McMurdo. 12 deg F, -10 deg F wind chill.

Light snow. Thanksgiving is a highlight of the season here. Mainly that’s because Thanksgiving and Christmas are the only times when the support staff gets a two-day weekend. Everyone here works extremely hard, usually a ten-hour day, and only gets Sunday off. That extra day of relaxation, whether spent in vigorous sports like skiing or the Turkey Trot ( a 5 km run), or just hanging out, means a lot. Also, the kitchen staff prepares a feast for Thanksgiving dinner on Saturday afternoon. Lots of freshies (even arugula for the salad!), cheeses, fruits, and of course turkey and all the trimmings and several kinds of pies for dessert. Everyone puts on their best clothes. Sometimes that means their best t-shirt, but at least they aren’t in dirty overalls and a baseball hat. Many people buy a bottle of wine from the store. Since all the food is prepared by the kitchen staff and dishes are cleaned by them, it’s a very convivial and relaxing occasion. At the end of dinner, the kitchen staff comes out for general applause and a rousing toast of appreciation.

I sat with a table of former Polies (all of whom spent several seasons working at the South Pole and are now working in Mac Town for a season). Sally, the head chef, is also a former Polie and she came over in her whites to say hello to her friends. She was famous for her cooking at Pole, and people at McMurdo say how much the quality of the food has improved since she came here. They talked a little about how they used to get together at Pole and have potato-peeling and pie-making evenings before Thanksgiving, so it was more of a family affair. Her eyes watered and she looked around at them, “It’s not the same, is it?” Thanksgiving at the South Pole, I have been told, is very close and special.

For me, Thanksgiving was a moment to stop and take stock. The last few weeks have been busy shooting times. My time here is now half over. I plan to spend this week looking over what I have shot with the digital camera (all the film from the panorama camera is still undeveloped and will be sent back home for processing when I return), making sure everything is labeled properly, and thinking about what I would like to shoot in the time remaining. It was also a time to remember how many, many people have helped make this experience possible for me and what a debt I owe all of them. I’ve had a very special opportunity granted to few. I have been able to see more of the continent than most people who have worked here for years. It’s an honor and a great responsibility. I try and do small things for people who help me but I have no way to repay much of that debt other than to do the best photographs I can and get them out in the world when I return.

Last night, I took a walk down to Hut Point after dinner, photographed Vince’s cross and Scott’s Discovery hut a little, and looked back at McMurdo. As the snow melts, it begins to look more and more like a western mining town. When the wind blows, it picks up the light volcanic dust and swirls it through the air. As the temperature rises, the ice starts to melt and little rivulets run down all the dirt roads.

Today, by contrast, it looks like the real Antarctic. Light snow is being blown horizontally by 25 mph winds. No planes or helicopters are flying. Temperature is falling and winds rising, so that the wind chill has fallen to –35 deg F in the last hour. Time to leave my comfy office and take some photos!

December 3, 2002. 10 deg. F, -11 deg. F wind chill. The weather continues cloudy and snowy. When you go outside, it’s like walking around in a bowl of whipped cream. You often can’t see more than a few yards away. No flights are going in or out. Two people in the Dry Valleys have serious medical problems, one of them with a broken wrist, but since the helicopters are not flying, there is no way to get them here for medical care. It’s moments like this that make me remember that, despite all the comforts here at McMurdo, we are on the most hostile and remote continent on the planet.

I thought about that tenuous existence a lot when I was at the South Pole. The station is such a minimal speck of human existence in the expanse of the polar plateau. The outside environment is too harsh to support life for more than a few hours without adequate clothing, shelter, food, and water. Fire is the most deadly danger. You wouldn’t think so in all that cold, but if the dome were to go up in flames, and it would go quickly in zero humidity, it would take most of the station’s fuel supply with it in a giant explosion that could well destroy much of the station’s shelter. When I was eating dinner one evening in the galley at Pole, the fire alarm went off. All around me, people left their plates and sprinted for the door, grabbing their parkas at a dead run. No one paused even a second or said anything. The response was instant and well-rehearsed. Fortunately, it was a false alarm. In the austral winter, when no planes can fly in or out, a serious fire at the South Pole would be devastating.

December 5, 2002. 27 deg. F, 7 deg. F wind chill. What a spectacularly beautiful day it is today. Warm, blue skies, with a fine view of Black Island and Mt. Discovery. Yesterday, it was overcast and cloudy and no flights went in or out. I was sad because Sandy Blakeslee, my friend and book collaborator, couldn’t get in on the flight from Christ Church. Well, she certainly will arrive today!

Despite the bad weather, I kept busy yesterday. At 6 AM, I joined the Hofmann fish group and went out to their hut on the sea ice. They had set a 1000-foot line the night before with fifteen four-inch hooks and were hoping to catch Antarctic cod (Dissostichus mawsoni) for research purposes. Scientist Art DeVries has studied mawsoni for 40 years, trying to understand how they thrive in the cold Antarctic water. The scientists keep several of them in the tank down on the lower level of the Crary aquarium. They swim very slowly around their tank and look up questioningly at me as I try and photograph them. I have been curious how the scientists went about catching them.

Mawsoni is the only large fish found in these Antarctic waters below the ice. An average fish weighs 60 pounds and is about 52 inches long, but the largest ones get up to 200 pounds and nearly 80 inches. They grow slowly, at the rate of only about an inch a year, so a 130-pound fish is about 30 years old. Art DeVries has found that many Antarctic fish produce a natural antifreeze to help them survive the sub-freezing water… a finding that ice cream makers are interested in for keeping ice cream from recrystallizing.

In the small fish hut, a generator-powered winch slowly pulls up the stainless steel line from the five-foot circular hole cut in the sea ice. The first few hooks come up with squid bait still attached. Then Mackenzie, who is standing on a platform in the hole, cries, “Fish.” It’s a 65-pound mawsoni with bulbous gray eyes and fat lips staring up from the water. The crew pulls the fish out carefully and lay it on a wooden tray to remove the hook. Then, they measure and weigh the fish, take a few scale samples, tag its tail, and release it. A small white octopus comes up entwined with one of the other hooks. Then four more mawsoni about the same size. They are docile fish, true survivors in extremely hostile conditions.

In the afternoon, I flew in a helicopter with a couple of tech-support men to Mt. Newall and Lake Vanda in the Dry Valleys. I visited Mt. Newell earlier in the season but was happy to return. This time the sky was slightly overcast, but the mountains in the flat light reminded me of a Dasburg painting of the mountains of New Mexico.I shot for about an hour while the men worked in the seismic station hut. It wasn’t cold, and we sat around on the snow talking as we waited for the helo to return and pick us up.

Lake Vanda was new to me. Bull Pass, where the seismic station is located is a couple of miles for the lake, but we got a good view of the lake as the helo swooped down. It is difficult to photograph the scale of these valleys. Without any vegetation, distances are impossible to judge. You know the mountain sides are bigger than they look, because enormous glaciers drip over their ridges. Mostly, the floor of the valley is clear of snow, but it is pocked with small wind-sculpted rocks. There is no vegetation or wildlife of any kind. Two small huts with seismic equipment and a few tents are the only evidence that the human race has ever visited here. No science is being done here at this time. It’s a strange place, another planet sort of place, and one that I would like to have explored for several days. As it was, the men finished quickly and I reluctantly boarded the helo for McMurdo

Randy Davis gave the science lecture last night on the free-ranging seal research his group has been doing this season. Weddell World is his camp, which I visited a few weeks ago and photographed the seals with cameras on their backs. With the information his group is now obtaining, they can do three-dimensional drawings of the speed and path the seal takes as it forages for food beneath the sea ice. They are learning how the seals manage to conserve their metabolic resources to dive, capture prey, and digest it while diving 200-300 meters below the sea ice. They are learning how the seals locate prey in the dark depths of the ocean below the sea ice. Sometimes after diving they finally get back to the hole only to find it taken over by another seal. Then it's battle or die. They have to breathe.  You have to admire and respect such amazing mammalian machines. When you see them lying on the ice like slugs you would never guess, but in fact they are extremely fuel efficient creatures that have evolved to maximize every ounce and calorie they can ingest.

We humans are considerably less efficient. We require a wide variety of food; all imported at enormous expense to Antarctica, as well as imported fuel to cook the food and to obtain water. I walked over to Scott Base today and photographed the contents of a Food Box. We Americans haven’t got food boxes. We have a large field center, where, if you’re leading a field party, you walk into a giant warehouse of frozen and canned and packaged food and make your choices. The New Zealand Food Box is a vestige of sledging times decades ago, when sturdy wooden boxes of dried and dehydrated food were loaded on Nansen sleds and dragged into the field. Brian, the field center manager, shook his head and told me that nobody wants the Food Box anymore. They want frozen vegetables and meats just like we do. Who wants to eat dried peas, tinned fish, potato flakes, freeze-dried meats, and cabin bread (crackers), if you have a choice? Plus, the wooden boxes, which were so indestructible for sledding, are very heavy for the helicopter flights that ordinarily transport field groups out to where they are working. Often a field party takes the box out and returns it the same way, basically uneaten. You then have very expensive dehydrated potatoes and crackers. Brian says he has worked at Scott Base for 16 years and that the boxes and their contents have remained basically the same for all that time. He is urging the Powers That Be to at least switch to see-through plastic containers.

December 6, 2002. 30 deg F, wind chill 13 deg. F. It’s almost up to freezing outside. A beautiful day to take a walk (which I plan to do this evening). People are shedding their parkas in favor of lighter jackets. No hats or gloves are necessary!

The ITASE traverse team, which left here almost a month ago to travel between Byrd Camp and the South Pole, doing ice coring and climate measuring along the way, has had serious problems. Their fuel sled was too heavy for the snow conditions and the tracks on their Challenger didn't have enough traction to pull a heavy load. They started out and had to give it up after several days and return to Byrd Camp. Yesterday, a plane from New Zealand flew them a new fuel sled and two extra-wide tracks for their thin-tracked tractor. They will take a day or two to fit the wide tracks onto the tractor, pack up all of their gear, and prepare the trains ready for travel once more. Even if everything goes perfectly from now on (not likely!) they will arrive a month late at the South Pole.

A friend at my dinner table last night found a tiny green worm on her salad lettuce. This may be the only such worm in the whole of Antarctica! She put the lettuce leaf on the palm of her hand and carried it around the room, showing the worm to everyone. She said she was considering keeping it as a pet but, given our erratic supply of freshies, the tiny creature may soon go hungry.