A quick hello...

11/21/04
12:17 AM

So I’m back at McMurdo sitting at the desk in room 111 of building 155 enjoying a huge bowl of soft serve ice cream with chocolate sprinkles and little rainbow chip things (they ran out of the crushed oreo topping, that was my favorite). It is delicious. It is late and I have had a full day. I should start from the beginning.
I left camp on Saturday morning. A drilling technician was joining our camp and Dave decided to send me back to McMurdo to upload some of the recently collected seismic data to Greg Baker (seismic guru at SUNY Buffalo). I had mixed feelings about returning. I was anxious to hear Greg’s opinion and to talk with him about the data, but at the same time, I didn’t want to leave camp. I would be all alone at McMurdo and I was afraid that I would have nothing to do. On the other hand, I was looking forward to being naked, having a bed, soft serve ice cream, fresh bread and vegetables, and the internet. I debated the shower issue. It had been a month and I was filthy and smelled like a 22 year old guy who hasn’t bathed in a month. Plenty of incentive to shower. But at the same time, would it be too refreshing? Would I be mocked upon my return to camp for cleansing my buttcrack? Would others be jealous and call me names like soapdish or squeaky? To make a long story short, I went until about 11 PM last night and then after taking care of everything that needed to happen, I showered. It was nice. But when I got out, I still had layers of dead skin that I had to kind of wipe off my arms. It was weird and kind of gross. I don’t think I’ll shower again until I can do it for real and actually follow the “repeat if necessary” instructions on the shampoo.
Anyway, so Saturday morning the helo comes to pick me up from camp. It was a Kiwi huey (which as a sidenote was in much better condition than any of the US hueys). Adam and I walked about a mile from camp to build a new helo pad for equipment drops later in the week. The plan was to have the helo fly a few people around to take pictures for an hour and then land back to camp to take me away. I would build the helo pad and then walk back up to meet them within that hour. So the time comes, and I start motoring back to camp walking over huge boulders and in and out of trenches – not easy hiking. Then when I’m about halfway, the helo lands on our newly constructed pad, picks Adam up and buzzes me on my way back to camp. I catch a glimpse of Jim in the window waving his arm frantically back towards camp. So I ran the rest of the way. It sucked, and boarded the huey a sweaty mess.
The Kiwis were great. I love their accents and they are always so nice. They kept calling me “chap”. The helo looked so empty with just me, a 5 gallon urine barrel and some ice core boxes in the cabin. Kind of like a taxi. They are actually pretty big, you just don’t notice when you’re knocking knees and fighting for over window space with 4 others.
The flight back was unforgettable. Clear blue skies. Not a cloud in sight. Bright sunshine. And we were flying low too. Zooming past huge sandstone peaks and glaciers at 100 knots. It was exhilarating. This really is an incredible place, and pictures or movies just can’t do it justice.
We were in the air for about a half an hour before stopping at Marble Point to refuel. When I got off I couldn’t believe how hot it was. Granted I was still overheated from the run, but it was significantly warmer near the coast. And the weirdest part was the running water. There were streams of murky brown meltwater running everywhere. I hadn’t seen running streams since New Zealand. It was like a warm winter day in January. It was also nice to interact with new people instead of the same 7 all the time. Even smalltalk with the Antarctic gas station attendant was satisfying, and I usually hate smalltalk.
We took off again for McMurdo and I got a view of the Ross ice shelf. But this time it was very different. There were chunks that appeared broken near the coast. There were patches of dirt. And I counted at least 10 clusters of oblong black dots near cracks in the ice – sunbathing seals.
We landed at McMurdo and again I couldn’t believe how hot it was. There were meltwater streams everywhere and all of the snow and ice that covered the roadways when we left for the field had vanished – replaced by mud. One of the helo techs helped me drop off the ice cores to the freezer and I headed for the BFC. I felt very out of place, it was all a little surreal at first. I headed for the housing office, sweating like crazy (I was still wearing two layers of thermal underwear underneath my snowpants and fleece jacket), determined to get a room and strip as fast as possible. The housing lady that really creeps me out gave me my roomkey. They gave me a room by myself and it’s a nice one with an internet connection (which isn’t supposed to exist as far as I know). So my opinion of the housing people has improved. I found my room and just unloaded. I stripped down to nothing and just stood there in the middle of the room for a few minutes. It was the greatest feeling. I haven’t been naked since mid October.
I also smelled really bad. I noticed that I was missing a band of leg hair where the tops of the bunny boots rub against my legs. It looks funny. And man am I pale. My face tan and sunburned, but the rest of my body is pasty.
Then I saw myself in the mirror. I actually don’t think I look too bad. A crazy, disheveled, greasy (very greasy) mop of hair. Facial hair (which is actually pretty light, not dark like the aforementioned mop) in selective patches. A peeling nose and freckles. Pretty much what I expected. I have a feeling that the next time will be a little more drastic.
Peeing in a toilet was fun, but you have no idea how much you’re actually producing. That is the beauty of the pee bottle. You appreciate your kidneys and you know when you’re dehydrated.
The next stop was the galley. FRUIT! I devoured an apple and PB+J sandwich on BREAD! It was delicious. I grabbed three of the leftover peanut butter chocolate chip bar things and headed back to my room.
I didn’t get around to uploading the data until like 3 or 4 and it took forever to document everything properly.
And then I took a shit. Oh was it ever wonderful. I only write about this because it was such a significant experience. A warm bathroom. A warm toilet seat. No wind. The first time I’ve pulled my pants down all the way to my ankles in a month. And 1 and 2 at the same time! I lingered. Just sat there for 5 minutes longer than really necessary.
So I’ve lost feeling in the tips of my big toes. It is really strange, they’re just numb. I don’t remember exactly when it happened, but I started noticing it Wenesday night. I thought they were just cold then, but they never got better. They look fine, they just feel like they’ve been anesthetized and it’s a little uncomfortable/unusual. I guess they just got too cold one day. Oh well. Maybe it will go away with time.
Before I forget, I weighed myself today – the midway mark – 175 pounds. So I’ve lost 5 so far. Not too bad, considering we ran out of candy bars over a week ago. Before that, I was eating at least 2 a day. I made sure that the new box of snacks is on the resupply flight tomorrow.
So last night I took care of a few more things and had to upload more data. I didn’t have time to relax until like 11 (after the shower). I talked to Dave at 9 pm on the iridium phone and as he started listing off things to do tomorrow I became more and more disheartened. So much for catching up with people, writing emails and reading the news.
Instead I spent the today running around McMurdo trying to get things done when everyone has the day off. BFC to pick up new teeth for the ice corer, an extra pee bottle and some gloves for Joe. Crary to cut 200 new plastic ice core sleeves from a huge roll (which took forever to find). And finally, locate the big ice core boxes “somewhere in the stockyard”, remove the small ice core tubes, and replace them with 120 larger ice core tubes “somewhere else in a mill van in another stockyard”. It took me an hour just to find everything. Fortunately, I found a BFC rickshaw thing and was able to transport 30 tubes at a time, but man was it a bitch. They kept falling out and the wind kept blowing things away or slamming the door of the mill van. It took about 4-5 hours in the end. At least I had my iPod.
Then at the check-in tonight, Dave gave me more assignments. I knew coming back would suck.
But the food has been incredible. Steak and italian roast beef with fresh bread and salads both nights. Eating alone wasn’t much fun, but I could concentrate on savoring every morsel. After dinner, I asked one of the galley workers if there was any way I could take a loaf of bread out to the field with me. She gave me two whole loaves of wheat bread and I snagged 8 pieces of assorted fruit. I feel it is the least that I can do for my comrades. The other night we had a droolfest talking about all of the foods we miss after eating rice and beans for dinner, again. Everyone mentioned fresh fruit and bread. I bought a can of fritos for Doug too – he’s a frito fiend.
They have screwed up the last two resupply flights and we haven’t received any more meal or snack boxes. As a result, the dinners have been getting a little less extravagant, but are still a relief after a long day of work. I made sure that we’ll get the right boxes on my flight tomorrow.
So I’m off again at 10:30 tomorrow morning, by myself again. Originally it was just going to be me and a few food boxes, but now it looks like there will be about 600 pounds of cargo accompanying me on the flight. Dave requested “all of the C-boxes”. Each box was assigned a letter, D for drinks, S for snacks, and C as the codeword for beer (cerveza). I think there were a total of 5 or 6 C boxes and the helo ops people were questioning me about their contents when they saw the weight (>300 lb). What is in these C boxes that weighs so much? I claimed ignorance to play it safe. I don’t know if Dave wants the secret to get out – we may mysteriously lose a C box sometime in the future.
I’ve got a few more things to take care of tomorrow morning. I don’t plan to sleep too much. I’ll put up a few posts and pictures and then catch a few hours before I have to wake up. A quick stop by the mailroom to figure out why my mail isn’t getting out into the field and then a stop at the BFC to pick up some stuff and get some additional teeth for the ice core drill. Then it’s back to the field until at least mid-December. We will be in the same spot until the end of the week and then move camp down into central Beacon Valley. We’ll have a few satellite camps too, so I may get to see another snapshot of the Dry Valleys before the end of the field season.
If you feel like writing, my address is (hopefully):

David Shean
McMurdo Station
Project G-054
PSC 469 Box 800
APO AP 96599-1035

Hopefully I will have some time to write a few letters when I get back out there. As always, I’m thinking about all of you out there and I miss you. I can’t wait to share more stories and pictures with you when I return. This has already been the experience of a lifetime and I can only imagine the adventures I will have in the coming weeks.


A view of the camp during takeoff.



Beacon Valley from the air.



Stormtrooper?



Lazy seals.



Mcmurdo from the air. Big huh? 1100 people there right now.

1 Shean = ~1.1 L

11/18/04

I saw Jim’s bare ass today. We were packing up the seismic equipment and he kind of walked about 15 feet away downwind. I heard a really strange noise, kind of a “bluahh” or something, and instinctively turned around. The image that was seared into my memory will never be forgotten. Jim was facing in the opposite direction, looking downward, with his pants around his ankles like a little boy. His white, kind of old man, ass and legs were fully exposed. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I tried to help from laughing, but let out a little snort and turned away as fast as possible. I would have said something like “Dammit Jim, you need to warn me if you’re going to do that!”, but I was so shocked that the words wouldn’t come.
Like a little boy.
They must have fallen. That is the only explanation.
Subject change.
When we do the seismic surveys and the shot points are over 60 m away, you hear the sound wave travel through the ice before you hear it through the air. It is not intuitive, and still fascinates me. There is a significant delay. Velocity of sound in ice ~3700 m/s, velocity of sound in air ~340 m/s. Pretty cool.
Doug and Dave didn’t get back tonight until 10:30 after putting in hobos (little computers that monitor temperature and such). Dave is nuts.
No clear indication of ice thickness from seismics yet. Kind of frustrating.
So we have a new volumetric measurement at camp. The Shean = slightly more than 1 L. I have been known to fill my 1 L nalgene pee bottle on occasion in one fell swoop. It amazes me. I hold the bottle at my abdomen and visualize how big my bladder actually is.
On his way to the 55 gallon urine barrel, Jim will comment on the puny volume of his contribution as only a quarter-Shean.
I’ve been really tired lately from the 10-12 hour days lately. Just work, eat and sleep.

One of the new seismic lines further downglacier. A slight change from the nice flat lake ice.



Adam. He was hot from walking. I sent this one to his wife.



A view of central and lower Beacon Valley. Out there somewhere is the next campsite. That's where the really old ice is located, some of it may be as old as 12 million years.

Drilling

11/17/04
11:34 PM

I’m exhausted. We were supposed to get a helo this morning to head down valley but the weather was bad - snowy and foggy. The night before, we were up until after midnight, which is when we finished eating dinner. We have been drilling about 20 meters from our campsite and it has been tough. I don’t have the energy to sit here and write all about it. We’re supposed to head downvalley tomorrow morning instead. Another long day of coring and a late night, only to wake up early again for another grueling day. Tomorrow is going to suck.
So we have like $90,000 worth of drilling equipment out here. Four different systems and so far we know that two don't work in this kind of ice. We finally made some progress despite getting the core barrel stuck several times, going down very slowly. The ice cores are beautiful. 1 m long cylinders of glacier. It takes 5 people just to run the drilling operation. When you start getting deeper and deeper, the workload increases. You constantly have to add and remove poles to the "string" that holds the core barrel down the hole.
We did more seismic studies at the lake, although I haven't been getting the results that I would like. I have made a few "business" calls to real geophysicists to discuss possible solutions. I'm starting to doubt whether we will get good data. I have also realized that I really don’t have much experience with seismic surveys outside of lab and class work, yet I am expected to carry out professional seismic surveys. So far it has been going ok and I am learning a lot about what does and doesn't work.
There is a large ice crack that has formed near my tent in the past few days. One chunk of ice is thrusting above another and there is a 1-2" ledge along the crack.
Adam found out that his wife is pregnant again. He was so happy. He came into the tent crying and hugged Doug and I. I was overcome by a strong sentiment of happiness. It is contageous. It is just another reminder of how young I am and that Adam is at a very different stage of life. His experience down here is entirely different because of his family.
Dave, in a lot of ways, is kind of like a little kid. Doug too. In their mannerisms, humor, facial expressions.
I caught a glimpse of myself in the brunton compass mirror and saw my scrappy beard. I think I look older.
I have been having vivid dreams, the other night I found myself in a black ocean with a seat bottom flotation device from an airplane. The sky was very dark but there were yellow lights like at a dock. The seas were rough and there were huge waves. Then suddenly, I was in a Connecticut airport where I met Adam. We drove to his old house which was filled with all sorts of weird shit, including a really strange toilet, and he started doing laundry. It was all very odd.
I've noticed that there is a recurring theme in my dreams – toilets. Dawn, what does that mean?
I think I’m actually gaining weight – I just looked at my belly and I've got some nice little rolls.
I’ve been eating a lot, but lately haven’t been doing much physical labor during the seismic surveys. Sitting at a computer when it’s cold sucks.
Adam is snoring pretty loud right now
I need to sleep.
I haven’t written any letters and tomorrow is the mail drop with the helos. I hadn’t even thought about it until last night.
We’ve been working very hard here. Early morning, late lunch, late dinner, then sleep – no free time to do things like write in journals or write letters. I wonder if that is what Jim and Dave do in their tent while everyone else cooks them dinner each night.


Life in the cooktent. Usually the highlight of the day.



The drilling team with one of the failed drill systems.



I really like this one. Doug and Jim workin' it.



The hole. This one is like 30 feet deep. It gets black after about 10 feet and you can no longer see the bottom. Light passes throught he shallow ice and it is illuminated in a beautiful deep blue over the seeminly infinite black hole. It's also a trip to listen to the reverberations when chunks of snow and ice fall from the surface down into the hole.

Tom Jones arrives

11/13/04
9:30 PM

An early night at Dave’s camp. The weather is shitty again. The winds picked up this afternoon at around 1. One of the d-rings on our tent (the pink fortress) finally gave out. One of the bungee hooks on Joe’s tent actually bent into a completely straight wire from the wind this afternoon. We probably had a few gusts up around 60-70 mph.
Jim, Dave and I did a seismic survey of our lake today. It was very refreshing to finally do something for my project specifically. I measured the lake, it’s actually pretty big, like 200 meters by 85 meters. Setting up the line went surprisingly smoothly, but of course there were issues with the computer. I finally worked everything out and we managed to get some good data. I still don’t think we’ll get exactly what they want, but we can try all we want. Dave swung the sledge while I worked the computer and Jim stood there to prevent everything from blowing away. When the winds really came it was awful. First of all, my hands were completely frozen. I lost feeling in three fingers. They were completely numb. It was weird and a little bit scary. Dave made me put hand warmers in my thin glove liners. I couldn’t wear anything more because I had to use the fucking computer. Oh and you can’t see shit on the screen because it is so bright out. The mouse was impossible to find. I probably spent a total of 20 minutes looking for the cursor over a 2 hour period. At one point a huge gust came that knocked Jim backwards. He landed about two feet from a huge tent stake sticking about 8 inches out of the ice. I don’t even want to think of what would have happened. The same gust dragged me along the ice. The lid of the equipment case was open to reduced glare on the screen and it sort of acted like a sail. I grabbed on with one hand and tried to grab the rest of the equipment with the other so that the cables wouldn’t break. We all moved about 8 feet downwind before the gust died down. At that point we decided to call it a day.
The wind took my pee bottle away this afternoon. I left it outside my tent in the morning and when I returned it was missing. I scoured the inside of the tent and even asked Adam if he had seen or moved it recently. I then set out on a search and rescue mission. I walked all the way around the lake looking at the rocks for any sign of “P”, but saw nothing. I spotted one of our packs that had blown away and grabbed it. As I put it on, about 15 feet away was my pee bottle, nestled beneath a small boulder, waiting to be reunited with its favorite (and only) provider.
This is the third night in a row that I have eaten with Jim and Dave. It has gotten much better. Joe still says some weird stuff and everyone just kind of ignores it at this point. Nobody knows how to respond. After dinner, Dave cooked beers. He exploded one in the pressure cooker and it was reminiscent of the Joe Beals coffee disaster. We laughed a lot. We listened to the entire Tom Jones album twice. Dave is so funny. Just watching him listen to Tom makes me laugh. I can hear it right now, he’s playing the same song over and over again in his tent. The one where Tom starts off talking about love and how if you think for just one minute that you can live without it, then you’re only foolin’ yourself. I can’t help but smile every time I hear it.
This was the first night that they didn’t break out maps and aerial photographs to discuss geology. It was kind of nice. We also “finished” at a reasonable hour, just after 5. Yesterday we went on a hike down to the base of the valley, about where Mullins feeds into Beacon. We stopped about 200 yards from camp to dig pits and spent the next 2 and a half hour there photographing and sampling. Jim has to photograph everything. What is he ever going to do with all of those pictures? We didn’t eat lunch until 2 and that was only after pleading. Jim and Dave were walking so slowly, stopping every ten feet to talk or look at something. Jim is a slow hiker, which is understandable. It kind of irritated me though. I just like to move I guess. Keeps me warm and prevents boredom. We dug more pits at the bottom and then split up into two groups for the hike back up. I was with Jim, Dave, Doug and Joe. We were walking and stopping, stopping, digging, sampling, on and on. At one point Jim had hiked up ahead and I kind of split off on my own and motored back to camp. I didn’t get back until 8:20. At least the weather was beautiful when I did get back. It was so calm and peaceful here on our little lake. I decided to change my underwear. It was long overdue. I haven’t really been keeping a schedule. Whatever works. I guess Dave is notorious for not drinking water, not eating lunch, and working 12 hour days. Fuck. He also ate the dint for breakfast yesterday.
Battery almost dead…again.


The first seismic line...



...and the seismic source.



A view from the base of Mullins Valley of winds blowing snow off the ice down into Beacon Valley.



The team getting ready to move after lunch. Parka, parka, PARKA.

Mullins Camp

11/11/04
10:04 PM

Day 2 at Mullins Valley camp. Today was quite a day. Last night when we went to bed, the wind was whipping through camp at around 40 mph. The tents were really noisy. I put in my earplugs and could still hear the wind, but I slept pretty well. I woke up at around 2 AM to Dave’s voice telling Doug he had just lost a D-ring (little metal rings that connect the lines to the tents). Adam woke up a little while later. It turns out that all three of the D-rings on Dave and Jim’s tent went during the night and one of Joe’s did as well. Our tent managed to get through the night with only some stitching coming undone on one of the front ties. We call it the pink fortress. Jim and Dave had to tie a rope from the top of their tent to a huge boulder so that it wouldn’t blow down. Everyone with blown D-rings had to use bungees, which actually work pretty well.
The ice is still cracking. Probably three to four times a minute. I only seem to notice at night. I think it is caused by the thermal contraction of the ice when it gets colder, so it makes more noise at night (and by night I mean when the sun dips behind the valley walls). It is surprisingly satisfying and a reminder that we are camped on a frozen lake, riding on top of about a hundred meters of moving glacial ice.
I set up the gel cell battery under my cot tonight and have like 5 things charging at once. The damn thing keeps cutting out on me and makes this annoying little beep when it does. It will be very nice to have the generator.
So anyway, when we woke up this morning, the weather was still awful. Up to 60 mph winds (according to Dave, although Adam tells me everyone overestimates wind speeds – he’s probably right, I would have no idea, all I know is that it was really windy). The sky was overcast and visibility was shit because of all of the snow blowing around. The East Antarctic Ice Sheet is only 2 miles beyond our camp over the head of the valley, so we were getting all of the cold air and snow off of the ice sheet. The wind was never consistent either, it kept switching directions, which made working (and doing anything outside) very difficult. We woke up at 7:30. The cooktent is literally 10 feet from ours, which is much more pleasant. Waiting inside were Adam, Doug, Kate and Bex. We ate and killed some time. At that point, the day appeared to be a washout. We decided to spend the morning building an ice wall for the shitbox. It was tough with the wind and blowing snow. There were several times when the wind would push you and you would just slide over the ice or snow, helpless. It was fun at first, but got old fast, especially when it pushes you into someone swinging an ice axe. We carved out a 3 foot deep trench while cutting blocks of snow and then build another 2-3 foot wall around the edges. The box is a much more pleasant experience.
We went back and ate lunch. Doug took a nap while the rest of us went out and started digging trenches on the moraine and near the edges of the lake to show the different ices. My wrist was really bothering me. I fucked up my right wrist and my two middle fingers at some point during the past few days. Now it is killing me. I think it is the high impact of picking the ice. And the worst part is that it will only get worse, I won’t have a chance to rest it. I don’t know what tendonitis feels like, but if you get it, you’re not supposed to pick and shovel for 8 hours a day.
We headed up valley, toward the accumulation zone for Mullins. It was beautiful. The entire valley is gorgeous. Dave and Jim were moving so slowly. Jim wanted to take pictures of everything and Dave took forever with his camera. Eventually I just started off on my own because the rest of the group was sort of milling about waiting for Dave and Jim. It was fucking cold. By late afternoon, we actually had blue skies with a few clouds and sunshine, but the wind was still blowing. I have a feeling that is going to be the case most of the time here. I walked all the way up around the rim of the accumulation zone on the moraine that dams the lake. The glacier ice is a creamy aqua, like scuffed light blue tinted glass. It is everywhere up there, with big angular boulders and patches of till here and there.
We got back to camp at around 5:30 and I had to cook dinner for the other tent. First of all, it smells weird in there, I think because of Joe. He kind of smells funny. Plus it is organized very differently than the other cooktent which is kind of annoying. And it seems so much darker because it has a red floor and doesn’t let much sunlight through the walls. I started cooking and he helped where he could. Dave and Jim came in right as dinner was ready. Spaghetti with sausage. Jim brought in a poster tube filled with images…the ice just popped right underneath my cot…of Mullins for entertainment and 4 Canterbury Draft’s (another New Zealand brew). Dave put on The Pretenders. He has a little walkman with tapes and speakers form 1989. They have been out here every season since then. He probably knows each of those tapes so well by now. We ate in near-silence. It was a little awkward. Dave was a little awkward. Joe said some things that weren’t really that funny and a little strange. I tried to make conversation, but eventually gave up. After we finished eating, Jim pulled out the images and we finally had something to talk about – science and planning. Dave put on the “Best of 1966” tape and mentioned that he was four years old then. Jim was born in 1942, Dave in 1962, and me in 1982. Talk about generation gaps. I think Dave still feels a little uncomfortable, or at least subordinate to Jim. Maybe subordinate isn't the right word. I feel the same way about Dave. 20 more years of science. I finally left their tent after finishing my beer with the excuse of getting the camera batteries charged. I popped into the other dinner tent and immediately felt at home. We laughed about the awkwardness. I do feel sorry for Joe. He’s the new guy and always has to deal with Dave and Jim. I found myself saying things to Dave and Jim that I would never say back at school. Talking about gold bonding my ass and shitting for example. I’m at that stage of field crudeness, but I don’t think they’re quite there yet.
The whole dual cook tent thing is really strange and kind of divides the camp. I really hope we get one of the 21 foot endurance tents. It would make things so much more pleasant and we would probably feel more like a team as opposed to a group of people working together, separately.
So my paper was accepted. Jim gave me the reviewer comments tonight during dinner. I guess he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d brought them. The man wastes no time.
I’m about to run out of batteries. Now that we have power, hopefully I’ll be able to do this more often. In the meantime the hand written entries continue to accrue.

A view of Wright valley during the helo flight to Beacon.



A view from the helo of the campsite. We are camped on a frozen lake at the head of Mullins Valley. The frozen lake and all of the rocks are sitting on top of a glacier that fills the valley and spills down into Beacon Valley below. It is unreal.



The helo dropping a sling with tent and equipment from the old camp.



A sound clip of a different glacier, but they all sound pretty similar. The pops and cracks can actually be pretty loud and when the wind isn't blowing they are the only noises at night. It is so cool.


The storm.



Spaghetti and sausage dinner. My second favorite to the chili.



The view from the shitbox. I finally remembered to bring my camera with me one morning.

A short entry and a ton of pictures from Mt. Boreas

11/8/04
10:55 pm

So we’re moving camp tomorrow afternoon at 4:10 pm, a full day before we anticipated. I still have to write home, so this will be short. Yesterday the wind came. I finally got a good katabatic wind. It sucked. Out in the field it wasn’t so bad, because we were working hard. We dug a whole suite of new trenches and pits (which we filled in this afternoon) up on the moraine near camp. But last night the winds really picked up. Like up to 40 mph. It was violent. It is the same way again tonight. The tent flaps like a sail, but it whistles along the side right near my head. The whole wall of the tent near my cot is blown inward, so I’m hugging the wall all night (or the wall is hugging me, depending on how you look at it). The door flaps in and out too. I slept like shit. It was really noisy and I was a little concerned after Adam told us to tie our boots and parkas to our cots in case our tents blew away. At about 2 AM, Adam woke up and started pounding in new stakes at his tent and at ours I guess. Doug woke up. I debated. I was so warm and comfortable. I knew we had done a damn good job putting the stakes in originally, and I figured that Doug and Adam could take care of things. Apparently it was a warm wind and the sky was incredible. I finally got some sleep from like 3-8 and then after waking up got a lot of shit from Adam and Doug for not helping. I should have just gotten up. I didn’t sleep the entire time they were out there. The mornings have been really shitty. I have a lot of trouble getting out of bed and then am usually overtired from lack of sleep. The only good sleep I get is from like 3-8 AM and I wake up right in the middle of it to pee. I think I’ll be better about getting up when Dave and Jim are around. I’m trying to think of what we’ve done in the past few days. We walked around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley. It was beautiful. The ice falls were unreal. Our stove just ran out of fuel, I need to get into bed. One of these days I’ll transcribe the written notes in my journal (wishful thinking). Oh well, sometimes it’s better to enjoy the moment instead of worry about writing things down.


It's starting to get late now, so I'm just going to throw up a bunch of pictures from the Olympus camp. Most of these were taken along the hike around Mt. Boreas to Wright Valley.

A frozen lake we encountered on our hike around Boreas. I practiced my lutz. The ice was beautiful and in some places you could see down a few feet. Other spots were filled with air bubbles and cracks. So much fun. And really fucking slippery.



Two nearby mountains known as Mt. Circe and Mt. Dido on the other side of Mt. Boreas.



A view of upper Wright valley and Wright upper glacier. The chopped up terrain in front of the glacier is known as The Labyrinth and is pretty incredible. It was carved millions of years ago by glacial meltwater.



The ice falls. Where the East Antarctic Ice Sheet spills over into Wright valley. Yeah.



Lower Wright Valley. I don't know if you can see the little red/black dot on the horizon at this resolution, but that is Adam, about 200 yards away. The valley is enormous.



Along the hike, we came across an old cache set up by Kiwi bedrock geologists in the 1960s. The jerry cans were still full of gas, even though the paint on the outside had been sandblasted off. The white things are actually bleached and windblasted cardboard boxes. We didn't open those. Probably food. We took GPS coordinates and went on our way.



Fossil imprints left by a large worm only found in Antarctica (name is something like Beaconoites). It lived in shallow seas and kind of filtered the mud for nutrients and left all of these impressions that were preserved as more and more sediment was deposited. As the layers above were eroded away, the fossils were exposed. Some of them are huge, like 2-3" across. What up Big Worm.



A view of camp on the way back. Did you catch the Friday reference in the last caption?



A nice shot of Boreas and unnamed peak. Kate and Doug are heading to the snowbank to collect snow for water. All of our water comes from that snowbank.



A fallen soldier during the move.



The infamous shitbox. The view was spectacular, looking right down into McKelvey valley. Notice the lack of wind barrier. To use:
1. Remove big rock.
2. Pull pants down just enough to avoid crapping in pants.
3. Take care of business...quickly.
4. Replace big rock.

Day 8

11/3/04
10:20 PM

Wanted to write a few things.
First of all, you don’t see your breath down here. There’s no condensation nuclei. The only time your see it is when you light a match or when the helo is around. That's when you realize how cold it is down here. The air is that clean.
You also have to thaw everything for dinner. All of the cans of beans or meat are frozen solid. You have to poke holes in the lids and rotate them on the stove until they are warm enough to squeeze from the can into a waiting pot. It takes about 10 minutes to thaw them enough so that the frozen core slides out. The same goes for peanut butter and jelly which are the lunch staples, although we usually leave them in a bag hangint high in the tent (warmer up there) for at least a day before we need them.
I’ve been having really vivid dreams lately. I think it is because I haven’t been getting good sleep. It is too light out and I just can’t get into a deep sleep cycle. I dreamt the other night that I was trying out for Joe Stoltz’s baseball team again, only I couldn’t remember how to play. I kept forgetting things. I ended up giving him the finger as I walked off the field and he told me never to come back. I was upset but proud.
Tonight was fun. I made chili again and we laughed a whole lot. We talked about celebrity jeopardy, Mourmons, Conan, fuckbuddies, anal sex, chimpanzees and MC Hammer vs. Jackson. Doug actually put up an argument that Hammer was a better dancer. I was offended. We debated for a few minutes and then Adam interjected with "I can't believe you guys are still talking about this." We teased Kate about a few things, including the topic of vibrators. We do team up on her sometimes and she is usually a really good sport, sometimes even comes back. But it has to get old when it is pretty much constant. I stopped when I sensed her getting upset, but Adam and Doug didn’t. I kept looking her in the eye trying to show her that I understood and I was sorry, but I don’t know if the message got across. She probably just sees me as another asshole.
Adam was protesting about using a vibrator with a woman and I said “So you’re not into the machines?” in a pretty serious tone. Doug burst out laughing and almost vomited because he had just taken a drink and it went down the wrong pipe. He couldn’t stop laughing. He thought I meant machines like cyborgs. Terminator 3 style. It was hilarious. So for the rest of the night we kept coming back to cyborgs. I played Mr. Roboto, so that was sung a few times as well ("Secret secret, I've got a secret"). Then right before everyong was about to leave, we were talking about the morning radio check-in to McMurdo and how Dave was going to be in town. Then Adam told Kate that during the call, she should say “Macops, this is G054, we have 4 souls at camp, no cyborgs, over”. I laughed straight for like 90 seconds. It was the funniest thing I think I’ve heard since we’ve been here. Maybe I'm slowly going crazy.

Day 7

11/2/04
9:29 pm

End of day 7. Another beautiful day. They wind comes and goes, and the temperature difference is incredible. We spent today in the lake basin again, digging. I spent about 7 hours digging a trench that is probably 25 feet long and maybe an average of 1.5 feet deep. It is a workout. Digging works best with two people. One swings the pick as hard and as fast as they possibly can until they get noodle arms and then the other jumps in with a shovel to throw out all of the loose dirt. You really sort of focus when you’re doing that type of work. Everything else just sort of melts away. After lunch today I spent about 5 minutes in the cook tent alone, just thinking about friends and warming up after shitting.
So I’ve been farting like a madman. I really don’t know what it is. Maybe my stomach just doesn’t deal with change well, because that’s about the last thing that I can think of. I thought it was the powdered milk (Milkman (TM) with "A kiss of cream" written across the package), but after cutting that out, while there was some reduction in number, there is still a problem.
Yesterday we went on another long hike down the valley. My ankle was bothering me today. I really hope that it will have time to rest before the next big day. The hike back up the valley was another test. I just got in a rhythm and the right mental state and took off. It felt really good. Made me think of hiking Mt. Everett with Charles.
We found out yesterday that the Red Sox won the World Series. I wish I could have been around to see it. I am actually glad it happened so that all of the talk will end.
Tomorrow is election day. It’s hard to believe. I think back to where I was four years ago. I have changed so much since then. If you had told me November 1, 2000 that I would be in Antarctica on November 1, 2004, I would have thought you were crazy. I remember that night vividily though, staying up, waiting to hear the final results. The sun just went behind Mt. Boreas and it got much darker in the tent. Here comes the cold. I remember saying “we’re going to have a war” after they finally announced that Bush had won. If only I had known.
I can’t imagine what another four years of Bush will be like. Age 22-26. Plus a who knows how many years of after-effects and "recovery". That is primetime for me. I will be getting a real job, maybe getting married, maybe starting a family. And all of the shit that Bush is doing will affect me directly. It is kind of scary. What is even scarier is that I can do absolutely nothing about it.
I haven’t really sat and reflected about how simple life is out here. It is wonderful. It is a blessing to be thousands of miles away from all of that bullshit. Politics in particular. But then again, I miss my friends and some things about life in Providence.
As I was humping up the hill yesterday, I was thinking about Vietnam. 30 years ago, I would probably be there. Actually, I could probably look up the draft dates and find out precisely when I would have gone. Being down here is like being in the service in some ways, ok, very loosely. It at least makes the war in Iraq a lot more real. Thinking about what those guys are going through over there. Isolated in a strange place. But then again, nobody is trying to kill me down here, just the continent itself. In some ways, this is a service to my country. I serve in the name of science! (imagine a voice like William Wallace).
Tonight we ate Ramen stir fry with canned chicken, frozen Japanese vegetables and chunks of tofu. After a long day, it was delicious.
Adam makes fun of Kate when she wears her fleece headthing. He thinks she looks Muslim. He called her Fatima and kept talking about how she prayed to Allah for a miracle and was granted the Raro (a New Zealand version of kool-aid). He was also using a Chinese accent and talking about “eyes like dinner plates”. He is well educated and said something about wanting to bring the Koran down here to read. He does know a lot of little random tidbits about religion, among other things. I don’t know. Doug loves it. I guess the real world is a little less PC than Brown. I just think of my friend Fatma and what a wonderful person she is. What if she overheard someone saying things like that?
I'm still waiting for my sleeping bag to dry out. It is almost an excuse to have the stove running in our tent. I feel guilty doing it, but I guess it’s just a small luxury. We listened to Johnny Cash tonight during dinner. He is great. A legend.
My nose has really been bothering me lately. Yesterday I had big black spots on it that I interpreted to be freckles. I hadn’t been wearing sunscreen, so I’m assuming it was burned. It runs constantly when we’re outside and I have to wipe it with my leather work gloves which really irritates it and results in a huge frozen snot patch on my index finger. I also think it got burned from below due to reflection off the snow. Antarctica is not a place for good complexion.
I wrote a letter yesterday. I have about 8 more to write before we leave here. Time. At least we are done early some nights.
Tomorrow morning is bacon and bagels for a change instead of cream of wheat or oatmeal. It should be a treat.