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!

 

Day Two: Friday 2 December

Antarctic Field Training (AFT)
 

One of the first things you have to do at Scott Base is Field Training. And everyone does this - VIPs, visiting MPs and all. So less than 24 hours after we arrived, we were putting up tents out on the ice and preparing to build an outdoor kitchen and table out of blocks of snow.

Field training is to help you understand more about Antarctica’s unique cold-weather environment, and how to cope with its challenges and recognise potential hazards, including the signs of hypothermia, frostbite and snow blindness. The field trainers teach you basic survival skills and safety routines and show you how you could cope in a crisis situation. Everything from the most basic (how do you know what the weather is doing, what do you wear to go outside, what colour flags do you follow?) to how do you pitch a tent in snow and ice? How do you anchor a tent peg? How do you build an emergency shelter?

OK to tell the truth, I wasn't totally looking forward to this. But it has been amazing.

The 6 of us who came down on the plane together were matched up with Mark, one of the field trainers. We spent Friday morning going over theory stuff, and after lunch Mark took us outside for an intro walk over the pressure ridges (where the sea ice meets the land). First thing  this morning, it was snowing! The snow had stopped by then, but there was still a sharp wind blowing which made us realise that we really might need all that outdoor gear.

 

Mark's favourite three words are "let's boost" and "wicked". So we did a lot of boosting - in fact we never seemed to stop all day - and everything was pretty wicked. (That's not quite true, Mark did allow us 15 mins for afternoon tea, which came with three different choices: muesli slice, caramel slice or lolly cake, all delicious. Morning and afternoon tea are taken very seriously at Scott Base.)

Later Mark let us have a go at sorting out which clothes to wear, preparing the food boxes, practising lighting the portable stove and getting our sleep kit together. Then we got into our outdoor clothes, packed all our gear plus some Polar tents into a Hagglund, signed out and set off about 6pm.

"Got into our outdoor clothes" sounds easy, but it takes us newbies a ridiculous amount of time. Even lacing up boots takes forever, and by the time we've struggled into all our layers and jackets in the locker room, we're hot and thirsty and already worn out! 

More on AFT soon!

 

Day One: Thursday 1 December

Flying to Antarctica!

11pm and sitting in my top bunk and it’s still light outside!

So I’m actually here at Scott Base feeling slightly discombulated (partly because it’s 11pm and still sunny) but also very glad that we didn’t have to experience either a cancelled flight from Christchurch, or a boomerang one, which is when you get halfway there and the pilots decide it won’t be safe to land and turn back.



Christchurch airport - that's our Hercules.

Things I did expect about the flight:

It was so noisy! You couldn’t talk to anyone without getting right up beside them and yelling in their ear, or passing a written message along the rows. Most people had earplugs or headphones and watched movies or played games on their phones or read or did crosswords (you can guess which I did).

It was so cramped! And that was with only about 15 of us on board - 6 Kiwis and the rest Americans - when there can be up to 60. I knew that you sat along the outside of the walls, and another row of people sat in the middle, but I didn’t realise the two rows would be so close together that our knees were almost touching, and whenever you wanted to get up for a stretch you had to squeeze between everyone’s big boots. I reckon the 8 of us in our section (2 facing rows of 4 each) were crammed into a total area not much bigger than a big double bed. There aren’t any armrests and it took me some minutes of practising and a bit of help from the American guy opposite to get the hang of the strange seatbelts.

Inside the Hercules - pretty much the only place to stand and stretch your legs.

Yes, we did get a paper bag lunch and a big 1.5 litre bottle of water which was lucky as it was so hot (see below). Inflight entertainment consisted of burrowing about inside the paper bag to see what treats were there: sandwiches, crisps, a muffin, a muesli bar, a mars bar, a packet of cookies, a packet of crisps and an apple. Someone passed a written message down the row: anyone want to swap for a vegetarian option? (yes, please!)

Yes, the toilet really is a bucket down the back, hidden behind a curtain.

Yes, that's it!

 Things I didn’t expect:

It was so hot! We’d been told to wear our extreme cold weather gear in case of an emergency - possible emergencies were described at length in the safety briefing - and once in the cramped conditions inside (see above), it was pretty hard to get changed into anything else.

The lighting was quite dim, and the windows are very small (more like portholes) so it’s hard to see to read. One person had brought a mini book torch attached to her book. I’ve got one too but it was packed away and no use!

Because it’s so cramped (see above), you have to stow away your stuff and sit down as quickly as possible, so other people can sit down. But once your bag has been squashed into a spare space, you can’t get at it again. So all those 32 pockets were no use, because I had put stuff in my bag instead, that I couldn’t get at. Like a mini torch for reading with! And once you sit down, there’s nowhere to put any of your stuff, so I spent most of the flight trying to balance books, drink bottle, lunch and camera on my lap.

It takes a lot of taxiing to take off and land. When we landed we seemed to be taxiing along for about 10 minutes.

I thought we would see a lot of ocean and then we’d be at Scott Base. We did see ocean – lots of it - and then a lot of clouds -

but then we saw floating sea ice, exciting! This was about 5 hours out from Christchurch.

And then we flew over Antarctica itself – even more exciting!

And when we landed, and climbed into an American truck, it took another 40 mins of driving to get to Scott base, while the Americans on board kept going to McMurdo).

It was sunny and not too cold at all, and all the ice was glittering in the sunshine!

Things I didn’t know but could have guessed:

It is very hard to do up the zip of a bulky jacket when wearing two pairs of gloves and a balaclava. Obviously didn’t get the order of that quite right.

Then we arrived at Scott Base, climbed out of the truck and got welcomed and ushered inside, and now here we are! This is my bunk room, shared with three room mates.

 

Day Zero: Wednesday 30 November

In Christchurch!

Getting to Christchurch took a while as our flight was delayed by about an hour, but at least we weren't trying to go any further, because today's flight to Antarctica was cancelled due to bad weather down on the ice. That means there will be two flights going down tomorrow, and I'm quite pleased that ours is the second flight that will leave at about 10am.    

On the flight down from Wellington, I met three other people heading south: two from LINZ who are surveyors and one from GNS Science. Gerry has been to Antarctica twice before - the first time 20 years ago, Andrew once and Chris never. They're going to be on the same flight tomorrow, so I'm glad I won't be the only newbie on board. 

Woody picked us up from the airport and brought us over to the Antarctica NZ offices and Clothing Warehouse. (Woody has worked for Antarctica NZ for over 30 years, so he's a good person to know.) Everyone who goes to Scott Base shares some of the same experiences,and one of the first things you have to do is report to the Clothing Warehouse so you can get kitted out with all the gear you need, and special kit bags to put your stuff in. It’s important to have the right extreme cold weather clothing (ECW) for outdoor wear – so Antarctica NZ makes sure you do. 

Guy Frederick (who is my team mate on the programme for writers, artists and media people) and I had our kit-out sessions at the same time in two different rooms while Bob went from one room to the other, making sure everything was the right size and fitted properly. The trickiest thing is working out the correct order to put things on – there’s a sequence of layers (base layer, mid layer and outer layer) that you need to get right, and then you need to figure out – and remember – which pockets to put things in – gloves, hats, camera…

So this afternoon I tried on:

4 different jackets

Thermal leggings 

Overtrousers

7 different pairs of gloves

2 pairs of socks

2 pairs of boots

A balaclava, a hood, and neck gaiter - and once you have those on, as well as the heaviest duty jacket all zipped up, you're not supposed to have any skin showing (also you have to work out how to breathe through all the layers)

Then Woody explained what to wear on the plane tomorrow and what to pack in which bag. 

And do you know how many pockets there are altogether?  (I just counted them) 

32!!!

32 pockets! No wonder it's hard to remember what goes where. 

Where I spent yesterday afternoon: the Antarctic NZ  Clothing Store
©Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection; CC licence

Packing for Antarctica: one day to go!

Plane ticket to Christchurch - tick

Passport - tick (I don't actually need it, but I'm hoping to get it stamped)

Sunscreen - tick

Sunglasses - tick

Camera - tick

Towel - tick (nearly forgot. Scott Base provides sheets and bedding for visitors, but it is BYOT)

Camera, phone and tablet all charged - tick

Spare batteries - tick (the cold temperatures means they get used up faster than usual)

Book to read on the flight south - tick

Maybe another book to read? (it's a 7 or 8 hour flight - and no inflight movies!)

Clean shoes - tick (you have to take care not to introduce any unwanted organic material on the soles of your shoes)

Lip balm - tick (you get dry lips because the air is so dry down there)

Handkerchiefs - tick (wouldn't have thought of this, but it's in the briefing materials. The air is so dry that people often get nose bleeds to start with, so a supply of handkerchiefs is recommended)

Pencils - tick (because the ink in pens might freeze outdoors - or so I've read??)

Notebook - several - tick

Removed all packaging - tick (so as not to take any rubbish down there)

Money to buy some souvenirs from the Scott Base shop - tick

Outdoor Antarctic clothing - no! Luckily, Antarctica NZ is going to give me everything I need, from head to toe!

Also taking lots of good wishes from family, friends, school teachers and librarians - thanks everyone for your support!

Antarctic Division Clothing Store showing tramping books and mukluks [what even are mukluks??] Photo by Chris Rudge
©Antarctica New Zealand Pictorial Collection  1988-1989; CC licence