News

Sunday, 11 October, 1999

I think you are 17 hours behind me. We are on the same time as New Zealand. Anyway, it doesn't really matter because the sun never sets -- it just gets lower or higher in the sky.

We (my group of 50) arrived in Christchurch last Monday. We got our clothing issue on Tuesday and were supposed to leave on Wednesday. Weather delayed us one day and I went through a couple of museums in Christchurch. Thursday we assembled at the airfield at 0415 to get on the C-141. Because there had been a back-up in flights, our group was at 107 strong. We took off at 0800 and arrived in McMurdo at 1400. The rest of the afternoon we got our orientation and room assignments. I'm living in a place called Hotel California -- one of the older dorms at the station, but not bad. The room is not overheated, and so far, I do not have a roommate. I expect someone will show up next week, though.

The very next day (Friday), I went to the field for what is known as Happy Camper School. It is actually a snow and cold weather survival school. I was in a group of 14 folks all of whom are going to outlying camps in Antarctica. We spent the night in the field. At 0300, the temperature was -30 F. By 1400 Saturday, the temperature had gone up to 0 F. Amazingly, I managed to stay warm! The views here are absolutely awesome. The air is so clear that mountains 30 miles away look like they are within walking distance. From our campsite, Mt. Erebus (a bubbling volcano) is our major landmark. We can also see Scott Base, the New Zealand research station, and one end of the trans-antarctic mountain range. Castle Rock is prominent in our landscape, and it is a four-hour walk from camp.

After our return to McMurdo Saturday afternoon, I had dinner and was so beat I watched part of a movie on TV and hit the sack at about 9pm. I slept straight through to 8am this morning.

This job is going to be interesting. Tomorrow we will begin inventorying our field gear and start running through field procedures. First trip to the Antarctic plateau will not be until it warms up a little to about -30 F to -40 F. We don't expect that to happen until the first week in November. However, I'm sure we will keep busy here at McMurdo. We will also start hands-on snowmobile maintenance and repair next week. Might get a test drive out to Cape Evans where Shackleton's 1907 hut is. Dealing with the cold is a challenge, but should be OK after I get acclimated. I'll send along some other observations.

Sunday, Oct 24th
Well, I'm still doing fine. The first issue of the Antarctic Sun was published this week. It is on-line at www.asa.org. Click on the Antarctic Sun icon. The photo of the snow camp was taken during my class. The snow wall shown in the picture shielded two tents from the wind. The other tent in the picture is an AGO team tent that we pitched for practice.

This week, the rest of our team assembled. Remy Fourre and Joe Kujawski are the lead engineers, Anna Stegemoeller and I are the support engineers, and Kevin Killilea and Dave Zastrow are the groomers. I think the team will work well. The plan is for Remy, Anna and Dave to go to three AGOs (Automated Geophysical Observatories) and Joe, Kevin and me to do the other three.

This year, we will upgrade five AGOs with a new controller and modifications to all the experiments. We will install an air pump on the thermo-electric generator (TEG) to make it less sensitive to wind gusts across its exhaust stack. In past years, gusting wind has caused back drafts down the exhaust stack that blows out the burner. When the TEG go off, the station cools down and the experiments exhaust the batteries and die.

This past week, Anna and I got some experience repairing snowmobiles. Fortunately, we were able to work in a heated bay and not outside. Frankly, I really don't want to have to fix one of these things in a -40 wind. Actually, the groomer's job is to operate and maintain the snowmobiles, but they occasionally need help with a repair, so we want to be ready for that.

Remy and Joe are hard at work organizing their upgrade kits. They shipped boxes of parts packed in more packing than we will need from McMurdo to the AGO, so we consolidated parts kits and have reduced the number of boxes we have to haul.

Tomorrow our group will go to the propane yard and assemble the pallets of propane tanks that will be flown into the AGO site. Each AGO requires 1000 gallons of propane for one year. We will put together two pallets for each site - one pallet containing 6 125-gallon tanks and one containing 5 tanks. The fifth tank on the second pallet is filled with nitrogen. Propane is a liquid at the temperatures at which it is stored, and the nitrogen is used to drive it out of the tank and through a copper tube to the AGO, where it is vaporized and burned. We have to assemble the pallet, strap the containers together for air shipment, connect the tanks together with copper tubing and fill them with propane. We will do five sets of tanks. The sixth set will have to be done back here, in McMurdo, after we have upgraded one site and retrograded its empty tanks.

Right now, the plan is to fly to the South Pole on Nov 3 and acclimatize for four days. As I write this, it is too cold to fly to the Pole. The temp is -70 and the air density yields a physiological altitude of over 20,000 feet. Also, we can't get a twin otter off the ground with our cargo with that low an air density.

First put-in for Joe, Kevin and me is scheduled for Nov 8 at AGO 2 in the Pensacola Mountain region (85deg 40min S, 46deg 23min E; alt 6,102 ft, 261 nm from the Pole). Remy, Anna and Dave will do AGO 3 on the Eastern Plateau (82deg 28min S, 28deg 35min E; alt 9,800 ft, 437 nm from the Pole). Each team will be at the AGO for 14 days. We will call a C-130 forward with the propane and to extract us. The return flight will pass back through the Pole and return to McMurdo. We will then repeat the process for two more sites: AGOs 1 and 4 with put-in scheduled for 26 Nov. We are debating whether to return to McMurdo, because we lose our acclimatization by returning to sea level. However, there are no beds at the Pole for us and we will have to camp out. I'll let you know what we do.

By and large, the weather has been quite nice this week. Temps have hovered around 0 deg F. One day, I'm sure the temp climbed into the teens. Yesterday and today the temp is down and the wind is up which makes for frigid air. So far we haven't had any storms and the sky has been clear and sunny. -- Tom Barfield