Ouch!  A storm system moved in right after the first Basler arrived and we haven’t seen a plane since.  It is now Friday, and although there may be a small window to get a plane here from McMurdo on Saturday it doesn’t look very promising.  After tomorrow the Baslers are all tasked to supply other bases in Antarctica and won’t be coming to Pole.  Soooo, it will probably be the LC-130 on November 2 that will be the next plane.  That’s bad because that was the plane I was supposed to leave on!  Instead it will be bringing in my replacement and  I’ll then have to stay several days to provide training and turnover.  Now, instead of 10 days to departure it may be 20 days or longer before I get to a warm place.  Nooooo, please noooo.  I don't want the planes to not fly.

In the meantime we are doing turnover things with the 15 people who did get here Monday.  Today we are bringing up three more 5,000 gallon emergency fuel tanks from storage in the far reaches of the station and transferring their fuel to the main station tanks.  We will transfer two tanks to show them how it is done, and then the summer folks will do a tank while we watch.  This will be good training for the next winter manager (who was one of the 15 people on the first plane) as it will have to be done next winter too.  Plus we are almost out of fuel in the station’s tanks – a small but significant point.

Reviewing fuel-tank dipping procedures.  It's warm!  Only -38F and 10 mph wind.  The winter-overs are shedding our ECW gear as too hot while the summer folks are bundled up like mummies.

Paul Smith and Mel MacMahon in the emergency fuel module preparing to transfer fuel from the 5k outside tank to the station's main fuel tanks.

We are adapting pretty well to the new guys on station. Late at night when we are up and they are in bed we sit around and make fun of them.  It’s good natured and done in humor, but the phrase “F’ing new guys” always brings a laugh.  Truthfully, they are not too bad and there isn’t any friction.  But they sure are intense!  They want to do things NOW.  They want to get going on work while we all want to stop working.  I sometimes go hide somewhere in the station to keep them from asking me more questions.  If they really need me now they can call me on my radio.  Still, I suspect all this current goodwill will wane when 50 more "F'ing new guys" show up on station.

Joking aside, this intensity by the new arrivals is a serious issue.  After being here nine months or longer our people are really tired and are used to working at a slow and deliberate pace in dangerous winter conditions.  The intensity of the new managers puts a lot of stress on the winter-overs to get things done for them.  This can (and has) caused accidents to happen.  It is a constant battle to slow things down and to resist new tasking being handed to the winter crew..  It doesn’t help that the only airplane to arrive so far has held summer managers, and the only people on station to do the work are winter-overs.  We miss those two other planes with summer workers that did not make it.

The first load of summer people arrived yesterday at Pole, and things immediately changed around here.  Two hours after arrival the hallways even had a different smell!  Not bad, just different. And not perfume, cologne or other chemical smells – different human smells.  I would not have thought my sense of smell would have been that sensitive, but after nine months of the station holding only 47 people, it is very clear that there are a bunch of outsiders in the station.  We winterovers are apparently a bunch of cave dwellers who have woken up to discover that 15 new people have started living in our cave.
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Meeting the new arrivals and all their baggage.  Temperature warm... only -60F.

Fifteen people came in yesterday and we are expecting another 15-18 today (in about five hours), and then another group tomorrow.  After the third plane we will be outnumbered by new folks.  My replacement arrives tomorrow, at which point he will be the Safety Engineer for the station and I will just be hanging around with my hands in my pockets (yeah, right).  

2010 winter-overs waiting on the sidelines to meet the new arrivals.

After having the station to ourselves it is strange to have to navigate around all these new people in the hallways.   No one but us winter-overs who have had the empty station to ourselves for the winter would think it crowded, but these people keep getting in our way!  There can actually be five or six people in the hallway I am trying to walk down!

In their favor, they are a pretty friendly bunch, and they did bring us bananas, watermelon, apples and fresh eggs.

The next few days will be spent getting these people up to speed on what is happening around the station at the end of winter.  They need to take it very slow and easy for the first two days, or their chance of being medivaced goes up tremendously.  They flew from sea level to 11,000+ feet in four hours and are now stuck here, and that can have serious health consequences if they are not careful.  Navigating the station at altitude is hard even for us winter-overs, so just walking down a hall can be stressful for them.  How well I remember from my first week here.

After acclimation we will start the official turnover that will last about 10 days.  I will lead my replacement around the station by the hand and show him all the places he will need to work.  He has never been to Pole before so it will be all new to him.  We will avoid the six-story beercan for several days so we won’t have to activate the emergency response teams.  Do I sound like a stuck-up winter-over?  Oh yeah?  Whadda ya wanna do about it?  Just kidding, but even though it will be hard for him (I remember my first few days) - it is daylight, warm (-60), and you don’t take your life in your hands when you walk out the door these days, and we don’t think there are any undiscovered crevasses to fall into.

On the positive side of things Martin Lewis, the Area Director, hand-carried my replacement iTouch with him on the first Basler, so I now have music!  Thank you Martin!!  For those who don’t know, I washed my original one in the washing machine last June. I liked my new one so much I was tempted to roll around under the table with it.

The first Basler of the summer season landed Saturday, so the end is near for us winterovers. It didn't bring us any people or fresh vegetables, but just stopped off on its trans-Antarctic flight for fuel. In fact, we got two Baslers Saturday, the second one half an hour after the first. Each was fueled and on its way in half an hour.

One of these two Baslers was supposed to return to Pole today with the first batch of summer folks, but the temperature here at Pole was -70F, a few degrees below their minimum operation temperature. Because the weather forecast is for clear and unusually cold temperatures it does not look like anyone will arrive until the end of the week.

Things have been postponed here. The Baslers, which normally operate in Greenland and the North Slope head down to Antarctica about this time every year.  They arrive in Chile, fly to Rothera Base and then across the ice to the South Pole, refueling at each stop.  From here they fly to McMurdo and start shuttling supplies and people between McM and South Pole.  Well the Basler is still stuck in Chile because of bad weather and we don't know when it will arrive in Antarctica.  It was supposed to have been here two days ago, and was supposed to bring the first load of summer people in tomorrow, but that clearly isn't going to happen if it is on the ground in Chile.

If the Baslers don't fly then the aircraft fueling personnel don't get to SP, and if the fuelies aren't at the Pole then the LC-130s don't fly in and we don't get flown out.  Everything is getting pushed back.  But I hear this is pretty normal so I'm not too worried - I'm just getting anxious to get out of here after nine long months.

Anyway - here are some pictures of general station opening activities.

Sunset picture six months ago. South Pole Telescope and ceremonial pole marker.

Mel MacMahon, station manager, on top of a fuel tank being moved in to add to the station's fuel reserves.

Look at that flag - it is really windy and cold.  Paul Smith on top of a fuel tank being connected to the emergency fuel module.  I don't remember the temperature that day, but I sure remember the wind.

Same day - Boyd Brown, left, and Jason McDonald preparing to pull a fuel tank out of its winter storage location at the far end of the station's perimeter. This is probably the fuel tank that you see in the pictures above.  Genevieve Ellison in the loader.

Mel MacMahon

Fuel tank being brought to its resting place near the EFM (Emergency fuel Module).

WAKE UP!

Nothing like an unexpected fire alarm at the South Pole to get everyone's adrenaline pumping.  At about 9 am this morning we had an alarm of a fire in Summer Camp (the group of  structures that we are bringing on-line for summer occupancy).  This was no drill and all the ERT teams mustered.  Summer Camp is about 200 yards from the Main Station, so that meant ECW gear for everyone before we could head out there.

I learned a good lessen - always have your ECW in one place.  Some of mine was in my room and some in my office.  By the time I had run to get it all together I was exhausted and dizzy (altitude here is 11,100 feet today) and had to rest before I could even start to put it on.  There was no option on the ECW - the wind chill outside is currently -101F with a 15 mph wind.  No short-cuts in ECW could be taken.

After I got my ECW on and headed toward the DZ doors to go to the Jamesways it was announced over the emergency response radio that the fire alarm had probably been set off by the portable heaters that were being used to warm the Jamesways.  Their exhaust plume had gotten into Jamesway 13 and set off its alarms. This news put everyone into lower gear and took the pressure off all the emergency response teams (and me).  I hung around in my ECW at the station exit with the fire-fighters while the false alarm was verified.

After about ten minutes we knew it was a false alarm and all the ERT teams were told to stand down.  That all took place about 30 minutes ago and my adrenaline still hasn't dropped to normal.

More turnover stuff

Winter season officially lasts only four more days!  That is when the new summer manager arrives on the first aircraft to land here in over nine months!    That doesn’t mean we get to leave - the plane, a Basler, only carries a few people.  We have to wait until the first large aircraft arrives.  That ski-equipped LC-130 cargo plane that will take most of us back to McMurdo is scheduled to arrive and take us out of here on November 2. 

In the meantime I have started working on station opening tasks.  The station is supposed to be clean and fresh for the first flight so we are all cleaning.  I have shoveled snow and have started cleaning my work area and room.  I have also started packing things into boxes for mailing home.  We get up to $88 of postage paid to send things home by mail, so I am trying to send as much as possible so I don’t have to lug it as baggage on the plane.

I have also started preparing things for my replacement who arrives on the third Balser, probably around October 20.  There will be about ten days of turn-over when I show him around the station and acquaint him with the way things work around here.  The days after the first flight, and particularly after his arrival, are going to be busy for me.  There will be meetings, walk-arounds, paperwork, station and buidling tours, and still all the normal things that are done weekly.  It will all have to go very slowly though – he will be suffering from the altitude.  I imagine we will spend a lot of time in the galley drinking tea to keep him hydrated (caffeine is not recommended) and going over things.  The first two days of new arrivals are spent mostly resting, particularly if the altitude is high. This isn’t just being nice to the new arrivals; it reduces the likelihood of high altitude illness and medivacs.  

The problem with the altitude is that he, and everyone else that arrives, will go from sea level to high altitude in the four hours of the plane ride.  There is no acclimatization at all.  It can be dangerous, so everyone has to rest and are watched closely for the first few days for signs of high altitude pulmonary edema and high altitude cerebral edema (HAPE and HACE).

At least the frostbite on my face has healed, so I won’t frighten him when I meet him at the plane.

It isn't over yet...

A hard day today for me.  Last week a small crevasse was discovered running the length of one of the out-buildings.  Although the crack in the ice was only about an inch wide, it was approximately 30 feet long.  Today the width had increased to about two inches and it was felt that it was best to restrict access to the area with black danger flags.  Although no one would fall into a crevasse that narrow, we don't know what is under it - it could be two inches at the surface and two feet wide a foot down. It could be thirty feet deep for all we know. Although unlikely, it could be large enough to swallow a piece of heavy equipment - again it just depends on what is under the surface.

There are ice tunnels in the area , and we do not know if this crack is over one of them or not.  Adding to the concern, another crack was found today about a hundred yards way in the waste area.  All will bear watching.

So this morning I rounded up an ice drill, some black flags, and marked off the larger crevasse to keep heavy equipment away from the area.  It was -71 with 15 mph wind, with ice fog and very poor visibility, and it was cold - -119 wind chill.  Everyone agrees that although today was not really different from many other days, it just seemed colder for some reason.  I did not put on enough ECW gear, thinking I would only be outside for half an hour, but I ended up taking about two hours to place those flags. I have to put more flags out either this afternoon or tomorrow morning.   Everything takes longer and is harder to do here than other places.  A surveyor is coming in on one of the Baslers in a few weeks and he will be looking at the cracks and trying to determine what is under them.

I'll try to take some pictures of me drilling holes and putting flags in the ice, but that is hard to do because it is so cold.

On a lighter note, we had the last raffle for the national flags that flew at the Pole this winter and I won one.  There were only three flags left: France, Russia and Argentina, so I picked France.  I would have liked to have had Norway because 2010 is the 100th anniversary of Norwegian Raoul Amundsen reaching the Pole, but it had already been chosen.

I'll try to post some pictures from when I place more black flags.

More Daylight Pictures...

Some more pictures of the station now that the Sun is up.

Flag cache uncovered with the rising Sun.  Atmospheric Research Observatory (ARO) is in the distance on the horizon.

Snow piles and supply berms.

At the construction Jamesways.  During the dark of winter being this far from the station on foot would have been a risky thing for me to do on any but the clearest of moonlit nights (I can't wear glasses in the extreme cold so I get the navigation lights mixed up) , but with the Sun above the horizon it is merely a cold (-82F) 10-minute walk.

Wind-blown patterns in the snow.  Seen from the top of A-Pod stairs.

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Snow shoveling

Went out today to shovel out the J3 jamesway.  Temperature -79F, wind 14 mph, windchill -120F.  But I got it done.  We aren't talking a little sidewalk shoveling - this is what the snow is like...

You can see the rear door to one Jamesway at the two red flags.  There is also a door to the furnace room, and the front door.  My Jamesway had about that much snow at its back door and it took about an hour  for me to get rid of it.  Trust me, that's a lot of snow.  Particularly at -80F.  Luckily the snow isn't too heavy, but because it has been there all winter it gets compacted and heavier the further down you get.  That snow you see at the center of the frame is a good five feet deep.  The dozer will get that, but we have to manually shovel all that snow near the doors.

Only one more building and I am done shoveling unless we have a storm come in over the next few weeks.  It has been known for a good storm to re-deposit all the snow that has been shoveled so that it has to be done all over again.

Pictures 2

Post-winter drifts, flag, cold, snow, ice.  At least it isn't dark.