Images of

ANTARCTICA

Around The Station

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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Here is the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, as seen from the MARISAT/GOES antenna platform. One thing that surprised me about this place was how spread out it is. There are huts, antennas, cargo berms, and roads everywhere. I would guess that if you considered the outlying areas such as the dark sector, ICE CUBE (the new neutrino detector array), SPRESSO (South Pole Remote Earth Science and Seismic Observatory), and other things like the VLF beacon, you would have about the same area as greater McMurdoland.

This is the cargo yard. All the boxes and equipment are stacked on berms, with roads running in between. I would imagine that this is to keep the drifting around the cargo to a minimum.

These are Hypertats, where much of the summer staff stays. These are more efficient than the older Jamesway huts, and more of them will probably be brought in to replace the Jamesways.

A view of the dark sector on a misty morning, taken from ARO.

A Twin Otter aircraft. These and the LC-130's are the planes the USAP flies to the Pole and to deep field camps.

I heard an unusual sounding plane land one morning as I was working at ARO, and took a look outside. This plane had just landed and taxied to the area where tourists and adventurers have their tents set up - on the opposite side of the Pole from the new station. A private company operates tourist flights every summer, and I think most of them take off from Patriot Hills, which is a camp toward the Peninsula side of the continent. For a large sum of money ($15000, I think), you can fly to the Pole for a couple hours. For more money, you can camp here and they'll return later to pick you up. Also camped out here were various expeditions which skied to Pole.

One such adventurer is Fiona Thornewill, who trekked here from Hercules Inlet (near Patriot Hills) solo and unsupported. She was the first British woman to do this, and along the way, she actually broke the previous record by two days. Hard core, for sure. She arrived well ahead of her planned date, and has been camped out here waiting for another expedition led by her husband to arrive - I think they are supposed to arrive today (1/28). She gave a couple talks to station personnel during the past week about her adventure, and I stopped by to listen to one of them. It was very interesting and she had some remarkable (and humorous) stories to relate. She had actually skied to the South Pole before, but not solo. She has also skied to the North Pole. Pretty impressive, but she seems very down-to-earth and without a lot of ego. As I get older and meet more people, especially the unusual number of remarkable people you meet on the ice, it seems that the most interesting and capable people aren't the ones who go out of their way to let you know how great they are. They aren't the cocky poseurs or pretentious ones with large egos (yes there are some of them down here). They are generally pretty modest about their achievements - and she seems to be one of those people. In my experience, if someone is bragging about what they've done or if they act like they want to make sure you know who just WHO THEY ARE and how great their exploits are, they ain't worth knowing.

A little ways past the Jamesway huts at Summer Camp, there is this thing: a derelict Russian biplane. A couple years ago it landed here but for some reason it couldn't take off again. So here it sits.

I walked out to the plane a couple days ago and found that it didn't really look seriously damaged. The problem must have been an engine failure or other internal mechanical problem.

I took the liberty of climbing inside, and obviously I wasn't the first person with this idea. Packs of smokes and other detritus were laying around in the seats. Here's the inside of the plane.

And this is the cockpit. I understand the story of this thing is somewhat humorous, but I haven't asked around to find out exactly what happened. Either way, it was interesting to get inside of this thing and poke around.

For reasons unknown to me, there is a half-demolished arch right by the biplane.

A pic of the plane, seen through the break in the arch. If you are so inclined, this plane can be yours for free. Of course you have to get down here, repair it, then fly it out, but the USAP will be glad to accomodate you if you feel the need to take it off their hands....

This is the sign outside the headquarters of the South Pole Electric Company, Inc.

After the tour of the satellite communications facility, this is what I had for lunch. Being the unashamed tourist that I am, I took a picture of it: The South Pole Burrito. Contained inside this red tortilla are: tater tots, turkey, provolone cheese, avocados, and hot sauce. Never had a meal like this before - and it was pretty tasty.

Now, for the gallery of South Pole bulldozers. They are all Caterpillars...this one is the 963 LGP (low ground pressure).

The mighty D7. It looks older, but it actually only dates from the mid 1980's.

Another one of the D7.

This is the oldest dozer on station - a 1971 vintage D4.

The second-oldest dozers on station are a pair of D6's, from 1978. Nothing here as old as the 1950's model D8's at McMurdo. Those things are the coolest dozers I've seen.

A brand new shiny Challenger. Bizarre looking, these things. They have extremely long noses, rubber treads, and some models have dragster-type rear wheels. This one is appropriately named "Drag Queen".

A Spryte. All of the Sprytes at McMurdo were shipped out on the cargo vessel last year, but there are still a couple of them here at Pole.

Two pictures here of skis on the bottom of various sleds found in the cargo yard (for Joey).

Yesterday evening, an LC-130 was flying over the station on a picture-taking mission. So I snapped a couple pictures as it flew by.

This is the same Hercules, flying over the dark sector buildings.

That Hercules landed a while later, and this is a video (4 MB .avi file) of it taking off from the skiway. Not a lot of lift here in the thin air, and it takes a while to get the skis off the ground. The Herc pilots almost never shut off the engines while at Pole. All the loading and unloading is done with the props spinning. While they're on the ground, you will sometimes see members of the air crew dash over to the Pole to get the hero shots. One guy yesterday had brought along a stuffed penguin with him and got a pic of it sitting on top of the ceremonial pole ball.

Today is 1/31/04, and I'm riding along in an LC-130 on the way back to McMurdo. The first hour or so of the flight is pretty mundane, at least as mundane as Antarctic flying goes. You're just going over the Polar Plateau, and all views look about the same. Then you get to the Transantarctic Mountains, and the scenery suddenly becomes much more interesting. There are only four of us on this flight, and the ANG guys are pretty relaxed...even more so than the flight up here. So most of us are wandering around the plane and gawking out the window. One fellow has a video camera and is glued to the window. I just sat back down at my laptop after getting my eyefuls...the lands we're flying over are unbeliveable. Mountain peaks, icefalls, glaciers, and crevasses (any number of which could easily swallow this plane whole) extend as far as you can see. As you fly towards McMurdo from Pole, you start to see little nunataks popping their heads up out from the ice. These are actually quite tall peaks, but the ~10000' thick ice sheet obscures all but their tops. The mountains slowly get bigger as you continue north, and eventually you are looking at a truly dazzling landscape. I even noticed a few dry 'oases' down below, where the snow and ice hadn't penetrated (like the Dry Valleys, only smaller). Anyhow, last night I got together with my friend Joe and we went down into the tunnels for a brief tour. Here's what a typical tunnel looks like.

There are miles of tunnels underneath the station, some old and some new. This is one of the new ones. I'm told that the old ones smell like crap, since the sewer pipes have broken so many times over the years. The walls of the old ones are also bowed inward, and the same pressure also tends to raise the floors up over time. I had wanted to see some of the tunnels during my visit, but I had gotten conflicting answers when I asked different people if it was OK to do this. The first person said nope, you need to have a good reason to go in the tunnels. The second person said all you need to do is go by the Comms building, get a flashlight and a radio, and check out. The third person (a manager) then told me it really wasn't allowed unless you had to work down there. Finally, I mentioned this to Joe and he seemed to think it was OK. So we went by the Comms office to see for sure, and the lady there was more than happy to give us a flashlight and check us out for an hour. Jerry, the senior NSF rep on station (he has been around long enough to have stayed at the Old Pole station, before the dome was constructed) was also sitting nearby and actually suggested that we look for this fish that somebody stuck in the wall at the end of the tunnel. Like so many things on the ice, the answer often depends on who you talk to. But the end result was clearly yes, it's OK for you to go down there if you check out. This is another pic of one of the new tunnels.

This is a gravity reference station that was put in recently. The earth's gravitational field has been precisely measured at this spot, so people with gravimeters who come here can bring their instruments down here and use this spot for calibration.

There is a machine that the workers use to dig these rectangular tunnels. I haven't seen it, but I understand that every so often they will drill a hole down from the surface and the machine will eject the snow it has removed. However, some tunnels are hand-carved, such as this one. I would guess chainsaws were used to cut out blocks of snow, and GA's probably did the bulk of the work.

Another one of the hand carved tunnel. By the way, it is damn cold in these things. The snow temperature is -60 F, and that's what the tunnels stay at year round. Some hard-core people work down here all day long, like Cherie the electrician who is staying the winter here (I met her at McMurdo last winter). There are little warm up shacks scattered around with heaters in them, but if you're standing still or just walking along, it still doesn't take long for you to get cold down here.

This is one of the emergency exits - just a hole drilled down from the surface with a couple wooden ladders.

And this is a map of the new tunnel system, with the nearest exit marked. These are placed every so often along the length of the tunnel.

We stopped inside the warm-up hut for a couple minutes, so here's a picture of Joe and I. Not a lot of room in these things, but they are quite warm.

After the tunnels, we got a case of beer and headed to the bar, where Eyvind met up with us. I hadn't been in the bar yet and was curious to see what a South Pole bar looked like. The bar is located under the dome, on top of the weight gym.

So this is it. There isn't really an official bartender position here like they have at McMurdo, and it's BYOB. So you put your beer in the cooler and whomever happens to be sitting behind the bar will hand one over when you are empty. My camera's flash doesn't work, so the picture is a little blurry due to the long exposure.

Another one of the bar, "Club 90 South"

This is a smoking bar, but nothing at all like Southern Exposure at McMurdo. It seems like it actually has some ventilation, which is utterly lacking at Southern. It's also more cozy. There are even a TV and some couches here. There is no space like this in the new station. The new station is very advanced, but naturally, it is sterile. I understand the new bar will be at the back of the galley, and in this location it will never have the comfortable atmosphere of this old bar. The huts inside the dome are due to get taken out in a year or two, and then the dome is going to be dismantled, shipped back to the US, and reconstructed as a museum. This is a BIG job. There are over 200 rivets at each node of the joint (if I remember my conversation with John the lead engineer correctly) and each one of them has to be taken out. They will probably shear off the heads and punch each one out. This will be a long, cold, tedious job, and I am not envious of the guys/gals who end up with it. But I'm really glad to hear that there are definite plans to save the dome for the future. After all, it's the building that most people associate with Antarctica. John sat down with Joe, Eyvind, and I and we played a couple hands of cribbage. He's on my flight to McMurdo as well, and it has been interesting talking to him about the various aspects of the dome and new station designs. He has also been around long enough to have stayed at the Old Pole station, and was here when the dome was being built. Interesting guy. Anyhow, back to the bar. Some dude with a blond mohawk, in the middle of this picture, was playing Tiger Woods 2004 Golf on the TV for a couple hours. His custom player was this *really well built* blond girl with a 400 yard drive. Computer graphics are getting more and more amazing all the time...and I caught myself idly staring at her a couple times. I'm not sure I should have admitted this, but it's true. I didn't think I'd been on the ice THAT long...

These two signs are hanging near the table in the corner.

One last picture here - this is a Jamesway hut, a semicurcular structure of metal, wood, and canvas. This is the one where I stayed while at Pole: J10. These aren't too bad, actually. You get your own little room (with a canvas door and wood dividers between you and your neighbors), and the each have their own furnaces so they stay reasonably warm. They are not soundproof, however, and every little noise outside comes right in. This lack of soundproofing raises another issue. Pole runs 24-7, so you never know when someone is sleeping, because the canvas doors are shut. So what do you do when you're walking to your room? Turn on the light? No, that might wake somebody up. Or, you blindly fumble your way down the central hallway to your room. Well, this makes noise because you inevitably bump into a post or rub against someone's bed through the canvas, so it might wake somebody up too. You can't win, so I decided to opt for the latter. A typical night went something like this. On the way to the Jamesway I'd stop off at the "Ice Palace" hut, which contains laundry, showers, toilets, etc. There are little cubby holes in the wall where you can keep your toothbrush, hair brush, etc. After the appropriate hygenic exercises and filling up my water bottle (this is absolutely key) I'd go to the Jamesway and come in through the front door, which opens inward into a tiny foyer, and then close it behind me. I'd open the next door and try to close it quickly and quietly so as not to let the cold air parcel that I'd just introduced from the outer door get into to building. The rooms closest to the door definitely feel the -20 F air pulses each time someone comes in. I then fumbled my way down the hall to my room, grope through the canvas drapes for the pull-string to my overhead light bulb, and go in. After taking off the hat, facemask, goggles, gloves, parka, jeans, shoes, heavy socks, and thermal underwear, I'd finally get into bed. But every night I'd probably wake up about 5 or 6 times for one of three reasons. First, at altitude you naturally tend to gasp for breath. You breathe normally for a little while, then you start gasping to make up for the O2 you didn't get in those previous normal breaths. Sometimes the gasping ends in a great crescendo, and you wake up. This usually wasn't a big deal and I went back to sleep instantly. The second thing would be dehydration. At Pole, I went out of my way to have a full water bottle with me at all times. Dehydration is bad enough at McMurdo, but nothing like Pole. When I breathed through my mouth when sleeping, it got bone dry, instantly. Sometimes it got so bad it actually woke me up. I couldn't swallow, and couldn't really even think straight...my only impulse was to desperately claw for the water bottle, feeling like I'm going to throw up. It is very strange that having an extremely dry mouth and throat makes me want to puke, but that's the sensation. After drinking a few gulps, it's back to sleep. And in a half hour or so it would probably happen again. The third thing is a natural consequence of the second. On occasion, I would wake up because I'd have to visit the toilet. Now THIS is a real drag. I'd usually try to go back to sleep and hold it, but if this failed, there was no other choice. Well, there was another choice. Some people keep bottles or cans in their Jamesway rooms to pee in, but to me that's heinous. Plus, I'd probably end up kicking it over. Either that or dropping it while trying to use it in a half-asleep state. So, to fix the problem I'd have to get some pants on, throw on the parka, jam my feet into my shoes, and go back outside to the Ice Palace. Opening the door to the Jamesway and encountering that bonechilling air with this minimal clothing was not pleasant, especially after you've come from a nice warm bed. Then, I'd have to blindly stumble over to the Ice Palace. I say blindly because I'd just gone from a very dark hut into the searing sunlight, made worse by the reflections off the snow...and in my haste I'd never remember to grab my goggles. I get to the Ice Palace, run over to the urinal and desperately try to get things 'in order' before peeing all over myself. You know how if you have to go really bad, those last few instants right after you get to the toilet but before you're positioned to go are the moments where you're not sure you're going to make it? This happened almost every time I have to urinate at Pole, regardless of the time or place. Bizarre. Anyhow, after taking care of this problem I'd head back to the hut. By now, my eyes had more or less adjusted to the light and after going back inside the hut, I couldn't see anything. If your eyes are adjusted to the dark, you can make out faint cracks of light at either end of the hallway to guide you towards the door or to your room. But on the way back from the toilet it's pitch black. So after another tedious crawl down the hall, I would get back into bed and try to go back to sleep. And no matter how many times this happened during the night, I ALWAYS wake up in the morning having to go so bad that my eyes are floating. It was inevitable. But in the morning it was worse because I hate walking blindly down the Jamesway hut...and I don't want to voyage to the bathroom and then have to come back to get the stuff I'll need for the day. So I get dressed properly and try to grab all the stuff I am going to take with me to the lab. Doing this while hopping back and forth because is awful. It was the worst part of the day, and it happened every single morning. I hate mornings. And this whole scenario was magnified during my first few days at Pole because my flu was so bad. I seem to recall saying something at the beginning of this like the Jamesways "...aren't too bad.". I take that back. They suck. But lots of things suck at the Pole: thin air, brutal cold, lack of amenities and conveniences, satellite communications windows only open during the middle of the night and early morning, brutal cold, and more brutal cold.

And yes, I sincerely like this place.