Engine #2

After 372 days on the Ice, this will be my final Antarctic entry in this blog, as I will be landing in New Zealand in just a few hours, only two and a half days late. We arrived at Pegasus airfield on Monday at about 1:30 and boarded the C-17. We waited. Trouble on engine #2. We waited. We taxied up the runway, and then back. Still trouble. We waited. Air Force personnel diagnosed the problem. We waited. 8:00. Dinner is over, so they brought us pizza on the plane. We waited.

We arrived back in town at about 10:00, still unsure of what was wrong. Our room keys were hanging on the housing office door. A note from RaJa said she was glad I was staying in town with her a little longer. Another from Bamma saying she has beer and pizza waiting for me. I needed a beer.

Tuesday passed. No information. Summer folks expressed their condolences. Winter folks laughed. Wednesday started out looking bleak. The rumor mill brought multiple strands of conflicting information, but eventually a new bag drag time appeared on the scroll, shortly followed by a transport time.

We arrived at the airstrip again just in time to see a snow covered C-17 about to be brushed off with a kitchen broom. No fancy de-icing systems here. This is a rather odd site; it has been a long time, if ever, that a C-17 has spent the night here. Their standard run is here and back in a day.

Oh yeah, the windshield too:

But after some warm-up and a practice acceleration down the runway, engine #2 was declared healthy, and soon we were in the air. The sun was setting behind us as we flew along the Transantarctic Mountain Range over the breaking pack ice and glacial run-out. The tiny window was a little dirty, but the view was still epic. A huge glacial tongue extending out into the sea ice:

Sunset light on the mountaintops:

The last light caught low clouds over the icy landscape, transforming them into a pink sea.

Until only the shadowed, ice-covered mountains remained.

For all I know, this is the last I will see of the frozen continent, and my departure is bittersweet. The friends I've made here are close and amazing. I know I will keep many of them, and hope to see them all again.

During the busy final weeks of my stay, I slowly regained some energy and mental capacity. I attribute it to everything: the return of the sun, the warmer temperatures, the increased energy of the station, and especially the greeting of returning friends. I became much happier to still be around, and sometimes even began to wish I was staying (though never overpowering my desire to leave). I felt much more comfortable than I ever did last summer. I realized that over the winter I developed a strong sense of ownership that dissolved many inhibitions that I felt as a fingee. Instead of an overwhelming world of strangers, McMurdo had become a familiar world filled with friends. Friends that will be dearly missed...

Ice Cave

Current Conditions
Temperature: 16F
Wind Chill: 8F

I heard rumors over the summer that several years ago there used to be tours of an ice cave on the Erebus Ice Tongue. According to the rumor, it had walls 50 feet high, which may be true, and tours stopped due to the recently overbearing focus on safety; which isn't true; they stopped because they have been unable to find a suitable cave to tour.

Also several years ago, a large iceberg (about the size of Delaware) broke off of the Ross Ice Shelf and drifted in front of McMurdo Sound, blocking the frozen sound off from the rest of the Ross Sea, and preventing the sea ice from melting out. In the old days before iceberg B-15, McMurdo Sound would often melt out all the way to town in the summer. During the B-15 blockage, the ice on the sound surely became thicker, and hasn't melted out completely since.

This year, the Erebus Ice Tongue grew quite a bit more than it has in recent years. meaning that a considerable amount of pressure must have been released to allow it. I'm assuming this has to do with the slow thinning of McMurdo Sound's sea ice, back to it's pre-B-15 equilibrium. More importantly, what that means for us is that chunks of glacier on the edges of the ice tongue were able to flake off this year, creating ice caves, one of which we now have the pleasure to explore.

On Sunday, the day before I was scheduled to leave the ice, they arranged a trip to Cape Evans and the ice cave for guide trainees, winterovers, and polies who are still in McMurdo on their way to South Pole station. It was a beautiful, sunny, balmy day, and I was ecstatic to have the opportunity. What a great way to spend my last* day on the ice!

Three Deltas full of people drove for two hours out to Cape Evans. Those of us who had seen the cape and hut reloaded one Delta to head straight to the cave, about half an hour back.

The entrance is a shallow, tubular slide. Here's Emily ready to drop in:

And RaJa, looking like a kid at Christmas at the bottom of the slide:

Once inside, the ambient light changes to a deep azure as it filters through the snow and ice above our heads. Thinner sections of the enclosure allow whiter light to pass through.

The left wall is a perfectly smooth sheet of glacial blue ice. The right side, where the "flake" has fallen away to create the cave, is covered in snow and ice.

Icicles hang over our heads:

At the back of the room, the cave continues on as a narrow crack up towards the surface.

A closer inspection reveals large ice crystals clinging to walls and hanging from above.

The white light of day creeps in through the entrance when we turn around:

And on the way home, a single Adelie penguin scooting across the ice sheet, the Royal Society mountains as his backdrop.

What an amazing day.

Don't Forget the Murphys

Current Conditions
Temperature: 8F
Wind Chill: -10F

Bamma's here! And she brought me Pad Thai from a restaurant in Christchurch. It was fantastic! (for the 3 seconds it lasted) Thanks Bamma!

The weather finally broke and we've gotten three flights in the past two days, bringing the population up to about 720. The galley is packed. Finding an empty table is nearly impossible, which means I will have to start settling for atypical, foriegn tables. Crushing.

We, as fellow winterovers, are now brutally aware of each other's toastiness, and are more and more able to recognize the affliction in ourselves, like being at the wheel of a train wreck, unable to switch tracks. Against my will, I mumble disapproval under my breath as people gather and stand in the busiest corridors, undermine any flow that may exist in the food line, turn blind corners without pausing to consider traffic. I've begun to wonder if there is a deeper subconscious that develops among winterovers. Even when there seems to be no one around (a rarity now) someone will still round the bend intent on collision. I don't recall this happening in winter. The intersection of Highways 1 & 2 was never so dangerous, even at peak mealtimes. Did we develop a subconscious traffic pattern? I don't know, but there was flow. It worked. It's gone.

Gone, just like our filters. Things come out of our mouths without concern for consequence. Some little annoyance, that would not normally even provoke irritation, will start a chain reaction in the nervous system ending at the lips with some muttered exasperation. Shawn told me today that he saw the line for food and some expletive came out, unwittingly, unprocessed by consideration, and several people heard it and moved aside. So that's a plus.

Yesterday I got to see another returning summer friend, Eric. Eric has been following my blog and he noted the conveyance of my mental decline over recent weeks. He said he half expected me to throw something breakable after every sentence (sarcastically, of course... I think), and so approached me with care. I didn't realize my ranting on the whole "toast" topic made me sound so dismal, so I want to put in the disclaimer that I'm still myself; I'm still generally happy, easily amused, and enjoyable to be around (I hope). I really just want to capture this winterover state honestly, while I'm experiencing it, because it is downright bizarre.

The sun is now up most of the time. It settles behind the mountains for a few hours at night, but the sky remains quite light. I love the sun. And hate it. It is fantastic to have it back, a beacon in the sky over a desolation of white, but at times it's too bright. This is a combination of the immense amount of reflected light in a snow-bleached landscape with the vampire-loving levels that my eyes are accustomed to.

Erebus had a fantastic plume in dazzling sunlight yesterday, and I actually took some pictures, something I haven't done in a while. This one is the drift that has accumulated over winter in the lee of the Arrival Heights building; it's 8 feet tall and hard as a rock:

The recent storms have piled mounds of fine powder over sections of road. Fleet Ops has focused on clearing town and Pegasus airfield, but have neglected the road to RaySat and AH, much to my driving pleasure (Fahrvergnugen, anyone?). I've been plowing into a drift that's taller than my Ford F150's bumper on a daily basis. The extremely light snow washes over the hood and windshield like flowing water, and puts a huge grin on my face. It's finally starting to stiffen up into styrofoam, but I might get one more good day out of it.

Oh yeah, I almost forgot: The Murphys' Winstock performance is now up on Surlyjam.

NASA & LIDAR

Current Conditions
Temperature: -4F
Wind Chill: -29F
Condition 2

Ok, since my recent blatherings on the topic of my current state of emotion have come out a bit on the jaded, bipolar, morose side (hey, at least they're not mushy), in this post I'm going back to some of the things that go on here, some of the science I haven't touched on yet.

The Lunar Habitat
So back in November, I got an email from Norman asking if I knew anything about this Lunar Habitat they were erecting in Antarctica for testing. No, I didn't, but I was curious. At the next Crary weekly meeting, I asked my boss and she didn't know either. I think it was a month later, "Remember that Lunar Habitat you mentioned? Yeah, the one your friend in Oregon found on the internet? It's looking like you'll be its caretaker over the winter." Yep, Raytheon Polar Services' communication deficiencies are a bottomless well. I have to revert to friends' internet skills to know what my job entails...

NASA's Lunar Habitat is basically an inflatable Jamesway structure, modeled after the ones that were once used as housing here, and still are at the South Pole. It was erected and lashed down over the summer, and its feasibility is essentially being tested against the elements in this harsh environment.

The Habitat has various sensors installed to monitor things like temperature, CO₂ level, and energy usage, a pump system that monitors the structure and inflates it as needed, and small electric heaters. The structure is not airtight, and there is no airlock, so the inside and outside air are free to mix, and astronauts would have to be suited up while using it. I guess it's purpose would be more of a shelter and laboratory than an actually livable habitat.

There is also a networked video camera in the center of the Habitat to view the interior remotely. At one point during the winter, several of the Habitat systems were in need of manual resets. We organized a teleconference where I literally called NASA in Houston from inside the Lunar Habitat. Exciting. I brought it up at Scott Base the evening before, and Lyal, one of the Kiwis, thought it would be great if I wore his homemade space suit to the conference, since they would be watching me on the video camera. I also brought along "Myrtle", our friendly neighborhood inflatable green alien doll. The NASA boys got quite a laugh out of the whole thing. They even had me pose for a picture, and were kind enough to send it to me:

Houston, we have a problem. No, the equipment is fine, this is a mental problem...

RaySat
You may have noticed the silhouette of a sphere on a hill in some of my pictures. That's RaySat, which is short for something nonsensical like "Radar Satellite," I think. The dome, which resembles a massive golf ball, is the protective housing for more NASA equipment. Inside is a 30-foot articulated satellite dish:

I'm not sure who's doing the Alfred Hitchcock impersonation in this one, but it's pretty good, especially for being unintentional:

The dish is used to track satellites as they traverse the sky, and it swings in an arc to stay focused on whatever satellite it is tracking. The keepers of this equipment like us all to think that there's a bunch of top secret stuff going on up there, but they're simply downloading scientific data from these satellites. The Antarctic treaty doesn't allow them to do any defense work here, only science.

LIDAR
One of my tasks over the winter was to fire the LIDAR. LIDAR stands for Light Detection and Ranging. It is the same premise as SONAR or RADAR, but uses light instead of sound or radio. The LIDAR here uses a pulsed laser beam to measure atmospheric conditions. The laser points straight up alongside a telescope that measures the reflected laser light off of particles in the sky. It is used particularly to determine the altitude, thickness, and particle size of Polar Nacreous Clouds. This information is used in conjunction with high altitude balloon launches to study ozone depletion.

The lidar is housed in Crary and fires through a viewing window in the ceiling. Its light reaches the edges of space, 20 miles straight up. You can see it here amongst town-lit exhaust columns:

The LIDAR uses a 500 mJ, Class IV laser capable of permanent eye damage and the ability to burn skin, though it does not seem to be capable of lighting a piece of paper on fire (maybe if I try it before the beam expander next time...)

When you're standing right underneath it, the beam appears to bend up and over your head backwards. This is an illusion, of course, from craning your neck back while searching for the elusive end of the thin green line.

We should have had three flights of fresh people in by now, but the weather this week has been horrendous, and flights have been canceled for five straight days. This is great news for me, because I don't have to deal with the population jump yet, but a lot of toasty winterovers are scheduled to leave, more than ready to leave, and some of them are getting downright irate at this point. Sorry kids. "You can check out any time you like... "