Scott Base

Our cross-valley flight was pretty awesome Saturday. We were probably in the air for a couple of hours after all was said and done, and we got some pretty good views. It was a bit nerve wracking coming over some of the cliffs, when all of a sudden the ground is a good 2000 feet farther down than it used to be, but it was still fun.

Today we headed over to take a look at Scott base, the kiwi installation just around the island. It's much smaller, and cleaner looking. All of the buildings are the same green color, and all connected by hanging hallways, so that you don't have to go outside to get from place to place. We were going to meet up with a guide that we had met at Bonney with the BBC guys, but he was out doing some training. It's a bit odd, as he told us he would be in.

For those who wonder, we are scheduled to leave McMurdo on 12/11. We will leave New Zealand on 12/13. I won't know until 12/11, fairly late at night, when I get to Chicago, local time. Since we're leaving on 12/13, and we make up 17 hours coming back, I may well get home on 12/13. I will try to let people know, probably via txt. Some of you may have to make phone calls for me.

Running Water and Electric Lights

With much difficulty, we have arrived in McMurdo once again. We got stuck at LH for two days rather than one, and were nearly stuck at Fryxell for an overnight instead of a simple day trip. It's nice to be clean and have a bed, but I wouldn't want to be in McMurdo for very long. Tomorrow should be a day flight in an AStar, the smaller, faster helo. And you can sit in the front! After that it's just equipment returns and a few more days on ice. For those of you asking, I've seen some life wildlife. There was a skua, a sort of large cold weather seagull, hanging around outside the Crary lab. The things are sort of vicious, swooping down to take food from peoples hands and if you've got a good grip, swooping into the back of your head to make you drop it. They're the reason that most of the dead seals don't have eyes... Cute lookin' though.

Return to Hoare

We made it to Lake Hoare today. All in all it was a pretty relaxed day. We only had one thing to do here. Tomorrow we'll hop to Fryxell and then McMurdo. You can almost count the days at this point.

Looking out at the lake, seeing the buoy site where we worked, makes me feel like I've been here for years. It seems like it couldn't possibly have been just a month and a few days ago that we got to Hoare for the first time. It's all been so constant and draining, and mostly so foreign. Being in such a different place and learning such a different lifestyle makes everything seem to last much longer. Added to the frequent travel and contrasting landscapes, it may as well have been a year. It's not a bad thing, really, just a rare sort of feeling. Well, one more night in a tent.

Life in the Valley of the Dead

As many of you are, I'm sure, aware I have an intense and irrational anxiety associated with the site of dead animals if there is any flesh to be found. It's not as strong for me as when I was a child, but it comes up. Roadkill isn't bad, and I've gotten pretty used to dissections. You may also know that I've got something of a fascination with bones, and find them apt decorative pieces, in the right setting.

So, it's been an interesting time here in the Valleys, where mummified seals and penguins are fairly commonplace. I've taken photos of all individuals I've found. They're all in various conditions, some just bones, some with skin, some with fur or feathers yet.

Mystery Revealed: Posted now on Flickr are ten my choosing. I didn't post the most disturbing of them (there's nothing quite as unsettling as an eyeball that hasn't rotten away in a skull without any skin), in part because it's a public forum, and in part because none of you were expecting it. All photos are of different individuals, not all individuals that I have found will be online. Finally, none of you asked why Mummy Pond was called Mummy Pond!!!! Come on! What a lead in! Oh well.

On a completely different note, bad weather has set in. We're still at Bonney for now.

In the Shape of Things to Come

Well, we're packed up and loaded; everything's ready to go. We finished the last buoy today and put away all of the tools and toys. We'll be at Lake Hoare tomorrow to fix (read: revert to an older version because my keeper didn't properly prepare in Chicago) some software issues. The day after we'll be at Lake Fryxell for the same reason. We won't be drilling any new ablation stakes as Meda is hurting pretty good and doesn't want to strain his back any further. After that we're in McMurdo for a few days, one of which will be a flying tour across a few lakes north of here. We may catch an early flight home, which would put us in Chicago on 12/14 instead of 12/19. I won't know honestly probably until 12/10.

Today I took a walk to Mummy Pond. It was about two hours away, but a pleasant walk. The winds were picking up, but sun dominated until I got there. I was warm enough anyways, and the scenery was nice. There's a high road and a low road, I took the high in and the short out. Up on the bluffs were boulders glaciers. The winds are pretty good across that stretch of land, so many of the rocks were sculpted. It was pretty cool to be able to look down on the lower route, which is an outwash plain of Suess Glacier when the full melt season is on. There were two streams flowing, but it is still colder here than usual. Generally by now the streams are in full bore and you can hear ice calving off of the glaciers frequently. Leave it to me to pick the cold year... The low path was mostly sand and flat. In many places wind and water left ripples in the sand, as if to speak of a beach long since gone. There weren't so many sculpted rocks here, but the contrast was pleasant. Mummy pond itself is smaller than any of the lakes I've been to. It's small enough that the ice is smooth all the way across. There is still ice movement, however. It doesn't form abrupt walls there, rather it swells up, sometimes more than a meter, creating odd and unexpected ice domes. It was a pleasant day, and a hike I've been trying to make since we got to Bonney, but could never find the time for.

One last note, true believers. Tomorrow will see the unveiling of my super mystery photo album extravaganza via my Flickr account (assuming i have the internet still). I haven't decided how many images will be included in the album, but I'm thinking maybe 10 or 15. I have more to chose from that would be appropriate, but don't want to go bananas. For those of you keeping score, I've now taken 984 images (admittedly some of those are work related and I managed to get a few of the floor of the CDC....). Still, you've been warned! When you ask to seem them, expect many!

Mostly Dry Valleys

Today sucked. The hot water drill was almost a joke. The guy shipped it with used pipes and hoses, and some sort of soap in it somewhere. Thankfully we shot it into a bucket on the first run, or the clean up would have been horrendous. The burner wouldn't work, so it was a cold water drill, which simply isn't effective. The weather was terrible today. Grey and windy, cold again. The meltwater at the lake edge is thoroughly refrozen.

And, to top it off, it's snowing in the driest place on Earth. Chances are we won't get our flight tomorrow due to weather, and they don't fly on Sundays, so we won't have our cables and cutters until Monday, which means our Monday move becomes a Tuesday move, our Tuesday a Wednesday, and our Wednesday a Thursday. Hopefully we're not delayed too much more...

Life During Wartime

We've scored a decisive, and potentially final, victory in the war against the Generators today. It is a great day indeed. Unfortunately, on the heels of this spectacular win in glorious battle comes a sudden uprising among the plebeians of the Hotsy region in the Eastern district, aided by their allies the sand grains, in the form of a stuck hose. To add insult to injury, in replacing the hose Meda took a stream of (thankfully not hot or he'd probably be blind) glycol to the face. We quelled this rebellion quickly, but are wary of scattered bands of resistance that may come up when we send a delegation to the barony of Brancker hole. Tension is high.

That much aside, the day was alright I guess. We got the first UW PAR (under water photosynthetically active radiation) replacement logging. We should be done with Jiffy drills, as the lake level measurement has been completed. This is good news for my neck and shoulder. The hot water drill is in today, and we've got to play with it to see how it works. If it does its job, this will be the first step in permanently replacing all Jiffy drills on Ice. Yay us. I made June's Chicken for dinner, which was tasty, sad, and nostalgically pleasant all at once. There's been no time for hiking lately, but I'm hopeful for the weekend. There are two places I'd like to get to before we move on. One of them (is not crucial but) would be helpful to the mystery photo album extravaganza which I'm sure you're all (chirp, chirp) anticipating (read: have completely forgotten about) greatly by now. And at this point it would be good to remember that it's 1:30, and sometimes it's good to sleep.

By the by, the Blood Falls pics finally made it up. They're pretty damn neat.

Blood Falls and The Door to Nowhere

Today we finished the ablation stake survey on the West Lobe, and once again took up arms against the vile nation of Generators. No clear victory was decided, with a win and a loss on both sides. The weather sucked today (clouds, wind, cold) and because of that and my being tired and in a generally terrible mood these past few days, I was pretty cold. Still, there was some salvage of the afternoon.

Today we went to Blood Falls (which is conveniently near one of our ablation stakes). Blood Falls is a section of Taylor Glacier that is very aptly named (see Flickr.com [search for jpwarnock] a few minutes after I finish this). It's an entirely geologic phenomenon (I can explain if you really care); biology has nothing to do with the color. Some people say it is the most interesting looking place on the continent. I'm not sure that I'd go that far, but it was pretty damn cool. Following our viewing of the Falls, we spent some time with one of the other science groups out here, who make their camp there. They're cutting (with chainsaws, dear god!) into Taylor Glacier. They've cut a tunnel, sevenish feet tall, three feet across, and some 20ish meters into the glacier. Then the started cutting down, to the glacier bed. They're looking for bacteria living in the ice. These organisms are especially prevalent near sediment, but do exist throughout. Seeing the entrance to their site (I couldn't go in the tunnel because a stream has flooded their entrance, just a day after they finished. Lucky boys.) is quite bizarre. It's like there's a door going into the glacier. Just a big, dark, rectangular hole in the ice, not a site I'm likely to see again (it will take about a year for the glacier to heal itself. all things considered, I think that's damn quick). I think in my own right I've spent a fair amount of time down the rabbit hole and through the looking glass, but this is something altogether different.

Ventifact Garden

We finished another drill hole today, and got a third as close to done as we can until we have an available melter. I took a ride by myself to fill the Hotsy that we do have running, and the view was spectacular. All of the little ice peaks, like frozen waves, caught the golden sunlight in a million places. But here a thousand blue, and here a thousand red and every other color you could need pulled from light split by ice.

It was a pretty productive day, but as the day wore on, things fell apart. Our generator on the East Lobe is broken, as is our Hotsy, and now the Limno generator is down too. The ATV is allegedly having problems, but I am skeptical. So for every success, a setback. Still, work got done, and tomorrow will be the ablation stakes, which will be a nice trip around the East and West Lobes.

Deciding to retreat after dinner before something else broke, I headed up hill. The mountain behind Bonney camp is exposed bedrock at the top, and I wanted to have a look. It's also one of the better spots to find ventifacts around here. The things were quite massive, some rocks more than fifteen feet tall and five feet thick sitting in place all carved with holes and tunnels and spires and groves and pits. By the time i hit the top of the hill, I was actually getting frustrated that there were so many I wanted to look at. At this point I'm pretty ready for bed, so it's off to the tent again.

Bonney

Well, we've flown in to Lake Bonney today. It was a nice flight with some good views. We flew later than we were scheduled to, but it wasn't so bad. We got one hole drilled today, but it took longer than it should have, on account of the film crew. We were filmed by a BBC documentary group. They filmed us drilling the hole in it's entirety, plus the underwater camera going in and measuring the ice thickness. He had me give a spiel about why we research here, which hopefully won't anger Peter. Anyways, I'll almost certainly be on TV in England, and might even have a speaking part. And I've officially been directed. It was fun, I just hope I don't get in trouble... We were going to do the second hole tonight, but Meda opted to wait. So, we'll do it tomorrow morning. Time to see how the new tent feels. 'night.

Turkey Lurkey Time

Ok, so maybe the song references Christmas, but (ten points if you can ID the source sans search engine)... Well, it was a pretty good one. We are still stuck at Lake Fryxell due to weather, so the hike to Lake Hoare was shorter. The spread was great; no one went hungry and there was a pretty good holiday variety. We had a crowd of something like 21, which is less than usual, actually. Still, it was a damn good time. There were many photos taken, but I'm not sure how many are going to be posted. I learned a new game (the wounds /shouldn't/ scar), table traverse, which will have to be practiced at home. Due to weather, there was no flight home, so it's rather later than it should be. Good night all. If we don't fly tomorrow, there may be violence.

Chapter 28, In which many lessons are learned.

Amoung them: if you leave the cheese to thaw on the propane heater for two episodes of X-men (~40min) while you're trying to figure out what's wrong the the sonar, you will end up with a zip-top bag full of melted cheese, even if it started frozen.
:the slime attached to Brancker buoys when you pull them out of a frozen lake smells very, very bad.
:that ridge, the one over east, in the direction of the ocean, the one you can only see sky over, is neither the farthest nor the highest ridge.
:stream team boys who are working late at F6, but have to pee, will not bother getting dressed for their trip to the barrel, but will rather run very fast in a t-shirt and gym shorts.
:INXS, through Jethro Tull, to Jimmy Eat World seems to take about three hours, when one's coworker does not decided to push stop when one leaves.
:a simple picture will often brighten one's day, even when there is 24 hour daylight.

Feet on the Ground, Head in the Sky

Well, it's almost 1 in the morning, so it's bed time. I just got in from a nice hike. I decided to go to the top of a mountain, behind camp. I'll post some pictures tomorrow (although there are new ones today. I hope you're not all bored of them...). Anyways, it was just awesome. By the time I hit the top I could see all of Lake Fryxell and the ocean. If it hadn't been for a few clouds, I might have even seen McTown. Many of the rocks up there are wind sculpted (they never do get the face right), and quite pretty to look at. I think that this may be the highest I've ever climbed, or at least the greatest elevation change that didn't involve a vehicle. I was high enough that I could see over some of the mountain glaciers into the next valley south. I couldn't see the next valley north (as I had been hoping) due to some ice in the way.... I'll be there eventually anyways. Well, I'm beat and we work on Sundays. Later.

Chip chop

Well, that's two sonars taken care of. But since something was working... The surface PAR (photosynthetically active radiation) sensor is broken. Actually, one of the wires cracked. But it's not our fault! Yay! We've patched it up so that it's working, but a good strong wind will probably mess it up again. So we have to replace it, as soon as they can fly a new one in to us. That should be today. After that, we have to tie down the cut wires of the Brancker. I got to chip out the ice hole so that we could get to it last night. It didn't take all that long, thankfully we did it this way instead of waiting for chainsaws. Still, a good three foot square hole in the ice takes some effort. Maybe I'll pick up ice-chipper as a weapon proficiency. It's probably too heavy to be useful. Ah well. Today we're just waiting for this sensor, then we're out to finish some things up.

Snip Snap

The weather was great today, full sun, a few lazy clouds, and hovering around 20F. I took a long walk to the 'Tourist Zone.' This is the only place on the continent open to tourists. The only way to get there is on a cruise boat equipped with helicopters. Should you take one of these cruises, you will have the pleasure of walking around a couple hundred foot square patch of hills in the Dry Valleys. The average price of one of these cruises is $30,000/person. Any takers? Right. So this is the only place on the continent (with the exception of the McMurdo greenhouse) where plants grow. Moss, specifically, and grow is pretty generous. Still, it's there. None of it is brave enough to be green, but some of it is a good-old-college-try shade of yellow. The hills are pretty there. Many of the rocks are wind sculpted, although not as much so as in other places. The rocks are pretty, and you're pretty close to the glacier. It overlooks Fryxell. Anyways, it was a nice way to kill a few hours this afternoon while the hotsy melted and the coms guys worked on getting the phone up and active.

After I got back we went to drill our last hole here. In the course of drilling, we managed to cut the damn cables we were trying to free. So, either we spend a few extra days at Fryxell pulling the thing (an underwater temperature sensor) out without just sending it to the bottom of the lake, or Peter deals with it later. Maybe he'll dive for it. We were both pretty impressed that we cut the cable. The drill edge was at least six inches away from it. The continent is accident prone. :( Well, it's almost midnight and we have an early morning tomorrow. JabberWocky over and out.

Good news/Bad news

The sonar points up, towards the ice/water interface in order to determine how/when/how fast ice moves up and new ice is added to the bottom.

Well, the good news is they fixed the internet. So it'll be working for a while, now. Also, no yetti attacks.

The bad news is that we had a hell of a day drilling. Our lake level hole was too close to shore, although I don't know how it could have been. So, after drilling three meters of ice, we hit the sandy bottom. Two drill blades were sacrificed (read: obliterated beyond recognition) in deciding that this was the bottom, and not just a sand pocket in the ice. After that we had to move to a new possition, which it looked like was going to be a loss until water sprang out at the last minute. So, a one hour job took all day. I was going to go hike around Fryxell basin for a bit, but now I don't know if I have the energy. Also, ice goblins have decided that this would be a great place to put lots of happy foot traps which cause one or your feet to suddenly be six inches below the other.

And our base radio is out of whack, so we only have the hand radios. That means that if we want to contact McMurdo (for our daily required check in, as an example) we get to walk up the hill and hold our hand helds really high and hope we get through. And the day started out so well....

Sonar Success; Scheduled Relocation

Well, the sonar is finally in. All it took was an emergency fly in of steel cable, ferrels, clamps, cutters... So it's installed, and seems to be working. It was cold today, and cloudy. Still, the sand is starting to sink into the ice noticably. It won't be long before the streams are flowing.

And we're packing. Tomorrow we will fly to Lake Fryxell. Fryxell is just over Canada Glacier from Hoare, actually the two would be lake Froare if it wasn't for the glacier. So we won't be going far, but it will be a completely different view. It will just be Meda and I there, too. That means we'll be doing the cooking now and such. So far this season, Fryxell station has been without internet. While Coms is working on that, there's a pretty good chance I'll have no net for a week or so. That means I'm probably signing off for now...

A Light Climb

Well, it's Sunday, and generally there is no work on Sunday. That usually doesn't apply to the science groups, but we were a head of schedule, so I went with the glacier team to get to the top of Suess Glacier. I didn't get to the actually top, but got to climb around a little. Suess isn't really a good choice for a first time, there are ice walls to climb and crevasses around the edges. So I played around on the sides, learning how to climb up ice walls and such. Also, the crampons I was using were not so good, so I couldn't do as much as I would have liked. Still, it was a fun day. Tomorrow we have to pull the buoy back out of the water and give it more line and re-attempt the sonar that way. Joy. So much for a lazy Monday. Here's hopin' it works.

Scoured Clean, Take Two

Alright. This site is acting pretty wonky. Or maybe it's my connection. Either way, I seem to be having issues, hence, nothing last night. Anyways, we had a productive day yesterday. We got a new hole drilled, expanded the buoy hole enough to be useful, to some data downloaded from one of the stations, and packed a few things for the next lake. We'll helo to Fryxell on Tuesday.

After dinner I walked to the other end of Lake Hoare. It was a bit more than an hour to get there. With the snow finally blown away, the lake is completely different. You've never seen so many shades of blue. And there are so many patters of bubbles in the ice, too. Some are like feathers, or pancakes, or strings coming straight up, or crazy curvy brain patterns. I did some sample collection, too. That was a relief, to have it started. I'll get some more pictures up (if the internet will let me), before we go back to work.

The Wind and the Rain

Wind last night. Soooooo much wind. There were gusts that would not only lift the rain fly on the tent, but lift the base of the tent and my head with it. Yeesh. The lake looks totally different, scoured free of snow.

Well, after a bit of magic we had generators again. We just warmed the damn things. I could understand that helping, except that the first day we used them, it was -30. Today it was -5. . . That's bunches and bunches warmer already. Once again, what use is a single data point? So, we had some success today. We got some drilling done, and some surveying. We're still behind, but it shouldn't be much of an issue. I'm much to tired to go walking around, plus my new homework just got posted. I'm sure I'll learn plenty being this tired and... right. So I guess it's a short one today. G'night.