Second Addendum

I am comfortably ensconced in my home away from home, the Devon B&B, for the final night before the adventure begins. There was a day of rain, so I did not go out to Lyttleton Harbor, but instead stayed in town and explored the marvelous Hagley Botanical Gardens here. I'll share lots of photos of things that caught my eye. Bugs in particular were new again.

Hopefully there will be no problems and everything will fall into place. The weather for our Routeburn hike this weekend is predicted to be cold and wet, which sounds mighty unpleasant. I can only hope that this is one of the times when the weather man gets it wrong.

First Addendum

I am sitting in a B&B at about 10PM on Sunday night after my first full day back in civilization. I visited the botanical gardens here in Christchurch, which are quite spectacular, and stopped to smell ALL the roses, which took a little time. I got a Starbuck's coffee. Twice. I made friends with a (very friendly, wet-tongued) dog. It's amazing and puzzling to me that cats and dogs are among the things I found myself missing most down there.

Tomorrow is my "work day," during which I will try to make a car reservation, plan a route down to the trailhead, buy some small amount of food, and make lodging reservations. Hopefully there will still be time to expore the nearby port town of Littleton, but if not, there is always Tuesday.

Keep those comments coming. Don't be shy! I like to see that someone actually reads this.

That's all folks

Tomorrow morning I leave McMurdo on an LC130 cargo plane. I am one of 40 or so passengers on the turboprop. The flight time is approximately 8 hours. This is longer and much less comfortable than the C17 jet (5 hours), but on the other hand I would not be getting out were it not for this flight. Also, the jet is often delayed (as it is today) and does not get back into Christchurch until after midnight sometimes. The LC130 will get in around late afternoon and I should be able to have a relaxing late dinner somewhere. The next few days I will spend reorganizing the amazing amount of stuff I find myself in possession of (I am allowed 75 lbs and I checked only to find I have hit that and still have a few clothing items to pack yet), and exporing rental cars, places to go, organizing food for the hike on the Routeburn, etc.

Sayings

I came up with a few sayings this year, and in keeping with the previous blog of two years ago, I'll share my favorites.

1. "Recovery is for the young." Oh, my aching joints.


2. "My eyes may be bigger than my stomach, but my stomach seems up to the challenge." When an inexhaustible food supply presents itself to you, it is hard to know when to quit. Especially when the message here is that of an Italian grandmother: "Eat, you're so skinny! You need these calories to keep warm! Have some more!"


3. "No dessert should go untried." My compliments to the excellent dessert chef this year. He also does yoga. The bread chef was also quite good.
4. From someone else: "Memories of Antarctica are always bittersweet." Everyone wishes they could have done that one more thing, gotten to know that other person better, seen more wildlife, or whatever, but are grateful for the friends they made, the good times, etc.
5. On my inability to sleep in past 7AM, no matter what time I went to bed: "Apparently, I have reached the time of life at which the habits of the body are more powerful than its needs." Perpetual light, perpetual wakefulness.

Vessel unloading

The cargo vessel has arrived at McMurdo, and the station has stopped everything but vessel operations. No bars are open, no alcohol sales allowed, very restricted store hours, no shuttles, no Sunday brunch... no fun in general allowed. Unloading and reloading takes about a week, but I am leaving Saturday, so will miss most of it.

Every available space is being used for storage. Sea containers are unloaded from the ship, trucked around the station to locations near where the materials they contain will be stored, unloaded, then reloaded with materials (mostly waste) that goes back to the States. The space between the dorms and the galley is fenced off. What used to be a short walk from my room to the galley now requires a long detour.

In just a few minutes an annular eclipse begins. I have heard the ceverage will be about 80%, which is pretty good. The Beaker types here are excited about it, but I have my doubts we will see much, since when I just checked it was partly cloudy and the sun was obscured. But that could change quickly, so I will pay attention. I will try to take some pictures, but they will probably just be overexposed where the sun is shining, even in eclipse.

All over but the shouting

We finished up this morning loading the sea crates. We sent absolutely everything back, including the trash from the instrument. There are no landfills in Antarctica anymore.

We started with what you saw in the earlier post in the plane and on the ice, brought it into the hangar (to the left), packed it more carefully, and then filled the crate. You can see the result below.

Recovery is hard on an instrument. The parts are fragile, and the handling is rough. The instrument was essentially undamaged at the landing site, even after getting dismantled (except for all the cut cables), but now I noticed several parts are worse for the trip in the plane and in the truck back to the hangar. Two TCD light guides are broken in their middles, and I noticed one TCD PMT was smashed. That all happened post-dismantling. My rule of thumb for recovery is (1) don't make it heavy, because if it is, people have to "gorilla" it to get it to get it where they want it in the plane or truck or hangar, (2) make special holders for recovery, like for the calorimeter, which worked out well - only a few IFO lines pulled off, and those were while trying to disentangle cable during recovery, which we gave up on and cut when we saw that we were doing more harm than good.

Now the crates have been turned over to the shipping gurus here, and magic happens, and somehow the crates end up back in the States. All these goods get handled again, as the stuff gets unloaded and distributed to the various institutions from which it came. And next year it all happens again.

Meanwhile, I have a few days of waiting before I catch a plane out of here. The room and board are a good price. There is moderate entertainment. I have a bit of regular work to do. So I won't get bored. We'll have a mild celebration of sorts. Yoann leaves on tomorrow's plane (he had such confidence in our finishing on time that he never changed his reservation from the 5th) while Terri and I are scheduled for the 11th, a week away. After that, I will tour NZ a bit, and get back to Cincinnati on March 1 or so.

Everything is in

We received the final few pieces of CREAM today via a Twin Otter on its way back from Siple Dome. The passengers were generous enough to help the pilots load the remaning bits. We just showed up at the airpoprt and offloaded it into our truck.

We have started the packing process and will load the sea containers in the next day or two. They should both be in the shipping pipeline early this coming week.

Miracles Can Happen

It seems that our day finally came, and that we only needed one! I was surprised that we went out, considering that the sky was very grey. During the flight there was a white out. I could not discern ice from sky. There was no horizon. Was that ice or ground fog below me? Fortunately our pilots (after a little searching) were able to find the instrument and land. (More on these spectacular couple of pilots later.) The weather continued to be poor. In fact, during recovery it started to snow a couple times, although it never amounted to much. It just covered the tools a bit and made small things hard to find. The temperature was -13C (9F), and a slight wind was blowing that carried enough wind chill to make cheeks really burn.

We worked in pairs. Terri and Yoann tackled the palette boxes on the priority list. Larry and I began the process of disassembly with the goal of reaching the SCD. This worked very well, and four people was the right number for an instrument like CREAM, which needed a lot of unscrewing and had numerous parts, many of them quite heavy. We looked for visual evidence of the S3/CVD failure but did not find anything.

There were some interesting moments during recovery. Once the TCD paddles were removed, Larry and I were faced with the wall of the TCD support structure. After removing the outrigger supports and numerous bolts, the thing would not budge. Tolerances were so tight that we could not slide it out. After nearly half an hour of beating on the thing, we got out the saws-all and cut a mounting bracket. From then on things went much better for a while. The CherCam was a challenge because of its weight and tight fit, but its removal went very smoothly once we realized the support brackets were easily dismountable from the frame. Once it was out, uprighting the palette was trivial. We then proceeded to remove the framing so that we could easily remove the SCD and everything below it. The cross members on top were cut, but nothing else (except the afore-mentioned bracket).

The new method of calorimeter removal with the trays was challenging but very effective. There were a few design issues that made for trouble. The very small flathead screws were apparently RTVed in and a couple heads were stripped during removal, so the cover had to pried off around them. The 3.5 inch long screws did not stand up enough to remove them after unscrewing them and could not be pulled out of the insets because the tolerance was very tight around the screwhead. But these were minor issues. It took just over an hour to prepare to remove the first layer (eg pulling off tape, which is very difficult with gloves and when the tape is cold, separating cookies, some of which had screws whose heads got stripped as well). However, once we got going, loading the trays took less than an hour. Overall I would give this new process a B+. A few minor design changes or perhaps even more details in the instructions would make it get an A+, if such is possible for moving 1000 lbs.


Meanwhile, the area around the detector looked like a tornado had blown through. Note the lack of a horizon in the photo above. We wrapped electronics boxes in ESD bags, and set the detectors out on blue foam or in the snow. Around 5PM Terri and Yoann worked with the pilots to load the plane. Terri identified the priority items so that they would go out that first day, and packed the electronics more carefully with bubble wrap. Did you know that tape does not stick at those low temperatures? It made for some challenging moments.

But in the end we were able to load about 80% of CREAM onto the plane. The pilots, Jim and Louis (who was French Canadian and spoke with Yoann in French, much to his delight) were absolutely fantastic. They were committed to getting as much back as they possibly could, and got out in the snow with us to help carry these behemoths over to the plane. They stayed an hour or two later than they probably were supposed to in order to get as much as possible. The pilot was a true professional when it came to tight loading. I put myself through college working in a moving company, where it was important to stack stuff from floor to ceiling tightly to get as much as possible in and to keep the load from shifting. Jim rivaled the best packers I worked with in those days.

All that is left for pickup today by planes on their way to or from other sites is two calorimeter trays, two bags of cables, the palette, the TCD support structure, the frame pieces, and a few odds and ends. The pile in the picture is all that is left.

Recovery is very hard on an instrument. While CREAM landed easily, and it appeared there was no damage to the science instruments, the subsequent handling takes a toll. I think you could count on one hand the number of cables that did not get cut. Consider that all the TCD paddles were removed with only one joint breaking. In the subsequent handling of about a dozen times every joint ended up broken. After removal from the instrument they sat in the snow. They were then handed into the plane, loaded, flown about, removed to the ground at Willie Field, loaded in our truck, hauled to LDB, and finally removed into the hanger. All the instruments were handled that many times. The heavier they are the harder it is to handle them. Only two people, maybe three, can really be in the Twin Otter loading. It is a very small cargo hold. Devices with brackets still on offer a hold for carriers. Imagine wrapping your feet in sopping wet towels, wrapping a quilt around your body, and wearing the biggest winter gloves you have owned, then walking through sand dunes carrying 300 pound delicate instruments. Not an easy task.

We will go through everything we brought back over the next couple of days. We'll examine the S3 and CVD parts more closely to see if we can find any reason for the failure. Everything will get packed up into the sea crate. After that, the instrument will arrive in Palestine around mid-March, and someone has to go down to pick up the pieces.


Meanwhile, life in McMurdo continues. The fuel ship has finished unloading and is preparing to leave. The Palmer is gone. Yesterday's off-continent flight practically emptied out my dorm, leaving it blissfully quiet. I was able to luxuriate in a hot shower this morning, instead of the usual tepid poor excuse for one I usually get. I had to turn in my skis, since for some reason the gear issue season is finished. I am not sure what I will do to entertain myself until my plane leaves once I am finished packing the sea crate. But I'll manage, because I can sleep in and can put my field gear away. I'll get to see the cargo ship arrival and unloading, which I understand is a really crazy time here, when looking both ways before you cross the street is essential in order not to get run over by forklifts shuttling goods and crates.

Mission update, take 2

We are a primary mission for tomorrow, Friday, 1 Feb. We'll see what happens. I have made my peace with staying here until 11 Feb, when the CSBF guys call it quits and the ballooning season officially ends, so I am not particularly strssed about this opportunity.

Here is an update on the other two payloads, ATIC and BESS. ATIC came down about 170 miles from South Pole Stations, while BESS came down miles from anywhere, near the top middle of the continent (in its usually displayed orientation). To be more specific, it is about 250 miles from Patriot Hills and 170 miles from AGO-2, both of which are uninhabited camps at this time. You can see ATIC's location in the map above. ATIC was launched at McMurdo, followed the yellow path counterclockwise for the first revolution and the red path for the partial second revolution, until termination at the end after 19.5 days. BESS is shown similarly to the right, and was terminated after 30.5 days. CREAM is shown at the bottom. It was up for 29 days.

Currently the plan is to fully recover ATIC out of the South Pole Station with a Twin Otter. Two colleagues from that experiment are currently positioned at Pole, and are waiting for weather to cooperate there. BESS will not get a recovery mission this year. The plan is to send in two mountaineers on a plane to get the CSBF required equipment and the BESS data (16 terrabytes!!). No scientist will get near the instrument this season. Sometime next summer (eg December) a campaign will be mounted to retrieve the whole instrument.

Weather cancel again

Despite what I thought was good weather this morning, we have been cancelled for today. There is supposed to be 4-6 inches of snow at some point this afternoon or evening. It has been coming for two days now, so I am puzzled why the great concern all of a sudden. You would think they would give us what time we could get on the instrument. We could return as soon as the snow started to fly. I almost feel as if they give us primary to shut us up knowing that they can call a weather cancel the next morning and run the backup missions, which they really want. But that is frustration talking, not reality.

The last two weeks have been really emotionally draining. I have been riding this roller coaster of hope and despair. It is impossible to plan to be part of the community when I never know what will come of each day. Each day I get up early, eat a big breakfast in preparation for working all day, then wait for my pager to buzz me. At that point I get the news: go or no go. I am not sleeping well at night because I am replaying every possible scenario in my head regarding instrument disassembly.

There is one funny story to all this. Way back towards the beginning of my long wait I was being sent text pages. I finally got one that said GO. I got my gear and headed off to the rendezvous point. Strangely, my McMurdo representative was not there. I found him in his office. He looked at me standing there in full gear unbelievingly. I told him the message said GO. He said the rest of the message was BACK TO BED. We now do not use the text feature. I get a phone number to call instead. No mistakes.

We are going to treat the next flight we get as the last. We will bring all tools and gear back. That is 400 lbs less of instrument we could carry instead, but that is how it goes. Some parts of the instrument may sit on the ice until next winter. While the arrival delay of the cargo vessel this year by two weeks has given us (for better or for worse) an extra two weeks to try to get the instrument back, we are running short of that windfall. If the instrument is not on the dock in a week, it will not go back to the US this year anyway.

Another try

Tomorrow (Thursday) we are a primary mission on a Twin Otter. Tonight (~10:30PM) the weather does not look so good. Here we go again....

Just to give you a feel of what people do down here in their spare time, see the photo.

One down, two to go

We finally got out today! The weather was gorgeous for a change. You can see the blue sky behind the picture to the left when we arrived. If it stays like this for four days or so I think we have a chance. We managed to remove all the external support hardware (flight train, termination packages, solar panels, the 600 pound power and communications module behemoth) and grab the science data box today. We are poised to begin breaking into the instrument proper. The parachute was not even visible after 10 days in the snow, so we left it behind. It would have been very difficult to excavate it. As it was, I spent most of the morning digging under the instrument to access the power disconnects to make the instrument safe to disassemble. I had to laugh that the engineers put quick disconnects on all the panels except the one that had to be accessed during recovery, and the fate that put that panel in the snow. We don't want to get shocked accidentally when cutting a wire. The access panel landed downwards in the snow, and the few snowstorms and wondstorms we have had since the instrument landed piled up a heap against the power module. I had plenty of practice digging at snow school so felt really prepared.

We left some of our tools and gear at the site since the plane was completely full. Everything is strapped down in case of a storm. You can see that the external stuff is gone.

So when will I be done? Let's do the math: today was Tuesday. Tomorrow we are back to backup status, so won't fly, most likely. Suppose Thursday we were primary, and then either Friday or Saturday. Then we would have the instrument all back, could pack it Sunday and Monday, and make the Feb 5 plane to Christchurch. But that scenario assumes we get our flights - and even more importantly this year in particular - the weather holds. Sunday is a no-fly day. If we flew on Monday we could stay up all night Monday night to finish packing but we would be dead on our feet. Worth it to me, I guess, since the Feb 8 plane is full, and the next one is Feb 11.

Weather cancel

We awoke to snow today (Sunday), despite a forecast for clear skies. After delaying a decision until noon, I have just been told we will not fly out today. The last schedule I saw did not have us on it again until Thursday, but that is, of course, fluid. Things are very grim for getting out of here before Feb 12.

The bright spot is that now I will go learn to use the CSBF gas-powered chop saw, which may come in handy during recovery. Vrrrrooom!

R/V Nathanial B. Palmer

The research vessel Nathaniel B. Palmer is a real contrast to icebreaker Oden. The Palmer is a working vessel, and its interior is full of labs and workspace for scientists to bring up all sorts of seawater, bottom ooze, and little creatures from the Antarctic Ocean. All of the work done by the Oden is exterior to the craft. There are no special wood highlights in the Palmer, although I was told it does have a sauna. The Palmer is capable of breaking through a meter of ice at a few knots (contrast that to the Oden, which is capable of several meters of ice at the same rate.) The Palmer's mission is scientific, and icebreaking is a secondary "necessary evil." Crew and scientist quarters are cramped, but there is lots of public space - as long as you don't mind sharing that space with a beaker of ooze or frigid water. The galley is in the bow, where, I am told,it is impossible to hold a conversation when ice is being crunched. The advantage to this large ship over the Oden is its stability in foul weather, which it encounters often. On the way down it endured 50 foot waves with 80 knot winds. All the captain could do was face the waves and ride the storm out. Water was apparently breaking over the bow in huge sheets.

Its draft is 7.5 meters, a meter less than the Oden. We were shown the spare propeller sections (4 to a propeller) - most impressive. Can you imagine having to install these in the middle of the ocean? I just don't think they would do that. They would more likely get towed to a port or limp in on one engine, and then have the prop changed.

Tomorrow is another day - take 2

We are the primary mission for tomorrow (Monday). Cross your fingers for us!

The Polar Plunge

The Kiwis at Scott Base offered a Polar Plunge this evening. Any and all interested could go jump into the coldest waters on earth. The temperature is about -2C. High salinity keeps the water from freezing at the usual temperature. A hole in the ice serves as your pool. The air temp is just below freezing. After your jump, there is a hot tub to get feeling back in your extremeties. I talked to one person who jumped four times. Most go at least once in their birthday suits, then plunge in more modestly. This has to be a Kiwi outing because the powers that be in McMurdo would never sanction it. Too fun, I think.

Did I go? No. Sorry to disappoint. Most of my showers in McMurdo qualify as Polar Plunges. There is never hot enough water when I need it.

However, one of my (crazy) colleagues went and sends this photo of the setup. The next photo is of her swimming back to the ladder.

Skiing and hiking and penguins

I have never been on a pair of skis before last weekend. You can rent cross country and skate ski gear here, and my colleague Terri, who has been here three months and really got involved in the community, learned from scratch in a few weeks. While I do not want to spend a few more weeks here, I have least got a flavor of what is like to both kinds of skiing offered.


The two ways of skiing are very different. Cross country skis are long and wide relative to skate skis, with fish scales on the bottom that keep the skis from sliding backwards. You trudge along as if you were walking. You have probably seen this in the Olympics. Skate skis are more like "the worse part of downhill skis," so I am told. You don't have a hill but are expected to go forward. I found this method much more interesting than cross country. You move in a left-right rocking motion from ski to ski, sort of like ice skating. I am no expert, as you can see here, so if you disagree with my description, add a better one to the comments.

So last weekend I rented cross country skis, tried them out for an hour, then on Sunday skied out to Castle Rock. The Castle Rock trail is along a glacier, and is rough snow and very steep. It was a bad introduction to skiing. I did very badly. It was only slightly fun because I got so exhausted, fighting the skis the whole way. I only fell now and then (maybe a dozen times), but I kept the rest of the group from speeding along. I at least doubled the total time they would have taken without me. They were very nice, and waited for me.



But being a glutton for punishment, I rented skate skis this afternoon and tried them out. I skated along the road from Willie Field (one of the the airfields), which is fairly level and moderately groomed. I had much better luck, but I was still very slow and got exhausted quickly. It was nice, though, to get outside and try something new. You can see I am more confident on skate skis. Today's weather cleared up this afternoon, and the wind died down, making skiing very pleasant. Sadly, we are not on the schedule for tomorrow. I still have the skate skis, so I will try skate skiing again.


Otherwise, today I took a hike around Ob Hill (very windy and cold), and on the way back spotted (distantly) penguins out by Hut Point, so dashed over there to view them. I watched them hang out for a while, then jump in the water. Weddell seals litter the ice, like giant floppy slugs. The sea ice is melting near, and large pools are visible. Some whales have been spotted in these pools- just not by me yet!

Not today... again

Still waiting. Must... keep... calm...

There is talk of flying tomorrow, Sunday, a usual no-fly day. I won't believe it until I am standing next to the payload with a screwdriver in my hand. Even getting the plane off the ground here at McMurdo is no guarantee we'll end up on the ground at our destination. On the ice shelf there is often a three to six feet high fog that comes in from the ocean that completely obscures the ground. The pilot needs to see the ground to land on it, especially since it is not a runway but just ice and snow. The winds form 6-12 inch high snow humps called sastrugi, which can snap off the landing gear if gone across crossways. The pilot aligns the aircraft with the sestrugi, and the aircraft bumps and rolls when landing, but doesn't lose a ski.

Tomorrow is another day

We are 1st backup for one of the Twin Otter flights tomorrow. If weather cancels the primary flight, then it is our turn. This is getting old....

Janitor Dawn

Janitor Dawn is responsible for keeping the dorm I live in, building 203A, spic and span. She does a great job. She is here six days a week, cleaning the hallways and bathrooms and lounge areas. She is also reponsible for cleaning the Chapel (where my yoga classes are held), and spends afternoons helping out in the main laundry facility for the Station.

Dawn is from Kansas via Denver. This is her first year here, and she has decided to pursue any opportunity to come back next year, hopefully in an administrative position. She left "a really good job" in Denver to follow her boyfriend down here and has not regretted it. She likes the international mix of people, travel opportunities, and the spectacular outdoor setting here. "Where else can you see penguins and whales in their natural environment?" She even likes the climate - most people are under the impression that the weather is really cold here, but it has been warmer here than Denver and Cincinnati recently. Temperatures are between the high teens and high thirties. While it has often been windy and cloudy this year, typically it is sunny and beautiful all summer. The really cold weather is at the Pole, which is between -20F and -30F these days. Yuch.

Thanks for sharing your story, Dawn!