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.
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.
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