Byrd and beyond!

Time to write!
But no time to write!

It's amazing how chock full your schedule can get anywhere, even in Antarctica. When I'm not working - I work 54 hours a week - I seem to busy myself with a million things, which means I'm not as punctual with writing about them here... I've been out to Byrd and back since I last wrote and I want to tell all about it. So here it is.

A sign left over from the 1997 "final" closeout!

Byrd is the word! This is a "new" camp in the deep field this year. New because it has been funded by the current US administration as a stimulating force in the world. Is it ever! New is a loose term the way I am using it however.

Arriving at the site just 6 weeks ago, at a point roughly between Mcmurdo and the Antarctic Penninsula, the camp managers are greeted with a little white spot on a gigantic white canvas. Guided by only satellites talking to their GPS devices, they find themselves next to a large mound. A hill really. But not too big.

This is an anomaly on the Western Antarctic Plateau, where grade is more of a sense you get if you look at the horizon really carefully and for extended lengths of time. Like one of those magic eye puzzles! next to the hill there were hundreds of little bamboo posts holding flags a scant couple of inches off the ground in the shape of an airstrip.

Coming to Byrd a couple of weeks into occupation, this is the view from the C-130's flight deck. See the smear? that's the airstrip. Light and dark spots to the right? Byrd Surface camp.

So Byrd has been occupied on and off for the past 60 years. It was one of the first stations on the continent, and for some time one of the biggest. From it's military beginnings in the 1950s the original station quickly found itself buried in snow from massive amounts of accumulation. Unperturbed, the military decided to build an underground station that could not be buried, because it already was. Quite a brilliant tactic, until the walls cave in! Through the the years and many incarnations of Byrd, more and more artifacts have been buried, abandoned, dug out, chutes and ladders galore, and now the main large station that once was is 6o feet deep. (Though we would all dig it out at the drop of a hat, entrance is forbidden for safety reasons.)

There are two parts of camp that stick out. Literally. A gigantic communications antennae and what was once a 70-80 foot ice drilling rig, now a scant 35 feet above the surface. The hill mentioned earlier, is not a hill of course, but a relic from some of the most recent stations in the past two decades. Byrd has been opened and permanently closed more times than some of the old timers around here can even remember.

Some of the coolest Ice Crystals I have ever seen, formed in our absence.

Why are we going back? Science of course! A great place to start. Two groups, CRESIS and POLENET are the main investigators. The main goals of these two groups lie in the movements of the ice sheet our camp is build on. Using seismic sensors, GPS locators, and GPR or Ground Penetrating Radar, these groups are able to map sub-glacial bodies of water, waterways, topography and keep tabs on where the ice sheet is going, and how fast it is getting there. From all this information and surely some other details that I missed, they will begin to formulate some glaciological hypothesis on ice movements, and possibly some hypothesis on the future of the climate change the earth is currently undergoing. These groups are operating all over the continent as well as in Greenland. Lots of info is online if anyone is interested in geeking out a bit.

https://www.cresis.ku.edu/

Two science support planes on a day of flat light. The smaller of the two is outfitted with radar devices running up and down it's wings.
The two fellas on the right were in charge of weather ops, but somehow could never seem to keep up with the current temperature. They had too many toys I think.

So the carpenters shop is charged with creating these camps, or at least setting up the buildings, outhouses, food storage, heat, and many other amenities for both camp staff and ultimately all for the science. We've learned a lot from those who came before us and we will now take all the buildings apart and winter them on a berm every year. Oi.

When we arrive there is usually little more than a couple of people living in small tents with big radios. When we leave, a small town has been erected where one can have warm (and quite good!) meals prepared three times a day, heated structures to work in, power (the sparkys, linemen, and diesel mechanics head this one up), internet connections, and sometimes even showers!

A temporary carp shop (used for science once we rid it of dirty socks) and the carp crew -1! We are standing in the longest Rac-Tent we believe to have been built. Ever. 112 feet long.
We got this far in one morning! Amazing the wonders we can work when cargo finally arrives!

Four steps in building a freezer cave. (To keep your frozen food extra frozen!)


1.Ya gotta start somewhere! How about... Here!


2. Two days later... How'm I gonna get outta this here hole?


3. Two more days later... Shelving and a staircase. Those carps really are something!


4. Wait for the right light to illuminate the largest sculpture you unintentionally made.

Standing, looking North. South. East. West? The landscape is at once desolate and stunning. Obstructions do not exist.

At times the light is so flat, one can not see a hole or small ridge right beneath them. Sky and ice are one. Shadow does not exist, nor texture.

Other times the sky is as big and blue as the world could imagine. Crystals flying by twinkle like the billions of stars overhead and out of sight. Snow all around sparkles white and blue, textures changing with light. Blown crystals form dunes more picturesque than National Geographic could capture. Freezing hard and solid as the crystals meld to one another, the dunes erode away by high wind, carving them to a perfect harsh. Over and over, buried deeper and deeper this place could disappear a continent. But your soul accumulates... space, silence. True silence. Thinking...

I could lay in this field and stare at these stars forever.

Don't forget to have fun and learn something!
1. It's always a good time for croquet! Especially if you paint the white widgets green!
2. Lessons on the hand drill - bamboo flag post and cedar shim. Sweat, but no coal.

On solid continent.

Glacier flowing in to the mouth of the Taylor Valley

It happened. I finally made it. I've got dirt in the treads of my keds from the mainland of Antarctica. So close but so far away, I had only ever been either on an island or atop an ice sheet, miles from the continent.

If only my nefew could see me now! Hi Sam!

The Taylor Valley is the most researched area in the dry valleys, across the Ross Sea from Mactown, it is a quick hop in a helicopter-about 30 minutes. Having never ridden in a 'helo' before my two trips out there, getting there is half the fun! We have some great pilots down here and they aren't afraid to use their skills! (some of the other folks on the trip didn't have as good of a stomach for that kind of thing though...) The dry valleys are thus named because they get very little precipitation, and, though surrounded by intruding glaciers, the valley leaves exposed the bare dirt of the continent, a rare occurance. Though the glaciers are flowing into the valleys, they don't make it far before seasonally melting back to the previous summer's location.

Lake Bonney and the view from Lake Hoare.
Recent snowfall! It must be getting warm around here!

So this brings me to the most dominant feature of the dry valleys. With all this melting of course there run seasonal streams which flow into... lakes! The dry valleys really are not that dry after all! Under fairly permanent layer of ice, these ultra saline lakes contain life! Only really small things of course, but bacteria, fungi, plankton and others make for a primitive but promising model. The ice atop the lakes is an amazing sight to see, but be damn careful! It's like walking on a table cloth that someone is in process of pulling out from under the dishes! I've never walked on such a slippery surface. Our helo pilot warned us - be careful. It's more slippery than Owl shit out there. It's also the coolest ice I've ever seen, and at this point I'm starting to feel like an expert on ice. I could tell you about how clear and amazing it is, but here are pictures instead. I will say that I picked up one loose piece of ice off the lake top, about the size of a rolling pin, and I think it was clearer than the clearest glass I've ever seen.

I'll worry aobut this here. You all back in the states keep your eyes peeled for owl feces!

Ice from the edge! The edges of the lakes melt every year, and refreze flat and crystal clear. Come spring they crack in some of the most amazing ways. These cracks are from the surface to several feet deep, thought the pics are pretty flat.



Some bubbles bubbling up? somehow? I'm pretty sure I would like to enroll in a week long class about the lake ice formations.


Rumpley top, cut by the wind and the sun? Stalagmites/hoodoos left when lake ice melted around them.

Scientists in the valleys study the life going on here, the glaciers, the rocks, and the whole idea that this is pretty much Mars. Or at least Europa, Jupiter's ice covered moon. Endurance, the project that is geared toward this similarity has a nifty robot that they are exploring the lake Bonney with that is a prototype of sorts for one headed out to Europa maybe in the next decade?? Pretty wild stuff. Around here they still get to pull it out and fix it when it breaks, and have thus learned alot about what might work all the way out there.

This is where the Endurance Robot lives (This is the kind of tent we build for all sorts of science related shelters.) and this is the robot being fixed (you have to get out the kinks before you go all the way to Jupiter!)

Now... for the quick-quick-I'm deploying to the deep field in 24 hours and have to pack version...
(story to come in three weeks when I return)

Various ventifacts, or wind carved rocks at Lake Bonney.

Lake Bonney, Canada Glacier at Lake Hoare Camp

Getting picked up on Lake Fryxall, Blood Falls.

Oh yes, and what in the world was I doing there? Fixing outhouses and drilling new ice anchors for and maintaining various shelters! Definetally a great job! Look at that smile!

Sea Ice!

Out on the Ross Sea; Sea ice converging with a glacier.

Hustle bustle, hustle bustle, military planes flying in, dropping huge amounts of cargo and people at a little village we call the runway. Roads stretch this way and that as far as the eye can see, Mountains raise up all around you, one bellowing smoke, all covered in glaciers. The biggest bus you've seen and caterpillar bulldozers populate the surroundings like so many ants. It's hard to imagine; but here we are on the Ross Sea, fathoms of some of the coldest water on earth right beneath your feet. A body of water that looks to me to be the size of a great lake! Surely were it not ringed by mountains, it would be lost to the curvature of the earth, off in the distance. Come February this little village, the roads the people and equipment everywhere will be restricted to more permanent ice shelf or land, as the 84 inches of sea ice we are standing on will dissapear, revealing the depths of the Ross Sea, and it's summer populations of seals and Orcas.

As a result of it's size perhaps, theremal inertia, or maybe purely of climatic causes, Antarctica puts on it's winter coat of ice for seven months of the year, only for the sun to melt it back away with every passing day of summer. This yearly cycle effectively doubles the size of the continent, freezing a ceiling over the diverse and bustling communities of sea life including sponges, sea-stars, urchins, spiders, fish, jellys and krill. This amazing freezing and thawing is of course a dynamic event, and does not simply come and go, but it shrinks, expands, flows, flexes, pushes into islands and glaciers, cracks, heaves and dives; interacting with it's surroundings and demonstrating the forces of plate tectonics right before your eyes.

A glacier heaves upward as it approaches the frozen sea; Little Razorback Island, flanked with pressure ridges and cracks heaving sea ice in all directions.

An amazing sight, this also means that around every crevice, crack or ridge lies perilous danger to the common human mammal, certainly not designed for the sub-freezing waters beneath. Hence we receive as part or our training here, a specific sea-ice safety course, during which we take an entire day to drive around the sights and use really cool ice drills and tape measures to profile interesting cracks and crevices. Power tools meets sightseeing, and for the geeks in the audience, a physics lesson is offered in small helping from the instructor and in earth shattering reality by the ice beneath your feet.

Hagglund - a Norwegian vehicle that carried the 12 of us; a glacier descending Mt. Erebus, and flowing into the Ross Sea.



Two drills. One, a brace and bit; the other, essentially a weed eater with an auger attachment!

With a few extra minutes we decided to swing by the snow cave and have a peek inside.

While I had a great time in the class, my most thrilling experience came a couple of weeks later while on sea-ice patrol. This is a duty of the carpenter's shop, to check the heaters and propane tanks in all the dive sheds in the area. 20 miles out (this takes a long time on sea-ice) in a pisten bully and once again surrounded by ice and mountains we come to a group of islands where a large majority of the dive sheds are located.

Our truck - around here we call them Pisten Bully; The first dive shed, at the foot of a cliff holding back the glacier.

Mt. Erebus and the edge of one of the glaceirs cariving it.

Stepping out of the rig at big razorback island, sounds abound. Moans carry on the wind and echo around the islands and pressure ridges drawing your attention to the dark slug looking calico lumps laying all around the island. The pressure ridges that form around these islands open up sea access allowing Weddell seals to flop out onto the ice where they began giving birth about a week prior to our visit! Small seals abound! Researchers were busy trying to weigh the 800 pound mamas, and lord knows they could be the more testy of the two animals. We kept our distance! (Also, we are required to)

Researchers weighing seals, and one mama hanging out, preparing to give birth.

Our day rounded out with a last dive shed in desperate need of some more propane, and an active BBC dive crew inside probobly not in desperate need of some company, but we decided to poke our heads in and say hello anyway. Filming sea life for "Freezing Planet", the next big BBC nature documentary series, four divers were taking turns plunging into the 28 degree water wearing tons of gear and swimming around cameras in huge boxes for 30 minutes at a time. We chatted about some of their footage we had seen at a sneak preview and in previous films, as well as what they were filming that week. They are doing some very interesting time-lapse photgraphy that is really bringing McMurdo Sound to life!

sedimentary ice?