being taken away as scrap. One day, the Traverse or a LC-130 will bring it back to McMurdo to be put on a cargo vessel and sent back to the states.

Historical McMurdo

I have had so many conversations with Old Antarctic Explorers (OAEs). They tell amazing stories about the way things used to be or some random adventure they got to go. It really increases the romanticism of this place because so many of those adventures seem so far away from our current experiences. One woman that I was chatting with, has been working here or in Greenland since 1981, four years after my birth.

As many stories as I hear, few things truly make Antarctica like the pictures. The pictures tell stories on their own and make me hunger for my own adventures. Of the pictures below, from 1965, my favorite is the one that shows open water around Hut Point. I've heard it talked about so much, but I have never seen a picture of it. I never would have imagined that ships, that look like warships, could be that close to shore in an area I identify as being covered in ice.











Dogs were banned because they were giving penguins distemper.


For perspective, that is Hut Point on the right and yes, they did dump their garbage there.


This is the open water that we all hope for and that Scott first sailed.

Adelies, Baby Skua, and Skua Bath Time

Eleven of the most inert Adelies I have ever seen.


Open Water!
Late last week, fun pages were being sent all over base. Penguins. Penguins at Hut Point. Lots of them. I went down and saw eleven Adelies. Unfortunately, they were napping and their personality comes out when they are moving about. Luckily, they have stuck around and recruited friends. Everyone has been seeing them. My roommate, Brooks, was lucky enough to catch them while they are swimming. I'm definitely heading back out there to try and see that.


The cavalry arrived a day later.
One of my favorite events of the year is watching baby skua grow up. I don't know if there is always a nest near Hut Point, but there has been for both of my summers. It is so amazing to see something as fragile as a baby growing up in such an inhospitable environment. As far as I can tell, there is no real nest, just a small depression in the rocks. I don't know if all skuas are raised like this or just the ones near McMurdo. It might be different at a skua colony.


Baby skua and its parent.


Claire trying to reason with parent skua.


Another blustery day to toughen up baby skua.


A skua.
After we had visited baby skua, we headed back down to Hut Point where the penguins were. They hadn't moved yet. However, we did catch a skua, possibly the other parent of baby skua, taking a bath. I don't know how skua can get wet and not freeze. I feel like we are better built to handle the cold because we have more fat, but obviously I'm wrong. They evolved in the Antarctica. We did not. Maybe, I'm just discounting their body fat ratio because I think of birds as lightweight. Anyone know how fat non-dinner table birds are? (Edit. Feathers are a great insulator, but I thought that down lost its ability to keep us warm once it got a little wet. Thanks to Lisa for some great editing!!)


Shake it out!


Splish splash, I'm taking a bath!


Time lapse of bath time.

Club Worlds

Where will I be this coming summer? I'll be at the World Ultimate Club Championships in Prague, Czech Republic from July 3-10, 2010. I'll be playing for Credo, based out of Christchurch, NZ, as one of New Zealand's Mixed/Coed representatives. I was honored and pleasantly surprised to have been selected to play. It is even more amazing to think that I had planned on retiring before this team helped me rediscover my love of the game in 2008.


Credo, 2008 Mixed New Zealand champions

My selection letter.
Bid Allocation for WUCC 2010

Country	Organisation	Total	Open	Women	Mixed	Masters
United States	UPA	15	4	4	4	3
Canada	CUPA	12	3	3	3	3
Australia	AFDA	10	3	3	3	1
Japan	JFDA	10	3	3	2	2
United Kingdom	UKUA	9	3	2	3	1
Germany	DFV	8	2	2	2	2
Finland	FFDA	5	2	1	1	1
Switzerland	SFSV	4	2	1	1
Colombia	AJUC	4	2	1	1
Italy	FIFD	4	2	1	1
Sweden	SFF	4	2	1		1
France	FFDF	4	1	1	1	1
Netherlands	NFB	4	1	1	1	1
New Zealand	NZFDA	4	1		3
Denmark	DFSU	3	1	1	1
Czech Republic	CALD	3	1	1	1
Venezuela	AVU	3	1	1		1
Belgium	BFDF	2	1	1
Russian Federation	RFDF	2	1	1
Austria	ÖFSV	2	1		1
Philippines	PUA	2	1		1
Ireland	IFDA	2	1		1
Mexico	AMEDIVO	3	1		1	1
Spain	FEDV	2	1		1
South Africa	SAFDA	1	1
DominicanRepublic	ADJU	1	1
India	FDFI	1	1
South Korea	KU	1	1
Brazil	FPD	1			1
Taiwan	CTFDA	1			1
Singapore	SUPA	1			1
Hong Kong	HKUPA	1			1
Norway	NFF	0
Hungary	HUFA	1	1
Israel	FLOW	1	1
Lithuania	LFDF	1	1
Latvia	LFDF	1	1
China Shanghai	China	1	1
Indonesia	IFDA	0
Portugal	BUG-P	0
Costa Rica	CRUFT	0
Slovakia	SAF	1	1
Slovenia	S	1	1
Ukraine	Ukraine	1	1
Poland	EFDF	1			1
Croatia	C	1			1
Estonia	EFDF	1			1
Luxembourg	L	1			1
Uganda	KUFC	0
TOTAL		141	53	29	41	18

Station Happenings

Christmas Day, we had the McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery. My favorite piece was a banner for the S.P.O.A that my friend Candy made stickers for this year. Someone sewed together a brilliant flag. I love it. The other great exhibit from the gallery was a room with a pinhole in the wall. It acted like a camera from outside, but it took a while for your eyes to adjust to figure it out.


Short People of Antarctica banner.
On our day off for New Years (note, not actually on New Years), we had IceStock. We had a main stage all day long and then an acoustic and electric stage at night. We have so many talented musicians down here. It is amazing and was a great day off. For the first time in many years, Icestock had great weather. Some people even got sunburns. I even got to throw a disc around for a while. It was a treat. I overuse that word these days. I blame Lindsay for making me like it so much.


Icestock main stage with Ob Hill in the background.


The MJB jazz band.


Throwing the disc!


Kish, once again, is the front man for Level 5.


Our full day of musical goodness.


Robot-ninja shenanigans!


Our headliner, Porn Spill, jams out your favorite funk.
Just this past weekend, we had our annual rugby game. Our guys train most of the season for the event. However, with people regularly missing practices to head to the field or for just the normal comings and goings of life, it is pretty tough. In the last weeks, they are still explaining the rules. One of these day, we'll win the game. We are getting closer and closer, even though we have never scored a point yet. This year, we were about 3 inches of a crossbar from scoring our first points. The guys played great defense most of the game. They usually do. I think that is similar enough to football (go, tackle) that we do alright with that part.


A Kiwi player gets ready to pass the ball.


Final score 23-0. Mt. Erebus in the background.


The Kiwi player, Chance, gets tackled.


Our closest chance of scoring smacks off the uprights.


Tony is tackled and the ball pops loose.

Moore's Bay on New Year's Eve day

This view is almost always the start of a great day.


This view is definitely the start of a great day.
On New Year's Eve, I was lucky enough to end the year in style. I went into the field with a grantee to fix a computer. The other folks in his group had already gone home and he wanted a computer guy around just in case anything went awry.


Our pilot took us directly over the Pegasus crash site.
I was pretty stressed about this trip into the field. Earlier in the week, the grantee had come to us to try and help him gain remote access to his linux computer in the field. He could ping (basically say hello and get a hello back) the machine, but he couldn't SSH to it. Every other service that would let him talk to his computer was turned off to make it use less battery. The easy solution to the problem, just like most computer problems, was to restart it. Expecting that to work, the grantee requested just forty-five minutes on the ground. This was great if the restart worked, but if it didn't, we probably wouldn't have the time to fix it.


I was amazed to see colors in the melt pools on Black Island.


A sliding glacier on Black Island.
As a shop, we wanted to head out with a full backup of the hard drive just in case it had been corrupted. We wanted to take spare parts. We wanted a spare battery. We wanted a lot of stuff that the grantee just didn't give us enough time for with less than an hour on the ground. All of this, stressed me out. I was going out to work on a system that I had never seen and didn't have time to get acquainted with. I wasn't sure it the trip into the field would be enjoyable at all. On the way out, I'd stress about if we would get it all done. While there, I'd get to stress about getting it done. On the way back, I was worried that I would stress because we didn't get it done. Yes, I do let the little things bother me too much.


The southwest side of Minna Bluff.


The black dot is where we were going.
New Year's Eve morning, we finally flew. It was a gorgeous day. It was so warm, we didn't wear our Big Reds while flying. Every time that I am in the field, I am boggled by our lack of perspective. Ten thousand foot mountains don't look that big. Flying at one thousand feet seems like three hundred. Nothing looks as far away as it really is. Flying at 110 mph, I would have guessed we were crossing the ice shelf at 60mph. The natural beauty and my amazement at our lack of perspective overwhelmed my stress enough that I was able to enjoy the flight out over Pegasus airfield, past Black Island, over Minna Bluff, and into Moore's Bay, which is a section of the Ross Ice Shelf.


Our flight route to Moore's Bay, S78'44.3 E165'02.45

Opening the box where all the communications equipment is stored.


Thorsten begins to uncover the box where the computer is stored.
At Moore's Bay, we had more beautiful weather with warm temperatures and almost no wind. Everything seemed to be going great. We split up to do our individual work. I grabbed a network connection to the computer to confirm we could ping it. Thorsten cut a live wire and spliced it to reset the computer. He insisted it was only 12V or 5v, but electricity scares me. I keep my distance from it and was glad he took that job. I'm not cutting any live wires.


The entire research site.


Our pilot takes a break while we do our work.
As soon as the computer was reset, we were able to use SSH to get back in. We turned on telnet so we'd have a second way to get in later if SSH broke again. Then, we reconnected everything and were getting ready to go. We just had a final test to see if someone in town could reach the computer. One short iridium phone call later, we found out we were not done yet.


Thorsten turns off the computer.


Paul wakes up from his cat nap.
Town couldn't reach the computer even though we could. The wireless link was down which isn't that much of a surprise because it is being broadcast over such a long distance (I think the longest we have ever done). We had to log in to the hardware and reset everything. After about ten resets, we got it to stay up. Things still weren't working. At this point, we were over our allotted time on the ground. I was starting to get stressed. After a few wrong turns, we figured out that an automated script on the computer had changed the gateway to an iridium link when the wireless went down. After entering a few quick commands, everything was working and we were on our way.


Mason Spur.

On our way out, the pilot let us know that we really had unlimited time. While they did have other flights to get to, they didn't want to have to make a follow up flight because nothing else is near by. They didn't tell us because they didn't want us to dilly dally. Yeah for stressing over nothing, just like usual.

On the way back, I was allowed to ride shotgun in the helicopter for the first time. The view is always amazing, but it felt like watching an iMax compared to a TV screen. I was left smiling for days. While a little stressful and tiring, the trip went well. Like most things, I'll conveniently forget the bad and remember the good. It was a beautiful day in the field and I was happy to get out. It was a brilliant way to whisk away a bad year.


The back (southern) side of Mt. Discovery