We arrived at the very end of October excited and enthusiastic – ready to go. The excitement really builds when you are on the flight over, until you step off the plane and you are assaulted by the frigid cold and the wind blows hard on your face. What’s more is that you dishearteningly realize you will spend at least a month living out of a tent in these conditions, working hard every day outside – more on that in a bit. It took us about two weeks to go through Happy Camper School, Crevasse Rescue Training, Snowmachine training, and to get all our gear in proper order.

We embarked from McMurdo in a Hercules LC-130 to Siple Dome. Because Siple Dome is far enough off-base, the pilots do not turn off the engines and they perform a cargo drop, as you can see in this clip.

From Siple Dome, we flew on the Basler, which is a DC-3 aircraft that was originally built in the 1940’s. Luckily for us, it has had some significant upgrades since then, i.e. avionics, new engines, etc. Have a look at this video of the Basler leaving us at our camp.

Part I

Part II

The main structure at Siple Dome.

Journey to the Field: The Last Leg

The journey to our field site at Whillan’s Ice Stream on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet was long, with many stops, the last of which was at Siple Dome. From there, it was a matter of getting our selves and equipment out to the ice sheet.

Some of the most important pieces of equipment were, of course, the skidoos — the only things enabling us to travel from camp to our various research sites. So how do you get a skidoo into and out of a small plane? As these pictures show, you drive and lift it, using a ramp, some muscle, and some finesse.

The lift…

The muscle…

And the finesse.

Of course, landing a plane on an ice sheet is an impressive feat by itself. The Basler plane (a DC-3) is the largest bush plane used by the United States Antarctic Program and can land without a runway.

This photo shows how much cargo a Basler plane can hold. Our group had enough cargo to fill three flights.

By the time the Basler returned with the second load of cargo, we had set up the sleep tents. We watched the plane circle once over our camp before landing.

The Basler created a flurry of blowing snow during takeoff, leaving us windblown and all alone in the flat white, with only our essential survival gear.

The Last Stop Before Our Field Site: Life at Siple Dome

Out here, sometimes doing what would be a basic task at home (cooking, for example) takes a little ingenuity and spontaneity…

No electric mixer handy? Use the power drill!

Your feta is frozen in one huge solid block? Use a hammer and crow bar to break off some pieces for dinner!

Compared to our field site, life at Siple Dome was luxurious…

The jamesway (a solid insulated tent with a wooden frame, heating and indoor comforts) at Siple Dome is the cozy center of life there.

Siple Dome has a rustic little outhouse, secured against wind with a cargo strap over the top. Though it may look primitive, this was luxury compared to our later toilet tent in our field camp.

Siple Dome Weather Balloon

Sal fills a 10g weather balloon with helium. The balloon is used to determine cloud height for weather observations.

Sal releases the balloon and starts the timer. The balloon quickly flies off into the cloudy sky.

Sal watches the balloon with binoculars until it disappears into the cloud cover. He records the ascent time and reads the altitude corresponding to that ascent time from a chart. Now we know the height of the cloud cover!

After our long wait at Siple Dome, I was giddy with excitement by the time we were in the air. During the 40 minute flight south (about 300 km to our field site from Siple Dome), we passed over several crevasse zones and the shear margin, which were noticeable even to an amateur crevasse-spotter like me. From above, the sastrugi (small snow dunes) gave the snow surface a beautiful texture, and to my delight, the majestic peaks of the Transantarctic Mountains were visible to the south about 100 km away.

After a hurried unloading, the plane took off to return to Siple Dome for more cargo, whipping up a flurry of stinging snow as it departed. A quick look around us and our small heap of survival gear served as a stark reminder that we were truly all alone in this endless plane of white – not another living soul for 300 km, and the nearest aid over 1000 km away. The feeling was slightly sobering, but not actually frightening. The plane returned two more times with the remaining cargo, and the sight and sound of it approaching drove home the fact that we would likely not see another plane for another three weeks. Four weeks after we left Santa Cruz, we’ve finally arrived at our field site.

The 48 hours since our arrival have been filled primarily with camp setup and eating, and a little preparation of science equipment. We each have our own mountain tent for sleeping (a normal 4-season tent), and we share a 16-foot Endurance tent for cooking and working. With kitchen supplies, tables, chairs and electronics, the four of us fill the Endurance tent nearly to capacity.

Here you can see the Endurance tent (blue, yellow, and red) as well as the individual sleeping tents (smaller red ones.) You can also see the sleds we use to pull cargo behind the skidoos. The flags you see are markers for everything from holes in the ice to places where we’ve buried our frozen food.

At nearly every meal, I find myself peering around our small, slightly cramped circle in the tent with marvel – this is the closest I’ve been to survival conditions. At mealtimes, we all come into the tent tiredly with grumbling stomachs, relax and take off an outer layer if we’re warm, but even after shedding some layers inside the warm interior, I’m still wearing three layers and a hat. What’s particularly eye-opening is that we are living in some of the best conditions on the continent – today’s temperatures were a balmy -7 to -9 degrees Celsius! When I think back to the early Antarctic explorers like Amundsen, Scott, Shackleton and Mawson a century ago, I’m even more amazed at their survival stories and feats of work and travel.

Slawek and I have now been in McMurdo for just over 48 hours. Because of our weather-caused delay, we’re now quite busy making all the necessary preparations for our field work. Tomorrow Rickard and Doug, the other two members of our field team, will arrive from Christchurch. In the meantime, we’ve gone to collect the camping gear that has been set aside for us, met with the communications office to discuss our communication plans while in the field, selected all the dry food for our 4 weeks of camping on the ice, and scheduled a hopeful date for our first flight to Siple Dome, the field camp from which we’ll fly to our remote research site. In the short time we’ve been here, Slawek has also already given a talk for the McMurdo community (both scientists and non-scientists) about the type of work we do, and what the focus of our field work will be. The talk, titled “The Ebb and Flow of Ice Sheets,” discussed the role of ice sheets in our planet’s future, the factors that control ice sheet velocity, and the goals of our field work studying subglacial lakes on Whillans Ice Stream. I’ll post a link to the 45-minute talk as soon as it’s available.

Tomorrow I’ll begin my 1.5 day with Snow Craft training, also known around here as “Happy Camper School.” During this course, we’ll be taught the essentials of living and surviving in the outdoors in Antarctica, complete with a night of camping on the ice, cooking our dinner outside, and other Antarctic survival essentials. All personnel at McMurdo who leave the station at any time are required to take this training. Most people here only leave the station for short trips or to established camps and Happy Campers will be their only night camping on the ice. For those of us on deep field teams, this will be the first day and night of about four weeks spent living on the ice.