Photographs from my recent hike out to climb the sublime (as described previously) have been posted.

View Images: Castle Rock

- and almost awake. Early on Tuesday morning, I participated in a video conference (1 frame per second images, plus a teleconference phone call for our voices) with an Honors English high school classroom in Loudoun, Virginia, USA. There were about 6 of us around a table, including an iceberg glaciologist, a diver/musician, an information technology staff member, a school teacher working in the admin offices, myself, and the National Science Foundation representative.

Event time? 4:30 AM. (I got up early, washed hair, and drank some black tea.) It had to be done at that early hour to avoid bandwidth issues on Antarctica’s end — plus it was a morning class time in Virginia. The students’ questions were excellent and ranged from scientific inquiry to social adjustments, life on the ice — even relationships between artists and scientists. I wore my fur hat, since I figured that would be amusing to watch on their end of the video. I wonder what sort of impression such a conference would have made on me, at that age, if I’d been able to participate in a live conversation with a group of interesting folks in Antarctica….

A hero-shot, snapped by my friend Bill.
Suitable for Alpinist Magazine, no?

The day after Thanksgiving was warm and sunny, and almost everyone had the day off. Some folks spend their down time watching movies in the dorm lounges and such, but a lot of McMurdonites prefer to get out-of-doors and do something physical. Thanksgiving morning, for example, a “5K Turkey Trot” race had been planned — which was cancelled at the last minute due to “unsafe conditions” (aka: all the fresh white snow starting to melt on the loose pumice-graded roads). Most folks just ran it on their own, regardless. As we like to remind each other whenever some trivial complaint is being aired — hey, it’s a harsh continent.

I convinced my friend Bill to go out on Castle Rock with me, a trail which I’ve been looking forward to for some time. (He’s the sort of endorphin enthusiast who would be perfectly happy running the whole 9 mile loop).

Like Armitage, Castle Rock requires a formal checkout at the Firehouse, a hiking buddy “who knows the climbing route”, a check-in plan, and a radio. So many folks had checked out to go walking/skiing/hiking that there wasn’t a radio for us, which was fine — the Castle Rock trail has three Emergency Shelters (red huts called Apples and Zucchinis), and the second shelter has a telephone. For the first hour, just as we were leaving town, the wind blew fiercely against us, and I was afraid it might be too windy. Instead of bunny boots or soft mukluks (which wouldn’t work at all for climbing Castle Rock basalt), we’d decided I should do the trail in a pair of Vasque trail shoes I’d bought at the last minute in MN, which I’ve been wearing in the office at Crary Lab, and walking around town between buildings. They had better traction, but I wasn’t sure they’d be warm enough. I brought extra socks, and changed when my feet felt damp.

It turned out my hands were the only thing I had to be vigilant about (my fingers get cold quite easily). The wind died down while we rested at the second hut, and by the time we’d climbed to the top of Castle Rock, it was a balmy 35 (!) and almost still. McMurdo is a sea-level port town, so Castle Rock (413 m) has a top-of-the-world view, by comparison. Of course pictures don’t do it justice, since the world really drops away in all directions, white and empty-of-people almost everywhere you look, with Erebus steaming about 25 miles to the north.

The landscape was serene, surreal, sublime. I think the only way it could have really been captured is if Thomas Moran and Rene Magritte were around to paint it collaboratively.

During a recent informal writer’s meeting in McMurdo, a scientist and writer (Jack) from the New Harbor foraminifera study asked us if we’d ever heard of “the Deborah Number.” As I recall, we’d been talking about time.

No one had — so another member of the group (Bill) did some digging. Turns out the Deborah Number is a term used by scientists who are studying FLOW (plastics, hydrocolloids), DEFORMATION, etc. This little area of physics which deals with “the mechanics of continuous media” or continua is called “Rheology.” The term rheology itself is based on the Heraclitus phrase: “everything flows.”

The Deborah number is called a “nondimensional number” and can be expressed as:
D = time of relaxation / time of observation.

In rheological terms, Antarctica’s glaciers and the polar ice plateau and the Ross ice shelf are all flowing — projects like TAMDEF tell us that the land itself is flowing in places, just very slowly. Interestingly, this relates to the Deborah number. This tidbit is a bit odd, but strangely thought-provoking, so I am including the following explanation from Marcus Reiner:

Prophetess Deborah sang, “The mountains flowed before the Lord.” When… the Bible was translated into English, the translators, who had never heard of Heraclitus, translated the passage as “The mountains melted before the Lord”- and so it stands in the authorized version. But Deborah knew two things. First, that the mountains flow, as everything flows. But, secondly, that they flowed before the Lord, and not before man, for the simple reason that man in his short lifetime cannot see them flowing, while the time of observation of God is infinite…. The difference between solids and fluids is then defined by the magnitude of D. If your time of observation is very large, or, conversely, if the time of relaxation of the material under observation is very small, you see the material flowing. On the other hand, if the time of relaxation of the material is larger than your time of observation, the material, for all practical purposes, is a solid.
(-M. Reiner, Physics Today, 1964)

New images have been posted.
View: Cape Evans Hut.

Thanksgiving in McMurdo fell on Saturday. McMurdo gleamed with white snow – the reflections were blinding, even with sunglasses.

In the spirit of awe and reflection, I participated in a Thanksgiving Day-trip to Scott’s historic Hut at Cape Evans. The Cape Evans hut was built in 1911 after Scott’s ship (the Terra Nova) could not reach his older Discovery hut near McMurdo. This is the hut from which Scott’s team laid their depot caches, preparing for the expedition to the South Pole. The trek described in “The Worst Journey in the World” also departed from and returned to the Cape Evans Hut. As historic sites go, Cape Evans is well-documented, and now well-maintained and protected. It is a protected site, with limits on visitor numbers and behaviors. We were given instructions on how to move through the hut, and an overview, before we walked onshore.

See:
NZ Antarctic Heritage Trust: Scott’s Terra Nova Hut, Cape Evans

My curatorial eye was amazed to spot marker numbers and teensy labeled tags on almost everything – every object from socks, books, tins, scientific tools and tiny bottles, string, a packet of darning needles, weathering tin debris in the area, dog skeletons, etc. Even surrounding vistas are numbered (I assume most of the tags are buried in snow, but correspond to an official map or guide pamphlet of some sort…)

Despite this scrutiny, the heart feels as if the objects are being viewed after months or years of solitude. The heart finds the hut evocative for various reasons. While windows and roof have been replaced or reinforced, the exterior wood, and the interior layout and personal collections is is visceral and real. Scott’s hut is approached from the sea ice, stepping over drifts that hide cracks where the sea ice and land ice are cracking apart – walking back, a woman behind me stepped (one leg only) into such a crack, and dropped up to her thigh. The hut is half hidden in a great V made by drifting snow – as if even the wind keeps away, just a bit, out of some natural respect. Above, there is black Weather Van Hill, marked with a simple cross and a memorial plate in 4 languages. The snow drifts are as high as the hut itself — inside is very dark as you enter. We had a couple flashlights, but batteries hate the cold, and so the lights were quite dim. The beam could illuminate only a small spot, anyways. Some of the old glass windows are cracked; now sealed with a new plexi layer to keep snow out. It takes a while for the eyes to adjust.

The outer door leads into a foyer, insulated with original crating wood from Scott’s expedition: the wood is stamped “British Antarctic Survey.” The walls are hung with various tools — and an achingly crude collection of boards that resembling picket fence stakes with hardened leather shoelaces and leather straps nailed on for the boot-laces. Skiis? It would be hard to imagine skiing on such lumber across a pleasant field, much less a harsh continent.

The foyer, you realize, is a walled-in breeze-way that runs back along the side, under the hut’s eaves. The sides were used as protected cold storage – and there are still crates and hooks, objects hanging on the walls, and old stores — a large iron basket of frozen penguin eggs, for example. The breezeway turns and widens, a protected hallway between the sea-ward wall of the hut and a line of pony stables. The stable pens are tiny – they must have been cramped, and dark, with a simple feed crate lashed to one wall and a crate for manure resting on the other side. In addition to dogs, Scott tried to use both mules and ponies (as well as primitive motorized vehicles.) There are still “pony snowshoes” hanging on the wall, which were slipped over their hoofs to help them in drifts.

Standing there quietly in the dark, at the outside corner of the house and the stable, I became aware of the large dark stack of something next to me. Fodder, I thought at first, or maybe slabs of wood or frozen sacks? Actually it was a stack of flensed seal, the blubber made dense by almost a hundred years of gravity and desication, with thick gobs of oil seeping along the cut edges. Given the cold storage conditions, I suppose it could still work in a crude oil lamp, in an emergency.

In such a place, one can easily imagine “emergencies.”

Outside the hut, between the stable wall and the sea: a large ship anchor, lost when the Aurora ship was swept away — this happened during the time when Shackleton’s Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-17) was using the hut.

Most everyone went immediately to the inner hut, but I wanted to see the context of the place first, and walked up the back side of the rise, to the hill with the weather vane and the cross (dedicated to members of Shackleton’s expedition who lost their lives in the area). At the sea edge, seals were rising and breathing in the open holes left by fish scientists. The Barne glacier is a chiseled blue cliff, running along the cape to the north. The volcano rises in the background (everywhere you turn, Erebus is there, steaming, enormous.).

The hut’s inner hut door is heavy wood, with an iron latch and strong sill, insulated on the back with torn burlap sacks. There is a smell, some alchemy between dry wood, straw dust, pony manure, curry and old meat. The bunk beds still have old fur sleeping bags, and thin wool socks; a variety of scientific instruments, beakers and bottled chemicals line the rear walls, and there is a dark room. Seeing the hut, one remembers that the Scott party was a scientific expedition, not just a run for the Pole. Vials, calipers, clamps, burners, glass tubes.

I understand that some small, fragile or ephemeral objects located in the area have been brought inside, as have small items found under layers of debris along the pony-shed floor. Nothing has been replicated or moved into the hut from elsewhere, which makes it feel more “real” than many other historic buildings. A taxidermied penguin and an old London newspaper lie on the desk near Scott’s bunk, as if he might be returning to study them soon.

Although I could not be celebrating with loved ones back home, my thanksgiving weekend included some rare gifts of community and experience. I felt blessedly “welcomed” at the McMurdo Thanksgiving dinner – it felt like a church picnic – only with gourmet food!

There were a lot of mouths to feed, so the dinner was held in shifts — with a special dinner for the folks who work the night shift, so they could celebrate together as well. It was an orderly (lines) and old-fashioned sort of feasting event with familiar faces in every direction. Everyone was in a terrific mood! Folks brought their own bottles of wine for the tables — a lucky few even had stemware. Most of us drank our antarctic toasts to “the place” and “each other” from plastic cafeteria cups decorated with penguins.

One young man, after a few glasses of wine, dinged silverware against his plate and got the whole room hushed — we all said it felt like a wedding reception — then he offered a heartfelt rambling toast about thankfulness which ended with a round of applause for the kitchen staff (the first of several official kudos they received).

Some looks just never go out of style, eh? Special thanks to my uncle Carl who gave me this terrific fur hat when he heard I was heading to Antarctica. Everyone loves it — a number of people actually ask if they can pet my head whenever I wear it.

As promised, a poet’s-eye view — driving across McMurdo Sound in a Hagglunds vehicle.

As Dr. Sam Bowser describes it:

“This vehicle is a Hagglunds, built in Sweden. It is a personnel carrier. The engine is in the front unit, but both sets of tracks are powered. It has an added feature that is not apparent: it floats! This is especially valuable when traveling over sea ice that is not thoroughly explored. If you unexpectedly break through a thin spot, you have only to get out, keep warm and then figure out how to get the vehicle back on the ice.”

Aside from noble purposes of scientific research and poet-support in Antarctica, the Hagglunds is really used as a military vehicle, which seems a bit odd to consider. The second image on the Hagglunds website depicts a Hagglunds vehicle.

I once again accompanied Team Andrill out to the sea ice, to observe retrieval of their second under-ice ADCP device ( (Acoustic Doppler Current Profiler). Once again, a Hotsie was used to melt a hole down through the ice (much larger this time – because the device was larger). According to Seth White, who also observed ANDRILL’s work:

According to a write up from Seth White: “ADCP measures the direction and speed of the ocean currents below the ice. Useful info for people intent on drilling down to the sea bottom through a thousand of feet of water…. The camp was about halfway between McMurdo and Marble Point…about 20 miles from station, I think.

Recovering ADCP Part 1 (Movie)

Recovering ADCP Part 2 (Movie)

Once the ice was melted and the ADCP device was hauled up, we carefully opened it. The data it gathered for the past month was kept inside, and the first goal was to transfer down a full copy of the data, before we risked moving it further. The computer cables stretched carefully out the back door of the Hagglunds; inside was Richard Levy with his PC laptop, running a program to download information from the device.

The whole process went slowly – very slowly – taking over an hour and a half altogether, I believe. Luckily, one’s sense of time is blurred in Antarctica. The wind was to my back and the sun to my face, a sun which slid slowly in the sky, as if being tugged by a distant, invisible rope. I was reminded once again that scientific inquiry in Antarctica follows the same motto as farming : “Hurry Up and Wait.”

A few of the guys crawled up into the front cab of the Hagglunds and napped while the data trickled out. It was warm in the sun, but still cold, with wind blowing across the sea ice. How to keep warm without anything to do? Eventually, Matt asked Richard and I to play “the ice axe game.” It’s like playing horseshoes, I suppose – only you use an ice-axe instead. There is a bit of risk involved.  Points are given for how the ice-axe lands: sharp point down into ice? blunt edge down into ice? or (best) standing up with the handle pointed down? No points if it wobbles or bounces or lands flat without any points into the ice. Some of us tried to toss the axe quite high first, to give it more “holding” power as it fell. This was a fun if pointless way to pass an hour, and kept the blood flowing to the extremities. After a while, we decided to make the game more interesting by throwing the ice axe using only our left hands (we are all right-handed). Ha! What a difference that made. Very hard to aim. At one point I accidentally threw it straight up over my own head (!) and we all dove for cover.  This effectively demonstrated why I was never involved in sports as a child.

After the ADCP data was finally recovered, we boxed everything back up, took down the scaffold for the winch, rolled up cables and cinches, piled everything on a cart behind the Hagglunds, and drove back to cozy Camp Andrill.

While we were gone, David Harwood and a couple others who remained behind had started to “strike camp.” They had taken down the Scott Tents, boxed up most of the equipment, tools, generators, fuel cans, food, stoves, kitchen utensils, tables, folding chairs, sleep kits, personal duffels – pretty much everything except the Rac-Tent structures. Everything was piled on an ice berm in front of camp, waiting for the Hagglunds vehicle to return. There were also sorted bags and buckets of burnables/recycled paper/aluminum/glass/food waste/human waste etc. Although a hot meal would have been a more welcome sight, we immediately swung into action and loaded everything onto the already loaded wagon we were pulling behind the Hagglunds. We filled the second vehicle of the Hagglund, and strapped piles of cargo to the Hagglunds’ roof as well. Finally, everything was loaded. I was reminded of the scene where Grinch has stolen all the trappings of Christmas from the Who’s down in Who-ville, and he’s heading for the top of a mountain with his impossibly ponderous load (to dispose of it). The Hagglund was loaded to the brink. The front vehicle “comfortably” seats 4, but I think there were 7 riding in there. I volunteered and was allowed to drive the snowmobile back, which also had a little loaded cart behind it. The guys were happy to let me do this — they slept in the Hagglunds during the long cramped drive back to McMurdo (about 30 miles total).

I’m can still smell snowmobile exhaust on my ECW gear. The snowmobile ride was not comfy, persay (my fingers kept freezing, and later I was told there was a trick “cruise control” button for setting the hand accelerator) but it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, never the less — to find myself riding alone one an unflagged route across a frozen sea, in Antarctica! I talked to myself for a while, and then sang out loud for a while, and then finally settled into a peaceful state. Sometimes I would drive a few dozen feet off-track, to look more closely at an upwelling of ice (resembling mirrors, mini-mesas, or clear blue mushroom caps). Othertimes I would realize that I had gotten a bit too far ahead of the Hagglunds, and I’d stop and rest, idling for several minutes while they caught up. The sun was shining when we set out, but there had been a storm brewing in the south all day — we watched it from the ice as we played ice-axe, and commented on the developing clouds several times.

A majority of storms sweep up from the south, including the worst storms (Herbies – or hurricane-force blizzards).  If there were children on McMurdo, and they needed a “boogie monster” the monster’s name would be HERBIE.   As we drove back to McMurdo, I was transfixed by the dark horizon to the south. Several key weather-predicting features (including Mina Bluffs) had disappeared. I felt very small, alone on a snowmobile in such an enormous landscape. The look of the brewing storm suggested that night would soon be falling (which is particularly eerie in a land of 24 hour sunlight). I was relieved as we neared the well-flagged route of the Cape Evans Road, which we could take back along the coast of Ross Island until we reached McMurdo. The air behind McMurdo was gray by now, and white snow was busy erasing the rocky features of Ross Island (including Castle Rock and Observation Hill). Flags were standing at attention and snow was falling heavily by the time we reached the cargo field on the sea-ice, just below McMurdo.  It was a lovely.

It was after 9 pm by now, and McMurdo had been transformed from a gritty mining-town to a sort of dazzling ski-resort! Everyone was in a great mood, due to the fact that Saturday would be our Thanksgiving holiday (otherwise Saturday is a work-day). We’d missed dinner by a mile, but David Harwood had called an Andrill member back in McMurdo, and asked them to “pull meals” for us. We were happy to find our dinner plates wrapped in cellophane, waiting in a warming box at the back of the kitchen. Hot meal! Much better than peanut butter and jelly! (a cold P&B is what you can get at any time.) Everything would need to be unloaded, but it was late, Team Andrill was tired, and it was agreed that the rest of the unloading could be finished in the morning.