Temperatures climbed into the 30s and 40s (Fahrenheit) and the skies continued to clear, allowing us several long days of excellent flying. Tracking conditions had been poor because sunlight becomes quite flat with low overcast skies, making it difficult to see tracks. Clear skies and direct sunlight made tracks easier to see. However, after several days the warm temperatures began to melt out all tracks, making it difficult to distinguish fresh tracks from new tracks.

Following a trail of polar bear tracks on the sea ice. To find bears for capture, we fly low over good habitat – areas of sea ice with cracks and leads which allow seals to surface, making them vulnerable to predation – and look for bears or their sign. In good light conditions such as this photo, tracks are easy to see. These tracks belonged to an adult female with two cubs-of-the-year (COYs).

We captured several sows with cubs, and an adult female and an adult male that were most likely a breeding pair. As we have all season, we fitted some of these bears with GPS collars which periodically record time, date, location, ambient temperature, bear activity, and salt water immersion (as a record of swimming). This data is stored on the collar and it is transmitted to satellite twice per day, allowing us to track the bear in real-time. We will use these collars to locate bears for recapture in the fall. For the possibility that we may not be able to recapture some bears, the collars are programmed to release in November and fall off the animal.

An adult male bear, positioned on the pads used for BIA, with the mask and bag used for breath collection.

An adult female laying on her side with her cub against her chest.

During this last week, I thought about how brutal this environment would be for any living thing that was not prepared. The sea ice and tundra is a beautiful, intriguing area, and I really enjoy spending time here. However, I know I am out of place. For example, I usually carry some kind of emergency fire-starter while doing field work (thankfully, I have not used it). But here, there is almost nothing to burn – some driftwood pokes out of the snow along the coast, but there is nothing on the sea ice. I enjoy cold, snowy regions and I have spent a lot of time doing winter field work and skiing, and the Arctic is quite different than anywhere else I have been. The environment makes the cultures which have thrived up here all the more interesting.

Sea ice breakup continued. One day we flew about 140 miles northeast of Deadhorse to look for bears and on the return flight, we encountered a new lead of open water that looked to be over a mile wide – it had opened that afternoon. Our pilot calculated the ice in the area was moving about a third of a mile per hour.

We counted nearly 100 seals along a single crack in the ice; 10 are pictured here. They hauled out through the crack onto the sea ice to rest and breathe. Seals do not stray far from their holes; if a polar bear approaches they can quickly escape back into the water.

Our last flight day arrived quickly. We flew in the morning but did not find any bears, then returned to Deadhorse to begin packing up. For over a month, I had woken up every day prepared to fly and to work with polar bears and it was surprising how quickly everything changed. We broke down all of the lab equipment, packed it into crates, and cleaned the living space. Over three days our research team departed on the daily flights to Anchorage. I was the last to leave on Friday evening, turning down the heat in the living space, turning off the lights, and locking the doors behind me.

I landed in Anchorage for an overnight layover and it felt like stepping into a different world. The northern coast of Alaska is treeless and it was still coated with ice and snow, while Anchorage, on the south-central coast, seemed to be teeming with green trees and summer warmth. From Anchorage, I flew to Seattle then Denver, took a bus to Fort Collins, and finally got a ride to Laramie. I am glad to be home.

The sun will be above the horizon in Deadhorse until late July. One day last week we flew all day and had several captures. I finished my labwork at about 2am and I took this picture (without using a flash) of Deadhorse as I left the lab. This twilight is as dark as it got, and by mid-summer the skies will be bright through the night.

The “Welcome” sign at the general store in Deadhorse.

Deadhorse sits at the north end of the Dalton Highway, also called “the haul road.” From my understanding, this highway was built as a service road for the Trans-Alaskan Pipeline, which runs from the oilfields of Prudhoe Bay to Valdez where the oil is loaded onto ships. The Dalton Highway parallels the pipeline for much of its long, winding journey. The highway was opened to the public in the 1990s, although it is still mostly gravel and rough driving. The highway begins here in Deadhorse, where I drove past it today on my way to the general store.

North end of the Dalton Highway.

However, we would not be driving to Deadhorse – we have done all of traveling by plane. Alaska Airlines flies to Deadhorse from Anchorage and Fairbanks, and many oil companies have private flights for their workers. The surprising accessibility of Deadhorse – if you are willing to spend days in a capable vehicle or willing to buy an expensive plane ticket – must be due to its role in oil extraction in the Prudhoe Bay oil fields. The town itself feels like a giant construction site. All buildings sit on elevated gravel pads, about eight feet above the tundra. Trucks and heavy machinery are everywhere, and equipment is constantly rumbling.

More accurately, the town feels like a cross between a construction site and a lunar module. Everything is built to withstand the fierce winter weather, with windchills that can fall below -100 Fahrenheit. Most buildings seem to have been built for ease of transport and assembly – many buildings are actually a series of connected, insulated trailers.

Our research team was up here last August for our first season of polar bear captures. We caught almost 30 bears (this includes adults and cubs) for measurements. Some adult bears received a GPS satellite collar as well. We tracked these bears via satellite during September. We returned in October and recaptured as many of these bears as possible, to re-examine them and see how they had changed during the intervening 1-2 months. This spring we are beginning another capture season – our first day of captures, weather permitting, will be Monday, April 20th.

RECOVERY LAKES, ANTARCTICA– Leaving site 5!

Today we are finally on the move again, after a prolonged stay at our science stop at site 5 in the middle of the Recovery Lakes area. We were delayed after our ice core drill was stuck 90m down in the hole Lou was drilling.

Drills do get stuck– every once and a while the chips, or the small pieces of ice that are generated as the drill spins around, get packed and the drill can become wedged in the ice. Sometimes the anti-torques, the metal fins that keep the drill from spinning in the hole as the inner barrel turns, get stuck. It happens. By pouring alcohol or glycol in the hole, drillers can sometimes turn enough of the ice around the drill into slush to pull the drill out again.

Drills have been successfully recovered that way. In our case, however, the cable had snapped, at the top of the pulley that lowers the drill into the hole, while the drill was at the bottom—exactly 92m below the surface. With the cable snapped and the drill that far down, we were in a bad position. Drills stuck closer to the surface have to be dug out by sheer manual labor, but 92m is too deep to dig, even for our team.

I was out at the drill site when it happened, picking up a couple of things for my own shallow, hand coring operation. I heard an ominous snap, and turned around to see the snarled end of the cable up near the pulley, with no drill in site, and the rest of the cable gone. “Oh @#!&!” was the only cohesive thought I had.

Sometimes when things like this happen (and they happen all the time out here), you think to yourself, “Oh, we can fix that, it will be ok.” But in this case, I knew right away that this was really, really bad, and that we probably wouldn’t be able to fix it. No drill meant that we would be essentially done with most of the science part of the trip, with the exception of the radar surveys that were being done as we drove. Lou was understandably upset, and we all started right away figuring out what we could do.

Lou knew that there was another similar drill that had been at South Pole being used in a separate project. We had no flights from the US Antarctic Program budgeted for our project after leaving South Pole, but this was an exceptional situation. Lou and Tom started working on figuring out where the second drill was (unfortunately already back in McMurdo, and not in the best of shape!) and if we might possibly get a flight, while Svein, our super mechanic, started on his own project, building a hook that might be able to catch the cable.

Our secret weapon in our quest to extract to the drill was the Borehole Optical Stratigraphy System (BOSS) that we had brought along. The BOSS is a borehole camera that I had been using to log the holes we had been drilling along the traverse. It was designed by Dr. Bob Hawley, currently a professor at Dartmouth College, who uses the reflectance from the borehole wall recorded by the images in the camera to map the varying layers in the hole. The variations in reflectance down the hole are due to variation in grain size and density of the different layers in the snow and ice. It’s a really neat piece of science equipment that was about to come in very handy as we tried to retrieve the drill.

We sent Bob’s camera down the hole to see where the end of the cable was, and what it looked like. 60m down in the hole, we found the end of the cable, a twisted mess of the metal strands, and could see a few meters down further that it continued to twist on it’s way down. The force of the break had twisted the cable, and it lay snarled in the last 30 m of hole down to the drill.

The image from the borehole camera, showing the broken end of the cable stuck in the hole 60 meters below the surface.

Not pretty, but perfect for the hook that Svein was working on, as the tangled cable provided places to hook onto. Svien’s hook consisted of four barbs, each with a sharp edge on the inside of the hook. Have I mentioned Svein is an avid fisherman back in Norway? Knowing now the exact depth of the cable end, and how it was lying in the hole, we went about fishing. At this point, no one, except for maybe Svein, thought that this was going to really work, but we were basically stuck out in the middle of nowhere, with months already invested in this part of the project, years invested in the traverse, with nothing else to do without the drill. So fishing we went, including a ceremonial spit on the hook which is apparently what you do for good luck in Norway. Lou lowered the hook down into the hole most of the way with the mechanical winch, and Svein and Ole lowered the last meter to the end of the cable by hand, with Svein, gloveless in the -26 deg C weather, seeing if he could feel the extra weight of the hooked cable. This was a bit tricky as 60 m of cable, plus the hook, is heavy enough as it is.

Lou started to pull up the winch, not sure if we had anything. There is a load cell on the top of the pulley for the cable which tells her if she has ice in the barrel or not, and we all watched to see if the load on the hook was increasing. A few meters from our fishing attempt, the load started to increase steadily– amazingly. It kept increasing as Lou slowly pulled the hook up with the winch, and we all watched, hardly being able to contain our excitement. Was this really working after all? Then, 11 meters from the surface, the load on the pulley suddenly decreased — we had lost the cable.

So, we went down the hole with the camera again. This time the cable was 5m lower than it had been. Svein went fishing again, and again the load started increasing as we pulled up the tangled cable wound at the bottom of the hole. A couple of times, the pulley snapped up and down and the load increased a great deal, only to release. We were pulling up and straightening bits of cable that had been tangled and stuck into the walls of the borehole. The snaps brought gasps from the field team gathered anxiously around Lou– all of us afraid that the cable would snap, and we would loose our drill for good.

Lou managed to pull the cable up to 7m from the surface next time before we lost it once again. Down went the camera once more, to find the end of the cable closer to the surface, meaning we had untangled more cable. Again Svein did the fishing, and Lou pulled the cable up 6m from the surface before we again lost the cable. Once more we lowered the camera, and saw that the end of the cable was now even more snarled and twisted from all the pulling– a perfect knot had formed that Svein might be able to catch, and Lou might be able to pull all the way to the surface. This was going to be the best shot we had at getting the cable back up to the surface, then hopefully being able to pull the drill up with it.

We had perfected finding the cable with the BOSS, fishing for the end, grabbing it, and getting it agonizingly close to the surface. Svein had been wanting to send the camera down with the hook so that he could see what he was doing, and I had been reluctant to do so with Bob’s camera. As a general rule, it’s not a good idea to send two things down a borehole—it you have two separate cables, as we did with the camera and drill, they can wrap around each other, and you can end up with one or both things down the hole. None of us wanted to lost both the drill and Bob’s camera. We called Bob on the Iridium phone, and he very willingly told us to go ahead and give it a try, even risking his camera (which we offered to replace if we did).

Lou lowered the hook again, and then I lowered the camera. Five different people were shouting directions to me as I maneuvered the camera into place– watching carefully on the way down to make sure that the camera cable was not twisting around the winch cable– while everyone huddled around the small LCD screen that the camera projected on to. I got to the hook, and was reluctant to get too close to it for fear of getting stuck in the mess of the cable and the hook. But I was able to get the camera down to where we had a good view of the cable, and Svein watched on the screen as he told Lou where to lower the hook.

We watched the camera as Lou was able to grab onto the mess of the cable end. I pulled the camera up 8 m, and waited for Lou to pull the hook up to see if we had the cable, and if it was slipping. When Lou got the hook up to the camera, the cable was still there, stuck even more onto the hook from the weight below. I pulled the camera out of the hole, relieved to have that done with, and the camera safe and sound back in its box. Lou pulled up the cable, and again we watched the load on the pulley increase as she pulled it closer and closer to the surface. We lowered the camera down into the hole two more times to make sure we had the cable (each time as stressful as the first for me for fear of losing Bob’s camera) then we got 7m, then 6m, then 5m, 4m and 3m from the surface, with more load on the pulley than we had seen before.

Another picture from the borehole camera, showing the hook that our mechanic Svein made snagging the broken end of the cable.

Here Lou stopped– we had come so close to getting it up before only to lose the cable in the end, and 3 m wasn’t all that far to dig. So we dug. The entire field team pitched in to dig a huge 3m deep trench while Lou kept the hole covered so that we wouldn’t knock snow down over the hook. When she cut away the last block covering the hole, there was the hook, with the cable attached. Svein and Andreas secured the bottom cable with clamps to prevent losing it again, and Lou pulled it the rest of the way up.

We all gathered around the hook with the broken end attached, amazed that it had worked, and happy.

Svein’s hook. The drill cable snagged on the end is the piece he was able to catch.

This was just the beginning however.

Now we had to get the drill, still stuck 92m below the surface, up and out of the hole. And it was really stuck. Lou had already had some problems freeing the bottom of the cores she had drilled (the core break) so that she could pull them up. The ice was brittle and strange here, much harder than anything Lou had experienced before. The drill had also spent a couple of days down at the bottom of the hole by the time we got the cable up to the surface, allowing the chips to sinter (solidify) and the drill to get stuck fast.

Lou went about pulling the drill up with the winch. She had to apply a lot of force to the cable, and we all stood well back in case the cable should snap again. A few jerks managed some terrific pops as more of the tangled cable was pulled free from the bottom of the hole. At one point, Lou thought one of the tangles coming loose was the drill, and we all cheered triumphantly. We realized it wasn’t the drill after the load on the pulley decreased again however. The drill was stuck, extremely, extremely stuck.

We didn’t have any ethanol with us, but Lou really felt like if we had some, we could get the drill out. Meanwhile, the second drill was being put back into working order and shipped back to South Pole, in the case that we would get an unplanned flight after all. Flight requests were made, and after a couple of days of waiting anxiously, we heard that we would get the flight, with the ethanol and the second drill in case we didn’t get the stuck drill out.

Weather delayed the first scheduled flight, and we had to wait another day before we finally got the ethanol and could try again. The flight came just before midnight our time, and Lou, Svein, Andreas, Stein and Tom got to work on pouring the ethanol down the cable into the hole. Svein made a special “ethanol delivery system” consisting of a bottle, rope, and small covered hole that he could open right over the drill so that the ethanol was getting right to the drill and not sloshing all over the hole. The group worked through the early hours of the morning, pouring ethanol into the hole, waiting, and pulling on the cable, until 7 hours later, just after 7am, the drill started coming up, slushy and half frozen still, but up and out of the hole. To our amazement.

A picture I drew for Lou after we got the drill up.

This is the traverse that will not quit. Already, we are attempting one of the longest science traverses ever made in Antarctica, through some of the coldest, highest, most remote locations. Vehicle problems? No problem. Radar problems? No problem. And then this, the problem of all problems with the drill stuck 90m down and no cable to pull it up, seemingly impossible to solve, threatening to end our science. But together, even when not sure we will succeed, we set out, step by step, meter by meter, kilometer by kilometer, undaunted, until we get across this continent. Our motto: science happens, all the time.

My task for the day is to set stakes at every 100 meters in a straight line in a distinct orientation atop the sea ice over McMurdo Sound. Each flag represents a location for data collection about the sediments below the sea floor. Our goal of 8 kilometers a day is doable for our three-person team but not always pleasant in the Antarctic cold. My job of sighting each flag through a scope is tedious and requires stillness. In Antarctica stillness is not your friend. It is only in movement that you can find warmth at temperatures of -15 degrees Fahrenheit.

Me, completely bundled up. (This is my usual fashion out on the ice).

I bundle all the way up. Face mask, goggles, hat, glove liners, and gloves are all required on days full of stillness. The waiting and stillness required for this job make it my least favorite. So, I lose myself in the landscapes. As my two team mates chat between flags leaving me in limbo, I consider the millions of years it took for glaciers to carve out Ferrar Valley. I wonder what is causing Mt. Erebus to throw out plumes of smoke today as compared to only sputtering yesterday. I imagine all of the various sea critters nestled in grooves in the ice below my feet. I am struck by the daily realization that I stand and live atop the frozen ocean surface.

In the distance you can see icebergs that have been frozen within the sea ice.

The ice I live on moves like the crust of our planet. Our amazing planet spins as it zooms around the sun. All of this movement, yet I am still cold? These are the things you consider while trying to pass the time in Antarctica.

Mt. Erebus and our straight line of flags.

This is why I love science. Because it is about the value of perpetual questioning. Because at its core it is about considering and then reconsidering the facts. It is a constant and unyielding effort to find and reveal something that is more true. Even in science there are few truths but many partial ones. So, we hunt and we dig. We travel to the bottom of the world to gain more facts that we can consider and then reconsider. The power of science resides not in its answers but in the questions it provokes. Legendary scientists are remembered less for the answers they’ve given us and more for the questions they had the courage to ask. As I gaze out over the sharp shapes of white and blue and hear the buzzing of my radio calling me back to duty, I make note of these realizations. Walking back to my scope, I make a small promise to myself. “I promise to never lose sight of the power and potential of questions.”

Flags and my team mates as they travel to the next flag location.

I’d never have guessed that two Kiwi drillers might befriend an opinionated American geologist like myself. Sure they talk funny. Some may say they’re rough around the edges. But, they suit me just fine. As a matter of fact, I quite adore them.

Steffan Colls on the sea ice.

Steffan Colls seems acutely aware of the power of his smile. He uses it often. He tried it out on me in our first meeting. I’m not easily wooed by such things. It was his frankness that caught my attention and has held it ever since. Communication with Steffan is rather easy. You don’t even have to ask him what he thinks. He is keen to tell you and does so at will. He is astute in his observations of others and keen to tell them as well. Ultimately, he is a family man. He is a wonderful listener and loyal friend with a heart of gold.

Kyle washing his laundry Antarctica field camp style.

Kyle Webster tries desperately to remain expressionless but ultimately always fails. It’s his eyes that tell the details of his every thought and betray his every emotion. He hides his shyness behind a rugged driller’s exterior decorated with random colorful profanities and a love of rum. But, his kindness is blaringly apparent and his consideration of others is ever present. Kyle is a thinker, a reader, a doer. He is always up for a good challenge of all sorts, be it mental, physical, or, preferably, both.

A backgammon game Kyle made because I said I was bored (and kept beating him at the computerized version).

Both men can tell a good joke and laugh at one too. They are mechanically savvy and hardworking. I always wonder about people with the mechanical skills they have. Did they take things apart as children? Somehow they are able to take apart, reassemble, and operate all that is required to keep their drill operating. They are pivotal to the success of our team when out on the line drilling into the ice or here in camp keeping spirits high.

The drill rig in front of the Ferrar Valley.

Down at the Antarctic clothing issue office, we had the usual fun of getting our cold weather gear in order (Lisa was playing with her ninja alter ego) and got some good news: we’re leaving tomorrow morning on a C-17 USAF plane rather than the slower, smaller C-130 which means about a four-hour flight rather than almost eight. That makes a difference because these military planes are not built for comfort: they have little insulation on their skins so they are loud and cold close to the bulkhead.

Lisa trying on clothes in her best Ninja pose at the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center.)

The Clothing Distribution Center.

Lisa tests out her ‘bunny boots’.

After months of preparation filling out USAP (United States Antarctic Program) forms and travel requests, going to doctor and dentist appointments to become “physically qualified” for Antarctic travel, visiting Raytheon Polar Services in Denver to meet with support staff and plan our movements on the ice, and training Antarctic field correspondents, our time is finally at hand. In fact, I feel like we’ve already started our polar adventure; in addition to posting blogs from all of our Antarctic scientists, we’ve also been keeping up with Ice Stories correspondent Robin Bell’s Gambutserv Mountain (AGAP) project on her Twitter and the Xtreme South Facebook pages.

We’ve also met up on the plane to New Zealand and here in Christchurch a drilling engineer on his way down to the deep ice coring operation at WAIS-Divide. That’s one of those acronyms mysterious to an outsider but full of meaning for glaciologists and climate researchers. WAIS is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice divide, like a continental divide, refers to a region of the ice sheet where the snow falling on one side of the divide flows one way down to the ocean and snow on the other side flows in the opposite direction.

A map of the WAIS divide. Image courtesy of the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project.

The WAIS-Divide is an ideal place to drill ice cores because the movement of the ice there is downward rather than horizontal, leaving clear annual ice layers that can be counted to track the passage of time. Lots of snow falls in this region of the ice sheet, trapping gas bubbles between the snow grains that record the compositions of the atmosphere when the snow fell, preserving a climate record from 40,000 to 100,000 years ago. Lisa, Ron and I saw some ice cores when we visited the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver last spring, some of them dating back to the original International Geophysical Year in 1957-8.

Bubbles in an ice core. Photo by John Weller.

Ron and Lisa filming in the ice core storage room of the National Ice Core Laboratory. Photo by John Weller.

We won’t have a chance to go out to the WAIS-Divide ice drilling camp as it’s an additional plane flight from McMurdo and we already have a pretty full work and travel schedule once we do get to McMurdo. We hope to travel out by helicopter to some fields camps to see penguins, the communications station at Black Island, McMurdo Dry Valleys, and, the biggest prize of all: the South Pole.

In the meantime, the Ice Stories crew enjoys green New Zealand.

Well, there is the usual sort of thing, like learning as much as possible in school about science and math, getting a good understanding about how the universe works, including the process of evolution. Then, it’s good, but not necessarily necessary, that you go to graduate school to rub elbows with people who have done research.

Anyone can be a scientist, really. In fact, ‘science’ is basically just a way of looking at things. In science, when you see some pattern out there in nature, or in a test tube, or through a telescope or a microscope, you formulate a preliminary explanation of what you see (which is called a hypothesis). Then, you try to be clever to find ways to DISPROVE your idea. If your explanation can withstand your testing, then you’re probably onto something.

On the other hand, if you are not a person thinking in a scientific way, then you just have an idea about something that strikes you as cool, and maybe you write a poem about it or paint a picture, or just continue to think it to be cool. Truly, there are ways of seeing things that are valid even if you are not being scientific. I’m not talking here about religion, or about morals, these two not necessarily being the same thing. I’m a scientist but I am also religious: I feel the vast and great forces of Nature all around me, and I’m awed and feel insignificant.

For a scientist, the cool part of it, besides the phenomenon itself, is coming up with an explanation that withstands concrete, observable alternate explanations. Then you see if someone else has had those thoughts (by reading stuff), and if not, you write a scientific paper about it and submit it for publication. This is the sort of thing you’d learn about in graduate school, mostly the process of being a scientist, that is, a person who finds stuff out and is responsible enough to tell other people through a publication.

Thomas Jefferson was a person who was not a ‘scientist’ but he was a great practitioner of ‘science’ and was very knowledgeable about nature, especially botany. He once said, in regard to his charge, Meriwether Lewis (the guy he sent to explore the Missouri and Columbia rivers before other white guys did), that “observation unrecorded is knowledge lost”. That’s so, so very true!!! In the olden days, people ‘recorded’ their observations and knowledge by intricate and constant story telling. Now we write things down, take notes, etc., and write papers and essays.

In any case, enough of this book learning side to being a penguin researcher. Let’s see, what did I do yesterday in this process of learning facts about penguins? Yesterday, and the day before and the day before that, we were engulfed in a major storm, winds up to 60 knots (though higher away from the shelter of where our platform tent is located) and from time to time snow so thick one couldn’t see more than a few yards. Well, Roald Amundsen, polar explorer extraordinaire, once said, “If you’ve had an adventure then you haven’t prepared!”

True, but sometimes there are ’small’ things that don’t go exactly as planned. And you have to deal with them before they become big things. This I was thinking, yesterday, upon hearing a thud and a clank outside, at the same time that our heating stove died. Seems we had a gust of wind from an unanticipated direction, which then took advantage of the fact that the propane in one of our canisters had been used up. Thus the canister was about 150lbs lighter than when I hoisted it in place.

Shoot, why now? Definitely not fair! So, I donned all my polar clothes… looking like the Dough-man… got a wrench, and out I went. I proceeded to wrestle with the two remaining, full canisters, which had blown over, too, upon the other becoming too light (these winds ARE strong). This isn’t so easy to do in a hurricane, wearing gloves and a parka hood that wouldn’t sit straight on my head. Thus I was usually seeing out with just one eye. Try untying and then re-tying knots wearing gloves in those conditions! Ultimately, though, I succeeded, made sure all the ropes on various tents and things were snug, and then back inside I went. Heating stove started right up!

That was the highlight of yesterday. Today, with lessening though still blustery winds I ventured down to the penguins. The penguins could care less, of course, what with this weather. The tent, though, which protected the computer that goes with our automatic weighing scale, was in need of help. Thought I’d gotten it right the first time, when setting it up! But the wind had torn some of the sewed-in loops out. So, it was kind of the same story, tying and un-tying knots in very strong winds, with tent flaps flapping etc etc etc, wind trying to take them one way, and me trying to force them the other. I sure am glad that my Dad and others taught me a lot of neat knots. They don’t teach that stuff in science graduate school! Finally, I got the whole thing staked down again in all its important parts. Then, after an hour or two, I went off to see how the penguins were doing. Taking notes as I went, of course, me being a scientist.

These are the kinds of things one has to do to have a successful season of field research. It’s a lot of camping and ‘surviving’ in order to be collecting data and taking notes, and thinking scientific thoughts. So, if you want to be a penguin researcher, do a lot of camping before hand, just to become comfortable with those little ‘adventures’ that arise day to day. Of course, some penguins live in places where the comforts of civilization aren’t all that far away. But I like camping out there in Nature, with my religion all about.

Part of our field camp.

Above is our lodging for this 2008-09 penguin research season. It’s called a RacTent (the blue and yellow structure). You can see the propane canisters in the back to the right, where the anemometer (wind gauge) is located (that pipe sticking up). To the left are the solar panels. Those have to be rotated now and again to keep them facing the sun, especially when there are lots of clouds and not much reflectance off the snow.

Inside the RacTent.

Above is the inside of the RacTent. In the far right corner is the propane camp stove, underneath which are about 5 boxes for recycling, one box for a different kind of stuff: food waste, cans, mixed paper, and non-recyclable stuff (plastic and cellophane food wrappers, etc). To the right is the propane heating stove. Anything put on the floor is liable to freeze, including your feet. Walking around, though, the upper half of your body is comfortably warm. To the left, you can see my ‘desk’ and laptop. Note the telephone on the card-table. That’s a wireless connection to McMurdo Station. The other morning at 5:30AM, the McMurdo Fire House called saying that someone from this number had called in a 911 code. Must have been some penguins fiddling with the antenna, or some electrons that the wind had overly excited.

The computer tent, with Adélies.

Here’s the tent containing the computer, with the automatic scale to its left. Solar panels that run the computer and scale are to the right of the tent. The wind is very, very clever about un-raveling things, wanting everything to enter a state of chaos. So, one has to keep paying attention to the small things, so they don’t become big and chaotic.

The green, plastic fence surrounding the penguins directs them to go and come by walking across the scale.

-41 deg C

SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA– The Norwegian-US Traverse, Year 2, Begins! We still haven’t started on our big trip, (the actual traverse), but we are getting closer and closer! This seems amazing given how far we’ve come already. I started my trip early the morning of October 25, first driving to Boston from my home in Vermont, with my husband, Mike. Our wedding was September 27, so we just missed spending our first month anniversary together.

From Boston, I flew first to Newark, then on to Los Angeles, where I spent a couple of hours waiting for my flight to Auckland, New Zealand. This is where things became a little bizarre. First as I was waiting in line to go through security, a very large limo pulled up to the terminal and a whole entourage started piling out. By this time in my trip (which was just the beginning, really), I was already too hungry and tired and homesick to care, and grabbed some food and went to my gate without waiting to see who it was.

As it so happens, the very famous person, hip hop super star Ice Cube was also flying to Auckland, with his entourage. Ice Cube sat in first class, while about 15 members of his entourage were back in coach where I was sitting. They were very, very entertaining for the first few hours of the 13 hour flight, and then thankfully fell asleep. The funniest thing for me is that when I tell people heading to Antarctica that I saw Ice Cube on the plane, everyone first assumes that it’s IceCube, the neutrino telescope that is being run at the South Pole, not the international hip hop/movie star.

In Christchurch, I had a few busy days gathering up the supplies we will need for the traverse, and meeting up with the rest of the group as we were all coming in from all over. There’s Lou, our driller, who flew in from Montana, Tom, the field team leader, who came from Vermont, Glen, coming from Colorado, and the Norwegians, Rune, Svein, Einar and Kjetil, who were coming from Tromso, Norway. The last member of our group to arrive in Christchurch was John, who had to make a last-minute, unexpected detour to Cape Town, South Africa to take care of some business for the Norwegian Polar Institute there. Compared to John’s trip, mine was nothing to complain about. He didn’t even get to see Ice Cube in person.

Tom Neumann, our fearless leader, in line to check in bags for the flight from Christchurch to McMurdo, which we had to do the day before our flight.

In Christchurch, we all worked finding the various odds and ends we would need to find in New Zealand that we hadn’t already shipped, and that we wouldn’t find in Antarctica, including a 5 m ladder, 400 loaves of bread (Norwegians really, really like bread), potholders, a spatula for pancakes, 20 large batteries, and 80 pounds of coffee (most of us really, really like coffee). This at time proved rather amusing, as it meant either Tom or Glen had to drive on the “wrong” side of the road in our rented van, sometimes with oddly sized loads.

This first group of us is participating in the first phase of our traverse from South Pole Station to the Norwegian Antarctic base, Troll. Phase One is to recover the four tracked vehicles we are using, which are currently located 300 km from the South Pole, where we are now. Svein, Kjetil and Rune are the cracker-jack mechanics who will fix two of the vehicles, which are currently non-operational, and replace the differentials (this being the part that broke several time last season) in all of the vehicles. Lou and I are going to drill an ice core while the mechanics do the repairs. The spot where we will be working is called Camp Winter, since that is where everything spent the last season.

Hand drilling an ice core.

After everything is fixed and we are done with our core, we will pack everything up, and head back here to the South Pole where we will unfortunately lose Kjetil and Rune and Glen. Rune’s wife is expecting a baby soon, so it’s important to get him back home to Norway before that happens. The rest of us will head to Troll with another group of researchers meeting us here in December. Then we will begin Phase Two, which is getting from South Pole to the coast, drilling ice cores, taking radar data, and collecting snow samples along the way.

The area we are passing through has not been visited since the 1960’s, and some spots we are covering have never been traveled over before. Our measurements will help determine whether this part of Antarctica is growing in mass (more snow is falling here due to rising temperatures), staying the same, or shrinking in mass.

I was able to spend a couple of hours roaming around Christchurch my last day before leaving for “The Ice,” and so I hit my favorite spots (I had spent quite a lot of time in Christchurch the last time I was in Antarctica). I went to rub Roald Amundsen’s nose at the Canterbury Museum (there is a bust of him there, and it is tradition to rub his nose for good luck), and then spent some time walking around the botanic gardens. I will try to remember what it is like to be warm, to smell flowers, and to be surrounded by color in the next few months. On these trips, I am always amazed by the sensory deprivation I experience.

Roald Amundsen’s bust at the Canterbury Museum, Christchurch, NZ. His nose is shiny from people rubbing it for good luck.

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

Plants from the botanic gardens in Christchurch…

…where we all spent our last day roaming around or laying in the grass, enjoying the sun.

After one delayed flight, we left for McMurdo a day later than expected, where we spent another crazy few days gathering, sorting, and packing all the food we would need for the entire trip (phase one and two). This was usually pretty amusing, trying to compromise between Norwegian and American tastes. We are bringing lots and lots of fish, aforementioned bread, rye crackers, brunost (Norwegian “brown cheese” or whey cheese), sardines, some other Norwegian snacks, and luckily a few packages of hot dogs (my request!). The amount of food is mind boggling, as is the amount of toilet paper (about 300 rolls). We won’t have an opportunity to resupply while we are traveling, so it’s important to get it right.

Lou and Einar going for a quick hike up Observation Hill in McMurdo.

The cargo system in McMurdo can be a bear to deal with, meaning that every box is weighed and measured, sometimes multiple times, and entered into the system before it can head out. In addition, we (mostly me) had to keep track of what was going into each box for our own records. The result is that we are very well organized now though, and have sorted the food so that for every week, there are three boxes that contain all our food. We can just grab the boxes and bring them inside the vehicles, and not spend time outside (where we are expecting temperatures around -50deg C in the beginning). That will be worth it in the end.

At the top of Observation Hill is a cross dedicated to members of Scott’s expedition who died on their return trip from the South Pole.

So far, we are all getting along marvelously. Somehow the nine of us, with our diverse backgrounds, all share a similar sense of humor, and work to take care of one another. The Norwegians have been particularly impressed with my skills in the Norwegian language (I had Norwegian roommates in college), even though most of what I remember is a little less than polite. We have all had a lot of experience in the field, and we all enjoy what we do. Who could ask for anything else?

Kjetil and John hiking up Observation Hill, with Mt. Erebus, and active volcano, in the background.