MCMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA– The problem with going to remote places is that no one wants to come pick you up. As of the 13th, we had a plan for finishing the survey, getting all the science personnel out of AGAP and leaving Antarctica on the HERC flight that left at 7am yesterday. Reality is: not a single member of the AGAP-South staff or science team was on that flight. Since the 13th we have been waiting for a ride out of East Antarctica, a ride that each day was promised and then taken away. The carps and electricians have it the worst. Their ride was supposed to come on the 13th, while the science team has just been waiting since the 15th or 16th. The funny thing is that the weather here was supposed to turn so foul and cold that we would not be able to get picked up at this time. It’s still a balmy -25F… normal AGAP summer temperatures.

Many of the HERC cancellations have had nothing to do with weather here at AGAP. The majority of flights were canceled because of mechanical problems and a few more were kept away by the forecast, not the actual weather. Last Tuesday, the HERC circled overhead and turned back to town without stopping. We later learned it had an engine failure that would prevent it from taking off again had it landed. That solace was not provided before the phrase “If a HERC circles twice and does not land, you’ve been AGAP’d” was added to the collection of poems, cultural arguments and witty limericks on the outhouse walls.

Yesterday morning, we were canceled again despite beautiful weather on the plateau. This particular HERC could not get appropriate air pressure in the passenger cabin. Normally, airplanes are kept at a pressure altitude of no more than 8000 ft, which is comfortable for most people when they are sitting or sleeping. Weather systems are often associated with pockets of high and low pressure. As they pass over, they change the pressure altitude or the amount of oxygen available in the air. Our science party has experienced pressure altitudes of near 16,000 ft while at AGAP. When they called to cancel the HERC because they couldn’t lower the altitude inside of it by pumping the plane full of oxygen, we all objected. Everything is downhill from AGAP! We are already at the maximum altitude we’d experience during flight and 2 days before we were 2,000 ft higher! Despite our exclamations, arguing with a HERC will never make it land. But later that night, a HERC finally landed! More importantly, it stopped, added 3,000 gallons of fuel to the AGAP fuel bladder and then hauled away with 20+ passengers and tons of cargo.

The much awaited HERC finally lands on the AGAP runway.

AGAP residents eagerly wait while cargo is loaded onto the HERC. Everyone was smiling and there was even some dancing… mostly because it was so cold.

Having waited patiently all weekend, Nick can’t hold back his excitement anymore.

Now back in McMurdo, the AGAP team will work to disassemble the science kit on the plane, pack, label and ship all our gear back to New York. Meanwhile, I am packing my personal things and coming to terms with going home — particularly since it will still be winter when I get there. A month in East Antarctica is plenty of winter for any year!

Not missing the cold of Antarctica does not save me from missing the adventure. As the reality of leaving this great continent dawned on me, I decided I had to throw myself in the deep end one more time: I took the polar plunge. Yes, I jumped into freezing cold, salty water in a cutaway in the ice shelf. It was surprising — like when we discovered one of the Recovery lakes is not a lake at all; it was cold, like the windy day on the plateau when the wind chill hit -55F and it was exhilarating — like all science fieldwork should be. What better way to end this journey of learning?

Swimming to the ladder after jumping into the Ross Sea as part of the annual Polar Plunge at Scott Base. Trust me — it’s not ideal bathing suit weather!

SUMMER CAMP, SOUTH POLE, ANTARCTICA– So, perhaps I was a bit ahead of schedule when I referred to Friday as the Eve of Discovery. Since then, AGAP has been playing the waiting game. Waiting to get to Pole, waiting to get acclimated at Pole, waiting to get to AGAP-South and now waiting for the rest of the science party to be medically cleared to fly our science missions.

In the midst of all that, I developed and recovered from the intestinal CRUD that was sweeping McMurdo. CRUD is the official term for whatever sickness is sweeping McMurdo in spite of the flu shots and constant handwashing. Initially, the doctors thought I was sick because I had taken Diamox, the recommended medication for altitude adjustment. When I was still eating tea and toast 3 days later, they decided I had had the CRUD. I slept through most of those uncomfortable days and being at Pole was just what I needed to forget being sick.

Eventually, I beat the CRUD and saw my name on the manifest to fly to Pole. We arrived just before midnight on December 18 for a planned 3 days of acclimatization at more than 10,000ft. When my illness resurfaced at Pole (CRUD part 2), I ended up having to stay 2 extra days. Most of my time was spent at Summer Camp, in the South Pole’s sturdy but temporary buildings called Jamesways. Although Summer Camp is a shantytown compared to South Pole Station, it was much more comfortable than I anticipated. We still have running water and plumbing, something I’ll be sure to miss at AGAP, and across from my little haven, there’s a lounge with 2 TVs and room to dance the night away if the spirit so moves you.

Hugging the Ceremonial South Pole.

I was impressed with South Pole Station and since it had so many public spaces, I spent much of my time squatting in the quiet reading room or in one of the lounges where the walls are lined with books. The station manager, who also contributed to the design and construction of the building, gave the AGAP group a behind-the-scenes tour. We learned how the building is designed to recycle all the heat it generates and saw the many 4-wall doors that would be closed if ever there was a station meltdown. Unfortunately, being in such an extreme part of the planet, where the weather can kill you, also means you have to plan for the worst. Everything in the building is duplicated. Each heating system could heat the whole building if the other one broke or needed repair. And on top of that, part of the building is a life preserver; a small section where everything needed for survival can be produced and maintained even if the other parts had to be abandoned.

At the South Pole, I did the ever famous handstand. Everyone wants a chance to hang off the bottom of the world.

I spent most of my last day at South Pole in the growth chamber, a greenhouse within the station where all the vegetables are grown for those that winter-over. It’s also one of the few places you can track down some humidity in the dry polar air. I knew before I came to Antarctica that it was the highest, driest, windiest and coldest place on Earth. But I now have a new appreciation of the high and dry aspects of its character. It’s common for people to get sore throats at night, not because they are developing colds but because it is so dry, it desiccates the back of the throat. In the course of the night, it dries out until the pain of it wakes me up. For the first time in my life, I have taken to sleeping with my water bottle cradled in my hands. But that’s only one of many strange habits I have these days. My favorite is that I have to wear sunglasses to go to the bathroom. Who thinks “Man, I need to go to the bathroom. I better find my sunglasses!” Acclimatizing to life in this frozen wilderness is not too hard when you’re excited about the science but I know I’ll have a whole new appreciation for life in NYC when I get back.

Because being at high altitude can make some people sick, the science team has to be trained on multiple parts of the airplane’s science equipment.

During June this year, we tested our radar system in Greenland. We flew over the Greenland Ice Sheet, collecting data to image the ice down to 2.5 km (1.6 miles) below the lake-spotted surface. Now in Antarctica, we face the challenge of imaging more than 4 km of ice…. That’s 2.5 miles of frozen history between our science team and the Gamburtsev Mountains we came here to study! Because we have to reach further into the ice, we have more data than ever coming back after each flight. There’s so much data that the system chokes on it and gasps, “Help me, Adrienne. Help!”

I have escaped the office a few times this week. I got to go on a tour of the pressure ridges that form between the flowing ice of the Ross Ice Shelf and the rock that stands firm against it. And just last night, I escaped to Scott Base, the Antarctic Base that belongs to New Zealand, for some retail therapy. My Scott Excursion really took my mind off of the software for a while and had me refreshed and ready to go back to Radar World this morning. Not to mention I am well stocked on wooly base layers to fight the cold.

View of Scott Base from the Pressure Ridges.

An interesting formation in the Pressure Ridges. What do you think it looks like?

Today, I feel the same way I do when I am at the top of the big hill at the beginning of the ride. There’s that moment when you lift off your seat before powering down the steep hill, screaming your head off. I have been living there, in that emotional suspension for 3 days. Part of my jitteriness the last few days is undoubtedly rooted in the fact I’ll be going to the South Pole on Monday. According to our medical briefing, that means I’ll be perpetually short of breath, having trouble sleeping and going to the bathroom about every 20 minutes for 2 days…. The anticipation is almost too much to hold in! I have been to 10,000ft elevation before but that was after living at 6,500ft above sea level for 5 weeks… and that was in Utah. The transition from sea level here in McMurdo to 10,000ft is such a surprise to the system that everyone is prescribed a medication to help our bodies adjust to the lower oxygen levels. On top of that, we all have to fight off the adrenaline brought on by the fact we’re in Antarctica, at The South Pole, at 10,000ft—no offense to Utah, but it doesn’t compare! Just in case we don’t adjust to the elevation, everyone has been learning tasks outside their specialty. Hopefully, if someone gets sick, we’ll be able to keep the science moving forward, even if at a slower pace.

In the end, it’s not just where we’ll be a week from now. It’s what we’ll learn. The Gamburtsev Mountains have been enigmatic since their happenstance discovery in 1958. Soon, we’ll know them in a way only dreamt of until now. The people on this science team will learn more about the Mountains than the rest of the world has compiled in the last 50 years. This is the Eve of Discovery.

The Ferrar Glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains.

This is going to be a completely new Antarctic experience for me. My previous work in the Dry Valleys was remote in the sense that we were not at the research station, but we were always less than a 45-minute helicopter flight from resources. Tango 1 is truly going to be a deep field experience. I am very much looking forward to being there, and excited to be on the advance team…I mean isn’t this one of the reasons I got into geology in the first place?

From our camp we will have two Twin Otter aircraft, a 20-passenger STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada, operating to facilitate the installations of three high precision GPS systems and seismometers.

Location of POLENET’s Tango 1 deep field camp.

Tango 1 camp, located at 86° 21′ S, 136° 57′ W, is approximately 220 miles from the South Pole. However, not only is this deep field experience different from the field sites I am used to in Antarctica, so is the altitude. Tango camp sits around 8500 feet in elevation. The elevation and latitude will make it cold and harder to work. This will be the highest elevation I have ever worked at and with that come its own set of unique considerations.

The Transantarctic Mountains.

Physio altitude is a term that describes what altitude your body feels like it is at. The barometric pressure does not affect the saturation of oxygen in the air (oxygen is consistently about 20% of the atmosphere around you) and neither does altitude for the matter, but altitude does change the density of that oxygen. As you go higher in elevation the same amount of space contains less oxygen. The lower the barometric pressure that oxygen gets less is that same space making it harder to breathe in the needed amount of oxygen. Antarctica is notoriously known for it’s low-pressure weather systems. As these low-pressure systems pass over you it will quickly change the altitude in which body thinks it at. Tango 1 camp at 8500 feet the physio altitude can change to make your body feel thousands of feet higher.

I will not have an Internet connection from Tango 1 camp but I will have a satellite phone in which I plan to keep you updated.

An Iridium flare flashes above the South Pole Telescope. (These flares occur when the sun reflects off of the Iridium satellites used for remote communication in Antarctica.)

NASA’s Ultra Long Duration Balloon. Once released, these balloons expand to the size of a stadium.

These light sensors (Digital Optical Modules, or DOMs) are placed deep within the ice in order to detect the blue light emitted when neutrino particles collide with atoms in the ice.

Ask an astronomer to describe the perfect place to put a telescope, and here’s what she’ll tell you: Make it cold, make it dark, make it high-altitude, and make it remote. In short, make it Antarctica.

All light-based astronomy is vulnerable to interference from the atmosphere, the same jittery effect that makes stars twinkle. Much like trying to see the bottom of a swimming pool, observing space through the moving air masses in our atmosphere causes images to wiggle and warp.

The very attributes that make Antarctica inhospitable to life make it ideal for astronomy. The high altitude means there’s less atmosphere to look through. The cold, dry air makes for minimal water vapor and less atmospheric emission of infrared light, both of which interfere with observations. Best of all, 24-hour darkness in winter means no daily temperature oscillations, reducing air currents.

The South Pole Telescope, located at the Amundsen-Scott Station near the South Pole, takes advantage of these clear skies to search for evidence of dark energy amid galaxy clusters. Dark energy is theorized to be a form of energy that is pushing everything in the universe apart.

To further reduce atmospheric interference, some astronomers use balloons to bring their instruments 35,000 feet into the air. Inexpensive compared to satellite-based astronomy, balloon-borne astronomy is ideally suited to Antarctica, where circumpolar winds high in the stratosphere carry balloons steadily and predictably around the pole.

One of the biggest astronomical efforts in Antarctica is actually taking place under the ice. IceCube is an array of ultra-sensitive light detectors buried a mile deep into the Antarctic ice sheet. These detectors can spot the passage of high-energy neutrinos, particles created by the most violent events in the universe, allowing astronomers to see impossibly distant cosmic events by detecting the neutrinos they create.

ICE-T on Dome C
An international team of astronomers have their sites set on another location in Antarctica—a formidably remote location known as Dome C—for construction of a new telescope. High on the Antarctic plateau, Dome C boasts atmospheric conditions that are even calmer—and thereby clearer—than those at the South Pole. “A telescope there would perform as well as a much larger one anywhere else on Earth,” says Will Saunders, astronomer at the Anglo-Australian Observatory. “It’s nearly as good as being in space.” The telescope in the works for Dome C, called ICE-T, will search for exoplanets, earth-like planets in other solar systems.