Author: gotgoodkarma

Here I go again, off on another one of my “adventures” as so many of my friends like to put it.  That adventure fire was lit inside me years ago and I feel like the last 10 years I’ve been searching for something and learning things about myself I didn’t know. I think I found it…  a way to incorporate so many loves in my life…Emergency Medicine, adventure, community and beautiful places you cannot help but fall in love with.

The Dash Poem

Well me peeps…  I’ve bag dragged.  What does that mean?  It means I took all my bags and all my cold weather gear (giant boots, “Big Red”, etc) and dragged it up the hill to building 140 to get weighed in.  They weigh our checked bag first, then our carry on then ourselves with all our gear.  My checked bag was 23lbs under the allowable limit and my carryon is crazy heavy.  In it I have all things I don’t want to chance freezing while it waits for the plane and enough clothes and toiletries to last me two weeks though my flight is scheduled for tomorrow.  That’s right I have a little field camp bag drag PTSD… where they took my bag and it was like two weeks before I actually flew, or close to it!

So we’ll see if I actually get out tomorrow, I’m feeling pretty good about it.  Flying north…off the ice.  I’ll be honest, I’m feeling conflicted about leaving.  Sad to leave friends and an…interesting lifestyle that I’ve grown to love.  I’ve got to experience the vastness of Antarctica and the fun college lifestyle with dorms and cafeteria style eating of McMurdo.  I’m made some friends at the Kiwi base next door too, that I’ve promised to send pictures of greenery, fresh veggies and sunrises to as they winter over down here.  A friend at dinner tonight referred to his season as a “semester”, accidentally.  Too funny!

However, home is calling.  It’s time.  I’m starting to spell things phonetically and completely forget words all together mid sentence.   My wardrobe of flannels and hoodies needs a vacation and I’ve been wearing the same boots for the past four months, day in and well… I haven’t seen day out in four months either.

Sunsets and night time, fresh veggies and Seattle coffee…here I come.

PS – I still have a ton of photos and stories to share that I’ll work on as soon as I get home as well as some answeres to questions I’ve gotten so stay tuned!

It takes a village to support science in Antarctica.  That village at WAIS includes many people, many of the toughest and hard working individuals I’ve met.  These guys worked day and sometimes night to keep camp up and running.  These people included, in no particular order…

A camp manager who oversaw everything and an assistant camp manager who basically helps coordinate what everyone is doing on a daily basis. There’s someone who helps coordinate the flights (amongst a bunch of other things like trying to get our email up and running and what ever else she can get her hands on when there are no flights coming or going).  A cargo coordinator who’s goal it was to move a lot of old cargo back to McMurdo and receive anything new that came off the planes including science stuff for the research going on there.  There were two guys who operate the heavy machinery.  That meant grooming the ski-way or fork-lifting cargo. They also groomed “town” after big storms.  A mechanic and his assistant (actually at one point there were two assistants) who kept the heavy machinery, snowmobiles, generators and other stuff running well.  A “fuel guy” who recieved the fuel deliveries off the planes, fueled up the planes and all our machinery, generators and tent stoves. Two weather guys that covered 24/7 watch of what this harsh continent’s atmosphere wanted to do from day to day, something we liked to know, but something we need for our (sometimes not so) active airport.  And last but certainly not least, our chef and sous chef who keep us fed!  Oh and a camp medic who helped keep snow melted for our water supply (while everyone stayed mostly healthy), amongst many other things .  That’s who maked up our little camp family.

Who else was there…  well, when camp was getting set up and taken down and about mid-season, we got a crew of carpenters including an electrician.  That can be an additional 5 -10 people at any given time.  There was also a group of 3 guys who flew and helped operate a twin otter that flew from field camp to field camp where they are needed to move scientists around.  The Pirritt Hills Traverse guys drove large trucks and sleds with drilling equipment from WAIS to another area of Antarctica that was needed for a project and too much to bring on a small twin otter flight.  And of course there were the scientist/researchers which added an additional group of people from 2-12 depending on when they overlap here at camp.  So camp ranged from thirteen to upwards of 40 or more people at any given time.

Here are some pictures of our camp crew, the 13 of us, at one of our weekly safety meetings when we were learning how to spot the heavy machinery operators to help them fork lift equipment (basically getting the forks under a pallet of cargo to lift it and move it).  To make things interesting, we had to direct each other with these hand signals to lift a piece of chocolate up with a fork (of all things) and move it to another spot.  The person doing the “forking” couldn’t see the piece of chocolate. Anyway, it was a fun exercise but just goes to show how we all work together, the weather guys, the sous chef and even I got trained on this because there are times where we all wear different hats to run camp and I love to be a part of that.

There were also tasks at camp that needed many hands to accomplish.  One such task was folding a fuel bladder that was retrieved from a nearby camp.  It needed to be folded and put into a bag and a box to be safely sent back to McMurdo.   This is all of us working to get two fuel bladders packaged up. (Also a picture of what a full fuel bladder looks like – just FYI).

Why are we all out here? We are “supporting science”. The United States Antarctic Program (known here as USAP, we pronounce it as “you-sap”) is supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF). Most of the employees here are hired by different contracted companies to provide services down here. I was hired by UTMB (University of Texas Medical Branch) to provide medical services as needed.

This summer at WAIS there are many science programs researching many things. Generally the science is studying the effects of climate change and since we here at WAIS are sitting on this massive ice sheet, there’s a lot of interest about it’s history and how it is currently behaving.

John Stone of Univ of Washington (yay Seattle) is here with his crew of two grad students and a couple drilling experts to drill down through the snow and ice out in an area called Pirrit Hills where there is already some exposed granite.  This is a beautiful spot that he picked with just the very top of a granite mountain sticking out of the snow.  Here they will get samples of the rock that is currently exposed to the sun, and the rock a few hundred meters down to compare and see when that rock beneath the snow was last exposed to sun, or even if it was ever exposed to sun. They were a super nice bunch that I met in Mc Murdo before I came out, but they were only out at WAIS for a short while before the smaller plane (the Twin Otter) flew them out to their site. This is where our traverse guys come in. There were about five guys who took several large heavy tractors with multiple long sleds behind them, loaded up with all the gear this group needed including the drill and equipment, and drove (or we call it “traversed”) it out to their site.

The Anita Group consisted of two guys who flew in to calibrate a weather balloon that was forecasted to fly over WAIS. They were up 24 hours a day as they got hourly calls about how far away this balloon was then they were sending “pulses” out to the balloon as long as it was still up in the sky before it went over the horizon. Since we can basically see 5 miles in every direction (on a clear day), they had lots of pulses to send out. They really didn’t need to be here more than a couple days but since we haven’t had a flight in or out for about 11 days now, they have been stuck here.

Erin Pettit and her crew came out a few weeks ago, a crew of 6 women who are “logging” the previous borehole that was drilled about 10 or so years ago. This site was picked to do a drilling project that would drill a borehole down and take ice core samples of the layers upon layers of ice. This “borehole” is still there, an arch building was built over it, previously at ground level now buried from the years of snow and drift. So her team is here to do some mapping of the bore hole, taking measurements looking at how the ice deforms under pressure. Basically how it is behaving, moving and changing with time and pressure. Erin had done some graduate work as well at the Univ. of Washington so it’s been nice talking about Seattle with her. She is also an amazing artist and has down some fabulous watercolors of camp.

The last group is called Polenet. They fly out to multiple sites and dig up GPS and seismic equipment to get data backed up and to update stuff. Only 2 of like 6 people came out since it’s been a bad season for weather which means we didn’t get much fuel out here and therefore…can’t fly out to so many sites.

Well folks, that’s what it is all about…the science.

To continue my tour of “town” I’ll take you on a tour of the Rec Tent which is where we chill on our down time and where our wash module is.  This is where most everyone keeps all their clothes, electronics and any beverages they don’t want to freeze in their tents.  There’s also shelves with books, games and exercise stuff like yoga mats and weights.  It’s where our spin bike resides, though only a few of us took advantage of that.

It’s fairly empty during the day when everyone is out and about working.  Sometimes the science crews or carpenters would hang here too when they were waiting around (sometimes for weeks) for their plane back to McMurdo would arrive.  In the evenings after dinner and Sundays you can usually find the camp staff relaxing and watching movies.  Sundays were sci-fi usually and Wednesday night was Bollywood night.  On occasion we might have a showing of a short film of someone wiping out on a snow drift in poor visibility conditions prior to the feature presentation of the night.  With a projector that we can hook up our computers to it most of us had external hard drives with tons of movies on them.

In the back of this tent is the Wash Mod (module).  This is where another snow melter is that we use for our showers, sinks and washing machine.  Yup that’s right, this was a “luxurious” camp.   However, it takes one giant bucket of snow for a 5 minute shower, three for washing your clothes.

In front of this tent is where the ski’s are and I can remember after a good storm having to dig these guys out.  However… I also remember on xmas, after getting two DVD’s of Seahawks games from mcMurdo, I pulled a comfy chair outside and watched some of the game in the Antarctic sub.  (For the record, the game was two weeks past but since there’s no email or internet I was able to pretend they were live).  Go Hawks!

The Galley…

Our Galley Tent is more than just where the kitchen is and where we ate.  We also hung out in this area as well, playing games, reading or just chatting.

We had our morning meetings here where we would learn the weather report for the day from our own weather guys, and camp news like that our email was still down and what planes are due for the day (though they usually got cancelled).  We would usually get a cheesy joke of the day like…Why did the cookie go to the hospital???  Because he felt crummy!!!  Waaahhh!!!  Haaaaa!!! Haaaaa!  We got a new one every day.  Then we would stretch as a group after the “pen of destiny” was spun to pick someone to lead stretches for the day.

I would find myself wandering through the Galley  during the day when I had a lack of things to do.  There was always some dishes to wash and snow to be shoveled and hauled in to be melted.  Our Chef and Sous Chef (Fran and Caithlin) were amazing.  It’s a wonder how they made such amazing food with out anything fresh and everything having been frozen at some point.  Fran was the master of meats and Caithlin is the master of the baked goods (including gluten free stuff).  They both went out of their way to make me gluten free options and I love them for it.

I’ve been to two art exhibits down here, probably more than I’ve been to in the last year in Seattle. One was out in the field camp and it was an art exhibit outside! Took a while to find a calm enough day to do it, but it was beautiful. The art was supposed to represent “ice” in some way and brought down to us by one of the researchers who is a “glaciologist” (study of ice). The exhibit will be making it’s rounds in the states as well, and did make an appearance back in McMurdo. During this exhibit, they asked us all to wear our Big Red coats for pictures, but one troublemaker wore a guerrilla costume. Pictures of this art exhibit made it to the second art exhibit back in McMurdo entitled appropriately…”guerrilla art”. MAAG was the title of this art exhibit located in the fuel barn (headquarters for the fuel department here). It was modern art exhibits made in (and out of stuff) in Antarctica.

Some pics of the field camp exhibit…

And some from the Modern Art exhibit in McMurdo…

Located at the Fuel’s Barn

Here is a slideshow of some modern art displayed…

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Those are lyrics from a Bob Dylan song that played on rotation on my shuffle one day while at WAIS. Have you ever seen a highway of diamonds with nobody on it?

Back in Mc Murdo I’m feeling nostalgic for the great flat white I just came from. It was a stormy season out at WAIS this season, but there were some beautiful days too, usually after a big storm. On some of those days I would take a walk out to the end of our air strip (call the “ski-way”), usually groomed well enough to walk on and far enough to get some exercise and get “out of town” for a short bit. For those of you who know me, I tend to hike alone and with a headphones on. My secret luxury. Well, on those few occasions, I had my shuffle on with an amazing playlist on the most amazing day. What I saw had to be one of the most beautiful things I had ever seen. There were some giant ice crystals that had formed (I learned this from one of our glaciologists at camp) and they reflected back to me something that I couldn’t put into words until that song came on. It was literally like a “highway of diamonds with nobody on it”.

I’m not sure how I choose my play list, but there was also an great song that I remember listening to when I was kayaking down the Baja coast years ago that was in the mix by Colin Hay “Waiting For My Real Life To Begin” and the lyrics that also perfectly described these moments… “On a clear day, I can see…see a very long way”.

I get asked a lot what the temp was at camp.  Well it carried throughout the day, warmest probably around 4am (we were on McMurdo time, same as New Zealand though location wise we were probably more like Argentina time).  Here’s some data for you.

Just before I left for Antarctica, on my last shift in the ER, one of my colleagues “doctored up” a photo of me. He pasted a fuzzy hat on me and placed my in the setting of WAIS (from a pic he found online). It was pretty funny. I kept this picture up in my Field Camp Medical Clinic and on my last day, we recreated it… in real life.