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.

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.