Wooster Geologists

Hello to you all from… still McMurdo. While we’re all frustrated to still be playing the waiting game, a ray of hope appeared last night – a plane flew from McMurdo to WAIS Divide, for the first time in over two weeks! Furthermore, three planes (a Basler and two Twin Otters, in case you’re interested in planes) are en route with cargo today from WAIS Divide, with destinations at Lower Thwaites Glacier (a staging site for gear headed to the science camps), Cavity Camp (our first destination) and Grounding Zone (the first camp for the MELT team). In fact, we just found out that the Basler successfully made the first landing at Cavity Camp, and has brought a whole bunch of our cargo – Ted and Erin literally both just did cartwheels in celebration.

Unfortunately, the delays, along with some aircraft maintenance issues, mean that we’re not going to achieve all of our original science goals, at least this season. But with the latest big gains, we should still be able to get a whole lot of good science done. It’s possible I could now be leaving for the deep field as early as Friday (fingers crossed!), so I wanted to make sure to slip in one more blog post for you all before I go.

Locations of historic huts on Ross Island, from https://www.coolantarctica.com/schools/Antarctica-maps-ross-island.php.

A few years ago I got into reading many of the great polar exploration stories of the early 1900s. If you’re interested in some great reading, start with Alfred Lansing’s “Endurance” about Ernest Shackleton’s failed attempt to cross Antarctica between 1914 and 1917. Another brilliant classic, this time a first-person account, is Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s “Worst Journey in the World” about Scott’s 1910-1913 Discovery Expedition to the South Pole. And if you want to come closer to understanding the true depths that a human being can suffer, Lennard Bickel’s “Mawson’s Will,” about an ill-fated expedition to map the Antarctic coastline south of Australia, will give you a new appreciation for what early polar explorers have endured.

A view of Hut Point from behind my dorm, with the Discovery Hut in the foreground and Vince’s Cross near the tip of the point behind the hut.

Since I have some knowledge of these epic exploration stories, and some personal experience with icy locales, one of the most exciting aspects of McMurdo for me is the nearby historical sites. Ross Island has played host to many historic expeditions, which left three huts that still stand along the shoreline. Scott’s Discovery Expedition built the first hut at Hut Point in 1902.The Nimrod Expedition, the first expedition Shackleton led to the Antarctica, left a hut at Cape Royds in 1908. And Scott’s 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition left a hut at Cape Evans. Unfortunately, with the thin sea ice this year, we won’t get to visit the huts at Cape Royds or Cape Evans, but Hut Point is visible from my dorm building and is just a few minutes’ walk down the road. You can’t go in on your own, but we arranged a tour for our whole team last week.

The Discovery Hut with McMurdo in the background.

Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery Expedition (1901-1904) was primarily focused on mapping and carrying out scientific research. It included many men who played key roles in later expeditions, such as Ernest Shackleton, and made many important discoveries, including finding the Dry Valleys (the only ice-free valleys in Antarctica).

Crates piled inside the Discovery Hut.

They also learned a thing or two about huts. The hut they put up at Hut Point was a pre-fabricated hut that was actually designed for the Australian Outback. As Australia is known for heat, not cold, the hut was designed to be shady, cool, and well-ventilated. As you might imagine, that’s not ideal for Antarctica. The men found the hut to be cold and uncomfortable, and chose to mostly live and work aboard their ship (the Discovery). The hut was used primarily for storage, as well as for some cooking and science.

A box from Scott’s 1910 Antarctic Expedition.

Despite its drafty interior, it was still a valuable shelter and equipment cache for later expeditions. Shackleton’s Nimrod expedition used the hut briefly in 1909, on their way back from an attempt to reach the pole. Scott’s 1910-1913 Terra Nova expedition used the hut (which was farther south than their hut at Cape Evans, making it a good jumping-off point for south-going parties) fairly extensively. The last people to use the hut were the Ross Sea Party of Shackleton’s Imperial Transantarctic Expedition, who left in 1916. It then lay untouched (and full of snow and ice), until it was dug out in 1956, the year McMurdo was founded.

The kitchen area inside the Discovery Hut.

The hut remains well-preserved today. I walked over to see the hut on my own not long after I arrived. I was engrossed in reading the sign on the door (which just indicates rules for entry), and suddenly jumped when I realized I was standing right next to a dead, decaying seal dating from 1916. When we got to go inside the hut, we found a high-ceilinged, open interior that had been curtained off into a main storage/living area and a kitchen area. There’s also one separate room, which was used primarily for carrying out scientific experiments and analysis. Artifacts inside are very well-preserved (other than a slowly decaying pile of seal blubber), and have been arranged for better viewing. There are crates, bags, and shovels from the expeditions, old tin cans and tools, and even some pieces of the biscuit that was a staple of their diet (I wouldn’t try eating it now!). You can faintly see on the walls where many of the men wrote their names.

Tools and supplies inside the Discovery Hut.

Just up the hill from the hut, out on the end of the point, is a cross that was erected in 1902 in memory of a Discovery crewmember who drowned near that spot.

The cross the Discovery Expedition erected at the tip of Hut Point in memory of George Vince.

Although the Discovery Hut is perhaps the most interesting historical site in the immediate vicinity of McMurdo, Scott’s 1910-1913 Terra Nova Expedition is much more famous. After several expeditions had made attempts, Scott was determined that a British man would be the first to stand on the South Pole. They made extensive depot arrangements and used a variety of techniques to get there, including ponies, man-hauling, and some experimentation with the earliest motor sledges. Five men from Scott’s expedition reached the pole on January 17^th, 1912, only to find that the Norwegian Roald Amundsen had beaten them by just five weeks (incidentally, Amundsen is arguably also the first to reach the North Pole, as earlier claims are disputed, and he led the first expedition through the northwest passage). Still more tragically, Scott’s team never made it back; one of the men died on the march, one walked into a storm to sacrifice himself as he knew he was dying and was holding back the team, and the final three, Scott included, died in a blizzard in their tent, just 11 miles from a major supply depot.

The cross the Terra Nova Expedition erected at the top of Ob Hill in memory of the five men who lost their lives on the way home from the South Pole.

Before heading home, the remaining members of Scott’s expedition erected a cross at the top of Observation Hill to honor the lost pole party. They inscribed it with the names of the lost and a line from Tennyson’s Ulysses: “To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.” The inscriptions have all but worn away by now (you can still see faint impressions if you look closely), but the cross still overlooks McMurdo.

Biscuit left by one of the expeditions at the Discovery Hut.

Having spent a little time in the middle of the Greenland Ice Sheet, and being about to head out to West Antarctica, I can’t imagine the bravery and outright craziness it must have taken for early explorers and researchers to achieve what they did. I’ll be sleeping in a fluffy synthetic sleeping bag on two insulating pads; they had reindeer fur sleeping bags that sometimes began to rot partway into the expedition. We have high-calorie, high-protein, and mostly good-tasting meals and snacks, including a whole lot of chocolate; they survived on biscuit, pemmican (basically powdered meat mixed with fat and sometimes other ingredients), and often their dead sled-dogs. We’ll be back to the comforts of home in just a couple months, and in the meantime have several forms of communication with McMurdo and with home; they went away for several years with hardly any communication at all during that time. We may be facing a harsh environment in the field, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to face than it was 100 years ago!

Another day, another cancelled flight – the advance team is now hoping to get out tomorrow, December 7th. Erin said she was once delayed 3.5 weeks in McMurdo due to weather; we’re crossing our fingers that our delay is much shorter than that!!

As long as we’re here, however, we’re doing our best to enjoy ourselves as well as to get some work done. One of the pleasant surprises for me when I got to McMurdo was finding out that there’s a trail system. You can find a map of the Ross Island Trail System here: ftp://ftp.data.pgc.umn.edu/maps/antarctica/pgc/11/pdf/Ross%20Island%20Trail%20System.pdf

Some of the trails, like the Castle Rock and Cape Armitage Loops, are really meant for ski travel (and I believe the Cape Armitage Route is closed this year, as the sea ice has been very thin). I’ve done a little bit of cross-country skiing in the past, although not much, and have elected not to try to properly learn at the moment out of an abundance of caution, as it’s typically not a good idea to risk a major injury before heading out to the deep field. However, I have been able to enjoy several of the hiking trails, which stay mostly on bare ground and offer some pretty fantastic views of the scenery.

Ob Hill, viewed from the Hut Point Ridge Loop

One of the most popular trails is up to the top of Observation Hill, usually referred to as “Ob Hill,” which is a small volcanic dome that looms over McMurdo. It’s about 750 feet high, and a short trail leads right out of town to the summit. At the top of the hill is a cross that was set up to honor Captain Robert Falcon Scott and the other men who lost their lives returning from the South Pole in 1912 (my next post will cover some of the history around here in more detail). The views are fantastic. There’s also a loop trail that circumnavigates Ob Hill, going all the way out to the tip of Cape Armitage, which is the southernmost point on Ross Island.

Bruce and Christian on the Hut Point Ridge Loop

Another great loop is the Hut Point Ridge Loop. Hut Point is the location where Scott’s first expedition built a hut in 1902, which still stands today. Bruce, Christian and I hiked the Hut Point Ridge Loop one stunningly beautiful evening, and thoroughly enjoyed the views out across the sea ice. In the distance we could see open water; the sea ice is likely to be mostly broken up by the time we return to McMurdo in late January (that’s also when penguins tend to show up; I’m crossing my fingers that we get to see some!).

A mother and baby Weddell seal on the sea ice near Scott Base

This post is really just an excuse, however, to show you some great pictures of seals. One hike that you can only do with a guide is a mile-long path through the pressure ridges near Scott Base (the nearby New Zealand research station). Pressure ridges form where winds and/or ocean circulation push sea ice against itself or against the shoreline. The sea ice buckles under the pressure, thrusting broken fins of ice into the sky. In the process, cracks and holes in the ice form, and Weddell seals use these access points to get to the surface. Many of the nearby Weddell seals have babies, which are a bit over a month old. Hope you enjoy the pictures!

A sea-ice pressure ridge with a surface melt pond

A sleepy mother seal with a playful baby seal

An alert baby seal

A very content seal

The latest update is that our advance team is delayed another day, and weather at WAIS Divide is looking iffy for another few days. That makes it fairly likely that the rest of our team could be pushed into next week before flying out, although we haven’t yet totally given up hope of getting out this week. Delays are an expectation when going through WAIS Divide, and we have enough wiggle room built into our schedule that we’re not yet concerned about having enough time to get our science done. But for our own peace of mind, we would like to get out soon!

Pretty soon I’ll run out of interesting things to tell you about at McMurdo, but I’ve got at least a couple more posts in mind. Since we’re spending lots of time in McMurdo, I can tell you a little bit about what life is like here and get you oriented to our current location. McMurdo is sited on the southernmost reliably ice-free land area in the world that also can be reached by ship. It’s dry and windy enough here that the snow tends to sublimate away before enough can build up on top to start making ice, so the ground stays mostly clear, making it a great place to build a research station.

Looking down on McMurdo Station from nearby Observation Hill

The map below shows McMurdo’s location on the tip of Ross Island. The solid red line on the map is known as the “grounding line” – it’s where ice goes from sitting on land to floating. Everything to the left of the solid red line is ice sitting on the mainland of Antarctica. Everything to the right of the solid red line is floating ice (or ice on islands). There’s also a dotted red line that intersects with Ross Island. That’s the approximate line between the permanent ice shelf (which is ice that has flowed from the ice sheet out onto the ocean but is still attached to the ice sheet) and sea ice (which is ice that froze out of ocean water, so it was never a part of the ice sheet).

The location of McMurdo on Ross Island, with nearby features labeled. The satellite imagery is from the MODIS Mosaic of Antarctica (MOA) 2009 image.

When you stand on the shoreline at McMurdo this time of year, it’s hard to remember there’s an ocean there, because McMurdo Sound is full of sea ice (and also seals; spoiler alert, my next post will contain pictures of baby seals!). It’s also difficult to tell where the sea ice ends and the McMurdo Ice Shelf begins. Most lines between sea ice and an ice shelves are very obvious because ice shelves tend to be much thicker than sea ice, but the McMurdo Ice Shelf is very thin, making the dividing line difficult to spot. It’s possible to drive vehicles and even land planes safely on the sea ice this time of year, and it’s safe to do that year-round on the McMurdo and Ross Ice Shelves.

Looking out over the sea ice on McMurdo sound on a beautifully lit evening.

Most of McMurdo life, however, takes place on solid ground on Ross Island. McMurdo Station was founded in 1956 and is the largest research station in Antarctica. In the summer it houses around 1,000 people, and can support up to ~1,250. In the winter the population dwindles to just a couple hundred. McMurdo was built for functionality, not for aesthetic; it has a very industrial feel. Buildings are fairly austere, although a few are cheerily colored, and they’re all numbered (although there’s no spatial logic whatsoever to which number is where!).  None of the roads are paved and heavy machinery is abundant, so you spend a lot of time walking in wheel ruts. Being new to McMurdo, I made the mistake of brining tennis shoes rather than hiking boots for daily wear. Fortunately, there’s a building where any item left behind by someone in the past is available to anyone else for free, and I happened to walk in 10 minutes after a pair of brand new hiking boots in my size were set out on the shelf. I am at a loss as to why someone abandoned them, but I’m feeling very lucky that I was able to snag them!

A typical scene around McMurdo.

Everyone lives in dorms at McMurdo and eats in the dining hall, which is known as the Galley. Ingredients – particularly fresh ingredients – are often very limited, but McMurdo’s cooking is excellent (particularly when it comes to desserts). There is a store on-site, as well, where you can buy necessities like shampoo and medicines, comfort items like chocolate bars and alcohol, and a range of souvenirs (I confess that it seems strange to me that the McMurdo souvenirs aren’t available to purchase in Christchurch – as it is, they fly everything down so we can fly it back home. On the other hand, it does mean that my family members will get shirts that have actually been to Antarctica!).

The Galley, where an artist-in-residence was giving a talk on Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition.

As McMurdo’s primary function is to support scientific research, many of the buildings are dedicated to science or to getting scientific equipment out into the field. Our team spends most of the time during the day squeezed into a couple offices in the Crary Laboratory building, which also houses equipment for chemical and physical experiments, and includes a set of aquariums on the lower level with bizarre Antarctic aquatic organisms. We also spend a lot of time at the Science Support Center (SSC) where we did our rope training, which has space to set up tents and stage gear inside, the Berg Field Center (BFC) where much of our issued field gear is housed, and Science Cargo where we sort and package all of our equipment on pallets and turn it over to the professionals to get it loaded onto the plane. Our team has approximately 37,000 pounds (yes, that’s the correct number of zeros) of equipment to carry out our science and live fairly comfortably in the deep field for a couple months, and getting it all labeled, weighed, organized, and entered into the cargo system is a huge task.

Our team members putting away an Arctic Oven Tent that we had set up inside the SSC. Getting all the air out is a team effort.

Although we have been working hard, McMurdo also has many opportunities for leisure time. There are several gyms on-site, as well as a great set of hiking trails (which I’ll talk about in my next post!). We have lectures twice a week from scientists and artists-in-residence, either in the dining hall or in the library at Crary Lab. There are three bars (one of them is also a coffee house) that are very popular in the evenings, which often host scheduled or unscheduled parties. And there are several other rooms that provide diversions, such as the craft room and the gear distribution center, which includes skis and mountain bikes as well as musical instruments for loan. We even have several TV channels that get sports or news feeds from the US, and a local channel that plays movies.

The gym that houses the cardio equipment, known as the Gerbil Gym.

We’re really anxious to get out of McMurdo so we can start our research, but it is pretty incredible what kind of support systems are available here. Just across the bay from my dorm is a hut built by Scott’s Discovery expedition in the early 1900s (I will also talk more about that in a later post). I don’t think that any of those men, who huddled in the drafty hut through long Antarctic winters, could have guessed what incredible amounts of infrastructure would be built on Ross Island in just a few short decades.

We’re crossing our fingers that weather holds well enough at WAIS Divide to get a plane out there this evening, but our advance team is currently delayed until tomorrow (December 3rd). The earliest the rest of us will get out is still pencilled in for Thursday, December 5th, but we’re playing it by ear.

Once we do get out of McMurdo, to get to our field sites we fly to the permanent camp at WAIS Divide, possibly from WAIS Divide to a fueling stopover/gear cache at Lower Thwaites Glacier, and then to “Cavity Camp” on the floating portion of Thwaites Glacier. Cavity Camp is very remote, and our site at Dotson will be even a bit more remote. We are bringing everything with us that we need and then some, but to get all the gear there, and in case of an emergency, it’s extremely important that we have good communications among the team members and between the team and operations staff at WAIS Divide and at McMurdo.

Our team leader is Erin Pettit from Oregon State University. She is extremely experienced in field research, and, fortunately for us, is also fantastic at creating a functional and positive team environment. Everyone on the team has assigned responsibilities. Some of those responsibilities are scientific. For example, Atsu is in charge of managing the seismic surveys, Erin runs the ground-penetrating radar, and Martin and Dale are in charge of the drilling. My primary role is to assist Atsu with the seismic measurements, as his setup takes two people to run, and I also have responsibilities for strategizing data collection for a few features of interest and integrating our plans with the big-picture context of Thwaites Glacier and the Amundsen Sea. In addition to science duties, everyone will pitch in to help around the camp. Some people will be on cooking and cleaning duties, for example, while another will keep an eye on the tie-downs and guy lines used to hold gear and tents in place in case a storm whips up. Giving everyone clear responsibilities means that no important task slips through the cracks.

Our camp under Mount Erebus during our overnight shakedown

To work out these team responsibilities and facilitate trust and open communication, as well as to test out all our gear, we had an overnight camp “shakedown” as part of our training. We went out on the McMurdo Ice Shelf to an absolutely stunning location under Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano on Earth, which gently steamed under a crystal clear blue sky. Cece and Blair gave us some tips on setting up tents with strong snow anchors, cutting snow blocks, and building wind walls. Bruce and Christian decided to dig themselves a large trench with slots in the sides to sleep in, just for the fun of it (they did, in fact, sleep in their trench, but they failed to dig big enough slots to allow them to turn over, so they were stuck in one position all night). It was actually a really relaxing and enjoyable overnight. If we get that kind of weather in the deep field, it will be lovely trip; but it didn’t give us much experience testing our gear in harsh conditions, which we’re likely to face!

Bruce (left) and Christian (right) starting to dig their trench. They cut slots in the sides of the trench and slept in the slots on our shakedown.

While we were on our shakedown, we also tested out some of our communications equipment. Much of our communication with McMurdo will be via satellite transmissions. We have four satellite phones with us, as well as a satellite internet uplink that will let us send text emails back to McMurdo (and hopefully some blog posts back to the Wooster Geologists blog!). Eight of us on the team also own inReach devices, which are GPS units that also link to the Iridium satellite network, allowing us to text family from home and also to send text messages to each other in the field. For emergencies, we also have a high-frequency (HF) radio with a huge antenna that we can set up – we practiced using that on the shakedown, as well.

Team members setting up the HF radio

We will check in with McMurdo at a specific time every day. If we don’t check in by our specified time, McMurdo immediately initiates search-and-rescue operations, so we’re all responsible for remembering to make that check-in on-time. Since we will have multiple teams working away from camp to take radar and seismic measurements, we will also have set check-in times every few hours with each other. The daily check-ins with McMurdo will also include sharing weather observations and forecasts, which will be very important in planning our activities each day. Although every team that leaves camp carries survival bags, getting caught out in a storm is not something we intend to do!