Images of

THE ARCTIC

The Big House

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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This is the Big House, i.e. Summit Camp's main building. It houses the kitchen and dining room, lounge, manager's office and comms room, communications to the outside world, and one of the two camp bathrooms. Comms to the US go through an antenna on the roof, surrounded by the spherical white radome. The camp has a full-time internet connection, which, yes, is invaluable for those who want to update their websites with gratuitous text and heaps of large pictures. There are also two phone lines. The deal for phone calls is this: you are assigned a PIN number when you arrive at camp, and you can use this to call out to anywhere you like. But they ask that you keep outgoing calls to 10 minutes per week (I believe this is cost-related, i.e. our satellite comms provider charges us much more for outgoing than incoming calls). Anyhow, the idea is you call someone and tell them to call you back. Works OK - and it's a Florida number because that's where our satellite provider (Harris) is located. So it's only a US long distance call for your friends and loved ones. That is, unless your significant other lives in Europe. Anyhoo, that's the skinny on Summit Camp comms. Right. So, moving on....

Here's one of the big house, with the US, Greenland, and Denmark flags flying. There was a cermony here earlier this year where various multinational dignitaries showed up, and these flags were left over. We took them down the other day for the winter. One thing that you can see from this picture is that drifting is a real problem here, as the building floor is well below the surrounding snow level. In fact, the Green House got completely drifted over last winter. Not only does Summit get a lot of wind-driven drifts, but it gets a good deal of actual accumulation (unlike South Pole, which suffers from a lot of drifting but gets almost zero accumulation). So Jen, the current heavy equipment operator, is out running the D6 bulldozer quite a bit to keep things manageable. The Big House is actually designed to be jacked up when the surrounding drifts get too high, and I'm told the last time this was done was in 1999.

One more of the Big House here, on a semi-foggy day. Fog here is a very regular occurrence, and it's astonishing how fast the fog can come or go. Last week, I walked into the Green House to brush my teeth before going to bed. Fog covered the camp in all directions, and visibility was about 1/4 mile. I was inside for literally 5 minutes, and when I came out I was greeted by a nearly clear sky with a beautiful, low sun. I couldn't believe it.

The back side of the Big House, with the wooden frozen food chest to the left of the door and the BBQ grill to the right. Sue, the cook, puts this grill to good use. An aside - although the prepared food here is excellent, the prepackaged stuff can be a little sketchy. Since there isn't enough room to store everything in optimal conditions, anything that can be frozen is left outside. For example, bags of chips will often break open due to the change in altitude, then they sit outside, freeze, and get STALE...a whole different kind of stale than I have experienced before. Frozen juice cans often break open. The guacamole is pretty rough after being deep frozen and thawed. And so on and so forth. But hey, it's a *harsh island*. The Nutri-Grain Strawberry Breakfast Bar that I just finished chewing also tasted a little off-kilter...no doubt due to its long-duration immersion in subzero temperatures. At least the grub doesn't spoil out there.

Another one of the patio area, with the "freshie shack" on the far left. This is cool storage for vegetables and other non-freezable food items. With flights coming in at a minimum of every three months, Summit has a pretty consistent supply of fresh fruit and vegetables. There's also a little plastic sled to the right, which is a common way of hauling stuff around camp.

When I first arrived and walked into the Big House, the thing I immediately noticed was this window, on the left as you walk in. The ambiance of this place is startling, actually, and I dig the plants in the window. No treaty here to forbid you from bringing in outside plants and animals. Someone put an avocado seed in a glass of water in the window, and at this writing it's germinating nicely. The first thing I thought when I walked into the Big House was "I think I'm gonna like this place". It was full of people, sitting around bullshitting and waiting to fly out on the Herc. There was a good smell of something cooking in the air. A bunch of Indian guys (from India by way of U. of Kansas, that is) were sitting around playing Street Fighter on the X-box while waiting to leave. It was as if I'd just walked into someone's cabin. But of course this building is supposed to be replaced sometime in the near future. By the way, that post outside the window is part of the apparatus used to jack up the building.

To the right as you walk in the front door is the manager's office, community computer, station server, and comms station. The Summit Camp webcam also points outside from the window here. Said webcam may or may not have been mooned by, uh, one of the current residents, and this alleged picture may or may not be available in the hourly webcam archives here.

On the outside wall of the office are a bunch of camp photos and miscellaneous stuff...the kind of things that give a place character and make it liveable. You know, the kind of thing you won't find at the new South Pole station or the Crary Lab.

Farther along, also to the right, is the TV lounge. We have a DVD player, CD changer, a set of reasonable speakers, and a selection of movies that is pretty good. Almost every one of the movies on station is something I would actually watch, and I'm a real bitch about movies.

Another view of the TV lounge, with Florence and Dave watching "Jerry Maguire". Note the disco ball hanging from the ceiling...which was put to good use last Saturday night.

To the side of the TV lounge are some shelves with various minor pharmaceuticals. Note the bin labeled "business".

In the far right corner of the building is the bathroom, with a nice reminder.

Another sign from the Big House bathroom. The trajectory labeled "unbelievable" made me laugh out loud. That, and the "you're fired" one. This sign is obviously directed toward men...but a more relevant one for present times would be one for women. One unnamed individual is in the habit of peeing all over the toilet seat. I'm not joking - I have seen the aftermath of this three times. So this person is doing an aerial drop. Fine, no problem there. But at least a) put the seat up...I mean what does it matter, since you're not touching it anyway, or b) wipe the seat.

I took this picture last Sunday...a typical Sunday afternoon at Summit. Very, very low key. Some people don't even make an appearance in the Big House on Sunday, but just hang out in their berths in the Green House or berthing module.

Sven's RAMAS instrument uses liquid nitrogen to cool its microwave detector. Liquid nitrogen, as you may know, is also useful for making ice cream. Here are Katie and Sven operating the Saturday night ice cream plant.

Last Saturday, Jim suggested we make this "coyote ice cream" to go along with the Mexican dinner. This is chocolate ice cream, with cinnamon and cayenne pepper. My first reaction was what you would expect, but after trying it I changed my tune. Good stuff. Here is Jim doing the honors. Sven is nearby with a margarita.

The mixing bowl itself, overflowing with evaporating nitrogen. Like Palmer Station, there is no full time janitorial staff at Summit. So each member of the crew (beakers included) gets a day to do the "house mouse" duties - a name stolen from Palmer. But house mouse works a little different. At Palmer there is a nightly "gash" where you rotate helping with the dishes and cleanup and a Saturday afternoon "house mouse" where you get a more general cleanup task to do. The Summit house mouse is where one person will do the cleanup after all meals, as well as cleaning the Big House itself. Also, the person who is scheduled for tomorrow's house mouse will help you during the dinner shift...this person is the assistant mouse or "ass mouse". Anyhow, house mouse is pretty comprehensive and takes up most of the day. This suits me well, though, since I am a binge cleaner anyway.

The first week I was here, there were rumblings of music and dancing in the big house Saturday night. This kind of fizzled out, mainly due to the ultra-mellow disposition of the camp crew. The second Saturday, however, it actually materialized. A disco ball was unveiled, some lights were put up, the TV lounge was cleared of furniture, and there was dance music aplenty (mostly courtesy of Sven). But first Sue cooked up a good Mexican dinner in El Grande Casa. Here's the sign outside the door which let you know what was being served...

Here's the crew at dinner. This is nearly the whole crew (there are 13 of us) and, at least with the current group, almost everyone will sit, eat, and gab together.

After dinner we turned on the music and opened up more wine/beer/booze. Here are a few pictures of us dancing...yes, me included. There have been exactly two times in the past two years where I have danced to pop music. Both were on the ice, and both involved good helpings of arhythmicity, lame moves, and stupidity. The first time, after a Hut 10 party at McMurdo, resulted in me climbing to the top of Ob Hill for buck naked hero shots with two people I hardly knew (ahem, followed immediately by breakfast at the galley I will have you know). But this time I just passed out on the couch. I do like dancing, but more the structured styles of tango or waltz, so I almost never dance like this. But there is something about being on the ice that encourages unusual behavior. I mean, polar plunges? Buck-naked hero shots? Dancing to Kool and the Gang? Making a 700 MB website about my life? For Chrissakes. No doubt about it...the ice does strange things to a person indeed.

More dancing.

Another long exposure of the silliness. I think those blurs are, from left to right, Dave, Sven, Florence, and Katie. Paula and Toby were also here... so that was 7 people, or more than half the camp population. Good times.

The radome, peeking up above the snow, with a nice sharp cut in the snow below courtesy of Russ and his new toy, the snowblower.