South Pole. November 21, 2002. –38 deg F, wind chill –59 deg F

Took a long walk around the station last evening. I’m finally feeling pretty normal, and it was lovely to walk around and poke into new nooks and crannies. I ended up at the balloon hanger where twice a day a balloon is launched to measure wind speed/direction, temperatures, relative humidity, and pressure. The data sent to World Meteorological Organization (WHO) for incorporation in the southern hemisphere forecasting models. I photographed the launch and then some of the cargo berms with construction materials for the station. The place seemed a little less alien. If I keep moving, my fingers don’t get cold and I’m quite comfortable. Most of the time I don’t wear my parka hood and I’m actually a little too warm when I’m walking around.

One of the physiologists who is studying the effect of this place on the body here, told me that we increase our oxygen consumption by 20% within a couple weeks of arriving at McMurdo, increase caloric intake by 40% (without gaining weight), and our thyroid is so busy coping with the demands, that it doesn’t produce enough hormone for the central nervous system. Thus, short-term memory loss is common. I can attest to that. I couldn’t remember a single name when I arrived at McMurdo for several days; after that, I did much better. The same thing happened again when I arrived here at Pole. After about 5 days, I could begin to learn names. The physiologists are doing applied research, testing what thyroid additive might help.

One of the plumbers invited me to go down in the snow tunnels this morning. These tunnels were carved out of the ice last year to contain the pipes for water and sewage for the new station. The plumbers are now connecting everything. They have offered before and I have politely resisted. It is –60 degrees down in the tunnels, and I couldn’t see what the attraction was. Today, it was Janice (who has a plumbing company in Kanab, Utah, when she isn’t down here) and she persuasively expanded on the beauty of the tunnels, so I agreed. We dressed in balaclavas but no goggles, plus the usual layers. I put the Nikon under my parka. You open a small door and set off. The tunnels aren’t far underground so you don’t have to climb down a ladder. All the pipes have heat tape around them so they don’t freeze solid. They tunnels are about 8 feet tall and four feet wide and are lit by electric lights every so often. Their construction last year was an amazing engineering feat by a team headed by John Wright. The crew worked at –60 degrees with specially made ice-drilling equipment. They carved the tunnels straight out of the snow, which is so compacted that it forms perfectly straight walls and ceiling. Every so often a small crack lets in a blue light.

Where the plumbers were working today was about 1200 feet into the tunnel system in a small side tunnel. They work for short stretches, take a break to warm up, and then return to work again. When we got there, I understood why I had been urged to come. Evidently, there is no breeze in this section, and the most elegant snowflakes have formed in long chains from the ceiling. They are so lacy and delicate that a slight breath will destroy them. Never have I seen anything like them. When we came out again, I took a picture of Janice with hoar frost on her eyelashes and balaclava. I suppose I looked the same… but at least I wasn’t cold, not even around my eyes without the goggles. How often do you get to walk around and photograph at –60 degrees?

November 26, 2002. McMurdo. 8 degrees F, -14 degrees with wind chill.

I returned yesterday from the South Pole on a gloriously clear flight. I got to walk around and shoot through the windows of the cockpit. About the first hour of the flight was spent crossing the polar ice cap, icy and flat. Then come the Transantarctic Mountains with their dark heads stuck out of the two miles of ice that cover their base. We flew past the opening to the Beardmore Glacier, the route over the mountains that Scott and Shackleton took up from the McMurdo area to the Pole. It is an enormous glacier that swirls like a mighty river from the plateau down to the ice shelf below. By some optical illusion, it looked like it was flowing upwards rather than downward when I photographed it. After the mountains the plane flies over the Ross Ice Shelf for quite a while before reaching the McMurdo area. When you fly half way across the continent, you see how large and empty and white it really is. How amazing that we still have a whole continent on our planet that has no roads, structures, or power lines (except for the extremely small isolated stations like South Pole and McMurdo). We would certainly have occupied and exploited it if we had been able to, so the emptiness is testament to its total incompatibility with human survival.

A man told me today, just before I left the Pole: “When I’m here the outside world seems like a dream. When I get home, the South Pole seems like a dream.”

McMurdo has the smell of dirt. The Pole doesn’t smell. Except for a certain amount of human debris and vehicle emissions, it has no dirt or dust.

Returning from the South Pole to life at McMurdo requires an adjustment. Life there is so hermetic that people become to tuned to each other’s rhythms. There is a smooth flow of 200 people in a galley that can only feed about 50 at a time. Anywhere else, it would be crowded and unpleasant. At Pole, it is graceful and gentle. When you arrive in McMurdo, life seems abrupt, harsh. I can only try and imagine what it must be like for those who winter-over and then must re-enter the outside world. You don’t have the web that connects those who work at Pole. People return year after year and call it their “family.” The South Pole has the harshest and most unforgiving external environment that I have ever had to work in, but the community is the most gentle and open. You don’t see people with large egos or flimsy personas. They don’t last long where everything is so open and brightly lit.

Mount Erebus. –18 degrees, -45 wind chill

I returned to McMurdo for one night and then took a helicopter up Mt. Erebus the next morning. This meant I dashed around like a loca doing laundry, answering email, making phone calls, and greeting friends. By going up Erebus so quickly, I don’t lose my acclimatization to the altitude that I gained at the South Pole. It is even higher on Erebus than at the Pole, but not so cold. It’s about 13,500 feet physio-altitude where the Erebus hut is and –20 degrees. After the week at Pole, I am pretty well adjusted but still huff and puff whenever I carry gear or climb very far. The helo ride up here is spectacular since the helo ascends about a thousand feet a minute up the side of the mountain. This is a ride that people would pay lots of money to take—everyone in McMurdo wants to come up for starters. You aren’t aware you are climbing that fast, but you get a grand view of Ross Island, the sea ice and the ever closer plumes of steam. At the end, the helo flies over the top flank of the mountain, giving you a view of the steamy crater before setting down outside the hut on the other side.

Mt. Erebus is a live volcano with a lava lake in its crater. Officially, it is called an open conduit Strombolian volcano, which means it has a magma lake that is somehow connected to the earth’s mantle and it sends up periodic puffs of gas that send car-sized bombs rolling down its sides. Researchers have been studying it for years but are still not sure of the size, shape, or depth of its magma chamber. It is the most active volcano in Antarctica and a natural laboratory since it is only about 20 miles from McMurdo. It is located in a rift area, rather than on the edge of a continental plate, and it is an area where the earth’s crust is being gradually pulled apart. The crust beneath it is only about 10 miles thick (as opposed to about 20 miles thick in New Mexico), so magma can get to the surface. Although it is an active volcano, it is safer than most to study, since its open conduit magmatic system keeps it from building up pressure (although it has had major eruptions in times past and is certainly capable of doing it again). Its last largish eruption was in 1984, but since then it has been content to bubble and steam. With its magma chamber, it is a window to the center of the earth.

The field huts are just below the summit on a flat plateau. Thirteen people will be working at this camp starting next week. The main hut is about 20 x 25 feet and serves as kitchen/dining/communication and relaxation area. A Preway stove running on diesel provides plenty of heat. Four large windows look out toward the top of the mountain. The other building is storage and bathroom. I’ve elected to sleep on its floor for the couple of nights I’ll be here. It’s heated and I don’t have to set up a tent. Since there are lots of supplies stored in it, it smells a bit of fuel. It’s rough and ready but has plenty of room to spread a sleeping bag out on the floor, and I won’t get cold.

Neither hut has any running water. All the water here comes from snow melted down in a giant pot on the Preway. Since it takes lots of snow to make water, it is used sparingly, mainly just for drinking and cooking. I wash my face with a tiny bowl of warm water. Even for those who work a season here, there are no showers or baths.

All bathroom waste is separately stored and eventually flown off the continent. That’s true everywhere on the continent except on the sea ice and at the South Pole (where they drill wells for it and sink it into the two-mile thick ice sheet—which they justify by saying it will eventually flow down with the ice sheet and dump into the ocean. Ships are no longer allowed to send waste into the ocean so the rationale seems weak to me.)

Brian, my former sea ice instructor, is here helping Sarah (the camp manager) set up the hut for the researchers who will arrive this weekend. Dr. Phil Kyle has been studying Erebus for 30 years and knows her every mood. Most of the researchers are from Socorro, so I’m sorry I won’t be able to stay for a period of time and get to know them better. I will also be unable to photograph them working, which is unfortunate. Once they get going, they lower ropes and ladders into some of the ice caves, which would be great to photograph.

Fire and ice. The upper slopes of Erebus have to be one of the most picturesque places in the world. Everywhere you look you see lava tumuli poking up through the snow and steaming ice sculptures. It is a fairy tale gone awry. The Snow Queen in her palace with underground steam vents. When I arrived at the field huts and started walking around, I realized that this is how I always imagined Antarctica to look—hilly, rocky, with lots of snow and ice. Gnarled, braided lava formations poke out of the snow. It is strange and beautiful at the same time. Photographing is difficult with the cold and high altitude. Brian helped me do one panorama session by carrying the Fujica camera so I could take shots of some of the steaming fumaroles in the area. Since the steam freezes into ice around the vents, elaborate towering ice sculptures form. You have to walk around them carefully since there are many places where the ice covers fragile areas.

Sarah made the three of us pizza tonight, mixing up the crust from scratch. I cut up onions and red peppers. We fried a little Italian sausage, roasted some garlic, put on tomato sauce and cheese. We told stories, ate pizza, and watched the snow glisten in the bright sun and Erebus puff above us. It’s a very beautiful and strangely peaceful place despite the inherent threat of the volcano looming over us. Last year, a terrific storm broke up here and lasted a week. All the researchers left their tents (some of which blew away) and camped out on the hut floor while the winds gusted up to 80 mph for the better part of a week.

November 27, 2002. Since the sun is out and the volcano’s plume is going straight up, it seemed like a fine morning for a hike to the summit. The hut where I’m staying is about 2000 feet from the rim. To get to the top, Brian and I took a snowmobile up about 1200 feet. From there we had to climb the last 800 feet to the rim. Not so easy at a physio-altitude of over 14,000 feet. Downright precarious in bunny boots (clunky rubber boots, well insulated, but with smooth soles). It took about 45 minutes to do the climb over loose lava, ice, and snow. Everywhere underfoot were Erebus crystals—feldspar crystals that are all sizes from tiny to about three inches in length. Other volcanoes have feldspar crystals but none are as large or perfect as these. Before I left, many friends asked me to bring them back a crystal, so as I huffed and puffed up the mountain, I slowly filled my parka pockets. By the time I reached the top, I was hot, panting hard, and had gained ten pounds.

The view from the crater summit was extraordinary. The crater is deep and lined with ice sculptures. Clouds of sulfurous steam pour over the side and obscure or reveal the crater below depending on the whims of the wind. One area at the bottom has the lava lake, another has a smaller vent that puffs and steams, and to one side is an ash vent that sends up clouds of ash every so often. Far below I could hear what sounded like waves breaking on a distant shore, followed by a hissing sound. I sat on a lava bomb a foot from the thousand-foot drop to the crater floor and thought that this must be how the earth will end, covered in ice with a few final openings like this to the last of the rapidly cooling molten core. The scope of the crater was impossible to photograph, especially with the clouds of steam, but I tried to give a sense of its power and mystery. How could such a powerful volcano exist in this land of perpetual cold and ice?

After dinner, Sarah took me on a magical snowmobile ride in the brilliant late evening sunshine. I held on tight to her, and we flew and bumped around the flanks of Erebus, through lava flows and fumaroles, across the snow and ice to an old hut that was used for research until the 1984 eruption. Since bombs rolled down the slopes near the hut, it was deemed too dangerous and abandoned. Inside it is still stocked with a stove, a bed, and cooking utensils and supplies, but it is more rustic than the hut we are now using. When we got ready to leave, we had difficulty starting the snowmobile but finally succeeded. The return was equally beautiful. A rough ride around the icy mountain with a grand view of the bay 12,000 feet below—Cape Bird, the large icebergs that are blocking the movement of the sea ice in the Ross sea, and Beaufort Island in the distance.

Our little camp grew today with the addition of Nelia and Rich, members of the Erebus research team, and Amy, who is here on a long-standing program that sends down a boy or girl scout every year, and Kelly, my fellow Artists and Writers grantee (who is writing the book on Shackleton’s lost men). Neither Kelly nor Amy is feeling very chipper. Sarah fixed us a fine dinner with stir-fry chicken, a fresh salad (what a treat!), rice, and apples for dessert. Afterward, everyone sat around the table until late, playing cards and talking.

Today it is Thanksgiving, but they don’t celebrate it here until the weekend. How far I am from home and family! I’ve had many kinds of Thanksgiving over the years but I’ve never spent it without family of some sort. Here on top of Mt. Erebus, one of the most beautiful places on the planet, I am surrounded by lots of wonderful people, but I miss Bernie, my kids, and all my extended family. I’m tired of photographing, of the cold and the ice. I’d like to smell trees, hug family and friends, and have an enchilada red.