Images of

THE ARCTIC

Summit Camp

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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Here is a .avi file of the Herc I flew in on, idling on the runway as the departing crew waits to board (1.5 MB). Here, as at South Pole, the airplanes are not shut down unless it is absolutely necessary (weather, mechanical problems, or whatever). They land, the passengers get off, the cargo gets unloaded and new cargo put on, the fuel is transferred to the camp's fuel storage areas (if it is a fuel flight), then the outbound passengers get on and it takes off. Occasionally the crew will have time to hop out and do a quick walk around the camp. However if there are no passengers and the cargo is not that delicate, then often a "combat offload" will be done, where the plane lands, the ramp is lowered, and the cargo pallets are slid out as the plane taxis along.

A couple snowmobiles were there to take us and our stuff to the big house (the main camp building). I didn't take this limo service, but instead lingered around a little to watch the plane get reloaded and take off.

Another one of the plane being unloaded. So here is a totally unrelated aside: On his way here, Jim bought the Lonely Planet guide for the Arctic. I have flipped through it a little - good stuff - I like those guides. So I'm sitting here typing away late this evening, with Jim and Larry nearby, and Jim is reading this guide. He stumbles upon a reference to the BSI UV monitor network and some observations recorded in 1997 at Barrow, Alaska. Pretty cool eh? Actually, I bought the Antarctic Lonely Planet guide at the McMurdo store a few months after I arrived there, and it was amazing how much info that book contained about the US stations. There was a lot of stuff about the history of the stations and especially about life on station...in fact much more colorful and interesting information about the real place itself than from the official USAP manual.

Fuel here is stored in bladders next to the skiway. So, like South Pole, all activity here at Summit Camp is dependent on fuel flown in on the Hercules. Another similarity is the elevation: South Pole is about 9300' actual elevation and Summit is about 10,500'. However, at both places the physiological elevation is often much higher than this (I think it gets to around 1000' greater at times) due to the fact that barometric pressure decreases as you get closer to the poles. So at both places you need to take it easy the first few days, drink lots of water, eat carbohydrates, and avoid alcohol. Another similarity is the landscape...flat, featureless, and white as far as you can see. Another thing the two places have in common is that there's not enough permanent berthing for the summer population...so temporary camps are erected each summer. At Pole, "summer camp" is a group of Jamesway huts (Korean war military-type tents) and Hypertats (newer, more efficient structures). Here, the "tent city" is a group of Arctic Oven tents. Also, neither Summit nor Pole are very windy places (McMurdo is the windiest of the four stations I've visited). I have heard that Summit is sort of similar to the way South Pole used to be...back in the mid-50's to mid-70's when "Old Pole" was operational. Summit is a very small camp, with only a few buildings and vehicles, in the middle of a high-altitude plateau of snow and ice. Of course Summit has it a lot better now, with better communications, facilities, and year-round flights. There are also many other differences. First, Pole is now a much larger station. Their winter-over population this year is about 75, although this is unusually high due to construction of the new station. In contrast, the current Summit *summer* population is a whopping 13 (4 beakers and 9 staff). In summer, Pole operates 24 hours a day, but at Summit the work day is 8-6 (with an hour for lunch and some breaks here and there). Pole is also much colder than Summit. When I was at Pole in late January, it was about -20 F on average. Here, at about the same time of the year in the northern hemisphere, it has varied from about 5 to 20 F. Summit is also somewhat windier, and does get some serious storms now and then. Another very noticeable difference is the humidity - Pole is absolutely bone dry, all the time, and gets almost zero precipitation, whereas it snows pretty regularly at Summit and there is frequent fog. I have only had one bloody nose here, whereas it was chronic at Pole (I never appreciated humidity like I did when I was at Pole!). Let's see, what else...oh yeah, the winter here is not nearly the same as at Pole. First off, Summit is 72 degrees in latitude so there is a much, much shorter period of total darkness. Also, the jobs at Summit last about three months, so the w/o staff doesn't have too long before they can look forward to a flight out. The flight season at Pole is only about 3.5 months, so that means their winter-over is 8.5-9 months. Much, MUCH different.

So here is the Herc taxiing away. Twin Otters also fly to Summit, in fact there is one supposed to come here in 8 days (August 12).

Here's another Herc picture, this time it's one approaching on a clearer day. The blue building with the radome is the Big House, and tent city is to the left.

Another one of the plane coming in. When we landed, it was the roughest landing I've had on the ice (although not really that bad). The runways and skiways at McMurdo and Pole are very well used, and are maintained by a fleet of people. Here, the skiway sits idle for months at a time, and there are only one or two people to get it ready. So it was a bumpier landing than I am used to, but very routine for these planes. The C-130's can operate in some seriously rugged locations...and I've heard some pretty amazing Herc stories from ice people.

Here's that same plane after touching down. The winter flights to Summit are done by Twin Otter. I would suppose this is for two reasons. First, the C-130's are all down south flying to Pole and various field camps. Second, the Otters can operate in lower temperatures than the C-130's. Summit can get pretty damn cold, past the threshold that C-130's can safely land and take off (about -55 F, if I recall correctly).

So here is my own personal Arctic Oven tent. It's erected on a piece of plywood, and has a mattress inside. Advantages of this tent over the Jamesway I stayed in at Pole: privacy. You don't have to worry about tip-toeing into your tent without turning on the lights or otherwise disturbing those who might be sleeping. But other than that, the Jamesways have it. They are dark, heated, and you have more room. I was wondering how well I would be able to sleep in a tent in the middle of the Greenland ice cap with 24 hour sunlight (the tent material lets a lot of light in). Although the first couple days were tough since I kept waking up every few hours, I have slept soundly through the night since then. I guess it was probably part of my acclimatization to the altitude. So the tent is alright, except for the 5 minute period each night when you get into the tent, take off your clothes, put on an ice-cold night shirt (or whatever) and then crawl gingerly into your ice-cold sleeping bag. But the bags that Jim bought for this trip are excellent and you heat up pretty quickly. There are actually a few other more comfortable places around station I could sleep if I wanted to - the couch in the green house or the weatherport hut next to the green house which serves as heated storage for some of our equipment (it also has two cots in it). But in reality, my time on the ice has been pretty posh for the most part. You know, heated bedrooms, internet on demand, meals cooked for me, and so forth. So I'm going to stay in the tent for the rest of my visit. The only thing I actually miss is a bathroom. I have a couple P-bottles in the tent, but I hate using them. And you have to carry the full ones back to camp, dump them out, and return them to the tent. But the nice thing is that the minerals in urine bring down its freezing point, so it doesn't usually freeze solid overnight in the tent like water does. And it's not as bad as putting your used toilet paper in a nearby trash can. Yep, the TP clogs the camp's sewer system...so that's the deal here. I just CAN'T get used to that.

Here is an outhouse, right over a big pit in the snow. Why? I dunno. I would theorize this is a convenient backup in case the sewer systems and/or outfalls (one each for the Big House and Green House) have problems. But in any event, I do intend to utilize this resource for one reason, and one reason only: to have the pleasure of putting my used toilet paper right down the hole WITHOUT bringing it back up (across my immediate field of view) and into that nearby trash can....

In case you were wondering what the inside of the outhouse looked like, here you go. The whole building is pretty cute, actually, and the cold keeps it stink-free...unlike that god-awful sled-mounted facility at McMurdo's Pegasus field. That one is sometimes so poorly maintained that it will literally pile up and overflow...and will easily reduce the toughest sumbitches to tears.

The outhouse again, this time with the RAMAS hut. RAMAS is the Radiometer for Atmospheric Measurements at Summit, and is operated by the U. of Bremen in Germany. More about this stuff later, as soon as I get around to making a "science" page.

So, like Pole, all water here is made by melting snow. At Summit, the melting is done with waste heat and a glycol loop from the main generator. In case of the backup generator being used (which is in a separate hut and not connected via a glycol loop to the snow melter), electric heating elements are also installed in the snow melter. So here is the snow melter, at the end of the shop/generator hut. There is a "snow mine" near the station which is off-limits and used to obtain the snow for our water. Every day, the loader operator drives over there and fills up a bucket of snow. This particular bucket is brought back and left in front of the melter, and the snow is shoveled into the melter...using one particular shovel which is kept clean and used only for this purpose. From here, water goes to the nearby green house via a heated pipe, and to the more distant big house via a plastic container (the "pig") which is hauled by snowmobile back and forth as needed. There are two pigs, actually, and one of them has recently been painted bright pink by Toby and Geoff. They are both coming back for the winter season, and plan to finish up the pig with a head and tail.

Summit, like Pole, gets some awesome atmospheric optical effects. Here is a halo I saw around the sun a few days ago. Not the greatest halo, but it appeared all the way around the sun and so I thought it was pretty cool. I have also seen some "fog dogs", where you look along the ground into a bank of fog opposite a low-lying sun and see rainbow-like effects. With the ones I've seen, there is a solid white rainbow ("zero-order"), with two or three colored rainbows ("higher orders") lying underneath. Each of these is generally brighter at their bottoms than at the middle of the rainbow. However, I haven't had much luck capturing these things with my camera.

Another sun-related one - the Summit Camp Tucker Sno-Cat, silhouetted against a bright foggy sun.

Summit Camp, like any self-respecting polar outpost, has a sauna. It's a nondescript little plywood hut near the shop/generator hut, and can fit a good number of people inside. I went in the other day for a half-hour, so here it is.

Another one of the interior of our sauna.

Last week we had a particularly cold, humid day with a little wind. This persisted overnight, and the next day hoar frost had formed on every surface. I hadn't seen hoar frost feathers like these before, probably because it's just not that humid at McMurdo or Pole. Here is a closeup of the frost on the roof of the green house.

Another closeup.

A couple more pictures of a forest of hoar frost feathers. Very pretty stuff.

Neat-o, but by noon the following day they were pretty much gone.

Every now and then, a bird will get waaaaay off its course, exhausted, or both and end up at Summit. This also happens at Pole, but more rarely. Anyway, this poor little thing was found dead last week. So I took a picture of it, just because it's so unusual to see a creature other than a human in a place like this. Paula the camp manager recently found a moth in one of the vegetable ("freshie") crates, and actually kept it. She then gave this dead moth to another bird that we found today. I was up on the roof working on an instrument platform when Katie appeared and told me that Paula had seen a bird hopping around outside the big house. So Jim and I went with her to capture it.

We walked out and found the little guy half flapping and half hopping along. He (she?) was moving around pretty erratically, and I figured he either had a broken leg or wing. So I reached down and picked him up. Upon closer inspection, neither his leg nor wing were broken. I think he was actually hypothermic...this would explain his weird, uncoordinated movements and the relative ease with which he let me capture him.

A closer picture. A couple people tried to get online this afternoon to find out what kind of bird this is, but as far as I know they didn't reach a conclusion.

So we got a cardboard box, put some corn meal, water, and sunflower seeds inside, and covered it with a metal grate. He seemed to warm up pretty quickly, and returned to normal bird-like movements within an hour. And he actually tried to get away from me when I put my hand in the box to deliver food...unlike just cowering in the snow when we first found him. So this afternoon we tried feeding him different things. We thought maybe he likes seafood since he looks like a shore bird, so we put a scallop and some tuna on a plate. An hour went by and he didn't eat any of that, but I noticed he was picking up the sunflower seeds. It looked like he was trying to eat them, but I think they were too big since he just flicked them out of his beak. So after dinner I ground up some of the seeds and put them in. A few minutes later he was eating them. A good sign. I actually became somewhat attached to this little bird. I guess it's something about being out here in the middle of absolute desolation. Looking out the window as I type this, it is very easy to imagine myself stranded in this place. I would not last long without food, shelter, fuel, etc. So this poor little bird somehow ended up here in the middle of the Greenland ice cap, and somehow had the luck to land at Summit Camp. After many hours outside struggling to get around, he was pretty much on his last legs when we found him. Such a pitiful sight. And now he's sitting in the big house, warm, with food, and a chance at survival.

So anyhow, last night I did some googling and found out that this fellow is a Red Knot, of the type native to northern Canada and Greenland. I originally thought we might try to keep him alive for another 8 days...and then convince the Twin Otter crew to fly him back to Kangerlussuaq. But as he got more and more energy back yesterday evening, he started to jump around in his box and bang up against the wall. This morning, it looked like he had gorged himself on the tuna, scallops, and seeds, but he continued to thrash around the box. I thought maybe he was overheating or stressing because of the very warm and relatively dark environment inside the big house, so I put him in the foyer of the building this morning. Maybe, being a Greenland bird, he was expecting a colder, brighter environment this time of year? Anyhow, as the day went on I and others started to think that we should let him go and see what happens. It looked like he had his strength back and was going stir crazy inside the box. And besides, if he was migrating across Greenland (these birds winter in Western Europe), then he was 2/3 the way to Greenland's east coast anyway. So, after lunch we all went out and I opened the box.

He didn't jump out of the box right away, but with a little help he figured out he could do so. He stood around for a while, hopped up on Toby's boot, and then took off amidst cheers from the group.

Russ said he had seen a similar looking bird flying around the camp last night, and I wondered if this one would find the other one when we let him go. Well, as he was flying along in the distance, we saw another bird join him and they flew off eastward together. A happy ending? I don't know. Perhaps one or both birds will come back to Summit, since it's the only source of food for a long ways...but there have been no confirmed sightings of this kind of bird since we let him go. Or, maybe they will continue on their journey and still end up freezing somewhere out on the ice. Or, there is the scenario that I like to believe - that the birds were mates and they will make it to their winter grounds...and so on and so forth.

What's this? Nothing very interesting. A pallet of freezable food in the, uh, cold storage area. Actually, there is a snow pit dug outside the big house which houses most of the frozen food storage. There is even a line of flags leading to it.

A few days ago I found myself staring at this: a box of wine. No big deal, right? Well, it is unusual for a couple reasons. The Greenland Icecore Project (GRIP) left a few boxes of wine at Summit after they left the area, and actually made up their own labels for the backside of the box. The second thing was that this is not your Ernest and Julio Gallo crap boxed wine. This is D.O.C. Italian wine. D.O.C. stands for "denominazione di origine controllata", and is sort of an official statement of quality and uniqueness, i.e. D.O.C. products are made in a specific region, using certain techniques, and have to maintain a high level of quality. So this is the good stuff...in a box, in the middle of the Greenland ice cap. Buona, no?

Yesterday (Tuesday, August 3), we had a medical drill. Katie, the on-site EMT (and a science tech), asked Jim to be the victim and asked me to take photos of the whole affair. She only gave us general instructions for the type of incident (a fall on the roof of the green house) and the drill wasn't scheduled for a planned time...so Jim and I took some liberties. First, I became the patient. Second, we started the drill a day early. So I got on the roof and acted as though I had hit my head and been knocked unconscious by a fall, broken my arm, and bruised my spine. Oh, and I was getting hypothermic (which was not hard to simulate since it got pretty cold laying there on the roof and not moving). Jim called it in, and within about a minute people were on the scene. The end result was that I got strapped to a back board, stuck inside the loader bucket, lowered off the roof, put on a sled, and driven to the big house. It all went pretty well, and I was on the couch getting treatment within about 25 minutes from the "fall". So here is me, completely helpless and immobile in the bucket of a loader, strapped to the backboard, with a neck brace and foam pillows, and covered in blankets.

I was kinda sweating the problem of how they were going to get me off the roof while strapped to a backboard, but some quick thinking resulted in Toby driving the loader over and (gingerly) using the bucket as a man lift. Nice idea. Here, they're pulling me out of the bucket.

So I got put on a Nansen sled...

...and we sped off toward the big house.

On with the walking tour of Summit Camp. Here is the fuel area for the incoming aircraft. The C-130's drop off fuel on many of their runs, and the Twin Otters often pick up fuel for their return flight. One of the buried fuel bladders is in the middle of this picture, with a red flag sticking up.

Farther away from camp are the cargo lines. These are done South Pole style, with the cargo on slightly elevated berms.

Looking back the other way from the cargo lines is a view of the industrial side of Summit Camp. The sled on the left is of a specific height for sliding cargo on and off the C-130's.

Walking sort of southwest from the cargo lines, there is the green berthing module, one of the newest additions to the camp. In the background are the green house and big house. The berthing module has 6 rooms.

The berthing module has an incinerating toilet as well as an outhouse nearby. When the sun is up, it is actually pretty warm inside this black outhouse.

I found this humorous message on the inside door of the outhouse.

A look inside the berthing module.

Walking back toward the center of camp - here is the garage/generator building and the sauna hut. The garage/generator building also serves as the metal and carpenter shops, the paint shop, and temporary storage for DNF ("do not freeze") cargo.

This conex sits right by the garage and serves as one of two parts supply areas. People here call it "Home Depot".

This weird little vehicle is usually parked by Home Depot. It's an Argo, whatever that is. Never seen one of these on the ice before, although there is a little 6-wheeled "Gator" at McMurdo.

Here's our current mechanic, Russ, with his favorite toy, clearing away some of the drifting around the green house..

This is a Tucker Sno-Cat. A 1950's version of this vehicle was on the first motorized traverse to reach the South Pole during the IGY. This one is probably mid-1980's vintage, like the ones at McMurdo. During my year at McMurdo, I had driven the Pisten Bullies and Mattracks quite a bit...but never the Tucker. So I asked if I could drive this around a little bit. One day Jen was grooming the camp, and invited me to come along (that's what the stuff behind the Tucker is - grooming equipment for the camp and the skiway). So I drove out to the end of the runway with her...

...and asked her to take a hero shot. I actually took a couple hero shots of her too. It's interesting that many of the veteran ice people you meet are still interested in and fascinated by the ice. Jen, for example, went to the East Camp (near freaking Vostok Station) for a few months as her first tour on the ice a few years back (and while there met Dani, the current chef at Palmer Station). And after driving the Sno-Cat (and other machines) for several months here, she still thought it would be nice to get a hero shot with the machine. Neat. She's definitely one of the coolest people here, among many.

A couple days later I walked out to the end of the runway. This is a nice walk, and when you get there you are really reminded just how isolated this place is. Summit Camp is just a few dots on the horizon, and if you look the other way, there is....absolutely....nothing.

On another day, there wasn't too much to do with the instrument so I took the afternoon off and dug out some tents. For the few days beforehand I had felt pretty listless, getting short of breath and feeling tired all the time. I decided to get some exercise by finally digging out my tent. As it turned out, Katie was going to dig more tents out that afternoon, so I went along to help out. The tents here are called Arctic Ovens, and there is plenty of room inside for one person and all his/her stuff. The tents are built on a wooden platform and are securely anchored down to keep them from flying away and becoming a permanent part of the Greenland Ice Cap. Not too bad, these things.

This picture here is another one from the tent excavation process: Katie on a sled, holding the tents down as we drove them to the recreation weatherport to dry out. The following is a completely unrelated digression...

The Physical Qualification (PQ) process for the Antarctic and Arctic is a farce. It is a very aribtrary exercise, and outstanding examples of indefensible judgements abound. A recent email from a friend of mine and the current discussion going on at the green house triggered this little diatribe, and I'm pissed off. So here goes. Let's see - at Summit Camp there was a diagnosed schizophrenic here this summer. And this was not a case where he was OK with medication - I'm listening to some stories of his bizarre behavior right now from people who were here. At Raven Camp, an epileptic had an attack and had to be medevac'd. At one of the Dry Valleys camps near McMurdo, a person with a pacemaker - who had already been barred from commercial air travel - started having pacemaker malfunctions and nearly died while being medevac'd. The common thread here is that all these conditions were disclosed ahead of time...and this is just the tip of the iceberg. I have also heard (but not confirmed) that there is a diagnosed schizophrenic at South Pole right now (yep, the winter!). Now he/she is supposed to be alright with medication, but nonetheless, what gives here? I hope I do not seem like I am criticizing the people themselves. I am lucky enough to have pretty good physical and mental (?) health, and I can't imagine what it's like to have these kinds of afflictions. However, small, isolated communities that live and work in constant, close contact cannot tolerate sick people. And medevacs are not only expensive but are often dangerous for the person who is sitting in the middle of nowhere, with limited medical facilities, waiting for resuce to arrive...not to mention potential dangers for the flight crews. However, the reality of the situation is that your physical/mental suitability for work on the ice is highly dependent on what your job funtion is. Period. If you are somehow deemed important, you have no worries about being OK'd. A fellow here just relayed his saga of PQ'ing. After the psych people NPQ'd him for a winter season (for highly questionable reasons), he told the person who wanted to hire him that he'd been NPQ'd. The hiring person's reply: no big deal, if you want to come back next year we'll get you through the PQ process. Another example - a friend of mine who was at McMurdo for 02-03 wanted to come back for this winter. He got NPQ'd because he truthfully admitted how much he drank. This number (15 per week) was not excessive by any stretch. I mean, if you drink two per day (as some doctors have started to recommend) and then have 5 on a Friday or Saturday night, that's 17 per week. He told the truth, but the omniscient psych people took his number and doubled it to get at the "real number". So based on that number, he was NPQ'd because of alcohol problems. I knew (and still know) this guy pretty well, and he is not a drunk. He had a hard job but worked his ass off, never missed work (except for being legitimately sick), and got along incredibly well with everyone. I mean, this is the kind of guy you want to have working with you during an Antarctic Winter. So after being NPQ'd, he went back to work here in the US and and applied again for the 04-05 season at McMurdo. His supervisors were (again) excited to have him come back, was offered a cool job at McMurdo... and just had to PQ. Guess what? NPQ'd again for "alcohol problems". Why? Well, he works as a bartender and a waiter back here in the real world, and evidently being in a profession associated with alcohol is too much. Never mind that McMurdo pays people to tend bar at the three (count 'em THREE) bars on station, and that the "limit" for alcohol purchases per person at the store is high enough to keep you perpetually pickled. Nope, this guy is a liability, despite a solid, proven on-ice work history and great reviews from his supervisors. OK, you say, maybe they're just being overly cautious. After all, wintertime in Antarctica is demanding and stressful, and you can't be too careful. I say to this: bullshit! Let's talk about alchohol abuse on the ice. I can recall at least 10 people (and name them by name) that I wintered with who were raging alcoholics. I didn't know most of these people well, but if every single time I go to Southern Exposure I see the same people getting trashed EVERY NIGHT OF THE WEEK, I draw my own conclusions. Another example comes to mind. A supervisor at McMurdo (who was actually an excellent supervisor and a very capable, competent veteran of the ice) had a habit of being a not-so-great-drunk. One night he decided to attack the physician's assistant while a bunch of people were hanging out in one of the dorm lounges. I wasn't there, but according to people who were (some of which were good friends and highly trustworthy), he simply went after the guy for no reason whatsoever (the physicians assistant was a great guy, and very mellow - NOT someone who would start trouble). The next day, the guy didn't even remember starting the fight. He was disciplined and reprimanded, and ended up leaving at Winfly instead of Mainbody. But that following summer he was back on the ice as part of a traverse. Now I actually like and respect this guy a heck of a lot, and would be glad to work with him anywhere, anytime. He is a real asset to the USAP...but because of this fact, this incident did not keep him from PQ'ing to come back. This is just one of countless examples involving countless different people, but just consider this one fellow's case versus that of my friend, and you get the picture. Although there are many excellent psychologists and psychiatrists out there that do wonderful work with people who need them, in general I have a very low opinion of them. And my experience with the occupational variety contracted by the US Office of Polar Programs has done exactly zero to rectify this.

Right - back to the tents. During the course of 373 days at McMurdo, I never had the chance to drive a snowmobile. Strange, but true. So I was kind of jonesing to go scooting around on one of these here. So when we were ready to take a few tents to start drying them out, I asked if I could drive. I had a short snowmobile class at McMurdo during the winter, but without actually using one of them I forgot everything. So Katie showed me the basic idea of how to use them, and off we went. And yes, the obligatory photo followed.

Here are some of the tents hung up inside the recreation weatherport. The exercise of digging out the tents did wonders for me, and ever since, my energy level has been quite a bit higher. By the way, human occupancy of the tents (read: heat) tends to create a layer of ice around the base of the tent. So you need to chip away at this to free the tent from the wooden platform as well as the surrounding snow. You need to be careful about doing this, since any hard instrument used for chipping can tear the tent fly. My tally for the day: only two small tears in tent flies while digging out four tents.

Not long after the tent-digging day, some weather set in and stayed with us for a week. Nothing severe, just dismal, overcast skies with a constant wind. Here is a view of the big house, behind a drift.

This same storm (or rather, series of storms) did yield some cool drifts. Here is one of them. To me, this and the next two pictures are three of the best ones I've taken since being here.

This is a line of flags going out to the Swiss Tower from the green house.

I particularly like this photo - it's my favorite one of the trip so far.

A few days ago (Friday) a Twin Otter came in. This plane was supposed to come in Wednesday, but weather delayed it a few days. On board were the two new science techs Sandy and David, and flying out was Larry the mechanic. So I tagged along to check it out. Here is the plane taxiing in. It was pretty foggy this day, and the pilot radioed in to say that they might be landing about 10 miles away because there was an opening in the fog there. I was actually hoping they'd land there, because the crew could use my help on a trip out to shuttle the passengers and cargo (a nice boondoggle, you know). But the pilot was this Danish fellow Stale, who is evidently quite a veteran of this kind of flying, and they landed with no worries. It was pretty cool since you could hear the plane taxiing in long before you could see it through the fog.

One of the plane coming to a stop in front of the fueling area. The pilots shut down the port engine since the passengers and cargo are loaded on this side, however the starboard engine kept turning.

I kinda like this one. These are the same aircraft that Kenn Borek Air operates out of McMurdo, however they are owned by Greenland Air. Per the US agreement with the Danish government, Summit must use the Greenland Air Twin Otters whenever possible, and can only contract with Borek when the government planes are not available. Greenland Air is remarkably expensive, by the way...like $600 USD to fly from Kanger to Nuuk.

So here it is: the terminal of Summit Camp International Airport. No tower, no navigational aids, just a couple fuel bladders and a pump!

Another pic of what has to be the world's smallest airport with a 15000' runway.

The Otter again, getting a fillup. They get a 3% discount if they pay with their Summit Petrol card.

Here are Larry and Katie unloading some stuff from the plane. And yeah, I didn't just stand around and take photos - I did help out with the cargo.

Paula, the camp manager, asked the pilot and copilot if they wanted some grub. We had just finished lunch and there was some hot pizza left, so she ran back and got some slices. Here she is striking a nice pose with the vittles (with Toby on her left).

After 5-6 days straight of dreary weather, the skies finally broke on Saturday. Time to head to the green house roof and smoke these cigars Jim and I rescued a week earlier. We found some pathetic, dried out stoges sitting on a shelf in the big house and proceeded with Operation Puro Unobscuro. We put them in a makeshift humidor, and applied some cigarette papers to mend some gaping tears in the wrappers. The end result turned out pretty darn good, believe it or not. So Jim and I invited a few people to join us for smokes and beers. What a gorgeous day. From left to right - me, Katie, Toby, Paula, Jim. Note the bottle of Deschutes Obsidian Stout sitting on the newly-installed roof hatch (courtesy of Tricky, who actually met Paola at McMurdo during Winfly 2002 - yet another polar small world thing). Obsidian is one of the 5 best beers in the world, in my opinion, and I was extra-stoked to learn that Jim brought a sixer of it up here, since they don't distribute in Colorado any more. We did a pretty good job of rationing our beer, actually, and only ran out a couple days ago.

So, well, whilst sitting on the roof of the green house, Jim and I just had to do a reprise of our previous cinematic conveyance, "Harsh Continent". This file, by the way, is here. This time, there were a couple more people, but the idea is the same: to show just how punishing and excruciating ice life can really be. Yeah, definitely harsh. So here it is: "Harsh Island". Addendum: Greenland is the world's largest island but it is not a continent like Australia is. What gives? This file is 4.5 MB, by the way, so download at your own risk (of boredom).

A couple pics here from Saturday night. I showed some movie files I had from McMurdo and Pole Saturday evening, and afterwards Jim, Toby, Katie, and I went out to watch the sunset. This was the longest sunset I've ever seen, and it was bitchin'. I put a panorama of the horizon just after sunset here, with some more blathering about how cool this evening was. Anyhoo, here is us, watching the sun go down.

The sunset itself. Nothing but a flat, white horizon.

The sunset itself lasted about 30-45 minutes, and towards the end the sun was just a flat line on the horizon. Extra-bitchin.

And one more, with the sun almost down. Some ripples are visible here, caused by the atmosphere playing with the sun's light.

Here is one last photo of the camp. The green house has a skylight which is pretty nice, except for when you want to watch a movie here during the summer months. One of the previous crew had stuffed a piece of cardboard up in the skylight, but I decided to make something better (with permission, of course...). So I put a piece of plywood there which could slide back and forth inside some 2x2 rails with slots routed lengthwise in each. A little paint and some ski wax to help the sliding, and voila. The thing hanging down from the skylight cover is a monkey's fist knot, with a golf ball inside, used to pull the cover back and forth. Paula showed me how to make this knot one day, and the completion of my first monkey's fist was definitely a highlight of the trip (seriously).