I just ate an orange today! It was so refreshing and the first real fresh fruit I’ve had in two months (minus a couple apples). Someone watching me said I should have filmed this grand event since I had a giant grin on my face the whole time!
I also ate one banana and a quarter of an avocado (darn rations).
I made it back to McMurdo around 3:00am today. Last minute flight and we hadn’t seen a Herc Plane in over two weeks! Living in a deep field camp in Antarctica is an experience only a handful of people will have and that’s why I did it. It was a beautiful place and a great experience, but I have to say I’m glad to be back in “civilization”. Flushing toilets, showers that you don’t have to shovel and melt snow to take, dark rooms to sleep in, not being on call anymore…it’s delightful.
Just settling in today and I’ll catch up on the 2 months work of emails, laundry and sleep. I’m sorry you’ve only had a few blog posts while I’m out there but there are many people to thank for that (My McMermaid and my Seattle Gnome). Without internet access and airplanes I’m shocked we got what we got up on there. I’ll be posting many more in the days to come to tell you all more about my experience. I should be in McMurdo through the end of the month and some travels in New Zealand. I’m most looking forward to some fresh fruits and vegetables, trees and flowers, fresh nature smells, the sunset and probably most of all…night time.
Just before the plane arrived at camp to take a few of us away, I got to see one of these amazing sights. This circular rainbow is what happens when the light refracts through ice crystals when there is moisture in the air. It’s just a beautiful sight and a sweet goodbye from the Antarctic Tundra.
Please, please, please…comment and ask questions. I have plenty of posts to put up but would love to answer questions too.
We have running water for dishes, brushing our teeth, showers and even laundry, but no flushing toilets. So what do we do? Outhouses! Different field camps have different ways of disposing of human waste, some burn it, some contain it and return it to Mc Murdo, but out here in the deep field camp, we can essentially “bury it”. I put that in quotes because the ground beneath us is all snow and ice. Ten thousand feet of it, extending 4,000 feet below sea level. Instead of digging a hole, we melt a hole. Basically this is how it’s done…
We use a giant drill to start a hole, making it about 2 feet deep or so. Then we take a large heater with a hose attached, the diameter of about the size of a plate and point it into the hole, weighing it down with a heavy metal chain. We leave it there…a while…like 2 days depending on how deep you want the hole. We made this outhouse just outside our rec tent where we hang out and watch movies at night time, for easy access. To make this one last we made the whole super deep… like 20 feet.
Once the big hole is made, the outhouse is lowered into place over it. It’s important to pack snow around the base of the outhouse or there would be some majorly cold breezes coming up the hole. These outhouses are painted black to use solar heat to keep the outhouse warm.
The seat is made from foam or else it would be super cold. I’m not saying it’s not cold. Basically, it is sheltered from the wind, so that makes it way more tolerable. Usually I’m still bundled up from the waist up, and there’s not much dilly dallying.
There is quite a bit of handwritten literature to read if you really want, or need to spend extra time out there. Very creative stuff…
The freshest and newest outhouse in town…
In my last post I forgot about a few extras around town. Possibly some stowaways on the few flights we’ve had so far this year out at WAIS. Please let me introduce you to a few of my chilly friends here at WAIS. How can I live out here on top of 10,000 feet of snow and not make a snowman?? The reality is that this snow isn’t all that good for rolling little balls of snow up into big bellies for a snow man, so I usually have to shovel out a hard block of snow to help create these guys but either way…I think these little buddies have a lot of personality.
The night before the Traverse guys left for Pirrit Hills, after working hard to get their rig ready to go, I helped them make their own snowman. Enjoy this montage of the making of Mr. Traversollini.
Our Finished Snowman, Traversollini, so photogenic and a member of the team that he made their holiday card!
Here I am in a deep Antarctic field camp, living in tents, but I have to say, it’s pretty cush. We have sinks with running water, showers and even a washing machine! However, in order to have water we have to melt it.
We are surrounded by water, but it’s in the form of snow. Maybe you’ve heard about this West Antarctic Ice Sheet… it’s what scientists have been studying, fearful that with our current global warming and climate change that this will melt or fall into the oceans, raising water levels to dangerous levels. Remember the name of my camp?? WAIS (West Antarctic Ice Sheet)…yup, I’m living on that ice sheet for the next couple months. I stand on snow and ice about 10,000+ feet deep, pushing the continent down below sea level. (Camp is 6000 ft above sea level.) This is the worlds largest desert though, with only 2 feet of precipitation annually.
To make water we take this snow and melt it. Simple, right? Way out behind our tents is an area flagged off as our “Ice Mine”. It’s clean snow no one is walking over. Every couple days our heavy machine operators will bring big scoops of this snow and drop it behind the “Galley” and the “Rec” (Recreation) Tent.
We are all careful not to walk over these mounds of snow. We then shovel up large garbage cans (55 gallons) of snow and dumping it into the snow melters that are located in the back of both of these tents.
We have separate designated gloves and shovels we use so as to minimize contamination and there are water filters as well. But I’m not sure I’ve ever seen more pure snow than here. The water is great in my opinion! It takes about 2 loads for a shower and 3 loads for a load of laundry.
In the back of those tents there’s a “module” thats attached which has the snow melters connected to a water holding tank next to a hot water tank. These are the only two places with running water. No toilets though. For that we have outhouses, pee holes and our own pee bottles. More on that topic later.
One of my favorite things to do with our pure melted snow, besides drink it and shower, is making “hipster ice”. Not only do I shovel and make the most water of anyone at camp (except maybe the night time weather guy – we might be tied), but I also make the ice and store it in a bucket in the vestibule (a tent’s foyer). This isn’t just any ole ice. I take water and pour it into a deep cookie sheet and place it outside for a few hours. Then I break it up (breaking bad style) into little mini icebergs.
They have a medical provider here at WAIS for many reasons. Some field camps are small and also remote with one employee trained as a wilderness first responder which is basically first aid in the wilderness, but for the following reasons there is a licensed medical provider here at WAIS…
When I got to WAIS my medical tent was set up. It’s a 5 section rac tent with a small stove. My cargo consisted of many large cases which I quickly unpacked and created my own little clinic, ready for a sinus infection or a trauma. Fortunately it’s mostly the former. But most of my time is spent doing lots of different stuff around camp. Mostly I help make water (Blog to follow).
Well I made it out to WAIS and I could not be happier. Here I am in such a beautiful place, pristine white snow as far as the eye can see and a big beautiful ever changing sky. The people are amazing, rough and and tough hard workers… a work ethic I have never experienced before in all the years out in the workforce. But also the nicest bunch of people I could ever ask to spend the next three months with. I am in a blissful place in my life right now – living in a remote campsite working as a camp medic. The perfect blend of my two favorite things in life, I couldn’t feel any luckier. Don’t get me wrong, my life in Seattle with my friends, my dog, my cute little house and amazing ER crew is well missed and I think of all these things on a daily basis but I know my time here is limited and I will be back there soon enough.
It was day after day of my flight being cancelled, then one day it happened… we got to the plane, it took off, didn’t turn around and we landed at WAIS. I sure had a great time in McMurdo, enjoyed the amenities like flushing toilets, TV and internet, made lots of friends but it was my time to get out to the deep field camp. The flight was a smaller plane than I came to Antarctica on but very similar. A cargo plane flown by the Air Force, this time I could see my luggage and all the medical cargo I had packed in the weeks prior.
My cute little Medical Tent which is 3/5th’s medical clinic and 2/5th’s my living quarters. I’ve never taken an empty room and turned it into a clinic before so I’m proud of how I set it up to a functioning clinic, ready to manage a trauma (though I hope I won’t have to).
So how do I spend my days?? Well, I’m available in my tent after breakfast for 2 hours but then available by radio as instead of a 2”x3” pager, I have a camp radio I carry around, to meals, to the outhouse, always on and always available. But I’m usually around the back of the Galley tent or the Rec tent filling the water melter every trying to keep the water levels in the tanks at the “max” level, the most challenging task I’ve given myself here at camp. In addition to camp water melter (actually everyone really does their part, but I like to decrease their workload where I can) I’m also the camp DJ and hostess for “Are your a snow-it-all” trivia nights. There’s plenty of work to do around camp including receiving cargo, helping to strap down cargo we are returning to McMurdo, mending tents (it’s a harsh continent), scooting over the outhouse when it’s starts to fill up – more on that on the outhouse blog entry to come).
I’ve only been here a few weeks now and got to experience Thanksgiving with this new camp family. As an pre-dinner treat, the carpenters (about 10 people out here helping to set up some structures) gave us some entertainment… topless carpenters donning hand made tutu’s crafted from clear garbage bags executing a well choreographed ballet incorporating their hammers and measuring tape to the tune of swan lake. I kid you not!! This was followed by a delicious dinner followed by gluten free flourless chocolate cake with Grand Manier flavored whipped topping. After dinner we had a full on dance party DJ’d by your’s truly in the Rec tent. Since everyone works so hard around here 6 days a week (sometimes 12 hour days!) it was nice to have a two day weekend and blow off some steam.
I also got to experience a “Con 2” almost “Con 1” storm with winds at 30-50mph. Fortunately I was always able to see the other tents and the outhouse when I needed to. If I found myself on my way somewhere and we had bad white out conditions, I’d have to just stop where I was until I could see something or who knows where I’d walk off to. After the storm there were drifts of stone several feet high between the tents. With these super white conditions and the sun behind the clouds, it is really hard to see surface definition and everyone whiles out when we think we are walking on flat land but really walking into a 4 foot drift. I sure have whipped out a few times, but the snow is soft and I usually only have a hard time getting up because I’m cracking up.
I’m trying to take lots of pictures around camp to send back to Mc Murdo and have someone email them to my Seattle Blog Gnome so I can give you a tour of my new little town and what its like to melt water, use an outhouse in Antarctica and live in a small camp environment supporting science so we can hopefully convince our new president elect that climate change is a real thing. But first, someone needs to tell him the world is round and there’s a frozen continent down here so he doesn’t cut off support and I can get home at the end of the season.
The Sun is up in the sky to the east first thing in the morning and up in the western sky when I go to bed. It reminds me to look north and send love to you all from the 7th Continent, on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet.
I hear this isn’t that strange to be delayed getting out to field camp, but I’m starting to wonder if “WAIS Divide” actually exists. So from what I heard, there were 5 Hercules LC 130’s on the continent. If its not one thing its another. If it’s not the weather here, it’s the weather there or it’s a mechanical error. But now there is a new one “Herc Availability”. Did they misplace the plane? This is why I imagine the Herc in “not available”…
The Plucky PA 