Excerpt from an email to a friend...

Hello again -

Life here at the Pole is difficult to describe. I'm often very busy and at other times bored. But the strangeness of the environment is the one thing that never gets boring. It is a blend of barren, stark, beautiful, frightening and magnificent. Sometimes when I am outside I just have to stop and look around me and at the night sky to realize how lucky I am to be one of the few people to have ever seen what I am seeing. There are only 1,200 people who have ever even seen the Polar night sky. We have just had our first truly dark night and the stars are simply magnificent, and the aurora are building up as well. Of course it is cold and getting colder, and walking outside is getting more difficult every week due to the sastrugi. The sastrugi, wind-blown furrows of snow, are getting larger and have to be climbed over to get anywhere. The best I can describe it would be to ask you to imagine a solid disturbed ocean where to get anywhere you have to walk up 1-3 foot waves and then down the other side, over and over again - while blindfolded.  Because the barometric pressure varies so much here our effective altitude varies between 10,000 and 12,000 feet, so climbing those frozen waves can be exhausting. We have seen 11,750 feet, and at that altitude even sleeping can be difficult. Today it is 10,700 feet. Even though I have been here almost four months and have acclimated well, when things get difficult I still sometimes have to stop and do nothing but concentrate on breathing. Well, that's my current life.  I've included a picture of two of our small loaders hanging out in the warm Heavy Shop getting serviced. They can't take the cold so they are only operated in the summer, but they are so cute. Their names are Emma and Wall-E.  They are very fast and compared to the big dozers they zoom around the ice like little bugs all summer.

Answers to South Pole Questions

To answer some recently asked questions:

1. Is the Pole Marker moving away from the station?  The station sits on a 3.5 kilometer thick ice sheet and that sheet is moving about 30 feet per year, so we have to move the pole marker that amount every January to keep it over the true Pole.  Currently the marker is moved along the front of the station from left to right so it isn't really getting further from the station, but in a few years it will start moving off into the ice.
2. How do we heat the station?  Ninety-nine percent of our energy comes from winterized aviation fuel, which is basically kerosene fuel.  Everything on the station runs on this fuel except two gasoline-powered snowmobiles (I'm sure if the NSF could find diesel-powered snowmobiles they would buy them). This is the same fuel the LC-130 transport planes use in their engines so whenever one lands during the summer all its extra fuel is pumped into our fuel storage tanks.  Every plane during the summer does this, and that is how we squirrel away enough fuel to last the winter.  The exception is the trans-Antarctic traverse which uses tractors to drag huge fuel bladders from the coast to the Pole.  This isn't done every year, but it is more efficient than bringing all our fuel in by plane. The last traverse was in the summer of 2008. We do have a very small wind generator, but it is more of a test than a real power source, only giving us about 1 kW.
3. How efficient are we in using fuel?  Very.  In fact we do not use any fuel to heat the station. I know that sounds strange, but we run our power plant generators only to produce electricity to power communications, science experiments, and lights - and we use the waste heat from those generators to provide heat (even for hot water and the laundry room clothes dryers).  Basically we heat the station the same way your car's heater works - by collecting waste heat from our engine's cooling system.  The insulation in the floors, walls and ceilings helps a lot because it is a foot thick.  All our outside doors are commercial freezer doors about eight inches thick, but instead of keeping the cold inside a freezer they keeps it outside where we prefer it.
4. How warm is the station?  We keep it pretty cool, between 60F and 65F but it could be warmer if needed.  We are all used to it and think this is a comfortable temperature range.  A few weeks ago when it got to 70F we were complaining that it was too hot.  The thermometer on my desk says it is 65F right now and I am sitting here in a t-shirt.  We don't generally bundle up in the station, but if you were here you would see people wearing everything from fleece jackets to t-shirts sitting in the same room together. 

Polar Vignettes...

Alone, two hundred yards from the station in the general direction of Africa. It's dark and windy.  I'm standing there getting myself used to the layout of the station grounds and how to navigate in bad weather.  The weather is good so it is unlikely I will actually get lost and have to call a rescue team, lol, but this is practice.  I purposefully frost up my goggles so I can't see anything and navigate back to the invisible main station using the wind direction and the glow of the moon off my right shoulder as navigation aids. I am so blind I actually walk into a station support column.  It's true - you really don't have to be able to see to get around.

Sitting at a galley table one quiet afternoon. The station's emergency alarm goes off. Sirens, buzzers, strobe lights! I know this isn't a drill because I plan the drills. This is real. The automated voice says there is a fire in the Power Plant. I run to get my cold weather gear because to get to the Power Plant means passing through the -90 ice tunnels. Others running too. I go down the hallway, down the beer can, through the ice tunnel - there is heavy white smoke in the generator room! But it isn't a fire, just a coolant leak. Serious in itself but not a fire at least. Three hours later I return to my cold lunch on the galley table. I'm coughing - my throat and lungs are frostbitten because I ran through the cold ice tunnels.

I wake up and look at my watch - it's 3:30 AM Sunday morning.  My throat is dry because my humidifier ran out of water during the night. I need something to drink so I get up and stumble through the early morning station into the galley and see... twenty people sitting around tables laughing and talking! What's going on!? What? it's 3:30 in the AFTERNOON? My first South Pole winter-over moment.  185 days to go.

There is a photography project where people around the world take a picture depicting life on the planet at the same moment on May 2. Here at the South Pole that moment came at 3AM on May 3. I get out of bed and put on all my ECW gear, mount my camera on a tripod and head outside. -75F. But I forgot to set my camera before I went out. It's on movie mode! Grrrr. With gloves off I try to push the tiny buttons needed to take a picture in the dark, but before I can do it my hands are too cold to operate it. The camera is becoming a block of frozen sub-zero metal. Screw this. I go back inside to bed.

Horseshoe night in the vehicle maintenance shop. The dozers and loaders have been taken outside to clear space  for the pits (and left running or they would be out there until November). I throw a few practice tosses and don't even reach the sand pit. But I get better and win my game 11 to 4. Later that night the metal horseshoes get so cold from lying on the frozen shop floor that one breaks in half when thrown. It's a different world down here.

100 Below Zero

The temperature did not reach -100F during the last two winters at the Pole, but this year we passed that mark today.  It looks like a cold winter since it is only April and the coldest months are still ahead.  Tomorrow I will go outside and find out what -100F feels like.

The barometric pressure is also very low at 670 mb.  If you are at the beach right now your pressure is probably 1000 mb.  That means we only have 67% of the air you have.  No wonder climbing stairs is so hard here.  You would have to go straight up to 11,000 feet to get the same level of oxygen and pressure we have today.  At this altitude I sometimes wake up during the night and have to breath deeply for a few minutes before I can get back to sleep.

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.