Day 30 to 37 – 25 November until 02 December 2008 – An Extended High Altitude Acclimatization
We are finally ready to begin our work around the summit of Mount Erebus at elevations between 3200-3800 m. Field work at such elevations always starts, with a mandatory high altitude acclimatization stay of two night at the small camp on Fang Glacier. Everything started out according to plan, with a perfect flight on a sunny day, weather conditions that we have begun to take for granted over the last few weeks. Little did we know that the Antarctic weather was just about going to teach us a lesson about its unpredictability and harshness!
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Day 27 – 22 November 2008 – Snowcraft II Training
We are now ready to prepare for our work on Mt. Erebus. This includes some additional training for crevasse climbing so we can get into and out of the ice caves in which we plan to deploy our microbe traps. Our FSTP mountaineer Nick Giguere has taken our small group under his wing for our training. He will be our guide when we work on Erebus so it is good to train with him as well. The group is Hubert and Laurie (Golf 439), Daria Zandmeneghi (Golf 081), and a photographer from the writers and artists program, Lisa Blatt (Whisky 437).
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Day 25 – 20 November 2008 – Our Trip to the Royal Society Range
Another glorious day for field work in McMurdo, and we are actually scheduled to fly out to the Royal Society Range. We have the company of Mary Lynn Price from San Diego who is one of the sponsored artists at McMurdo, and her role is shooting videos for podcasts of women doing science in Antarctica, in conjunction with a major video production by Norbert Wu for the BBC. The flight is glorious, sunny, and beautiful sights all the way to Walcott Glacier. Hotel Sierra is going nuts shooting ice patterns because he is convinced that everybody wants to have those shots as desktop patters on their computer.
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Day 20 – 15 November 2008 – A Visit to Turtle Rock
It is Saturday and an absolutely glorious day and we decided to hop on our Skidoos and go to Turtle Rock to prepare for a mooring that we will do there in a couple of years. Light workload (test a drill, figure out how safe it is to go there) but lots of cool sights to see. There is not a very big story to write about, the coolest thing are the pictures of our outing: The skidoo ride took us only half an hour from base, in near zero wind speed and a great view at Mt Erebus with a plume that was rising vertically up, not deflected by wind as it normally is. We saw lots of seals and show you a study of a very young baby seal that just loved to perform for us. Enjoy the Pictures!
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Day 16 – 11 November 2008 – Checking off the Rest of Our Taylor Valley Science Program
Today, our photos chronicle our last full day in Taylor Valley: We deployed a set of our experiments in an ephemeral stream in upper Taylor Valley just above Lake Bonnie, and we did an evening hike to one of Lauries’ sampling site from for a soil yeast project that she is currently writing up. The goal in our ephemeral stream deployment is to explore what microbes dominate a setting that consists almost entirely of water and basalt, and that is frozen throughout most of the year. Our colleagues from the LTER tell us that this stream is running at most about two months per year. This type of setting is probably the closest analog we can find on earth for the polar regions of Mars that are currently the targets for our search of extraterrestrial life.
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Day 15 – 10 November 2008 – Drilling in Lake Fryxell
Our much-anticipated day of drilling into Lake Fryxell has come. There is a bit of worry and concern because we were warned that drilling can be tricky and that it is very easy to get the Jiffy drill stuck in the ice, in particular in deep holes and in cold ice early in the season. This can happen when the cold ice shavings in the hole mix with the lake water and flash-freeze. This is particularly disastrous when you have a long drill bit that weighs a ton. If the drill bit freezes you don’t get a hole until you work for several days to free up the drill bit again. Considering this potential problem we decided not to take any chances and we asked Andrew from Bravo 422 to help us out. He is of similar size as Hubert (at least in terms of height) and he was eager to demonstrate that he was up to the task.
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Day 14 – 09 November 2008 – The Polar Haven Site
In the morning we went out with Amy, Tristi and Andrew to look at the "Polar Haven Site" in the middle of the lake where they are doing most of their work. We decided to put our mooring as close to their site as possible so we can use their characterization of the chemistry, physics and biology of the lake. There, we will drill a ten-inch diameter five meter long hole through the ice of Lake Fryxell. Our hike to the site is not trivial. Most of the way is very slippery ice so we have to wear crampons or stabilizers on our boots. The ice surface is extremely uneven with ups and downs of about three feet, depending on how the winter scoured (ablated) the ice and how the sun melted and let re-freeze the water during the summer. This is called "candle ice" because it forms long thin sections that resemble candles. It is tricky walking but lots of fodder for the photographer.
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Day 13 – 08 November 2008 – Flight to Taylor Valley and Scouting Deployment Sites
Today is the big day: Finally all of our staging, and preparations come to an end by delivering our cargo to the heliport. It is a bright, clear, but cold day and our flight takes us past the Royal Society Range and the Ferrar Glacier. Just past Ferrar, we are dropping into Taylor Valley, the most studied and visited Dry Valley in Antarctica. We flew over Lake Fryxell but continued up Taylor Valley to explore a site for an exposure experiment in a seasonal creek issuing from an ancient lava flow field. We found a very promising area, landed and then continued on to Lake Fryxell camp. There we were met by the local residents, the Bravo 426 team (Maciej Obryk and Annika Taylor) who are working with Peter Doran from the University of Chicago. They are measuring ice thickness and the ablation of the ice from the strong winter winds.
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Day 10 – 05 November 2008 – Packing is a Long Process
There seems to be a never-ending string of tasks that we need to check off before we can get out to the Dry Valleys. The first thing is coordinate with another field party (the Limnology team from Montana State) so we can arrive at the Lake Fryxell hut the same day as they do. Next we must pack and weigh all of our gear that will be shipped out so we can fill out a flight request form. The weights are very important for flights so that the pilots know how much fuel they need to complete their mission.
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Day 09 – 04 November 2008 – Sunny, but Very Cold and Windy
This morning, I got up to a beautiful morning and decided to go on a small walk around Observation Hill. Short 2-3 mile walk, mostly easy but with a few treacherous icy bits. It was a very sunny day, but windy and VERY cold. Taking pictures was hard towards the end because my beard and camera turned into a frozen mess, and the shutter of my electronic camera would work only if I give it the occasional reprieve inside my coat.
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Day 08 – 03 November 2008 – It Takes a Lot of Planning
We have been slacking off in our reporting, but not much happened that is worth writing about: more briefings, catching up with paperwork, hitting the gym and the galley. We brought the flag made by the Indian Island 5th grade class (Penobscot Nation school in Old Town, Maine!!!) up to the BFC to have patches sewn on and a binding to make it more likely to withstand the wind out in the field. There were two BFC people working hard on the banner, Leah Biezums and Kate Koomes.
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Day 05 – 31 October 2008 – Deploying Below the Sea Ice
This is our first field day today. We deployed our first experiment under the seasonal ice at Cape Evans (with the help from the USAP divers)! Going out on the sea ice sounds like a straightforward thing to do, but it is not. A snowmobile can take you far, very easily. While sea-ice is easy to travel on, it can also be treacherous, in particular near islands, moving glaciers and near the shore line (the sea-ice transition), where the ocean tides (here about a meter/three feet once a day) can bunch up a lot of ice. All this is relatively easily handled by experienced people when the visibility is good. However, when the sun is not out you cannot sea cracks very well and in a storm visibility gets very bad. Also, once you are out there, your snowmobile might break down and you don’t just walk home.
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Day 04 – 30 October 2008 – Making Exposure Chambers
We can see the end of the tunnel of briefings and training courses! Now we have to hurry to get ready for our first experiment deployment: On Saturday the McMurdo dive master Rob Robbins and Henry Kaiser will deploy some of our experiments on the underwater slopes of Mt Erebus near Cape Evans. Time to do science.
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Day 03 – 29 October 2008 – AMS, MEC, COMS and MACOPS
Just when you thought it was safe to get going on your work, it’s Back To School! We spend all day yesterday in training to prepare us for working in the Antarctic. You need to know the lingo sometimes because of all the acronyms. See the code to the lingo here. Some of the training is classroom style, such as the altitude training course at FSTP to learn about AMS, how to minimize it, and how drugs can help you from dying up there.
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Day 02 – 28 October 2008 – Meetings Wall-to-Wall
We got a lot of things done yesterday and today will be full of meetings. Once we are done with most of the briefings, courses and other hoops to jump through we’ll report in all gory detail! Just kidding, most of it is real fun and or full of anticipation of cool things to come. In today’s photo gallery we’ll give you an idea of the places we will visit, Taylor Valley, Walcott Glacier and Mount Erebus. In all these places we will put out experiments with which we want to trap microbes that can eat volcanic rock!
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Day 01 – 27 October 2008 – Expedition Begins
Day One! We are now at McMurdo Station for less than 24 hours and lots has happened. We were incredibly lucky to arrive in Christchurch when the first major weather window opened up in McMurdo. We had to wake up at 3 AM in Christchurch and caught our scheduled flight to the Ice. Super-luxury. We were ferried over in a C17 Globemaster four jet-engine cargo plane equipped with regular airline seats. There were a few "regular" canvas jump seats on the sides of the plane, but we were lucky enough to get "real" seats for this five-hour flight.
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