So, just a short update before bedtime: I got extended! I gonna a few more days at the Pole, flying out on the 6th of February. The way back, I won’t stay in MacTown, but hop right into the C-17 to Christchurch. Anyway, I am looking forward to stay a bit longer and saviour this very unique place!

Again, in reverse order:

5. Do not shop all the neat memorabilia at once! The shop, full with shirts, mugs and caps, opens for one hour each day. Now, it is a tiny thing, so getting what you want is a matter of minutes. But you don’t wanna do that! Let’s face it, besides work, there isn’t much to do here. So, shopping a little bit once in a while, extending that satisfying feeling over a long period of time, makes you happier! And that is a good thing, especially here!

4. Don’t touch metal objects outside with your bare hands. Or any other body parts, for that matter. Two incidents: In the first I picked up a wrench that was lying outside, I didn’t have my gloves on. The instant I touched it, I had a burning sensation as if I had touched a pot boiling water! I dropped the wrench immediately and could prevent freezeburn, but my thumb hurt for a bit longer… Later, I was coming out of the “Ice Palace” (our restrooms) and had slightly wet hands. When I grabbed the outer door knob, my hand almost froze onto it! Nothing bad happened, but just feeling my hand sticking to the handle reminds me of drying my hands properly…

3. Never face forward when being pulled by a snow mobile. The snow mobile have sleds that can also carry passengers. When you have a mad man driving those little toys at 30-40 km/h, two things happen: You get a lot of small ice pieces thrown at you from the tracks. And the exposed parts of your face freeze. Now, neither are good feelings, let me tell you.

2. No urinating outside! That SEVERELY violates the Conservation Act of the Antarctic Treaty! Sure, getting up at night and tunning over to the toilet, or using one of those solar boxes in the field is inconvenient. But if you get caught urinating into the snow, you migt get seriously into trouble, I guess.

And finally, the most important thing NOT to do at the South Pole
1. Never take a 3 min shower! Ok, this sounds a bit ridiculous. But believe it or not, a colleague got yelled at because someone thought he was too long in the shower! In a situation, where everyone gets 2min showers twice a week max, everyone watches everyone else, I guess. So, staying longer in the shower than allowed is a bit foolhardy…

Of course, in reverse order:

5. Eat! Man, you gotta eat. Don’t skip meals, don;t even think about it! Since I can’get up for breakfast, I started going to Midrats (Midnight Rations) to get a third meal during my day. You burn so much calories here! It is not only doing manual labor with all the clothes on, it is more the fact that even with that special gear you body is still working hard to generate body heat. I read somewhere that an average person needs around 5000 kcal when he is living at the Pole. Now, I am not so sure about that number, but I can imagine a 1000 kcal more than at home. That is a lot!

4. Drink! Being such a dry and high place, the need for water is immense. I am trying hard to maintain 4l a day, which might be still a bit too less. The moisten my hands, I used more of my hand creme than in the past two years! And they are still like sand paper. My nose is just a big wound, though I am glad that the nose bleeds stopped. Man, that was a real mess!

3. Drink beer! Beer keeps your spirit up and makes you sleepy. That is good in an environment, where even in my dark Jamesway hole my body knows, that there is the sun shininh out there. Always.

2. Drink even more water! Beer (as coffee) dehydrates the body immensely! I had one beer (sic!) the other night and had to go three times to the loo! Awful!

And finally number one:
1. Drink hard stuff! Keeps you happy, too, but doesn’t dehydrate as much as beer! 😉

After a long day out in the field, I got a little tour around the old station on the way back. Reminder: Die old station is the Dome. It is the second one, the first one dating back to the fifties and being buried deep under ice about a kilometer from here…

The dome is probably know by everybody. It used to be completely above ground, but now it is buried almost halfway in snow in ice. The Dome was more or less a wind shelter, inside were a few buildings with labs, living quarters, lounges and galley, storage, etc. Now, it is completely deserted, expect for some of the storage. Soon, they will start dismantling a building, that not only served practical purposes, but also had a visionary and non offensive architecture. It seems to date from a time, where mankind still was careful, yes even reluctant, to invade nature in one of it most unique forms. The Dome is round, smooth, it ducks under the ever blowing wind of the Pole, a kind of reverence to an irresistible force. The footprint of human presence here at the very end of the world was not that much smaller during those times, sure, but it was paid with hardship and restrain. Even though the Dome is a world apart from the experience of the every first Antartic explorers, the new station has clearly ended an area and started a new one.

This new area is dominated by a station that thrones over the timeless Antarctic plateau. Build on hydraulic columns and facing the wind with its tern, reverence was the last thing in the mind of the designers and builders of this third station at the Pole. No, the message here is: we have come to stay. Year for year, the projects and scientific programs grow more ambitious, the summer population larger. Who knows what will become of this place in 10, 20, or 50 years?

In addition, the Pole is becoming a tourist attraction. Planes fly the eager explorers from Patriot hills to 89deg south, so that their passengers can ski the last degree (about 60mil = 100km) into the Pole. Don’t get me wrong, on the plateau even those 5-6 days are a dangerous undertaking. Still, the whole business has a strange taste to me. In way it is suppose to prove some sort of achievement, but than again it is probably folly.

Whatever. It is time for me to retreat again, so farewell for now…

Well, it is time that I straighten out something here: I did not travel to the South Pole as a tourist. No, sir, I am actually on work here. What’s worse: when you are going to work on your detector, your work becomes pretty much your life, 24/7. In that regard, being here is not different from being in Uppsala or Jülich during beamtime.

What is it exactly that I am doing? The part of the Icecube experiment I am working on consists of tanks filled with frozen water (yes, I mentioned this earlier, but anyway….). Altogether, three crew were down here. The first supervised the digging of the trenches and the placement of the tanks. They also made sure that we have all the components that we need. The second team installed the electronics for the tank and supervised the filling with water. Then the tanks get their sunshades and are opened to start freezing. The third team (yep, that’s me) babysits the tanks, supervises the backfilling of the trenches and does calibration measurements for the tank deployed in the last year…..

Now, doesn’t sound like much, doesn’t it? But in Antarctica, everything has the Antarctica factor multiplied to it: Ten times harder, ten times more difficult, ten times more intense. We need two hours to make one station (= 2 tanks) ready for the closing operation, there are ten station we have to handle. Sounds like an job easily done in two days. But in this cold, with all the snow and the wind, we are glad to do one per day. Plus the calibration measurement on an old station, which takes easily thesame time, and you are done for the day. And all this calculation is only valid, IF you got some sort of transportation. We can borrow either a skidoo or sometimes even the Icecube van (a minivan on tracks!). Without, one of those tasks just kills you. Walking 200m or so, pulling a sled full of equipment, your done. It is incredible, but both the cold and the altitude/low pressure just makes everything a huge task!

To make things more complicated, we have to decommision an old experiment. that means decabling, deassembling the electronics crates, packing things in boxes… This is not done outside, thank goodness, so it is sat least bearable for quite a few hours.

So, everytime I get “home”, I am completely exhausted. And since I don’t sleep well, getting up two times a night to pee (I have a bottle now, though! No more running through the cold…), I am more and more tired every day. Which is good. Gives me the feeling to get a glimpse of what the pioneers of the Antarctic exploration might have felt working here at the end of the world….

Good night!

Antarctica is certainly a very unique place, being the driest, windiest and coldest continent of all. So, even if people up in the north ar eused to snow in winter or when they go high up, the forms of H20 encountered here are usually only found on glaciers or very high up…

The top layer is usually snow drift, very fine snow that is carried by the wind over the ice plateau. Since Antarctica has very low precipitation (10cm per year average), snow drift is the main source of soft snow around here. The snow that stays freezes and compacts into something called firn. Firn is basically snow that through compression has partially crystallized. It is still white, but harder than snow. The firn layer is about 50m here at the South Pole. Below that there is ice, though at many places over the plateau, ice is exposed directly at the surface.

In conjunction with wind, softer parts ofthe surface erode away, exposing a landscape that looks like a frozen ocean, and endless sea of motionless waves. That is called sastrugi, however, we don’t really have that around here, I only saw some from the plane.

Now, snow and ice are certainly an indicator for cold temperatures, and it IS cold out here! However, on a windless day at -30C you almost feel warm in the sun. It seems at least to me that one cannot really distinguish between -10C or -30C. But when the wind picks up just a little bit, the cold just creeps in through every crack in your clothing. Sure, we do have this ECW: the big red parka, the padded bibbed Carhart, and gloves, hats, the whole shebang. But when you work, you take of the thick gloves and only have the liners, sometimes you have to open your jacket to take out something that needs warming. And then the wind is there. Besides, the wind is patient. It doesn’t have to cool you down in, say, 10 min. It can just eat sat your heat away bit by bit over the whole time you spend outside. And, boy, it does! A rather light wind of barely 5kts can make windchill of -40C! And when it picks up speed, well, better get inside fast, because body parts will start hurting.

I personally have never been so cold as here after working for two hours out in the field. It is not the cold fingers, nose, or feet. It is this loss of heat inside you that takes all your energy and makes you just curl up and sleep. And that is exactly what I am gonna do now!

All right, time for a bit more detailed report of life at 90deg south! There are basically two possibilities for accommodation down here: Either you stay in the new station, or you stay outside. And no, you don’t get to choose! Now, in the station means a nice little room with a bed, a desk, a little cupboard and the restrooms just down the corridor. If you are an IT guy, you might not even have to leave the station at all, which waters down the whole South Pole experience a lot, obviously! People never wear their ECW, run around in flipflops and shorts….

Of course, I am NOT staying in the station.

I am sleeping in the Summercamp.

Or: the Jamesways…

The Summer camp is a bunch of tents from the Korean War (yep, M.A.S.H style…). The tents, called Jamesways here, are just canvas over a wooden frame. Inside, there are place for 9-12, well, rooms, which are seperated by canvas mostly… Actually, there is a cool page here, where you can see Jamesway 1 in all its glory (I am in 10, pics will follow soon…). So, here is the thing: The heating blows the driest, hottest, nastiest air ever right into you little, well, room. The floor, however, is barely about freezing temperatures. You are sleeping somewhere in between these extremes, being too hot and too cold at the same time! Furthermore, the restrooms are in another Jamesways, 20m across the Antartic plateau! Since we are drinking at least 4l a day to keep hydrated, you have to pee every three to four hours. Which gives you two choices in the night: Get up, get sort of dressed, run over to the loo, run back through ice and wind and try to sleep till the next time. Or, you have a pee can. Yep. A can. For the night. Right next to your bed on the floor….

But what can I say, for all it short comings, the Jamesways have wireless Internet. So, sitting on my bed, hot air in my face and cold draft under my butt, I can write nice little stories in my blog….

The whole living situation is pushed a bit more to the uncomfortable side by the conservationism around here. This effects everyone, Jamesway or not: Only two showers are allowed per week, each two minutes only. I am used to shower every day, especially my hair needs it. Going three days without made me realize how much I like civilization and endless hot water! But to be fair, it isn’t that bad. Die to the cold, there aren’t much bacteria growing on stuff, so even humid things don’t smell much and dry very fast in the arid air. Besides, we get one load of laundry per week, which is almost luxury compared to the shower allowance!

To come to brighter facts: The food is really nice here. There is plenty, it is usually hearty and well made, and there is always a nice treat for dessert! Plus, hot chocolate and coffee as much as you like. Cool, eh?

Otherwise, there isn’t much to tell. There are regular weekly activities around the station: sports and exercising, movie and game nights, you get the idea. I, however, have been so busy with my work life and using my free time to write post cards and blog entries, that I have hardly joined the social life around here. And that’s why I will write about my toils around here tomorrow…

All right, I am dead tired, it is well beyond my bed time, so without further comment: Levent at the Pole:

Well, this is the big one. The day has arrived. McMurdo was already quite overwhelming, but this journey tops everything. Again, not much sleep is given to the passengers of flight P282 out of Willie air field. Well, it wasn’t that early, the plane was boarded at eight in the morning. This was a C-130, a smaller cargo plane with skies attached to the landing gear. The flight took us not more than three hours. The plane has plenty of port holes where we could see mountains covered in snow and ice and the glaciers flowing down from the Antartic plateau. The windows of the plane were rather dirty, though, so the pix turned out a bit murky. Oh well….

And then we touched at about 11am NZ time. A step and I was out of the plane, breathing SP air (-27C) on beautiful sunny day. Now, the view here isn’t nearly as spectacular as in McMurdo, but the station and smaller buildings sitting on this endless white plane of ice, well…. It is a sight to be remembered…. However, you’ll have to wait for the next post for pictures from the Pole!

This Lord Tennyson quote is written on the cross that was set in memoriam Scott’s Party that perished on their way back from the South Pole. Today, I would make the same trip, but orders pf magnitude faster and much safer…

The day started out veeeeeeeery early. We had to report to the CDC at 5:30 in the morning. First, you grab your bags and repack the things: There are a few things that you have to wear already on the flight! The rest is than packed into a carry-on bag and as many checked-in bags as you want (there is a weight limit, however!). From there, we walked over to the passenger terminal, were you go through pretty much the same security procedure as in civilian flights. After that I had an hour before reporting back to the terminal, so I went for breakfast. Now, the clothes you wear are pretty hot, so I ended up running around in my fleece underwear. Very sexy, let me tell you! 😉

After breakfast, people started going back to the terminal, where another security video was shown (and there are a few more to go, I am
pretty sure). After that we normally would have been taken to the plane, but not today! Since NZ is celebrating the 50th birthday of their Scott Base (just around the corner of McMurdo Station), our flight had so special guests on board for the celebration: Besides some reporters and journalists, the NZ prime minister Helen Clarke and Sir Edmund Hillary are flying with us today! Cool, eh? Just as a reminder: Sir Edmund and Sherpa mountaineer Tenzing Norgay were the first to reach the Mount Everest summit! He was part of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition

Finally, we set out to the runway. The first leg to McMurdo will be flown in a C-17, a cargo plane. Man, those babies are huge, the inside looks like a big hall. I guess you could two basketball courts in here or so…. There are no windows, but I am sitting next to one of the exits, it has a small look out. The inside is pretty loud, more than on a commercial plane, but otherwise (temperature, pressure) it is just the same. You can get an idea of the plane interior on my pix!

The flight took somewhere around 5h, then we landed on the Ross Ice Shelf, Pegasus air field. Quickly, we were ushered into a transport bus called Ivan. Starring unbelievingly at the landscape around me – a large, white plane encircled by the several mountains – we were driven to McMurdo station, where we got another security video to watch. That concluded more or less the day. We had to re-check our stuff for the flight to the Pole next day, but that didn’t take long…