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.