The Station

Let me describe the South Pole station.  It is basically a long narrow building on stilts that faces into the prevailing winds.  It is shaped something like a huge boxy airfoil.  The theory is that this shape should keep snow from accumulating around the station so it won't get buried every winter by huge snow drifts.  This does and doesn't work.  The station itself stays clear of snow, but a huge snowbank piles up about thirty feet in front of it over the winter.  This snowbank usually gets as high as our top floor windows which are about 30 feet up, and right now after two months of winter it is about 15 feet high. Since our outlying science buildings are in the direction of this drift we have to climb a thirty foot wall of snow to get to them by the end of winter.  This snow has to be pushed away by bulldozers every summer.  You can see the wall just starting to build up in the picture to the right.

Inside, the station has two levels.  L2 is the main level and has work space, the galley and dining area, a large science area, and some meeting rooms.  L1, the lower level, is about 70% air handlers and service areas, but the laundry, library, and store are there.  Yes, we have a souvenier and sundries store here - it's like a very poorly stocked 7-11 that is open an hour a day and sells five year old cans of  Pringles.  There are four wings off of the main station, three of which have housing for residents.  In the summer these are chock full of people but during the winter we have the luxury of turning one of them into food storage.  That means we do not have to go outside every few days to get food, and since the wing is kept at 50 degrees the food doesn't spend days thawing before we can use it.  There are a lot of perishables that stay edible for months in the food wing.  The picture is a very unattractive one of the L2 corridor.  The stairs lead down to the L1 level.  My room is in a wing to the immediate left, but out of the picture.  To the right is Africa, straight ahead through the doors at the end of the hall is South America, to the left is Japan, and behind you is India.

My room is in A-pod.  That's a nice pod because the rooms are big.  By big I mean that my room is almost exactly the same size as my bathroom at home.  Imagine living in your bathroom for nine months with a desk, bed, three chest of drawers and a chair.  At least it doesn't take long to straighten it up.  The next wing of the station, B-pod, is the coolest of the wings because it has a complete mini-station in it.  It has everything we would need to survive if there was a catastrophic accident - diesel powered generators, fuel system, water supply, heat, laundry, living space and a mini kitchen.  It wouldn't be good living but all 47 of us could cram ourselves in there and stay alive until a rescue flight could get to us in October.  The fourth wing is pure luxury - a ¾ sized gym and a well-appointed exercise/weight room.  We use the gym once a month to hold "drive-in movies" where we project a movie on the gym wall.

We also have three service arches outside the main building.  These are buried under the ice and contain the main power plant, fuel, supplies and maintenance shops.  To get to them we have go through heavy freezer doors and walk down six flights of stairs in the beer can.  The beer can (the National Science Foundation calls it the vertical tower, but everyone else on the planet calls it the beer can) is not heated, so if it is -94F outside it is about that cold in the beer can.  At the bottom of the beer can are unheated snow tunnels that lead to the arches.  So even walking inside from one part of the station to another you can get frostbite.

Everyone loathes the beer can, which is basically an enclosure around a staircase.  It doesn't look too bad in pictures of the station but you have to remember that it continues down into the ice.  So to walk up the beer can to get to the main station is like climbing the stairs of a six story building at 10,500 feet altitude and -80F.  I hate the beer can so much I will leave the service arches using their outside doors, and in full ECW walk uphill 100 yards to the main station when it is pitch black, -90F, with a 20 kt wind just so I don't have to climb those stairs.

There are some other outlying science buildings but I will talk about those in later posts.

The End of The World

I shot this panorama last week during an inspection trip to the 9-meter satellite dish at the farthest point of the station.  Where I was standing is called the End of the World because it is the furthest place on the station that is normally accessible.  Beyond this point neither machinery nor people regularly go.  Conditions: -65F, 18 mph wind, -98F windchill.

Those antennas might be inspected once a year.

10 Seconds

I'm sure you readers are getting tired of it by now and are probably muttering, "Again with the cold", but let me assure you that as the winter progresses every week has been a new experience in cold appreciation.  Let me try to explain what -104F wind chill is like.

When I dress in my ECW* it is inside in the warmth of the station.  By the time I am ready to go out I am nice and toasty and maybe even a little hot.  But once I step out the door that warmth is instantly sucked out of my clothes by the cold and wind.  The temperature next to my skin goes from around 85 to the mid 60s in about 10 seconds.  It happens so fast I can actually feel the temperature dropping inside my ECW.  After 15 seconds the only heat I have is what is being produced by my body - which is now working hard trying to keep that tiny air space inside my ECW warm.  For me there is no more stark indicator of how cold it really is here than those first 10 seconds outside the door. 

This is aggressive cold that demands attention.  It envelops my ECW, sucking away every bit of heat it can find, and for the most part it succeeds - being just barely held at bay by the heat my own body produces.  And it is a fine line.  If you were to go outside and simply stand there you would freeze to death despite all the ECW because your body would not produce enough heat to keep you warm.  You have to keep moving, keeping your body active to produce enough heat to warm that precious inside layer of air.  

This is cold where you can't make mistakes. I now cover every square inch of my head with layers of fleece.  I wear a breathing device over my nose and mouth that gives me pre-warmed air to breath, and I wear goggles over my eyes.  If I leave even a sliver of skin exposed on my face it will be frostbitten in minutes, so just before going outside I always look in a mirror to make sure I haven't left any skin exposed by accident.  Even then I sometimes have to come back inside after a few seconds because I will have left the tiniest bit of skin accessible to the wind and cold. 

Yet I can't just throw on all my warm clothes because being too hot is worse than being too cold.  If I am too hot I will sweat, and wet clothes do not insulate.  Yesterday I experimented for hours to get things right. Too hot in the chest area... come back inside and take off fleece.  Too cold in the arms... come back inside and exchange a short sleeve undershirt for a long sleeved one.  Too cold in the legs... come back inside and add a layer of thermal underwear or another layer of wind-proof pants (but not both - too hot)!  Then I realized my hair was wet because my head was sweating - very, very bad!  So I remove a layer of head covering.  And on and on.   I'll say one thing for the South Pole Station, it is very convenient having an ultra-low temperature test chamber for winter clothing just outside the door.  Mere steps away.  Here there is no waiting for cold.

Luckily I only have to get this right once and then I will be able to suit up without worry and stay out for an hour or so. Well no, that's not quite right - in reality how long I stay out depends on Antarctica.  It's like Antarctica sees me, smirks and says, "Now try this" and turns up the cold or the wind.  The coldest temperature ever recorded here was -117F.  The coldest temperature so far this winter has been -81F, but the winter is just four days old.

[April 3: Since I wrote this last week the temperature dropped to -87F with a -127 windchill.  It was only for a day but since it is so early in the season I think it portends a cold winter.  I made a 45-minute foray to the Jamesways and back that day and my gear and breathing mask setup kept me warm.]

[October 6: It is now the end of the winter and only three weeks until we all leave.  The low temperature for the season was -104F.  I don't remember the windchill.  I have become an expert n ECW gear (duh) and can now stay warm for a couple of hours when the windchill is down around -140F]

*ECW - Extreme Cold Weather gear

Yukimarimos!

We experienced an unusual ice effect at Pole yesterday called Yukimarimos.  They are naturally formed delicate frost balls that are blown across the surface of the ice by the wind. Our yuki's were small because our wind was a little strong, but many were as big as gumballs (update: early this morning yukis the size of golf balls were gathered in the depressions outside the staton - a few hours later they were all gone).  There were millions of them blowing across the ice yesterday, gathering in depressions as if hiding from the wind and then moving on when disturbed.  They are very delicate wisps of surface frost that have been set in motion by the wind and become spherical as they travel across the surface gathering up more frost.  I think you can see how delicate they are in the second picture. These are a pile of yukis the size of gumballs that have gathered in a depression, out of the wind...

Yukimarimos were first noted by Japanese scientists in 1995 and they seem to form on high altitude ice sheets in Antarctica from time to time.  "Yuki" is Japanese for snow and "marimo" is a a ball-like plant found in northern hemisphere lakes, so yukimarimo means "snow-ball" or "snow-roller".  When the light is right you can see how delicate and diaphenous they are...

The little yukis seem almost alive as they roll across the ice sheet, scurrying away and blowing around you as you stand gazing at them.  If you simply look across the ice sheet you don't notice them rolling along, but if you look down at the ones scurrying around your feet and then slowly raise your gaze you can see that they are rolling along the surface for hundreds of yards in every direction.  As you walk along the ice the eddys around your feet release even more of them and they roll away from you downwind like they have taken flight.  The yukis below are about the size of M&Ms and you can see even smaller ones clinging to the walls of the depression...

If it hadn't been so danged cold out there at -70 I could have watched them for hours but ten minutes was all I could take.  Even then I got a frost-niped finger on my camera hand (you can’t push the shutter button with mittens on).  So I hope everyone appreciates these pictures, I suffered for them.

Here are some other pictures from the original researchers who first observed and named them...

http://homepage3.nifty.com/takaokameda/en/yukimrimo_en2.html

Emergency at South Pole

Oh alright - simulated emergency at South Pole.  Last weekend we had our first winter emergency drill, a simulated snowmobile accident about 200 yards away from the station.  Saturday morning all of our Emergency Response Teams responded to a general station alarm announcing there was an unknown injury at the big fish behind the station (the big fish is an ice sculpture left over from a summer ice sculpting contest).  The first responders arrived on scene in about 7 minutes to find one female victim with an arm trapped under the snowmobile and the other rider trying to dig her out.  Seven minutes was a very good response time considering everyone has to don serious ECW gear to go outside.  Did I forget to mention that it was -71F with a -94F wind chill?

Although everything did not go perfectly it was a very good response considering it was our first unannounced drill of the season and everyone was caught by surprise.  The victim was found, assessed, immobilized on a backboard, transported, and in Medical 18 minutes after the first ERT team member arrived.

I have to compliment our primary victim, Shelby, who produced some very realistic screaming whenever she was moved.  As an added surprise the second snowmobile rider, Derek, appeared perfectly normal at first but collapsed on cue in the middle of the drill to add an unexpected second victim to the teams' duties.

As Safety Engineer it is my responsibility to plan these drills and set up emergency drill scenarios.  We are required to run at least one drill a month and as the season goes on they will get more difficult.  I try to keep them realistic, so there won't be any meteor strikes on the main station, but I'm sure there will be some victims who will be difficult to get to, some mass-casualty drills, some fires, and some drills where the victim can't be easily found.

Food, food, food...

Just so you don't think I am down here eating cold beans out of tin cans, here was this evening's dinner menu at the South Pole Galley, Friday, March 5, 2010:

Vegetable Black Bean Soup
Red Leaf and Mizuna lettuce (grown in our own greenhouse), tomatoes, mushrooms, cucumbers and olives
New York Strip Steak (inch thick) grilled to order with Steak Diane Sauce
Sliced Potatoes Lyonaise in Onion and Paprika
Grilled Portabella Mushrooms with Red Peppers, Fennel, Cummin and Gouda
Steamed Broccoli
Crab Cakes
Cherry Tart, Homemade Brownies and four kinds of homemade cookies (cookies are a constant)

That was just tonight's dinner and believe it or not its pretty typical.  Oh, and its all you can eat.  And free. I might be able to complain about a lot of things here, but the food isn't one of them. Out of 47 people here this winter three are chefs or cooks.

Starting to get serious...

Now we're starting to get serious about cold.  We have our first winter storm coming in today and the meteorologist says it should last for three or four days.  It will have overcast skies, high winds, blowing snow and very cold windchills.  I have had to boost my cold weather gear by another layer and have started using hand and toe warmers when I go out and the storm hasn't even started yet.  Right now it is -56 with a 13 kt wind.  Luckily I don't have to go out until later today and then it is just to walk about a quarter mile to a heated building to do some work.

Around the station the winterization activities are winding down and station life should get into its winter groove pretty soon.  Everyone has been assigned various duties over the past two weeks like replacing bedding in the remote living areas so the summer crew will have clean bedding when they arrive next October.  This year's summer people left the areas in a shambles and we have had lots of extra work cleaning and removing junk from all the jameways before turning off the heat.  Jamesways are heated quonset type buildings that have been partitioned into 16 or so sleeping rooms, each with a bed, a desk and a place to hang clothes.  They are pretty primitive but a lot of people like them.

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours replacing blankets, quilts and sheets in the jamesway I had been assigned to clean, so it is now complete.  You wouldn't think it would take two hours to throw  some bedding on top of a few mattresses, but things can be kind of slow here when it is so cold.  Last week a friend and I had cleaned the building and removed all the junk so with the clean bedding it is now ready to shut down.  Later today four of us have to start on a building called the Ice Palace which contains public showers , restrooms and laundry that I have heard was left in terrible condition.  At least that building will be heated.  Of course we still have to walk through the storm to get back and forth.

I'll be glad when all the cleaning up after the summer people is over.

More work

Station closing continues this week and we are all very busy getting things ready to go cold.  The buildings and systems that were needed for the large summer population of 275 are no longer needed and have to be cleaned and "de-heated".  Since our fuel has to to last all winter conservation is very important here - if we don't need to heat the buildings we don't.  Fuel is very closely monitored and we have enough for the winter as long as nothing unexpected happens.

The aircraft fueling system also had to be taken up and stored and I spent much of the week helping with that.  Being the new guy I'm sure I helped some and hindered some, but I think the extra hands were helpful.   The picture is of the crew rolling up about half a mile of fuel line that ran from the ice runway to our fuel storage tanks.  Every LC-130 that lands during the summer pumps fuel from its tanks into our fuel storage tanks and it all goes through these lines.  If they were left in place all winter they would be buried in huge drifts by spring and impossible to dig out - so up they come.  I'll talk more about drifts in later posts.

That frosty guy at the top of the post is me.  Yes it looks cold but I am really pretty warm under all that fur and down.  The outside temperature was a comfortable -25F with no wind so staying warm was not hard.  The coats here are so warm I was just wearing a t-shirt under mine, but when it gets colder I am sure that will change.

Inside the station things are also progressing.  The Polies are becoming a community and I have learned almost everyone's name.  Things are very quiet in the station which is actually pretty big for only 47 inhabitants.  It is easy to find a place to be alone, or just as easy to head to the galley to find people to talk to.  My work is turning out to be very rewarding.  I can't talk about it on the blog, but we are in the process of making some operations safer to perform.

On the fun side I get LMC and snowmobile training later today!

My Second Sunday

It is now my second Sunday at the Station which means I've been here 10 days. It seems like a lot longer, but the character of the Station changed dramatically yesterday when we closed for the winter. There are now 47 dedicated souls here that will be here all winter no matter what. The dynamic of the station is now much lower key, people are more friendly with each other, and often the hallways are completely empty of other folks.

I was able to move into my permanent room yesterday which feels like a mansion compared to my first room since it is about 15 square feet larger. That may not seem like much, but it means I don't have to move things to open the door. Pictures coming when I get things put away.

Weather-wise it has been really beautiful with blue skies and low winds of about 8 to 10 knots. Of course the temperature is another matter. It was a balmy (for the Pole) -20F when I arrived and in the past ten days it has dropped to being constantly around -43F. Temperature is not really the hardest part of Pole life for me yet - it's the altitude. The altitude varies with the barometric pressure and right now it is over 10,000 feet. Everything is hard at that altitude, particularly the first week here. I have passed the critical first week danger zone for development of HAPE or HACE, so I am good to go for the entire season. I am acclimating well and can now walk the length of the station or up a flight of stairs without having to stop and rest while gasping for air. I still can't do both yet, but maybe by next Sunday I will be able.

Tonight I participated in a South Pole tradition by watching "The Thing" on the first night of the winter. Unfortunately it was the new version and not the original, but there are some things in life you just have to do if you have the chance, and watching any version of The Thing at the South Pole on the first night of winter is one of them. The other South Pole tradition was yesterday when the last plane left. Several of us went out to bid farewell to it as it buzzed the station on its way to the coast. [link]  This was at 2 am folks, so you know I am a traditionalist.

So far I have been struck by how calm, quiet and relaxed all the Polies are, but winter is just getting started so we will see in a few months. An interesting thing I have noticed is that greetings seem a bit strange to me. Since you may see some people ten or more times in the hallway every day, do you say Hi every time or do you walk past and ignore them? The first time each day is easy, but what about the thirteenth time? I think a lot of people here are having trouble with it. I'm sure it will get worked out over the winter.

Over the next two weeks all us poor 47 Polies will have to close down the station. That means putting out flag lines to the outlying research buildings so no one will get lost when it is dark, blizzardy and 80 below in a few months. We also have to shut down several heated out-buildings that are used only in summer, take down the ice runway flag markers so they don't get buried by snow over the winter, and lots of other things to maintain the station over the winter. I'll keep you informed of how that goes.

I was asked what it is I do here.  I am the Safety person for the station over winter.  Although we have a physician and a small clinic, the nearest real hospital 1,200 miles and six months away, so not getting seriously injured here is very important.  I also do drinking water testing and some environmental work.  In other words, I am the Occupational Safety and Health component of the station staff.

I get to the Pole at last

I arrived in Antarctica last Wednesday (Tuesday for you) on an Air Force C-17 cargo plane from New Zealand. When I got off the plane and stepped onto the ice runway for the first time my first impression was that it sure was quiet in Antarctica – very quiet! Then I realized I still had my earplugs in from the C-17 flight! A large group of us were driven for an hour to McMurdo Station where I would stay two nights because of some training I needed. We were transported in a Terrabus which was a miserable trip at a max speed of 20 mph. Google “Ivan the Terrabus” for a picture. When I got to McMurdo station I learned that my summer counterpart at the South Pole, who was to show me the ropes for two weeks at the Pole had left before I got there! In fact he left on the same plane I flew in on.

On Friday I was told my flight to Pole had been canceled for the day but an hour later the phone rang and they wanted to know why I wasn’t in the terminal ten minutes ago for the bus to the plane. I finally ended up riding with the New York Air National Guard crew to the airport. That was great since it was just me and the crew they let me stop and get some pictures of some penguins along the way. The plane wasn’t going anywhere without them after all. During the flight to the Pole I got to go to the flight deck and get some pictures.

When we got to the Pole the weather was too bad to land but the pilots decided to circle for an hour before heading back to McMurdo. This was bad news because the flight would end up being 3 hours + 1 hour of circling + 3 hours back – a long flight since I did not have time to grab a sandwich before leaving McMurdo. Luckily the weather cleared enough for us to land after only 40 minutes of circling.

So there I was at the South Pole standing atop 2.5 miles of polar ice sheet beside an LC-130 cargo plane, its engines running and propellers spinning because it was -30 and too cold to shut them off, looking at my new home for the next 10 months. How cool, I thought - how many places are there where airplanes drop you off at your house? Luckily the station manager had taken pity on the new guy and had sent someone to meet me. After that it was easy.

To be continued…