December 28 - 30, 2010... Braving the wind and cold while working on the ice.

Almost every day, I wore 4 layers at the bottom, 6 layer on top including the big red parka, 2 hats, 4 layers of gloves with hand warmers, 3 layers of socks with a pair of toe-warmers, goggles with a customized fleece nose protector, and white big bunny boots (resembling the big boots Mickey Mouse wears).

This picture is taken in a still decent weather. Most of the times, it would be so bad that the whole nose and mouth my cap would be white.

At this altitude (South Pole’s pressure altitude is about 11000 ft), one slows down a lot. Short of breath especially while climbing up anywhere is pretty common. When you walk, you walk very slowly. You can hear a funny noise your bunny boots make on the loose, fluffy, and freshly blown in snow. When you walk, your breath sounds as if you are in a space suit and breathing through an oxygen mask or something. Your breath freezes as it leaves your nostrils.. It shows up as a frost or snow accumulated on your nose cover and parka collar. The air is so clean and dry, that you feel like a searing pain in your lungs every time you inhale without some kind of cover on your nose. You take your outer gloves off, you will start feeling chilling numbness in your fingers. If you ignore this and don’t start warming the hands by keeping them in your inner pockets, you are likely to encounter a throbbing sensation and pain in your fingers. The same goes for toes. If you stand still in snow for long time, toes will just start hurting. You need to make sure you keep moving your fingers and toes because you don’t want to have them frozen and dead.. :P If your breath goes inside your goggles, they will fog. The worst part is, if you take your goggles/ glasses out to clean this fog, you will see a frost instantly developing on the glasses. This is indeed a very harsh continent. But, there is a different excitement and fun of actually being here. With some experience and trials, one learns the best way to keep himself/herself warm (with different combination of clothes, different number of layers etc.) You start reducing the dressing time eventually. I am now ready to head out within 10 minutes instead of 20 minutes. Eat, drink water, sleep and work is all you do when you are here. But, trust me it is fun.. :)

The other thing I would like to mention here is the satellite availability. Phone and internet worked only during these satellite times. We had limited availability during early mornings and afternoons. So, during my work days, the only time I could log on to the internet was right after I get up. This added up with the physical exertion everyday made me take a long time to get my blog updated.

Satellite pass at South Pole.

So, all we did for the next three - four days was work, sleep and eat. With the help of a couple of general assistants, Bob and I made a great progress working with the second system. However, we started having some or the other problem with our instruments on both the systems: search coil magnetometer, flux gate magnetometer and dual frequency GPS receiver. We started debugging and experimenting with the help of people back in US.

December 27, 2010... Field team and Pole team

Early morning, Hyomin and Joseph along with our mountaineer Julian left to the remote site PG2 in a twin otter. They will try replacing an Iridium cable and see if we could communicate with the system, if not, instead of debugging in -40 deg C, they will pack and bring the system back.

There was a nice surprise awaiting me at the galley. We had Indian lunch that day: naan, masoor daal, chicken curry, palak saag, flower-pees subji. :D I was extremely thrilled to have Indian food at the South Pole.. :)

Me and Bob started to get our cargo together on the other site for our second system. The cargo people here with their huge caterpillars, helped us move our heavy instrument boxes.

December 26, 2010... Sunday: Still a work day for us

I was ready to go out again with my team and work on our first system. We almost finished working on it. We had to revisit it later to fix some of our instruments after we heard back the status from our engineer and our Steve from Ann Arbor.

What was more tiring during this day was changing the clothes every time I head out or come back. For the coming few days, I decided not to go through this hassle and keep all my layers except the parka (even though you sweat a lot inside the heated station) when we return to the station for lunch etc.

Later in the evening, we dressed up again and went to the Pole to take some pictures. I held our Indian flag high and was a proud Indian to put it next to the South Pole. Just a reminder, Antarctica is a free continent and doesn’t belong to any nation.

We could not start our work on the second system. It was necessary to finish building the two systems at the Pole before our departure date on 3^rd Jan, 2011. So, amongst four of us, I decided to stay back and help Bob set up the next system at the Pole while Hyomin and Joseph were going to fly towards the remote camp on the Eastern Antarctic plateau about 650 km from the pole to retrieve a system that stopped working in a month after it was deployed 2 years back. In a way, I was glad stay back in the warmth of the station at least at nights instead of sleeping in cold tents on the plateau. I also had a loads of good food available all the time at the station!

December 25, 2010... Merry Christmas

I stayed back on the Christmas day and along with the whole station enjoyed the holiday. My other team members worked even that day. In the morning, we had some gifts to exchange. The later part of the day was slow and relaxing for me when I tried to catch on my blog. At 10.00 am, many enthusiasts at the station took part in the “race around the world” which was a 3 mile-long lap around the station starting and ending at the South Pole.

Race around the world starting at the South Pole.

The whole day, our galley scroll was showing Santa Claus’s North pole to South Pole flight status.. We finally learned that the flight was delayed due to Ornery reindeer. :D

Later in the evening, we had a Christmas special dinner. The blinds in the galley were down to imitate night (we were already getting bored of too much light, this was a welcome change) and the TVs showed fire. Everyone was dressed nicely and we were served an amazing dinner and wine. After the dinner, we had a small social where we were filled in with loads of exciting stories by the polar research veterans: Bob, Vladimir and Don.

Christmas fire on the Galley TV.

A nice Christmas special dinner.

December 22 - 23, 2010... Getting Acclimatized at the Pole

On December 22, 2010, we just surveyed places to decide where two of our Space Science systems are going to be. We stopped by the South Pole and took some pictures at Southern end of the world. This was the highlight of the day. More excitement followed with our snow mobile training in the afternoon. A snow mobile is a pretty cool and useful vehicle. We used two machines for four of us for the coming days, to go to our farthest site, move stuff around etc. We got our stuff moved to our work place. A cherry on the cake for me was I got to see sundogs that day.

Sundogs. The picture is not that great though.. It was just too bright, I could hardly see my camera screen.. I do have a video on my flip. I will upload it on youtube once I get back to US.

Me riding a snow mobile.

December 23 was the third day at South Pole and we were already in on the ice shoveling, setting up our stuff. While your body is trying to get acclimatized, i.e. while it is already working hard to settle up oxygen level, heart and respiration rate, you need to take it a bit easy by not giving the body extra muscle work. I learnt a tough lesson that day. My body could not take the strain. That resulted in shortness of breath, high respiration and heart rate, and dry cough and fever. I had to stay back for next couple of days to avoid any medical complications and high altitude sickness.

December 21, 2010... Heading further South

I don't think we did anything constructive on December 20 apart from getting ready to go to the South Pole. We had to take our bags to the check-in place that evening. This event is called "bag drag" in Antarctic lingo.

We left McMurdo on December 21, 2010 around 9.00 am. LC 130 was like a huge hippo with a belly full of cargo and a couple pf snow machines probably caterpillars. Our carry-on bags were strapped in the center and about 15 of us sat on the side seats. I was the only female in the group and I got a seat at a very end on one side, where it will be convenient for me to go to the back of the plane to use the ladies toilet if I want to. For men, there was a urinal at the other end with a big curtain around it.. :D Remember, it is mainly a military cargo plane..

It wasn’t really comfortable take off for me as everybody was sliding towards the tail end where I was sitting or rather falling off from the seat. The take off time was quiet longer as the plane takes off from the ice and thus needs a longer runway to comfortably get in the air. Once we were up, I changed my place to another empty spot and dozed off for a while. The bunny boots have a small valve for altitude pressure control of the air inside the boots. That air acts as a good insulator but needs to be controlled at different altitudes. So, we had to leave the valve open. It was so loud inside the plane that we had to use ear plugs. Slowly, everyone started moving around, taking pictures from the two small windows available on the plane. Some of us visited the cockpit as well. It was an incredible view from up there.. We crossed the trans-antarctic mountain ranges, some glaciers etc. and then we saw all white flat landscape. I got the worst seat while taking off and the best seat while landing back. I got to sit in the cockpit during the landing. It was just breathtaking experience. The Amundsen-Scott South Pole station getting bigger from a tiny little spot on horizon was one of the scenes I will never forget. The landing on the ice was pretty smooth. In fact, it was so smooth that we really didn’t realize when we were on ground.

Me in cockpit

When we landed, I locked the valves on my bunny boots, stepped outside and had a blast of cold, clean air hitting my lungs instantly. I had to be very slow while walking towards the station from the landing place. We had an orientation, lunch and then enough rest. The first 2-3 days are very crucial while acclimatizing to a high altitude place like the Pole. I saw the South Pole from the galley, our dining place but I was not ready to venture out in the cold right away. That was a wise decision and thus, I could go out the next day.

I will never forget this day because I had one of the most amazing flight experiences, I landed on the South Pole on a special day: Summer solstice of the southern hemisphere and winter solstice of the northern hemisphere. It was literally the biggest and longest day of my life. :D

December 19, 2010... McMurdo: Kiwi base and Discovery hut

Sunday was a lazy day for everyone else but I got up at 6 am to talk to my parents back home (India is 7:30 hours behind). After a good full brunch, we all scattered to do whatever we want. Some went to attend the Service at the church, I went out to the Kiwi base: Scott base about 3 miles from McMurdo.

In the afternoon, we went on a small tour to the Discovery hut near McMurdo station built by Robert Scott in 1902. His team was surviving on the last bits of 800 or so gallons of rum, 800 pounds of steak and some oatmeal, cocoa, seal meat they gathered here during their expedition.. When the help arrived, the members had to leave in a hurry, so you could see half cooked meat, half eaten cookies, an opened seal (the smell was atrocious).. Everything is preserved like it is and esp. in the cold weather down there, all food items are still like they were 100 + years back.

On our way back we saw some seals lying around..

December 18, 2010 ... Wrapping up work and some fun time

We met our mountaineer in the morning got all our work, food collection checked. The next task was to get the cargo properly packed ready to ship. We got each and every packet with its contents registered in the McMurdo Cargo system (We had 27 packets in our list!)

I attended a 2 hour communication class to know in detail about the VHF, HF and Iridium communications in Antarctica. These communication modes may get some interruptions. The GPS navigation system always works fine even in Antarctica with visibility of at least 10 satellites all the time.

The work was done and now was some time to relax. There was a "Women Soiree" that evening. It was a small charity function cum talent show arranged by women in McMurdo. We thoroughly enjoyed it..

December 16-17, 2010 ... Preparing our camping gears and Food Pullout

Even though we were extremely worn out due to the time intensive drills at the happy campers, we had to take care of a lot of things to prepare for our field camp further away from the South Pole.

So, we have two systems to be set up at the South Pole and we have another system to fix or pull out from a place which is quiet remote.. The site is about 650 km away from the South Pole and about 2000 ft higher (an altitude of 12000 ft). Some of us will stay and finish the work on the systems here at the pole and some of us will go to the remote site. A twin otter plane will drop us off around 27 th December. We first need to set up our own camp near the system at the remote place. Then work on the instrument, if required, pull it down and bring it back with us. Now, here is a catch. We will be ready to be picked up in 2-3 days. But, there is just one twin otter in this area and several such groups to be dropped off and picked up from various places. The weather plays the most crucial role in deciding the flights. So, in worst case, we can be there waiting for the plane and praying for the bad weather to calm down for about a week extra.

For the two days, we were simply trying to get all our cargo including all camping gears such as sleep kits, tents, shovels, kitchen box, survival bags, Gamow bag, toilet cans etc. at one place. We also had a food pull out where we took food for 4 people (including mountaineer) for four days and 7 days worth emergency food (dehydrated meals). Food included breakfast items such as cereals, instant oatmeals, lunch items such as energy bars, soups, trailmixes with loads of dry fruits and nuts, and dinners including rice or pasta and meat.. I might have to pass on steak etc... but we do have veggie soup options to go with rice.. Powdered energy drinks and hot cocoa was of course included.

December 14-15, 2010... Happy Campers

Finally I got some peaceful time to write more. This post is probably going to be a little bigger because by far what I am going to update you with is the highlight of our stay.

On Tuesday December 14, 18 people including three of us gathered for a Field Safety Training Program (FSTP). They call it "happy campers" here for either because some people do get happy at the end of the camping or the training is so excruciating that they try to make you feel good by giving this program a happier name... :P Well, for me to start with it was not so happy experience but later it was.. :)

We were on a very tight schedule from the minute the program started. We first had a classroom training on risk management as camping on the ice in the middle of no where involves great risk. Negligence or poor handling of risky issues from your side may get your life as well as lives of people around you in danger. We then learnt about some medical issues encountered because of high wind, cold, sun etc. Sunburns are most common, in fact, with the Antarctic ozone hole, UVA and UVB radiations are extremely strong. There are direct UV radiations as well as those reflected from snow. Sunblock is a must to avoid any sunburns, skin cancer etc. The other issue is snow blindness. If you take out your sunglasses/ goggles you are sure to get a temporary or longer lasting blindness caused by snow. When we were flying to McMurdo, I briefly experienced it while looking out of the flight. This is similar to when you look at the sun for sometime, later when you close your eyes, you can still see a sort of negative image of the sun. This itself is annoying. The aftereffects of snow blindness are almost the same but just replace the sun's small disc by an extended white sheet all over your view. The next things we were told about were frostsnips and frostbites (due to cold winds on exposed body parts) and hypothermia (drop in body temperature). These can get pretty dangerous at high altitudes if neglected in primary stages. Let me not scare you all anymore. However, I can assure you is that we were made aware of these issues and asked to take enough precautions to avoid them.

So, with this knowledge, we all were taken to a remote location for camping on the ice. It was not too far away from McMurdo. Even the Kiwi base (NZ station) was in our visibility. There was some traffic around as well, since we were also close by the balloon launching (BLAST - an astronomy program) facility. Anyhow, the idea was still to simulate the field experience. So, Megan and Julian our instructors planned our training such that they will let us know what all to do and then will leave us on our own on the ice for the night. We had a beautiful view of Mount Erbus (an active volcano) and Mount Terror. The site was on sea ice (McMurdo is itself a part of Ross island), but we were not directly on the sea ice. We were on a glacier. There were interesting structures close by called pressure ridges where a part of sea ice tries to push the glacier in other direction. In fact, this region has some thin ice and seals can make their way out on the open. We saw a couple of them very far away probably sun bathing.. :D

We reached this place where we were taught how to work with special stoves, how to put up tents etc. We then built a 'snow wall' to protect our small tents called Mountaineering tents from the wind. We set up our kitchen which was mostly making hot water only.. :) All the food was either dehydrated where you simply add hot water and let it stay warm inside your jacket for 10 minutes or so to cook or it was just nuts, chocolates and energy bars. The drinks were hot water or hot chocolate. As the day passed, the sun and a lot of physical work were making us too warm. People started to enjoy their "beach vacation" by building fun structures like a dining room for all 18, snow trenches to sleep in for the night. 8 snow trenches which resembled small tombs gave that area a look of a graveyard. We knew that the place where we will be going to field camp is going to be nowhere closer to this one. It will be all flat, with no direction bearing (compass doesn't work near South Pole effectively), windy, cold (25 to 30 degree below what we were experiencing here) and at least 3000 m above this sea level. So, this indeed was just a beach vacation.

We did have unlimited supply of water. Just scoop fresh snow nearby and add it to the pot to boil.

The next day morning, we were taken back to an on-the-field classroom which was a small hut- a little permanent structure compared to the tents. We were taught how to use VHF, HF radios, their protocols etc. HF radio had variable frequencies (by varying the length of the dipole antenna) from 4.77 MHz to 11.33 MHz. The protocols were way easier than that HAM radio protocols. I am not sure if you can use these radios for hamming though.. Anyway, we setup and made test calls with HF.

After this we had a real life scenario training. They gave us a situation: "Your flight has crashed while going to remote place. The plane is burnt. You manage to just get one survival bag and HF radio. You are 9 people and one of you has a broken leg. There is a condition 1 storm coming from the horizon. (Condition 1 is the worst condition: windy, stormy, white everywhere, you loose all orientation, while Condition 3 is the best condition with clear weather.) How will you handle this situation?" We had to use our classroom knowledge from our risk management class. Set up HF antenna quickly to request help. In the mean time, set up the tent, secure it with snow wall, boil hot water, tend to the injured person etc.. We actually did this all as if we were in that situation really... We were later told that this is probably one of the worst case situation thrown at us. This part of the training was good. We used every bit of knowledge gathered during the whole camping time.

The second scenario was "We are inside a tent. One of us went out to use the toilet and never came back in 20 minutes. It is condition 1 outside. How would you go an rescue that person before he/she gets hypothermic." Well, we failed this test. We spent too much time planning and probably had lost that person by then. Finally when we got out making a human chain with the help of a rope and with buckets on our heads to simulate the stormy condition where we can't see/ hear anything and have no bearing, we were all so disoriented that we had to break the chain and come back. The lesson learnt was: not to go out in stormy conditions!

We were so tired and exhausted with the two day continuous drills that by the time we got back to McMurdo we all were drained out. We still had to sit through a helicopter rescue video and learn things without dozing off.. :P The three of us: me, Joseph and Hyomin going to the actual field camp, had to still drag our humongous sleep kits to the cargo cage provided to us (will write about that in the next post) for our next big adventure. The day ended with a nice shower and an amazing meal which we really appreciated after that dehydrated dinner we had at the camp site.

At the end of the day though we were all happy campers!

December 13, 2010... McMurdo: More Trainings and Briefings

Today's day was really hectic. We had an environment conservation briefing. Antarctica is a protected place and to conserve its natural habitat (yes! there are abundant species living in the sea) all countries have a treaty to take back what they bring here. Basically, Antarctica belongs to no one and that's why, you cannot take anything out from this place and you cannot bring anything that might contaminate the surroundings here. They ask you to dust off your shoes, camping gears, throw all the fruits, veggies that might get any fly or insects. Even whatever waste is produced here is supposed to be shipped back to your own country to dispose off. So, here at McMurdo, they carefully separate all the waste, package it and send it back to USA to dispose off.

After this briefing, we had to go and meet several people to arrange our field camping gear, food, science instruments for project, Iridium and HF communication equipment. We sort of got started on this, checked items on our list, requested stuff we might need so that they can arrange by the time we are back from our happy campers course or snow school day after. Although this was a lot to do in a day, the whole process is made a lot simpler by organizing things before hand. People here work over many seasons and thus are trained to take care of these things efficiently.

In the afternoon, we had a 2 hour course on altitude sickness. So, there are some interesting facts. When we are going to be at the South Pole the physical altitude is 9300 ft. But, with thinner air, less oxygen and thus lower pressure, altitude felt by the human body is around 11000 ft. We will be higher up at around 13000 ft pressure altitude at our remote work site. That means, the body tries to work hard to get more oxygen to the brain and the blood. In other words, it tries to ''acclimatize" by increasing respiration, heart rate, red blood cell production, pulmonary artery pressure and also diuresis (urinary output).

If the body is not well rested and hydrated at high altitudes, altitude sickness may occur at varying levels. There is something called as Acute Mountain Sickness (AMS) which is more common with symptoms like headache (or even mild brain swelling), fatigue, nausea etc. Severe AMS or High Altitude Cerebral Edema (HACE) may even cause loss of muscular coordination, severe headache (severe brain swelling), decreased mental status and even death sometimes! Well, they say if you have a big head a smaller brain, you are less susceptible to HACE.. Jokes apart, this is a big deal here as it is very difficult to carry out any emergency rescue operation on a short notice because of the harsh weather conditions. The more serious version of altitude sickness may cause leakage of fluids in lungs and the only way out is an emergency evacuation to a lower altitude. Well, so we learnt about all this how to prevent it by taking it easy for the first couple of days. It takes a month to get acclimatized in these extreme conditions. But, we come on a time limited mission and get only a couple of days to 'feel better'. So, I will have to remember drinking loads of fluids to avoid following condition.. :D

December 12, 2010, A Special Day

12/12 is a special day for many reasons.. It is special because of now two pretty girls who have their birthdays on this day..

Anyway, it was a day off here. So, I just wondered around to see the sun going round and round the whole day.. We also had Crary lab tour where I saw and touched a sea version of touch-me-not plant (लाजाळूचे झाड). It was a sea cucumber from the Antarctic sea which retracted when touched.. :D I loved playing with it in that special touch tank.. I then went out on a small stroll and took a lot of pictures at 10.30 pm at night..

The mountain on the left is called Mount Discovery.

December 11, 2010... C17 Flight to the Ice

We were scheduled to be on the US air force flight C17 to McMurdo leaving at 7.30 am. A shuttle took us to the same place where we did our clothing. We were required to wear the Cold Weather gear. After the security check in they showed us film about Antarctica and the dangers involved in this adventure. We were then taken to C17 by a bus. This loud hippo (Airbus 330-200) can land on ice (of course it needs a longer runway). We enjoyed the five hour journey in its enclosed belly at the end of which we were treated with the breath-taking views of this end of the planet..

December 10, 2010... Gearing up for Extreme Cold Weather

The next day, our main task was to get cold weather gear from USAP's Clothing Distribution Center (CDC). We went there and tried all those different clothes. There are at least three layers and it is necessary to have pretty much all of them when you enter this cold continent. Here is a poster showing what you need to wear on the flight to McMurdo, Antarctica..

December 9, 2010... In the land of Kiwis

We arrived Christchurch pretty late in the afternoon after a 36 hour journey. But, the beauty of this place just dazzled us so much that the fatigue of travel simply vanished as we entered. It was so pleasant, green and bright that for a second we just forgot the worst weather in Blacksburg (the night before we left, we touched -20 degrees C!)

We had a wonderful afternoon at the Cathedral, downtown of Christchurch. It was not so difficult to keep being jet lagged when there were so many things to do.. My brain simply started jumping around with joy to even allow me to try hand at a life-sized chess. :D

That evening we had a nice Indian dinner at "Little India", heard a Scottish band practice in a garden, and even saw a statue taking a shower!

December 7, 2010... On our way to the South

It has been my dream to go to the space one day. I was always fascinated with the poles, especially because of the auroras, and several other astronomy related reasons such as the sun is either up in the sky the whole time just circling close to horizon or the whole sky rotates around just one point. But, I never really dreamed of being at any pole, especially the South Pole. Here I am.. Close to one of the poles. In fact, if you know, we cannot really go to the North Pole as there isn't one on land. It's somewhere in the Arctic Ocean. South Pole can be physically visited and more interestingly it physically moves by about 10-15 feet each year. The continent is not just a mammoth iceberg. It actually has land, live volcanoes. Apparently, the plate on which this continent is situated moves a bit every year, physically moving the South Pole.

Anyway, as a part of my space science project, this year I got a chance to be deployed in Antarctica, visit South Pole, work there on two instruments and the go to a remote place to fix a previously deployed instrument. This is a once in a life time opportunity and I realized this only when I was on my flight to Christchurch, NZ from where we were will be set to McMurdo, the largest base station on Antarctica under the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). After a rigorous physical examination, NZ Visa process, and a number of drills to set up our equipment, I was on my way to the South with two other colleagues: Joseph and Hyomin...

Beyond the horizon -- क्षितिजाच्या पलिकडून

When I looked at the sky from India, US, I have always seen the Pole star depicting the North, Cassiopeia and the Great bear pointing towards it always.. Once having a glimpse of Large Magellanic Clouds (LMC) was all I could experience of Southern sky. Well, here I am at the opposite end of the Earth from the North. If I go further South from the South Pole, I would fall off the Earth! :P Just kidding.... My point is, I am at a place which is way beyond me-- Kshitija i.e. horizon.. :) I am in Antarctica, the highest, driest, windiest, coldest place on the Earth. I will be at the geographic South Pole. I will be at the Pole during the summer solstice of the southern hemisphere and winter solstice of the northern hemisphere (December 21), when Santa Claus travels down all the way from the North Pole (close to December 25), and even when the South Pole on the Earth physically moves (as the glacier drifts -- pole moving ceremony around January 1)! So, here is the diary from this heavenly place on our planet.

I will try to update my blog as and when possible depending on the internet availability here in Antarctica. I am also making a picture story simultaneously. You can find it under Destination Antarctica on my blog..

I would like to dedicate this whole story to four people. Baba and Mandar because of whom I am writing this in public instead of just my diary and to the two most beautiful girls in the world: Shreya and Parirani whose birthdays falls on 12/12 (the newest parirani arrived in this wonderful world only on 12/12/2010.. :) )