Yesterday Adam flew to Base Camp at Mt. Vinson. He was so happy. I would like to give a big thanks to Scotty, who gave up his seat on the plane so that Adam could go. Tuesday, December 26, 2006
Base Camp at Mt. Vinson
Yesterday Adam flew to Base Camp at Mt. Vinson. He was so happy. I would like to give a big thanks to Scotty, who gave up his seat on the plane so that Adam could go. 
Sunday, December 24, 2006
"Cache Management"
Dec. 19, 2006
While one of the secrets of survival back in North America may be "cash" management, for over a century the key to survival in Antarctica has not been cash - which is worthless here - but "cache". It pervades Antarctic life.
In a nutshell, here's the story. Once one leaves the coast, Antarctica is incapable of sustaining life. It has no water in liquid form and little precipitation, and is technically a desert. This means that one cannot live off the land, and must carry all sustenance with him. Proper management of the necessities of life becomes an imperative.
In the days of the early Polar explorers, the technique was to carry all of one's needs on a sled, and lay aside supplies for the return trip in clearly identified locations known as "caches". If one planned things right, on the way home you would find your cache and be all set for the journey to the next cache. If one was unlucky with the weather and traveled slower than planned, you could make it to your objective - the Pole - yet die on the way home having failed to reach the resupply cache. This is what happened to Robert Falcon Scott, who led the second team to reach the Pole in 1911-12, froze to death on the way home and was perhaps the most adored failure in British history. He and his remaining men died 11 miles short of their cache...
Roald Amundsen, the man who beat Scott to the Pole by a few weeks, had a different philosophy of caching. Unlike Scott, who used ponies and hauled his sleds by hand, Amundsen used sled dogs to take him to the Pole, and then - as planned - began eating them one by one on the way home. I don't think Disney will make a movie about that one.
Nowadays, things are done differently. Except for the few stalwart souls who walk and pull sleds to the Pole (and with whom I talk every day on satellite phone as part of my job), the key to life in Antarctica is not sleds, but airplanes, and the key to airplane travel is of, course, jet fuel.
Jet fuel is the main currency around here. Government bases trade it or sell it reluctantly at exorbitant prices, or in the cases of unexpected private visitors, refuse to trade or sell it at all. Everyone who has fuel, hoards it. It is so precious that at the American base at the South Pole, fuel is brought in by Hercules C-130 aircraft that consume two barrels of fuel for every one that they bring in!
Here at Patriot Hills life similarly hinges on the availability of fuel. Every few weeks a massive Ilushin 76TD aircraft makes a ten-hour round-trip flight with a load of eight tons of fuel - jet fuel for aircraft, propane for melting snow into drinking water, gasoline for ski-doos, and fresh food for the human population. (BTW, our electricity is generated entirely by solar panels). Life here would be impossible without these flights.
The jet fuel we receive is brought from the main ice runway about a kilometer away up to our snow ski-way alongside camp. At the skiway - which is groomed by machines designed for ski slopes in Aspen and Innsbruck - are two leased DeHavilland Twin Otter aircraft chartered from Ken Borek Airways in Calgary, Alberta. The Otter is the Chevy Suburban of life on the Ice. Each has a load of ten passengers, a range of about 600 miles, and with skis they can land just about anywhere down here provided the surface is well-illuminated. Sastrugi (hard wind-blown lumps of snow up to 3 feet in height), crevasses, and poor visibility do not seem to discourage the intrepid Otter pilots. By the way, when they are not flying ski-planes in Antarctica, the Borek pilots - all from Canada and including both men and women - are flying floatplanes in the Maldives.
The main limitation of the Otter is its range. A six hundred mile range means that without a source of refueling, the aircraft would be limited to destinations within 250 miles of Patriot Hills, which given the enormous expanse of Antarctica is limited indeed. Here is where caching comes into play. Twice each season, we send a team of three with a tracked vehicle pulling two enormous sleds loaded with jetfuel on a 300 mile journey to a location in the middle of nowhere near the Thiel Mountains, roughly halfway to the South Pole. Here the team offloads the barrels of fuel, grooms a skiway suitable for Otters, and returns straight away to Patriot Hills. The first roundtrip this season of 600 miles took approximately 87 teeth-jarring hours of non-stop driving through massive fields of hard sastrugi.
With the aid of the cache, the Otter crews can set about flying expeditions and resupply missions in the direction of the Pole, with refueling stops in each direction at Thiels.
Other caches, much less extensive than Thiels, are regularly resupplied by air from Patriots to enable occasional flights in other directions. A great deal of attention goes into the maintenance of these caches during the course of the season.
Food is also cached by government programs in refuges at numerous locations around Antarctica to aid expeditions in distress and they are carefully listed by international agencies with detailed GPS locations. One recent visitor to Patriot Hills - a veteran British Antarctic explorer - recalled how during the 1960's, he and a hungry group of fellow scientists feasted on an unexpected cache of Hershey's candy bars left behind by Admiral Byrd and his crew decades before.
Here at Patriots, we store our food in what is known as the "Ice Cave". It contains not just food brought in this season, but the uneaten food of years past - some of which tastes just fine. And in case we have a problem getting resupply one season, the kitchen reckons that they have enough food stored in the ice cave to feed the staff and guests for months, albeit without beer, Coke and chocolate bars, which seem to be consumed as fast as they arrive.
So there you have it. Bet you didn't know that Antarctica was the world's largest supply depot and refrigerated warehouse, the result of both necessity as well as humankind's evident innate propensity for stashing things away.
See you all later,
Adam
While one of the secrets of survival back in North America may be "cash" management, for over a century the key to survival in Antarctica has not been cash - which is worthless here - but "cache". It pervades Antarctic life.
In a nutshell, here's the story. Once one leaves the coast, Antarctica is incapable of sustaining life. It has no water in liquid form and little precipitation, and is technically a desert. This means that one cannot live off the land, and must carry all sustenance with him. Proper management of the necessities of life becomes an imperative.
In the days of the early Polar explorers, the technique was to carry all of one's needs on a sled, and lay aside supplies for the return trip in clearly identified locations known as "caches". If one planned things right, on the way home you would find your cache and be all set for the journey to the next cache. If one was unlucky with the weather and traveled slower than planned, you could make it to your objective - the Pole - yet die on the way home having failed to reach the resupply cache. This is what happened to Robert Falcon Scott, who led the second team to reach the Pole in 1911-12, froze to death on the way home and was perhaps the most adored failure in British history. He and his remaining men died 11 miles short of their cache...
Roald Amundsen, the man who beat Scott to the Pole by a few weeks, had a different philosophy of caching. Unlike Scott, who used ponies and hauled his sleds by hand, Amundsen used sled dogs to take him to the Pole, and then - as planned - began eating them one by one on the way home. I don't think Disney will make a movie about that one.
Nowadays, things are done differently. Except for the few stalwart souls who walk and pull sleds to the Pole (and with whom I talk every day on satellite phone as part of my job), the key to life in Antarctica is not sleds, but airplanes, and the key to airplane travel is of, course, jet fuel.
Jet fuel is the main currency around here. Government bases trade it or sell it reluctantly at exorbitant prices, or in the cases of unexpected private visitors, refuse to trade or sell it at all. Everyone who has fuel, hoards it. It is so precious that at the American base at the South Pole, fuel is brought in by Hercules C-130 aircraft that consume two barrels of fuel for every one that they bring in!
Here at Patriot Hills life similarly hinges on the availability of fuel. Every few weeks a massive Ilushin 76TD aircraft makes a ten-hour round-trip flight with a load of eight tons of fuel - jet fuel for aircraft, propane for melting snow into drinking water, gasoline for ski-doos, and fresh food for the human population. (BTW, our electricity is generated entirely by solar panels). Life here would be impossible without these flights.
The jet fuel we receive is brought from the main ice runway about a kilometer away up to our snow ski-way alongside camp. At the skiway - which is groomed by machines designed for ski slopes in Aspen and Innsbruck - are two leased DeHavilland Twin Otter aircraft chartered from Ken Borek Airways in Calgary, Alberta. The Otter is the Chevy Suburban of life on the Ice. Each has a load of ten passengers, a range of about 600 miles, and with skis they can land just about anywhere down here provided the surface is well-illuminated. Sastrugi (hard wind-blown lumps of snow up to 3 feet in height), crevasses, and poor visibility do not seem to discourage the intrepid Otter pilots. By the way, when they are not flying ski-planes in Antarctica, the Borek pilots - all from Canada and including both men and women - are flying floatplanes in the Maldives.
The main limitation of the Otter is its range. A six hundred mile range means that without a source of refueling, the aircraft would be limited to destinations within 250 miles of Patriot Hills, which given the enormous expanse of Antarctica is limited indeed. Here is where caching comes into play. Twice each season, we send a team of three with a tracked vehicle pulling two enormous sleds loaded with jetfuel on a 300 mile journey to a location in the middle of nowhere near the Thiel Mountains, roughly halfway to the South Pole. Here the team offloads the barrels of fuel, grooms a skiway suitable for Otters, and returns straight away to Patriot Hills. The first roundtrip this season of 600 miles took approximately 87 teeth-jarring hours of non-stop driving through massive fields of hard sastrugi.
With the aid of the cache, the Otter crews can set about flying expeditions and resupply missions in the direction of the Pole, with refueling stops in each direction at Thiels.
Other caches, much less extensive than Thiels, are regularly resupplied by air from Patriots to enable occasional flights in other directions. A great deal of attention goes into the maintenance of these caches during the course of the season.
Food is also cached by government programs in refuges at numerous locations around Antarctica to aid expeditions in distress and they are carefully listed by international agencies with detailed GPS locations. One recent visitor to Patriot Hills - a veteran British Antarctic explorer - recalled how during the 1960's, he and a hungry group of fellow scientists feasted on an unexpected cache of Hershey's candy bars left behind by Admiral Byrd and his crew decades before.
Here at Patriots, we store our food in what is known as the "Ice Cave". It contains not just food brought in this season, but the uneaten food of years past - some of which tastes just fine. And in case we have a problem getting resupply one season, the kitchen reckons that they have enough food stored in the ice cave to feed the staff and guests for months, albeit without beer, Coke and chocolate bars, which seem to be consumed as fast as they arrive.
So there you have it. Bet you didn't know that Antarctica was the world's largest supply depot and refrigerated warehouse, the result of both necessity as well as humankind's evident innate propensity for stashing things away.
See you all later,
Adam
SCPZ 131100 175M 16G24 9999 NIL 2/8 1CU3000 1SC5000 M09 Q995 STY C=G H=G JW
Dec. 14, 2006
In my last entry I described the process of getting dressed for Antarctic cold in a small one-man tent each morning. After a sound night's sleep, I emerge into the breathtaking (literally and figuratively) and remarkably quiet white world of Antarctica. I zip up my jacket, adjust my sunglasses and head to the Comms box to make my first utterance of the days, as follows:
SCPZ 131100 175M 16G24 9999 NIL 2/8 1CU3000 1SC5000 M09 Q995 STY C=G H=G JW
Catchy, isn't it? Well its actually full of meaning, and spoken in a language called METAR, known to aviators and meteorolgists all over the world:
Here's a translation:
SCPZ is the not-so-picturesque international designator for our runway which is unpaved and consists entirely of glacial ice (more on our runway in a future email).
131100 means it is the thirteenth day of the month at 1100 Zulu (otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Coordinated Time) which translates into 8AM Chilean time or 6AM in New York, the beginning of the work day for the Comms and Meteorolical staff at Patriot Hills.
175M means that the wind is blowing from 175 degrees magnetic, which is pretty much in the direction of the South Pole. This is the prevailing direction from which the wind blows most days.
16G24 means that the wind is blowing 16 knots and gusting to 24 knots. These winds are known as katabatic winds. They are formed as the cold air on the Polar plateau descends from the Pole's 9,000 foot elevation to sea level, which is the altitude of the Ronne Ice Shelf about twenty miles north of here (open ocean is hundreds of miles away, however; hence no cute penguins anywhere near us). As the cold air descends from the Pole it tends to pick up speed and substantial blows can and do occur here with reasonably frequency. When occuring at night, they are a soporific. The sounds of ice crystals pelting off the fly and the contrapuntal vibrations of the shaking tent are - contrary to expectations - very restful sensations.
9999 means that we can see forever - unlimited visibility
NIL means that we are experiencing no weather events (were it to read +SN - a snow blizzard, it would be time to crawl to our tents and hunker down)
2/8 means that the sky is covered with two-eights cloud cover. Eighths of sky are called "Oktas" down here - don't know the origin.
1CU3000 means that one Okta of sky is covered with a layer of cumulus at 3,000 feet above the ground. In the US we call these "few" cumulus. 2 to 4 oktas are "scattered", 5 to 7 oktas are "broken", and 8 oktas are "overcast". But the international system used by many down here sticks with the numbers.
1SC5000 means one Okta of sky covered with Strato-cumulus at 5,000. Catching on?
M09 means that the temperature is minus 9 degrees Celcius, which is roughly 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Actually very pleasant. The air is dry, lots of solar radiation from the sun, and one always dresses in layers before leaving the tent so there are rarely unpleasant surprises (except when cruising in one of the Ski-Doos, when it can get REALLY cold).
Q995 is the measure of air pressure in hectoPascals, which is a fancier name for millibars. Q stands for QNH, the international designator for barometric pressure. Back in the US, we describe pressure in inches of mercury ("Hg"), but that seems only to be the custom down here at the South Pole Station and McMurdo Base, both operated by the National Science Foundation.
C=G is perhaps the most important part of the report. Aircraft down here don't get to land on gorgeous paved runways with instrument approaches and all kinds of approach lighting or indicators. Sometimes they have no prepared runway at all and they land on snow, or ice. And these surfaces tend to be less than perfect, covered with hard wind-driven lumps of snow called sastrugi and occasionally crevasses. Either can spell disaster for an unwary pilot, particularly when there is an overcast and hence no shadows. So C=G means that the contrast is good, which is as good as it gets. From there, contrast can decline to Moderate, Poor, and the dreaded Nil. As a matter of fact, low contrast resulting from a low overcast is pretty tough on people on the ground, too. Surface irregularities become invisible and tripping is a constant hazard. As my friend and fellow radio operator Alan Cheshire VK0LD reported from our base camp on Mt Vinson last week, "I feel like I am living inside of a ping-pong ball."
The next item, H=G is also important to our pilots. It means that the Horizon is Good. A poor horizon is, as you can imagine, very disorienting. The scale also runs down to Nil.
The report concludes with the initials of the individual who took the weather observation. In this case, it was my good friend Jaco Wium, who sits with me in the Communication box (an upscale shipping container with insulated walls and windows, which the folks around here have taken to calling the "White House"). I will talk more about Jaco and his work in a future letter, but suffice it to say that Jaco, a South African and a seven season veteran here at Patriot Hills, is a maestro at reading downloaded satellite images of Antarctica and can usually be seen taking long strides around camp searching the skies for omens of weather to come.
Oh yes. I forgot a column. It is the one before Jaco's initials. It is entitled "Remarks". Let's recap what you have just learned about our day down here: few clouds, bright sunshine, 14 degrees F, light winds, unlimited visibility and snow covered mountains on two sides and endless ice on the other two, no nasty weather, good horizon and good contrast. My "Remarks" about this?
"Bloody gorgeous!"
See you all later. Adam
In my last entry I described the process of getting dressed for Antarctic cold in a small one-man tent each morning. After a sound night's sleep, I emerge into the breathtaking (literally and figuratively) and remarkably quiet white world of Antarctica. I zip up my jacket, adjust my sunglasses and head to the Comms box to make my first utterance of the days, as follows:
SCPZ 131100 175M 16G24 9999 NIL 2/8 1CU3000 1SC5000 M09 Q995 STY C=G H=G JW
Catchy, isn't it? Well its actually full of meaning, and spoken in a language called METAR, known to aviators and meteorolgists all over the world:
Here's a translation:
SCPZ is the not-so-picturesque international designator for our runway which is unpaved and consists entirely of glacial ice (more on our runway in a future email).
131100 means it is the thirteenth day of the month at 1100 Zulu (otherwise known as Greenwich Mean Time or Universal Coordinated Time) which translates into 8AM Chilean time or 6AM in New York, the beginning of the work day for the Comms and Meteorolical staff at Patriot Hills.
175M means that the wind is blowing from 175 degrees magnetic, which is pretty much in the direction of the South Pole. This is the prevailing direction from which the wind blows most days.
16G24 means that the wind is blowing 16 knots and gusting to 24 knots. These winds are known as katabatic winds. They are formed as the cold air on the Polar plateau descends from the Pole's 9,000 foot elevation to sea level, which is the altitude of the Ronne Ice Shelf about twenty miles north of here (open ocean is hundreds of miles away, however; hence no cute penguins anywhere near us). As the cold air descends from the Pole it tends to pick up speed and substantial blows can and do occur here with reasonably frequency. When occuring at night, they are a soporific. The sounds of ice crystals pelting off the fly and the contrapuntal vibrations of the shaking tent are - contrary to expectations - very restful sensations.
9999 means that we can see forever - unlimited visibility
NIL means that we are experiencing no weather events (were it to read +SN - a snow blizzard, it would be time to crawl to our tents and hunker down)
2/8 means that the sky is covered with two-eights cloud cover. Eighths of sky are called "Oktas" down here - don't know the origin.
1CU3000 means that one Okta of sky is covered with a layer of cumulus at 3,000 feet above the ground. In the US we call these "few" cumulus. 2 to 4 oktas are "scattered", 5 to 7 oktas are "broken", and 8 oktas are "overcast". But the international system used by many down here sticks with the numbers.
1SC5000 means one Okta of sky covered with Strato-cumulus at 5,000. Catching on?
M09 means that the temperature is minus 9 degrees Celcius, which is roughly 14 degrees Fahrenheit. Actually very pleasant. The air is dry, lots of solar radiation from the sun, and one always dresses in layers before leaving the tent so there are rarely unpleasant surprises (except when cruising in one of the Ski-Doos, when it can get REALLY cold).
Q995 is the measure of air pressure in hectoPascals, which is a fancier name for millibars. Q stands for QNH, the international designator for barometric pressure. Back in the US, we describe pressure in inches of mercury ("Hg"), but that seems only to be the custom down here at the South Pole Station and McMurdo Base, both operated by the National Science Foundation.
C=G is perhaps the most important part of the report. Aircraft down here don't get to land on gorgeous paved runways with instrument approaches and all kinds of approach lighting or indicators. Sometimes they have no prepared runway at all and they land on snow, or ice. And these surfaces tend to be less than perfect, covered with hard wind-driven lumps of snow called sastrugi and occasionally crevasses. Either can spell disaster for an unwary pilot, particularly when there is an overcast and hence no shadows. So C=G means that the contrast is good, which is as good as it gets. From there, contrast can decline to Moderate, Poor, and the dreaded Nil. As a matter of fact, low contrast resulting from a low overcast is pretty tough on people on the ground, too. Surface irregularities become invisible and tripping is a constant hazard. As my friend and fellow radio operator Alan Cheshire VK0LD reported from our base camp on Mt Vinson last week, "I feel like I am living inside of a ping-pong ball."
The next item, H=G is also important to our pilots. It means that the Horizon is Good. A poor horizon is, as you can imagine, very disorienting. The scale also runs down to Nil.
The report concludes with the initials of the individual who took the weather observation. In this case, it was my good friend Jaco Wium, who sits with me in the Communication box (an upscale shipping container with insulated walls and windows, which the folks around here have taken to calling the "White House"). I will talk more about Jaco and his work in a future letter, but suffice it to say that Jaco, a South African and a seven season veteran here at Patriot Hills, is a maestro at reading downloaded satellite images of Antarctica and can usually be seen taking long strides around camp searching the skies for omens of weather to come.
Oh yes. I forgot a column. It is the one before Jaco's initials. It is entitled "Remarks". Let's recap what you have just learned about our day down here: few clouds, bright sunshine, 14 degrees F, light winds, unlimited visibility and snow covered mountains on two sides and endless ice on the other two, no nasty weather, good horizon and good contrast. My "Remarks" about this?
"Bloody gorgeous!"
See you all later. Adam
Saturday, December 09, 2006
Morning in Antarctica
Dec. 5, 2006
After three weeks of great weather, it has taken a turn. Temperatures have dropped to subzero and winds have kicked up, producing a lovely moving carpet of snow about a foot above the ground.
The outer shell of my little green tent is held down by extra wide flaps of fabric called valances that are placed on the ground and covered with blocks of snow. (Note: This is not one of the large multi-colored tents that one finds on the web sites written by our clients, these are the little ones you see on Everest. BTW, these are warmer!) Proper loading of the valances is critical to the survival of the tent in strong winds, which are very common around here. I also built a low curved snow wall upwind of the tent that deflects the snow drifts around the tent. Well, for a time it does. My little green tent is slowly being surrounded by a wall of snow, which must be removed by hand every now and then in a manner intended to avoid ripping the outer shell.
The tent has room inside for a narrow mattress and my duffel bags. On top of the mattress is a light thermarest foam mattress about a half-inch thick. My minus60 sleeping bag made by Feathered Friends of Seattle sits on theThermarest. It is quite toasty and I sleep in the nude in a light fabric liner (cocoon) which fits inside the sleeping bag. A wool hat and eye shades completes the night-time set up. And I sleep with a VHF radio tuned to the base working frequency and an alarm clock set for 7:15am.
It never gets terribly cold in the tent. Last night was about 32F inside the tent. During the warm weeks when we arrived, the tent in daytime was above 60F and rarely below freezing in the evening.
My mornings remind me of a butterfly struggling to get out of a cocoon. It all occurs whilst I am lying on my back. I wiggle out of my sleeping bag, wiggle into my clothes. Grab my radio and dop kit and head for the toilet tent. There we have a throne, comprised of a wood platform with a toilet seat covering an open drum. My advice to myself each morning in availing myself of the facility is the same advice I recall from climbing radio towers: "Don't look down!" Thence to the urinal, which is comprised of a drum whose 2" orifice is connected to a sheet metal funnel-like contraption that was evidently designed for very tall people, or at least people taller than I. Both drums, pee and poo, are flown out of Antarctica on each outgoing flight so as to avoid polluting the pristine Antarctic environment.
If you are wondering about what underlies our tents, ie where the things I drop in the snow and can't find are going, our camp sits on a glacier that is moving northward at about six feet a year. Twenty miles down glacier of us is the Hercules Inlet, a part of the Ronne Ice Shelf. At six feet a year, my lost items will reach the Hercules Inlet in 15,000 years. Beyond the Ronne Ice Shelf is the Weddell Sea, about 600 miles. So in about450,000 years (Jacob check my math, please!) my lost items will calve into the Antarctic Sea and float northwards on an iceberg. So I won't be waiting around for them.
After taking care of business, I brush my teeth and head to the Comms Box (photo to follow) for our morning scheduled contact at 8AM with the home office in Punta Arenas, in which we exchange weather and discuss upcoming flights and the day's schedule. Then off to breakfast, which is toast, eggs and such. At 8:45 we have a staff meeting during which all the department heads discuss their plans for the day, make requests for assistance, and are given direction by the Field Operations Manager (FOM).
By 9:15, we are ready to begin our regular duties, the subject of a future email.
Regards to all my friends and readers, from this very, very beautiful place, which seems to change its attitude and the quality of its light continuously throughout the day.
Adam
After three weeks of great weather, it has taken a turn. Temperatures have dropped to subzero and winds have kicked up, producing a lovely moving carpet of snow about a foot above the ground.
The outer shell of my little green tent is held down by extra wide flaps of fabric called valances that are placed on the ground and covered with blocks of snow. (Note: This is not one of the large multi-colored tents that one finds on the web sites written by our clients, these are the little ones you see on Everest. BTW, these are warmer!) Proper loading of the valances is critical to the survival of the tent in strong winds, which are very common around here. I also built a low curved snow wall upwind of the tent that deflects the snow drifts around the tent. Well, for a time it does. My little green tent is slowly being surrounded by a wall of snow, which must be removed by hand every now and then in a manner intended to avoid ripping the outer shell.
The tent has room inside for a narrow mattress and my duffel bags. On top of the mattress is a light thermarest foam mattress about a half-inch thick. My minus60 sleeping bag made by Feathered Friends of Seattle sits on theThermarest. It is quite toasty and I sleep in the nude in a light fabric liner (cocoon) which fits inside the sleeping bag. A wool hat and eye shades completes the night-time set up. And I sleep with a VHF radio tuned to the base working frequency and an alarm clock set for 7:15am.
It never gets terribly cold in the tent. Last night was about 32F inside the tent. During the warm weeks when we arrived, the tent in daytime was above 60F and rarely below freezing in the evening.
My mornings remind me of a butterfly struggling to get out of a cocoon. It all occurs whilst I am lying on my back. I wiggle out of my sleeping bag, wiggle into my clothes. Grab my radio and dop kit and head for the toilet tent. There we have a throne, comprised of a wood platform with a toilet seat covering an open drum. My advice to myself each morning in availing myself of the facility is the same advice I recall from climbing radio towers: "Don't look down!" Thence to the urinal, which is comprised of a drum whose 2" orifice is connected to a sheet metal funnel-like contraption that was evidently designed for very tall people, or at least people taller than I. Both drums, pee and poo, are flown out of Antarctica on each outgoing flight so as to avoid polluting the pristine Antarctic environment.
If you are wondering about what underlies our tents, ie where the things I drop in the snow and can't find are going, our camp sits on a glacier that is moving northward at about six feet a year. Twenty miles down glacier of us is the Hercules Inlet, a part of the Ronne Ice Shelf. At six feet a year, my lost items will reach the Hercules Inlet in 15,000 years. Beyond the Ronne Ice Shelf is the Weddell Sea, about 600 miles. So in about450,000 years (Jacob check my math, please!) my lost items will calve into the Antarctic Sea and float northwards on an iceberg. So I won't be waiting around for them.
After taking care of business, I brush my teeth and head to the Comms Box (photo to follow) for our morning scheduled contact at 8AM with the home office in Punta Arenas, in which we exchange weather and discuss upcoming flights and the day's schedule. Then off to breakfast, which is toast, eggs and such. At 8:45 we have a staff meeting during which all the department heads discuss their plans for the day, make requests for assistance, and are given direction by the Field Operations Manager (FOM).
By 9:15, we are ready to begin our regular duties, the subject of a future email.
Regards to all my friends and readers, from this very, very beautiful place, which seems to change its attitude and the quality of its light continuously throughout the day.
Adam
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