Snippets

After seven months, five of them in complete darkness, I am starting to have a tenuous relationship with time.  Sunday afternoon I thought it was Monday morning; and today, Tuesday, I thought it was Wednesday.  I'm also  waking up at about 3:00 am every morning.  I don't even know what time I go to bed.

The South Pole Scott tent is up for our outdoor camping pleasure.  So far only one person has taken the plunge and tried to sleep in it.   The tent is only about 20 yards from the station, but this is extreme backyard camping nevertheless.  Sign-out, sign-in is required, as is an emergency radio, spare battery, and two huge sleeping bags.  You have to put your boots in the sleeping bag with you or they will be too cold to put on in the morning.  Temperature tonight: -80F.  Think I'll stay in my nice warm room.

We had a Hash House Harriers race here last Saturday night and I was inducted into the International HHH registry.  HHH describes itself as a drinking club with a running problem.  We couldn't run between stops here at Pole because it was too cold and the altitude too high, but we had fun walking the route between drinking stations. What can I say, we have to get our fun where we can.  It was beautiful outside that night with a clear sky, little wind and a bright full Moon to light our way.  Google Hash House Harriers for more information.

Even there are still over two months before we can leave, most everyone is counting the days until then... literally. Seventy-three days until we get airlifted out on an LC-130.  Weather permitting.

South Pole Aurora, Aug 9, 2010. Joe Romagnano

Showers, the male version

Another Polie has just published a long and amusing post on her Ice White & Blue blog about showers at Pole (warning, it's not a G-rated blog). Showers are an interesting topic, at least for Polies, but I don't seem to suffer the angst and emotional commitment to showers that Genevieve does. Of course she takes her showers in the women's showers and from her post that seems to be a much more icky experience than showering in the male showers.

To conserve power and water each of us only gets two 2-minute showers per week. We get our water from a rod well (technically, a Rodriguez rod-well) but we all call it "The Rodwell". The Rodwell is basically a flexible pipe that extends deep into the ice through which we constantly pump hot water. The result is a huge globe of water deep in the ice enclosed by solid ice. The depth of our rodwell is now giving us water that fell as snow in Antarctica 2,000 years ago. As we use water the depth gets deeper, and the water older, until it is too deep for us to pump anymore.  When that happens (it takes years) we have to start a new rodwell.

I know this is about showers, but let's talk drinking water for a minute. This water here is simply the best tasting water you can imaging. I love it. We can only get it at one remote place in the station before it is treated. This water is so pure it won't support life. It hasn't percolated through soil, or run over rocks in streams, so it doesn't have any dissolved minerals or electrolytes that our bodies need. So we have to treat it to add those things. But everyone who comes here should taste the pure stuff once.

Showers: because it takes energy to melt this 2,000 year old ice, and eventually the Rodwell will have to be relocated to another spot on the ice, we conserve as much as possible. A two-minute shower means two minutes of running water. We can stay in the shower as long as we like, but we can only run the water for two minutes. The rest of the time we are wet and freezing. We wet ourselves down and freeze while we lather up. Then rinse off and freeze while we do it again. Then we freeze as we get out of the shower to dry off. Although the bathrooms at the Pole are the same temperature as the rest of the station - between 62 and 68 degrees - the baths have higher ventilation rates so there is a constant breeze - Brrrr.   Note to NSF: heat lamps in the shower stalls!

There are, however, techniques for not freezing to death. And no, we don't wear our ECW into the showers.  We get 2 showers a week, so if you only take one shower you can take a four-minute shower! Wow. Also, if you turn the water down so it is trickling out the shower head at half flow you can double that to eight minutes! The half-flow trick is a very good one because that little bit of constant warm water also keeps you warm(ish) for the whole shower.

Getting out of the shower into the 65 degree air of the room is a different story - I have found no solution.  See previous note to NSF.

Lights out at Pole, or... Gen 2, Our Hero.

So far this winter we have had two adrenaline pumping events.  This week we had number three.  In late evening the station went dark.  And quiet.  Power for the station went off  unexpectedly and turned off all lights, electrical equipment, fans, air handlers, everything.  We later learned that power across the main station buss was zero - not enough to light a flashlight bulb.  I was in my room at the time and transitioned instantly from being in a nice book reading mood to being in a totally dark, scarily quiet environment.  Then the alarms started going off.  I don’t know if you have ever tried to find your clothes, shoes and radio in complete darkness while your heart rate is increasing by the second, but it isn’t easy.

 

Big deal, right?  Our power went off.  Happens all the time at your house.  Well, our power keeps us alive.  At -94F outside it wouldn’t take long for us to get very cold.  If our power is off it means our generators are probably off and not only will there be no electricity there will be no waste heat to warm the station.  We have five generators but one of those is usually undergoing maintenance and not available, and another in the Emergency Power Plant (EPP) sets off the sprinklers whenever it is started because the heat from its exhaust manifold heats the sprinkler head directly above it.  We know that because it happened last summer.  The EPP was inches deep in water and all the engineers were soaking wet.   I wish I had seen it.  So if we have to activate the emergency power plant we have two choices: get emergency generator A started or start generator B which will set off the sprinklers and exhaust all our fire-fighting water in about five minutes.  In my mind that is a design flaw, but hey, who am I to say? Just my opinion. Not criticizing.

  

Luckily one of the off-line generators in the main power plant (Gen 2) did exactly as it was supposed to do and started itself about fifteen long seconds after Gen 1 failed.  Still, what was going on in the power plant?  No one had heard from them.  People were standing in the hallways of the main station wide-eyed and wondering what was happening.  Being Safety on station, I put on my ECW gear and headed down to the Power Plant, trying to guess what might have happened.  Was it a fire?  No, the alarms were system failure alarms and not fire alarms (and from the previous scary event we know the fire alarms in the Power Plant work just fine).  What was happening?  As it turned out it was not too bad.

I learned that our old friend Gen 1 had overheated and shut herself down.  Since she was supplying all the station's power at the time, everything went black.  Regular readers will know that a few months ago Gen 1 set off all the fire alarms in the Power Plant, causing a station-wide emergency response when the Power Plant was filled with steam and coolant vapor.  Gen 1 is definitely on our  #$%^ list for the winter.  No one has figured out why, but Gen 1 apparently overheats at random intervals and shuts itself down. It did the same thing twice last summer.  Gen 2 however, is our hero. She started for both emergency events this winter and re-supplied the station with power on both occasions. And she doesn’t even set off the sprinklers.  Go Gen 2!

This is Gen 1...  

and this is Gen 2... our Hero. (She was dripping a little oil on the day this picture was taken- sort of like a bad hair day for generators).  As you can tell they are twins - just evil twin and good twin.



The third twin, Gen 3, doesn't get her picture posted because she sat through both emergencies and did absolutely nothing.  Nada.  She wouldn't start on the first one and was off-line for maintenance during the second.

My brain at 11,600 feet

After two weeks of nice low altitudes around 10,200 feet, the South Pole decided enough was enough.  Over the last 24 hours a storm system has dropped the barometric pressure enough to equal a physiologcal altitude of 11,600 feet.  This isn’t the highest altitude we’ve seen this winter (but almost), but it has been the fastest onset.  The saying here is “The South Pole can kick your butt anytime it wants to”, and I’m a true believer.  Whether it is the dark, cold to below -100, windchills well below that, blowing snow and zero visibility, frostbite, sastrugi that have to be climbed over rather than stepped over - the Pole has a wide range of options on kicking butt.  This week SP dipped into the hat and drew out… altitude.

The effect on personnel is noticable.  I become out of breath just from walking down the hallway.  Shovel snow? You must be joking.  Work becomes much more difficult and rest stops become pathetically close together.  Last week I could climb the six-story beer can from bottom to top without stopping to rest – today I had to stop three times.  Sleep is disrupted and although I am exhausted, I really don’t sleep much – just in short snatches.  Climbing into my raised bunk means a few seconds of gasping for breath at the top.  Headaches – yep.  Difficulty in forming complex thoughts – yep.  Loss of appetite – yep.  Lethargy – yep.  In fact, I am wondering if it is really worth finishing this post.

I am sure it was the sudden onset of the low pressure storm that is causing all these symptoms.  I can tell a difference in all the station personnel, and everyone here is moving much slower.  If the altitude stays at this level for a few days our bodies will adapt some, but in the meantime this is my brain on no oxygen.

Last week, when there was a reasonable amount of oxygen for me to breath, I took this picture of an aurora. Click it for a larger version with all the stars. That's Jupiter at the lower left, just above the barely discernable horizon.  Enjoy. 

Hard, Cold Trash

Genevieve preparing to line a triwall box with a plastic liner in a 20 mph wind.

 Here is Genevieve, our Waste person wrestling with our solid waste that must go into triwalls.  Triwalls are large cardboard boxes that she assembles for all our solid waste.  These are flash pictures because it is still very dark.  I hope I don't get in trouble for the flash pictures but I was assured that it would be ok to take them, that the scientific instruments would not be effected.  Windchill when I took these pictures was below -130F with a real temperature of -89.  To get more in the boxes she does her wastie dance on top of them to compact the contents.  

Getting that stuff compacted.

Getting the triwall closed using body mass.

Climbing in

Worst weather yet...

Two posts in as many days, a new record.  But I have to post about the current weather - it just keeps getting worse and worse.  We now officially have one of the top five days ever recorded in terms of altitude at 11,860 feet, and it keeps going up.  The weather prediction computers in Florida (yes, that's where our weather computers are) shut themselves off when they decided that the wind speed predictions they were projecting weren't reasonable.  But here we are with 40 mph winds and at nearly 12,000 feet.  I'm sitting here at my desk and I can feel the station rocking in the wind - that's the first time that has happened all winter.  We can hear the wind howling outside even through the foot-thick walls.  Luckily it is pretty warm today at -56F.  You may think that's a joke, but really it isn't.  There is a huge difference between -56 and -80.

I was outside this morning for about 45 minutes and it is very different from the lower winds and clear skies we usually have.  Normally the wind blows from one direction constantly, but today the wind was from another direction - it was very confusing.  We navigate using some red lights placed around the station and at one point I couldn't see them anymore.  I was getting nervous because I didn't know how I was going to get back to the station if someone had turned the station's red lights off.  Then I realized I was facing in the wrong direction and the lights were behind me.  I bet you think I was miles away, but I was only about fifty yards from the station.  It is really pitch dark and when the wind blows there is blowing snow up to about ten feet off the ice.  If you look straight up you might see stars, but looking horizontally you can't see much at all.  When I got back inside the station the upwind side of my parka was coated in snow.

Current prediction: increasing winds for the next four days.

Local News at 9

People have been telling me to post more about everyday life, and not to wait for big events.  Ok, but you asked for it so don't blame me...

Every Saturday night we have a South Pole Drive In Movie in the gym, with the movie projected onto the big screen (sheets sewn together).  Normally these movies are boy-movies - science fiction and action films.  To counter this the women on station have started an alternative movie night with, well, more sensitive films.  This week will be Jane Austin.  Normally none of the males on station would go to see this even if you paid them, but the talk is that they may crash it and sit in the back.  The catch is that every time "love" is mentioned in the movie every male in the room is going to down a shot of liquor.  Should make for an interesting screening of Jane Austin.  We'll see if it happens.

Cold temperatures are getting to be pretty everyday here but the last two weeks have been special.  We hit -103F last week and added several new members of the 300 Club.  The 300 Club you ask?  When temperatures are below -100F the sauna is heated to +200F.  People hang out in there for fifteen minutes or so and then run outside and around the South Pole marker.   Big deal, right?  Oh, did I forget to mention that this is done completely nude?

In more mundane matters, there is a competition on lighting at the station.  Some people here want to turn every light off that isn't absolutely necessary in order to save a few watts of electricity - and they do so at every opportunity.  Others are getting tired of wondering why they are eating lunch in the dark and want the lights turned back on.  Me?  I'm getting tired of sitting around in the dark wishing I had a candle to eat by.

Things not to do at the South Pole in July, four months before the next flight in?  Don't leave your ipod in your pants pocket and run it through the washing machine. Not good.

Today we reached our lowest atmospheric pressure since winter started.  It is now 649 mb of atmospheric pressure.  That translates into an effective altitude of 11,850 feet.  Whew.  If you don't think that is high, try coming down here and climbing a few stairs.  So, are you curious about the weather here right this minute?  Seventy-two below zero, winds of 30 mph, blowing snow and blizzard conditions, and 11,560 feet of altitude. Remind me again why I am here... please.

But don't think it is all fun and games.  We all have our work to do.  I am currently working on finding a way to erect some platforms over some fuel tanks to provide a safe working area next summer, and in getting some additional safety devices installed on a materials conveyor.  Since both of these areas are always between -70 and -90 degrees what would normally be a difficult job becomes even more so.

Alien Worlds

The Moon is back after being gone for two weeks and is it ever bright!  It's like a huge spotlight lighting up the Antarctic ice cap.  It is a big difference from last week when I got lost in the dark when I was only 20 feet from the station stairs.  Today you couldn't get lost unless there was a huge storm and blowing snow.

I don't know if you can see it in this compressed photo, but there is a huge halo around the moon that reaches just to the ice.   The column of light that appears to connecting the moon to the Earth is called a moon pillar.  Pillars are most often seen and photographed as Sun Pillars, but more rarely as Moon Pillars.  It is caused by the light of the Moon being reflected off the ice surface beyond the horizon and back into space. I've never seen a picture of a Moon Pillar before, so this may be a first. The building to the far right is the South Pole Telescope.

And this incredible photo is by Joe Romagnano, who keeps us in fresh vegetables from the greenhouse all winter. It is a 270 degree panorama of the station on June 1.   That is the Moon to the left, and the South Pole marker in the near right.  I remember these aurora very well.  I was outside and remember thinking that they weren't very impressive, so you can imagine how magnificent they can get.  Click the picture for a larger view.

EGGGGS!!

Now for something entirely different. We had our mid-winter egg oiling party last night where we got together in the galley and re-oiled all our eggs. Huh, you are thinking, re-oil our eggs? It turns out that oiled eggs stay fresh for long periods of time. We get oiled eggs from New Zealand at the beginning of the winter (early February) and they will stay fresh until November. We only have to re-oil them halfway through the winter. I imagine most of you living in North America will not have heard of this technique, I know I had not, but by coating the eggs in vegetable oil they stay perfectly fresh without refrigeration.

I am told that oiled eggs are very common in New Zealand and eggs in grocery stores are not even refrigerated. They just sit on the shelf. Think of all the energy we could save in the US if we used this technique.

So every mid-winter at Pole we unbox all our eggs, pick up each one, coat it in new oil, rotate it 180 degrees in the egg crate, and put them all back in storage. And of course since this is the South Pole we make a party of it. To prove that I am not making this up here are the pictures.

I'm Baaack!

Sorry for the long time since the last post, but I was stuck in a mental groundhog day state for about two weeks where every single day seemed like the day before.  I'm in a better mood now and although I can't say every day is a day of exciting new discoveries, things are picking up a bit.  I finished a big project this week and that helped take away some of the same 'ol, same 'ol feelings of the past month as well.

The auroras have been magnificent for the past few weeks and the pictures below only hint at them.  The really great ones I just stared at and didn't go get my camera.  Anyway, it is very hard to photograph them because of the extreme cold.  Even when there isn't any wind the -90 temperatures just make fingers ache in a couple of minutes when adjusting the camera.

We have our big monthly emergency response drill in the morning and the entire station will be taking part.  We have four emergency response teams that specialize in quick response, fire-fighting, trauma and logistical support.  All they know about the drill is that it will involve a simulated chemical spill.  It isn't going to be quite what they expect, but that is the nature of real emergencies.  Everything is set up for them to succeed, so I hope things will go well.  We will have a photographer taking pictures so I may have something interesting to post next week.

Not having seen a single living thing on the station (other than the 46 other humans) over the past four months, not even an insect, I really miss my cats.  I know there is the Antarctic Treaty that bars animals, but a dog or a cat on station would really be good for morale.

Well that's all for today.  Temperature -87F, wind chill -109F, altitude 11,200 feet.  Dark.