Journal Entry 2/2/98
A year has passed. I cannot forget Antarctica. In 1997, Jerry Marty told me something as I helped him fly flags at the Geographic Pole marker. Jerry is a senior NSF program official and has spent many, many seasons on the Ice. As we stood last year in a stiff breeze at 40 below zero, I asked him what kept bringing him back. What was it that I was feeling then, something reawakening from my past in the Far North? Jerry’s answer was direct and absolutely to the point. He said, simply, “The Ice gets in your boots. You can’t get it out”.
Is it the cold itself? – or is it the challenge of living at an extreme? Do those whose work takes them to deserts feel the same about heat – do they feel a calling to the sting of dust? – or humidity for the Tropics, the steambath? I’m absolutely certain of it .. but for me, it’s kept in a box up in the attic marked ‘Cold Weather Clothing’. Just a cardboard box – but what a strong, silent song it sings. And I listen.
The project that I started last year is going well, monitoring the concentration of air pollution ‘Black Carbon’ particulates at the South Pole Station. Data is coming back by e-mail every two weeks. The aethalometers are working fine. The instrument upwind of the station is sampling the cleanest air that can be found on the planet: its measurements show BC concentrations as low as 0.1 to 0.01 of a nanogram per cubic meter. (for comparison, clean ocean-breeze air in Berkeley contains hundreds of nanograms after passing over the city; stagnant, hazy days build up to 10,000 nanograms or more). The second aethalometer at the South Pole is downwind of the exhaust from the station’s main generator plant. As the wind sweeps the exhaust plume past the sampling inlet, the instrument registers each waft of fumes as a giant concentration of particles. Correlation of the concentration in these wafts with wind speed and direction allows us to estimate the emissions from the station, part of the environmental impact assessment that will eventually be required by the Antarctic Treaty. The station technician assigned to the project has been doing a great job of keeping the equipment running, sending back periodic reports. Some re-supply was required; some preventive maintenance was advisable; some on-site assessment would be helpful.
But nothing enough per se to demand a deployment South; nothing that careful planning couldn’t have addressed .. until the phone rings.
It was Harry Mahar of NSF – a person whose name is corrected by my computer’s spell-checker to ‘Harry Mohair’. Harry is the NSF’s Safety, Environment and Health Officer, responsible for working conditions at the three U.S. bases in Antarctica. Harry and I had worked together last year on the problem facing aircraft cargo operations. At Pole, the aircraft must leave their engines running while the cargo-ops crew unloads the freight and reloads the retro shipment. The Caterpillar-tractor drivers and cargo handlers are working in the direct blast of kerosene engine exhaust – like manhandling heavy loads at 12000 feet altitude directly behind a school bus. In the Old Days, all logistics were handled by the U.S. military, and OSHA-like concerns were not on their radar screens. Orders were orders. A few years ago, civilian contract workers started taking over more and more functions, and the rules started to change. In the case of cargo-ops, ASA found that women were better Cat drivers than men, and last year it was the case that almost all of the Cargo-ops crew were young women .. young women of child-bearing age, being occupationally doused in kerosene fumes. Enter Harry Mohair, Man With A Mission.
Last year we used an aethalometer to map the concentrations of smoke behind the aircraft, to find the regions where it was a maximum. Of course, this was exactly where the people have to work, close in. Now Harry wants more information. I daydream. The phone rings. As in the classic gumshoe flicks, a gravelly voice grates “Hansen .. Tony Hansen? .. Dis is Harry Mohair. We Need More Information”. We flash back to Patrick McGoohan as ‘The Prisoner’. I blink out of my daydream, we’re in the Nineties, did Sam Spade just contact me by e-mail?
I’m going to Antarctica again.
I depart on Saturday night, January 31. I will sleep one night on the plane. I will arrive on Monday morning, February 2. I will not have a February 1st. Will I pass ‘GO’, will I collect $200 ?
As if in a dream, I find myself at LAX, the quintessential Anonymous Airport in the Big Burb.
I have 5 heavy boxes, painted black, labeled ‘Do Not Freeze’. The Ice that was lurking in my boots is dragging me back down.
Journal Entry:
Christchurch, New Zealand
Wednesday, Jan. 4
I arrived in Christchurch on Monday morning. It is as cloyingly quaint as ever, a reverie of suburban London set against a distant backdrop of brown hills. It’s Croydon, the town I grew up in, xeroxed onto ‘California’ paper.
Things look good at the USAP office. Clothing issue almost right away, report for flight at noon the next day. This time, I feel much more confident .. but I am saddened to miss the electric thrill of the unknown that was so much a part of the anticipation last year. I know what to do with the clothing. I know what to wear, what to leave behind. I know how to banter with the staff in blue coveralls. It’s really a shame – I almost feel cheated. Ho Hum, back down to the Ice.
Check in at Gloria’s B&B – she remembers me, it’s just like home. She has a full house – lots of people coming and going. I am assigned to share a room with Don who arrived on the commercial flight with me and is going down to Mac for the winter-over. Don is a really nice guy, a quiet electrician from North Dakota, we chat a little and then he falls asleep from the long flight down.
Eat, sleep, wake, sausage and eggs for breakfast, onto the shuttle van…….. and right back again. “Too bad you guys” says Mike, the logistics manager, “visibility’s down to zero, no flight down this afternoon. Report tomorrow morning at 5:45”
Boom. My already-small balloon bursts. A day to kill, spinning my wheels. Sunshine? Sidewalk cafes? – not when I really want to get on with the task at hand. To seem useful, we decide to practice with the video capture. I stand in front of weeping willows and announce the delay.
Don does a video also, a little self-consciously, he will try to e-mail it back to the school in ND so that his 9-year-old daughter can see her Daddy although he will be gone for 9 months. As last year, I am deeply moved by the quiet determination and hard work ethic of the contractors who support the entire Antarctic enterprise.
Spend some time at Gloria’s doing computer work, go back to USAP to do some e-mail, feel useless. Get a steak and a pint at Bailey’s pub on the central square, still nothing to do. Fold up my street clothes hopefully for the last time, set alarm clock, get to bed early despite an ominous note from Gloria that our shuttle van time has been changed to 6:15.
6 AM. Don and I are up, cups of tea in hand from Gloria’s selfserve kettle. Our keys are on the reception desk, our bags are in the hallway. We decide to step out of the front door to assess the morning air. Don, quiet, careful Don, pulls the front door closed behind him.
Click.
We are outside, our bags are inside … and our keys are inside too. The whole house is asleep, Gloria and all her guests and the dog. The shuttle will be here in a few minutes. Don and I look at each other. The door is firm.
Then we remember the fire escape, a ladder connected to platforms outside each window. The window to our room is still open a crack, up on the third floor. “You pulled the door closed, you climb back up and in” I tell Don “and make sure you climb back in through the right window or we’ll NEVER get to check-in”. Don has long black hair, a big bushy beard and a blue denim shirt. The screams would be heard all over Christchurch.
He chooses the right window, disappears, and reappears at the front door just as the van pulls up. We smile.
There are 4 other NSF/ASA passengers, to be added to a couple of dozen Navy ratings who are going down to unload the cargo ship. We pull on our ECW’s and clump over to the passenger terminal. Some announcements, the safety video, an airport waiting area complete with Armed Forces TV and a coke machine. Finally we are called out for the bus. Quick – get on the bus first, get to the back.
The bus drives the quarter-mile through the gates to the waiting plane. This morning there will be another flight down later with more military personnel – Air Force guys – and there are two more planes that came in yesterday. Four ‘Hercs’ on the tarmac.
The bus pulls up, the loadmaster sticks his head in the door and yells “Loading by sixes! YOU .. and you and you and you … off the bus in sixes please and onto the plane, less crowding that way”. Those at the front of the bus get put onto the plane first .. which means they are stuffed all the way to the end of the “aisles” (a euphemism) and will spend the next 8 hours with 10 pairs of boots between them and the can. Don and I and the other NSF’s sit tightly at the back of the bus until coaxed off by the bus driver, and then hang back from the boarding process looking as nonchalant as possible.
Finally, we’re the last group on – the plane is a mass of humans-in-wadding, a few seats left at the front, our tiny ruse succeeded and we feel disproportionately proud of ourselves as Old-Timers.
The loadmaster surveys his realm, counts us on his fingers and yells up to the flight deck. The engines start to turn, the turbines whine, the shadows of the propellers flicker and disappear. The whole plane vibrates, even though it’s stock still on the ground right where it was parked. Lights blink, crew members yell into microphones and it looks like a go.
Abruptly, one engine dies, spins down to a halt with a sigh. After a moment, as if following the flight engineer’s decision, engines 2, 3 and 4 follow suit. The crew are looking every which way and listening to the earphones, they go out of the open front and rear doors onto the tarmac. Everyone on the plane looks at each other and thinks “XXXX”. “!!”. One engine overheated or its oil pressure failed, the flight is scrubbed and we’re on the ground for another day. So soon – 10 seconds after the engine ran up to speed. DON’T they have mechanics in this outfit ??
The loadmaster sticks his head into the hold area. Everyone stops talking. “FOLKS” he yells against our earplugs “WE’VE GOT A TWO-ZERO MINUTE DELAY REPEAT TWO-ZERO MINUTES”. It wasn’t a mechanical failure – an extra passenger has to get on at the last minute. After a while, a big guy in a green flight suit climbs aboard and the engines start again. The brakes release, we lurch a little, the view through the window moves.
The props feather and thrust and reverse as the pilot tests all four engines. It’s a very characteristic sound that is familiar to anyone who’s spent time on turboprop aircraft. For me, the sound is hard-wired into memories of the Arctic, Siberia, and of course last year’s trip to the Pole. The plane taxis onto the runway, making this yawning sound, turns to face the runway and engages maximum thrust. Everything blurs and buzzes, we start to move, faster and faster, bump and there’s the ground, falling away below, getting smaller and browner and no longer part of our personal world to be.
The ventilators belch and emit steam (actually it’s condensed vapor from the moist ground air); the passengers arrange themselves into piles of clothing and boots and bag lunches and earplugs and we are on our way to The Ice.
4:45 PM
We have reached The Ice: the edges of the worlds meet under the windows.
I look forward: ahead and below, mountains half submerged in ice: I look up: I see the exhaust nozzle of the aircraft engine, the whole reason I am here.
Journal Entry 2/6/98
At last we take off, after half a day’s delay due to bad weather. Just two passengers, 12 tons of plywood and my boxes of equipment. At first the surface beneath us is covered with cloud, but then as if by appointment the clouds clear just as we approach the Trans-Antarctic Mountains, about 1 hour into the flight. The views are spectacular: the peaks, the ice-filled valleys, the Beardmore Glacier up which Scott and his men toiled so desperately. In less than my father’s lifetime a traverse of Antarctica has been reduced from a heroic and ultimately fatal enterprise, to a plane ride.
How smug we feel, our technology has conquered the Ice. We have established camps as if they were space stations, visited from the air and provided with cooked meals, running hot water and comfortable beds. There’s even a Wells Fargo ATM machine at McMurdo: I withdrew twenty bucks just so I would have the receipt as a souvenir. In the space marked ‘Branch’ was printed ‘Antarctica’.
We approach Pole: the loadie waves at us to buckle up, the plane heads down, our ears pop as they reduce the air pressure from the cruise level of a couple of thousand feet (i.e. almost surface pressure) down to the ambient pressure of Pole, equal to 12000 feet. Almost there.
Suddenly, vibration. Then we hear an engine whine as it shuts down. The crew rush to the windows, point and stare. Number 2 engine is stopped, its propeller motionless. The plane pulls back up and we buzz Pole Station at a couple of thousand feet. Right Over The Top. Right Down There. But we’re not landing. Out of my window I catch a glimpse of the dome receding into the vast whiteness as we turn around to head back to Mac.
Much discussion among the crew, much peering and pointing. It turned out that the ‘Start Valve’ had unexplainedly opened, temporarily flooding the engine with fuel – I suppose, as if you had pulled the choke out on a car while driving on the highway. Because of the as yet unknown possibility of engine damage, they didn’t land for fear that they would be unable to take off again. We and the plywood would spend the night at Mactown, and make a third attempt on the very next flight out.
On the return, we pass again over the Trans-Antarctic Mountains: this time the view is framed by one stationary propeller as well as one spinning prop, a rather special sight.
We had taken off at about 8 PM, and had turned around at Pole at 11. We’d be back in Mac at 2 AM. The first flights out usually call for reporting at 7 to 7:30 AM. It was going to be a short night. I remembered the advice from a veteran Arctic crewman, probably related to me over a beer at Thule: the secret of survival on flight missions is summarized simply as
Sleep whenever you can ; Eat whenever you can ; Excrete whenever you can .
At this particular moment in time, options 2 and 3 were not available, so I slump back on my webbing and catch a few Z’s. Back to Mactown.
Journal entry 2/8/98
On the third attempt, we make it, I am back at Pole. I just knew it was going to succeed: as we drove out from McMurdo and approached Williams Field, the airbase on the ice sheet, I saw planes on the surface and, AND !! – the most spectacular plume of smoke rising from the airfield area and drifting away downwind, risen to a height of maybe 30 to 50 feet off the surface, probably a mile long, the most beautiful brown stripe over the white landscape that anyone could imagine – anyone, that is, whose life contains a dependency association with the humble Soot Particle.
I was so excited at the sight of this smoke trail, that I jumped up and down in the van, pointed through the windows until my fellow passengers knew that I was completely nuts, and finally the driver stopped so I could jump out and take pictures. I’m sure that they won’t show very well on the digital image
but that fact will only heighten the impression gained by you, dear readers, of the transience of human nature, the absurdity of one man’s obsession with Brown Wisps, the improbable yet true basis for justifying a trip to the end of the world.
I was so excited, because the smoke plume showed exactly what I had surmised. An approach to mitigating the exhaust fume work environment behind the aircraft at Pole: just lift the smoke up, only a few feet, so that it blows over the heads of the cargo ops crews, and they have clean air to work in below.
This was such a good portent, that I knew we would get there this time .. and we did .. and it was just like coming home to familiar faces, a familiar situation.
This was crazy! – I’m at the South Pole! – how can it possibly seem familiar?? The answer, of course, is in the vast contrast with my overwhelming impressions last year, when everything was astounding and my brain almost burst from excitement.
This time, here’s a whole bunch of people who welcome me back! “Hey Tony, good to see you again!”.
Some things have changed, but the spirit of the place still has that magic feeling. They’ve moved some of the summer accommodations to a new cluster of tents (yes! – tents at 50 below zero !! – but they are ‘Jamesways’ which have enormously thick insulated walls, and are as big as small buildings )
I am assigned to a ‘room’ (euphemism : = “closet” ; “compartment” ) in one of the ‘Hypertats’, which are the same size as Jamesways but are made of metal. The group of ‘tats are named after the Flintstones characters: I’m in Fred, number 6. Next to Fred are Wilma, Barney and .. Shemp. Shemp is left over from another group named after the Stooges. I presume that Betty, and also Larry, Moe and Curly, are huddled giggling elsewhere. Like his buddies, Fred steams in the bright sunlight from the oil-fired heater.
There is a central hallway with four compartments on each side. The compartments have concertina openings, so you slide it back and squeeze in, then slide it closed. The partitions don’t go all the way up to the ceiling, and mine won’t close completely either: one loud sneeze and seven other people say ‘Gesundheit’.
My first day is Zombie Day, adjusting to the altitude, so I very slowly and deliberately set up house in this little space. A few clothes in the cabinet, computer and camera accessories, a little table as a desk, my heating element, mug, teabags and powdered milk on the shelves. It must be like a sailor coming back on board, setting up his tiny cabin again.
I pause, and reflect on the feeling of those coming here for a full season contract. They must live in this closet for four months, bringing with them in one bag all the talismans of their previous lives. Privacy, outside space, even shared common space are either non-existent or radically different. It’s a mining camp, a lumber camp, but without any outside space to escape to. It’s a submarine stranded on a snow plateau.
I walk slowly over to the bathroom building, right near by. Inside, sinks and stalls and showers. But when I look in the mirror, I see though the window to the outside, fiercely bright, demanding a contrast between its harsh whiteness at 40 below zero, and me stripped to the waist to wash, my warmth protected only by a window.
And it’s familiar. And I’m at The South Blooming Pole. Tomorrow I will be able to breathe, and my work can begin.
Journal Entry 2/10/98
I am acclimatized, my equipment is unpacked and functioning, we all arrived safely. Now it’s time to get to work. This year I have brought with me a prototype of a new version of the Aethalometer, that performs its measurement both with visible light (to detect ‘black’ particles) as well as with ultraviolet light. Some chemical species absorb very strongly in the UV, although they are not visibly ‘black’ – components of tobacco smoke, for example, diesel emissions, and perhaps (aha!) some of the organic species in aircraft engine exhaust.
While other arrangements are being finalized, we set up the UV-Aeth in the upper galley room, a small social area next to the door to the bar. The bar is the only room on the station where smoking is allowed, and the door has a spring closer. Sure enough, when I look at the data the next day, there are some rapid increases in the UV measurement, with relatively few accompanying ‘black’ particles, that probably indicate people opening the bar door and allowing cigarette smoke to escape. However, there are also fairly long periods showing high concentrations of UV absorption as well as proportional amounts of black carbon. This looks a lot like a diesel-exhaust “signature”. The bar and upper galley room are somewhat ventilated from the outside – the ‘outside’ being the interior of the Dome, into which tractors drive from time to time, bringing in pallets of freight. Whenever this happens, the inside of the Dome fills with diesel fumes, and, of course, some of those fumes will find their way into the enclosed spaces of the buildings. While the scientific evidence is neither novel nor overwhelming, it confirms that the UV-Aeth is working correctly, and that tobacco smoke and diesel fumes here have the expected characteristics.
The real fun, though, is yet to come .. measuring the exposure of the cargo crews to aircraft exhaust.
We are going to use 2 Aethalometers: one ‘conventional’ one (black carbon only) will ride with me in a vehicle, and we will park directly behind the aircraft to get a measure of the BC concentrations in the air right behind the plane. The other one, the combination UV-BC, will be mounted in the cab of a caterpillar tractor with its inlet above the head of the driver. This will register the particle concentrations in the tractor cab as it drives back and forth behind the aircraft, maneuvering the loads on and off the plane.
One of the ‘Snow-Cats’ is available, so it is assigned to me, I’m shown how to drive it, and we load one Aethalometer into the back seat on a cushion. I had brought a power inverter which we clipped to the battery, and all is well and functioning. The ‘Snow-Cat’ is fun to drive, but a little bouncy.
The other installation was a lot more daunting: not from the perspective of being difficult, but simply the concept of lashing a sensitive, ten-thousand-dollar item of scientific instrumentation into a snorting, oily Caterpillar Tractor, most of whose visible parts were made out of solid steel at least an inch thick. They drive the Cat into the garage: it clanks in on snowy iron feet and belches its exhaust into the confined space, a Dragon of medieval horrors.
The second power inverter is hooked up, and I carefully hand up the UV-Aeth, wrapped in a cocoon of foam rubber pieces held together with duct tape. We wrap a packing blanket around it and then – literally – lash it in with ropes. Embedded computer ! – Sensitive opto-electronics !! – tiny UV lamps !!! – a highly-sensitive prototype scientific instrument, sent to war in a tank, lashed in with oily ropes.
The power works, the instrument works, there are no further excuses or delays. The Cat blows a huge cloud of exhaust and clanks out through the doors, lurching and swaying. I almost feel like closing my eyes, expecting to see a trail of tiny Aethalometer crumbs left on the ground-up snow.
The driver is a woman of my age, who is an artist back home. She had been a cook down here, 3 seasons ago, and wanted to return but in an outside occupation. They offered her a job as a cargo handler if she would get some training as a Caterpillar tractor driver. She took the training, and is now grasping iron levers with gloved hands, instead of a paintbrush.
The plane arrives, and we go into action. It’s really bad where I am, in the Snow-Cat under the tail of the plane, on the far side away from Cargo-Ops. The blast from the propellers rocks my vehicle, the noise is deafening, the exhaust fumes are really bad. From my vantage point, I see the Instrumented Cat approach, bearing gifts with outstretched arms in the form of a cargo pallet loaded with a Giant Spool, going home. As I watch, almost immobile from horror, the Cat, its load and !!! My Beautiful Instrument !!! lurch and sway and crash back and forth as the tracks grind up the snow during maneuvering. I cannot believe that anything that works on the principle of making tiny, fine determinations of the change in optical properties of a little spot of tape, to a precision of 1 part in 10,000, can possibly survive this tumble-drier.
Amazingly, it does survive .. and very well too. Afterwards, we will find that the data from the tractor cab matches PERFECTLY with my measurements of the concentration being emitted by the engines. The concentrations in the tractor cab rise and fall, as the driver approaches the plane and then backs off to the staging area on the side. Amazing. Truly Amazing. The instrument worked, and worked well. As it turned out, we got data from 5 different planes, and found that their emissions varied a great deal, i.e. some planes were ‘dirtier’ than others. The graphs showed that the concentrations in the tractor cab could be held to moderately low levels by keeping the door closed, and moving in quickly from the clean-air zones at the sides to minimize the time spent right behind the plane. Commonsense stuff, but now confirmed by 2 sets of scientific data.
But there’s more for me to do. Several flights today. We also want to record the details of the tractor’s movements, and for various reasons I’m delayed so that I have to rush out to the flight line just as the plane arrives, without having time to go back to my ‘Tat and get extra clothing i.e. insulated overalls. I’m lucky, I catch a ride over to the flight line on a sled towed by a passing snowmobile.
You guessed. I’m gonna stand still with a clipboard for three-quarters of an hour in –42 degrees with insufficient clothing.
Gordon Bennett ! (a quaint British expletive) I get cold. I freeze, my glasses get covered with ice and I can’t see my wristwatch, my goggles ice over, my pen freezes so it won’t write unless I unzip my coat to put it under my arm, and that lets in more cold air, I can’t wear my thick gloves because then I can’t hold the pen, you get the idea. Gordon Blooming Bennett. Gordon Blooming Frozen Bennett.
But there is one moment of inspiration in this frigid idiocy titled ‘Clipboard-With-Icicles’. Around me are the various ground-operations crew, taking care of things like the aircraft fuel, the passenger checklist, etc. At Pole, men and women share almost all tasks equally. Today’s Ground-Op is a woman, dressed to manhandle (womanhandle?) fuel hoses and packing cases and whatever, dressed as a Working Polie in insulated brown coveralls, quilted jacket etc. But lacking the bushy beard of most of the Outside-Tasked men here, she has pulled her neck gaiter up, way over the nose, to keep her lower face warm. Her hat is pulled down to keep her forehead warm. The eyes show through a narrow slit in this mass of clothing, eyes framed with the only skin visible.
The visual effect is stunning in its incongruity. It reminds me of the Islamic veiling of women. It’s the image we see from Tehran or Kabul .. except for the oil-stained coveralls and the giant boots. The chador has reached the Industrial South Pole.
Journal Entry 2/12/98
It’s done. I’ve measured smoke next to the bar, smoke behind planes, smoke in the tractor cabs and smoke in one of the new buildings near the runway. There’s smoke everywhere, because there has to be heat and power and motion, and that is provided by burning fuel. I was out late last night watching planes on the runway, taking notes of the movements of tractors – but the second time, I dressed properly. All the data is in my laptop and it looks really good. It’s certainly advantageous to be able to prepare a professional-looking chart within half an hour of taking the disk of raw data out of the instrument. I suppose Bill Gates got to be rich for a reason.
Yesterday, planes were delayed and at one point there were two of them idling on the Pole runway like angry cats, growling and swishing their tails, because bad weather had shut down McMurdo. Today dawned cloudy and ominous, but then the clouds thinned out and I had a nice display of blue sky for my farewell.
( I bet you read right past that without blinking. ‘Dawned’ ?? what do I mean ‘DAWNED’ ?? There’s only one dawn per year at Pole, and it lasts for several days. Nevertheless, people at Pole use the terminology “Last Night”, “Tomorrow Morning” , “Afternoon” etc. in the conventional way, despite the fact that these concepts are completely artificial. )
Now we’re on our way back in the plane. Starting air pressure equivalent to 11,000 feet, the Pole ambient. As the flight proceeds, they will gradually re-pressurize the cabin to bring us back to sea level. No matter how much you stayed indoors at Pole, even if you stayed in a building in the Dome and only left it to go across to the galley, there’s no escaping the altitude. Back to McMurdo, back down to earth – yes, Earth, of which there is none at Pole – back towards the real world, one step at a time. The first step is to come down from the mountain, relinquish the rarefaction, the subtle reminder that one-third of the atmosphere is below you, the lack of breath that always tells you where you are.
I am not sure if there are heroics at McMurdo – remarkable achievements, great challenges met. Somehow I cannot visualize it there, it doesn’t fit. Too many people. Mactown has a night time defined by lack of activity, and thereby obvious by contrast. At Pole, the exigencies of getting everything done in a very short time under extremely harsh conditions dictate round-the-clock work. Tractors chug, construction crews hammer and shout in three shifts.
The sun goes round and round relentlessly, making no distinction for the clock. You sleep when your work is done, you wake when your alarm beeps. The view through the window is identical except for the direction of the shadows.
The Great Achievement at Pole this season was the construction of a new arch, the start of the lengthy process of completely rebuilding the station for the next century. One step at a time, old structures will be removed, new facilities built within the scope of the master plan.
One segment at a time, the arch sections are assembled on the ground and then hoisted into place.
The work has to be finished this season: they can’t possibly depart for the winter and leave it incomplete. Yet the start of work was delayed 12 days at the beginning of the season due to bad weather: that’s 12 percent of the 100-day season, one-eighth of the total. Jerry Marty is in charge: he worked construction as a young man and has worked his way up through the ranks to where he is now in NSF’s management. The roughnecks know this: in turn, he knows what’s possible, what’s not. Respect is tough to earn, easy to lose. The guys and women clambering on the arch at 40 below work for Jerry and The Goal: completion.
The last section is hoisted and bolted: Jerry is a happy man. He marks his calendar: on schedule, under budget, despite starting 12% late. When the finishing touches are done and the site is cleaned up for winter, the beer will flow – but not a moment sooner, nor a moment later than the last date for the last flights out. These people are the heroes.
Journal Entry 2/13/98
It’s wet in McMurdo. Wet, liquid water in pools on the ground. Wet heavy snow has fallen and the temperature must now be almost 40 degrees, that is to say, 40 above. The air is thick, the air is moist too. By contrast with Pole, the McMurdo atmosphere presses upon me like the fecundity of a tropical jungle. My body responds: released from asceticism, I am getting 50 percent more oxygen than yesterday. The thick sticky snow is like whipped cream rather than crispy flour.
Mactown looks almost quaint, covered with fresh snow and with icicles dripping from the corrugated iron roofs. A wooden bridge crosses some elevated pipes with a ski-resort flair.
I walk down to Scott’s Hut: on the way, I pass the dock where the resupply ship “Green Wave” is berthed for unloading. There’s quite an opening in the sea ice and the reflections twinkle.
Nature presses closer: skuas circle overhead, I had seen seals on the drive in to town from the airfield, and then …..
Penguins !
Not only were they cute to meet all expectations, they also fulfilled the requirement felt by everyone who goes to Antarctica: the need to answer the question from one’s family and friends: Did You See Penguins ? Just as the USAP provides food and housing and live TV for the benefit of McMurdo personnel, perhaps they also provide penguins – carefully trained to look natural, just like Disneyland employees, but on payroll nevertheless.
But penguins or none, Mactown is still a town, with all of the bustle and clapboard siding and truck yards of its military roots. One heck of a view, to be sure. All of the popular media expectations of Antarctica. But not a space station floating on top of three miles of ice, like Pole.
We arrive from Pole on Thursday evening: bag drag at 9 PM for an 07:30 departure on Friday, back to even more warmth. Just long enough for a meal, a walk, a few hours’ sleep and off in the bus to Willy Field, from whence I had tried three times to get to Pole only a week ago.
Just a week – but it seemed like a week in space. A week focussing on only one thing, only one responsibility: Do Your Project. No phone calls, no meetings, no reports. Food and housing provided, just Do Your Project. The hard work of doing the project seemed like a vacation: not a vacation from toil, but a vacation from stress. There were actually a couple of days when I had an hour or two with nothing to do. Of course, I did e-mail, wrote my journal, took pictures … but imagine, an hour or two with no external demands.
Reality intrudes. When we get out to Willy Field, there are planes running their engines, there is a HUGE cloud of smoke hanging over the previously-white ice.
But that, after all, was one of the reasons I came.
Load the plane, put in earplugs, only sixteen passengers and a big unit of freight. As we depart, I look down at a glacier. Though seemingly solid, it moves and flows under the influence of inexorable forces. A different set of forces is taking me home, like a giant bunjy cord. The plane flies into clouds and Antarctica is gone.
Aerosol d.o.o.
Kamniška 39A
1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia, Europe
+386 1 4391 700
Aerosol USA Corp.
10157 SW Barbur Blvd Suite 100C
Portland, OR 97219 USA
+1 510 646 1600
