Day Seven: Wednesday 7 December

Real science!

Today was set aside for visiting one of the teams working out in the field this season. Scott Base is the hub for all science activities, but for many of the teams it is the place that they leave from and come back to, and it takes a lot of organisation to get that to happen.

Just as the food and all other supplies for Scott Base have to be carefully planned, ordered and sent down by air or sea – which means you feel guilty leaving even a mouthful of food because you know what it has taken to get it to your plate - so the science teams have to plan in detail what they need and how to get it to Antarctica. And because of the extreme conditions, things don’t always go as smoothly. Equipment breaks down, or doesn’t work the way people thought it would, or lots of other unexpected events can happen – like equipment not arriving on time - to hold up the work, and living and working conditions are often challenging as well.

The team from K001 (each science team or event has a number, even mine – I’m K136) took me out with them on a day trip to the site.There were seven of us, so we took five in a Hagglund and the other two rode on skidoos. They left after us and I tried to get a photo of them zooming past halfway there, but they were too fast!

This team is led by David Prior from the Dept of Geology, University of Otago. They’re trying out a new way of taking ice samples from a hole in the ice shelf, and they’re also hoping to freeze seismometers into the ice shelf to listen for sound waves and ice quakes. This is a test of technologies for a bigger programme in the 2017-2018 summer season, and it’s connected with bigger issues of ice flow towards the ocean, ice shelf collapse and global warming.

We passed the site of our AFT camp and continued across the ice shelf. This is the way to Cape Crozier, which three members of Scott’s team travelled to in the middle of winter to try and collect emperor penguin eggs. One of them, Apsley Cherry-Garrard, wrote about their horrendous trip in a book called The worst journey in the world.

Our hour-long drive was much more straightforward, and even the AFT camp site didn’t look so alarming. In fact I realise now that I spent the first few days feeling completely overwhelmed and intimated by the environment, but I’m proud to say that I went on my first solo walk later today.

The camp is built around tents and linked containers for living, eating and sleeping spaces, with the drill site off to the side. It's all by itself in the middle of the ice shelf, surrounded by vast expanses of unbroken snow, overlooked by Mt Erebus and Mt Terror.

Cosy camp kitchen!

The view from the camp toilet!

The on-site team members welcomed us with cups of tea and even toasted our sandwiches for us (we’d made lunch before leaving Scott Base). They talked about how the project was going and the problems they’d come up against, and gave us a tour of the drill site. 

It was really interesting to see how things don’t always go to plan, or work out perfectly first time, and part of the process is figuring out what to do next. What makes that specially difficult, and often very frustrating, down in Antarctica is that everyone knows what an expensive and time-consuming process it has been to get things to that stage, and they also know that they only have a limited time available when they can be out in the field doing this work.

We got back to Scott Base at about 5pm, and spent a few more minutes de-kitting, getting back into ordinary clothes and putting gear away. At quarter to six, I was supposed to be meeting the American group who were coming over for dinner, including their writer in residence, Maris Wicks. But just before that, I found out that our bag drop for the next day’s flight was at 6.45pm, and I hadn’t even started packing. So I managed a quick chat with the American group, then 15 mins of crazy throw-everything-in packing before hauling all my stuff to the bar for weighing (this means weighing the check in luggage, which is taken away and disappears  and weighing your carry-on luggage and yourself.) Luckily the American group were still finishing dinner so I could join them after that. It’s so nice to have made a link between the US writers and artists programme and our NZ one.

Later that evening, at about 10pm, I went out to the pressure ridges by myself, and everything went fine, even if I did have a bit of trouble working the radio. But Jim who was on the late shift on comms obviously knew it was me calling in, and patiently waited til I got it right! The seals were blobbing out as usual and some of the Scott Base crew were out kite surfing. It was a lovely evening.

Still Day Six: Tuesday 6 December

When we went into the labs at McMurdo, Paul bumped into some people he knew and one of them, Caroline, offered to take us downstairs to the wet lab and touch tank, full of sea stars and sea anemones and other graceful, colourful and beautiful sea creatures. Look at these - (this water was freezing, I had to warm up my hands in my gloves afterwards)

We were so late getting back that lunch morphed into afternoon tea, at which I’d arranged to meet Lizzie who was going to show me the work she and the other conservators are doing on the contents of the TAE Hut .More on that hut later! And then Trudie tracked me down to say that Tim Naish, one of the scientists on the hot water drilling project, had some very cool fossils if I wanted to see them – so here they are. Leaf fossils and bits of wood from 15 million years ago, when small beech trees grew in the Dry Valleys.

And the day still wasn’t over, because after dinner at about 8pm, Kat offered to take us out for a walk in the pressure ridges (more on them later!) just in front of Scott Base. So much snow had fallen that Kat took a pole to probe the path between the flags -

 
But we made it round to the spot where you can see the seals – fat black blobs contentedly lolling on the ice.

As as we stood marvelling at the weird and wonderful ice shapes -

 

 

we heard a puffing and snorting and saw the tip of a seal’s nose emerging as it came up through one of the breathing holes. What a magic way to end the day.

Day Six: Tuesday 6 December

Snow, seal blubber and fossils

Today looked as if it was going to be a quiet day because it started to snow and the forecast was for worse weather to come, but it has been really busy and full of fascinating stuff, from smelly seal blubber to fossils.

This morning I had a trip to Discovery Hut organised with Paul, the science tech, as driver and guide. Discovery Hut is the hut from Scott’s first expedition, and it’s tucked away in a small bay only a few hundred metres from the American base at McMurdo.

We took the main road from Scott Base to McMurdo (only 5-10 mins drive away) and drove through a muted black-and white world, so different from yesterday’s blue sky and sunshine.

 I’m glad to have been able to experience such contrasting weather conditions, especially for visiting the hut where Scott’s team lived through much worse weather. In fact the hut was prefabricated in Australia and based on an Australian bungalow with a wide verandah, and it proved so cold that the men ate and worked there but slept on board their ship anchored nearby.

 

Just inside the front door was a pile of seal blubber leaking ooze, and the whole hut smelt of it - and lying outside the front door was this - a very dead, mummified seal. 

 

 I was lucky enough to have ten minutes or more inside the hut on my own, just soaking up the atmosphere. These huts are so evocative of history that you almost expect to hear voices or catch glimpses of the men at work.

Remains of the last dinner cooked here, still in the frypan

 Afterwards we had a drive around McMurdo, which makes you see Scott Base in a whole new light. McMurdo is so much bigger, housing over a thousand people, and it has big accommodation blocks, a fire station, hospital, helicopter pads, warehouses, a gym, a chapel,a coffee house/wine bar and huge computer labs, and a more industrial, mining-town feel.  Having said that, the people we did meet in the labs and the canteen were all really friendly. Scott Base has an American night every Thursday and apparently the Americans from McMurdo love coming here for dinner.

Whenever you leave Scott Base, even if just for a walk, you have to sign out, say which vehicle you are taking (if driving) and what time you expect to be back. At least one member of your party has to take a radio and spare battery, and you have to call in to the comms team at regular intervals with updates. We signed out from 11 to 12.30pm, but were out longer than planned as there was so much to see, so we called back and asked comms to extend our return time to 2pm. We also asked if they could arrange to put aside two lunches for us and lovely Ruby (who was on our Cape Evans trip yesterday) sorted that for us too.

There was more to come – I haven’t even got to the fossils yet! The day wasn’t over!

Christmas at McMurdo

 

Chapel of the Snows at McMurdo

 

Day Five: Monday 5 December

Unexpected treats (but everything down here is a treat)

Today our programme got rejigged slightly and suddenly a trip to Captain Scott’s hut at Cape Evans was on offer. How could anyone refuse that?

There are three huts that are either very close, or fairly close to Scott Base. Discovery Hut (from Scott’s first expedition) is at Hut Point, right beside the American base at McMurdo. Cape Evans houses the hut from his second Terra Nova expedition, the one from which they launched their attempt on the South Pole, and further away at Cape Royds is Shackleton’s hut from his Nimrod expedition. (Discovery, Terra Nova and Nimrod are the names of their ships.) I could never get the positions of these three huts straight in my mind before, but now I’ve been to one – and might see another tomorrow – it all makes more sense.

Departure time was set for 8am, we got away by 8.15, packing the survival kits on the roof of the Hagglund in case it went through the ice, so they would float. (Comforting thought.)

Mark drove us out from Scott Base, and across the sea ice in front of McMurdo, then just kept going in a straight line across the ice for about an hour and a half –

 

But we did stop to have a look at these amazing icebergs frozen into the ice, near the islands we saw from the top of Castle Rock. The icicles were melting and we could hear the tinkling of water, the only sound in that vast landscape apart from the odd screeching skua overhead.

 

The hut at Cape Evans is right on the water’s edge, or where the water would be if the sea ice melted, which means you have to watch out for tide cracks and make sure you don’t fall into one.

 

I’ve read so much about these huts and expeditions – books and diaries written by the men themselves – that I knew it would be an amazing experience to go there, but everyone finds it amazing, no matter how much you know (or don’t know) about the early polar explorers. For a start, it’s astonishing to think that they brought everything they needed with them to build the huts, and then built them, and what they left behind is just a fraction of what they needed for their time on the ice.

And inside, it’s so beautifully restored that history seeps out of every dark corner, and you can close your eyes and imagine it all being used: the kitchen, bunks, tables, jugs and bowls, chairs, scientific equipment, clothes, sealskin shoes, tins of food, piles of skis leaning against the wall…

I especially love the tins and cans of food and other kitchen equipment -

 

And the way that all the bunks differ because the men built their own ones, some better than others.

 

And other random stuff...

Seal blubber!

A box of penguin eggs!

After we’d dragged ourselves away, we drove a little way further to see the Barnes glacier spilling off the slopes of Mt Erebus –

 

 

And on the way home, we saw one Adelie penguin - the first one we've seen (because they need to live near the edge of the sea ice) that caught sight of us too and scurried away.

 

 

 

Still Day Four: Sunday 4 December

Castle Rock

Today Richie, one of the field safety guys, offered to take a group of us out to Castle Rock - a half hour drive in a Hagglund, then a scramble up the side of a big rock. Does that sound easy? Well, it wasn't!

 

 

I've left out the whole bit about getting ready - although I'm much better at that now. I know where to collect a day pack and snacks from, what sort of clothes I might need, and what else to put in my pack, and I remembered to sign out without having to traipse all the way back and do that, and I gave myself enough time so I didn't get completely hot and bothered pulling on all the jackets and boots, and I don't feel quite so overwhelmed when stepping outside into the cold.

I've also left out the bit about slipping over on the ice, and figuring out how to use the cows tails (I think that was what Richie called them? like carabiners) to haul myself up the rock face, and  not getting freaked out by Richie's descriptions of what would happen if you got too close to the edge.

But once at the top, it was pretty amazing, with views from Mt Erebus smoking away to the peninsulas of Cape Royds and Cape Evans (both sites of historic huts) sitting behind Razorback Island, and glaciers spilling into the sea ice, and away across the other side, the mountains and glaciers of the Dry Valleys, and bits of McMurdo and Scott Base down below, just visible behind Hut Point. We stood up on top for a while and then ducked down into a less windy spot and had a cup of tea and biscuits while still admiring the view.

I've also left out the bit about scrambling down again, which was just as challenging as climbing up,.

A few of our group set off to walk back, but I felt like I'd had enough adventure for the day by then, and anyway we had another science team lined up to talk to - a group of four guys from Wellington who've been working on rare atoms and cosmic rays, which sounded pretty enticing.

Scott Base is a long way from anywhere, but there's a lot to do, both indoors and out. People have been on walks for their day off, watched movies, visited McMurdo, or joined in supporting the NZ teams in the man hauling competition, with teams of four pulling one other team member on a sled from McMurdo to Scott Base. (Sadly the Americans won this time... )

After dinner, the science team we'd talked to gave a general talk about their work in the bar, but Guy and I missed it because we were on dishwashing rota in the kitchen, which involved a whole pile of dirty pots and pans (but it was a very delicious dinner) as well as sweeping and mopping the floor. Dessert was provided by My Crew Rules! (Part of an ongoing competition between the different groups at base) and their entertainment also included a "surprise mystery speaker" who turned out to be Richie, talking about leading a group on a 75-day climbing expedition up Everest back in May. Castle Rock is tiny in comparison, but it was big enough for me!

Day Four: Sunday 4 December

Brunch and Fam trips

Sunday is a day off for Scott Base staff, and often there's a “fam trip” (which stands for "familiarisation trip", but "family trip" works quite well too!) This is a day trip out somewhere, usually announced on the noticeboard outside the kitchen/dining room for people to sign up to. That's what we're doing later today.

Scott Base sleeps about 80 people, but in summer there are people passing through all the time – coming for short visits, or staying for a few nights on the way to their science base out on the ice. At the moment, it’s pretty full. There’s a huge amount of organisation goes into managing all the people coming and going.

It’s a very social place. Everyone eats together in the canteen, and the eating arrangements are described as being like a “catered backpackers” – the food is amazing, but you line up to do your own dishes afterwards, and if the trays are full when you get to the top of the line, you take your turn to put the dishes through the steriliser, wait through the 90 second cycle and put them away. People take turns on the dishwashing roster and the bar roster. There’s even a coffee machine, for you to make your own coffee! All the food takes a long journey to get there, so people are very conscious about not wasting anything.

Every Saturday at 3.15pm, there’s a meeting in the canteen for all staff to get together and talk about what’s happening on base. It’s also very noticeable that people aren’t glued to cellphones and digital devices – maybe because of the limited connectivity, but also because it’s a place that encourages you to engage with each other and with the environment, not with personal technology. When you sit down for a meal, everyone is dressed casually and the person next to you could be a scientist, a staff member, a politician, a DV (distinguished visitor), a writer or an artist - it's a very "levelling" atmosphere.

The main building consists of a series of interconnected huts, linked by corridors and stairways. It’s about 400m from end to end, and to start with (even sometimes now) I just couldn’t get the directions straight, and was constantly getting lost, or heading confidently in totally the wrong direction. The corridor walls are lined with big framed photos of NZ scenes and science posters of work that has been done down here, and there are lots of windows, so you can be walking along thinking of something else, and then you suddenly look out the window at blue sky and white ice, and remember where you are.

Every morning, there’s a voiceover giving the weather details and news of the day, usually some quirky item from NZ. Today it’s minus 4 degrees, sunny, but there’s a wind blowing that will make it feel more like minus 21 degrees, and the news was about the crashed McLaren supercar on the Queenstown-Glenorchy road. 

Sunday is most people’s day off, and there’s a big Sunday brunch at 10am, featuring make-your-own waffles as well as a cooked breakfast. After that, we’re heading out for our "fam trip” to Castle Rock!

 

Day Three: Saturday 3 December

20 to midnight and still just as sunny outside.

We were very lucky with our AFT overnight. Other new people who arrived earlier in the season had to do their in temperatures of minus 20 or 30 degrees.

This morning we awoke to another fine day, got dressed, packed up our stuff, made cups of tea and packed up the tents.  This was when I spent about 20 frustrating minutes hunting for one glove (of the many pairs) that I couldn’t find – even though it was just me in the tent!  If I couldn’t find it, I’d have to report it because you can’t leave anything out in the environment, but finally – after searching several times through bags, sleep kit and all my cold weather gear - I found it tucked away inside one of my (many) hats.

We stamped down the snow trench and camp kitchen, so the Hagglunds wouldn’t fall into a hole, and just before we left for Scott Base, Mark took us over to the Square Frame. This is a container hut that base staff can book if they want some privacy, time out or a fun night out with a group of friends. It has a bunk room and was incredibly warm (so it can be used as an emergency shelter if needed for AFT).
We were back at base by about 9.30am, but of course that wasn’t all – sleep kits had to be draped over racks in the drying room, any uneaten packets of food put back in the food cupboards, dirty dishes washed and kitchen equipment put back in the kitchen room, rubbish disposed of, tents out away and the Hagglunds refuelled. We had to de-boot and get back into indoor clothes in time for a quick session debrief with Mark before morning tea. It was only 10am and once again it felt like the day had been packed full already.

The rest of the day: more meals. Lunch, afternoon tea, dinner (all delicious). Paul the tech guy connected me up to the internet, Trudie organised for Guy and  me to meet with the two science teams who are flying out tomorrow (weather permitting) to talk about what they’ve been doing. At 3.15pm everyone was in the canteen not just for afternoon tea but also for the weekly base meeting, followed by base tasks for volunteers. I volunteered to help tidy up the carrels room, where the dress ups are stored. (For dress up parties of course!) 

Inside after dinner, people were hanging out in the bar or catching up on emails in the computer rooms. Outside, people were kite surfing on the ice or going for walks on the marked tracks in their brightly coloured jackets. And now it’s midnight, and the sun is still shining…

 

 

Still Day Two: Friday 2 December

Antarctic Field Training - overnight!
or
Glamping in Antarctica

We packed every single item of clothing we'd been issued with, ready for anything, but it was the most amazing weather. Such a gorgeous night - sunny, hardly any wind at all, and the ice crystals were glittering in the snow.

Mark, our field trainer, drove us in the Hagglund about half an hour out of Scott Base. We unloaded the gear and started practising our outdoor and survival skills (which some of us have more of than others). This meant, first of all, putting up the survival tent and three Scott Polar tents, and laying out our sleep kit - four layers of sleeping bags - so it was ready to climb into.

Scott Polar tents in the gear storeroom

The Polar tents are modelled on the style that Scott and his teams would have used, which is pretty incredible to think about. In fact you can't help wondering, even just such a short distance from Scott Base, what it must have been like for them ploughing and manhauling their way to the Pole, in far worse weather and less adequate clothing than we were experiencing last night.

Setting up tents

Want to know how to build a snow kitchen? I can tell you! It involves digging out cubes of ice with a snow saw and spades (I didn't even know there was such a thing as a snow saw.) The ice cubes get built into a wall to give you shelter from the wind. (There wasn't much wind - but you have to be prepared for a change in the weather.)

Still no wind!

There were six of us plus Mark in our group: me and Guy, Jeremy from NIWA and Gerry, Chris and Andrew from LINZ. When we were working  out who would go in which tent, Jeremy said he'd like to sleep in a snow trench, so that's what he was making while we were constructing our kitchen. I hope he wasn't just being nice to me, because he really did seem to want to sleep out in his trench (which did look pretty cool), but as you can see from the list of names, I was the only female in our group. I'd been happy to share - but actually it was pretty nice to have a tent to myself. (And I ended up with so much stuff spread all over it that I don't know how the others managed with two to a tent.)

My home for the (sunny) night

And me!

The sun slowly circled around the horizon, and away in the distance, but looking so close, Mt Erebus was wreathed in a shawl of clouds, with a faint puff of smoke sometimes coming from the summit.

By about 8.30pm we were all set up and sitting in our camp kitchen, eating cheese and crackers and drinking cups of tea. It was still sunny and warm and we stayed there for nearly two hours, talking and having dinner (dehydrated meals from the Scott Base store) and more cups of soup, tea or milo. 

I discovered that eating is quite hard when you are wearing snow goggles and can't see what you are doing, and when you want to be very careful not to spill anything, because it will have to be scooped up in its bed of snow and put into the food contamination bag. The aim is always to keep the Antarctic environment as pristine as possible, so there are  lots of processes for waste management that have to be carefully followed.   

The sun was high in the sky and still bright as day when we started getting ready for bed at about 11pm.Then everything went very quiet, for hours - apart from a plane that came in sometime around midnight, and a few gusts of wind that set canvas flaps fluttering. But it was light all night, which was so weird. 

PS The toilet arrangements could have been a lot worse. There were a series of buckets (enough said). But at least it was inside a tent!