Recovery

With ANITA down for over a week we still haven't got out to recover the gondola.  At the moment the plan is for myself & Brian from ANITA to go with Corey (a CSBF rigger) out to Siple Dome, about 100 miles from the crash site, for 3 days.  From there we'll take daily trips out to the payload to break it down for sending back to McMurdo.  But with bad weather out at Siple Dome we've just been getting postponed!

Yesterday with the trip to Siple Dome cancelled we managed to get a different flight arranged to Taylor Dome to recover pulsing equipment that was used to send RF signals during flight.  This turned out to be a great boondoggle, the skies were pretty clear and Taylor Dome is the other side of the Royal Society Range, so our little twin otter aircraft, flying pretty low, gave us fantastic views of the mountain range, some of the islands and views over the ice shelf.  I'll post these in good time.... 

Meanwhile, on the ground the views were getting pretty spectacular.  I didn't get any photos of it, but yesterday on the way out to the airfield we saw some amazing shaped clouds over the horizon.  The wavelike shapes we saw are apparently Kelvin-Helmholtz clouds, caused by shear between two layers of fluids.  They didn't look quite as impressive as the one below, but were still pretty weird.

Then, today, we saw a mirage over towards the ice shelf horizon and White Island that stretches the horizon vertically.  I've seen a few of these during my stay, when there is very little wind and the Sun heats the air except for a band close to ground level creating thermal inversion layers.  The pictures below, taken by Peter, shows the effect, the one today stretched 90 degrees around the horizon and was pretty spectacular.

Still no penguins though.  Boo.

ANITA terminated

ANITA's flight was terminated last night at about 2am.  The payload reached the ground not long after at 83 27.92S, 154 57.46W.  Not the perfect location for recovery!  It had looked as though the balloon would head straight towards Ross Island, so that we would be able to cut down pretty close by, but a change of course to the south, towards mountainous terrain, meant that the flight had to be terminated early if we were to be certain of an easily recoverable location.  

The problem now is that with with payload over 300 miles away we'll have to use longer range aircraft and probably have less ground time to actually get back all the bits we need!  Oh well!  Hopefully it'll mean a nice trip out of McMurdo for me though, I'm only an alternate for the trip so will only go if there's space (or if something unfortunate should happen to Brian).

Other than that I really haven't done anything of note this past week besides searching fruitlessly for penguins three times a day out at Hut Point.  The supposed "glut" of blog entries was misleading; I lied!

With a little luck though I'll have some sweet photos of a smashed up ANITA to post in a few days.  Now where's my chain-saw...?

Icebreakers, Penguins and the Rumour Mill

If it stays this warm in McMurdo (it's been above freezing a number of days in the last couple of weeks) then Pegasus runway will be unusable, we're going to have to leave on one of the cruise ships.  Spout nonsense like this around McMurdo and someone will inevitably believe it.  So begin rumours that spread around town like wildfire.

Of course, a lot of rumours have some kernel of truth at their core, but others, like the one about getting a ship out of Antarctica are started just as jokes.  Other stories, like the one about a guy getting run over by a challenger (a big caterpillar tracked vehicle) turned out to be totally true.  He was OK, thankfully, though had to be med evacuated out with a broken pelvis.

Unfortunately, even small rumours that seem perfectly plausible on the face of it turn out to be untrue.  Penguins follow the icebreaker in each season, of course you'll get to see them before you leave.  It turns out that a couple of seasons ago a whole host of penguins did indeed follow in the icebreaker that visits every January.  They got as far as Scott's Hut and were there a whole day.  This year the icebreaker came in and did penguins follow?  Did they hell!

I just want to see one.  Please!

Ross Island Cup

I haven't written a blog for nearly a week now, there's a lot (relatively speaking) to catch up on.  So, seeing as once again I'm shifting on ANITA, a slightly mind numbing 7 hour experience checking graphs and numbers, I may as well post a glut of blogs about what's been happening down in McMurdo.

The USA isn't renowned as a rugby power, most Americans don't know the rules and a fair proportion of the its populous probably has never watched a game.  But, fueled by patriotic enthusiasm and excitement at a break from the normal routine of life around base, a large group of McMurdoans witnessed the highlight of the Antarctic sporting calendar; an annual rugby game between McMurdo (USA) and Scott Base (New Zealand).  The winner of the game this year would have the pride of taking home the inaugural Hillary-Dufek Ross Island Cup, only problem for McMurdo being they hadn't scored a try in the fixture for many years now and have never actually beaten the Kiwi team.

The Scott Base team perform the Haka

Seeing as Americans are good at almost every other sport I was a traitor to McMurdo, even though I had to stand in their section of the crowd, I was rooting for the Kiwis.  What is it with American sports crowds and highly unoriginal cheering, and chanting every time a tackle was made regardless how much ground Scott Base had made!?  If they'd been playing Australia I'm sure I'd have felt differently though.

Watching rugby played on ice is certainly interesting, the two injuries and blood left on the pitch showed how committed the players were.  But in the end the result was as expected, Scott Base ran out winners, albeit with a fairly close 8-0 score.

And then there were 3

There are now only 3 members of the ANITA team left in McMurdo, lonely times!  The staff at LDB is a skeleton crew of 5, enough to help us keep our data flowing and cover the recovery operations.  Other than this there are 3 members of CREAM, who will be leaving soon having had their flight terminated and their recovery operation any day now.  But worst of all, the Galley has closed!  And lunch break out at LDB will now feature sandwiches from town or reheated days old meals.

Looking on the bright side however, we'll be eating better than anyone staying at Scott's Discovery Hut did all those years ago.  I visited the hut (which is less than a mile from my dorm) last week and was amazed at the condition the food was in, the freezing Antarctic conditions meaning that very little, including the dead seals, decays.  But they did have bovril ... mmmm ... meat drink.

On an entirely different topic: if, like me, the situation in Gaza totally depresses you then please sign this petition and read this article.

Dead of night

It's 2:30am here, the middle of the night.  While McMurdo operates around the clock, LDB does not, but I am out here because ANITA is still in line of sight and I'm on night shifts.  It all leads to going a little crazy as sleep deprivation (event though I got 6 hours earlier today) kicks in.

It is quite nice to be out here all alone though, the Sun is lower in the sky and everything feels very peaceful outside of the hangar.

Other than working nights and sleeping days not much has been going on out here other than film watching.  I still haven't seen any damn penguins, the only wildlife I've observed have been skuas (like overgrown aggressive seagulls that'll happily dive-bomb people with food) and seals (dead ones or far off alive ones).  Oh, and also sea spiders in a tank, creepy!

Getting stuck

After my cheery post yesterday, saying that the hard slog was over, it turns out ANITA is coming back into our line of sight.  This means I do have to come back out to work to take part in 24 hour shifting until ANITA disappears once more over the horizon (hurry up, hurry up, hurry up).

This brings me to a fun problem.  It's no longer freezing here!  So taking a 60 ton vehicle across the transition from land to ice shelf becomes pretty eventful.  The transition itself no longer looks like smooth ice sheet, rather a series of rock pools and ice pools.  Drive too fast, and the bumps send everyone flying, kind of like a cheap ride at a fairground.  Drive too slow though, and the 60 ton vehicle doesn't get very far.

Doesn't look like it should be stuck really, does it?

So far I've been stuck twice on the road out to work.  Both times away from the transition on the main Willy Field road, also a mushy pit just waiting to trap Deltas.  At least I got some exercise out of it - walking back to base when I couldn't be bothered to wait half a hour for fleet ops to come drag us out.

One bowl ONLY

The Winter festivities are over, but here in McMurdo it feels like they're just beginning  Why?  We finished packing yesterday, so can finally have a more relaxed time of it, working from town rather than LDB and even the possibility of later starts!  So with all this free time suddenly on my hands, what to do?!  Win my deal with Jo of course (or at least not lose it) - I have to lose some weight out here or I promised that I'd cook for her every day for a month.

The problem is, with there being relatively few activities, the temptation to just eat your way out of boredom is pretty strong.  The food at LDB was really good too, so 2 cooked meals a day plus many coffee breaks with cake was the norm.  Luckily, the food in McMurdo galley is usually not so great, after all they are trying to cater for 1000 people with very few fresh ingredients.

So we come to the one bowl diet - as recommended by LDB camp manager Rich.  You can have one bowl and one bowl only of food at each meal.  Stack it as high as you like, with whatever you like, but second helpings are out of the question.  How long until I crack and eat the McMurdo crack (aka Frosty Boy) for every meal?  Who knows.....

Icestock

Thanksgiving in McMurdo (not that it bothers me) wasn't great, Christmas was just depressing despite the alcohol fuelled fun. New Year though, an event that's usually a bigger let down than The Phantom Menace, was pretty damn good.

I'd been to a couple of music events down here, Freezing Man (named after the American hippie fest Burning Man) and The Zim Brothers' Christmas, and knew there were some pretty good musicians around. What hadn't been shown prior to Icestock though, was the fun loving atmosphere of McMurdo. Icestock, however, had this in abundance.

What could be better than seeing in the new year than at a mini festival? Seeing in the new year at a mini festival with excellent funky tunes, a professor in a penguin hat, a bassist in a purple pimp suit, a totally free midnight meal to head to, a party in an empty fuel container after that, half a bottle of good quality whisky and the midnight countdown in full sunlight.

A mini festival

A professor in a penguin hat

A bassist in a purple pimp suit

Midnight countdown, sunglasses at night

Awesome.