4 November 2002
11 deg F, -4 deg wind chill
Yesterday was the first day that the temperature actually got above freezing. It was a summery 33 degrees yesterday late afternoon, and all over McMurdo you could see wet dirt underfoot. It didn’t last long. Today is blustery, blowing snow, and cool. But, I could feel a change. It won’t be long before most of the snow has melted from the town, leaving black volcanic dirt that will blow through the air. No longer will it look like Antarctica, so I need to get busy and do more shots of town before that happens.

Another first yesterday was the arrival of the skua population. These are large brown scavenger gulls that nest on several of the islands in the area and scrounge what they can get from the bins of sorted waste that are out in front of all the buildings and dorms here. They aren’t pleasant birds; they will dive bomb you, swooping down with great force from above, if you come anywhere near their nests. Here, they aren’t nesting so they are simply scavenging. It’s great to see a bird swooping overhead out on the sea ice. We have no squirrels, no pigeons, no dogs or cats. We don’t even have ants, flies, cockroaches, or other insects of any kind. You can leave food outdoors or inside and nothing will come to eat it. It’s a sterile place, this white continent. Here at McMurdo, which is enclosed by over 70 miles of sea ice right now, we don’t even have any penguins. An occasional Weddell seal hops out of a ice hole down by Hut Point, but for the most part, we see no animals or birds of any kind. So, it’s great to see the first of the skuas arrive.

Yesterday, Brian Johnson (my sea ice instructor), Kelly Tyler, and a couple of other folks drove a Hagglunds (a strange tracked vehicle that will go anywhere, but slowly) out to Cape Royds to see Shackleton’s hut. The journey on land is short as the crow flies but it’s impossible on foot. It goes over the base of the volcano, and the land is folded and crimped into an extremely rugged landscape full of crevasses. None of the expeditionary parties who stayed out at Evans or Royds succeeded in finding a land route. On the sea ice it takes a little over two hours to drive to Cape Royds, past the Erebus Ice Tongue, past Cape Evans to the Barne Glacier. This is an impressive glacier with a high wall of ice where it meets the sea ice. Because of the pressure down on the sea, the glacier causes major cracking of the sea ice, so the journey is a cautious one. I was glad to have Brian leading the way since he knows the cracks by name and location and keeps a watchful eye on all of them. At one point he saw a fresh crack and got out to do a fast drilling of it and a flag marking. The ice is still pretty thick, nearly 12 feet most places, but the cracks can be unpredictable. Near Cape Royds, there are lots of “proximity cracks” near the land, several of them quite wide. At one point as we were crossing on foot in preparation for walking over the cape to the other side where the hut is located, Brian fell up to his knees in one crack. He didn’t hurt himself, but it did encourage me to watch carefully and do a wide step over the cracks.

Shackleton built a hut at Cape Royds in 1908 on the Nimrod expedition. Within a 33x19x8 foot space, 15 men slept, ate, worked, talked, and met all their social needs for a winter. They built it in 10 days and completed the insulating and furnishing in another 3 weeks. Shackleton had his own cubicle, two men shared each of the other seven. (Joyce and Wilde, David and Mawson had scientific equipment; Adams and Marshall had novels and gauze curtains.) The hut is not in as dramatic a setting as Cape Evans but it appears to be in a more sheltered. Certainly, the hut has a more comfortable feel. It feels less like a cold dark museum and more like the men could return from sledding at any moment to cook dinner.

Many objects remain from the expedition, as at Evans, and even more boxes of supplies both inside and outside the hut. I photographed biscuits, tins of tea, cod roe, curried rabbit, boiled mutton, veal and ham pate, bottled currants and gooseberries. Outdoors were tins of beans and tea that had opened up over time. Several of the reindeer sleeping bags lie out on the bunks awaiting their sleepers’ return. Cooking utensils hang on the wall. A large teakettle sits on the stove. Shoes are neatly stowed under the bunks.

The setting is a low spit of volcanic land. The hut is sheltered in the far side so you have to walk over the hill to get to it. Just beyond the hut is an Adelie penguin colony. According to David Ainley (one of the penguin researchers here), the penguin colony at Cape Royds has been there for 1000 years. They have done paleo-penguin research, looking at sedimentary layers and carbon dating. The penguins are creatures of habit, returning to nest at the same place every year, so a penguin genealogist would have a great time here. We were not able to enter the colony itself since it is a protected area but we sat for a while and watched their antics. The Adelies have the most personality of all the penguins that I’ve seen. They bustle around, move rocks around to make their nests, talk up a storm, and are very curious. One of them left the colony and walked over to where we were standing in front of the hut and paraded around in front of us, cocking its head, raising its flippers, and generally providing both entertainment and great photos.

It was a great day’s outing…my only regret is that I seem to have lost the one pair of gloves that were keeping my hands warm, gloves that I just got a couple of days before from the Field Center. I constantly lose things. I put them in the enormous pockets of my parka and can’t find them until I empty things out. The gloves, however, did not reappear when I got back. I seem unable to photograph and keep track of details at the same time. Crary Lab issued me a Green Brain, a little khaki notebook, but I can never remember which pocket I’ve put it in. Losing the gloves is a major loss; hopefully, they will reappear. So far, I’ve been fortunate in that everything I’ve lost here has eventually reappeared.

Last night, I did the Sunday night lecture in the galley. It’s fun to do, because the audience is enthusiastic and large, filling almost all the available seats (and probably would have been even larger if it hadn’t been for the Halloween party the night before). I showed some earlier work and then images from the Peninsula. It required effort to put it together in the midst of my schedule for the last few weeks, but I’m glad I did it. Lots of people have told me today that they enjoyed seeing what I was doing, and several folks have contacted me and suggested events that I might photograph.

November 7, 2002 7 degrees F, -25 degrees wind chill

On Tuesday I got a helo ride out to the Dry Valleys again—this time to Lake Bonney, the largest lake in the Taylor Valley. It takes a little over half an hour to fly out, first across the sea ice and then up the Canada Glacier to the valley. The helicopter has to climb a good bit to get up the glacier and over the ridge of mountains and then descends again rapidly to the floor of the valley and the frozen lake. No scientists are yet working at Lake Bonney, though they will be there soon working on climate research. I went with Vince, a mechanic, who went out to fix an ATV out at the camp. The helicopter dropped us off mid-morning and told us he would return about 3:30 P.M. So we had the enormous lake valley to ourselves for the day.

Vince started up the stove in the Jamesway—the Quonset hut style of building that has been used for years by the NSF here. They can be set up each year or in this case left up through the winter. They can be set up with as many compartments as are needed by the field party. Each has a stove running on diesel fuel to heat the building, as well as kitchen facilities, a table, and other comforts. This is a large camp so they even have a little outhouse in the back with the usual arrangement of funnels and bags (since all waste must be removed from the Dry Valleys). The day was not windy or cold, so it didn’t take too long to get the space above freezing.

As I started to photograph, he turned the key in the ATV, which was parked out on the ice. It started right up and worked perfectly. Since he had nothing more to do, we decided to take it for a spin up and down the lake. At the far end, we found a great mummified seal up against a rock. I’m told that they are crabeater seals, rather than Weddells, and that some have been carbon-dated to 1200 years old.

Nobody knows how they got so far away from the edge of the Sound or what led them to make such an unpropitious journey. This guy was all there, with his teeth and all his bones in his flippers exposed. I hadn’t realized that their flippers are not just a membrane of some sort. They are actually made up of quite a number of joints and finger-like bones that give them enormous flexibility.

We made hot water and mixed in dry soup and had hot soup and sandwiches for lunch. The huts are stocked with lots of canned goods, but the soups were all frozen solid. Only the items in the refrigerator were not frozen. This may be one of the few places on the planet where you put things like mayonnaise and mustard in the refrigerator to keep them from freezing. Vince told me that he works as a mountain guide and teacher outside of Lander, Wyoming, when he isn’t down here. He’s been coming here for 7 years, every winter. He even wintered over at least once. It’s a change of pace, he said, and it’s good money. His job as a mechanic takes him to camps all over the McMurdo/Dry Valleys area. Today, he was lucky and the job was easy!

Yesterday, I drove over to Scott Base, the New Zealand station that is only a couple of miles away from McMurdo on the far side of Observation Hill. Ma Peters, the head of Human Resources, greeted me warmly and treated me to a tour of the base. Kiwis are very different creatures from Americans, and their base reflects their considerably greater informality. It is also much smaller. They have beds for only 90 people on base, whereas McMurdo can house up to 1200. Their support staff is about double the size of the science staff, as opposed to McMurdo which has a ratio more like 10 or 12 support for each scientist. That means that everyone at Scott Base, including the scientists, pitches in to do the station chores, whether it’s tying flags to mark routes or washing dishes.

The station is laid out in a more orderly fashion than McMurdo, which looks like a nineteenth-century mining town spread higgledy-piggledy over the hills. Scott Base is a group of small buildings all painted a lime green and connected by passageways so that you don’t have to go outside to go from galley to offices. Their field center is more integrated. Supply and drying rooms are connected to carpentry, electrical, and communications rooms. A greenhouse has hydroponics herbs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and beans. They have a hot tub in a separate building that looked wonderfully inviting—it had murals of trees and flowers painted on the walls. They look out onto the sea ice—a series of pressure ridges that have jumbled the ice up to waves and towers. The ground is more snow covered and the hills behind are also less bare volcanic rock than McMurdo. You have more of a feeling of being part of the continent and less of being on a volcanic outcropping.

They also have a considerably better lunch in their galley than we do! They had a great sandwich bar with a variety of cooked meats and cheeses. We haven’t seen “freshies” for several days. They had lettuce, tomatoes, and cucumbers, as well as grapes, apples, and bananas. The buns for the sandwiches were home-baked. They also had several kinds of cheese for dessert, and a cappuccino machine for making your own coffee.

McMurdo has a high-fat diet. Usually, the galley has a vegetarian entrée, but even that is usually pasta or stuffed pastry. All the veggies are frozen and usually not very appetizing. Occasionally, we get a salad, but it’s been a week now since there has been any fresh lettuce. Even the fruit is canned. Now, if you’re into meat, you’ll be real happy here. Last night there was steak, pork the night before. One night recently we had crab legs. I can see why there is such an emphasis on cholesterol in the medical process to check you out before accepting you to come down to McMurdo—the meals here are heavy in fatty meat, gravies, and biscuits and lacking in fresh veggies and fruits. If you didn’t have a cholesterol problem before you came down, you will have one by the time you leave.

What are very lacking at their base are science facilities. The lab is primitive. It doesn’t even have running water. They have to haul what they need from the building above. The couple of rooms are tiny and lacking in basic laboratory equipment. All the scientists there have to bring down their own lab equipment. What a contrast with Crary Lab here at McMurdo with its three levels of laboratory space with all sorts of modern equipment.

Gretchen Hofmann, a biologist from Arizona State University in Tempe, invited me to come out and watch their group set up their fish huts. This group is investigating how Antarctic fish respond to a sudden elevation of temperature. Organisms elsewhere in the world have a heat-shock response that triggers previously inactive genes to synthesize heat-shock proteins, but there is some evidence that evolution at subzero temperatures has altered this response. Gretchen is well-loved by her deploying team of students and graduate students; she is organized, thoughtful and kind, and encourages their initiative. She has been coming down here for a number of years, and I heard later that her father was also a scientist on the Ice. She made me feel very welcome and provided a running commentary on the process of setting up the huts. First, a caravan of huts and drilling apparatus is towed out from McMurdo by a Challenger caterpillar to a predetermined location on the ice, a couple of miles off shore. A large bulldozer scrapes the top layer of snow off the sea ice. Then a four-foot hole is drilled with an enormous bit. The bit slowly drills down through the ice, bringing up first ice and then finally a swoosh of water. Finally, the hut itself is pushed into position over the hole, and snow is piled up around the sides to keep it in place. The huts are all set up with diesel stoves that just need to be turned on to make them operational.

Science projects: 80 at McMurdo, 23 at South Pole, 18 at Palmer, 19 on the icebreaker ships. Number of deploying scientists and team members at McMurdo: 270. Projects by discipline: Aeronomy and astrophysics, 30; biology, 40; geology and geophysics, 23; glaciology, 16; ocean and climate, 15; artists and writers, 6 (Photographers, just me). (from the Antarctic Sun)

“It has always been our ambition to get inside that white space and now we are there so the space can no longer be a blank,” Robert Falcon Scott, when they crossed the 80th parallel on November 25, 1902. “This compensates for a lot of trouble.”

Another Artists and Writers grantee, Bob Marstall, arrived a few days ago (he’s illustrating a children’s book on Weddell seals and is down here for several weeks). At the last moment, his writer on the project couldn’t PQ (physically qualify) and so he couldn’t come. What an awful disappointment! Bob is out for Happy Camper School today and tomorrow. It won’t be as cold as when I did it, but it won’t be a whole lot of fun with all this wind either. Writer Kelly Tyler is also here for about six weeks. She is writing a book on Shackleton’s Ross Sea party, the men who laid the depots for Shackleton’s ill-fated attempt to cross the continent.

8 November 2002. 6:30 P.M. 12 deg F, 70 mph winds
-35 deg F wind chill

It’s not too cold, but it’s nasty outside. I could barely stand up walking from the galley to Crary after dinner. A high pressure system is pushing moist air towards us, the weather report said. This is not like any high pressure system I’ve ever seen before! Earlier, the afternoon was lovely with softly falling snow, a rarity here. I walked around and photographed the station, especially some of the storage crates that lay everywhere outside. After my lecture and getting to know so many people, I got calls from guys in trucks who passed me, “Hey, Photography Woman! How’s it going?”

Then I saw a little building that said, “Greenhouse,” and so I pushed open the door. Inside were two small rooms of lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, and herbs. The lights were bright and the veggies were thriving. Who gets to eat this good stuff? Since I haven’t had any salad for days, I began nibbling the lettuce leaves, which were delicious. Then I looked down at my camera to start photographing. My camera and tripod were covered with water. Dripping wet. The lens on the camera even had water in between the elements. The high humidity with all the hydroponics and plants condensed on the cold metal and glass… and that was that. I had to call it a day and come back and clean the equipment as best I could and leave the inside elements to dry.



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