Antarctica in Black and White

I'm out of here in just a couple days. Since I last posted, there was a pretty major storm and all the sea ice vanished and it's all open water between us and the Royal Society Range. Plenty of shenanigans (cancellations, kites, hikes, etc.) ensued, but in honor of the end of the season, I've decided to dedicate this post entirely to pictures.

I'll never be one to give up a window seat just because 'I've seen it before'. No place or thing ever looks exactly the same twice. Whether it's a physical difference, like different lighting or different atmospheric conditions, or a mental one, like a new mindset, there's always something new to be seen in the most familiar place. Both in light and in spite of this outlook, I made the switch to black and white photography while visiting sites this year to which I had already been. I've decided to cobble together a collection of 15 of those photos from the 2014-2015 season. I'll save you the detailed philosophy (feel free to ask me sometime) - please enjoy the photos!

As always, thanks for reading!

Ice Pits and Brimstone and Bear!

It's been a few weeks since the last post. I never did get to Mt. Paterson, but I eventually got out to WAIS Divide (after 5 days of cancelations - not nearly as bad as the 2.5 weeks endured by the rest of my crew). We had a very productive time there, visiting all but one of the sites we needed to service. There was a pretty big POLENET crew out there because we had to do a lot of digging.

Because our seismic sites measure activity in the ice, they are buried in snow at many locations. Some of these locations are on glaciers with very high rates of snow accumulation (up to 6 or 7 feet per year). When the stations are installed, the sensors are buried just below the surface, encased by a large dome to protect them from drifting snow. Each year, when the sites are visited, the sensors are dug out and repositioned just below the surface again. Even one year's accumulation takes a lot of work to dig up. The four glacier sites we serviced from WAIS hadn't been visited in two.

The remnants of the 10-12' hole we dug at Lower Thwaites Glacier. That's a pretty large collapsed cardboard box on the right.

Our seismic engineer, Doug (who's pretty tall), stands in the ~14' hole out of which we dug the seismic sensor at Kohler glacier.

I also got a chance to visit a GPS site to which I'd never been before: Bear Peninsula. While I didn't actually go to the site (it required traversing quite a lot of steep blue ice and there was only enough mountaineering equipment for the mountaineer and the engineer), I did get to sit high up on the peninsula and watch them work from afar. We could see open water far in the distance and the sun appeared and disappeared over the mountains in the other direction. We explored the extensive striated serpentine deposits and talked geology with the pilots as we waited for the engineer and mountaineer to service what turned out to be a mildly exploded station.

Doug (far away, center) and Brian (right) take pictures under a colorful sky at Bear Peninsula.

Dave, our logistical coordinator and my officemate back in Columbus, attempts to knee-sled down the slippery blue ice at Bear Peninsula on the way back to the plane. It wasn't very successful.

WAIS life was very similar to the way I remembered it - friendly people, camping on the ice sheet, skiing, the occasional soccer match, whiling away the non-work hours with card games, conversation (there's no internet), games devised from our unused scientific equipment (e.g. spin the person in the seismic dome!), and side projects for whoever needed an extra hand, like a back-lit ice pit (two pits dug in the snow, one covered, with a thin wall in between that allows daylight to illuminate it and show layers in the ice - see below; we went a little overboard, building steps, chairs, wine coolers, and food prep/storage space). At its height, the population of the camp was 41, but that didn't last long, as that was while people from smaller camps and traverses were passing through just to catch a flight back to McMurdo for the end of the season. I was out there for two weeks and got out on the first try (pretty unusual). Now I'm back in McMurdo until mid-February doing helicopter and fixed-wing work near the coast.

The back-lit ice pit wall from the spectator side. The spot where the wall was a little too thin and we broke through was patched and eventually food-colored to look like stained glass. The wall is about 6 feet high and reveals almost two years of accumulation.

Erin, the primary proponent of the ice pit, sits in the recessed chair next to the stairs descending into the pit.

Dave is spun in a spare seismic sensor protective dome by Brian, Doug, and Maeva, in front of the POLENET work tent at WAIS while other members of the project look on. 

I'm getting back into the swing of 'town' life - hanging out at the lounges/bars, playing indoor soccer once or twice a week, hiking on a semi-regular basis, and keeping track of goings-on via e-mail. Meanwhile, after a slow start, we've been productive via helo and fixed-wing flights. Last week we got to one site and this week we're at three so far, with more in the pipeline. It helps that most of the science projects are in the process of packing up and leaving, so we have the plane almost entirely to ourselves and the helicopter schedule is, at the very least, uncrowded. We also have enough people (8) that we can run two crews/day. For example, yesterday (Tuesday), four of us went to a helicopter site near the northern coast of the Transantarctic Mountains called Brimstone Peak, while three went to a fixed-wing site in the opposite direction called Deverall Island.

Brimstone Peak is a beautiful site - to get there, we fly across the Ross Sea from Ross Island to Marble Point, where we fuel, and then up the spine of the Transantarctic Mountains (TAM). Brimstone Peak, at 7,677 ft, stands almost alone amidst the sea of ice that slowly takes over as the TAM diminish into East Antarctica in Northern Victoria Land. The peak is comprised of monumental columnar basalts formed from Jurassic Kirkpatrick Basalt flows, which are part of the Ferrar Group and the Beacon Supergroup, all of which are associated with the rifting of West Antarctica and the breakup of Pangaea. It's named for its brimstone-colored rock.

Spencer, Brian, and Cristo work on the electronics of the GPS station at Brimstone Peak. The GPS antenna is in the foreground.

A panorama looking west from Brimstone Peak toward the East Antarctic Ice Sheet. On the next ridge over, the Beacon Group sediments underlying the Kirkpatrick Basalts are visible.

On the way back from Brimstone Peak, we stopped to pick up cargo at Lake Hoare, at the foot of the Canada Glacier, in the Dry Valleys. The cargo displaced us somewhat, so we were a bit squished in the back of the helicopter, but it was well worth it. The Dry Valleys were beautiful and, despite their proximity to McMurdo and the number of my associates who work there, I had never been. The lake itself, which is hypersaline and contains liquid water throughout the year (and therefore plays host to some unusual biota), is a very popular research spot and has a semi-permanent camp, complete with wooden structures and internet.

The camp at Lake Hoare, with a couple of tents against the Canada Glacier in the background.

That's all for now. We'll continue waking up before 6 every morning hoping to fly, but we don't have very many sites left - we might even get out of here early! I'll be publishing a post soon that's entirely dedicated to pictures, so keep an eye out if that's your cup of tea! As always, thanks for reading!

Gone South for the Winter

This is what it says on my office door in Columbus.

For many, winter means heading south. Anyone who knows me is aware that I prefer my winters snowy and cold, but I like to go south, too – just a little bit farther south than most. This winter, I’m back in Antarctica, having left Columbus about a week before Christmas to begin what has become the routine flight to the west coast and across the Pacific Ocean.

I only got a couple of days in Christchurch between arriving and flying to the Ice, and I packed them full. I checked into my hotel (the Rendezvous downtown, quite a bit cushier than the last one, and brand new – one of the first new high-rises in the city after the earthquakes) upon arrival and set about exploring the city with Gail, a fellow polar scientist I met on the plane. The changes since my last visit were astounding and heartening. New construction was taking place on every block and significantly fewer lots were completely vacant. The new buildings were colorful, unique, and architecturally interesting while beautifully and seamlessly adhering to Christchurch’s status as “the Garden City”.

The scene was one of rebirth. Of a city that has a chance to recover not only from its recent past and dramatic events beyond its control, but also from its reliance on concrete and small windows. The new structures rose gracefully and reflected the clouds and the sky. Pedestrians, local and otherwise, made their respective ways around the city at all hours.

We ate a tremendously satisfactory dinner with my local friend Cat at the hotel’s restaurant and called it a night. The following morning, having not yet adjusted to the 18 hour time difference, I woke up at about 5 and decided to go for a walk in the botanical gardens to catch the sunrise. I didn’t take my camera, but rest assured that it was beautiful, peaceful, and a perfect way to start the day. Around about 8:30, I wandered back out, grabbed a SIM card for my phone (I lost my old one), and ambled on over to a small breakfast establishment on the recently reopened New Regent Street near the hotel.

Then it was off to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) to get all of our Extreme Cold-Weather (ECW) gear and be informed that our Ice flight, originally scheduled for December 23^rd, had been delayed to December 24^th. After a quick meeting with a friend from Alaska who had just gotten back from Antarctica, and lunch with my advisor at the InternationalAntarctic Centre’s café, I took a bus back into town and spent the rest of the day working in my room – not fun, but necessary.

Since we had the next day free, a few of us—Gail, Rob (an engineer/hydrologist), Adie (a chef), and myself—opted to go for a hike on the Port Hills between Lyttelton and Christchurch. After a bus ride to the edge of the city and a relaxing and delicious lunch of nachos on a deck overlooking Lyttelton and the harbor, the bartender of our lunch venue (Wunderbar) was kind enough to suggest to us a route which I had never taken before called the Major Hornbrook Track. We found it without too much trouble at the top of a quiet residential street and were quickly on our way up to the ridge separating the port and the city. It was a beautiful day, and we spent some time relaxing at the summit before it began to cloud over and we decided to descend and catch a bus back into the city. It was late and we decided to eat dinner again at the hotel restaurant before heading to bed in preparation for our 6:00 am transport to the airport the next morning.

Rob and Gail stopping to investigate some of the local flora on the way up the Major Hornbrook Track from Lyttelton

We sat for a while in the shade and tried to figure out all of the port operations

Fog rolling in at the top of the Port Hills

We got off without a hitch (except a minor delay for maintenance). We flew on LC-130s—prop planes which move significantly more slowly than the jets used during the shoulder seasons when the ice runway is thick enough to accommodate them. We made it from Christchurch to McMurdo Station in just over 7 hours. We were greeted with a waiting shuttle, the usual welcome brief, and relative peace. Because we arrived on Christmas Eve, the night before a two-day weekend (generally weekends on the Ice are only one day), the station was quiet and it afforded us the opportunity to move in unhurried. We got our bearings and our linens and set about reacquainting ourselves with the station.

The next day was Christmas, and the kitchen prepared a spectacular meal of crab legs, steak tips, and an array of fresh fruits, vegetables, and baked goods for all 800+ people at McMurdo. Good cheer was rampant over the course of the day with food, friends, gift exchanges, and games. There was plenty of time to reconnect with coworkers and friends of seasons past and show some newcomers some of the ropes.

The dessert station in the galley for Christmas dinner - no extravagance was spared!

Holiday dinner in the galley

Decorations in the entrance hall of Crary (where most of the science operations are headquartered)

The days since Christmas have been busy and slow all at the same time. I arrived as part of the late-season installment of the POLENET crew (if you've forgotten what we do, here's a refresher), and quite a few of my coworkers had arrived long before me and had anticipated getting out to the deep field camp at WAIS Divide on December 15^th (I'm scheduled to go out at the beginning of January), but due to a perfect storm of complications regarding fuel, cargo, and weather, had not made it yet. They were scheduled every day, only to check the board every morning and see that their flight was canceled.

As I write this, they are still here, patiently (if not a little desperately) waiting for their flight to finally take off. They almost made it today, but were canceled at the last minute while they were sitting on the shuttle waiting to go to the runway. Due to the nature of intracontinental travel here, they are living out of one small ‘boomerang bag’, which is tagged specifically in the event of flight cancellation or postponement after baggage has been checked. The checked bags, which have been palletized and prepared for loading on to the LC-130, are from that point inaccessible, but passengers are allowed to retain one carry-on bag (less than 15 lbs) and their boomerang bag in the event of flight cancellation. Except for over Christmas, the POLENETers have been living out of their boomerang bags for two weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve been completing all of the various trainings necessary to live and work on the Ice (environmental awareness, field safety, snow mobiles, light vehicles, etc.), hiking a little bit, maintaining POLENET's wepage and setting up the online components of our upcoming Glacial Isostatic Adjustment workshop, and helping some of the senior project staff and engineers prepare for work out of McMurdo. 

Because of the fuel shortage at WAIS, we’ve attempted to reconfigure some of our logistics so that we can perform at least some of the necessary station maintenance by flying from McMurdo rather than from WAIS. The engineers and I requested a flight across the ice shelf to visit a difficult-to-access site. Because we requested it late, we were put on back-up (rather than first priority), which means that we get to go if the priority flight gets canceled, and if we don't go, we stay on back-up until we do or until we cancel the request. This means I wake up before 6 every day to make sure I'm in the office when the meteorologists check the weather, just in case we get called up. We haven't in the two days since we've put in the request, but we'll be on the list for the rest of the week. Hopefully we'll get to go out and do some work!

McMurdo Station from the top of nearby Observation Hill

More to come soon. Happy Holidays from the bottom of the world, and thanks for reading! 

So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

As I sit here in the San Francisco airport, at a quiet gate with no flights, looking out at all the runway lights through my reflection on the glass, I can't believe it's over. I left in such a whirlwind that I didn't comprehend what was really happening. As I was leaving the office, it felt like I was just going into the field again. As I was driving to Anchorage, it seemed like just another conference trip. Even as I was sitting on the plane, playing blackjack with the couple next to me, nothing had changed.

Now I'm here in the lower 48 again, making plans for the next few days - where I'm going to stay, how I'm going to get around, what I need to do to prepare for my upcoming (as in, Friday) New Zealand trip, who I'm going to see - and it's started to sink in that my plane did, in fact, leave Alaska. In some ways, it felt like I was just settling in.

My last post here was at the beginning of June. After that, life took off. There was rain, followed by landslides, followed by a constant loop of fieldwork and revisions in the office. I got in the occasional hike on the weekends, and some good ones for work, but so much was happening that it became impossible to think about life outside the park. It was amazing - never have I enjoyed my work so much.

My coworkers and friends made it feel like I wasn't leaving. A few of them told me matter-of-factly, only half joking, that they would see me in December after I finish my degree. I laughed then. I'm getting emotional now.

I made some fantastic friends - a group of people with an immeasurable devotion to the natural world and a mission to help people everywhere understand why it's a world worth exploring. I will miss them and their unending enthusiasm and excitement in the face of some of the most aggressive terrain in North America, if not the world. I will miss working through pouring rain and escaping from bears; I'll miss taking a walk down to the other end of the office to chat about big-picture geology over breaks and when my brain was too tired to focus on details; I'll miss hiking the most difficult route just because it's fun; I'll miss watching movies so late into the night that we see the sun rise; I'll miss bonfires and playing music and pausing to watch moose walk through camp; I'll miss the freshly caught salmon they'd bring me; I'll miss spending time with, and learning from, these people.

Coworkers Russell (left) and Alina (right) work on summarizing a wet day of field work at a backcountry ranger cabin

But this is a circumstance precipitated by choice - a choice to continue learning and exploring. Traveling and living in new places has been my mode for over six years now, and I'm slowly getting better at maintaining meaningful connections and keeping in touch. So I hope that these relationships will not end (maybe if I write it here, I'll hold myself to a higher standard of communication).

In the meantime, it's off to new adventures. I get three days in Columbus before I fly to New Zealand again, only for two weeks this time, and then I'm back in Ohio to finish my degree, geology gods willing. I have multiple and various pending opportunities after graduation in December, and despite my whining in this post, I can't wait to see what's next.

So long, Alaska. Keep in touch. Maybe send one of those rainbows along every once in a while, or a good snow. I'll be thinking about you this winter, wishing I could follow the wolf tracks on my skis in the midday twilight and watch the lights sway in the dead of the cold, cold night.

I'll miss you, but I'll see you again. Soon.

"That's Alaska!"

This is a phrase that's been uttered countless times since I've gotten here, always by people who know. People who have lived here for ages. People who have stepped on bears and people who have walked away from multiple roll-over plane crashes.

It gives entirely new meaning to the phrase "that's ____!" I'm sure you've heard it. When invoked, it's part humorous, part smug, part implication that what you're hearing is insider knowledge, being coyly but knowingly shared between friends. Sometimes it's stated with an air of proud annoyance, as if to suggest that, yes, this particular aspect of [my state] is annoying, but in a unique way that I'll bet your sad, inexperienced, inferior state wouldn't know how to respond to. I've used the phrase, and I've probably heard it used in all the states in which I've spent any significant amount of time, but Alaska takes it to a whole new level.
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"People here are so nice!"
"That's Minnesota!"

The Saturday after I got into Fairbanks, I woke up at 5:00 am (this was okay, because I was still in Eastern time - it felt like 9:00) to go grocery shopping before catching my train at 8:00. I had purposely picked a motel close to a 24-hour grocery store so I could walk there, walk back, and repack all my stuff without budgeting for a taxi or extra transportation time.

After snoozing a couple times, showering, and repacking to make room for the incoming food in one of my checked bags, I ambled over to the Safeway at about 5:45 am, knowing I needed to be back to catch the train station shuttle at 7:00. Not knowing the layout of the grocery store, it took me a little while to find my way around. I also missed a few things the first time around, so by the time I got out (with almost 100 lbs of groceries and no cart), I was cutting it close with the 15 minutes I still had to walk back.

As I wobbled across the parking lot, I heard a honk coming from the adjacent Carl's Jr. I looked over and a couple guys in a Ford F-250 Super Duty were waving me over. They asked me if I needed a ride somewhere, and I motioned in the direction and mumbled something about it being out of their way (it was on a dead-end road). They said it was no problem - they had nothing to do anyway because the establishment to which they were taking the large contraption being towed on the back wasn't open yet. I hopped in and we started chatting, and five minutes later they dropped me off and helped me carry my groceries to the door. I gave them my thanks (they refused anything else), packed up, and headed to the train station.

I related this story to a few of my new coworkers in the park. "That's Alaska!" they said.

Even the graffiti is friendly!

View down Healy Canyon toward the Alaska Range aboard the Alaska Railroad Denali Star

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"Seeing a bear in the [Baxter State] Park is a rare treat!"
"That's Maine!"

At the end of my first week (last Thursday), the physical sciences group here at Denali took a trip over to the far west end of the park road, which is only paved and accessible to private vehicles for the first 15 miles. The trip served multiple purposes. We were headed to Kantishna, a small mining town that had enjoyed several booms over the course of the 20th century and that had been absorbed by the park in 1980 and was now a small community with no cell phone service, one road in (the park road), a grass airstrip, and a few very expensive lodges for people who wanted a comfortably hardcore wilderness experience and could afford it. A few of the buildings and camps that the park now uses as personnel stations in Kantishna are historic, dating back to the prosperous gold and antimony mining days. The park had repurposed one of these camps, Friday Creek, as a staff camp for people coming out to work on reclamation efforts on the numerous streams running through Kantishna. This camp is used relatively often because the streams run neon orange and are therefore a constant source of work and study, and it falls under the purview of the park geologist, so every year, he and the staff go there to set it up and spend some time up there.

A fragment of the physical science team pauses to discuss Moose Creek in Kantishna. Rocky, a lifted Ford F-350 Super Duty, looks on.

The trip also serves as an introduction to the geology of the park. Much is visible from the park road, including formations, fossils, fault facets, and all manner of fun geological things. We stopped periodically to admire spectacular folds in the schist, colorful volcanics, and enormous glaciers. For us newbies, though, it was an even better opportunity for spotting wildlife. In my few short days at the park, I had already seen a bald eagle, a moose, caribou, marmots, pikas, ground squirrels, and mice. I was figuring we might see a large mammal or two on the trip up. My expectations were thoroughly surpassed with 10 grizzly bears (including three cubs), herds of caribou, golden eagles, and other smaller fare. All of this in about 8 hours.

A Toklat Grizzly (uniquely identifiable by their blonde coats) clambers up a slope near Polychrome Pass

While another sleeps below the same cliff. It's adorable, but look at those claws...

We got to camp, set up, and had some wonderful food. I met some other new folks and chatted with a few of my superiors well into the evening. There were only three of us left around the campfire when we decided to put it out and call it a night. It was still broad daylight, of course, but I still felt a little uneasy walking back to my cabin, which was down at the end of the road and semi-isolated. I was lucky enough to get the historic one in the camp. It had no power, water, or gas, but it was incredibly comfortable and well built. It had a little register where rangers and other park staff who had been out at that end of the road had written about their experiences. Generally, they corroborated with the signs plastered all over the walls that said "WARNING: BEARS FREQUENT THIS AREA AND HAVE ENTERED THIS CABIN AND KNOW IT MAY CONTAIN FOOD! IF POSSIBLE, STORE ALL FOOD AWAY FROM CABIN! KEEP FOOD IN BEAR-PROOF STORAGE!" The bear-proof storage was a 50-gallon drum under the sink that was sealed with a steel bar and multiple bolts. I was suitably unnerved by this, but slightly reassured after my boss told me they didn't usually get into any mischief if humans were around. Just to be on the safe side, I built a fire in the cozy little fireplace in the cabin. I slept wonderfully.

"That's Alaska!"

My own little slice of bear-infested heaven! Couldn't really get a better view without disturbing the local wildlife.

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"It was 65 degrees on Tuesday and now it's snowing!"
"That's Ohio!"

On Saturday we drove from the end of the park road back to HQ (a mere 92 miles away). Only five of us were left at the camp because we were working on a specific project on the way back that involved a lot of stopping and thinking and observing. We woke up and looked like it was going to be a beautiful day for field work. It was 65 degrees, sunny, and we were all well-rested and ready to go. As we drove away, it started to cloud over a bit, and stayed cloudy for the first 30 miles (about 2 hours). When we got out at Eielson Visitor Center to take a look at some volcanics and glacial features, it started to rain. We popped inside for a quick look around and came back out.

It was snowing. Hard. It started accumulating before we even left the parking lot. Thankfully we were in a monster of a truck, so even with slightly slick conditions on an unimproved road along sheer cliffs, we still felt reasonably safe. We limited our stops after that point, and by the time we got to Toklat at Mile 53, there was a substantial amount of snow on the ground. We stopped to eat lunch at the camp there, played some table tennis, and took Rocky out onto the river bed for a short demonstration of its abilities.

Snow falls in front of the Toklat ranger station

We moved on and had made it another 10 miles before, abruptly, the snow stopped and the sun came out. 40 miles later, we were back at headquarters, shedding our down jackets and raincoats because it was back up to 65 degrees. The entire park road between headquarters and Kantishna is between 2000 and 4000 feet of elevation, so I couldn't really blame the weather on freakish highs and lows.

"That's just Alaska!"

The view of Divide Mountain (so named because it divides the east and west branches of the Toklat River) from the Toklat River bridge on a significantly less snowy day

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I've also done some phenomenal hiking since being here, but I'll save that for a hiking-themed post later on. Thanks for reading!