WAIS Divide Outreach

Christchurch, New Zealand - Feb 1, 2009 - Logan

2009-02-01T07:08:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: Feb 1, 2009

Location: Devon Hotel in Christchurch, NZ
Time: 11:30am
Latitude: 43°31'43.04"S
Longitude: 172°37'58.15"E
Elevation: 75 m (246’)
Temperature: 25°C
Wind speed: 4 km/hour
Clouds: Partly cloudy
Relative Humidity: 44%
Precipitation: None so far
Animals: Lots of birds

I made it back to New Zealand! The flight was on a much larger C-17 this time. The C-17 is different from the LC-130 in that the inside was easily twice as large, it had jet engines instead of 4 propellers, the seats were much more comfortable, it was quieter, and it had fully retractable wheels for landing gear. This plane is a lot faster than the LC-130 and the trip from McMurdo to New Zealand was only 4 hours instead of the 8 hours it took to get down there!

Throughout the flight I was thinking about what it was going to be like when I got off the plane. We took off at about 5pm and were scheduled to land at about 9pm, and the thing I was most curious about was the sun. Since we were flying north, and it was getting later in the day, I was wondering if I was going to be able to see the sun set while I was on the plane, or if it was going to be dark when we landed. The sun has not set, or gotten even remotely close to the horizon in the past 64 days, and I was extremely curious about how I (or my body) would respond to it.

The other thing I was thinking about was the temperature. When we left McMurdo it was just below freezing. As a rule, anytime you fly in Antarctica you have to wear all of your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear which includes your Big Red down jacket, ski pants, huge bunny boots, hat, glacier glasses, and gloves in case the plane were to crash and you had to survive on your own. A well known trick is to wear your regular clothes underneath your ECW gear, and in the middle of the flight, everyone stripped off their ECW gear in preparation for getting out of the plane in the summertime heat and humidity of New Zealand.

The one disadvantage to a C-17 is that it has very few windows and I had to get out of my seat if I wanted to look outside. Every time I did this, the sun was still high in the sky. Finally we started our landing approach and I couldn’t get up any more, so I tried my best to not think about it, telling myself that I’d know soon enough when they opened the door. We touched down and then taxied for what seemed like an eternity. I could already feel the humidity increasing in the plane, even though the doors were still closed. We finally stopped and began filing out, and when I got to the door and began walking down the steps I was hit with the answers to both my questions in quick succession. At the door there seemed to be an invisible thermal and humidity barrier, and crossing it was like getting off the plane in Dallas in summertime after vacationing in the mountains of Colorado. As soon as I got off of the steps, I looked up at the sky, which was glowing orange with what seemed to me at the time to be the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. I was enthralled and the people behind me had to nudge me forward towards the shuttle buses that were waiting for us. I got on the bus, and sat down, still trying to soak in as much of the sunset as I could. It was at least a full minute later, after the shuttle had started driving that I was again struck by something that I hadn’t seen in a long time. My gaze had drifted to what was right below the sunset and quietly I gasped: “Look at all those trees!!!” They were everywhere, huge and majestic…I felt like I had left the moon and was once again surrounded by Life!

The shuttle bus ride was as short as the plane taxi was long, and in no time at all we were dropped off at the terminal, and we had to go inside. By the time we collected our bags and got through customs, the sun had set and it was dark outside. The darkness felt remarkably normal to me…this is the way its supposed to be, the way its been for my whole life, and I felt very comfortable with it.

Back in my hotel that evening Spruce and I recollected on our time in Antarctica and what a fitting, almost storybook ending we had. WAIS Divide already seemed like a faint memory, even though we were drilling ice core on 24 hour shifts only 8 days ago. Now I’m looking ahead to a couple of weeks of vacation time in New Zealand. I’m going to meet up with an old Kiwi friend and go mountaineering near Mt. Cook for a few days, meet up with some other friends on the north island, and just be a tourist for awhile. Beyond that, I’m looking forward to when I return home on February 18th, to when I’ll get to see my family and friends again whom I’ve sorely missed. These next couple of weeks, they are going to be good.
Feb

McMurdo - Jan 27, 2009 - Logan

2009-01-27T05:15:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: January 27, 2009
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 10pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Borehole depth: 1511.951 m! <- Final depth for the season!
Temperature: -3°C
Wind speed: 5-10knots
Wind Chill: -8°C
Visibility: Unrestricted
Precipitation: None
Animals: 3 Skua and many seals
Breakfast: Eggs, pancakes, plum.
Lunch: hummus wrap with ***lettuce, green peppers, onions!!!*** and a plum.
Supper: A huge salad w/ all the fixins!!! Blueberry cheesecake for dessert! And a plum!

The past few days have been incredibly busy! On Thursday night we finished drilling the last meter of ice core for the season, and most of camp came down to the drilling arch for the event. It was the most photographed ice core this season! Once the core was safely pushed out of the drill into a core handling tray, we all congratulated each other with a well deserved glass of whiskey. We all had a lot to be happy about: the two main goals for this season were to get through the brittle ice and also to get past 1500m. Not only did we accomplish both of these, but we finished a day early!

On Friday we started cleaning up which included lowering the final racks of ice core trays down into the basement, securing the trays on the carts for the winter, turning off the AC units (which was cause for more celebration!), packing all of our tools and office supplies up for the season, and general tidying up of the arch. With everyone working, things went pretty fast and we were finished by Saturday afternoon. In the evening I began to collect everyone’s pictures on my external hard drive to facilitate everyone sharing their photos with everyone else.
This was kind of like herding cats, but by Sunday morning I had finally done it. On Sunday morning we helped take down the Jamesway that we had used all season and packing up the last few things. It was amazing to me that in the span of two and a half days, we went from production drilling to being completely done with packing and disassembling the Jamesway…the transition was very abrupt. A positive side of all of this was that since production drilling was over, we all transitioned to a single shift and were working the normal 8 am to 6 pm hours that the rest of camp was working. This was great because it was the first time since we started production drilling on December 22, 2008 that I was able to work with and hang out with my fellow core handlers whom I had become such good friends with.

The weather on Sunday began to improve and since our work was done, we were all scheduled to fly out on Monday. This was my last chance to take care of things at WAIS that I had put off, or didn’t have time to do. One of these things was setting up a slackline, which is like tight rope walking, but using tubular webbing that stretches when you walk on it. This turned out to be really easy: we attached one end to a Tucker (large tracked vehicle) and attached the other end to the large 953 bulldozer, and drove the 953 a little bit away to tighten it! This was a lot of fun and I kind of wish that I had thought of this earlier in the season. Another thing that I had always wanted to do but didn’t have the time/energy was to go on a run away from camp until I couldn’t see camp anymore and was just out in the middle of nowhere. So, I told someone in camp exactly where I was going and when I was coming back (in case something went awry) and then headed out. After jogging for an hour with nothing but the sun and the horizon in view and the sound of snow squeaking under my feet, I turned around and saw that camp was just a speck on the horizon, barely visible. All around me, in all directions all I could see was flat white ice sheet, the sun in the sky, and a few scattered clouds. This was a great moment for me filled with so many emotions: happiness, accomplishment, extreme aloneness (but not loneliness), and isolation. And I was cold. I took some photos and headed back. I am pretty sure that where I was jogging, no human being had ever stepped before.

On Monday the flight arrived right on schedule, right after lunchtime. We all spent the morning taking down our tents, taking the last few pictures, and saying our last goodbyes to the people who were staying behind. The camp population was at ~45 people and 23 are leaving on our flight, and another 9 will be leaving on the next flight scheduled for Tuesday. The remaining people will take down the rest of the buildings in camp and should be leaving around February 7th.

The flight was pretty uneventful except that as we were taking off the pilots buzzed camp, which scared the bejesus out of me because we were flying so low. Getting back to McMurdo has been very interesting and is making me wonder what it will be like to get back to New Zealand. There are so many people here that I don’t know! And there is fresh fruit & vegetables available at every meal! Holy moly! Even though the plums are as hard as a rock and are extremely sour, I eat one at every meal. The temperature here is very mild compared to WAIS. It is barely freezing. There is flowing water along all of the streets. The main ship that
resupplies McMurdo with food and equipment will be here in a few days and an icebreaker vessel has cleared a channel through the McMurdo Sound, so I can see ocean water! I walked down to the icy water and looked in and saw some algae growing in it: the first living plant that I’ve seen in 9 weeks. There are lots of seals and skua around, and I am hoping to see a penguin, but I think my chances are pretty small. If I see one, this blog will be the first to know about it.

Well, that’s all for now. We have a few errands to do here in McMurdo, but mostly I’m spending my time catching up on email, reading about what our new President has been up to, planning my trip to New Zealand, and resting. I’m scheduled to fly back to New Zealand on January 30.

Tent city with the sun and a halo around it.

Looking at some bubbles in one of the final ice cores.

The crowd gathered around the drill as the final ice core was coming up.

Me with the final ice core. Bottom depth is 1511.951 meters below the surface.

Me in the basement that is filled up with ice core trays. There is ~932 meters of ice core being stored in the basement!

The skeleton of a Jamesway as we were taking it down.

Me balancing on the slackline.

WAIS - Jan 23, 2009 - Tim

2009-01-23T04:38:00.000-08:00

Name: Tim Bartholomaus

Date: January 23, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide Galley
Time: 23:00
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1511.951 m! And that's it for the season!
Temperature: -16 °C
Wind speed: 18 knots
Visibility: 1000 m
Clouds: overcast, but with occasional cloud breaks
Wind direction: 15°
Precipitation: Some snow, ~5-8 cm

Well, as John suggested, after our end-of-season celebration and toasting at the arch, most folks turned in pretty early. Although our drilling is complete, our work is far from over. In order to prepare for next year and leave our equipment in good shape to spend the winter here at WAIS, in McMurdo, or in any number of places back in the US, we had a lot of packing to do before we all hop on the next Herc flight. The way the weather's been, and because our departure date is so imminent, we want to have as much equipment and as many people ready to load as soon as the next plane touches down. Fortunately, most of what we have here at WAIS can winter either in the arch or on one of the large berms that the heavy equipment operators have been building out of snow.

Although the peak of excitement this week was the completion of the season's ice coring, the positive energy continued this morning when all of us core handlers showed up together for work (more or less. Folks not on a shift 1 schedule were given some slack to ease the transition back onto a more typical schedule). This was the first time we'd all been up and working together since we started drilling on multiple shifts sometime around December 20th. It was fun seeing everyone together again, and, with many hands, we made light work of the day's checklist.

One of the first things we did this morning was also one of the most anticipated: shutting off the four large refrigeration units that had kept the processing side of the arch down around -30 degrees C. Once the last of the cores that Spruce and I had logged last night was through the DEP process, all of the ice from the floor of the arch was lowered down into the basement for storage over the winter. When this was complete, the hatches were shut and the refrigerators were switched off, leaving an odd, but relaxing quiet around the arch. It was actually possible to carry on a normal conversation, and after the doors were left open, the temperature quickly rose to a comfortable temperature of only about -15 to -20 degrees C.

Other tasks for the day included dismantling the DEP for shipment back to the Desert Research Institute, inventorying all of the office and lab supplies in the arch and warming jamesway, and dismantling all of the sensitive electronic equipment that we don't want to get too cold. Some of this cargo, colloquially known as "DNF," for the Do Not Freeze stickers applied to them, was then brought over to the "Science" RAC tent near the center of camp where it will be kept indoors and warm until the plane is about an hour away. At that point, the cargo will be brought out and strapped onto extra large "Air Force" pallets prior to being loaded into the Herc. The final activity of the day was to sweep the entire processing arch and shovel barrels and barrels of snow off the floor and out the door. I've never seen the arch looking so ship-shape as it does now. In the end, I think everyone was pretty satisfied. It was really nice all working, eating normal meals, and hanging out together again.

After dinner, I enjoyed my last shower, I think, until I get to McMurdo, where one doesn't need to shovel snow to make water. And finally, many of us capped off the day watching "Hurricane," a great Denzel Washington movie about the wrongfully-imprisoned prizefighter made famous in Dylan's ballad.

Now we're one more day closer to flying out of here! There's talk of a Monday flight, which means that we might even have some time off on Sunday if all goes well tomorrow. I think every one of us has really enjoyed working and living out here at WAIS Divide, doing exciting science in such a unique environment, and with fun, interesting people. I feel really privileged to have had this opportunity. That said, thoughts in camp are starting to drift towards people's next plans. Personally, I can't wait to see my girlfriend in NZ, and adventure together for a couple weeks before heading back to Berkeley. There's more good stuff still coming down the pipe, for sure!

That'll be it from me- thanks everyone for reading our blog. Cheers, Tim

WAIS - Jan 22, 2009 - John

2009-01-22T07:43:00.000-08:00

Name: John Fegyveresi

Date: Jan 22, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1512 m

Woo Hoo!!!! We've drilled the last ice core of the season today at a depth of 1512 meters!

Hello Everyone! It's John here again for what will by my last Blog entry. First off let me start off by saying that I was actually supposed to be back in McMurdo today. Last night we were supposed to get a flight here at WAIS and I was scheduled to be on it. We had some rather quirky weather and only had a very small window open up for the flight. The plane made it all the way here, but just as it was about to land, a thick fog rolled in limiting the visibility too much for a safe landing. The plane circled over the camp for an hour and a half and finally turned around and headed back to McMurdo. Of course as fate would have it....about 30 minutes after the plane turned around, the fog broke and it became clear here at camp.

With all this being said, I'm quite glad that I got stuck here and was able to be here for such an important and exciting day. At about 10 pm tonight, the drillers pulled up the final ice core of the season from a depth of 1512 meters. We went in to this ice-core drilling season with a lot of questions. No one knew just how bad the brittle ice was going to be and everyone was unsure of just how far we'd get. An ambitious goal of reaching 1500 meters by January 23rd was set at the beginning of the season. To be able to surpass this goal...and a day ahead of schedule is a huge accomplishment for everyone here at camp and says a lot about the determination of everyone here.

About an hour before the final core was drilled, a whole crew from camp headed up to the arch to prepare for the big celebration. We all gathered around the drill and took a whole slew of photos and videos as the core was finally brought to the surface. Once it was passed into the handling side of the arch, we all made a toast and listened while
Bruce gave a speech congratulating everyone. Some awards were also given out for categories like "Best Ice Core Dancers", and "Longest Amount of Time in the Cold", etc. It really was a great night for everyone.

The celebration did end up closing down quickly however. A lot of people at camp (myself included) were up until 5:00 am last night waiting to see if the plane was going to land. This meant that a lot of people were very tired today. To make matters worse, the weather took a bad turn today and went incredibly south. We've had sustained 20-25 knot winds today, with blowing snow, and less than 1/4 mile visibility. The plane that didn't land last night probably won't come now until at least Saturday. Everyone made their way back to camp from the Arch after the celebration where we've all gathered in the Rec to watch a classic film, "The Princess Bride".

This really has been a great day and I'm thrilled that I was here (and not back in McMurdo). On a personal note I just want to add that my experience here at WAIS Divide (and in Antarctica) has been incredible....and that's mostly due to the amazing people that I've been surrounded by. Every one of the core handlers, drillers, and camp staff, has been such good people and I sincerely hope that many of us come back next year. There's also been a lot of talk in the air about hiking and I'm very much hoping to cross paths with a few WAIS folks on the trails once we get back New Zealand.

So, I guess that's it. Thanks for keeping up on the blog, and I'm honored that I was able to write updates for you all!

Take care everyone!

-john

For anyone interested....I also have been trying to keep my blog up to date as well. Check it out if you want:
lakewoodhiker.blogspot.com

WAIS - Jan 21, 2009 - Logan

2009-01-21T07:42:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: Jan 21, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 10pm
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: ~1490 m

Well, I hate to say it, but the end of the 2008-2009 drilling epoch here at WAIS Divide is drawing to a close. Tonight will be my last shift, and as long as everything continues to go well, we will finish by tomorrow evening. With that in mind I’ve been trying to wrap a few things up before we leave.

Tonight before my shift I finished construction of the WAIS Pole. I got the idea from pictures that I have seen of the pole at South Pole and decided that WAIS Divide needed a similar pole. The pole itself is a ~1.5m long silver cardboard tube that is used for transporting the ice cores. I put some green netting (the same stuff we put around out ice cores) on the tube to give it some color. Then, to top it off, I filled up a weather balloon with water and blue food coloring to give a neat pattern, then stuck the balloon outside and froze it. Once it froze I peeled off the balloon, stuck it on top of the tubing and viola, the WAIS Pole was born!

The other major task that I had tonight before starting work was to break down the 3-walled backlit snowpit. This was basically a lot of digging. Since not many people have gone out there recently, the plywood that was covering the snowpit was covered with about a meter of snow! This wasn’t that big of a deal though…I really like digging in the snow. Since we were breaking it down, I had the pleasure of punching through one of the walls. Lots of fun.

That’s all for now…I’m off to start my last shift!

WAIS - Jan 18, 2009 - Spruce

2009-01-18T07:40:00.000-08:00

Name: Spruce Schoenemann

Date: January 18, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide Rec Tent
Time: Actually Monday morning
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1367 m
Temperature: -18°C
Wind speed: 8.7 knots
Visibility: Less than 1 mile
Clouds: Stratus clouds everywhere-no blue sky
Wind direction: 099
Relative Humidity: In the Rec Tent it’s very humid thanks to the showers!
Precipitation: none
Animals: the lint creatures from my wool long underwear
Breakfast (2pm): Cinnamon Raisin Bagel w/ Butter & Coffee
Lunch (6pm): Leftovers consisting of Eggplant Parmigan, Vegetables & Quinoa, and Shrimp Soup
Supper (12am): Spinach Tortellini, Honey Mustard Chicken, and Peas & Carrots

Hello to all the WAIS Divide blog followers! It’s Sunday! A day off for most everyone, except Shift 2. As you read in Bruce’s blog for Saturday, we finally had an all camp day off, and some excellent festivities, including the 3 mph sleigh ride and a sailing slide show. I really enjoyed putting together the slides of my various sailing adventures, which provided a nice change of landscape from the vast white ice sheet to the vast blue ocean.

This morning (2pm in the afternoon) I awoke and realized that the 2nd WAIS Divide Coffee House was underway. I hurriedly made my way to the galley for a breakfast bagel and then headed directly to the Rec Tent to catch the second half of the Coffee House. The finale of the show was John Fegyveresi’s guitar playing and vocals. He is an excellent musician and songwriter, and we all enjoyed his witty words.

While the rest of camp enjoyed their Sunday, Shift 2 headed off to the arch to start up the last week of drilling. It was to be an exciting shift since Bill Mason was going to try a new valve in the screen barrel section of the drill. The valve was designed to help pack the chips more efficiently in the screens so that the drill could get more ice per run. Rather than drill 2.5m ice, we were going to attempt to drill 3m of ice. The first core we drilled came out of the core barrel, through the F.E.D (fluid evacuation device), and on to the 4m trays in the core handling side of the arch. Both Tim and I could not believe how long that single piece of ice core was. We made estimates on the length and then measured it with the laser baluff. 2.95 meters! Wow! It was an absolutely excellent piece of ice core, with no breaks or fractures and a perfectly spherical bottom break. If we could drill 3 meters each run, then over the course of our shift, we could get 12 meters of ice from four runs down the bore hole rather than 10 meters. Unfortunately the valve seemed to be triggering too early in the drilling process and we were never able to break the 3-meter barrier. We reverted back to the 2.5 meters per run in order to maximize the amount of ice we put in the 1m holding trays since we are limited in the amount of ice we can drill by how much we can store. Speaking of which, the basement is almost completely full of carts. There is room for 3 more carts, and then we will need to start filling the aisle between the two rows of carts! I still find it hard to believe that we have drilled that much ice core this season. What seemed like an endless amount of trays and carts at the beginning of the season is now a packed storeroom of row upon row of 1m ice cores. At the rate we are going, we will probably hit 1500 meters by Thursday night, but we have enough trays to drill to a depth of approximately 1532 meters. Since we have the time, if all goes smoothly, will fill up every last tray before the season is over!

With the season’s goal in sight, everyone’s spirits seem to be a bit higher. There is a jovial, celebratory atmosphere in camp, and in less than a week we will all be gone, except for the ice cores, the only true WAIS Dividians wintering over.

Cheers from way down under,
Spruce

WAIS - Jan 17, 2009 - Bruce

2009-01-17T09:13:00.000-08:00

Name: Bruce Vaughn

Date: January 17, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: Actually Sunday morning
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1360 m
Temperature: -16°C
Wind speed: 5 knots
Wind Chill: Seems warmer now that we’re used to it!
Visibility: Almost enough to land a plane
Clouds: Scattered clouds
Wind direction: Prevailing
Relative Humidity: Are you kidding?
Precipitation: none
Animals: Mostly the party kind
Breakfast: Oatmeal and toast
Lunch: Pizzas and carrot cup cakes
Supper: Pot roast & potatoes/veggies; Tofu stir-fry; peas; pecan pie

This is Bruce and I am the current science field leader who is way over due for writing a blog. Everyone else has been doing a wonderful job of keeping up on the unofficial (blog) news, and providing glimpses into the colorful and creative life that goes on here.

We have five more days of drilling, in which we fully expect to reach our goal of filling all the ice trays that we have, and reaching a depth below 1500 meters. The core quality is excellent and becoming less and less brittle every day. A plot of core quality vs. depth shows that we hit our low point in ice quality around 1070 meters, and we are now pulling up almost entirely ‘Excellent’ (0- 1 breaks) core at the 1360 meter depth. We now routinely bring up 2.5-meter lengths of ice, and cut them into shorter sections in the core processing area.

The last flight we had was last Tuesday, and between weather and aircraft mechanical issues our flight schedule has been pretty limited. We understand that more than half of the Hercules LC-130’s are down with mechanical problems, making it difficult to forecast actual departure dates. The CIRES crew is still in town, on day 4 of waiting for a flight. But there is plenty of food and good company for them! On Saturday, we suspended our work for a day for a much-deserved break beginning at 3 pm after a 17-day stretch of round the clock shifts. This will be the last such time-off for the season, because once we start taking things down, there will be a steady march to load and go, as planes become available.

Our community here on the ice is very much in the groove now just as we approach the end of the season. Its fun to watch as the season progresses and people get to know each other more and more. Perhaps because each of us is so dependent on the efforts of the many, there is a sense of community that arises spontaneously. In anticipation of an evening of fun, on Saturday afternoon we had a ‘Safety’ meeting that included gratuitous beers, and a participatory improv safety reminder put on by our esteemed camp supervisor “T”. It was a fun and upbeat way to engage the audience about the importance of being safe without being too square. Placards were used for “Funny” and “Not Funny” and “Applause” as different events were acted out by different groups of four. Scenarios covered appropriate and inappropriate party behavior in an engaging and humorous fashion, and far from stuffy. Nicely done. After an entertaining slide show given by Spruce on sailing tall ships, we all gathered for a sleigh ride – that in all honesty I thought stood a good chance of being a pedestrian yawner. Quite the contrary. Using the Tucker snow cat, ‘Dooley’ towed all of us at walking speed on one of the CRESIS sleds that is basically a sheet of thick flexible material only an inch or so off the snow. A Nansen sled towed behind carried a small Honda generator and large stereo (courtesy of ICDS) booming out the tunes. What started like a geriatric cruise quickly became a frivolous festival of walking, riding, sipping beer, dancing, snowballs, somersaults, group photos, human pyramid building, and general carrying on. A sort of traveling circus, really. A great time was had by all, and there were lots of smiles and a nice feeling of community that can only come from a weeks of sharing every day- hardships (not many), dog days of doing the same thing (many) along with the good times too, and blowing off some steam. Kudos to Brian Bencivengo for organizing the sleigh ride!

The traveling circus, a 2 mph sleigh ride at WAIS. Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

The traveling circus, a 2 mph sleigh ride at WAIS. Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

As we pace ourselves for the home stretch, it is comforting to know that we really are community in the greatest sense. Our merry band of ice-people is strong, capable, and full of spirit.

Cheers,
Bruce

WAIS - Jan 16, 2009 - Gifford

2009-01-16T09:13:00.000-08:00

Name: Gifford J Wong

Date: 16 January 2009
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Tent)
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Borehole depth: ~1330m
Wind speed: negligible
Visibility: Seems like miles and miles!
Breakfast: scrambled eggs (with extra Hot Peri Peri Nando sauce!), toast w/ Nutella, and orange juice.

Well… Friday was a full day, to be sure. Our work days are going incredibly well… in fact, today after lunch we asked the drillers to drill a full 2.5 meters in one, continuous run. In the past, due to the brittleness of the ice, we had the drillers “break” the core for us as they drilled. While this helped preserve to the best extent possible the integrity of the core, it took a little more time and required more “finesse”, if you will, from the talented drillers. With the help of some useful charting of ice core quality, the decision was made to drill a “full-length” core and cut the core at our “1m station” (refer back to a previous blog for details). The first cut… a success! No “reaction” from the core save for two beautifully flat faces! It was marvelous because the drillers can now drill “full runs” saving precious time and we get to inject something new to our daily routine – using a chop saw!
This bodes well for our target depth this season…

After dinner, Dave Ferris (driller this season, core “wrangler” last season) presented his talk on the history of Antarctica. It focused on the fabled exploits of the early Antarctic explorers, leaving out the obvious names of Scott, Shackleton, and Amundsen. It was a fascinating tale that started with James Cook (and James T. Kirk) and ended with us at WAIS, more or less. History is an incredibly fascinating canvas, and Antarctic history is so compact and “portable”. Woven into Dave’s tale were little hints at how early Antarctic exploration colors today’s Antarctic Treaty System. From the original signatories to today’s growing club, history plays an important role – and I love that!

Finally… after much wrangling, Bess, Jonathon (Met Tech), John F and I got a chance to “practice” our improv skit for this Sunday’s Coffeehouse. I know it sounds a bit oxymoronic, but the fact of the matter is you have to practice improv with your improv partners so that “being on the same page” evolves from a wish to a reality. Despite only being able to have 2 or 3 practices before this Sunday, tonight’s “rehearsal” (the first) seemed to reflect the existing playful nature that Bess alluded to yesterday – thank goodness! Here are to huge laughs!

Anyhow, this is a snapshot of my Friday… I suppose it is getting late, but the take home message is we’re actually winding down with the end in sight. The last four carts of empty trays stand lonely adjacent to carts upon carts laden with ice cores! That is a sight that I couldn’t quite imagine at the start of the season. The calendar that lists potential flights actually has my name on it… and the projected date is just over a week away. Another sight I could hardly imagine when I first stepped off the LC-130 onto the WAIS Camp flightline. Crazy… but there you go – another (2nd to last) Friday at WAIS Divide.

Cheers!

WAIS - Jan 15, 2009 - Bess

2009-01-15T09:12:00.000-08:00

Name: Bess Koffman

Date: January 15, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 2030
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1300 m
Temperature: -17°C
Wind speed: 10 knots
Wind Chill: ?? °C
Visibility: a few miles
Clouds: the whole sky
Relative Humidity: 90%
Precipitation: light snow
Animals: what we ate for lunch and dinner =)
Breakfast: Pancakes with strawberry sauce
Lunch: Fall-apart delicious beef, polenta, quinoa
Supper: BBQ pork, garlic/sesame sautéed kale, potatoes, cornbread, veggie soup, tempeh, zucchini and tomatoes.

Greetings to all our northern hemisphere readers out there! It’s been awhile since I’ve written, but hearing from a friend in Costa Rica that she’s been following the blog was all the impetus I needed to come back and write another post. Life, as you’ve heard, has been good at WAIS Divide lately. The arrival of airplanes means fresh fruit and vegetables for us, always a welcome change from frozen fare. The ice core drill has been working really well since the event that Dave F. posted about, and we’re on track to meet our depth goals by the end of the season! The ice itself has changed a lot during our time drilling. It went from slightly brittle to impressively brittle, to now what we call “ductile ice.” The ice is under so much pressure at the depths we drill that the bubbles disappear and the trapped gasses actually become part of the ice crystal lattice. This is called clathrate-hydrates. We’ve noticed an appreciable decrease of breaks in the ice, and it no longer shatters spontaneously. This is good news! As Dave hinted, the arrival of ductile ice will allow us to change our drilling and core handling procedures, becoming faster and more efficient.

Last night, while we were enjoying a science lecture on the NEEM project in Greenland by Bruce, the camp manager came into the Rec Tent and informed everyone that we’d get a plane at 0100 today! That’s one in the morning, for you analog types out there. What a plane means is that all the camp staff that are involved in weather observations (Jonathan), cargo & heavy equipment (Keith, Jason and Dulaigh), and fuel (Phil and Jake) as well as other functions (including camp manager Ben and asst. camp manager T-Bird) have to stay up through the whole period of time when the plane arrives, gets unloaded and loaded with cargo and passengers (“pax” in Antarctic lingo), and finally leaves. The plane took off from McMurdo bound for WAIS, then we had a thick fog roll in… as you may imagine, the plane could not land here and instead went to offload some fuel at the South Pole! So the one pax onboard got a free ride to the Pole, and all the passengers who hurriedly packed up in order to take the 0100 plane back to McMurdo had to stay up all night and then go back to sleep… as best they could! The bad news for camp staff was that we were scheduled for another flight today—meaning the whole rigmarole all over again. We had some pretty tired RPSC staff at camp today. Our blustery, foggy weather has stayed here, though, and pretty soon the flight got canceled. Looks like we’ll enjoy the company of Sylvain, Sridar and the CReSIS folks for another day!

This evening after a delicious dinner of BBQ pork, corn bread, garlicky kale, potatoes, and a few other things including dessert of flourless chocolate torte, I headed out to one of the arch-shaped tents (called a Polar Haven) to practice a song for next Sunday’s coffee house. This past coffee house was such a successful event that all of camp wanted to do it again! It sounds like we’ll have a lot of great acts, including some new performers. I’m working on a John Prine song with Jonathan, the “Lumberjack” of last week. I may also do some improv comedy with Giff, John F., and Jonathan, which should be fun. We goof around enough that it shouldn’t be too hard to make a show of it.

Thanks for reading! I’m off to bed….

WAIS - Jan 14, 2009 - Dave

2009-01-14T08:22:00.000-08:00

Name: Dave Ferris

Date: Jan 14, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: deep and getting deeper
Temperature: very warm
Wind speed: calm
Wind Chill: none
Visibility: forever
Clouds: beautiful
Breakfast: Leftover Middle Eastern food (see other blog)
Lunch: Hot chocolate with Bailey’s outside on the cliff overlooking the great WAIS with Natalie and Logan.
Supper: garlic shrimp and scallops over rice; FRESH LETTUCE SALAD!!!!

Hello, I’m Dave. I’m an ice core driller and I’m told, the first driller to post on the WAIS blog. This is my first year as a driller and I guess I come to it from a little different perspective. Last year I was a core handler and I also work with the ice core back in my lab at South Dakota State University. So why did I switch to drilling? Lots of reasons but the big one was to have a chance to work with the group that designed and built this drill. This drill is impressive to see. It’s a monster. The drill sonde (barrel) is 45 ft. long. The cable winch weighs 19,000 lbs. We hope to be drilling 4-meter (12+ ft) cores next season after we get through the brittle ice.

Someone once told me that ice core drillers were the rock stars of Antarctica. I can tell you that these guys are at the top of their profession. One doesn’t often get a chance, if ever, to work with the people at the top (even though it is admittedly a small arena). The drilling group (Ice Core Drilling Services, ICDS) is based out of the University of Wisconsin. There are 5 of them led by Jay along with Bill, Nicolai, Paul and Krissy. The rest of us are contract drillers (6).

Drillers say that ice core drilling is 99% boredom interspersed with 1% sheer panic. I came hoping to observe and learn during the 1% but have learned to long for and treasure the 99%. There’s a lot of pressure on these guys. If the drill shuts down, everything shuts down. Things are always changing. Mechanical things really don’t like to work well in the cold, computers even less. The ice seems to change about every meter. And these guys adapt continuously. They seem prepared for anything. Things happen completely out of the blue. Problems crop up that could never have been dreamt of. And these guys come up with a plan and materials to fix it, quickly. Very quickly. There’s no running to the hardware store or ordering replacement parts. We had a potentially show ending problem the other day. The problem had caused us to burn through a couple instrument sections and motors. We were down to the last ones. It was amazing to watch how they troubleshot the problem in only a few hours. A fix was quickly devised and a day later we are back up and running. Smooth as ever.

So, drillers are the rock stars of Antarctica. If so, I think I might only be a roadie at this point. But as a roadie I get a front row seat every night to the concert.

WAIS - Jan 13, 2009 - Logan

2009-01-13T08:21:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: Jan 13, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 10:30 pm
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1,230 m
Temperature: -22.5°C
Wind speed: 2.7 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: 317° Grid
Relative Humidity: 72%
Barometric Pressure: 28.85mm Hg
Precipitation: None
Animals: None

Today was a day of seeing my vision become reality, of reaching goals that I had set out for myself. No, we haven’t finished drilling, and I haven’t finished editing the journal article that I’m working on (almost done with draft 2 though!). The two breakthroughs I accomplished today are as follows:

1.) There are two options for going to the bathroom here at WAIS: You can go to one of the outhouses if you need to sit down, or you can pee at the pee flag. The pee flag is very convenient for guys and since all of the urine is concentrated in one spot, it keeps camp clean. Now, as you can imagine, if lots of people pee in the same spot in snow, you can make quite a hole. (People here joke that this is called “hot water drilling”) The one closest to the Galley that sees the most traffic was about 6” in diameter and a maybe a couple of feet deep. During the last “storm” a few days ago, a lot of snow was blown around and the pee flag hole was covered up. So someone started a new hole about a foot away from the original hole. After a few days, the original hole was also re-opened and now we had two holes! Well, I got to thinking that it would be a fun project to connect these two holes and, with the help of lots of tea, got right to work. This is quite a delicate task since the area around the pee holes is solid ice and if you pee on flat ice you will splash all over the place (including your shoes) which is not cool. You have to hit right at the rim of the hole – too far inside it and you don’t make any progress, too far outside it and you are splashing your shoes. It took me a couple of days, but at long last I finally created a channel connecting the two holes!! The channel even had a neat “S” shape to it! Well, I figured this was big news for camp and I went right into the Galley and started telling everyone. This was right at the beginning of my shift, so only a few people were up. I had to wait until morning when the rest of camp got up for breakfast to tell more people. The reactions I got were priceless. When I told Gifford, his face lit up with a huge grin and he said with a laugh “Oh that was you? That’s awesome!” Ben, the camp manager, gave me a huge heartfelt congratulations after he saw it. In general, all the guys were excited to hear about it couldn’t wait to go check it out and help deepen the channel. The girls in camp just laughed politely, at times being fascinated and at times being baffled by what entertains the men in camp. My shift partner, Susanna, (bless her heart) had to listen to me tell the story of how it happened about a thousand times and by this evening she was telling it for me. She even humored me enough to go check out the pee flag herself. At the time of writing, the channel is getting deeper quickly, it’s already a few inches deep!

2.) One of the disadvantages of working on the night shift is that all of my meals are out of order. I wake up and eat dinner for breakfast, eat leftovers from yesterday’s lunch at 3am, and eat breakfast for dinner. I never make it to lunch since that is the middle of the night for me. So, I thought it would be fun to make it to every meal that camp offers for 24 hours at least once. Here is how it went:

1:00 am Meal # 1: “Midrats” – French toast with real maple syrup (thanks Spruce!).
3:00 am Meal #2: “Leftover lunch from yesterday” – Cheesy scalloped potatoes (yay!), honey baked ham, vegetables.
7:30 am Meal #3: “ Breakfast” – Egg bake with roasted red peppers, baked potato squares, and bacon.
10:00 am – Went to bed at my “typical” bedtime.
12:30 pm Meal #4: “Lunch” – Grilled turkey and cheese sandwich, mashed potatoes, and tomato soup. It was really hard to get up at this time…my body is used to sleeping for 6 more hours.
2:00pm – Went back to bed but couldn’t sleep. My body is going berserk trying to digest all of that food, so I just laid there and rested.
5:30 pm – Finally fell asleep.
6:30 pm Meal #5: “Dinner” – Leftover Middle Eastern Food from last Sunday: Stuffed grape leaves, green beans & lamb over rice, lentil soup, and kibbe. It was really hard to wake up after I FINALLY fell asleep. My stomach is starting to hurt now.
8:00 pm – I went back to my tent to try to get some more sleep. Again it took me a long time to go to sleep. I don’t know if I’m going to be able to do this…but there is only one meal left…I can do it…
10:30 pm Meal #6: “Night Shift Breakfast” – Eggs, bacon, toast, and a fresh nectarine (!). I finally made it! Wahoo!! I am soooo stuffed…at least I know I’m not going to get cold at work tonight.

Notice that the largest amount of time between meals was only 6 hours between lunch & dinner, and this is when I was supposed to be sleeping! Well, needless to say, I didn’t get much sleep! In the end it was worth it because I got to hang out with a lot of people who I usually don’t get to see (since I’m usually asleep) and I got to eat lots of good food. But, I don’t think I’d do it again anytime soon. ?

Logan eating meal #6 & feeling fat. Photo: Logan Mitchell, Oregon State University

In other news, a plane came today. It brought freshies and it took away some people. One of the three people that left was Anaïs, and I am very sad to see her go. She has been such an integral part of life here at WAIS that I’m not sure what it’s going to be like now that she is gone. She has been the inspiration behind so many fun events in camp: the Olympics, she oversaw the construction of the three walled snowpit and the igloo, and she was always there if anyone was having a bad day or needed help with anything. She is a fantastic storyteller, could get anyone to laugh, and knew a ton about the science that is being done at WAIS and could explain it in a way that anyone could understand. Anaïs, we miss you already and wish you safe travel on your way back home!

WAIS - Jan 11, 2009 - John

2009-01-11T08:11:00.000-08:00

Name: John Fegyveresi

Date: Jan 11, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m

Hey everyone! It's Sunday here, which also means it's the first day off in 10 days......sort of. The past few days we've had some trouble with the ice core drill and it was actually down for maintenance for a day and a half. Because of this, the "day off" was actually spread out over two days. The 2nd and 3rd shifters actually got off Saturday, while the 1st shifters got off Sunday. Regardless, everyone still found time today to make it to the 1st Annual WAIS Divide Coffee House and Talent Show.

A few days ago, Bess got the idea of converting the Rec tent into a makeshift coffee house. Her idea was to decorate it, serve some coffee and cocoa, and have people from camp perform in sort of a "open-mic" format. It turned out to be an enormous success with almost everyone at camp attending and/or performing. Here's a quick recap of the performers:

The first act up for the talent show was Todd. Over the past few weeks Todd has been taking time-lapse digital photos of the ice-coring process and of some of the weather here. He compiled all of the footage and first played the weather videos to music. It was quite spectacular to see the clouds and sun moving over the WAIS camp at ultra high speeds. The highlight of Todd’s videos was of course the ice coring video. He managed to capture the entire 2-3 hour drilling and core handling process in time-lapse format and play it sped up in about 10 minutes. It was quite entertaining to watch people zip past the camera carrying trays and typing on computers. Bess and Gifford were working the core handling station during the filming and made sure to take full advantage of it. They choreographed several dances and even a few pranks in front of the camera. The next performer was Bess. She recited two excellent poems and did an amazing job. She was quite animated as she acted out several of the scenes to each of the poems. Following Bess, Jonathan (Weather Tech), sang and played a few songs on guitar including one song done entirely in French. Following Jonathan, Phil (Medic) read aloud from a book about Alexander the Great. It was a very heartfelt section about humility. When he was done, he told us a personal story about someone he worked with years ago as an EMT medic. After Phil, Renin (Cook) also told us a personal story about an experience she had while visiting family in Turkey...it was also a very poignant story. Next, Anais played us 2 songs on her bamboo flute and it was amazing. After that, Bruce told us all about an experience he had in Greenland where due to some very heroic and brave people, he survived a bad bout with altitude sickness. After Bruce, I went up and played/sang three songs on a guitar. I played two of my own songs and one from the "Into the Wild" Soundtrack. It went pretty well. While I was playing, Sylvain was busy creating some artwork. He used a soldering iron to burn an image of a penguin into a block of wood. It was very well done, and looked very professional. The caption her burned into it read: "In Antarctica, we are all Penguins". Next up was Susanne. For her act, she recited 4 verses from an Icelandic poem in the Icelandic language. After she read them, she translated them into English. Next was one of the funniest acts of the day. Marie and Spruce put on an act titled "Ballistic Batina, and Hubba Hubba Bubba do Bunny Boot Ballet on Bubble Wrap". Basically they dressed up as ballet dancers, put their big snow boots on, and danced around on bubble wrap. It was hilarious. After everyone stopped laughing, Ben (camp manager) taught us how to play a Chinese game similar to rock/paper/scissors...in Chinese. The last act was again Jonathon, but this time he was singing about how he's a lumberjack that likes to wear women's clothing. It was also pretty funny. Overall, the coffee house was a huge success. Everyone thanked Bess and we already decided to put another one on next Sunday.

When dinner rolled around, we were all greeted by another surprise. Dave (Driller) set up "Middle East Night". Normally, Sunday dinners are reheated leftovers. This gives John the cook a night off. In his place, some camp members usually whip something else up. Dave took it upon himself to create his own Middle East Night and prepared an entire 5-course meal consisting of all Middle Eastern Cuisine. We had stuffed grape leaves, green beans & lamb over rice, lentil soup, naan with za’atar, kibbe, and some other stuff I can’t remember the names of, but tasted wonderful. Everyone was extremely grateful to have such an amazing dinner on a Sunday night.

That pretty much sums up the day. Overall it was great for everyone here, even though a lot of people still had to work. I think everyone was glad to be able to make it to the coffee house. This coming week a lot of people are leaving camp, and it was nice to have one last gathering that we could all attend.

That's it for now I guess.... signing off,

-john

WAIS - Jan. 10, 2009 - Gifford

2009-01-10T07:05:00.000-08:00

Name: Gifford J Wong

Date: 10 January 2009
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Galley)
Time: 2330
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Borehole depth: ~1100m
Temperature: -5.4°C (this morning – sorry)
Wind speed: negligible
Visibility: Seems like miles and miles!
Precipitation: My water-soaked pants from sitting inside an igloo for 2 hours
Breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, toast w/ Nutella, lox, and orange juice.
Lunch: Pork loin with apple sauce, French fries and peach cobbler for dessert!!
Supper: Incredible roast turkey with gravy, mashed potatoes, stuffing, cranberry sauce and corn chowder (plus more of that magical peach cobbler!)

This is the blog for the 10th of January, and I’m staring at the clock… 30 minutes left. I’m taking a quick break from my igloo time to drop in on the blog – I love that I can type a few lines and have them broadcast to the interested folks. Thank you for reading!! Today, er, tonight is my first night-before-a-day-off in 2009. Not too bad, all things considering, as its only been 10 days … but this being the 10th day, I am a touch hungry for something out of the norm. Thank goodness for “Saturday”!

I find it interesting how quickly shift-work can put you into a comfortable routine. Earlier you heard of how Spruce and his fellow shift cohorts have created a mini-community within the WAIS community. The same can be said for my shift. In a sense, I’m only able to hang out with folks that are awake during my meal times. In a lot of ways, this kind of schedule set-up makes sense since we can run the drilling/ice-core handling operations 24 hours a day. The downside, of course, is you can go for days without getting a chance to hang out with your friends (such as Tim, Spruce, Bill, Tanner and Patrick!).

The routine, of course, helps me, of all things, get out of my tent in time to get to work for my own shift. I usually wake up around 0515 … out of my tent at 0530 … stretch in the Recreation Rac Tent from 0545-0600 … breakfast until 0630 … work from 0700-1500 … and then struggle to avoid napping because dinner is at 1800. Sadly, I’m in bed by 2200, and then it starts all over again. “Weekend nights” like tonight are different, of course. First off, I’m still awake… secondly, camp folks feel compelled to stay up “later” on the nights preceding their day off, and that usually means F-U-N.

Tonight was especially fun. It started with Ben Partan (camp manager and Emperor of West Antarctica) collecting folks to play softball after dinner. He somehow roped in 18 people to play on an impromptu field (unfortunately, a Tucker was parked in our usual playing area so we had to make due with a field that put the sun behind the pitcher). The score was “a lot” to “a lot” by the time we called it good. We even got a couple innings of “pinch playing” from Tim and Spruce who were still dutifully logging core!

And then there was the igloo mentioned in Spruce’s blog – it was christened with a gathering of bodies and stories. Despite its ~2m diameter size, I found myself swimming in a sea of 10 happy people… one of the things we shared were middle names, and in no particular order: Julia, Ruth, Andrew, James, Franklin, Michael, Tarrant, Joseph, Giese, and J.

With this, I think I need to get moving again. For one thing, its already 2355! I also see that there is just a little more peach cobbler left… hmmm, midnight snack? Cheers from WAIS!

WAIS - Jan. 8, 2009 - Spruce

2009-01-08T07:05:00.000-08:00

Name: Spruce Schoenemann

Date: January 8, 2009
Location: Science RAC Tent, WAIS Divide
Time: Actually 0400 on Friday (end of my day)
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: ~1111m
Temperature: -16.8°C
Wind speed: 8.1 knots
Visibility: far and wide
Wind direction: 048° Grid
Relative Humidity: 74%
Barometric Pressure: 28.98 mm Hg
Precipitation: The drips of melting ice off my beard
Clouds: Blue sky to the horizon
Animals: I miss my dog, Titan
Breakfast: (Asleep)
Lunch: (Asleep) My breakfast was at 2pm: Grapenuts Cereal, Coffee, Cookies
Supper: Beef & Tempeh Stroganoff, Noodles, Green beans, Lemon Pudding Cake
Midrats: Pot Roast and Rice

Today it finally cleared! The wind is calm, the humidity is low, and the sun is out! There is no more flat light concealing the drifts on the walk from tent city to camp. It can be a clumsy walk when you can’t see a foot high drift right in front of you.

So what’s it like to live in a community with people working 24 hours around the clock? While everyone is winding up their day, I am just getting started. My breakfast usually occurs at 2pm, four hours before everyone’s dinner. By the time I get off shift at 11:30pm, the rest of camp has gone to bed. Tonight I enjoyed my “dinner” with the rest of the folks on my shift, which includes Tim, Tanner, Bill, and Patrick. We have formed our own smaller community within the larger community of WAIS Divide. Although we tend to miss many of the daily activities, we like to make our own fun.

Tonight we went out into the beautiful calm and sunny evening to work on a half built igloo that had been started yesterday. I was super excited to work on the igloo since I have never built one. Anais left us a note with the basic guidelines and we just went at it. We started on the next tier of blocks. The blocks slowly spiral upward, with each block supporting the next, and the angle of their slope gently increasing. Patrick and I stood in the middle to hold up the blocks while Tim and Bill quarried and shaped the blocks. We used an extremely technical measuring device (1.5m rope tied to a post in the center of the igloo) to measure the proper angle and slope of each block. After completing one tier, we needed to stop to let the blocks set up and seat themselves before increasing the angle to nearly horizontal.

And now the day is already over. It is hard to believe how quickly the days go by here at WAIS Divide. I have made a list of all the things I want to do before I leave, and time is running out. Only two and half weeks! Some of the things on my list include getting pictures out at the triple walled backlit snowpit, go cross country skiing on the ski-way, make a photo journal following the day in the life of a core handler, sew on a WAIS Divide patch to my jacket, and sled on the massive berms used for putting up camp in the winter.

Cheers from down under!
Spruce

WAIS - Jan. 7, 2009 - Tim

2009-01-07T07:04:00.000-08:00

Name: Tim Bartholomaus

Date: January 7, 2009 (now January 8, after my shift)
Location: WAIS Divide Rec Tent
Time: 3 am
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 1080 m
Temperature: -13 °C (it's been warm since the storm a few days ago!)
Wind speed: 5 knots
Visibility: unrestricted
Clouds: mostly cloudy, with the ceiling several thousand feet up, but there's sun off on the horizon!
Wind direction: 20° (NNE)
Precipitation: none (the snow from the last storm stopped a while ago)
Lunch (breakfast for me): A bowl of rice krispies and two scones (I slept in, and missed the official lunch).
Supper (lunch for me): Chicken or tofu curry, Israeli couscous with herbs, tater tots, corn with peppers, seafood chowder, coconut cake.
Midrats (dinner for me): Seared salmon with orzo, mushroom quinoa,
Mediterranean veggies, citrus beurre blanc, Bailey's chocolate surprise

After the storm on Tuesday, the weather is starting to clear up. The winds have died down, the snow has long since stopped, and the clouds, although thick overhead, are starting to break up around the horizon. While, as Logan wrote, the storm was a touch disappointing and certainly fell short of a full-on Antarctic gale, I’m starting to look forward to the return of blue skies and still air. One of the biggest temporary impacts of the storm is flat, even lighting that makes it almost impossible to identify any textures or relief in the ground surface. When you combine that with the long snow drifts that have built up behind each obstacle larger than a 3’ by 3’ by 3’ tri-wall cardboard box, the typical walks between tent city, downtown WAIS, and the arch become something of a small adventure. Everyone in camp has been stumbling around, tripping over the new drifts as they are encountered, then stumbling off of them as one walks off the lee side.

In the arch, it was a fairly typical day for Spruce and I on shift 2.
Since I was up a bit late last night, I skipped lunch and got up a bit before 2 pm. After a quick, cold breakfast in the galley, then a stopover in Rec to wash my face and brush my teeth, I dashed off to the warming Jamesway next to the Arch. The warming Jamesway is actually one of my favorite places around camp. These Korean-War-era, former Army structures have a lot of character and, for one, are actually kind of dark inside, which can be a treat here in the land of the 24-hr sun. We’ve got a small heating stove inside that keeps it nice and toasty, racks and hangers to dry our gloves, boots and Big Reds, some office space at one end, and a bit of a lounge/meeting space in the other end of the 35-foot-long arched building. Altogether, this makes for a pretty cozy environment for we core handlers to drink tea and layer and delayer all of the warm clothing we wear while at work.

The first five and a half hours of our shift were uneventful. The drillers made great progress- we were getting a nice-looking 2.5 meters of ice core (about 15 or 18 years worth of ice at this depth) every 80 minutes or so. This was just enough time for us to keep up with our core logging as I described in my last blog (12/29/08). It was an impromptu 90's night on the iPod, and we were listening to classics by the bands Everclear, Gin Blossom and Oasis—some stuff I hadn't heard since high school. But then, just as the end of our shift was coming into sight, we got warned by one of our drillers that the next run might be "banged up a little."

Spruce and I walked through the door to the drilling arch to find the three drillers we work with, Bill, Tanner and Patrick, gathered around the cutter head at the end of the core barrel (together we five make up the "dude" shift, because we're the only shift without at least two women). Out the bottom of the core barrel stuck several large angular fragments of ice, not the cleanly broken, smooth surface we're accustomed to seeing. Today was the first time this had happened this season, so our handling of the situation was a departure from standard procedures; together, drillers and core handlers collaborated quickly to safely get the ice out of the core barrel without further damage.

After we five talked it over, the drillers took off the cutter head and we removed the largest of the chips by hand, then attempted to push the remaining portion out as we typically would. The core wouldn't budge. Again we conferred and, although we recognized that some of the ice still inside the core barrel was likely damaged, decided that the best way to get the rest of the ice out without further risk would be to disassemble the core barrel around its middle (the core barrel is modular, with about 10 equal lengths screwed together to make the entire 3.15-meter-long barrel). This worked well and we were able to feed two out of the three ice lengths into their protective netting on the cold, processing side of the arch. These two lengths looked only marginally worse than they might under typical circumstances, so we turned our attention to the last, more broken 1-meter-length. When we tried to push it out of the core barrel, some of the broken fragments jammed against the inside of the core barrel, seizing it in place.

Again, we took apart more sections of the core barrel, and then again, until the barrel was in four pieces. Finally, we were able to hand-clear the jams and push several of the largest fragments into netting. Many of the fragments, alas, had lost their absolute position within the ice core, but were placed into one of several zip-lock bags to preserve their position as nearer-the-top, nearer-the-bottom, or closer-to-the-middle. In the end, it was a real shame that one of the 3,500 meters of ice that we have drilled or will drill was badly damaged; some of the analyses planned for the WAIS Divide ice core will not be possible on this length. But through the patience, creative problem solving, and dedication of those involved, we were able to protect 1.5 meters of ice from damage, and salvaged large, intact pieces and nearly all of the mass of the broken core.

I've been impressed at how committed the people I work with are to drilling the best possible ice core. Nobody in camp is simply a hired hand—it's clear that everyone has a stake in this core and goes to great lengths to make sure things go as well as they possibly can. Although today's event was a real shame, our team handled it as best as we could. This kind of attention, in addition to the careful planning and new drill technology behind this project, will reduce the likelihood that other core is damaged and help ensure that the WAIS Divide ice core is one of the best yet.

WAIS - Dr. Julie M. Palais (Antarctic Glaciology Program Manager)

2009-01-06T12:40:00.000-08:00

Name: Dr. Julie M. Palais (Antarctic Glaciology Program Manager)

Date: 30 Dec. 2008- 2-Jan. 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m

Borehole depth: 875 m on Dec 30; 930 m on Jan 2. ~1060 m on Jan. 6
Temperature (Jan. 6): -12.2°C
Wind speed (Jan. 6): 17.5 knots
Visibility (Jan. 6): Unrestricted
Wind direction (Jan. 6): 313° Grid
Relative Humidity (Jan. 6): 85%
Barometric Pressure (Jan. 6): 29.02 mm Hg
Precipitation (Jan. 6): light snow

Animals: None (unfortunately; I miss my 3 dogs!)

Breakfast: Bagels Cream Cheese and Lox almost every day! Amazing!
Lunch: Smorgasbord (everything from lamb stew to vegetarian mixtures with couscous and vegetables). Meals were superb with great soups, breads, and other baked goods. Not good for the waistline.....
Supper: Dinner on New Years Eve included pre-dinner appetizers (sushi, foie gras, deviled eggs, smoked salmon, cheeses, dips); crab legs, beef tenderloin, green beans, tater tots and great desserts. (some of this information was borrowed from Renin's blog since I forgot to write it all down (she's one of the cooks, she should know!). It was GREAT!

In a nutshell my site visit was amazing! I should explain. I am the National Science Foundation (NSF) Antarctic Glaciology Program Manager whose program is funding the WAIS Divide effort. We have been planning this project for many years and so to see it all coming together was very rewarding. Thanks to all those in my office back in Arlington, VA who have helped to make this possible including some of the Senior Staff in OPP (Office of Polar Programs) including Dr. Scott Borg (Antarctic Division Director), Dr. Karl Erb (Director, OPP) and Mr. Brian Stone (Division Director, Antarctic Infrastructure and Logistics), and my colleague Dr. Alexandra (Alex) Isern who has worked with me in the last year in overseeing the construction and support of the DISC drill and ICDS.

Dr. Julie Palais in the backlit snowpit at WAIS Divide. Photo: Dr. Julie Palais, National Science Foundation

(L to R) Dr. Kendrick Taylor (WAIS Divide Chief Scientist), Dr. Julie Palais (NSF Antarctic Glaciology Program Manager), Bruce Vaughn (Science Coordination Office Operations Manager) standing outside the arch facility. Photo: Dr. Julie Palais, National Science Foundation

(L to R) Geoff Hargreaves (National Ice Core Laboratory), Dr. Kendrick Taylor (WAIS Divide Chief Scientist), Anais Orsi (Science Coordination Office Operations Manager), and Bruce Vaughn (Science Coordination Office Operations Manager) inside the core handling arch. The baker's rack in the background contains the 1-meter long sections of ice core, wrapped in green turkey netting. Photo: Dr. Julie Palais, National Science Foundation

In this photo, the sonde from the Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill is being rotated so that the ice core can be pushed out of the barrel. Photo: Dr. Julie Palais, National Science Foundation

Close up picture of the 1-meter long sections of ice core. Photo: Dr. Julie Palais, National Science Foundation

A few examples of the many things that impressed me at WAIS Divide:

The field camp was very comfortable and expertly run by a number of folks including Ben Partan, the camp manager and his staff, who work for Raytheon Polar Services Company (RPSC). As noted above, meals (the mainstay of camp life) were provided by three amazing chefs (John Wight, Camille Frost and Renin Oliver). Thank you all for the wonderful meals! Of course Matthew Kippenhan, RPSC logistics is the go-to man from RPSC. This project would not have been possible without his many years of work on this project and expert planning in the off-season.

The Deep Ice Sheet Coring (DISC) Drill was built by ICDS (Ice Coring and Drilling Services)(Charles Bentley-PI and Don Lebar- Program Manager)(University of Wisconsin) (beautifully designed and built by a cadre of expert engineers, drillers, machinists- Alex Shturmakov, Jay Johnson, Bill Mason, Paul Sendalbach among others). The drill is a technical marvel and was expertly operated by a hard working group of drillers (Jay Johnson, Bill Mason, Krissy Dahnert, Elizabeth Morton, Dave Ferris, Tanner Kuhl, Bill Neiumeister, Nicolai Mortensen, John Robinson). I was very impressed with the drill and seeing it "in action" was wonderful after many years of helping to oversee its construction with other colleagues at NSF. It seems to be everything we hoped for and more. And the most important thing is that it appears to be safely and cleanly operated and is producing excellent ice core. Watching the drill going down the hole and then coming up to deliver ice to the core handlers is like a flawlessly executed ballet dance with everyone and every part of the system working in concert. And best of all, the core quality is excellent! Filming of the drill in action is being done by Marie Delgrego DRI/Reno and a wonderful time lapse digital video of the drilling operation was made by Todd Rampenhahl, one of the camp staff. These films should be available eventually for all to see.

Science Coordination, National Ice Core Laboratory and Core Handlers: In the field the Chief Scientist and the force behind the project is Dr. Ken Taylor from the Desert Research Institute in Reno, Nevada. He (along with Mark Twickler and Joe Souney- back in the office at the University of New Hampshire) and Bruce Vaughan from the University of Colorado have done a great job coordinating the project and hiring a wonderful complement of young, enthusiastic students/scientists to do the core processing and core handling (e.g. Anais Orsi, Spruce Shoenemann, Natalie Kehrwald, Marie Delgrego, Logan Mitchell, Gifford Wong, Tim Bartholomaus, Bess Koffman, John Fegyveresi, and Susanne Buchardt-our visitor from Denmark). It's pretty cool to see so many women involved in this project given that the first time I went to the ice in 1978 we were by far in the minority. Last but definitely not least are two representatives from the National Ice Core Laboratory (NICL) in Denver, Colorado, Geoff Hargreaves and Brian Bencivengo who have been instrumental in getting the core processing line up and running with help from Eric Cravens back at NICL in Denver helping to develop the database being used by the core processors.

Other Science: Although I didn't meet them because they were off on their seismic traverse it should be noted that the Center for Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets (CReSIS) is using the WAIS Divide camp as a base of operations for their geophysical/seismic traverse (Sridhar Anandakrishnan is the principal investigator) and there is also an atmospheric chemistry project on going to study the composition of the atmosphere around the drill site. The student working on that project in the field is a very competent, young scientist with an incredibly great attitude and strong work ethic named Sylvain Masclin who is from France.

All in all it was a wonderful trip out to WAIS Divide. I was able to see the drilling activities in operation and I was able to speak with most of the folks involved in the project. We were able to discuss the status of the project and I learned about the plans for the next couple of years when we will hopefully reach the bed at a depth of about 3500 m. Thanks to all for a wonderful visit!

WAIS - Jan 5, 2009 - Logan

2009-01-05T10:12:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: January 5, 2009
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 9:20 pm
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: ~1030 m
Temperature: -13.8°C
Wind speed: 22.5 knots
Visibility: ~50m
Wind direction: 321° Grid
Relative Humidity: 90%
Barometric Pressure: 28.78 mm Hg
Precipitation: light snow
Animals: None
Breakfast: French toast (my favorite breakfast here)
Lunch: (Asleep)
Supper: Asian rice noodles, stir-fried pork and veggies, Thai coconut lime chicken soup, veggie egg rolls and 1000m celebration cake!

Yesterday we reached a huge milestone, or more precisely, a kilometer-stone. That’s right, we have now drilled down past 1,000 meters! The age of the ice at that depth is ~4,550 years old. Can you imagine that? An ice core, 12cm in diameter, 1000 meters long, and containing a unique record of climate history over the past 4,550 years? That is so cool! (and also the most over-used pun in Antarctica!)

We have known for a couple of days that a storm would come, but it wasn’t forecast to be a huge storm, and it has lived up to its lack of expectations. But, it’s our first real “weather” in a long time, so I thought I’d write a little about it. Our first “storm” was on Dec 16th, but it only lasted ~12 hours and didn’t give us very much snow. Since then we have had extremely stable weather: mostly sunny skies with sparse clouds of all types and hardly a breath of wind.

After finishing my shift last night, I went to bed around 11am. By then the wind had started picking up, but there was still no snow and I could still see some blue in the sky. Susanne and I are night shift partners, so since the storm was forecast to be strongest this evening, we decided to “carpool” (walk together) from tent city to the Galley when we woke up at dinnertime (which is our breakfast). When I woke up at 6pm, I noticed that a lot of snow had blown in between my tent fly and tent body and was piling up quick. Also, the type of tent that we are using (Arctic Oven) has a hole in the top of it for a stove flue, (the fly also has a hole, but the hole in the fly has a flap covering it…I have no idea why they don’t have a flap for the tent body hole!) and this hole was allowing snow to blow in my tent! Luckily for me, my sleeping bag was not right under the hole, so the small pile of snow was next to me instead of on top of me. I scooped up the snow and put it outside, then plugged the hole with a pair of cotton socks that I’m not using. Hopefully that problem is solved. Next, I got all of my gear on (long underwear, fleece jacket, insulated Carhartt overalls, Big Red down jacket, baklava, goggles, beanie, and gloves) & stepped outside of my tent and what did I see? Tent city is about 75 m long, and it’s another 100m beyond the edge of tent city before you get to the first Jamesway of camp. Well, it was windy and snowing lightly, but I could still see a good portion of tent city, which means visibility is about 50m. Humph. I know you aren’t supposed to wish for bad weather, but I feel like a good storm is part of the Antarctic experience. This one just doesn’t quite have enough umph to qualify. I looked over my tent and found that the snow covering up the corners of my fly had been blown off. This tiny gap was allowing fresh snow to blow under the fly and accumulate between the fly and body. I got a shovel and covered them up…hopefully that’ll solve that problem. We’ll see how it looks in 8 hours when I get off my shift!

With all this good weather here, I have been very curious about what the rest of the climate system has been up to this season. It could be that this summer here is just an anomalous year, but I wonder if it is part of a larger trend? If anyone out there in internet land has been keeping up with ENSO or other climate parameters and feels like sending me some general info, I’d love to hear it. Also, while you are at it, it would be really neat to find out about significant cultural events that happened around 4,000-5,000 years ago (2,000-3,000 B.C.) and let me know about those also. Since we have limited internet access its hard for us to find this kind of stuff out, and it is really neat to think about what was happening in the rest of the world at the same time it was snowing in Antarctica and making what would eventually be a part of our ice core. You can email me at logan.mitchell “at” wais.usap.gov. We have limited internet access here, so please keep the email size below 25kb and don’t send any pictures. Thanks!

WAIS - Jan 3, 2009 - Gifford

2009-01-03T14:08:00.002-08:00

Name: Gifford J Wong

Date: 03 January 2009
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: 2030
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -20.4°C
Wind speed: 2.4 kts
Visibility: Seems like miles and miles!
Wind direction: 326°
Relative Humidity: 69%
Precipitation: None
Altimeter: 28.87
Animals: I like the cracker variety … ?
Breakfast: scrambled eggs, toast, lox, and some foie gras with orange juice.
Lunch: Lime-coconut-chickensoup and flat-bread sandwiches (crabmeat, salami & ham & gouda, or veggie – I chose the first two). Peach cobbler for dessert!!
Supper: Lovely mix of flank steak, garlicy seafood soup, steamed
carrots, fries, and peach cobbler (from lunch)! Oh, and IBC Root Beer
(no joke)!!

Hello again! Life at the oWAISis resort/camp continues to roll along. Today my list of things done include: 1) work, 2) shower, 3) write letters and 4) play a few holes of golf.

Work was fantastic today (as it honestly is every day). As John hinted at in his blog yesterday, I got the opportunity to work with him logging ice cores while Bess took a day away from the cold, noisy and dry Arch. Working with a new partner presents both interesting challenges as well as exciting, new interactions. The process, as outlined by Tim a while back, is not without its inherent difficulties. We are dealing with surprisingly fragile, regularly irregular, and frustratingly dynamic ice. That said John handled the tasking swap like a pro! He even picked up on the hand signals that Bess and I developed for the 1-meter logging station (Tim’s “second station”). My friends who are behind “Discovering Deaf Worlds” (www.discoveringdeafworlds.com) would be proud!

The shower, in and of itself, is not worth noting. The process, however, may be interesting for some. As you might imagine, we are surrounded by “water” in the form of snow… but a snow-melter takes a lot of energy to run. We definitely try to conserve water where possible (save for drinking water – dehydration is a silly thing to find yourself ailed with out here!). A sign hanging in the shower reminds the shower-er how much water it takes for a 5-minute shower: one 55-gallon barrel full of snow. So, before I began, I checked the holding tank (which attaches to the water heater) and the melter tank – both were full. The barrel (which is unceremoniously dragged from outside, where the fresh snow is piled, to inside, where the melter/tank is staged) was completely empty. A quick shoveling of snow solved that dilemma, and I found myself ready to bathe!

Letter writing, it might be argued, is a lost art. I mean, text messages have their place, and emailed letters are a fantastic way to effortlessly communicate with anyone anywhere in the world! Phone calls are great (and satellite phones are incredibly decadent). BUT an actual letter received at a field camp hundreds of miles from anywhere is quite the little treasure. To bring this point home, for me at least, Dave the driller (he helped build the golf course) let me borrow This Everlasting Silence: The love letters of Paquita Delprat and Douglas Mawson 1911-1914. In this vein, a letter received warrants a letter sent. The previous planes (aforementioned in at least John’s blog, I believe), while few and far between, generously brought with them a number of cards, letters and even packages for me. So, tonight, between work and dinner, I wrote cards and letters (so if any of you are reading this – they’ll be on the next plane, I promise!).

And this brings me to the last thing “I did” tonight – play a few holes of golf. Admittedly, it was just 3 holes of “miniature” golf. In fact, it was the same course that was used for the WAIS Divide Olympics! A storm is coming in a few days and there was talk of tearing it down so that nothing non-snow-like blows away, but after 8 people played in tonight’s impromptu tourney, the decision was made to tear down the “golf course” tomorrow. The storm is due in 3 days… we’ve got time.

Well, if everything goes well, my shift might see the “odometer” creep past 1000 meters! I hear a sleeping bag calling my name… thanks for tuning in, and wherever you are, I hope you’re enjoying 2009!!

WAIS - Jan 2, 2008 - John

2009-01-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Name: John Fegyveresi

Date: 1/2/2009
Location: WAIS Divide Rec Tent
Time: 9:39 pm
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 930 m
Temperature: -22° C
Wind speed: 5-8 knots
Visibility: < 1 mile and foggy
Wind direction: 335°
Relative Humidity: 71%
Barometric Pressure: 28.83 mm Hg
Precipitation: None
Breakfast: Pancakes, cereal, and coffee
Lunch: Lamb soup, veggies, and a few other things I can’t remember
Supper: Bread, shrimp rice, pasta/garlic medley

Hello again everyone. It’s John again blogging from one of the public computers over in the Recreation tent here at WAIS divide. First major order of business today and news worth mentioning: Happy Birthday Logan!

That’s right…today is Logan’s 28th birthday (or 4th birthday in dog years). Of course back home in the States, it still isn’t quite his birthday yet, so make sure to open your window, pop your head out, and shout “Happy Birthday” for Logan…..if the wind is right…we all just might hear you ?

Today was our first official work day of 2009. We hit quite a few small snags today with the drilling. No major problems, but it did mean that we were only able to pull up about 20 meters as opposed to our usual 35-40. Tomorrow I’ll be jumping in with Gifford on first shift as a substitute core handler. Bess hasn’t been feeling too well and the group down here feels it’s better if she just takes it easy for an extra day so that she can heal up. It’s been a while now since I’ve done some core handling, so it will be a nice change. It will be a lot of fun working with Gifford too.

We had a last minute flight that came in today. It was originally scheduled as a “Backup Flight” but was later upgraded. Basically, if a flight is labeled as “Backup”…it means that it is set to fly somewhere else first: like South Pole. If, however, the weather turns sour at South Pole, we would be the backup and it would fly here instead. In this case though, it was simply upgraded to a Primary flight…to a lot of people’s surprise. We had 5 people leave camp today, and only one new person arrive (Dave – Mechanic). 5 people leaving doesn’t sound like a lot, but when the camp population drops from 45 to 40, it is actually quite a noticeable difference. The flight came in at about noon, and was off again by 1:00. Several of us got great video clips of it leaving.

Later tonight, fellow core handler Susanne, gave us all a great science talk on her involvement with the North GRIP project a few years ago. This project went from 1996 to 2004 up in central Greenland and is in many respects similar to the project here at WAIS Divide. The ice core drilled at NGRIP is often considered the “sister” core to the one we are drilling. The annual snowfall and temperatures in North-Central Greenland and at WAIS Divide are very similar. It will be very interesting to compare both cores once we are done here at WAIS and see how Northern and Southern Hemisphere climates compare over the past 100,000 years.

Well, we have roughly 19 days of drilling left here at WAIS and we are still looking to be on schedule for hitting a depth of 1500 meters. Everyone is starting to think a little bit about the voyage home from here. A lot of us here are planning a few weeks to travel and hike around in New Zealand. There are hundreds of amazing trails and places to see there. Because many of the people here at camp were here last year, they are able to offer some great insight to which places are the best to see in New Zealand. I know I can’t wait to do some of the great hikes there.

Thanks again for keeping up on our adventure…and I’ll write again next
week! -john

WAIS - Jan 1, 2009 - Logan

2009-01-01T14:07:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: 1/1/2009
Location: WAIS Divide Galley
Time: 10:00 pm
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 910 m
Temperature: -21.3° C
Wind speed: 3.6 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: 335°
Relative Humidity: 71%
Barometric Pressure: 28.83 mm Hg
Precipitation: None
Animals: WAIS Divide Olympians
Breakfast: None (I was asleep)
Lunch: Leftover rice, quinoa, beef tenderloin, rolls.
Supper: None (I was asleep)

Happy New Year from WAIS Divide!! Today was the 2nd Annual WAIS Divide Olympic games with 4 events: Tower building, sled hauling, sumo wrestling, and miniature golfing. The weather for the games was perfect: Mostly sunny with a few high clouds that made for a perfect background for the pictures. The Games had about 20 participants (~1/2 of the entire WAIS Divide camp) including core handlers, drillers, one of the cooks, and lots of camp staff.

First up was Tower Building, organized by Tim and Bess. For this event a team of four people had to quarry snow blocks, then carry them 10 meters and construct a tower out of the blocks. The team with the highest tower after six minutes won! Before the event started, I thought that it would be a challenge to just get a couple of blocks and that the tallest tower might only be 4’ tall. Boy was I wrong! It turned out that every group was able to quarry plenty of blocks, and the real challenge was figuring out a good way to stack them up as high as possible. In the end, the winning technique involved building a small stairway next to the tower, then at the last second standing up your highest, skinniest block at the very top. The first place team constructed a 8’ 10” tall tower! I was on the second place team, and even though we didn’t get first, I was quite proud of our 8’ 4” tall tower.

The second event was a sled hauling relay race organized by Spruce and Gifford. In this event, different teams of four people were chosen, and then given a banana sled. For the relay, each person on the team had to don a harness which was attached to the banana sled with a rope. In the banana sled was one of the other team members. The duo then had to run 20 meters, go around a flag, and then come back and switch runners. Each person on the team had to pull the sled at least once, and the first team to complete 4 rounds first won! The harnesses that we were using are the ones we use in the drilling arch and are very tricky to put on and take off. They have four buckles: one over each should and one around each leg. A couple of the teams tried to leave the leg loops buckled and step in/out of them so they didn’t have to deal with the buckles, but even stepping in/out of the leg loops was very time consuming. The team I was on quickly figured this out and after the first person went we left the leg loops unbuckled which saved us precious seconds and allowed us to capture the gold! Wow, I never thought I would win a gold at the Olympics! Many thanks to my fellow sled relay mates for making it a possibility: Ben (camp manager), Billy (head carpenter), and Jonathan (weatherman), you guys are awesome!

Sled hauling event - 2nd Annual WAIS Divide Olympic Games. Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

Sled hauling event - 2nd Annual WAIS Divide Olympic Games. Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

The third event, sumo wrestling, was organized by Natalie. In this event, two people donned large pieces of foam that were strapped to their bodies, and then began wrestling in a 3m diameter circle. The foam suits were perhaps the comedy highlight of the Games because the armholes were not spaced out quite far enough apart, so when you wore it you looked like a tyrannosaurus: big foam body with tiny short arms sticking out in front of you. The rules were that if any part of you besides the soles of your feet touched the ground inside the circle, or if any part of you went outside the circle you lost. For example, if you fell on the ground laughing at how much your opponent looked like a tyrannosaurus rex, you lost. I was eliminated early on in this event. The final matchup was between the night cook Renin (see yesterday’s entry) and Zach (an electrician). Renin tried to bulldoze Zach, but Zach was quick and nimble on his feet and was able to deftly dodge Renin’s attack, sending Renin flying out of the ring. Way to go Zach!

The final event was miniature golf set up by Dave (driller), Bill (driller), Brian (NICL), and John. There were three holes complete with snow block obstacles, ramps, snow pits, and bridges. We used neon pink, orange, and yellow golf balls and went to town! The snow was pretty rough and didn’t allow the balls to roll very much which meant that a delicate mix of power and aim was required to navigate the course. When the dust settled, Spruce had the lowest total score with 10 strokes to complete the course! Tied for second place with 11 strokes was Gifford, Dave, Tim and I!

By the time the competitions were over it was 5pm, clouds had moved in, and everyone was freezing cold, so the Olympians retired to the galley for some hot coco. Everyone was tired, but had huge smiles on their faces. Bess was nominated the official scorekeeper and tallied up everyone’s individual scores. 4 points if you got a gold, 3 points if you got a silver, 2 points for bronze, and 1 point for participation. I was astonished when Bess announced that I had the highest overall point total for the games!! In second place was Tim, and in Third was Jonathan, Spruce, and Zach.

After all of this, I needed to get some rest before my shift started, so I took a couple hour nap. When I arrived back at the galley a few minutes ago I noticed that on the white board where the final results were written down, someone was accusing me of doping. I swear though, they were just multi-vitamins!

Many thanks go to Anaïs for organizing the Olympics and making the wonderful WAIS Divide Olympics buttons that were given to all of the participants!

WAIS - Dec 31, 2008 - Renin

2008-12-31T14:07:00.000-08:00

Name: Renin Oliver

Date: 12/31/08
Location: WAIS Divide Kitchen
Time: 9:00 am
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 900 m
Temperature: -16 °C (3.2 °F)
Wind speed: 8 km/h (5 mp/h)
Visibility: unrestricted
Clouds: mostly cloudy
Wind direction: N
Precipitation: none
Animals: human
Breakfast: scrambled eggs, bacon, oatmeal
Lunch: stuffed shells, tortellini
Supper: assorted appetizers (sushi, foie gras, deviled eggs, smoked salmon, cheeses, dips); crab legs, beef tenderloin

Welcome to the kitchen at WAIS Divide! It's the last day of 2008 and we've got quite the dinner planned for everyone tonight. Before I get ahead of myself, I should introduce myself. My name is Renin Oliver and I am the night cook/baker. I feed Tim and others a midnight meal (midnight rations or mid-rats) at the end of their shift, and then also I make breakfast for all of camp. In between I outfit everyone with cookies and fresh bread for the day, stock the snack shelf (nick-named 7-Eleven for how much stuff we have), and make the beverages for the day (grind the coffee, make the powdered milk, and the juice/gatorade/Raro (New Zealand kool-aid). As I work the night shift I normally am not awake for lunch, and barely wake up for dinner – but tonight's different! We have a great spread of food to send us into 2009!

Everyone get off early, around 3pm today, and that's when the appetizers and party begin! As it's a special day some people dress up, or just put on a clean shirt. I will wear the same thing I've worn for the last two holidays we've celebrated here, but it's just nice to not wear my kitchen clothes for a change. It will also be a great time to see everyone at camp at the same time, since right now there are shifts working around the clock, we sometimes don't see each other (even though there are only ~50 of us or so) for days on end!

This will be the first New Year's for many of us to celebrate it in the light. The dining area (aka galley) has skylights which can be covered, so it's at least a bit darker when we eat dinner and have our party. The arch has a nice stereo that will likely be brought down, so there will be a lot of music and fun to be had! Normally around midnight on New Year's Eve I have the TV on, showing the ball drop in Times Square, and do the countdown that way, so this year should be interesting. Everyone's watches are set differently, so we may just be jumping around celebrating 2009 for 5 minutes to cover all our bases. I don't know how many people will chicken out and go to sleep before midnight, as our days are long and people tend to sleep earlier here – but there will definitely be enough people to stay up and party into the new year.

Since I work the night shift, I'm used to sleeping at 9am and spending the whole night hanging out in the kitchen. Surprisingly enough I'm not by myself very often, as people on the night shift stop by for a snack, or others getting off their shift hang out and play cards in the galley – so it's definitely not very lonely. I think for tonight the weirdest thing for me (besides celebrating New Year's in the daylight) is to have so many people awake at the same time as me.

Other than that, I should get to bed so I can wake up in time for appetizers and the party, and a yummy dinner at 6pm!!!!

Happy New Year to everyone who will celebrate it in the dark!

Renin

WAIS - Dec 30, 2008 - Spruce

2008-12-30T14:06:00.000-08:00

Name: Spruce Schoenemann

Date: 12/30/08 (Actually 12/31/08 now that I'm off-shift and finished
with Mid rats)
Location: WAIS Divide Science
Time: 14:30 am
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 875 m
Temperature: -17 °C
Wind speed: 8 km/h (5mph)
Visibility: Unrestricted
Clouds: 1/8 cloud cover
Wind direction: 290 degrees (out of the northwest)
Barometric Pressure: 29.10 in Hg
Precipitation: none
Breakfast (actually lunch at camp, noon): Slept through lunch, so ate grapenuts cereal, yogurt, dried cranberries, maple syrup, and coffee
Lunch: (actually dinner at camp, 6 pm): Chicken Pot Pie, Veggies, Mashed Potatoes
Supper (mid-rats, midnight): Fancy Pasta w/ Turkish meatballs and veggies

Hello to all the WAIS Divide blog followers out there. Tonight was officially New Years Eve Eve. Yes, that’s right, Shift 2 gets two New Years Eves as we are off starting tonight until 3pm on New Years Day. To celebrate, we are enjoying our mid rats dinner so wonderfully prepared by Renin.

From Tim’s last blog entry I think you get a pretty good sense of the process of core handling and the science that will be done on the cores once back in the states.

So, I am going to take a more reflective approach to this blog, since it is the end of a year and the start of a brand new one. Looking back on 2008, I realize it has been a very interesting and exciting year. I want to share how I ended up here at WAIS Divide as a core handler in the first place. Last winter I applied to a number of graduate schools to start a Master’s program in paleoclimate science. As a backup in case I did not receive grant funding for the schools I applied to, I submitted an application to the Science Coordination Office at University of New Hampshire in late February. A few weeks later I got a call from Mark Twickler to set up a phone interview with him and Joe Souney. I was surprised and even more excited that I might have the opportunity to travel to Antarctica AND work on the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project. This would significantly help me gain direct experience in ice core research and paleoclimate science. My hour-long phone interview included questions like “How much time had I spent in isolated environments?” and “What experience did I have working extended periods in extreme cold?” My first response involved the trips I had made aboard ocean going Schooners for extended periods, as well as my experience working backcountry trail crews in Washington and Alaska. For the second question I shared my experiences working as a builder at 8,000 ft during the winter in cold and windy Estes Park, CO.

In late March I was offered a position as 1 of the 6 core handlers. Mark Twickler and Kendrick Taylor needed an answer by April 1st. However, I was still waiting to hear from the last few graduate programs that I hadn’t heard from yet. The deadline for graduate schools to send out final decisions is April 15th, so I explained my circumstances to Mark and Kendrick, and asked them to wait till I had heard from all the graduate schools. In the end, I turned down the one offer I received, to take this amazing opportunity to work in Antarctica on an ice-coring project I had heard and read about for the past few years.

My deployment to Antarctica wouldn’t be until mid November, so everything between April and November had to be targeted toward filling the gap of time effectively in regard to planning for re-application to graduate school, fulfilling prerequisite classes, and finding a temporary but worthwhile job.

I finished my work building lodges at the YMCA of the Rockies in mid May and moved to Boulder in June with my girlfriend who had just found a job working as a Clinical Exercise Physiologist. I enrolled in Physics classes at CU Boulder, and found a great job working on the city of Boulder’s ClimateSmart program in the Office of Environmental Affairs. I worked up until early November for the city of Boulder, while preparing applications for graduate school and leaving for Antarctica. Now I have been here 4 weeks and we have reached to almost 900 meters. I look forward to reaching our goal of a depth of 1500m and the satisfaction that will bring!

Thanks for listening to my story!
Cheers,
Spruce

WAIS - Dec 29, 2008 - Tim

2008-12-29T13:27:00.000-08:00

Name: Tim Bartholomaus

Date: 12/29/08 (Actually 12/30/08 now that I'm off-shift and getting to
my entry)
Location: WAIS Divide Galley
Time: 14:00 am
Latitude: 79° 28’ 1.2” S
Longitude: 112° 5’ 6.0” W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 850 m
Temperature: -19 °C (-2.2 °F)
Wind speed: 7.5 km/h (4.5 mp/h)
Visibility: 400 m
Clouds: broken, fog
Wind direction: 260 degrees (out of the west)
Barometric Pressure: 28.93 in Hg
Precipitation: none
Breakfast (actually lunch at camp, noon): Turkey with cranberry sauce, beets, stuffing, sweet potatos
Lunch: (actually dinner at camp, 6 pm): Lamb, with mash gravy, fries, veggie and feta patty with curry sauce, fish chowder, roasted vegetables
Supper (mid-rats, midnight): "Mom's" grilled shrimp with spinach, spaghetti, grilled eggplant and rutebega.

There's a saying around Antarctica that some people like to use: "They lied about the job. I lied to get the job." Mostly, I think this sentiment is confined to some of the folks in McMurdo Station that work for Raytheon Polar Services Company, the US Antarctic Program's logistics and support contractor. Even McMurdo needs garbage collectors and dishwashers, while many people likely come south with grand visions of wide-roaming explorations similar to those of the "heroic age" of exploration.

I would not say that the "lies" saying holds true for any of our core handling crew. In fact, one of the questions on the job application was to the effect of "What experience do you have working long days at -20 degrees C?" It's an honest question, and I think we must have all responded honestly. Everyone seems to be holding up well to the conditions. When I interviewed for this core-handling job, it was described to me as very cold, very loud factory work. This is mostly accurate, although it's not as loud as it could be- for one, I don't need to wear hearing protection unless I'm working right next to one of the four very large refrigeration units that maintain the temperature of our working space between -25 and -30 degrees C (-13 to -22 deg F). However, unlike most factory or assembly line workers, one of our main goals is to handle our product (ice core) as little as possible because it is so brittle (see Logan's 12/17 or Bess's 12/22 entries). Our work on the "factory floor" comes after that of the drillers (who, incidentally, work in a warmer, quieter environment). Once the drillers produce the ice core and pass it to us, our responsibilities, in order of priority, include:

1) Protect the quality of the core so that chemical measurements can be later be made of the ice, trapped air, and dust brought up in the core. This includes keeping the ice cold so that trapped air does not diffuse out of the core, and not inducing any more fractures than are already present within the core.
2) Maintain the top-bottom orientation of each piece of core and its position within the 3,500 m-long (2.2 mile-long) entire ice core.
3) Make preliminary (but as accurate as possible) measurements of the length of each piece of core and any breaks or fractures within each core, so we know from what depth the ice came.
4) Store the ice core in a way that responsibility (1) is met.

Many of the blog entries thus far have discussed camp life, particularly the things that make us most happy: interesting people, beautiful landscapes, good food, fresh food, mail, airplanes, skiing, shenanigans, etc. However, a few people have asked me about what it is that I actually do for work. So, I'm going to tell you a little bit about the steps we take to meet the four priorities outlined above.

The core comes up in the drilling arch (as you might guess: a building shaped like an arch), which is separated from the core processing arch by a thin wall. Once the core barrel is rotated to horizontal, the drillers manually push the core out of the core barrel, from the drilling side to the core processing side, with what looks like a round sponge on a long stick. On the processing side, the core slide into green plastic netting that protects it and helps keep it intact in the event of cracks or spalls off the surface of the ice (on today's shift, we probably had an average of 5 fractures per meter of core).

As soon as we get the core, we measure the lengths of each of the three pieces of core the drillers give us with a slick little device known as a Balluff. The Balluff slides on a rail parallel to and above the core, shines a laser line across the diameter of the ice cylinder, and digitally reads out its position on the rail to the nearest millimeter. A button allows us to reset the Balluff position to zero, thereby allowing us to quickly measure the length of each piece of ice and note the positions of anything interesting (score marks, fractures) along the length of the ice. At this first station, we also count the fractures in the ice, measure the temperature of the ice (typically -31 deg C, mean annual air temperature at WAIS Divide) and of our work space (generally around -27 deg C), draw arrows on the ice surface to indicate the original up direction of the ice (we use pencil), and note the quality of the ice core. As soon as possible, we give our notes to the drillers, so they have feedback and can make any adjustments to their drilling technique, as necessary. From this first station, we slide the core in a 4-meter-long, aluminum tray over to another station that is similarly equipped with a Balluff.

At this second station, we re-measure the core as a double-check, note the type and positions of any fractures, draw hatch-marks across fractures (in case the core falls apart later and needs to be reconstructed), and put identifying marks at set depths on each fragment of ice. From the computer on which we log all of this information, we print a "birth certificate" that contains all of this information and that will travel and live with this ice core for the rest of its "life." From there the core is slid into 1.1-meter, stackable aluminum trays and put on wheeled rack carts. At this point, the core-handler's job is done and the core is passed to those responsible for measuring the electrical (properly, dielectric) properties of the ice.

The head scientist at WAIS Divide, Ken Taylor, has a machine (operated by Natalie and John) that can measure these electrical properties at roughly millimeter resolution along the length of the core. The dielectric properties (DEP) of the ice vary with the concentration of ions, or salts, within the core. It turns out that the salt concentration of snow varies with the season, with maxima each summer. These peaks in concentration are preserved as the snow turns into ice; therefore, each peak measured at the DEP machine corresponds to one year. The DEP machine therefore allows us to quickly, in the field, assess the age of the ice we've pulled up. Just yesterday we logged ice that was on the ice sheet surface, as snow, 3,500 years ago! Maybe one of our readers can shoot us an e-mail with what was happening in the world 3,500 years ago. Unfortunately, we scientists are at something of a loss on our ancient history.

So, that's what's happening on the "factory floor" here at WAIS Divide, 24 hours a day, 6 days a week, for about another 3.5 weeks. As you might suspect, it's more complicated than it sounds, with the complications largely centering on how one measures the length of a roughly, irregularly fractured length of ice core. But that can rest for another blog entry.

-Tim

WAIS - Dec 28, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-28T13:26:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: Dec 28, 2008
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 10pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Borehole depth: ~800m
Temperature: -19.6° C
Wind speed: 4.3 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Clouds: very few on the horizon
Wind direction: 293° Grid
Relative Humidity: 77%
Barometric Pressure: 29.23 mm Hg
Precipitation: None
Animals: House Mouse (see below)
Breakfast: Pizza, fresh salad (!), melon (My breakfast was last night’s dinner at 6pm yesterday)
Lunch: Turkey sandwich with lettuce (!) (at 3am).
Supper: Toast, a piece of pineapple, cereal (mixed Cheerios and grapenuts), and a muffin. (at 8am)
2nd Breakfast (Camp’s supper): Leftover chicken soup (6pm tonight)

Lots happening here at WAIS today, how do I write it all down and not put you to sleep? After getting done with my 11pm-7am shift catching ice cores as they pop out of the drill, I headed down to the galley to get dinner (which is everyone else’s breakfast). The passing of days here doesn’t mean that much since my definition of day/night is all messed up, but the camp has Sunday off which meant that there was no cooked breakfast this morning. I also found out that I was supposed to be the “house mouse” for the breakfast meal. Since we are living communally here, everyone pitches in to help keep camp running. One of the rotating duties is house mouse which entails doing dishes, cleaning up the galley after the meal, and shoveling snow for the snow melter, since all of the water we use in camp comes from melted snow. So, I did my house mouse duties & then checked my email and went to bed.

When I woke up at 5pm it was still the same day (obviously, but it still catches me off guard all the time). Since it was (still) Sunday, it was time to scavenge through the kitchen & look for food. Over a hearty bowl of soup, I was surprised to find out that there were new people in camp! That’s right, new people! I knew a plane wasn’t scheduled to come today, so how did they get here? While I was at work the previous “night”, a group of people who are working on a geophysics project had driven into camp. This group is working and traveling along a 137 mile transect between WAIS Divide and Thwaites Glacier (north of here) using active source seismic techniques to learn about the ground underneath the ice sheet. The way this works is that they drill a ~50m deep and 10cm wide hole in the ice sheet with a portable drill that is powered by compressed air, then drop about a pound of explosives down the hole & blow it up! The energy from this explosion travels down through the ice sheet and into the bedrock below. When it encounters a change in density, some of the energy is reflected back up to a seismic monitoring station installed at the surface. A change in density could be caused by layering in the ice sheet, water at the base of the ice sheet, or different kinds of rocks below the ice sheet. From this they will be able to tell what the topography would look like if there were no ice in West Antarctica, and give scientists an idea about what to expect if/when we drill into the bedrock at the bottom of the WAIS Divide ice core. Pretty cool stuff.

After dinner a bunch of people started a softball game. This was incredibly fun! We have a real softball, two bats, and we used flags for bases. Probably the best part was sliding into the bases on snow.

Logan

WAIS - Dec 27, 2008 - Anais

2008-12-27T11:47:00.000-08:00

Name: Anais

Date: Dec 27th
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 8:40pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -19°C
Wind speed: 4 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: 69°
Relative Humidity: 73%
Precipitation: None
Animals: 2 new bearded faces
Breakfast: burrito, mango/grape/ strawberry fruit salad
Lunch: delicious fresh vegetable soup, sandwiches with fresh lettuce, coleslaw, bayley’s chocolate delicacy.
Supper: wonderful fresh vegetable salad, pizza, melon and watermelon

Hi,

I have to talk to you more about the plane. When we get a plane, life changes at camp. You may remember that last time we had a plane, it was very important for the camp, as some of the cargo contained spare pieces for the big 953 caterpilar that a lot of people were waiting on. This time was a little different. Sylvain got his regulator. He was anxious to get it. Brian and Bruce, who are part of the core handling group arrived, and they will change my workload (although I don’t know which way it will change just yet.. more or less?). Brian is working at the national ice core lab, and in a week, Geoff will be able to leave, and Brian will take over for him. Bruce will be the science coordination officer next year, so he comes now to see how things are done, where everything is, and then he’ll get to pack everything so that he can find stuff when he comes in next year. We also got a new equipment operator for the night shift (part of the camp staff). His name is Jason. Planes bring new people. New people are fun. They change the routine. Planes also bring mail. Mail makes people happy. It doesn’t matter if you don’t get mail: If your friends are happier, it will automatically make you happier. Plus, often times, they get cool stuff to share.. This time, I got a care package from my family in France. It was a great package. My brother put in a huge box of fancy chocolates. Huge. 750g of chocolate.. 1 ½ lb. Can you imagine? It’s almost 8 bars of chocolate. So, all the people that were in the galley late last night got a piece (and there is more than half left..) Hmm.. Delicious. My father put in the package a large bloc of foie gras, a French delicacy. I gave it to John, the cook, and he said to give it to Camille, the other cook. When she saw it, she was ready to jump to the roof! She said she’ll make brioche for it, and we’ll share it on New year’s day. Perfect. We lamented for a minute on the lack of the appropriate wine, but it didn’t last long. My mother put in the box a very cozy wool shirt that I’m impatient to put on (but I’ll wait for a shower first..), and my sister put in a neck gaiter. I was very happy. I’m still very happy. Some would say I’m always happy anyways, but, yesterday, I felt especially happy. And now, even today, it seems like a continuing feast. If you look at the menu, you will see that we’re having fresh salad and fruits at every meal. It feels so good. There even are apples. Apples that you can bite in, not just bites of apples. After a while eating purely frozen food, I tend to develop a craving for biting into a fresh apple. In the past, when we had fresh food, it was just for one meal. One salad, one fruit per person. But this time, it’s a continuing feast. Last night we had plums and kiwi, this morning, apples and clementines, tonight melons.. It’s just great!

Maybe I should stop talking about food, or you are going to think that this is the only thing I ever talk about. Of course, I’m French, so I do talk about food a lot. And I often write to you after dinner, when it is fully present in my mind, but I can talk about something else, like ice cores. We are working on full 3 shifts now, and things are going really well. The drillers are producing 2.5 m of cores every run pretty reliably. Every shift got to do 6 runs in their shift last night. This is a sign that they have found the right combination of parameters to keep things going. It is hard to drill, because you cannot test anything at home: labs don’t typically have a trial ice sheet under them to drill several hundred meters long cores, and every ice sheet is different. In the brittle ice this year, the consistency of the ice keeps changing, so, even if you are not changing anything, sometimes, it works great, and sometimes it does not at all. Brittle ice coring is for smart people, there is no routine… On our side, things are rolling too. We get scared sometimes, as the ice pops, like rice crispies in a bowl, and breaks in different pieces. There is nothing we can do about it: it’s sitting in its tray, and popping on its own. We try to be as careful as we can. The drillers are giving us very good core, and so far, most of our cores stay in excellent quality, but the occasional one gets a lot of breaks. So far, we have drilled over 780 meters (200 this season), which takes us back 3500 years ago. If we are able to keep going the way we’re going, it will be a very good season. So we’re all very excited. I hope it keeps being as good as this for a while. We’ll see!

Anais

WAIS - Dec 26, 2008 - John

2008-12-26T11:46:00.000-08:00

Name: John Fegyveresi

Date: 26 December 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: 2200
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: 17°C
Wind speed: calm
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction:
Relative Humidity: 70%
Precipitation: None
Animals: Just the halibut we ate for dinner…
Breakfast: Pancakes, bacon, cereal, etc
Lunch: Quinoa medley, mushroom soup, rice, etc
Supper: Halibut, rice pilaf, and freshies! (fresh fruits and veggies)

Hey everyone. It’s John again. I think I last updated a week ago. Christmas has come and gone and it’s back to the “grind” again. We started up full bore with three shifts last night and are right back into the ice-coring rhythm again. Today when I left the Arch, we had already made it to 730 meters. With the help of the drillers making some modifications on their end, we’ve been able to consistently pull up 2.5 meters every run without issue. We’ve also had no major ice core breaks (yet).

Back home in the States, it was actually Christmas today…so several of us here made some satellite phone calls back home to friends and family. It’s still hard to believe that I can pick up what looks like a large cell phone, and simply dial up my sister who is thousands of miles away in upstate New York and talk to her as if she were just down the street. It was definitely nice to check in with people on Christmas. I know everyone here was really happy that the satellite phone was working.

As far as my own projects….Well, I have been continuing to look at chips and chip fragments from the coring runs to see if I can help the drillers get more efficiency out of the drill. I’ve also been continuing to take and analyze samples from my snow pit that we all dug two weeks ago. Mostly though, I’ve been helping out on the DEP machine. It’s a time consuming station to work at, and unlike the other handling stations, you don’t move around much there. This means you get colder a lot quicker. I am definitely glad that I’ve been able to help, but I have to make sure to take ample warming breaks. My ultimate science goal for this trip is of course to get some samples of ice to make bubble, sections from. I use bubble sections as a part of my graduate school research…so the more I can get, the better my data and findings will be.

On a side note we had a strange occurrence here at camp today. There have been several people that have been waiting to leave (and a few stuck in McMurdo trying to get here) but the flights have been cancelled 4 times. Finally….today….we welcomed the first flight in over a week. All of the new guys got off, and the 3 waiting to leave WAIS got ready to board the aircraft for a takeoff about an hour later. It was then, that we got word that weather all over Antarctica would be terrible tonight except for here at WAIS. So, something that hardly ever happens…..happened: The return flight back to McMurdo was cancelled. The 6 military flight crew of the LC-130 are now stuck here overnight and the plane is sitting out on the ski-way completely shut down. The pilot told us that in 11 years of flying Antarctic missions, he has never been stuck at a field camp….until now! Of course for us…this was exciting. Some of the science crew decided to give them all a tour of the ice core arch and give them the lowdown on what we do here. We also have an extra building here at camp for pilots to sleep in…just in case something like this happens. As of right now the weather here is beautiful, so in my opinion they are all getting a nice relaxing night here at camp. The new return flight is now scheduled for 7 am tomorrow, so they will probably go to bed very soon.

So that’s about it for today. Merry Christmas to everyone back home and thanks again for keeping up on our little adventure down here! -john

WAIS - Dec 25, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-25T11:45:00.000-08:00

Name: Logan Mitchell

Date: Dec 25, 2008
Location: WAIS Divide Galley
Time: 7:30 pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 700 m
Temperature: -16 °C
Wind speed: 2 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: 040° Grid
Barometric Pressure: 29.06 mm Hg
Precipitation: None
Animals: None except the dead ones we are eating.
Breakfast: Leftovers (I was sleeping)
Lunch: Leftovers (I was sleeping)
Supper: Leftovers: Veg curry, spinach soup w/ chicken, mashed potatoes.

Merry Christmas to all of you intrepid blog readers from WAIS Divide!! Today was a pretty slow day with everyone recovering from last night’s extravaganza and enjoying a much needed day of rest. I have been working on the night shift (which goes from 11pm-7am), so in order to keep my sleep schedule on track I was awake from 5pm on Christmas eve until 8am (watching movies) on Christmas day, then slept till around 4pm. I got up, made a few phone calls on the sat phone to family, then worked on editing a research paper for a couple of hours. In a little while (at 11 tonight) I’ll head back to the arch and start my workday.

There is one thing that I wanted to add about the Christmas eve festivities. Bess (who provided motivation) and Jonathan (our local weatherman who provided the lyrics) joined forces and put together a mini WAIS Divide choir and we sang Christmas carols to everyone in the Galley just before dinner last night. After that Ben, the camp manager told us that there is a tradition in Antarctica for field camps to sing Christmas carols to one another via HF radio. Our HF radio wasn’t working well at the time, so we called McMurdo on our sat phone and they re-broadcast our singing to all of the other U.S. field camps (including the South Pole station). It is so amazing to me that our little WAIS Divide Choir was broadcast all over the continent!

That’s all for now, I need to get ready for work!

Christmas at WAIS Divide. Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

WAIS - Dec 24, 2008 - Spruce

2008-12-24T11:42:00.000-08:00

Name: Spruce Schoenemann

Date: Dec 24, 2008
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: early morning of the 25th
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759 m
Borehole depth: 690 m
Temperature: -16 °C
Wind speed: 8 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Clouds: Few at 4,000ft, scattered at 12,000ft, 3/8ths coverage
Wind direction: 025° Grid
Barometric Pressure: 29.06
Precipitation: None
Animals: Only Santa Claus (Billy)
Breakfast: Leftovers (I was sleeping)
Lunch: Pasta w/ Marinara Sauce and Coffee
Supper: Roast Duck Breast w/ Sweet Mandarin Comfit, Beef Tenderloin, Green beans, Mashed Potatoes, Creamed Cauliflower

Hello again to all those who are following the WAIS Divide Blog. This is my second entry for the blog and today is Christmas Eve day. Due to our strange three-shift schedule, I did not have to work today, however tomorrow on Christmas day our shift 2 will be the first to start up again at 3pm.

I awoke this morning to a warm tent (65° F according to my new keychain thermometer from Kendrick). It was another absolutely clear sunny day at oWAISes. I am starting to wonder if the weather ever gets bad here. All this talk about blizzards and white out conditions was just to scare the bejeezus out of us.

After a slow paced “breakfast” of ribbon pasta, marinara sauce, and coffee, I headed over to the Science RAC tent to burn some pictures of my Antarctic adventures thus far. I will be sending the photo CD home to my girlfriend and parents, so hopefully some of you might get a few pics by email.

On my way to the Science RAC tent I stopped into Comms to check with Ben about the arrival time of the LC 130 and found out that it was canceled. We were all expecting a primary flight to come in this morning with freshies for the Christmas Eve dinner since the last two on Monday and Tuesday had been cancelled. Folks were somewhat bummed since this meant there wouldn’t be any last minute Christmas mail.

During the afternoon I helped transform the Galley into a banquet hall for 44 people. We moved tables into two long rows, set up chairs and an extra table for the White Elephant gift exchange, and hung red, green, and white party streamers along the purlins. Around 4ish we started eating hors d’oeuvres and sipping boxed wine. John, Camille, and Renin helped prepare a scrumptious dinner of roast duck breast, beef tenderloin, mashed potatoes, green beans, and creamed cauliflower.

But the highlight of the evening that everyone was waiting for was the White Elephant gift exchange. Santa Billy (head carpenter) arrived to officiate the exchange, but prior to that he allowed a select few (mainly ladies) sit on his lap and tell him what they wanted for Christmas. The rules of the gift exchange were quite simple. You were given a number, the person with #1 picked the first gift, then #2 could pick another gift from under the tree, or, if they liked number one’s gift they could take it. Any one gift could be stolen up to five times. Through out the evening a few very popular items, like a knitted hat and scarf, were traded multiple times.

Following the raucous gift exchange, arch and table traverses ensued. This entailed someone climbing from the floor of one side of the galley arch to the other side without falling. We made sure everyone was safe by having a spotter. A number of us tried it successfully the first time, so we moved to the more challenging table traverse. There are two ways to go around a table; around the width of the table or end over end. After some demonstrations by Billy and Kiwi John on how to do this, Logan, Tim, Natalie, Ed, Bill M., Bill F and I attempted the strenuous circumnavigation of the table. Bill Mason was the only one able to fully complete the end-to-end traverse but almost everyone made it over, under, and back up around the narrow part of the table.

To wrap of the festive evening we all went outside to sled down WAIS hill (the 30 ft high burm that Dooley made for storing the camp gear over winter). People hauled the banana sleds and Nansen sleds up to the top and piled on 5-10 at a time for a short but exhilarating ride. I put on some cross-country skis with edges and attempted some tele turns on the groomed slope but didn’t have enough speed to keep going. By the time the sledding ended it was officially Christmas Day and everyone wished one another a Merry Christmas!

WAIS - Dec 23, 2008 - Gifford

2008-12-23T12:37:00.000-08:00

Name: Gifford J Wong

Date: 23 December 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: 11:15pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -20.2°C
Wind speed: 4.8 kts
Visibility: Seems like miles and miles!
Wind direction: 20°
Relative Humidity: 70%
Precipitation: None
Altimeter: 28.93
Animals: Just the freshly decorated Christmas cookies in the Galley Rac Tent
Breakfast: “special” French toast with Nutella and melon balls (frozen) @ 0600
Lunch: Curry day – I had the one with chicken!! With fresh naan, dal and rice.
Supper: re-heated mahi mahi, rice noodles and peas’n’carrots @ 2045

Gifford here… another California shout-out to the lovely folks that read this blog!
I’ve noticed a lot of folks have shared some wonderful stories about WAIS Camp, in particular, and Antarctica in general. This IS a fascinating place, without a doubt… but there are times when things can become (incredibly) challenging. Yes, even life at a remote camp with swing dancing, Christmas cookie decorating, and a shower can be difficult.

Today I’ll take a look at how Antarctic science is not as easy as one might think. For example, our foray into 24-hour drilling started a few days (blogs) ago… we have been getting fantastic-looking ice core since. Unfortunately, the complexity in processing and adequately logging this ice core is quite high, and our computer system is finding it challenging. Remember, we’re doing things that, at least for the US Antarctic Program, have never been done before. This said, every one of us has put in quite a few “extra” hours to help the process along. Without meaning to sound melodramatic, a beaker’s life is not all fun and games (“beaker” is an affectionate McMurdo term for scientist), and sleep can be something of a luxury.

Indeed, a friend of mine who is working in the Dry Valley (Antarctic) LTER just wrote me about how she spent 24 hours watching an experiment only to go to sleep for 4 hours and then wake up for another 12 hours of sampling! We don’t have it nearly as rough – we’ve been blessed with pleasingly-short 8-hour shifts. Still, most of us have put in at least one 10, 12 or 14-hour day since arriving to WAIS (with one or two folks putting in even longer days!). Today, for me, was a 15-hour affair… (and it was so worth it!)

The regular 8-hour shift began and ended with no excess drama… we arrived a few ticks before our start looking for a smooth transition between shifts, and we ran a bit long as we needed to help out with ice core movement. We have these “wheeled shelves” (carts) that we use to store the ice cores on, and there were storage carts laden with ice that were ready to be moved from the “ground” floor (the Arch is actually somewhat buried by two years of cumulative snowfall) of the Drilling Arch to the basement. This procedure of shuffling carts to and fro between floors requires a minimum of 4 people, and each shift has 2 core handlers. The process is simple enough, and after a few lifts (and lowers) of the elevator, the Drilling Arch’s ground floor was prepped for another day or so of drilling.

After this quick dance with very old ice, Bess (my colleague and shift-partner) and I then hopped on a snowmobile and headed out to her snow pit to help make it deeper. She had already sampled down to 1.3 meters, and we were aiming to get to 3 meters today. I believe she’s chatted a bit about what she is looking at, and I feel lucky to be a part of this process. After much difficulty (we were using shovels and hand saws due to the nature of her sampling), we made it to a sampling depth of 3.1 meters! I’m sure I will sleep very well tonight!

But in reality, this camp and the science that is going on here is phenomenal. Sure, it may be a little tough getting to Antarctica, and doing science here may be a touch challenging now and again, but we have it so much easier than our predecessors from, say, the Heroic Age (of Antarctic exploration). Many folks in camp are reading books or articles from this period that outline truly difficult and challenging experiences, some of which do indeed lead to lost lives.

Thankfully, we’re not THAT challenged out here! And with that I see that it is 11:15… I think I hear a sleeping bag calling out my name. With that, I just want to say (while I can), Happy Holidaze to everyone out there (with some special love going to my family in Cali and my friends ALL over!!). Oh, and “Go Bears” – my Cal Bears are going bowling this football post-season!

WAIS - Dec 22, 2008 - Bess

2008-12-23T04:14:00.000-08:00

Name: Bess Koffman

Date: 22 December, 2008
Location: WAIS Divide Science Rac-Tent
Time: 1940
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Borehole depth: 630 m
Temperature: -21.5°C (COLD °F)
Wind speed: 2.5 kts
Visibility: unlimited
Clouds: a few straggly ones
Wind direction: 354 degrees, N
Relative Humidity: 69%
Precipitation: none
Animals: just the crazy swing-dancers in the galley last night
Breakfast: Eggs, home fries, bacon
Lunch: Grilled cheese with tomato soup
Supper: pork loin, canned corn, mac & cheese

Bess here again. I realized I haven’t really introduced myself, so I’ll do a brief introduction here. I’m working on the WAIS Divide project as a graduate student at the University of Maine, in Orono. I study dust and trace element chemistry in the ice, and am particularly interested in how the chemistry of iron affects phytoplankton in the Southern Ocean. Iron effectively fertilizes the little plants in the sea, much like you would fertilize your lawn to make it grow greener. I look at where dust comes from, how big it is, and how much iron it contains. My background is in geology, along with geomicrobiology (studying bacteria that live in/on rocks). I got my undergraduate degree from Carleton College in Minnesota, a wonderful liberal arts college nestled among cornfields. I’ve worked as a field science technician in Antarctica, in Maine, and in Nevada. I’ve also done a lot of outdoor education work, particularly with NC Outward Bound and the Chewonki Foundation. So my interests have been outdoors-focused for my whole life, and working here in West Antarctica is the icing on the cake.
So yesterday here at our field camp was a day off. Folks tend to sleep in a little then gather in the galley (kitchen/dining room) for coffee and breakfast. Our meals are reheated, or scavenged from the shelves of snacks, bread, and cookies that the cooks leave for us. After a half-cup of coffee (thanks to Patrick, our Starbucks guru), I headed over to the Rec Tent to see about playing mandolin. I’m working on learning to play the mandolin, because I love bluegrass music and I love being able to make music with other people. As I was tuning the mandolin, John Fegyveresi came over and pulled out a guitar. He helped me learn a new chord, A minor, and together we played a little. It was really fun. Soon I surpassed my experience level with the mandolin, so I sat back and just listened to John play guitar—he’s really good! We sang a few songs including “Take me home, country roads” and “Wagon wheel,” two great folk songs. The live music filled up my soul and made me smile.

Later, I went skiing out on the skiway (where planes come and go) with Natalie, Tim, and Eddie. I learned some new skate-skiing techniques, and Eddie helped me with my form. I raced back to camp to set up the galley for a dance class. One of the mechanics, Jake, is a really good jitterbug dancer, and together we decided to teach everyone what we collectively know about dancing. Yesterday was our first dance class, and we went over the swing and the jitterbug. I was really impressed with how quickly everyone learned both steps and spins. Pretty soon we were showing some aerial moves—flips and high kicks—and complex spins such as the pretzel. Before I knew it, people were flipping left and right! It was amazing. We had six couples dancing, and had to keep moving tables out of the way in order to accommodate everyone’s moves. Sometime in the next week we hope to teach a salsa and merengue lesson—I can’t wait! Yesterday’s dancing will probably be one of the highlights of my season down here.

Today was a big day: we began 24-hour ice core drilling. This means that us core handlers are working three shifts, around the clock, to process all the core. I’m on the first shift, which runs 7 am to around 4 pm. Today we had a lot of good-looking ice core come up, but we also noticed that the core is starting to get more brittle. Ice gets brittle because it’s under such great pressure at these depths, that when you bring it up to the surface, some of the air bubbles can explode, fracturing the ice. The ice is really sensitive to warm temperatures, bumping and jostling. It will even break with no provocation! We have to treat it very carefully to keep it from breaking. This ice will remain in a cellar below the drilling arch, where it will stay very cold and still for at least a year before it gets shipped back to the U.S. This will allow it to “acclimatize,” which we hope will make those bubbles less sensitive to bumps and bruises. As we progress through the season, we expect the ice to get more and more brittle. Our goal is to push through to deeper ice that is under such great pressure (imagine two miles of ice crushing it!) that the air bubbles actually become incorporated in the crystal matrix of the ice. When this happens, it’s called clathrate-hydrates and the ice becomes blue and clear, not opaque like it is now. So, stay tuned to find out if we get that deep!

WAIS - Dec 21, 2008 - Ken

2008-12-21T08:10:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Great news from WAIS Divide, all our equipment is working, the procedures have been developed, the crews have been trained, and the cooks are making it very difficult to the avoid eating too much.

We received the critical parts for the Cat 953 tracked forklift that is needed to load heavy pallets on planes and many other tasks. The piston bully which is used for snow removal and grooming is back from McMurdo after mid season repairs.

It took a few days of coring for ICDS to figure out a set of procedures that allows us to drill one meter of ice, raise the drill to break the core free from the ice sheet, and then drill a second one meter section without bringing the drill to the surface between runs. This produces clean fractures on the ends of the one-meter sections. For comparison, last year when we tried to cut the brittle ice from this depth into one-meter long segments the ends would shatter and damage the core. This is a new method that has not been done before and so far it is working very well. ICDS is now focusing on increasing the speed of all aspects of the operation that will not influence core quality.

Core handling operations are also going well. The new system for vacuuming drill fluid off the core is every effective. The new system for applying the netting around core is much better then last year, but it does require significant muscle power to prepare the netting for the next core. We are holding the temperature of the core processing area at -30 C to minimize the thermal shock to the core. The combination of new core handling procedures and a colder core handling area have resulted in excellent core quality and a hearty core handling crew. I expect core quality to decrease as we go deeper and get into the seriously brittle ice. We also cut a core that was drilled last year and left onsite for the winter. Last year when this core was cut the end shattered. This year after the ice had relaxed for a year, the ice cut smoothly. This validates the concept of leaving brittle ice onsite for a year so it can relax and be less susceptible to damage during shipment. The electrical measurements on the core are showing a nice series of annual layers that we can use to determine the age of the ice.

Our current bottom depth is 621 m, which is 40 m below where we started this year. Now that we have everything prepared, we will start production drilling with 24 hour/day operations.

Cheers,

Ken

WAIS - Dec 21, 2008 - Natalie

2008-12-21T04:11:00.000-08:00

Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner: Leftovers

Hi. This is Natalie Kehrwald again adding to our WAIS adventures. Sunday is our day off at camp, which was welcome after our first few days of drilling and getting used to working in shifts. People who are adjusting to the night shift are given a bit of extra time to get ready for working from 11 pm until 7 am. Our camp is using New Zealand time to keep on the same schedule as McMurdo, but since we are in a different part of the continent, this means that “night” here actually includes the warmest part of the day. The fact that the sun will not set until late February also helps with working different drilling and core processing shifts.
Sunday is definitely the preferred day for laundry and showers. I walked into the recreation tent expecting to see many people waiting their turn to transform from scruffy to clean, but instead there was a group singing and playing instruments including guitars, a mandolin, and a Celtic drum. People waiting were drawn to the music and just hanging out or reading and it made for a really relaxing morning.

I went for a ski after lunch with friends, and on the way back we ran into a very bundled person flying a 6 meter long kite. Because we could only see the person’s nose sticking out of all of their layers, Bess and I yelled over to see who it was. It turned out to be Kiwi (so nicknamed because he is the only New Zealander currently in camp) who is a mountaineer and mechanic. We have a few gigantic mining bulldozers in camp that are used to dig out the drilling arch after winter, and to clear buildings after summer storms. In addition, we have snowmobiles and forklifts that we need to move cargo or conduct work in farther away locations. The mechanics in camp are responsible for keeping all of these machines running, and may have to repair snowmobiles outside during blizzards. But, since today was a day of play, we were able to spend a part of the afternoon flying kites. The 6 meter kite can be used with skis to take advantage of the wide wide open spaces around here, and we also flew a 2 meter kite that is mainly used for tricks.
When I came back to camp, I stopped by the galley where Bess was giving swing and jitterbug dance lessons. Our eating tables were folded out of the way, and people were laughing and doing flips in the air. Some of my flip attempts ended up in me falling or sliding around, but it was generally great to be surrounded by so many happy people. The walls of the galley tent are canvas and so we had to be careful to stay away from the edges so that we did not accidentally do damage to one of the most important structures in camp. We decided to keep up the Sunday dancing in the future, and I am off to dinner and a movie in the non-damaged galley. Life is good.

WAIS - Dec 20, 2008 - Tim

2008-12-20T04:06:00.000-08:00

Name: Tim Bartholomaus

Date: December 20, 2008 (only 5 days 'til Christmas!)
Location: WAIS Divide Galley
Time: 11:15
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -26 °C (-15 °F)
Wind speed: 8 km/h (5 mp/h)
Visibility: ~5 miles (8 km)
Clouds: Overcast
Wind direction: From the north
Precipitation: Light snow
Animals: None
Breakfast: Fried grits, "fancy fruit" muffins
Lunch: Pizza of many different varieties
Supper: Flank steak, chicken and veggie noodle soup, baked potato wedges, pastry with fruit, chocolate cupcakes
Photo notes: DSCN1088.jpg Me in front of our nearly complete seismic stations. The solar panel tower is behind my head. Largely buried behind the solar panel tower is the battery and electronics box. The top of one of the seismometer shields is visible within an excavation at the left of the photo.
IMGP1199.jpg A Nansen sled, hitched to the back of a snowmobile. One corner of the solar panel tower is visible at left.

Tim here; chiming back in. Yesterday, as John Fegyveresi wrote, he and Bob Greschke hauled equipment 5 miles out from camp in order to install an extremely precise instrument to measure shaking at the ice surface. Today, I helped Bob, who works for a science support organization known as PASSCAL, set up this instrument, known as a seismometer. The reason for this unusual mission, unrelated to my traditional duties logging and measuring the deep ice core pulled from the interior of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, is the specific flavor of my personal research interests. While I'm not in school at the moment, in the fall of '09 I hope to start a Ph.D. in glaciology, with a particular focus on the mechanics and geophysics of how and why glaciers and ice sheets move. In contrast, most of my peers are more interested in paleoclimate and what the chemistry of the ice and air bubbles within the core tells us about past, present and future climate.

Bob Greschke is working on a large-scale project called Pole Net that will establish an array of seismometers across Antarctica to identify and analyze earthquakes from around the world. When he got into camp on the LC-130 flight a few days ago and asked our crew "little boss," Anais, for an assistant, she correctly suspected that I'd be interested in this geophysics assignment. So we loaded up a sled with over 500 lbs of batteries, hitched it to a ski-doo, and drove way off past the end of the ski runway at camp. Once camp, with its 40-odd buildings and tents was nothing more than a smudge on the horizon, we stopped at the equipment cache laid out the day before. At this point, we were surrounded by the expanse of the great flat white (as surrounded as one can be by emptiness). Again, I have to reiterate how stunning it is to be out there. I think Antarctica has actually increased my appreciation for the high plains of the U.S. and other wide-open landscapes. There really is a simple, austere beauty to these places.

The work that Bob and I did out at his WAIS Divide seismic station was rather simple and compares well to assembling a very large erector set then threading it together with power and data cables. First, we bolted together the 5-foot-on-a-side tripod of solar panels and guyed it out to anchors buried in the snow. Then we quarried (with a wood saw and shovel) two large holes into the snow surface into which the battery and electronics box and the seismometer shield could be placed. Into the battery and electronics box, we placed ten large-capacity batteries. Although now, during the summer, there's plenty of sunlight feeding the solar panels to easily keep the batteries topped off, the set-up we installed will be sufficient to keep the seismometer powered through 5 months of continuous darkness. Finally, we leveled and connected the seismometer, and covered it with a series of shields to reduce the impact of air currents that could push ever-so-subtly, but measurably, against the sensor and also protect it from the weather.

When all was set, I stood on the snow 15 feet from the seismometer and swung my body weight forward- pushing my feet against the snow. On a little hand-held computer, Bob and I could then watch as the sensor recorded the shake in three directions: North-South, East-West, and up-down. This was my first time working with a seismometer and, as seismic methods are becoming increasingly used in glaciologic applications, I was happy to have been able to help out with it and extremely impressed with the technology.

One of the things that struck me while I was out installing this high-precision digital instrument was the long history of Antarctic exploration, and how the equipment we use reflects this. For one, we drove out to this remote instrument installation on a small snowmobile that had been painstakingly maintained by U.S. Antarctic Program staff since the 1970s. Although seismometers have been in use since at least the early portion of the 20th century, ours was equipped with a satellite phone antenna so that it could communicate with researchers in the U.S. But the most fascinating pieces of still-active history are the sleds used to tow equipment and people behind snowmobiles. These sleds are named for Nansen, the Norwegian explorer who nearly became the first person to reach the North Pole while using them in 1893. In fact, I'm fairly convinced that the sled we used today may well be over 100 years old, although the sinew, leather, and rope lashings are still present and in good repair. The wood frame is incredibly solid. Despite the abuse these sleds see in doing fieldwork, they are exceptionally well preserved- largely due to the cold and dryness of Antarctica. I marveled at the expeditions this sled must have seen. How much of the continent has it traveled? Which pioneering glaciologists has it met? And what would these pioneering explorers and scientists think if they could see the work we do on the continent now?

On Monday, we start our 24-hr shift rotation in the drilling and core processing arches. I'll be on the second shift with Spruce- working from 3 until 11 pm. I'm really excited- I think we drilled about another 15 meters today, but now is when we're really going to start making serious progress. I kind of like the idea that, even while I'm sleeping, or eating meals, or blogging, we'll be advancing the borehole, and getting more ice core. It's very satisfying to be part of such a motivated, hard-working and productive team.

WAIS - Dec 19, 2008 - John

2008-12-19T04:03:00.000-08:00

Name: John Fegyveresi

Date: 19th of December 2008
Location: WAIS Divide field camp
Time: 7:15pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -21.7°C
Wind speed: 5 kt
Visibility: Good
Clouds: Thin clouds
Wind direction: Roughly from the North
Relative Humidity: 76%
Precipitation: None
Animals: A single skua flying around the cargo line
Breakfast: Breakfast Burritos
Lunch: Turkey/Cheese Sandwiches
Supper: Catfish and Curry

Greetings everyone! It’s John here…writing from the land of penguins and skua. This is my first stab at updating the blog, so I’ll try to keep it interesting. I think it’s great that all of you are keeping up with our adventure here in Antarctica and I was thrilled when Logan asked me to be a part of the “Blog Update” crew. First off, let me start by telling you all who I am. Unlike Logan and the rest of the core handlers, I am actually down here at WAIS divide to do an independent study of the ice cores. Unfortunately, because the ice is so brittle this season, it will be difficult for me to get any good samples. What this means in a nutshell, is that I’ve basically become an adopted core handler. I’ve offered to help out the handlers whenever there is need. I most likely will not be doing as many shifts as the rest of the core crew, but I will still helping out when needed.

It is Friday night here, which would normally be cause for celebration as the work week comes to an end. Unfortunately here at WAIS, we work 6 full days, and so tonight is just like any other. The first update worth mentioning is the arrival of 4 new people! We have been without any incoming flights here at WAIS divide for several days due to bad weather and mechanical problems with the LC-130 aircraft. Last night, however, a flight finally came in bringing not just 4 people, but a new Pisten Bully and a load of fresh fruit and vegetables. The best way to describe a Pisten Bully, is that it kind of looks like a van but instead of wheels, it has giant rubber tank-like treads that it rides on. It roams around camp pushing and grooming snow out of the way to make it easier for us to travel on foot and snowmobiles.

It’s hard to believe Christmas is less than a week away. We’ve been so involved with getting the ice-coring process working, that we really haven’t had time to think about it. Some of the camp staff put up wooden cut-out Christmas trees in front of some of the buildings and there’s been a few Christmas songs playing at meal times as well. It will be weird that we will all be away from our friends and family for the holidays though. Luckily, we do have satellite phones and email here, so we can all still make calls back home.

We are having another game of softball tonight outside the main food tent. A few nights ago, we played a game and it was a lot of fun. It’s amazing that at even at -20 C, you can stay warm as long as you are running around playing a game. It also brings a little piece of home to such a remote camp, when we all get together to do something familiar like softball or movie nights. We all need a little time to unwind too, or you can really get a little stressed or even homesick. Luckily, everyone here, from the carpenters to the scientists, all seem to get along very well….so having fun isn’t a problem ?

…..So, how about science John?

Well….a lot of progress has been made on the ice core drilling in the past few days. We officially went to two shifts today and we will go to three starting Monday. All of the fine tuning and glitches in the ice coring process are slowly but surely being worked out. Every day that goes by, is one step closer to a perfected process. The drillers pulled up 10 meters this morning, and the core handlers logged it. By next week, we should be at peak production pulling 18-20 meters a day. As Logan said though, it’s hard to predict how this might change once the ice gets more and more brittle. Right now, the ice is still pretty stable.

In addition to my partial core handling role, I’m also doing a few other independent science studies while I’m here. Last week, with the help of the rest of the group, I was able to complete a 2 meter backlit snow pit. The pit basically consists of two separate pits dug into the snow, with a thin wall separating them. One side is left open for light to go into, while the other is covered with plywood. While inside the closed pit, the thin wall is lit up and allows me to see all the snow layers from the past few years. I am able to pick out individual snow storms and see changes in the type of snow between winter and summer months. Hopefully, this will tell me something about how the weather works here in West Antarctica.

There was also another interesting science story from today as well. One of the new arrivals yesterday, Robert, is in charge of installing a seismic station here at WAIS divide. Robert works out at New Mexico Tech, and is associated with a project called Polenet. This project involves putting several seismometers in the Arctic and here in Antarctica that will monitor earthquake activity from around the world. The entire station is self contained and solar powered, so doesn’t need to be monitored. It even has a built in satellite phone that calls in every few days to let everyone know it is still “alive and well”. The basic idea is that anytime a major earthquake happens around the world, this seismic station will eventually pick up the seismic waves as they travel through the Earth and reach Antarctica. Based on the arrival times of those waves, scientists will be better able to determine exactly when and where the earthquake occurred. Add to this a whole mess of additional stations here in Antarctica, and you’ve got a very accurate network of seismometers. Cool Stuff! I spent the day, driving the seismic equipment out to a remote location about 6 miles away from camp on a snowmobile with Robert. We had hoped to get the station up and configured, but ran out of time. What this means is that tomorrow, Tim is going to head out in my place and actually get to do the fun science stuff and actually setup up the equipment.

Anyhoo….I’ve been typing a while now and the softball game is about to kickoff, so I’ll talk to you all later!

signing off….

-john
(lakewoodhiker.blogspot.com)

WAIS - Dec 18, 2008 - Marie

2008-12-18T08:17:00.000-08:00

Marie DelGrego

Date: December 18, 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m

Hi, my name is Marie. I have never written in any blog before, let alone this one. I couldn’t figure out how to get the weather info, so here is my take on our weather. It has been incredibly warm today, for Antarctic standards that is. This morning I was walking from building to building in just my regular shirt. But to be outside for more than a minute or two, I would want my warm coat. The sky has been an incredible, most beautiful color of blue. Not exactly royal blue, not turquoise blue, some where in between and so vibrant you can’t stop looking at it in amazement. There has not been much wind, which is part of the reason it seems so warm to me. I’m a little kooky when it comes to cold though, I go skiing in shorts in the spring…. ? I grew up in Michigan with lots of cold and snow. There have been a few clouds here and there, wispy clouds that fade into broad ripples, very beautiful. And then there is the snow, as I’m sure you know by now, there is more snow here, than anything else.

Ok, pretend you are tiny, the size of a small pea. You are standing on a large white piece of Styrofoam the size of a city block that squeaks when you walk on it. Then imagine an extra extra large blue bowl, big enough to cover that huge piece of Styrofoam. This bowl has been placed over you, but it is not dark, it is incredibly bright and sunny. So bright you have to wear sunglasses or it might hurt. Add in that it is really cold, like standing inside of your refrigerator’s freezer. Now think about your happiest thought, one that makes you smile like never before. That…….is how I feel while I am in Antarctica. I want to cry I am so happy!!!

I am a videographer, not one of the scientists. I am here making a documentary for the WAIS Divide project. That is partly why I am so happy, I love to film things! I got a great shot of a LC 130 air plane today. I set up my camera at the end of the snow runway. I zoomed in on the plane. The plane took off and flew right over the camera by literally around 80 feet! It was loud and fast. It can take several hours to set up for one shot. When the documentary is done I will let Logan know how to access it and you all can see it too. Many of the others dug a huge pit in the snow. There is one pit that is almost 7’ deep 6’ wide and 12’ long. On three of the sides another pit was dug to expose light to the thin wall that now stands between them. They will put large sheets of plywood over the main pit so there is no light in it. When you go inside the main pit with the cover on, all you can see is the little bit of light that now shines through the snow walls. It is a luscious blue color and you can see each layer of snow like the layers in a cake when you cut a wedge out of it. This will be in the documentary too, it’s really beautiful.

As for the food today, the most important part is that it was delicious, as always. They treat us extremely well here. I mean it, gourmet food, really! We never want for anything when it comes to food. I have no idea what I am going to do when I get back to the US and my home. I can’t cook as well as the cooks do here, I am spoiled rotten. Not to mention my pants feel tight already….geez!

Well, it’s time to go relax a bit before bed, it has been a long day.

Ciao, and think warm thoughts for us here in Antarctica, so we can stay toasty warm. ?

WAIS - Dec 17, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-17T13:19:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell

Date: December 17, 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: 11:00pm
Latitude: 79°28?1.2?S
Longitude: 112°5?6.0?W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -23.9°C
Wind speed: 3 knots
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: NW 319°
Relative Humidity: 77%
Precipitation: None
Animals: None
Breakfast: frittata & Finnish coffee cake.
Lunch: Chicken breast, lentil soup, fresh baked bread, wild rice, and chocolate birthday cake.
Supper: Seafood scampi (mussels & shrimp), orzo pilaf, mixed vegetables, and crème brûlée.

Hey readers, its Logan once again. First off I want to thank all the other core handlers for helping me out with the blog entries! It has been really interesting for me to read about what has been happening here at camp from someone else's perspective, and it has allowed me a lot more time to enjoy myself in the evenings.

Today was a very important day which can be summarized with one phrase: Happy birthday Natalie!! For her birthday, the sun came out, the wind died down, we all had yummy chocolate birthday cake, we drilled 3 meters of core, there was another pair of sundogs around the sun, and there was a camp wide softball game after dinner. The core drilling was very exciting because we were testing a drilling technique that is very important for determining how much core we will be able to drill this season. In a certain depth range in the ice sheet the ice changes from bubbly ice (where all of the air in the ice is trapped in bubbles) to clathrate ice (where there are no bubbles and all of the air that used to be in bubbles has been absorbed into the crystal structure of the ice) and in this transition region the ice is very brittle. It is so brittle that if you try to cut it with a saw it will shatter into tons of pieces and will therefore not be very useful to scientists. To work with ice from the brittle ice region you have to store it in a cold place for awhile while the ice "relaxes" and becomes more supple. Our plan is to store the ice we drill this season on 1 meter trays in the basement of the drilling arch (which is just a huge room dug into the snow beneath the drilling arch) for 1 year and then pack up the ice and ship it back to the U.S. The main goal for this season is to drill all the way through the brittle ice region, which is hundreds of meters thick, and we are just starting to enter into it. Our problem is that it takes about an hour for each drilling run which consists of lowering the drill down the hole (which is currently 580 meters deep) and bringing ice back up to the surface. The drill is capable of drilling ~3 meters of ice at once, but since we can?t cut the ice we were worried that our throughput would only be 1 meter of ice per drilling run (because we have to put the ice on the 1 meter trays). If that was the case we wouldn?t be able to drill very muchcore this season. The test we tried today was to drill 1 meter of core, break it (as if only drilling one meter), then drill another meter of core and pull up the two sections intact. Nobody has done this before and we weren?t sure if it would work, but it did!! That means (if it continues to work well) that we will be able to get plenty of core this year which makes everyone here very, very happy.

I personally am very happy that we are finally starting to drill some ice. My lodestar has always been ?work first play later?, but so far on this expedition I have gotten to play a lot in New Zealand and McMurdo before I got to work. So it feels nice to actually get a chance to finally do what I came here to do: get some good quality ice core that will result in awesome science.

For this blog entry I decided to compile some interesting statistics about life here:

- Days since my last shower: 5
- Days since my last sunset, or any kind of night: 18
- Relative cost of the fuel we use in camp: ~$15/gallon (this is so high because the fuel is flown in from McMurdo?)
- Gallons of diesel that the generator that powers the freezer units in the drilling arch uses every day (Yes, even in Antarctica I work in a freezer, and its kept at about -25 to -29°C): 300-400 gallons/day
- Price of that diesel: ~$5,000/day
- Percent of meals that I have a second helping: 100%
- Number of jackets I have here: 7
- Number of pairs of boxers: 7
- Amount of jet fuel an LC-130 uses: 700-800 gallons/hour
- Amount of spare fuel we have in camp (if we were isolated and no more flights came, this is how long our fuel would last): ~4 weeks
- Amount of spare food we have in camp (same deal): ~16 weeks
- Total depth of the ice sheet: ~3,500 meters
- Current depth of drilling: ~584 meters

That's all for now. We will add more stats as we think of them. Hope everyone is doing well and staying warm back home!

Photo courtesy of Logan Mitchell.

WAIS - Dec 16, 2008 - Anais

2008-12-16T10:40:00.001-08:00

Name: Anaïs Orsi

Date: December 16th, 2008
Location: WAIS divide galley
Time: 8pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -21°C
Wind speed: 20+ knots
Visibility: less than 30 ft.
Clouds: low clouds covering the sky, but I can’t see them because of the blowing snow
Precipitation: light snow
Animals: a few bearded humanoids
Breakfast: biscuits and gravy
Lunch: tuna casserole and cheese and strawberries blintz
Supper: Meat loaf and Oreo cheesecake extravaganza

Hi,
This is Anaïs. It’s my first time writing on the blog, although you may remember me from last year: I was here, at WAIS, as a core handler a year ago. It is actually pretty amusing to come back, and see what stays the same and what is different. The camp looks very similar. They Galley is still this warm and inviting yellow tent, and John, our wonderful head cook still prepares for us amazing delixiavouricious food... There are 3 cooks at WAIS divide, one for each shift of 8 hours, and John is the only one to be back. The other 2 cooks are back to Antarctica, but in other camps. Our 2 new cooks are first timers, although they have a lot of experience in cooking for field camps in other remote places in the US. The rest of the staff is the same way: some of the same faces, some newcomers, and some that have a lot of experience, although they have not been here. All around, I would say that no matter their path, they are a collection of very interesting and inspiring people. I am very impressed with our core handling crew: so much experience, stories and wisdom packed in so little years! One of my favorites times of the day is when I get to sit down at a Galley table and meet a new person. Each one has a story to tell, more than one story actually. Antarctica is the white continent. The people that you find there bring colors to it. They’re the ones that make my Antarctic experience go far beyond the awe one can feel when staring at the vast horizon.

Speaking about awe, my day started with diamond dust. Diamond dust is the name of the sparkling fine snow powder that you can see twinkling in the air on a very cold and sunny day. As I was walking toward breakfast, I recognized the shining snow and looked for the sun, as it is usually a good predictor for halos. This morning, I saw the most complete halo I had ever seen. It had a full ring around the sun, with rainbows on the side called sundogs, and an upward arc running through them. On the top of the halo, there was yet another wide downward rainbow arc. It was far too big to fit in my camera, and I had to stop and savor that moment. Upon entering the galley, I couldn’t help but tell everybody to rush outside to watch it. A morning like this was the sign of a wonderful day.

Today, we drilled the first core. Finally, almost a month after leaving home, we saw our first piece of ice. It is always a very important moment, one that everybody will remember. For some reason, we all take more pictures of the drill during the retrieval of the first core than any time after that, although we have many more drilling days ahead of us. The engineers have been working all year at improving the drill, and it is very satisfying to them to finally see everything come together. The ice was beautiful: perfectly cut, perfect break. Just the way we wish it to be for the next 3000 times… I do not seem to find a better way to describe the satisfaction of seeing everything work on the first try.

Tonight, the wind peaked up, and the visibility went down. We were supposed to get a plane, but Ben, the camp manager just announced that it “boomeranged”: it was on the way, but decided not to continue its journey, as the visibility here is degrading, and already too low for the plane to land; so it boomeranged back to McMurdo station. We were waiting for some really important pieces to repair out big forklift, as well as fresh fruit for Christmas meal, but this will have to wait. Maybe tomorrow?

At least, now, we have cores to play with!

WAIS - Dec 15, 2008 - Spruce

2008-12-15T10:38:00.000-08:00

Name: Spruce Schoenemann

Date: 15 December 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: late 11:50pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -21°C
Wind speed: 3.5 kts
Visibility: -1.0 mile
Clouds: 7/10ths Strato Cumulus
Wind direction: 313°
Relative Humidity: 71%
Precipitation: None for 9 straight days
Animals: We could use a dog!
Breakfast: French Toast, Bacon, Maple Syrup, Raspberry Compote
Lunch: Tempeh Reuben Sandwiches and Peach Cobbler
Supper: Chicken Pot Pie and German Chocolate Cake, yummm!

Hello to all those of you who are following the WAIS Divide blog. This is my first go around at the blog. My name is Spruce Schoenemann, and yes I am named after a Blue Spruce. Vermont is my home state, but I’ve spent a number of years living and working in numerous places, most recently Boulder, CO. This is my first time to Antarctica and my first time as a core handler, or should I say, soon to be, as we have not yet drilled our first core. Today we were supposed to start drilling but we were foiled again due to some technical difficulties with the drill.

Today I awoke to a beautiful sunny day at WAIS, my tent was warm and I sleepily got ready for the day. This entailed putting on my wool long underwear, Carhartt work pants, fleece sweater, down jacket, hat, goggles, boots and gloves, and grabbing my daypack for all the rest of my necessary outerwear.

The favorite part of my day is blue-collar yoga after breakfast, which goes from 7:40-8:00am. It is a great way to start the day by working out all the kinks and stretching the sore muscles from leaning over ice core trays.

Most of the day we spent readying the Core Processing side of the arch. This included leveling and aligning the 1 meter buffer table, preparing the FED (Fluid Evacuation Device), and de-burring and cleaning ice core trays. To give you a sense of how many trays we have prepped, imagine if you lined up all the trays end-to-end, they would stretch the length of 7 football fields. That’s a lot of work!
Tonight the weather was absolutely perfect; clear and sunny with no wind. About 10 of us went outside to toss the disk and huck the nerf football. We played outside the galley for about an hour until are hands got cold. To wrap up the splendid evening, Logan, Tim, Bess and I went out beyond the ski-way to take photos of each other laying out (diving horizontally) for the Frisbee. We got some fantastic shots of our aerial leaps as well as our snowy crashes. It was even more entertaining looking at all the pictures afterward as we warmed up in the galley with hot cocoa.

Before I head to bed, I want to say hello and goodnight to my parents. I want to thank my wonderful girlfriend Mary for supporting me in my life’s journey, which has taken me far away to Antarctica for a few months. I am also thankful for all my great friends whom I look forward to seeing again when I return. Have a goodnight and stay warm!

Cheers,
Spruce

WAIS - Dec 14, 2008 - Gifford

2008-12-14T10:27:00.000-08:00

Gifford J Wong

Date: 14 December 2008
Location: WAIS Field Camp (Science Rac Tent)
Time: 11:30pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -21°C
Wind speed: 9.4 kts
Visibility: 1.5 – 2.0 miles
Clouds cover:100%
Wind direction: SE,117°
Relative Humidity: 81%
Precipitation: None
Animals: Just the rowdies in the Rec Rac Tent
Breakfast: Leftovers (tofu stir fry, an egg roll, and an English muffin with Nutella)
Lunch: Leftovers (Pizza, fish chowder, bratwurst and chili)
Supper: Leftovers (Potatoes au gratin, shepherds pie, baked chicken and green beans)

Happy Sunday, folks! Gifford here - the sometimes-loquacious, California-bred, helicopter-geek turned ice-core handler. As the menu above suggests, Sunday is the day that WAIS camp goes from “full-on” to “time-off”, and deservedly so. As the previous blogs noted, days can be long and grueling (even when recreating), so folks really do enjoy a rest. But don’t let a “day off” fool you – a lot can happen, even out at WAIS!

My day started with the empyting of the water trays that belong to the cooling units in the arch. There are four industrial a/c units designed to keep our work space climate-controlled to a wonderfully chill -25C. Unfortunately, they dump their excess moisture in these metal drip pans that must be manually emptied throughout the day and I pulled the 0600 shift.

After a quick empty, I took advantage of our satellite phone to say “hi” to my parents. As you might imagine, effective communication is essential, and WAIS camp packs such conveniences as a satellite phone. We still have a high-frequency (HF) radio, its glory days only going back a few decades… calls to home used to consist of you, the caller, the receiver (say, my parents), and about a dozen ham radio operators stretching across Antarctica and up through South and North America. My how times have changed!

0930 rolled around and Patrick, one of the Ice Coring and Drilling Services (ICDS) folk, began his “Coffee Corner”. Not only is Patrick an old hand at working in Antarctica, he also managed a Starbucks Coffee back in the US. Today we sampled an extra-bold Sumatran coffee and a medium organic, shade-grown Mexican coffee. I could fill the next couple paragraphs discussing the pros and cons of blade versus burr grinders, or the differences between materials used to make coffee presses – suffice it to say and despite our location, comforts do abound at WAIS!

The “big task” of the day involved me accompanying Bess (the Maine voice) to her snow pit site. Unlike John who is looking at stratigraphy and physical properties, Bess is looking at trace elements. The site and sampling techniques used must have a high level of “clean-ness”, so we placed this site well upwind of the predominant wind direction of the camp. We are in an area aptly called “the clean air sector”. We created a flag-line to her site from the arch as well as set up a tent at her site as equipment storage and emergency shelter. It was a nice way to recall those skills learned in Happy Camper school (and I must say our snow wall looks pretty nice and functional).

If you notice the weather notes, you’ll see that we had complete cloud cover. In a place like WAIS, where it is already expansively flat and incredibly white, an overcast day can turn a mundane drive on a snow mobile into a harrowing rollercoaster ride. The available light, termed “flat light” in aviation parlance, severely diminishes your ability to discern surface features. Not only do you lose the horizon (the sky and ground melt into one continuous backdrop of grey), you lose all of the bumps and dips that are wind-carved into the snow (sastrugi). We made it to her site and back with only a few unseen jumps and side-hills – yes, it was fun!

All in all, a great Sunday! My parents know I’m okay and not too cold, I now know the difference between fully-washed and semi-washed coffee beans, and Bess and I learned the important Antarctic lesson that you should always check behind your snowmobile when racing home to make dinner lest you accidentally leave a sled laden with backpacks and equipment behind.

WAIS - Dec 14, 2008 - Ken

2008-12-14T09:27:00.000-08:00

December 14, 2008

Hello,

We made significant progress this week. The weather has been mostly calm and clear, so camp has been able to catch up on removing the drifts. ICDS lowered the drill to the bottom of the hole with no noteworthy equipment problems. The fluid level in the hole was still above the pore close off depth at the same depth as last year thanks to the ICDS design of sealing the ice/casing contact using O-rings. The cooling system in the core processing area has brought the air temperature down to -30 C, which will be great for minimizing the thermal stress on the brittle ice, however it does come at the cost of significant thermal, noise, and wind shock on the core processing crew. We have been conducting training on the core processing and drilling procedures, and we had an accident response drill that included three simulated victims. We are all set to start drilling and hoping to recover our first core on Monday.

Cheers,

Ken

WAIS - Dec 13, 2008 - Susanne

2008-12-13T06:16:00.000-08:00

Susanne Lilja Buchardt

Date: 13th of December 2008
Location: WAIS Divide field camp
Time: 19.30
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -22°C ( °F)
Wind speed: 3 kt
Visibility: Good
Clouds: Thin clouds
Wind direction: Roughly from the North
Relative Humidity: 75%
Precipitation: Ice crystals falling, making a halo around the sun
Animals: Crazy scientists
Breakfast: Eggs, potatoes
Lunch: Burritos
Supper: Pizza and minestrone soup

Today we woke up to a beautiful day with a little more wind than the last few days. Everybody had slept very well, and we soon found out why. The generator by the arch had stopped running sometime during the night making it nice and quiet in ‘tent city’ where most people in camp sleep. Tent city is located a few minutes’ walk from the centre of camp. To many of us the very centre of camp is the galley, which is heated, and where everybody eats. Around the galley there are other heated jamesway buildings (like a very big tent) housing offices, medical equipment, showers and some sleeping quarters. Some 300 m from the galley we find the arch where the ice core drilling and core handling takes place. Since the generator was not running, there were no lights in the arch, so we could not continue our work in there and it was evident, that the first ice core would not be drilled today as we had hoped. We decided to go make sure our tents could withstand a storm, because the forecast said that we could expect strong winds in the afternoon. After about an hour, our tents looked good and the generator was up and running again, making it possible to continue making core trays ready to receive the ice core, which will hopefully start coming up early next week.

In the afternoon the people working in the arch (drillers and core handlers) did an emergency exercise. The medical crew in camp had arranged a scenario with three people acting the victims of an accident with a falling ladder. It was then the task of the arch crew to tend to them as good as possible. The camp medical crew was there, but just as everyone thought professional assistance was readily available, we found out that they were only there to film the events, so we were truly on our own. It was a very good exercise, and I think we learnt a lot from it – if nothing else, it showed how vulnerable we can be out here in the middle of nowhere, and that being dressed for Antarctic conditions does not make it easier to check for signs of life… After the exercise we all gathered to watch the film taken during the exercise to assess what was good and what could be done better.

After that we enjoyed a nice Saturday night dinner, and now I can hear laughter and loud voices from the galley which means I have been blogging for too long and that it is time to join the party.

Final comment: We never saw anything of the storm today – maybe we will tomorrow?

WAIS - Dec 12, 2008 - Bess

2008-12-12T06:15:00.000-08:00

Bess Koffman

Date: 12-12-08
Location: WAIS Divide field camp
Time: 2300
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -18 °C (~0°F)
Wind speed: km/h (3-5 mp/h)
Visibility: unlimited
Clouds: high ceiling
Wind direction: NW
Relative Humidity: dry
Precipitation: light snow
Animals: we thought we might see a “beware of dog” sign posted by the skiway, but no such luck… it was just a piece of plywood painted black, likely for visibility observations.
Breakfast: Scones, scrambled eggs, bacon, canned apricots
Lunch: hamburgers and bratwurst on homemade bread buns
Supper: Chicken soup, cod fillets, rice, veggies, delicious challah
Photo notes:

Yet another new reporter… Bess here, representing the Maine voice. Today was pretty long. I know, I know, you’re thinking that all our days are 24 hours long and we have continuous sunlight, right? Well, of course that’s true. But on certain days, the time between breakfast and dinner just feels longer than our 10-hour shift. Today was such a day. For me, the day began (after breakfast, yoga, and brushing my teeth) with helping prepare to dig a snow pit. My colleague John needed to dig a 2-m pit in order to look at the stratigraphy in the snow and make some physical measurements such as density. So five of us gathered our clothes, snacks, water and hot tea and helped John load all his supplies onto the sled, towed by a snowmobile. We needed plywood to cover the pit, so drifting snow wouldn’t fill it back up. We had to bring flags to mark the pit so we could find it again (and so it wouldn’t become a tiger trap to catch the next poor sucker who drove over it!). We brought shovels and saws for cutting blocks out of the snow. Other than that, Marie came along to film the whole thing and brought her video camera and tripod. So we drove away, two on the snowmobile and three piled up on the gear in the back. The pit’s location was chosen to be a couple km from camp, near one of the previous ice core boreholes (WDC-05A). And then we got to work digging.
By 11:30, we had created a lovely snowpit with four big steps leading down to the lowest level, a full 7.5 feet below the surface. One of our tallest guys, Tim, was fully buried in it. The temperature was surprisingly cold down in the pit. The snow stays around -25 C, which is about -5 F. Pretty chilly!
After lunch I headed back into the Arch as a new team of snowpit diggers went out to dig a neighboring pit (allowing us to get a backlit wall, which shows the snow layers). The afternoon consisted of basic grunt labor, nothing too interesting. I was ready to sit down when 18:00 rolled around and we got to eat dinner. As I said, it was a long day.
Our after-dinner ski was definitely the highlight of the day. Natalie, Tim, Logan and I (your reporters) headed out to the skiway after determining that no planes would be landing. The skiway is a broad, groomed track that is well flagged on both sides, perfect for skate-skiing and classic alike. We skied out to one end of the track and stopped to admire the halo around the sun. It had been there all day. Logan had the idea to take pictures silhouetted against the sky, and that’s how our fun began.
It started with stationary shots. Person on skis, holding poles to the side, smiling. Then came the low-angle shots, with the sun blocked behind one’s body, making a great dark profile. It evolved into jumping, cartwheeling, and doing headstands and handstands. Logan and I did headstands facing away from each other and managed some pretty sweet scissor kicks. Once our hands got wet from the snow, we reluctantly put our skis back on and made our way back to camp. It was a wonderful, fun evening.

WAIS - Dec 11, 2008 - Natalie

2008-12-11T06:14:00.000-08:00

Natalie Kehrwald

Date: 12-11-2008
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 5:45
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Temperature: -17 to -25 °C
Wind speed: 3 km/h
Visibility: Clear to the horizon this morning; now clear near camp
Clouds: Surface fog on the horizon (moving in); broken clouds at 10,000 feet
Wind direction: 280 grid
Relative Humidity: 77%
Barometric Pressure: 28.32
Precipitation: None
Animals: None
Breakfast: Blueberry pancakes
Lunch: Roasted chicken, couscous, and minestrone soup
Supper: My tummy is rumbling in anticipation

This is Natalie Kehrwald adding to Tim and Logan’s blog entries.

Everyone from the science team and ice core drillers are now here in WAIS and we can feel the excitement of getting closer to the beginning of drilling. The past few days have been great because each day would bring a huge LC-130 into camp carrying our friends and necessary cargo. When we could hear a plan in the distance, the whole camp would stop working and run or snowmobile over to the runway (also the skiway). The plane drops off cargo while it is taxiing to a stop, and then suddenly you are surrounded by your friends that just got off the plane. It is very fun to watch people’s faces as they experience looking at the wide, wide horizon of WAIS for the first time. Although the pilots are used to flying here regularly and often keep their planes running while picking up people or cargo to bring back to McMurdo, on this last flight they were interested in getting a tour of WAIS and learning about the ice core that we are drilling.

Now that everyone is here and settled, we have been spending full days getting ready to drill and ensuring that we are ready for changing conditions. Because we have been so lucky with the weather, this morning we were discussing ways of weather-proofing our tents while it is still nice out and while we can plan ahead. Some good ideas include:
Keeping all of your belongings inside a zipped duffel. This way if the wind blows your tent door open, your clothes, etc. will not be scattered across the ice sheet. I heard that this has happened more than once.
Make a wall about three feet high on the southern side of the tent since most storms come from this direction. This is basically like making a snow fort – you can saw blocks out of the snow and construct what you want out of them.
Make sure you have a supply of food and (non-frozen) water in your tent in case you are trapped in your tent by a storm. If you open your tent door and cannot see the next tent or the flag line, you should definitely not leave your tent. Our tents are set up on a grid somewhat like a Bingo chart (I am G6) so that we can easily know where the next tent is if a storm should develop.

This afternoon we can see a surface fog circling most of the horizon and it moves closer by the hour. My first day at camp a similar weather pattern developed, and the fog went from a line on the horizon to enveloping our camp within four hours. We have had remarkably good weather and that night’s fog was the only time it has been cloudy at all. I keep hearing stories of how last year there were only three completely sunny days during the working period and how unusual these days of sunny sparkling snow really are. I am planning to go for a ski after dinner (yum – the food here has been amazing) in order to take full advantage of the sun while it is shining.

WAIS - Dec 10, 2008 - Tim

2008-12-10T06:13:00.000-08:00

Tim Bartholomaus

Date: 12-10-2008
Location: WAIS Divide
Time: 11:45
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Visibility: Clear, clear to the horizon
Clouds: Some patchy clouds on the horizon
Precipitation: None
Animals: None but the camp folks starting to look a little scruffy
Breakfast: Biscuits and gravy with pineapple and cantaloupe
Lunch: Salmon with orzo and green beans with slivered almonds
Supper: Prime rib with crumbled blue cheese, mashed potatoes, steamed veggies (including brussel sprouts- which were actually tasty), and lime meringue pie for desert (yum!)

WAIS Divide is amazing! Tim Bartholomaus here- after Logan's great start getting the blog going, we're starting a rotation in order to include a diversity of voices and distribute the reporting responsibilities. I got into camp on yesterday's C-130 flight, so today was my first full day out on the "flat white." And I'm really stunned. Every time I pick my head up, and look beyond the clear edges of our camp, I just smile and get all giddy. Being out on this expanse evokes so many interesting emotions. Certainly there's joy and happiness, but a sense of awe, appreciation for the rare privilege to live and work here for a couple months, and a touch of anxiety- just enough to give a thrill. The camp is really huge and extremely well equipped. We've all got so many sets of warm layers we could probably comfortably sit still in a storm at 40 below, but when I look out to the subtly textured, untrammeled snow that surrounds our camp, I am humbled. We are as close to the middle of nowhere as I could possibly imagine, and although the weather has been utterly lovely the past two days, the long and deep snow drifts that pile up behind the buildings in camp are good reminders of how fierce and unforgiving this landscape can be. Although there are flags (more like pennants on bamboo poles) marking trails all throughout camp, if one were to become lost or disoriented out on the great flat white, you could be seeing some tough times ahead, for sure. But well beyond these background, spooky thoughts, I am continuously impressed by the beauty of the light and shadows cast against the snow surface, how unlike anywhere else I've been this place is, and how lucky I feel to be here.

But I also feel like today was our first real day of work. Sure, we were pretty busy at times during our stay in McMurdo, but so much of that was in training courses, and the remainder where the little odds and ends to make sure that the project and ourselves had everything we'd need when we arrived in camp. Well, now we've arrived and there is Plenty to do. Today was a very busy day and I could write pages- but that would take a long time and in all likelihood, would be a least a little boring to some of you readers. Instead, I'm going to list a few things I'm surprised by and a few things I'm not surprised by.

Surprises:
- The camp is way bigger than I had imagined. There are 53 people here now- which I was expecting- but there's SO much stuff here- logistics and infrastructure stuff, recreation stuff, a large, almost entirely separate complex surrounding the drilling arch and an area about the size of two football fields dotted with cargo.
- The camp is Extremely well provided for. For example- There's even a separate little tent-building set aside for "science" office space, from which one may comfortably compose a blog entry. Our head cook, John, is the 11-year executive chef for a very nice restaurant in Acadia National Park, the Jordan Pond House. The food here in camp is excellent.
- I didn't sleep well last night. I always sleep well, but I woke up a couple times last night, including once at 2:15 am, and was taken aback by my brightly glowing tent walls. I'm almost sure it has to do with not being used to the bright, 24-hr light. I'm sleeping with a little mask on tonight.
- We (i.e.- the core handlers and I) joined the camp work/construction crews this morning for 15 minutes of yoga and stretching. I think this was actually my first time doing yoga in any kind of intentional way. One of the last things I expected at WAIS Divide was to be down on mats with a bunch of (mostly) dudes in Carhartts doing yoga to start out the work day. How civilized!
- I've taken a fair bit of pride in moving into my tent. I kind of expected I'd just treat it as a place to lay my head until the end of January, but during my limited free time, my "denning" instinct has come out and I've happily spent time in my tent, trying to get it organized and make it cozy and comfortable. I contentedly hung Christmas ornaments sent to me by my parents from the ceiling of my tent this afternoon.
- It's been a bit of a shock getting back into working mode, with schedules to keep. I'm really glad to finally be working on what I was brought down here to do, but I'll admit somewhat sheepishly that I had gotten used to the relaxed lifestyle in McMurdo.
- The corollary to this last one is the satisfaction one gets from working hard and efficiently as a team. Our crew has come together well and it's fun getting stuff done together.
- The excitement of being out here at WAIS divide has not dimmed one bit. Sure, I've only been here for 36 hrs, but I'm really loving the landscape and the camp.

Not surprises:
- Our tents, called Arctic Ovens, really are as warm as we were told. It was 65 degrees in mine when I got up this morning.
- It's about as cold working in -20 deg C (-4 deg F) temperatures as I expected. That is, it's really quite cold, and if you don't take care of yourself, you can get cold fingers or face or body quickly. But it's also quite possible to be warm, especially if up and moving around.
- I do miss my girlfriend, friends and family, and really wish I could share this place with them.
- Skate skiing out across the ice sheet, with a bit of an orange tint to the clouds off on the horizon, and the sharp, clear, lower-angle light of evening, is as cool as I thought it would be.

WAIS - Dec 9, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-09T06:11:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell

Date: 12-9-2008
Location: WAIS Divide, Antarctica
Time: 11 pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Animals: Arctic Turn or Snow Petrol
Breakfast: Eggs and hashbrowns
Lunch: Cheese sandwiches w/ calmative olives
Supper: Ribs, vegetables, and Thai fish soup.

I woke up to another perfect weather day. There was no wind to speak of and bluebird skies all day long. In the morning Marie, Susanne and I set up our tents. The tents we are staying in are called Arctic Ovens and are some of the most burly (and heavy) tents that I’ve ever seen. Think of a modern version of a Scott tent. They are very big as well, with the floor about 9’ x 9’ and about 5’ tall. This is especially nice because I can almost stand up in the tent which will make it easier to change in the tent. They are yellow and very bright, and I wonder if I will be able to sleep? Eventually I’ll get tired enough I guess. I can’t express how nice it was to finally unpack my bags and organize myself in my tent. For the past 3 weeks I’ve been living out of heavy duffel bags that were overflowing, checking in and out of rooms, and getting on so many flights that I was never really organized and it always took me a long time to find anything which is really frustrating for someone who is used to not bringing a lot of things on long trips and being very organized. It’s just so nice to be organized now and know that I’ll be here for about 7 weeks.

Things are coming along with getting the drill set up and hopefully we will be able to drill our first meter of core on Friday. We’ll see.

At ~3pm a LC-130 arrived with the final load of ice core handlers and drillers. Now we have the entire crew here who will be working on the ice core. The camp population is 52 people right now including us and the camp staff (cooks, medics, mechanics, electricians, etc). Meeting all of these people and seeing all of the equipment and infrastructure that is needed to drill an ice core is really making it sink into my mind just how valuable ice from an ice core really is, and it certainly is giving me a greater appreciation for how precious the samples that I measure are.

While we were setting up our tents we saw an awesome snow white bird which had long angular tapered wings, but nobody here knows if it was an Arctic Turn or Snow Petrol. The weather for the past few days has been excellent so it didn’t get blown in on a storm, it must have flown here from the coast. I’m not sure exactly how far it is, but I think it is a few hundred miles! I have no idea why it would fly this far inland, or what it eats on the way, but I feel fortunate to have seen it! I think it is a good omen for the drilling season.

From now on the other core handlers will be writing some of the blog entries along with me. Hopefully they will give a different perspective on things and make the blog a little more interesting than my skattered notes. :-) In a week or so I’ll send a couple CDs of photos back to the U.S. so they can be added to the blog.

WAIS - Dec 8, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-08T06:10:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell

Date: 12-8-2008
Location: WAIS Divide, Antarctica
Time: 11 pm
Latitude: 79°28’1.2”S
Longitude: 112°5’6.0”W
Elevation: 1,759m
Latitude: 79’°S
Longitude: 112.085°W
Elevation: 1,759m
Breakfast: Skipped
Lunch: Meatloaf, lentil loaf, mashed potatoes, and turkey sandwich.
Supper: Trail mix on a plane & an apple.

Timeline:
5:30 PM – Check in and take a shuttle out to Willy’s Airfield.
6:00 PM – Board plane.
6:30 PM – Take off.
6:40 PM – Loadmaster (the guy who loads the plane & takes care of the passengers) offers coffee to everyone on the plane.
7:10 PM – 23,000 ft high and just saw a gigantic crevasse.
9:30 PM – Starting the descent.
9:45 PM – Landed at the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Divide!!!!!

I finally made it to WAIS Divide!! The LC-130 flight was again very enjoyable. The crew was very friendly and I was surprised that the loadmaster even offered in flight drinks! They even figured out how to regulate the heat on this plane so that it wasn’t too hot. There were only 5 passengers, Marie, Susanne, two other twin otter pilots and myself. The twin otter pilots will be working out of WAIS divide and stocking a resupply depot for a science expedition that is traversing across the WAIS. Our flight is mostly full of cargo, with most of it being equipment for the ice core drill.

Flying out of McMurdo, we quickly left all topography behind us. After only 40 minutes the horizon was a perfectly flat line. Then, the flight crew pointed out this gigantic crevasse in the ice sheet. I’m actually not really sure it was a crevasse because it was so big, but I don’t know what else it could be. It is hard to judge size from 23,000 ft in the air, but the crevasse (or whatever it was) looked like it extended many miles and must have been hundreds of feet wide. I wonder if there is a slope change at this point? I should have asked the pilot for the lat/lon of this feature, but I didn’t. Hopefully I’ll remember to do it on the way back. During the rest of the flight I listened to the first CD of The Audacity of Hope by our President-elect, Barack Obama (thanks Ariel, Rachel & Coleen for sending it to me!!) which was a great way to spend a couple of hours in a noisy plane. Looking out of the windows the ice sheet looks like a vast white ocean.

We landed too late in the day to set up our tents, so we are sleeping in a jamesway. Jamesways are a cross between a building and a tent: they have a rigid structure that is in the shape of a half oval covered with a very thick canvass material. The jamesways here all have diesel burning stoves that are left on all the time, so we are plenty warm. The weather when we landed was clear blue skies above us with some high clouds off in the distance. It is noticeably colder, but there is no wind.

That’s all for now. Its been a busy day. I’m so happy I FINALLY made it here!! It has taken me exactly 3 weeks to travel from Portland, OR to WAIS Divide.

WAIS - Dec 7, 2008 - Ken

2008-12-07T08:31:00.000-08:00

From Ken Taylor

We have made slow progress in the past week. Half of the drill and core handling crew are at WAIS, and the rest are in McMurdo waiting for flights. We had several days of unusually clear and calm weather, which helped our cargo situation. We have most, but not all, of the equipment we need to start operations. The rest of the equipment and crew should be coming in a few days. We are setting up the equipment we have and preparing the arch.

The camp is still operating a bit slowly because the tracked forklift that is used for moving heavy loads and clearing snow is not operational. The RPSC construction crew is doing a good job supporting us. The construction crew is lead by Billy Texter, who has been has been providing construction support for the project since the Greenland drill test four years ago. It will be another two weeks before we are ready to start drilling with three shifts.

McMurdo Station - Dec 7, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-07T06:08:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell

Date: 12-7-2008
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 1:00am
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Temperature: -2°C (28°F)
Wind speed: 6 knots
Wind Chill: -6°C (21°F)
Visibility: Unrestricted
Wind direction: E
Relative Humidity:
Barometric Pressure: 28.785
Precipitation: None
Animals: None
Brunch: Pancakes, eggs, fresh fruit (pineapple & watermelon!!)
Supper: Pork & salmon, scalloped potatoes, bread.

Tim and I rented skis and went skiing today around the ~10 mile Castle Rock loop. Well, I guess that isn’t all true. I didn’t check to make sure that my bindings fit my skis (I was assuming that they would work since there weren’t that many pairs of skis) which they didn’t. I guess I had x-country skis and skate ski boots. So, I ran most of the way with skis strapped to my backpack while Tim skied (he felt sorry for me so he let me use his skis for awhile). It was a surprisingly nice run!

Marie, Susanne, and I are scheduled to fly tomorrow so I wanted to describe what it is like to get ready for a flight. All of the luggage on a flight is palletized on a large pallet so to speed the process up you have to “check in” the night before, but it is called “bag drag”. When you fly you have to be wearing all of your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear which includes the large down jacket (big red), bunny boots (the funny lookin white boots), snow bib, warm hat, and glacier glasses. So, when you bag drag, you have to drop off everything you have except your ECW gear and whatever you can fit in a small carry on. That is all you have to wear for that night and, if your plane is canceled then it is all you will have for a day or two until they take your gear off of the large pallet. Lets just hope that our flight actually gets out tomorrow.

McMurdo Station - Dec 5, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-05T05:54:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 12-5-2008
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 10 pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Temperature: -5°C (22°F)
Wind speed: 18 km/h (12 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -14°C (7°F)
Visibility: 11 km (12 miles)
Clouds: Mostly cloudy
Wind direction: East
Relative Humidity: 41%
Barometric Pressure: 981 hPa (28.96 in)
Precipitation: None
Animals: None
Breakfast: Eggs, bacon, blueberry pastry
Lunch: Turkey sandwich, fritos, and a pickle.
Supper: Potato salad with apple pie for dessert.

Photo
Weddell seal on the sea ice in front of McMurdo Station

Today was our first day in Antarctica that we didn’t have lots of things to do all day. It was nice to have a somewhat free day to get caught up on things. We will have a pretty good internet connection here which is both good and bad. I can upload pictures, but I can also check the New York Times and see what Obama is up to. I was able to make a few phone calls back home which were a lot of fun. How often do you get a phone call from Antarctica?

McMurdo Station - Dec 4, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-04T05:54:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 12-4-2008
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 11 pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Animals: 3 Waddell Seals, 1 Skua
Breakfast: Blueberry pancakes, eggs
Lunch: Turkey sandwich with lots of freshies!
Supper: Steak, mashed potatoes, green beans. Mint Oreo cream pie for desert.

Photo
Inside Scott's Discovery Hut

Today we had lots of classes. First up at 8am was the Environmental Awareness class where we learned a bit about the efforts that are being made (and are expected of us) to keep Antarctica as pristine as possible. After that we went to the best class so far: snowmobile class! The instructor (Joe) was really funny and we learned how to diagnose and fix simple mechanical problems. Then we went out and got to drive snowmobiles around an obstacle course on the sea ice! The obstacle course had flags set up that we could slalom through and hills to go up and over. It was a ton of fun!

At dinner we found out that our flight has been pushed back yet again. This will allow me a little bit more time to work (procrastinate) on the blog. After dinner we went over to Scott base (the main Kiwi base of Antarctic operations which is only a 30 minute walk from McMurdo) for “American” night which happens on every Thursday. It was fun to get to hang out with Kiwis! On the way over to Scott base we saw a few Waddell seals from a distance and one Skua (looks like a grey seagull). One funny thing about the Kiwi base is that they painted all of their buildings green. I don’t know if there is a specific reason for this, or if they just wanted to have some color in their lives.

McMurdo Station - Dec 3, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-03T05:53:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 12-3-2008
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 10 pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Breakfast: trail mix and old oatmeal (I didn’t eat any)
Lunch: Hummus sandwiches and potato chips.
Supper: Roast beef, potatoes and bread

Photo
The view across the sea ice form the top of Observation Hill

Today was the second day of Happy Camper class. Today was less fun, but still interesting. We had a few classes on radio communication and risk management. We got to practice with VHF and HF radios. We set up the HF radio and called the South Pole station which is over 1,300 km (~800 miles) away! After Happy Camper we came back to McMurdo & rested.

Ken was able to get on a flight out to WAIS today! We are scheduled to fly on Friday.

McMurdo Station - Dec 2, 2008 - Ken

2008-12-02T07:02:00.000-08:00

Update provided by Dr. Kendrick Taylor

Hello,

Operations are progressing slowly. RPSC has the camp up and running, but problems with the Cat 953 (tracked forklift) and Tucker have reduced our ability to move cargo and snow. Compounding the issue is a recent 100 hour period of wind and drifting that obliterated much of the digging that RPSC had already completed. RPSC is trying to get another mechanic and equipment operator to WAIS Divide to help deal with the equipment and drifting. All of the SCO crew and most of the drill crew are in McMurdo. Geoff Hargreaves (NICL- USGS) is at WAIS Divide. Jay Johnson and I are hoping to get out in a day or so. The rest of the crew should get out soon after that. Considering what the weather has been and the equipment difficulties, I am expecting the delays to continue.

We appreciate the positive attitude of the RPSC staff, especially those that helped us get through McMurdo quickly by scheduling additional classes. For those of us that have been coming down for a while, it is good to catch up with our polar buddies that we have known for years. For the newbies, there is the excitement of being on the Ice for the first time.

Cheers,

Ken
Also see http://www.waisdivide.unh.edu/ProjectUpdates/ViewProject

McMurdo Station - Dec 2, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-02T05:52:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 12-2-2008
Location: Ross Ice Shelf, Antarctica
Time: 8pm
Latitude: 77°50'22.37"S
Longitude: 166°46'52.61"E
Elevation: ~3m (9’)
Breakfast: Omelette, pancakes, and JoJos.
Lunch: Hummus + cheese sandwichs (2) and potato chips.
Supper: “Alpinaire” dehydrated dinners (similar to Mountain House) dated October 31, 2001.

Photo
Happy camper school

Today I woke up at 6am to work on the blog a little bit before breakfast. It was so weird to stumble out of my pitch black room into a crowded corridor full of people and then looking outside at broad daylight. I’ve been down here a couple of days already and it still surprises me every time.

Today we started “Happy Camper school”. This is a short two day class that is meant to be a crash course on how to stay alive in Antarctica if you somehow get stranded in the middle of nowhere (like in a plane crash). (On a side note, isn’t everywhere in Antarctica the middle of nowhere?) We have two instructors and 18 students. After sitting through a few lectures about how to dress, how to work a MSR Whisperlite International stove etc, we drove back towards Willy airfield and out onto the Ross Ice Shelf and played in the snow! The first task was constructing a bombproof camp. We built a quinsy big enough to sleep 4 people, set up two Scott tents, dug three “graves”, and set up three 4-season tents. To construct the quinsy we piled up all of our gear bags, put a tarp over it, covered the mound of gear with 18” of snow and then dug a hole in from the bottom, moved all the gear bags out and viola, you have a super strong snow shelter! A Scott tent made out of yellow cotton canvass and is shaped like a pyramid with a wooden pole in each corner. These tents have been standard fare for Antarctic exploration for the past 50 years because they are almost indestructible. The only downside is that they weigh ~100 lbs, so they would be a little tough to take backpacking. (This is where I am sleeping tonight) A “grave” is an aptly named snow shelter. To make one you dig a hole in the show in the shape of a grave then cover the top with blocks of ice once you are inside. This is a fast efficient shelter that could keep you alive during a storm, the only thing wrong with it that I could see is that I’d worry that nobody would find me if I was sleeping in one.

Once all of the tents were up the instructors showed us how to set up a snow block quarry and we built a 50’ long, 3’ high wall of snow blocks to shelter the tents. The weather had been worsening throughout the day and it began to snow heavily, but there was no wind. The air temperature was just below freezing so we were getting big fat fluffy snowflakes. At this point the instructors wished us luck in surviving the night and went back to their heated hut for the night! We were still full of energy and while some folks continued digging out their shelters, some of us began to wonder what we could construct out of snow blocks from our quarry and finally decided to build a bridge. We came up with the design & started cutting out all of the blocks that we would need. In the middle of this we broke for dinner which was made entertaining when we again began discussing the age of our meals. We found an expiration date on some of the dehydrated meals to be October 31, 2001! For desert we had chocolate bars, one of which had to be at least a decade old because even though it was pure milk chocolate, it looked like white and brown marble. Tim & Spruce tried it and said it tasted like cardboard. I’ve eaten a lot of weird things in my life, but I’ve decided that I’m drawing a line when it comes to decade old chocolate bars.

Around 11:30pm we had finished cutting all of the blocks for our masterpiece, but we decided that it would be more feasible to build an arch instead of a bridge. The weather cleared up at this point and showed us that the short snowstorm had left us with ~3” of fresh snow. We began stacking the blocks and Marie & I plus two others used our bodies to hold up the leaning sides of the arch as Tim and a few more people placed the final keystone pieces on it. By 12:30 am we finished the arch and the sun came out showing us a beautiful Antarctic “night” which looked suspiciously like the “day”. I’m not sure exactly how low the sun gets on the horizon, but it isn’t anywhere close to setting. We used the leftover snow blocks to construct a bench and table, took lots of pics and then went to bed. What a great day!

McMurdo Station - Dec 1, 2008 - Logan

2008-12-01T05:52:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 12-1-2008
Location: McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 11pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Temperature: -8 °C ( °F)
Wind speed: 7-12 knots km/h ( mp/h)
Wind Chill: -12 °C (°F)
Visibility: unrestricted
Clouds: partly cloudy
Breakfast: Eggs & potatoes
Lunch: Sandwiches
Supper: Chili & roast beef & kiwi

We have been quite busy all day today getting gear together & running errands. It was really nice that Ken had jobs for us to do all around town because it forced us to get to know our way around town a little bit and meet people. For example, I went & checked out the satellite phone for the WAIS Divide camp for the season. I got to meet all the folks who issue communications devices to field camps and learned a little about all of the different things they have.

The rest of the core handling crew flew on a C-17 and arrived this evening, so once again we are all together! During dinner the conversation was about how old the food we were eating might be. Most of the food here is brought by a huge freighter that comes once a year sometime in February when the sea ice has broken up. McMurdo is stocked so that it would have enough food to last ~3 years in case one year the resupply couldn’t make it due to an iceberg blocking the sea channel to McMurdo. In any case, we found out from an unofficial source that the veggies we were eating were probably 1-7 years old and that the dry goods (flour, sugar, etc) were probably older. I wonder how old the oldest food that has been consumed here in McMurdo is? Now I understand why people are so excited when fresh fruit is flown in from New Zealand. McMurdo also has a greenhouse, but I don’t know how much of our food comes from it.

New Zealand - Nov 30, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-30T05:51:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-30-2008
Location: Christchurch, NZ to McMurdo Station, Antarctica
Time: 10 pm
Latitude: 77°50'46.42"S
Longitude: 166°39'59.78"E
Elevation: 34m (112’)
Temperature: -5 °C ( °F)
Wind Chill: -10 °C (°F)
Breakfast: Trail mix snack
Lunch: Bag lunch: sandwich, chips, granola bar, apple, water.
Supper:

Photos
Me in front of the LC-130
The inside of the plane. Note the sleeping people, seating on the side of
A closer look at the drift ice…
Land Ho!!! This was my first sight of Antarctica!
Ivan the shuttle bus.
McMurdo Station from Observation Hill.
tall.
Timeline:
5:30 AM – Wake up.
6:00 AM – Catch the shuttle to the airport.
7:15 AM – Check in.
9:00 AM – Take off from Christchurch!!
3:00 PM – First sight of Antarctica!!
5:00 PM – Land on Willy’s Airfield.
6:15 PM – Intro briefing for McMurdo.
7:30 PM – Ate dinner.
10:00 PM – Hiked up Observation Hill.
12:00 AM – Met some resident forklift drivers.
12:45 AM – Ate “Midrats” or Midnight Rations.
1:15 AM – Finally went to bed.

We are flying in a LC-130 which is a large cargo airplane operated by the U.S. National Guard with 4 propeller engines and a combination of skis and wheels for landing gear. Since it’s a military plane it is very basic and very loud. The airplane we were supposed to fly on was the C-17 which is larger, has 4 jet engines, and it can fully retract its landing gear, so its much faster and quieter. As such, our flight is going to be 8-10 hours instead of 4-5 hours for the C-17. On the flip side however, the LC-130 has a lot more windows which I am very happy about. Riding on this plane is Spruce, Natalie, Marie, Tim and I as well as ~15 military folks, some U.S. and some New Zealand. Right after we took off the military folks set up 5 cots to sleep on. It seemed to me that they had taken this flight so many times that they were not interested in the view, only in getting some rest while they were in the air. Two people also slept on top of the large pallet where all of our luggage was packaged. Once one of them got up I snagged that spot and slept for ~2 hours. It turned out to be quite comfortable! For ear protection they gave us earplugs, but I was excited about trying out my new noise canceling earbuds. They worked pretty well, but not as well as I was expecting/hoping. There are two “bathrooms”, the one at the front of the plane is just a urinal and the one at the back is a normal sit down toilet. Instead of doors/walls around the toilets there were curtains that could be folded back when the plane was taking off or landing. The only tricky thing was that since it is so loud in the plane, the only way to find out if someone is using the bathroom is by peeking behind the curtain. The plane was warmed by large hot air vents in the ceiling of the plane. This was nice except that they were too warm and if you were under the vents you got roasted!

The coolest thing about the flight was watching the progression of flying over open ocean, to seeing the first icebergs, to seeing lots of icebergs, to seeing the ocean almost totally covered in icebergs, to seeing the glacier and ice sheet covered mountains of Antarctica. The mountains we flew over were the Trans-Antarctic mountain range for about 3 hours of the flight. I have seen a lot of mountains and glaciers in my life, but these were by far the largest and most expansive.

We landed on Willy’s airfield which is just compacted snow on the Ross Ice Shelf! It is amazing to me that below the ice shelf there is seawater. From Willy’s airfield we took “Ivan” the terra bus over to McMurdo. Once we got into McMurdo we had our initial briefing about the town of McMurdo, ate dinner, and then went and got our luggage. After that Spruce & I hiked up Observation Hill (or Obb Hill for short) to get a view of the lay of the land. Even though I was mentally cognizant of the fact that the sun wouldn’t set while I was here, it was still surprising to be out hiking at 10pm at night and still be in broad daylight. After our hike we went exploring in a few of the buildings and we found the bouldering cave! I’m very excited about this, I had been told that there were some climbing holds on a wall, but not a full bouldering cave! I did bring my climbing shoes, and I’m hoping to get some bouldering in while I’m down here. We also met some people who are working here for the summer and hung out with them for awhile. This was fantastic because they gave us the low down on the fun things to do around McMurdo. Overall, I am really excited to finally be in Antarctica!!

Happy birthday Bess!

New Zealand - Nov 29, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-29T05:50:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-29-2008
Location: Devon Hotel in Christchurch, NZ
Time: 9pm
Latitude: 43°31'43.04"S
Longitude: 172°37'58.15"E
Elevation: 75 m (246’)
Breakfast: Blueberry muffin & another pastry
Lunch: skipped
Supper: Veggie lasagna & a salad.
Photo
View overlooking Akaroa.

Today we spent the day in Akaroa. Tim and I had some work to do so we spent most of the day at the hostel, but everyone else went out and had fun. Bess had probably the best day of her life, and tomorrow is her birthday! In the morning she went swimming with dolphins, in the afternoon Spruce taught her how to surf, ate incredible food all day, and in the evening saw an amazing shooting star. Also we got word that we could ride on a New Zealand crew change flight on Sunday morning! In the evening we drove back to Christchurch and got ready for our flight (again). I’m somewhat skeptical that we are going to actually fly this time.

New Zealand - Nov 28, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-28T05:49:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-28-2008
Location: Akaroa, New Zealand
Time: 8pm
Latitude: 43°48'15.80"S
Longitude: 172°58'4.32"E
Elevation: 3m
Breakfast: Toast & an apple.
Lunch: Chowder with mussels.
Supper: Fish & Chips.

At 11:35 pm last night we got the notice that our flight was going to be canceled due to weather. Since this weekend is the Thanksgiving holiday, there will be no more flights on Saturday or Sunday, so our next possible flight is next Monday. This is a bummer because it delays us even more, but also because I’ve heard that Thanksgiving is a lot of fun in McMurdo. Since we have a couple of days off we are heading to Akaroa for a couple of days. This is really nice for the people who just arrived, but I am antsy to get to Antarctica.

New Zealand - Nov 27, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-27T05:49:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-27-2008
Location: Devon Hotel in Christchurch, NZ
Time: 8pm
Latitude: 43°31'43.04"S
Longitude: 172°37'58.15"E
Elevation: 75 m (246’)
Breakfast: Eggs, bacon, hashbrows, yogurt & fruit.
Lunch: Apple & a roll.
Supper: Lots of Indian food

Photo
Thanksgiving dinner with the crew. From left to right it is: Marie DelGrego, Natalie Kehrwald, Tim Bartholomaus, Gifford Wong, Susanne Buchardt, Anais Orsi, Spruce Schoenemann, Bess Koffman, and Me.

Ken’s flight made it! We are scheduled to go to the airport at 12:30am tonight. Everyone is excited and hoping that our flight isn’t delayed. I again spent most of the day running around town & taking care of last minute errands. For Thanksgiving dinner we went out to an Indian restaurant with the whole group. It was lots of fun and I was quite happy to stuff myself by finishing off all of the leftover dishes once everyone else was full! I’m fattening myself up for Antarctica!

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone back home from New Zealand!

New Zealand - Nov 27, 2008 - Ken

2008-11-27T04:41:00.000-08:00

Hello,

Work is progressing at WAIS Divide. Major storms have slowed progress adding to the effort required to get the arch structure ready for drilling. The 2008 image shows how much the arch drifted over since the 2007 image. The top of the almost-buried arch in the foreground of the picture is 16'5" off of the 2005 snow surface (the arch was erected in 2005). All of the drillers (ICDS) and core handlers are in McMurdo. We hope to get 4 of them out to WAIS Divide on Wednesday, and the rest of the crew out to WAIS Divide later this week.

Cheers,
Kendrick Taylor

New Zealand - Nov 26, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-26T05:48:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-26-2008
Location: Devon Hotel in Christchurch, NZ
Time: 9pm
Latitude: 43°31'43.04"S
Longitude: 172°37'58.15"E
Elevation: 75 m (246’)
Breakfast: Eggs, bacon, hashbrows, yogurt & fruit.
Lunch: Korean seafood
Supper: Sushi

Spent the day walking around town & buying things that I realized that I might need/want in Antarctica. Not much to report though, just passing the time. Ken Taylor was able to get a seat on a plane leaving late this evening and the rest of us are supposed to fly tomorrow. The second wave of core handlers arrived in New Zealand today, so now we will all be heading to Antarctica together. The folks that arrived on this wave include Gifford, Bess, Tim, Susanne, and Marie.

New Zealand - Nov 25, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-25T05:47:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-25-2008
Location: Devon Hotel in Christchurch, NZ
Time: 10pm
Latitude: 43°31'43.04"S
Longitude: 172°37'58.15"E
Elevation: ~10 m (’)
Temperature: °C ( °F)
Wind speed: km/h ( mp/h)
Wind Chill: °C (°F)
Visibility:
Clouds:
Wind direction:
Relative Humidity:
Barometric Pressure:
Precipitation:
Animals: Dusky Dolphins!!! Also the Wandering Albatross.
Breakfast: Blueberry muffin & French bread with nutella
Lunch: An apple
Supper: Fish & rice. Chocolate cake for dessert.

Photos
Underwater photo of a dolphin swimming with me.
Spruce, Ken, Natalie, & Anais in their snorkeling gear.
Dolphins jumping (all of the white splashes are dolphins!).

Today I had an incredible experience, I swam with dolphins! We woke up at 5am, put on ~5mm wetsuits & snorkeling gear then got on the Dolphin Encounters boat & drove across the Kaikoura bay. It didn’t take long to find the pod of wild Dusky dolphins which are a type of bottle nosed dolphin. The Dolphin Encounter boat captain said that the pod of ~350-400 dolphins that we found was unusually large. The Dusky dolphins are 1.6-1.8m long and weigh 70-80kg. We drove to the front of the pod and the boat dropped us in the water. Visibility under the water was ~15 meters and the water was incredibly cold – my hands and feet which were not covered by the wetsuit were numb within minutes. The first thing that I noticed was how many dolphins swimming all around us…they were so graceful and beautiful! I felt incredibly clumsy in the water next to them, but they seemed to enjoy playing with us, like for example they would swim around me about 2 feet away while I tried to keep up with them by spinning in place so that we maintained eye contact. At one time I did this with a dolphin for almost two minutes! There is something very special with maintaining eye contact with an incredibly intelligent animal for that long. There was at least one baby dolphin that I saw in the pod as well. We got to swim around for ~15 minutes, then we got back in the boat, moved to a new spot, swam for ~15 more minutes, and then did it again for a total of ~45 minutes swimming with dolphins! After we were done swimming we got back in the boat and drove around for awhile. The dolphins would swim right in front of the bow of the boat and jump around just to the side of it!

Once back on land, we drove back to Christchurch only to find out that flights to Antarctica for the past couple of days had been delayed due to poor weather conditions and so we would also get delayed by two additional days. This will give me a chance to get caught up on other things I guess.

New Zealand - Nov 24, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-24T05:46:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-24-2008
Location: Dolphin Lodge, Kaikoura
Time: 10pm
Latitude: 42°24'14.08"S
Longitude: 173°40'57.40"E
Elevation: ~20 m
Wind speed: ~40-60 mph
Precipitation: heavy in the morning
Animals:
Breakfast: Musli & other leftover food
Lunch: Tuna and crackers
Supper: Fish & Chips

Last night it rained a lot! Spruce and I were sleeping in bivy sacks under a tarp and although we weren’t getting rained on directly, our bivy sacks were getting wet from the rain drops splashes. By the morning I realized that my bivy sack is no longer waterproof because my sleeping pad and sleeping bag were damp. At 10am we caught our scheduled Water Taxi (just a boat that takes people from beach to beach in this National Park) back to where our car was parked. Very convenient!! The first order of business was getting dry and then I drove us back to Kaikoura. Driving in New Zealand is a lot of fun because there are great roads, great scenery, and you drive on the left side of the road. I have some practice at this from when I lived in Nepal, but even so it took a few minutes to get used to it. The most common mistake is to turn on the windshield wipers instead of the blinker because they are on opposite sides. On our way to Kaikoura we stopped at the Ohau Point seal colony roadside pullout. There were at least a hundred seals hanging out on the rocks here! The greatest part was that there was a fairly large tidepool that was about the size of a small pool or a large hot tub where the juvenile seals would wrestle and play around a lot and just cause a ruckus. When we got to Kaikoura the wind had really picked up to about 40-60 mph and there were huge 10-12’ waves crashing on a sandy beach! It was very beautiful and also intimidating at the same time. Tomorrow we are supposed to swim with the dolphins, but I’m not quite sure if it will happen since the sea is so rough.

New Zealand - Nov 23, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-23T07:29:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-23-2008
Location: Medlands Beach, Abel Tasman National Park
Time: ~9pm
Latitude: 40°55'15.58"S
Longitude: 173° 3'16.92"E
Elevation: 2 m
Precipitation: light to heavy rain throughout the day
Animals: Birds including the New Zealand Bellbird and all black oystercatcher, sand flies

Breakfast: Muesli w/ dried fruit.
Lunch: Bagels w/ lettuce, cucumber, cheese, tuna.
Supper: Cuscus with Lamb and beef sauce from pouches.

Photo notes:

Spruce and Natalie in front of Cleopatra's pool
Spruce sliding down the waterslide into Cleopatra?s pool
Ken and Natalie on a suspension bridge over Falls River.

Hiked another ~11km today. Saw a neat pair of black oystercatcher birds that were feeding on critters in the sand. It rained most of the day and just about everything is totally soaked except for my sleeping bag, a spare shirt, and a pair of socks. We stopped briefly by Cleopatra's Pool which is a neat area of large granite boulders that have made natural pools. Despite the cold rain and no possibility of drying off, Spruce jumped in the even colder river and slid down the natural waterslide! The water was very brown from all of the tannins that were leeching out of the forest and into the river. One pleasant thing along the trail today was all of the beautiful bird calls from the New Zealand bellbirds. I only got a few fleeting glimpses of the bellbird, but I was able to record a video that has their calls on it. When we were setting up camp in the evening the weather cleared for a little bit, but the sand flies came out in force and were biting any exposed skin. The sand flies have been present all along the trail, but tonight they were especially bad. Because of the sand flies and rain we stopped in a hut again for a couple of hours to dry off & cook dinner.

New Zealand - Nov 22, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-22T07:27:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-22-2008
Location: Te Pukatea Bay, Abel Tasman National Park
Time: ~9 pm
Latitude: 40°57'9.92"S
Longitude: 173° 3'49.78"E
Elevation: 2 m
Temperature: ~15-20°C
Clouds:
Wind: light to moderate
Precipitation: light to moderate
Animals: Dead boar, lots of birds including the New Zealand Bellbird and quail, sand
flies, and lots of intertidal sea critters (hermit crab, flat worm, sea anemone, regular crabs, chitons, millipede, snails, etc)
Breakfast: Scones w/ New Zealand brand of Nutella (it had crunchy stuff in it like
crunchy peanut butter!) and peanut butter.
Lunch: Pita bread sandwiches w/ cheese, tuna, and cucumber.
Supper: Pasta with sundried tomato sauce and salmon.

Photo notes:
Millipede
Flat worm
Crab that is about the size of a pea!
Chiton
Closed sea anemone and barnacle
Hermit crab

We hiked ~7km today which we knew wouldn?t take all that long, so we took our time along the trail and had many stops. We met a hunting ranger on one beach who hunts wild boar in the Abel Tasman National Park. New Zealand has many introduced species that have dramatically impacted the natural flora and fauna, and now much is being done to try to control or eliminate these introduced species, one of which is the wild boar. Wild boar cause extensive damage because they dig up the forest floor in search of roots to eat. The ranger had parked his boat on the beach, but it became stranded when the tide went out and so we helped him push it back into the water so that he didn't have to wait for the tide to come back in. He had killed one boar that day which was sitting in the boat. He told us that he usually kills 2-3 boar when he goes hunting, but that he doesn't go every day. The way they kill the boar is they release dogs which have GPS transmitters attached to their collars, and when the dogs corner the boar, they follow the GPS track to where the boar is cornered and then shoot it. Its not really sporting, but then again they are going for efficiency and not sport. Low tide that day was right at lunchtime, so Spruce and I went searching for cool intertidal critters and we found a ton! By turning over a few rocks that looked devoid of sea critters on top we found whole communities on the undersides. The neatest find for me was a hermit crab. When I was a kid I used to live in Tucson, AZ and every summer we would come up to visit the Oregon Coast and one year my Mom allowed me to get a pet hermit crab. You could hold the hermit crab on your hand and it would come out of its shell and crawl around, so I decided to see if this New Zealand hermit crab would do the same thing, and it did! It was pretty shy though, and eventually it decided to just hide out in its shell until we left. The weather today was
cooler and the light to moderate rain is starting to soak most of our camping gear, but we are still in good spirits. There are a couple of huts at the larger campgrounds where we would stop and get out of the rain for a little bit.

New Zealand - Nov 21, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-21T07:25:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-21-2008
Location: Appletree Bay, Abel Tasman National Park
Time: 9pm
Latitude: 40°59'4.27"S
Longitude: 173° 2'13.21"E
Elevation: 2 m
Temperature: ~15-20°C
Clouds: High lenticular and scattered lower level cumulus
Animals: Deer, sheep, cows, birds, etc.Breakfast: veggie wrap
Lunch: Supermarket deli sandwich & chips
Supper: Thai yellow curry w/ Jasmine rice & red wine

Photo notes:
Morning view inland from our campsite.
The group from left to right: Ken Taylor, Spruce Shonneman, Natalie
Kehrwald, Anais Orsi.
NZ tree ferns.
Ken and Spruce on the trail.
Misc. beach that we passed.
Me overlooking the Abel Tasman National Park coastline.

In the morning as we were driving on a rutted dirt road leaving camp we hit a rock with the underside of the van. We didn't think much of it at the time, but after driving for a few hours we stopped for breakfast. After breakfast we noticed a pool of oil beneath the van which turned out to be coming from the transmission. On closer inspection we saw that the rock had put a sizeable dent in the transmission oil pan and deformed it so that it wasn't making a good seal and was leaking around the edge. We spent a couple of hours asking around town if there were any spare parts to fix it only to find out that this part is no longer made, there are no spare parts in the town we are in, and there aren't even spare parts in Japan where the van came from! After mulling over our predicament for awhile we finally tried to tighten the bolts around the transmission pan only to find out that they were very loose and that we stopped the leaking just by tightening the bolts!

What would a road trip be without a little car trouble to mix it up? We then finished
driving up to Abel Tasman National Park and began hiking at around 5pm. We only had a
couple of kilometers to go so we were at camp in short order and cooked up a delicious
dinner, watched another amazing sunset and went to bed happy.

New Zealand - Nov 20, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-20T07:21:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell
Date: 11-20-2008
Location: End of Old Beach Road, just north of Kaikoura
Time: 10 pm
Latitude: 42°19'56.38"S
Longitude: 173°43'41.75"E
Elevation: 2 m
Temperature: ~15-20°C
Animals: a few seals & lots of seabirds
Breakfast: Eggs, bacon, hash browns & toast at Devon Hotel
Lunch: Lamb meat pie and potato wedges at the Antarctica Visitor Center
Supper: Whole crayfish, whitefish patty, and rice at roadside shack.

Photo Notes:
Me in front of the Clothing Distribution Center.
My crayfish dinner!

After a relaxed morning we went to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) where we got outfitted with our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear. This included a huge down jacket (common called Big Red), another shell jacket, hard shell bibs, multiple sets of gloves, hats, fleece jackets and pants, and long underwear. This gear gets checked out every year by people working in Antarctica so most of it is used and quite a bit worn, but some of it is newish. After this we started driving north along the coast and we stopped in Kaikoura for dinner. Kaikoura is a Maori word with kai meaning food and koura meaning crayfish, so naturally I wanted to try some crayfish here. I was expecting to find crayfish like we have in the states, about 3-5" long, but boy was I surprised when they served me a crayfish that at about a foot long was as big as a small lobster! After dinner we headed out to a beach that a local had told us we could camp for free at. When we arrived we met a New Zealand fishing guide who was fishing for a type of shark called a rig right off the beach. He caught one that was about 3-1/2' long just before we arrived and it was really cool to check it out. We found out lots of interesting thing from him, like for example this past winter has been the first typical winter in about a decade in terms of weather and snowfall and rig is the best meat to use for fish & chips. After watching a gorgeous sunset we fell asleep on the beach.

New Zealand - Nov 19, 2008 - Logan

2008-11-19T03:10:00.000-08:00

Logan Mitchell from Oregon State University reporting

Date: 11-19-2008
Location: Christchurch, NZ
Time: 11 pm
Latitude: 43° 31.87‘ S
Longitude: 172° 37.27’ E
Elevation: 75 m (246’)
Temperature: ~18°C (~60°F)
Animals: Herds of sheep seen from the plane, butterflies in botanical garden.
Breakfast: Eggs, sausage and fresh fruit on the airplane.
Lunch: Thai food.
Supper: Rack of lamb ribs with roasted potatoes.

Today we arrived in New Zealand after a long series of flights. I began my trip from my hometown of Corvallis, OR on Nov 16, 2008. I drove up to Portland and visited my Dad for a day then on Monday, Nov 17, 2008 I got on a plane. I flew from Portland, OR to Los Angles, CA to Aukland, NZ to Christchurch, NZ. In total, I was in the air for ~16 hours. Since we crossed the international dateline, we skipped Tuesday and landed on Wednesday Nov 19, 2008. When we got off the plane in Christchurch we were met by a Raytheon employee who informed us that we would be staying in New Zealand until November 26 and not be flying immediately to McMurdo as planned because of delays at WAIS Divide. Later we found out that the delays were caused in part because the D4 bulldozer broke down. The D4 is essential for digging the camp out so it will take a lot more time than we anticipated to prepare the camp before the science crew can arrive. In light of this we made plans to go hiking along the northern coast of New Zealand in the Able Tasman National Park. After that we went out to see the sights around Christchurch. The difference between the Fall season in the Northern Hemisphere and the Spring season in the Southern Hemisphere was very apparent. The whole day we were marveling at the wonderful weather and at all of the New Zealanders out lying in the grass and soaking up the sun. We visited the botanical gardens where there is a wide variety of vibrant roses in full bloom as well as some more tropical plants. We also visited the local museum where we learned a lot about prehistoric flora and fauna of New Zealand, indigenous hunting practices, and the history of the great Antarctic explorers. Most importantly, I got to see my first penguin! All in all it has been a wonderful day.

WAIS - Nov 3, 2008 - Matthew Kippenhan

2008-11-03T12:45:00.001-08:00

WAIS Divide is back in action

Sunny but windy, between -32 C and -35 C.

WAIS Divide opened on Saturday, 11/01, via Basler at 2 pm. They refueled
the Basler and were in the modules by 3 pm. They quickly turned on
heat, got the generators going, and ran propane in the galley. Most
things wintered well. The arch has drifted a lot, but you can still see some metal on the smaller arch building. All of the heavy equipment is running, as well as four snow machines. The McM and WSD fuelies
are setting up the fuel system today. The heavy equipment operator
started grooming the skiway today to prepare for a backup flight in two
days. WAIS is a primary flight on both Thursday and Friday and five
missions are proposed for next week.

2008-02-12T04:44:00.000-08:00

February 12th, 2008
Time: 7 am
Latitude: 42.40338 N
Longitude: 71.11346 W
Temperature: -18°C(-1°F)
Wind speed: calm
Wind Chill: -
Clouds: clear
Wind direction: -
Relative Humidity:35%
Barometric Pressure: rising
Precipitation: about 10" at my house since I have been home
Animals: 1 dog, 4 rabbits, 9 chickens, 1 rooster
Breakfast: bagel and not enough coffee
Lunch: The macaroni and chesse, and toasted cheese sandwiches I missed in the field
Supper:Pasta, pasta, pasta

It is about two weeks since I returned and It feels like it was a lifetime ago since I was in Antarctica and New Zealand. I have not fully adjusted back into this life but I am moving full steam ahead with the next round of trips and work that I do here through my office. The educator workshops that the Wright Center hots each summer are filling up and we are all looking forward to working with new and former educators. Certainly if you are an educator or know one then please direct them to our free workshops for this summer http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/workshops/wkshps08.html
There is certainly nothing better than learning content during actual hands-on work and all of our workshops offer that to participating educators (formal and informal classrooms K-16th grade). Other than preparing for this summer I am busy compiling slide sets of this last field season. I have about 30 gigs of slides and video and there is more that I have not received from colleagues. Little by little we wil be posting it to the outreach website at http://www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center/wdop/index.html Many of us are also posting notices of public sites where we will be doing live presentations about the WAIS Divide ice coring project. If any of these are in your area then please attend or if you would like to have a live presentation by a member of the science/field crew then please contact me at my office zach.smith@tufts.edu with your preferences of date and time and we will do the best we can to accomodate all requests. We are also working on taping some presentations and posting them to the website.

Lucky the weather has been cooperating for me and it has snowed almost every other day since I have been home. The beach in New Zealand was nice but my personal biological clock is still set for winter and the more snow the better. We have been doing a lot of skiing and skating and hope to keep doing it for many more weeks. I am scheduled to be (working) on another private tropical beach in less than a month but it is the cold and snow that I prefer now.

Today's images are of what was left of the Grinnell Glacier in Glacier National Park, USA July 2008, and a private beach in the Bahamas. Both places I will work this summer with teachers during our workshops.

2008-01-31T06:18:00.000-08:00

January 31st, 2008

Time: 7 am
Latitude: 42.40338 N
Longitude: 71.11346 W
Temperature: -2°C(29°F)
Wind speed: 15 km/h (9 mph)
Wind Chill: -6°C(20°F)
Clouds: clear
Wind direction: W
Relative Humidity:41%
Barometric Pressure: rising
Precipitation: -
Animals: 1 dog, 4 rabbits, 9 chickens, 1 rooster
Breakfast: fresh backyard egg, toast, coffee

Well I am back in my office with mixed emotions. Happy to be home but there is always a transition period from being in the field to having to drive a car and go to a grocery store. I will get over it just long enough to start preparing for my next trip.

As I think back and relate parts of my adventure to my family, a few things come to mind. One is the amount of energy, creativity, and professionalism of my colleagues. Not that my office mates are not the most creative people I know but to live 24/7 with a group like we had at WAIS Divide camp is hard to find. Not all of the creativity was directed for the benfit of our science though but often it was directed by our science. One of the things I did not talk a lot about was the ubiquitous Antarctic humor required to live with each other for the last 2 months. On the morning shift we tried to see how much we could make the morning shift drillers laugh by placing notices on the window between the drilling and ice processing portions of the arch. The themes were naturally dictated by the job and the conditions. Many of these could have become outhouse graffiti, and maybe still will....

WAIS not want not
An ice core in the barrel is worth two in the hole
It is better to have cored and lost than never to have cored at all.
I core, you core, we all core an ice core
Gone ice fishing
I break for ice cores
Practise safe coring
All ice cores are not created equal
In case of emergency break ice
I'd rather be coring (preferably in a warm place)

As I reconnect with colleagues and friends many of them have asked me how "bad" things really are in terms of global climate change. The data we collected on WAIS DIvide this season will not even be analyzed for months and or years as the ice still needs to be fully processed in the US after it arrives here this summer on the boat from Antarctica. So no one can give an answer to how bad things are based on the ice core we collected this year. Though, based on everything we know from the science at this point, there is no doubt that there is human induced climate change happening. The way we conduct ourselves for the next couple of generations will determine how bad things get. Anyone not sure how much energy they use in relationship to others should do a web search for a "global footprint calculator", of which there are many available. These footprint calculators will allow you to input your energy use and calculate how many Earths it takes to support your lifestyle. It is takes more than one Earth then there are probably things you might do to reduce your use. For help on reducing your energy use there are a number of sites now that provide information/services. One such group is Cool Air -Clean Planet http://www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/ who is also linked from our outreach web site as a terrific source for educational materials for school, businesses, and individuals.

Wage Peace, and environmental sustainability

2008-01-29T05:19:00.000-08:00

January 29th, 2008

Time: 7 am
Latitude: 43.08 N
Longitude: 70.73 W
Temperature: -12°C(10°F)
Wind speed: calm
Wind Chill: -
Clouds: clear
Wind direction: -
Relative Humidity:56%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - light snow
Animals: 1 dog, 4 rabbits, 9 chickens, 1 rooster
Breakfast: fresh backyard egg, toast, coffee

When I left home back in the beginning of December it was 40°F, this morning it is 10°F, which is still not very cold and not very different than the middle of West Antarctica.

After 37 hours of planes, trains, and automobiles I arrived home this morning at 2 am. And I arrived home on the day I left. I left my beach front hideout in New Zealand at 10 am on January 28th and arrived home on January 29th at 2 am. If you do the math you will see that there are not 37 hours between 10 am and 2 am the next day, but since I crossed the International Date Line I gained a day traveling. I still had to sit for 37 hours but I only "lost"14 hours. The first at the door to greet me this morning was my dog. I guess she had it marked on her calendar because I was told that she has been at the door waiting since yesterday morning. Maybe it was the added excitement in everyone's voice that cued her into my pending arrival, or she did in fact have it marked on her calendar. As you can see from the current animal list there were no birds chirping this morning to greet me and they are all domestic residents of my backyard. I must have awoken them at 2 am this morning when I arrived but they were not as excited to see me, in fact they were pretty much neutral about the whole thing and were just happy that anyone fed them this chilly morning.

If you also do the math between my arrival home time and the blog entry time you will see that I did not get much sleep last night. Actually I got very little sleep for the 37 hours of traveling either. My ability to sleep while sitting up on planes and buses is not good. So, among basic chores today like chopping wood, stowing gear, cleaning clothes, and catching up on anything I missed for the two months that I was gone, I have scheduled a long nap for this afternoon. Though instead of the veranda at my secret New Zealand beach spot (which was only little over a day ago) I will be napping indoors in front of the wood stove.

Today's image is the view from my New Zealand beach still fresh in my mind, especially as I look out the window over the D1 operating that needs to be done here at home.

2008-01-27T10:28:00.000-08:00

January 28, 2008
Still an undisclosed secret location (on a beach) in New Zealand, no mater what the latitude and longitude says

Time: 5 am
Latitude: 43_ 31.742’ S
Longitude: 172_ 37.846’ E
Elevation: ~60 m (180’)
Temperature: 20_C (68 _F)
Wind speed: calm
Wind Chill: -
Visibility: forever
Clouds: very few strato-cumulus
Wind direction: -
Relative Humidity: 70% ?
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: -
Animals: gulls, bees, moths, spiders, cats, black swans, dolphins, sparrows, sheep
Breakfast: Tea, Croissant, cold cereal
Lunch: Fish and Chips
Supper: Cheese, crackers, canned fish – standard backpacker’s meal

I am still at my lodgings in New Zealand and using it as a base for exploring. The view from here is still spectacular and warm enough to sleep with the windows open with no additional blanket. At home we also have a bedroom window open at night (even in winter) but here, not only are the windows open but there are no bothersome flying insects. There are a couple of locations here in New Zealand that have biting sand flies (like a New England Black Fly) but none here. The area where I am has a large marine sanctuary so the dolphins, and other marine life, are protected. There are a number of dolphins here that might even be attracted to “play” if they are in the right mood. Dolphins tour boats and swims are very common here in New Zealand along with tours to see yellow-eyed and blue penguins. I did see dolphins but I did not see penguins here in New Zealand or in Antarctica this year. Guess I will have to come back and try again. The trekking around here is super and today I walked through everything from high ridges to beaches to small touristy towns to grasslands filled with grazing sheep. One could easily have fish and chips for lunch in a small town and end up either gazing across the ocean from a top a ridge line or sitting on a deserted beach and watching dolphin cruise by.

From where I am it is only a few mile to the ocean proper and I feel like I am living on the edge of an ancient fjord. The terrain is high and steep and some of the cliff faces drop hundreds of meters (a thousand feet) into the water. The water here is also reported to be a 1000 m (3,000 ‘) deep. The views are spectacular from the high points on the ridge trail, where I hiked to yesterday. I would post a picture of the view from the ridge line but no photo can possibly do justice to sitting on the top of a steep rocky ridge with friends enjoying snacks and looking out over the ocean and the “fjord” to the water that is hundreds of meters (thousand feet) below. There is brilliant sunshine, little wind, and unlimited views until far out into the ocean where the Earth curves away. I also learned that New Zealand has about 50 million sheep and they are everywhere. All the trek routes I have followed are also free range land for sheep. There are a few milk cows and cattle but mostly sheep. The sheep oblige trekkers by keeping the weeds and grass chewed down. There are not many trees here. All of the forests I have seen are managed forests and were planted only in the last 20-40 years ago. Most sit out like carpet swatches laid out over the hills surrounded by grasslands, and sheep. The day was truly spectacular and I think I picked up a bit more sunburn from being out and about with little shade or cover but it was well worth it to see all the things I have seen.

2008-01-26T10:08:00.000-08:00

January 27, 2008
Undisclosed secret location (on a beach) in New Zealand

Time: 5 am
Latitude: 43_ 31.742’ S
Longitude: 172_ 37.846’ E
Elevation: ~60 m (180’)
Temperature: 20_C (68 _F)
Wind speed: calm
Wind Chill: -
Visibility: forever
Clouds: very few strato-cumulus
Wind direction:
Relative Humidity: 70% ????
Barometric Pressure:-
Precipitation: -
Animals: gulls, bees, moths, spiders, cats, hundreds of black swans, and dolphins- hopefully later today
Breakfast: Tea, so far
Lunch:
Supper:

I apologize for not getting to the blog yesterday and potentially keeping everyone in suspense at a critical moment when we were getting off the “ice”, but it could not have been helped. Our flight actually did leave McMurdo though a little later than scheduled – about 10 pm. For most of the time between 6 pm and 10 pm that day we were standing on the “tarmac” at the Pegasus airstrip on the seas ice outside McMurdo. We had to wait for a C-17 to land, off load people and cargo, and have us and our cargo loaded. A C-17 is much nicer than a C-130 with much more room to stretch out. We were even given a chance to go up to the cockpit as we were flying out to Christchurch. I was very lucky and managed to be in the cockpit as we flew over the ice margin and saw the transition from the terrestrial glaciers, the sea ice, and the open ocean. The ~5 hr trip was uneventful and we (~100 people) landed at 3 am in Christchurch. We then were taken to the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center) where we returned our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear, given our travel tickets back to the US, and allowed to leave for hotels in Christchurch. By the time I arrived at my hotel it was 5 am and I was in my bed asleep by 5:30.

I did not have any room reservations for the next few days in NZ, and there was a music concert going on in town which packed town, so I got up at 8 am for breakfast to try and find an available room for the next few nights. After a few phone calls and Internet searches I found that there was little available in Christchurch. I had looked at the map of NZ before leaving Antarctica and did see that there were a number of fantastic-looking spots to visit. So, I found a bus going to a secluded ocean front town located only a few hours form Christchurch and there I found a room available at a B & B (Bed & Breakfast). I did a quick walk around the outdoor arts festival also going on in Christchurch, had lunch, and made the bus in time for a very scenic drive through the NZ countryside. After having only 2 hours sleep in the last 36+ hours I was a little tired but managed to stay awake for most of the long bus ride. When we arrived I was thrilled to find this isolated beach-front community of ~500 people (without tourists) with a few shops and restaurants. The owner of the B & B picked me up in town at the bus drop-off and drove me to a cup of tea on the veranda of her home over looking the bay through a plethora of lovely garden flowers. After 2 months with few colors and aromas other than ourselves and hot cooked meals, I immediately fell in love with my new location and managed to sit in one place in a comfy chair on the veranda for hours until I made my way back down to town for some delicious fish and chips. I did wake up a couple times in the night but had a great sleep and enjoyed every bit of the darkness that I now realized I so missed. It is now before dawn and I am back on the veranda composing today’s blog with yet another cup of tea and the sights, sounds, and smells of an ocean community waking up to another day. It is also the first time I have seen the moon in months and I am sitting here waiting for Sunrise in shorts, a long sleeved shirt, and NO shoes.

Last night there was an evening gathering of any of our group still in Christchurch, which I am sorry I had to miss because of last minute travel arrangements, but I am very very content to be here, now. I met some wonderful people at WAIS Divide camp and I will be talking to and seeing many of them in the near future, so they are not lost to me. If any of them, especially those that I did not get a chance to say good-bye to are reading this, thanks and I wish you good travels - Via con Dios.

To them and you, I will continue to write this blog as often as possible until I get back to work at my job as program coordinator at the Wright Center for Science Education at Tufts University. We have plans to provide a workshop for teachers in Glacier Park Montana USA this July with information and classroom appropriate materials about the WAIS Divide ice coring project. Though we can not bring you to Antarctica and our ice core drilling project directly we can take you to the glaciers on the US and through them virtually bring you to Antarctica. International educators and individuals interested in applying for the workshop and/or more information about educational materials developed with the WAIS Divide ice coring project in mind should go to www.tufts.edu/as/wright_center and available through links from the projects science web site at www.waisdivide.unh.edu
New information will be added often. The ice core drilling program will continue for the next 3-5 years so please continue to check back as I return home back to the US and over the next few years. Each year there will be some returning people along with a new cast of “characters”.

For now, the Sun is about to rise over the ridge, the birds are in full chorus, birds are starting to fly, bees are buzzing at the nectar in the flowers, and I need another cup of tea. Thanks so much for following along with us. I have enjoyed writing this science travel log and talking with many of you on the blog, through my personal e-mail, and during direct calls from WAIS Divide camp to many school classrooms. Many more of you I will see at teacher, student, and community presentations/professional meetings over the next couple months. Enjoy wherever you are and help to keep it the fantastic corner of the world it is.

2008-01-24T11:47:00.000-08:00

January 25, 2008
McMurdo Antarctica

Time: 10 am
Latitude: 77° 50 S
Longitude: 166° 49.10’ E
Elevation: 34 m (112’)
Temperature: -3°C (7 °F)
Wind speed: 33 km/h (21 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -25°C (-12°F)
Visibility: mostly cloudy, low ceiling
Clouds: stratus
Wind direction: SSE
Relative Humidity: 63%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - occasional flurries
Animals: 24 Skuas, dozens of Weddell seals in McMurdo - including pups, no penguins yet, 1 whale sighting
Breakfast: eggs, bagels, juice, coffee
Lunch: mac and cheese
Supper: lamb, potatoes, mixed veggies, pumpkin pie
**Since we are in McMurdo there are four or five entrees at every meal

We did our bag drag last night to prepare for our flight today. Bag drag means that we took all our gear, except of ECW
gear (Extreme Cold Weather) and one carry-on bag to be weighed and
packaged for the flight. The pilots need to know exactly how much
weight they will be flying with on every flight around and to/from
Antarctica. Once we weighed our gear we gave it up to the baggage folks
to package and ship out to the runway for loading. We kept our
toiletries, one set of town clothes, and ourECW gear out to use until
the flight. If the flight is canceled we need to have clothes to wear
until the flight does go, whenever that is. We will not see our checked
bags again until we land in Christchurch New Zealand. The temperature
in town (and onthe flight) is relatively warm but we are required to have our ECW gear with us most of the time.

The rest of the day we will spend writing, walking around McMurdo,
napping, reading, playing cribbage, or just hanging-out until we leave
for Willy’s Field and our plane. We will take a C-17 back to New
Zealand instead of the C-130 we take around Antarctica. The C-17s have
a little more room with comfortable seats than the C-130s. It will
still be a 5 + hour flight “off the ice” and we will not arrive until
late, possibly even Saturday morning. We are taken to theUSAP Clothing
Distribution Center (CDC) where we will return the clothing and gear we
were issued for the program and then we will be released to wander off
and explore NZ and/or return home. It will be even later that morning
when we finally get to our hotels and recover from the late flight.
Rumor is that there is aBon Jovi concert in Christchurch so it might be an exciting weekend in town with all the additional tourists.

I
still have not seen any penguins though I did find a flock of Skua and
many more seals. The day started very nice but soon turned very
blustery and cancelled any hope of a big hike today to the top of
Castle Rock. Another trip to Hut Point and up Ob Hill were all the
outdoor activities I was able to accomplish.

The images I have for you today are a photo of an old time photo of McMurdo taken during a very early expedition (this image hangs in the galley) and a picture of McMurdo taken this last December 2007. Both are taken from Hut Point looking back towards Ob Hill. In the old McMurdo picture you can see three sailing ships in McMurdo harbor with Ob hill in the background. In the modern picture you can see the station as it exists today.

2008-01-23T12:56:00.000-08:00

January 24, 2008
McMurdo Antarctica

Time: 10 am
Latitude: 77° 50’ S
Longitude: 166° 49.10’ E
Elevation: 34 m (112’)
Temperature: -4°C (24°F)
Wind speed: 24 km/h (15 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -11°C (13 °F)
Visibility: 7 miles but overcast, low ceiling
Clouds: stratus
Wind direction: SE
Relative Humidity: 74%
Barometric Pressure: rising
Precipitation: - light snow
Animals: 6 Skuas, dozens of Weddell seals in McMurdo, including pups, no penguins yet, 1 whale sighting
Breakfast: omelets, French toast, sausage
Lunch: burritos
Supper: mac and cheese, turkey potpie
**Since we are in McMurdo there are four or five entrees at every meal

Yesterday felt like chore day. I went to the New Zealand Scott Base to look in their store and rode in the shuttle with the 109th Airlift Wing NY National Guard (http://www.dmna.state.ny.us/ang/109/109.php) pilots who flew us in to McMurdo the day before and were on their way back to WAIS
Divide to collect a few more of our friends. The weather was
deteriorating yesterday but this morning I met a couple of our folks at breakfast
and learned that indeed they were lucky to get out because of clouds.
Later during the day,I also went to see the person in charge of travel arrangements, checked my mail,
and ran down to Hut Point to look in the open water leads for penguins
– there were none there at the time. Hut Point is very nearby McMurdo
central where Robert Falcon Scott and his men built a hut on one of
their early expeditions to Antarctica. I wrote about it in an earlier
blog. When I got there, also touring that hut were members of the
Norwegian-US Traverse of East Antarctica http://traverse.npolar.no This
project is an ice coring traverse of East Antarctica. The US researcher
on the project, Dr Mary Albert, works at Dartmouth College and the Cold
Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory in Hanover, NH
http://www.crrel.usace.army.mil/. I happen to know her from my earlier
experience in Antarctica. Funny to see people in Antarctica whom you
know that live and work only a few hours away from your home. The drilling
organization on that project is also Ice Coring and Drilling Services (ICDS)
http://www.ssec.wisc.edu/icds and their driller and our drillers had a
lot to talk about at supper last night. Since the principle
investigator of ICDS, Dr Charlie Bentley, is in town with us there was a reunion of sorts as well lots of “shop” talk. The members of Norwegian-US traverse are also flying out to New Zealand with us tomorrow (fingers crossed).

The rest of the day I spent catching up with letters and “thinking about “
(I hesitate to say planning since we are not even off the ice yet) the
few days I will spend in New Zealand “recovering” from my days here on
the ice before the long flight back to Maine. As I have mentioned
before, many of our folks will be spending weeks and months touring New
Zealand and the world after they leave here but I only have a day or
two before getting back to family and work.

Today I will
continue to look for penguins in the open water leads. I have stopped
counting Weddell seals as there are dozens and dozens of these 500 lb “sea
slugs” all around the open water at McMurdo. I still have not seen any Skua (sea
gulls) but I know they are here somewhere.

Today’s images are of the
ice breaker opening up the sea ice to make it possible for the resupply
ship to land, possibly by Monday. And an image of good ole’ Mac Town (McMurdo Station). Transitioning back to McMurdo
and its dirty streets, buildings, and traffic is a difficult adjustment
after being in the middle of West Antarctica for over a month.

2008-01-22T13:58:00.000-08:00

January 23, 2008
McMurdo Antarctica

Time: 10 am
Latitude: 77° 50’ S
Longitude: 166° 49.10’ E
Elevation: 34 m (112')
Ice core: done driling for this season at final depth of 580 m (1,740’)
Temperature: -9°C ( 15 °F)
Wind speed: 13 km/h (8 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -
Visibility: unlimited
Clouds: minimal mid level stratus, alto cumulus, mostly cloudy.
Wind direction: E
Relative Humidity: 40%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 20 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo), I have not looked for penguins yet but the ice breaker is in and there are water leads so there should be penguins?
Breakfast: coffee
Lunch:
Supper:

Well folks, we made it. We are back in McMurdo
and still, this morning, very bleary eyed. We landed about 1 am and
made it to our dorm rooms by 2 am. The strangest thing is waking up in
a dark room instead of a yellow tent. It was a long and noisy trip in
our C-130 and I did not sleep a wink. From what little I saw out the
tiny portal windows on the plane it was cloudy across the whole of the
West Antarctic ice sheet and though I am not that excited to be one of
the first ones out, I am happy that we got out when we did. You just
never know what will happen with the weather, which was spectacular and
clear when we left. As seasons change around the world, the last couple
days seemed to have turned a corner with the weather atWAIS Divide. I am sure that this is an over statement but since we have seen fair weather for the last couple days in a row at WAIS Divide it sure seems like a change in the weather. Though I am sitting in McMurdo
and it is “warm” compared to where I was yesterday and it is hard not
to feel real change. I am also going to be in New Zealand in a few days
and my thoughts are moving towards summer sports and being outdoors –
which I realize will be dashed once I get back to Maine in a week and
40+ inches of snow on the ground.

Since it is early in the
morning, I just got up, and I am still a lot shocked by being back in
“town” and the warmth, number of people, and the many buildings, my
mind has not kicked back into gear. I am going to stop writing for
today and leave you with my last memory ofWAIS and our group picture.
As far as I remember everyone in camp at the time is in the picture. It
is a small image here on the web but you may still be able to pick out
friends, family, and correspondents (I am the fourth in from the left,
second row). Time to find the galley and its unlimited food, and
coffee. I have to cleanup, repack gear and review my data from the
field. I left my 3dquadrat and one data logger at WAIS which we will collect next season.

I will be continuing this blog until I have arrived home in a week, and most certainly the outreach for the WAIS
Divide ice coring program for the future. For additional information
and images please go to our science site which also links to additional
outreach-education at waisdivide.unh.edu. More later-

2008-01-21T08:16:00.000-08:00

January 22, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica -Still!!!!!

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 580m ( 1,740’) ~ before 400 BC - coring completed
Temperature: -16°C (2°F)
Wind speed: 0-5 km/h (0-3 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -22°C (-8°F)
Visibility: 10 km (7 miles)
Clouds: minimal low-mid level stratus
Wind direction: NE
Relative Humidity: 76%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 20 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: eggs, home fries, juice, coffee
Lunch: BBQ beef sandwiches, carrot-mushroom loaf, hash browns, green salad
Supper: Sweet potatoes, rice, chicken, tofu

Well,
the day started bright and calm and all seemed right. I started to pack
gear and remained optimistic about the flight. I spent the morning
downloading other folks images and organizing and volunteered for House
Mouse since I now have a casual schedule. The only thing really left to
do was take down my to take down my tent and hang it to dry in the
science jamesway . While I was on washing dishes from breakfast on House
Mouse, the announcement came over the radio that for some unexplained
reason the flight was canceled. The next two songs on the galley
stereo were “I got to get out of this place” by the Animals, and “Hotel
California” by the Eagles. Coincidence? I think not. Strange Karma –
that cosmic sense of humor? Probably not that either. It is just the
way things work here in Antarctica – on Antarctica time and nothing
that you could ever schedule. So, here I am in WAIS camp for at least
one more day. The only tough consequence is that there are only a few
planes to New Zealand, and one is Tuesday night. The chances of
actually getting out of here and getting straight on the NZ flight is
less than the chance that a plane will still show-up here today - which
is very very low. No worries, we just hangout here and McMurdo a few extra day(s). There is a plane scheduled for today
in the late evening so there is plenty of chance for something else
unexplained or explained like weather to get in the way of this flight.
Always an opportunity though to learn something else about this place
or the people here and who knows, maybe today the weather will be even
better or the views of the flat white surface will be more spectacular?
For right now though I am leaving my tent up.

Here is what happens when flights are delayed and the natives get restless. Actually just kidding, this image is of Dr Charles Bentley and Rebecca in a friendly arm wrestling match. Probably over who ate the last of the popcorn. Who do you think won? Especially with the ~60 year age difference.

2008-01-20T08:54:00.000-08:00

January 21, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: 580 m (1,740) ~~ 450 BC
Temperature: -12°C (11°F)
Wind speed: 0-2 km/h (0-1 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -12°C (11°F)
Visibility: 10 km (7 miles)
Clouds: minimal mid level stratus, mostly sunny
Wind direction: N
Relative Humidity: 73%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: leftovers
Lunch: leftovers
Supper: leftovers

Fingers
are still crossed but it actually nice out ("warm", calm, and sunny)and
our flight is still on for this afternoon. Yesterday, the thought of
really leaving was a little strange but today with this weather it
seems too good to be true. The way I am scheduled is I only have to
spend one day inMcMurdo and then I am off to New Zealand and home. The
shift after ours drilled our last core at about 5pm and then shut down
operations. It is time for me and others to pack gear and everyone else
to pack up the camp. To celebrate, we had a little party last night and
made it our last night together for some of us. The last staff will not
leave here foranother 2 weeks but by that time I will be back in the
office at work. Packing up the camp is very important so that it is
placed up on snow berms to prevent too much drifting and burying by the
snow over the winter. The arch will also be secured but there will
undoubtedly be lots of frost and spin drift that collects inside over the winter. Much of the arch equipment will also be left in place to survive the potential -60 oC winter temperatures. In preparartion for the flight out today, I took a shower yesterday and tried to get my gear in order. It will take me another couple hours to find all my stuff and take down my tent. I really do not have that much gear, nor are there many places to find it except in the corners of my tent, but I just need to check items to make sure everything is there. If will be tough to retrive anything that I forget.

The only appropriate
photos to add to today is a group shot, but that has not happened yet
so I will load it as soon as I can. Maybe later tonight from McMurdo. The photo I do have up for today is actually a picture of camp looking out the Twin Otter window from almost a month ago. I will fly on a C-130, and not a Twin Otter, to go back to McMurdo today but I will not have a window to see out of so I thought that I would use this image as my substitute parting shot.

2008-01-19T07:49:00.000-08:00

January 20, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 555 m ( 1,665') ~300 BC (yesterday's depth was over estimated)
Temperature: -17°C (1°F)
Wind speed: 0-7 km/h (0-4 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -23°C (-10°F)
Visibility: 10 km (7 miles)
Clouds: low-mid level stratus, mostly sunny -believe it or not
Wind direction: N/NNE
Relative Humidity: 80%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: eggs, sausage, corn muffins (one of the best muffins ever)
Lunch: Burritos, chicken and veggi
Supper: SALAD, and some other good stuff

Though I have been keeping close track of our time here, it is suddenly almost over. I am not sure how the time pasted so quickly but Gabby, John, a few others and I am on the list to fly out of WAIS camp Monday. If all goes well, and the weather holds, we could be in and out of McMurdo in a day and in New Zealand by Tuesday night. I do not like not to be one of the first ones out while there is still work to do but I guess I will take the flight when I can get them – I am certainly looking forward to seeing my family very soon. At home there is a lot to do, including my favorite D1 operating (shoveling), sledding, and also a couple of telemark races/festivals that my family and I will attend. I am sure that the wood pile is also getting low so plenty of chores to catch up on.

More happy news around camp, we had another C-130 plane land this morning. We traded about 10 science and staff folks and some ice cores for salad. Now understand, I really like the folks that left but this is only the second time we have seen salad since mid December. All joking aside, we really enjoyed having fresh lettuce, spinach, cucumbers, and tomatoes for supper. And, it is also sunny and one of the nicest days we have had in a long time. It is tough to have to work inside on beautiful days, including in the middle of West Antarctica. The day was so nice that the snow pit we dug weeks ago and used for filming was opened up as a tour destination for camp staff lead by Trevor. The snow layers were so illuminated today by the sunshine that you could easily see many of the features we see being created on the snow surface these past couple weeks. For example, one of the two images today are of wave forms that are created on the surface by the erosion and deposition of snow created by the wind. In the surface image, the wind is blowing from the left to right. The other image is of “fossil” wave forms that were created last summer by the wind and now buried ½ meter under the surface and illuminated in the snow pit wall. In the “fossil” wave forms, to which the arrows are pointing, the wind also blew from left to right. It is very exciting to see features formed to day that we can use to understand the features we see buried under the snow. And in this case, that the predominate wind direction during both years was left to right (which is a West wind here).

Yesterday I introduced you to a couple of our international folks and today I have one more, this time in French-

Salut ! Je m’appelle Anaïs Orsi, et je m’occupe des carottes une fois qu’elles sortent du carottier. Je les mesure, note les détails particuliers, compte les cassures éventuelles et les emballe pour les envoyer au laboratoire national des carottes de glace (NICL, National Ice Core Lab, on prononce “nickel”), à Denver, au milieu des Etats Unis. Au NICL, les carottes vont être découpées en échantillons et être réparties entre les différents laboratoires aux quatre coins du pays. C’est comme ça qu’un jour, le facteur va sonner a ma porte et dire « les carottes sont arrivées ! », et je commencerai l’analyse dans mon labo, à Scripps Institution of Oceanography, à San Diego. Comme la plupart des autres manipulateurs de carottes, je suis doctorante en climatologie, et je travaille sur les carottes de glaces. Si je n’étais pas venue, j’aurais toujours pu recevoir mes échantillons et les analyser, mais c’est intéressant de voir comment on creuse les carottes, et ce qui leur arrive entre le moment où elles sortent de la glace et le moment où elles arrivent à la porte de mon labo. Bien sûr, c’est sympa de pouvoir voir à quoi WAIS ressemble, de se rendre du temps qu’il fait, etc. J’ai profité du fait de venir pour faire une autre petite expérience : j’ai mesuré la température dans un trou de 300m creusé en 2005. La glace conserve la température qu’il faisait quand elle s’est formée. Le signal s’atténue avec le temps, mais on peut voir les changements climatiques à longe échelle. Un jour, avec cette méthode, nos arrière petits-enfants pourront sûrement voir le changement climatique actuel : rien qu’en introduisant un thermomètre dans un trou dans la glace…
Je suis vraiment contente d’être ici, à WAIS divide. Faire des mesures sur le terrain est une partie importante de mes recherches, et j’ai besoin de tout le reste de l’année pour analyser les échantillons de glace que je vais recueillir. En plus, il y a plein de choses amusantes à faire ici, la neige par exemple, a une constitution parfaite pour la sculpture ! J’essaie d’apprendre comment les choses marchent ici, pour qu’un jour, je puisse organiser ma propre expédition polaire.

Hi! My name is Anaïs Orsi. I am a core handler here, which means that, as soon as the ice core gets out of the drill, I measure it, mark it, count the eventual breaks and pack it to be sent to the National Ice Core Lab in Denver. In NICL, the core will be cut into many samples, which in turn will be sent to different laboratories across the US. So, one day, Fedex will knock at my door and say “the ice cores are here!” and I’ll start analyzing it in my lab, at Scripps Institution of Oceanography, in San Diego. Like other core handlers, I’m actually a graduate student working on ice cores. Even if I hadn’t come, I could still get the samples in my lab, but it’s interesting to see how cores are drilled and what happens to them during the process. Of course, it’s also cool to see what it looks like here in WAIS divide, what the weather is like, etc. I took advantage of my coming here to do another small project: I measured the temperature down a 300m hole drilled in 2005. The ice remembers the temperature it had when the snow fell. It gets dampened, but we can see long-term temperature changes. One day, with this method, our great grand children will probably be able to see global warming this way: by sticking a thermometer down a hole in the ice…
I’m very excited about being here. Fieldwork is an important part of the research I do: it takes me the rest of the year to process and analyze the samples I collect here. Plus, it’s a lot of fun: the snow is just ideal to carve things into, for instance. I hope to learn a lot about how things work down here, so that one day, I can organize my own polar expedition.
aorsi@ucsd.edu

One last item. An expert in Norse history found some inaccuracies in our generalization about the period of the Vikings posted in a former blog. I appreciate his willingness to share his expertise and add detail to our generalization. Thanks
"In the blog it says that the Vikings in Greenland died in around 1128 AD (ice core depth 218). Actually, Erik Raude (Erik the red) came to Greenland in 982 and the Norsemen lived there in approx. 500 years. In 1408 there was a huge wedding in Hvalsøy church in Østbygda that was the southernmost village in Greenland. Relatives from Iceland came to celebrate the wedding. Willy Dansgaard (Prof. Emeritus in Glaciology, Copenhagen) writes in his book: "As for any wedding, people were happy and they partied all night. But no one knew that the wedding bells were in reality the deathknell for the Vikings in Greenland. No one ever heard more about them. "

Fingers crossed for good weather for the next week.

2008-01-18T07:37:00.000-08:00

January 19, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~500 m (1,500’)
Temperature: -13°C (9°F)
Wind speed: 0-5 km/h (0-3 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -17°C (1°F)
Visibility: 8 km (4 miles)
Clouds: low-mid stratus
Wind direction: N
Relative Humidity: 86%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: eggs, bacon, bagels
Lunch: hot turkey/veggie sandwiches
Supper: tomoato-rice soup, potatoes, salmon

Still digging out from our storm three days ago. On the way into the galley to upload this blog I ran into one of our medics Phil. Phil and Charles act as our medical/safety staff here in camp. Not only are they there for safety training, bumps and bruises, and the often flu like symptoms (we are lucky that we have not had any major accidents here) these guys also wear a number of other hats. Phil was on his way out this morning to operate the Cat D4 bulldozer and remove yet more snow and make our lives easier traveling back and forth across camp. He mentioned how interesting it was to be both medic and D4 driver. I think it is great and have always appreciated having a couple different interests/careers that I move between. In his US day job, Phil is an ambulance driver/medic for a non-profit hospital. Charles, our other medic runs Qwest Medical in Whitefish, Montana that provides wilderness medical training. In camp he also collects daily weather (sometimes hourly observations before flights arrive) that includes the balloon observations for determining cloud ceiling for incoming flights, and is in charge of the satellite communications that I (we) are so indebted to him for. Without his diligence I would not been able to upload the blog from WAIS Divide camp. As you can see, you have to be a Renaissance person here in camp and have any talents. Both terrific guys that play a very important role in camp.

Weeks ago a student asked if there were any international scientists/staff working with us here at WAIS Divide. In camp we do have some international folks, some that are students at US institutes and some that are senior scientists. As a way of introducing them to you, I have decided to ask them to add a piece to the blog. Some are included below written in their own language. The generalized English translation for their commentaries is also included, but possibly just reading their words, in their language, is more interesting. Today Inger and Wilfredo-

Inger Seierstad

Jeg hedder Inger Seierstad. Jeg voksede op i Norge og jeg bor i Denmark. Jeg er på WAIS Divide som en udveksling mellom det danske og det amerikanske iskerne-milieu. På WAIS Divide arbejder jeg med iskernen efter at den er boret. Vi har et godt hold og jeg nyder at være her. Det er meget interessant at se hvordan et amerikansk iskerneprojekt er organiseret i forhold til europæiske iskerneprojekter. Jeg har lært meget som jeg vil tage med hjem, hvor jeg i gang med en PhD om iskerner fra Grønland.

My name is Inger Seierstad. I grew up in Norway and I live in Denmark. I am at WAIS Divide as an exchange between the Danish and the US ice core communities. At WAIS Divide I work as an ice core handler together with eleven other people. We have a good team and I enjoy my time here. It is very interesting for me to see how an American ice core project is running compared to the European ice core project. I have learned a lot that I will bring back home where I am doing a PhD on ice cores from Greenland.

Wilfredo Falcón

Hola! Mi nombre es Wilfredo Falcón y estoy participando en un internado con el US National Science Foundation y Raytheon Polar Services. La meta del internado es proveer experiencia a estudiantes universitarios en las diferentes actividades que se llevan a cabo a través del Programa Antárctico de los Estados Unidos, y motivarlos a seguir participando ya sea trabajando o haciendo investigación científica. Actualmente estoy estudiando Manejo de Vida Silvestre en la Universidad de Puerto Rico en Humacao y una de las profesoras me contó acerca del internado así que solicité y aquí estoy! Como estudiante de manejo de vida silvestre estoy interesado en como la fauna y flora antártica se ha adaptado a un ambiente tan hostil como lo es en Antártica. También me interesa como el cambio climático y la reducción en las capas de hielo afectará no sólo la vida silvestre en Antártica, si no también alrededor de todo el mundo y en especial las áreas costeras. He aprendido muchas cosas en WAIS Divide en términos de cómo el cambio climático está afectando la reducción de las capas de hielo en el continente y al mismo tiempo cómo esto está afectando el medio ambiente. El proyecto de perforación para sacar coros de hielo (icecores) proveerá muchas respuestas que nos ayudarán a entender mejor lo que está pasando alrededor del mundo. Otra cosa que he encontrado facinante es la cryobiología, que estudia los efectos de temperaturas extremadamente bajas en sistemas biológicos. Se cree que existe vida en el agua que está presente entre la capa de hielo y la roca continental. Sería un gran descubrimiento encontrar vida capaz de sobrevivir en un lugar con temperaturas tan extremas.

Definitivamente me gustaría regresar a Antarctica y estudiar la vida silvestre que aquí habita. Tengo un interés especial en cómo la reducción de las capas de hielo están afectando las colonias de pinguinos de adelie y a su vez las interacciones depredador-presa que éstos tienen con las focas leopardo.

Para más información:

Wilfredo Falcón Linero
wfalconpr@gmail.com

Internado en Antarctica RPSC/NSF:
Contacte a Kimberly Jones al:
RPSC/NSF Internship Program
kimberly.jones@usap.gov

Universidad de Puerto Rico en Humacao
www.uprh.edu/mvs

My name is Wilfredo Falcon and I am doing an internship with the National Science Foundation and Raytheon Polar Services. The goal of the internship is to provide hands on experience to college students on the different activities in the US Antarctic Program and to encourage them to come back to work or do scientific research. I am studying Wildlife Management in the University of Puerto Rico at Humacao. One of my professors told me about the internship opportunity, so I applied and here I am! As a wildlife management student I am very interested in how the Antarctic fauna and flora have adapted to such a hostile environment in Antarctica. Also, I’m interested on how the climate change and the ice sheet reduction will affect not only Antarctic wildlife, but also around the world and especially in coastal areas. I learned a lot at WAIS Divide in terms of how the climate change is affecting the ice sheet reduction and at the same time how this would affect the environment. The ice core drilling will provide many answers that will help us better understand what is happening around the world. Another thing that I have found fascinating is cryobiology, which is the study of the effects of extremely low temperatures on biological systems. It is believed that there is life in the water that is between the ice sheet and the continent bedrock. It would be an exiting discovery to find life under the ice sheet.

I would definitely try to come again to Antarctica and study the wildlife. I have special interest on how the ice shelf reduction if affecting colonies of Adelie and Emperor penguins and their predator-prey interactions with the leopard seals.

2008-01-17T07:37:00.003-08:00

January 18, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 480m (1,460’) ~ the year 0 - the birth of Christ
Temperature: -15°C (5°F)
Wind speed: 0-10 km/h (0-6 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -20°C (-5°F)
Visibility: 11 km (7 miles)
Clouds: few thin high stratus
Wind direction: N/NE
Relative Humidity: 80%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: English muffins, bagels, grilled ham, cereal, homemade hot chocolate
Lunch: fried rice, steak stir fry, veggie stir fry
Supper: Lasagna (meat and veggie), Tira Misu

Two
days ago I mentioned the pink sprinkle cookies that Karen the night
chef had made for us and asked you all for suggestions on what we
should celebrate. You responses were fantastic (see comments from the 16th)
and I wanted to pass on a few of those and make some additional
comments. One thing that we started celebrating yesterday was the
arrival of the mythical C-130 plane. It has been a long time since we
have seen a plane but it did arrive. It brought with it a lot of
friends, colleagues, and supplies including Dr Charlie Bentley who I
spoke about the other day, a good friend of ours and asst. director of
the project’s science management office Joe Souney , folks from the
National Science Foundation (NSF) to see the arch and our drilling
progress, folks form NOVA, a few other support folks fromMcMurdo , and
believe it or not – mail and fresh grapefruit from the US. So, we are
celebrating the safe arrival of these folks, and fresh fruit.

Below are some of the ideas for celebration I received through the blog.

A few things you could celebrate on the 16th:

“1953: Corvette introduced in New York”

“The ability to eat delicious meals that are prepared for you ... instead of hunting for food cache's or eating seal meat.”

“ The ability to bathe whenever you feel the need ... and with warm water!”

“1945: Hitler descends to bunker to remain until suicide”

“You are not alone! You have many new friends from all over the globe
to get to know and learn to appreciate their varied cultures!”

“The fact that you have the opportunity visit a beautiful place”

“Beatles' album Yellow Submarine released- 1969”

“I’d love to just eat a cookie in that amazing place”

Sometimes
it is a little too easy to become complacent about where we are and I
apologize if some of my comments sound a little conceited – being in
Antarctica and whining about no hot chocolate. Not only do I understand
that we are some of the luckiest people in the world to be here and
able to do this science, but we are among the few percent of the
population of the world that live in peace and do not go to bed hungry
– for that we are eternally grateful. Certainly the comments about just
being, and just being here are correct and I (we) am happy to be among
an amazingly talented group of people, it is reward enough. Today (and
everyday) it is certainly time just to celebrate the ability to
celebrate with friends, and in Antarctica.

We also hope to get an additional C-130 plane tomorrow to take our ice cores back to McMurdo. The next plane after that is scheduled for Tuesday which will take many of us back to McMurdo to hopefully catch the next lift to NZ at the end of the week.

I also want to pass on the map showing our resupply vessel locations. The map is made by our new GIS service provider, The Antarctic Geospatial Information Center, www.agic.umn.edu. These vessels will be docking soon at McMurdo
to resupply the station, bring supplies for other stations to be
eventually distributed, and to take lots of stuff (our ice cores
included) back to the states. This site is funded by the NSF's office of Polar Programs.

Thanks for the comments everyone. Please comment whenever the spirit moves you.

The image today is of Rebecca at the DEP machine. Who is thankful that she received letters from her friend Anne's 3rd grade class at PS261, room 3-312, in Brooklyn.

2008-01-16T08:18:00.000-08:00

January 17, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 480 m (1,440’)
Temperature: -14°C (7°F)
Wind speed: 16-25 km/h (10-15 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -25°C (-12°F)
Visibility: 11 km (7 miles)
Clouds: high - mid stratus
Wind direction: E/NE
Relative Humidity: 83%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - last few days ~3-4"
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: no hot chocolate, pancakes, bacon, cereal
Lunch: grilled ham & bagels
Supper: chicken marsala, veggies

The
amount of snow drifting that has to be removed from doorways, cargo
lines, and tents is pretty amazing. Just like at the beach as the water
rushes back to the ocean around your feet, the snow and wind here erode
on the up wind side of objects and deposit downwind. Down wind and to the side of
each tent there are drifts that are 10s of meters long and on the
upwind side there is usually a trench. The step-down into my tent
entrance from the level of the snow around it is over 2’ (2/3 m). The
spindrift from the storm also found a few chinks in my tent fly and
started to build-up between the tent and the tent fly during the night.
Not enough to cause any real problems but I did have to hand-shovel my
way out my door this morning and remove the snow before it fell into
the tent with all my gear. It also has not been sunny and warm enough
for a few days to melt any snow that did get inside so I have a little
snow in the inside corners. One of these days the storm will pass and
there will be enough sun to heat up inside the tent and melt the snow.
The wind has also done some serious sculpting on my former lawn dragon
and Pukka snow bunny. Harvey’s ears are drooping a bit but otherwise the storm probably added more snow than it eroded away.

Despite
the storm, work inside the drill arch continues. We have not drilled as
much core lately due to some very minor equipment problems that have
all been resolved. At this rate we may get to 500 or 600 meters of ice
core before this Sunday. After that it is time to pack it all up and
get it shipped out to start its journey to the National Ice Core Lab (NICL) in Denver Co. Geoff and Brian, NICL’s curator and asst. curator have been here all season doing a fantastic job. The equipment set-up that they developed here at WAIS Divide seems to be working great. Each summer, following a season in the field, there will be a core processing “party” at NICL
to section the ice cores and distribute the appropriate pieces of ice
core to scientists. Then much of the rest of the analysis will take
place in their individual laboratories with much of it being chemical
analysis for gases and aerosols (particles) that will yield additional
information about past climate change.NICL is the repository for ice cores from all around the world. A lot of the ice core that resides at NICL
are pieces of each core that are left as archive pieces for the future.
There are always advancements in science theory, technique, and
equipment so ice core from each project remains atNICL for future investigations. nicl.usgs.gov/

The two images today are of the nearly 100% completed Harvey my Pukka snow bunny, who I hope you can see silhouetted against the skyline, and of my day shift partner Sylvia who is taking a much needed break warming up by sitting on the heated tool box in the driller's side of the arch. Even in the driller's side of the arch, which is a few degrees warmer than the ice core processing side of the arch, it is too cold for power tools to operate well so the carpenters built a wooden tool box which is heated. We also put our cold gloves etc in the box to warm up. When Sylvia and I need a quick break we head to the tool box which warms us up from the bottom first and provides a comfortable seat.

PS There has been some relief here on the hot chocolate dilema. John the chef has now been making hot chocolate out of baker's cooking chocolate and powdered milk. From what I hear it is a welcome relief form the lack of hot chocolate drink and even tasted better than the powdered instant mix stuff.

2008-01-15T08:29:00.001-08:00

January 16, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 420 m (~1,260’)
Temperature:-13°C (8°F)
Wind speed: 25-30 km/h (18 mp/h- gusts to 25)
Wind Chill: -23°C (-10°F)
Visibility: 1.6 km (1 miles)
Clouds: stratus and ground blizzard still , but blue sky above 1000'
Wind direction: N/NE
Relative Humidity: 87%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - 0
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: no hot chocolate
Lunch: shrimp and scallop in pasta, pesto pasta
Supper: Steak, potaotes, Asian noodles, veggies

As
I mentioned, we got a big storm starting two nights ago. It was (still is)a
good Antarctica storm with high winds, snow, and believe it or not –
blue sky and light clouds above ~1000’. It is kind of strange to get a
glimpse through the ground storm and look up to see blue sky. It means
that there certainly will not be a plane again today. It may seem that
I mention the planes too often but there are a bit of the blood around
here. It is the planes in “freshies”, people, and science supplies.
Though we are out of hot chocolate, more importantly we are running low
on some science supplies and waiting on a couple of key people to show
up. None of this is a real problem but it makes life in Antarctica
interesting. There is also something fun about planes and even if they
do not bring something special for you they add a bit of excitement to
the day. It is also the planes that will carry our ice cores and
personnel out of here at the end of the season, which is coming up very
very fast. We know that they will come but I would like to see them in
and out of here more often to reassure that I will get out on time. One
of the people we are waiting to see is Dr Charles Bentley, geophysicist
and professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Dr
Bentley is a real Antarctic explorer making his first trip here to the
ice in 1957 spending 25 months as part of the International Geophysical
Year(s) in and out of Little America that was an outpost on the edge of
the Ross Ice Shelf. He is truly one of the pioneers of Antarctic
science and during that first trip to Antarctica completed the longest
geophysical traverse from Little America inland to Byrd Station. Today
he is one of the world’s leading experts on West Antarctic ice
sheet and the principle investigator for the University of Wisconsin’s
Ice Coring and Drilling Services (our drillers here atWAIS Divide camp). Dr Bentley also has a mountain named after him, Mount Bentley, at 4,247 m (13,930 ‘) in the Sentinel Range.

Maybe
it is the lack of planes or maybe it is the low-pressure weather system
but we need another celebration around here. We have had holidays and
birthdays about every week but nothing to celebrate in a while now.
Karen did make some terrific looking cookies with sprinkles so we might
need to invent a reason to hold a celebration just for the cookies. If
you have any ideas on something we can celebrate please send them to me
right away.

Today's image is one of the entrance to the galley. You can see the size of the drifts that formed during the storm the last 24+ hours. If we had not been shoveling out the doorway each hour or so it would have been completely blocked.

2008-01-14T08:00:00.000-08:00

January 15, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~ 400m (1200’) ~300 AD
Temperature: -15 °C (6 °F)
Wind speed: 40-50 km/h (25-30 mph) with gusts to 40 mph
Wind Chill: -25°C (-14°F)
Visibility: 0.2 km (0.1 miles)
Clouds: ground snow storm up to 100' (?) in elevation
Wind direction: NE
Relative Humidity: 87%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - lots and lots of flurries, maybe another 2-3" of actual snow?
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: pancakes with Alaskan blueberries
Lunch: Grilled sandwiches, veggies
Supper: Pork, veggies, chicken soup

We
had yet another flight scheduled for yesterday and the day started
calm, sunny, and as nice as it gets here. By supper time it was strong
winds, blowing snow , and little to no visibility.OK , no big deal but
now we are even out of hot chocolate – that is a tough situation. A
person can endure many things but no hot chocolate in the winter is
getting difficult. Actually, believe it or not, but I do not enjoy hot
chocolate so it is no big deal for me (though I am out of Ginger Tea)
but I feel the pain of all the other people here who really like hot
chocolate and feel that it is a stable in the winter (I know it is
summer in Antarctica but it sure feels like winter). The picture today
is of the outhouses (and flags) taken from inside the galley breezeway.
I am not sure if you can actually see the black-colored outhouses in
this image but if not, do not feel left out as we can hardly see them
from the galley and it is only about 17 m (50’) away. I do not think
that this storm will reach the intensity of our pre-Christmas storm that
had us all stuck in the galley and rec hut for the night unable to get
to our tents. Tonight will be an interesting night trying to sleep with
the wind against my tent.

Regardless of the storm we are still
working away in the arch and drilling ice core. All the equipment in
the arch is working well, especially under these conditions. The one
unique things about snowy places like Antarctica is the spindrift.
Spindrift is the very fine snow that gets blown through every tiny
opening whether it is in your clothing, your tent, or in the arch.
There are the tiniest openings along the doors in the arch and today we
were shoveling all day just to keep the snow out. During the last storm
some people had spindrift blown up between their tent fly that found
its way into the tents. One person even found a pile of snow in their
sleeping bag that was blown through a slight opening in the doorway. As
I sit here writing I am hoping that I closed all the doors and windows
in my tent. It was too easy to get lulled into a false sense of security when
I woke up and found another beautiful day. By now I should know better
and I think I did close all the windows and doors - fingers crossed.

My 3d quadrat is still there and making it through the storm. I had a discussion at supper with one of the visiting scientists, Dr. Robert Bindschadler
from NASA who is here with a small group working in and out of the Pine
Island Glacier. The discussion centered around how to measure snow
accumulation here in this windy environment. His group installed an
automatic weather stations (AWS) and it includes a sonic
measuring device for accumulation. He mentioned that you can definitely
measure accumulation here in Antarctica but it has to be daily (even hourly)
observations. The reason is that after the snow actually accumulates during storms
it may be completely scoured away during windy non-snow events.
You can actually stick a ruler in the snow and measure
accumulation of snow but you can not just measure the ruler once at the
end of the season but daily to observe both the accumulation and the
erosion from the wind.

Both accumulationand erosion are the prime events of last night and possibly into late today. The winds last night were rattling my tent to the point where it was a challenge to sleep at all, even with ear plugs of headphones.
We do have flights scheduled for tomorrow
and the next day but I think we all assume that tomorrow is going to be
cancelled. One of these days we will see another C-130 land here with lots of
need supplies.

2008-01-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

January 14, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~355 m (1100’) ~520 A.D. Approaching the end of the Roman Empire
Temperature: -9 °C (13°F)
Wind speed: 15 km/h (9 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -15 °C (4 °F)
Visibility: 1 km (0.6 miles)
Clouds: flurries and wind
Wind direction: W
Relative Humidity: 85%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - flurries
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: Leftovers
Lunch: Leftovers
Supper: Leftovers

As
I mentioned yesterday, our Sunday off is a nice time to catch-up on
rest, skiing, movies, and other work. Wake up, take a shower, wash some
clothes, upload the blog, go back to sleep, eat lunch, ski (pretty
tough in this wind and snow), watch a movie, write, read, go back to
sleep, and then start the week all over again tomorrow. Actually since
my shift was the last to work yesterday, by 4 pm today the afternoon
shift was back at the arch drilling and processing. The evening
midnight to morning shift will also be on tonight in the arch. We will
actually only be here for another week or so and then it is almost time
to pack up and leave. Hopefully the weather suddenly improves and we
all get out of here on time. Possibly unlikely if the weather so far
has been any indication with the number of cancelled flight to date. We
were actually supposed to get a C-130 flight in today but it was also
cancelled. No worries though as Antarctica is what Antarctica is and we
will need to concentrate on drilling as much as possible before we
leave here. We will be home soon enough and back to the our other work,
some of us anyway. There is one person I hear that has scheduled a
month in New Zealand, a month in Australia, and 2 months backpacking in
the states after they leave here. That is not exactly my itinerary as I
will take about 2 days in New Zealand and then straight back to work at
the university. From what I also hear, the weather at home has switched
from snowy to rainy. That does not make me want to run home even with
the constant wind and cold here. There is something wrong about rainy days in
Maine in January. By itself it does not signify global warming but it
is very unusual to have a number of very rainy days in Maine in January and
over time there is a definite trend towards warmer winters. It was not
that long ago that I remember the entire month of January being well
below zero degrees Fahrenheit. In the past, it was the January thaw
that we looked forward to around the end of the month when it might
rain a little just before we moved into my favorite month of February.
Then, the temperatures in Maine were still cold, though longer sunny
days, with more snow. A 3dquadrat is great to have to help you focus
your attention on changes in the weather but just observing your home
area closely is also certainly important. There are a number of sources
that contain long-term weather data records including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). The IPCC report - www.ipcc.ch/- contains an incredible amount of information on global climate change and future climate forecasts developed using computer modeling, based on real observed data. These reports are updated
periodically and are the best source for global climate change
information. There are also a number of other “local” reports such as
the those developed for New England using 100 year data sets on local
weather and events such as the length of growing season and lake ice on
and off dates. One in particular, Indicators of Climate Change in the
Northeast, was developed at the University of New Hampshire and now
distributed by a non-profit group called Cool Air-Clean Planet
(www.cleanair-coolplanet.org/) in New Hampshire that works on greening
solutions. These types of observations/reports are very important in
helping us “see” the changes that are taking place. Near my home is
lake Winnipesaukee NH which has had an annual ice fishing contest for
decades. Only last year (or the year before?) was the first time ever
that the contest was cancelled for lack of safe ice. In the past, New
England was also filled with small, often family-owned, ski areas that
have mostly disappeared as the old New England snow fall has become so
sparse and unpredictable that they could not afford to stay open. Even
in our town is small community ski area that has only held it spring
ski festival once in the past many many years. Could all the lack of
ice and snow be just part of a cyclic trend? Possibly but the
scientific data supports that there is definitely a human induced
addition to the warming that affects local and global climate change.
The Earth’s climate is far more susceptible to small changes than we
ever thought possible. Many still do not believe that people can affect
the planet but these changes are easy to see. Which brings us back to
theWAIS Divide ice coring project as we collect and analyze ice cores
form Antarctica that contain a record of the changes in past climate.
These ice cores will give us additional information to understand past,
present, and future climate changes.

The additional snow and wind has helped by snow bunny and snow serpent. As soon as I am done with them I will post an image.

Today's image is of some of the drill crew from Ice Core Drilling Service (ICDS)
in Madison, WI. Note the sunny day (older photo) and the amount of snow
that has drifted over the drill arch - on which they are standing.

2008-01-12T08:57:00.000-08:00

January 13, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: ~380 m (1140’)
Temperature: -15 °C (6°F)
Wind speed: 22 km/h (14 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -23 °C (-10 °F)
Visibility: 1 km (0.6 miles)
Clouds: flurries and wind
Wind direction: W
Relative Humidity: 80%
Barometric Pressure: falling
Precipitation: - flurries
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: pancakes, muffins, cereal, bacon
Lunch: Jalapeno corn bread, chili, veggie soup, baked potato
Supper: Short ribs, fries, bread, veggie BBQ

We
are working 6 days on and 1 day off this week and maybe the next week.
We have accomplished quite a lot in the drilling arch but still have a
long way to go. Since our ultimate goal is the bottom of the ice sheet
at 3,500 m (10,000’+), and we are just past 350 m (1,140’), we are about
1/10 of the way down. It may seem like we have not gotten far this year
but it took so long to get all the equipment in place that the next few
years will be pure drilling and we will gain 3-4 times more core each
year. At the end of the last shift change Ken printed out a plot of the
annual layers of ice that we have collected so far. A very very rough
estimate places us somewhere back around 600 A.D. We can not directly see the
actual annual layers in the ice core but it
takes the DEP machine to analyze the dielectric constant in the ice to
determine the annual layers. At some level I am becoming a little
complacent about the ice I am working with and I am treating it like
another day in the arch measuring and cutting ice core. It is easy to
forget where we are and the cool science we are doing when working at
-20C trying to stay warm. Next time I get to work I am going to take a
bit more time and really concentrate on what I am collecting.

After
the last work shift on Saturday it is time to catch up with reading,
movies, and personal grooming. Many of us have longer hair and most men are wearing beards here in camp but with limited showers sometimes it is best just to have
as little hair as possible. Where is the closest barber
inWAIS Divide camp? As you can see from today’s picture, your friendly
neighbor driller is good with a multi-million dollar instrument and a
$10 shaver. The big question is what do you tip a free barber in
Antarctica? Me, I am keeping my hair long but little by little I am
getting rid of my beard and plan to arrive home in less than two weeks
without it.

2008-01-11T08:18:00.000-08:00

January 12, 2008
WAIS Divide camp Antarctica

Time: 6 am
Latitude: 79° 28.10’ S
Longitude: 112° 3.56’ W
Elevation: 1820 m (5919’)
Ice core: `270 m (810’), ~900 AD
Temperature: -13 °C (8°F)
Wind speed: 13 km/h (8 mp/h)
Wind Chill: -19 °C (-3 °F)
Visibility: 1 km (0.6 miles)
Clouds: clear to noon, storming by afternoon
Wind direction: W
Relative Humidity: 78%
Barometric Pressure: steady
Precipitation: - flurries
Animals: 6 Skuas, 12 Weddell seals (all in McMurdo)
Breakfast: pancakes, muffins, cereal
Lunch: leftovers of all the best suppers- burritos, steak, catfish gumbo
Supper: Mahi Mahi, rice, veggies

In
New England, the saying is, “If you do not like the weather then wait a
minute”. In Antarctica the saying for me is becoming, “keep waiting, it
might be nice later for a minute, or maybe not”. Friday started as a
beautiful, calm, warm, and sunny day but by 1pm it was a horizontal
snowstorm. Despite the storm outside, the real training grounds for
being in Antarctica is working in the drill arch. It is colder in the
arch, ~ -20 C, than outdoors and you never get the benefit of any
bright sunshine. That temperature is needed to preserve the ice cores which come out at about -27°C. So far all the teams are doing well and easily
handling the amount of work, and the cold. The average run of the drill
up and down the hole to collect one ice core is about an hour. It takes
only about 30 minutes to process each 2.5 m (8’) core so we spend the
rest of the time bagging, boxing, and labeling boxes for shipping back
to the National Ice Core Lab (NICL) in Denver. At the temperature in
the processing room, my clothing is keeping me warm. I do need to
remember though to dry out my socks each meal as the sweat that builds
up in my boots makes my feet cold after a few hours. The worse thing is
my fingers. As long as I keep my gloves on all is fine but it is too
easy to want to take them off to write or handle equipment. The metal
of the equipment is so cold that even a quick touch gives you a cold
burn. There is no great combination of gloves in the arch to handle the
equipment and to write with a pencil but careful changing from thick to
thin gloves makes it all work. It is time consuming but it is the only
good way.

This morning I talked to a group of school kids in
Maine using our satellite phone. They had great questions and it was fantastic to talk to someone
again outside of camp. Because of their questions, I decided that it
might be a good idea to add animals to the list of observations that I
am keeping track of and listing in the beginning of the blog. As you
can see from that item there are few animals to be seen here, and none
(almost none are here in the middle of West Antarctica). By the time I
get back to McMurdo the sea ice will have melted so far that the icebreaker will be able to reach the McMurdo water front and with that broken ice path comes more Skuas and Adele Penguins. There are bound to be a couple dozen of birds wandering around the broken ice flows.

The
image today is of a typical windy day in camp. You can see how flat
the light is and how the snow is blown over the ground like sand.
Though the image is small you might still be able to see the ring
around the Sun.