That First Spring Day

McMurdo Station & Mt. Erebus

There is always that one day that marks THE change.  It may not be the last day of winter, but it certainly is the first day of spring.  After months of dreary streets and icy sidewalks it seems as though everything in town had decided to make the change.  New shoots of green grass push up through the trampled dead grass and mud.  Every branch in the city is strewn with tiny green buds with the same hope for spring.  The people are the biggest emergence.  Everyone comes alive.  Every open space is filled with frisbees and softballs.  Every dry space in the grass holds people lying on blankets soaking up the newfound sunshine.  Shorts are dawned for the first spring jog.   Everyone emerges from their winter gloom.

LC-130s on the ice runway

We had that day here in McMurdo last week.  Despite the temperature still being below freezing the streets turned into a slushy mess and streams of water flowed down the hills toward the sea ice.  Everyone walked around a little bit happier.  Some people went for runs in shorts while others did still walk around in their giant down jackets.  The biggest thing missing was green; anything living and green.

New Zealand's Scott Base

I figured it was a good time for me to climb up Observation Hill.  I’ve wanted to head up there since I got to town, but I wanted to save it for a nice day and until I was ready to get a new view around here.  It reminded me of walking up to the M in Missoula; about the same elevation gain and gave a spectacular view of town and in this case the Ross Ice Shelf and McMurdo Sound and Ross Island.

Looking out across the Ross Ice shelf

McMurdo Sound

It wasn’t spring on top of Ob Hill.  If the view didn’t remind me of where I was the colder bite of the wind certainly did.  The cold feeling justified the vast white landscape that I was looking at.  When I am in McMurdo the vehicles and buildings all seem so massive.  Looking down on station from the top of the hill it seems like such a tiny part of this world.  Everything about the landscape around me is so big, but the mountains and ice that I can actually see right now are hardly big enough to be mentioned on a map of the whole continent. 

McMurdo from Ob Hill

Penguin Video

Just a little something I put together the other day.  I hope everyone finds this as amusing as I do.

Month 1 in Antarctica

I've already been down here for a month.  Every day I walk outside and feel like it is my first day here. Other moments I feel like I have been here forever.

If there was ever a place to go and escape, this is it.  It is way to easy to become engulfed in the landscape, the people and the experience of being here.  I don't feel like I miss trees and vegetation until I look at photos of them and a sense of longing comes briefly comes back.  I feel more content here than I have felt in one place for a long time.  I even wonder what it would be like to spend a cold dark winter here.

Every day is a new adventure.  The people I work with and teach are always amazing.  There really isn't much of anything that I would rather be doing right now.

But, this place also goes against so many things that I believe in.  The amount of fossil fuels that this place uses is beyond comparison.  I can't begin to comprehend the millions of gallons of fuels burned each here to keep things running around here.  But I have to accept that this is the way things work around here.

One of the Most Amazing Experiences of My Life

Simple as that.  A day of work led to a dream of seeing [Emperor] Penguins.  Sixteen of these super curious birds waddled and slid along near us.  Each day this place amazes me.

Weddel Seal

First real day on the sea ice

Today I was finally able to get out of town and get onto the sea ice to do some work.  There have been some cracks developing on the ice so we had to go out and drill into the ice to do a profile on them to figure out which vehicles could safely cross each crack.  I was able to get a few photos in between turns on the ice drill and measuring tape.

Weddell Seals

Royal Society Range

Mt. Erebes

Mt. Discovery

There is an ice machine in my dorm in Antarctica

Much of my work this week has been inside.  Learning to drive cool vehicles and other trainings and prep work for classes and getting personal search and rescue gear together.  Inside these buildings I could be anywhere.  Then I will pass by a window and be reminded of where I am.  I’ll look out on blowing snow, a rocky hill, a vehicle with giant wheels or tracks or across the ice at a seal and I’ll be reminded that I’m in Antarctica.  Or I’ll walk outside and the slight sting of the cold will remind me.  So far [temperature-wise] it is no different than a winter in Montana.

Heading South

I’ve met many neat people down here-lots of other transient people.  But I guess for a while I’m not transient.  I don’t have to worry about where I’m going to spend the night.  I don’t have to worry about what I’m going to do for the next few months.  Things are set and it isn’t a desk job and all of that is a relief.

One of my first views of Antarctica.  Vast empty expanses of what some people would call nothingness.  

I’ll put up some photos of life in McMurdo soon.  And there will be a few photos of more remote places in Antarctica throughout the season.

Such an amazing place.

Really I could leave here right now and be completely content.  But I don’t have the slightest desire on earth to do that.  I am going to be very content here. 

I am on New Zealand time so I am 17 hours ahead of US Mountain Time.  Or just subtract 5 hours and add a day.

My snail mail address here is:

McMurdo Station

Attn: Ben Adkison

PSC 469 Box 700

APO AP 96599-1035

I’ll be stoked to get mail.  Thanks to having a US military address here it is the same rate to send me mail as it would be to send anything within the US.

First few steps on the Ice.

I am in such a different world now.  Just figuring out which way is north is a huge mental challenge.  Trying to learn a new job and get used to a new town is another challenge. 

Tomorrow we go out on the sea ice for a day of training and ice surveying for the 'roads' along the ice.

Off to Antarctica

So I’m off too Antarctica tomorrow.  Or today or yesterday--depending on when and what part of the world you’re reading this from.  That means a 4:30am pickup from the hotel and hoping to land on the ice around noon-ish.  That is if the weather cooperates and we can fly into McMurdo.  There are two planes going down.  An Airbus-320 that has half the seats and the rest is filled with fuel to make the 4,800-mile round trip journey.  The other is a USAF C-17, which is the second largest cargo plane in the world. 

I’m on the first flight out which is the Airbus.  Our checked bags are on the C-17 (which leaves a few hours after my flight) meaning if the weather turns bad we arrive only with our carry-on and a small checked “boomerang bag.”  This "boomerang bag" is the only one we get back in Christchurch in case the plane has to turn around because of weather on the way down.  The rest remain "palletized" (new word learned today) until planes can leave again.  Meaning we could be without checked bags for days in either McMurdo or Christchurch.  Really not a big deal.  All I really need is my computer, camera and a book.

Mountains on the South Island of New Zealand on the Sydney-Christchurch flight.

I’m really excited for this new adventure in life.  In a way it is the most permanent adventure in awhile since I’ll be in one place for so long (4-5 months).  I have no idea what it will be like on the ice or what my job will be like, but so far I am certainly not against doing this for a few years, despite the craziness up to this point of actually getting down here.

All the people in my department are amazing.  We laugh all the time and are all my kind of people.  It also seems like everyone thinks we have the coolest job.  It is true that most people don’t get to see as many other cool places as we do. I’ve met many other people that are heading down (quite a few Missoula people actually!) and all seem like really good, fun people.  I’m really excited for the people experience down there besides just the fact that I’ll be in Antarctica. 

Awesome mall made entirely of shipping containers.  I kind of want to build a house out of them someday.

The last few days in Christchurch have been an experience in itself.  There have been a few serious earthquakes here in the last few years.   Apparently the Australians are fully to blame for this because it is “their” plate colliding with the “NZ” plate.  New Zealand is by all means a fully developed first world country.  And in so many ways much more progressively developed than the US.  After a few hours spent in the city it is amazing how “far back” total devastation can send a community.  What used to be a pretty marvelous cityscape is now literally in ruins.  Cleaned up vacant lots sit full of weeds and broken concrete where skyscrapers used to rise up.  Piles of rubble are now where buildings used to stand.  It seems as though every church in the city was completely destroyed or seriously damaged.  I guess the republicans weren't around to save them...okay...okay I won't even go there.

I went through such a range of emotions while riding a bus through the city.  Sometimes I felt as though I was in a lesser developed part of Chile.  It will take decades for Christchurch to be “re-built.” It is really humbling to see what nature can do and how slowly humans can get back to their status quo.  Yes, this is a major city so development takes time and the development that was there was far more concentrated than in a more rural area so the affects are much different than the would have been in the countryside. 

Just a glimpse of what has happened to downtown Christchurch.  I don't want to add other photos because they are all similar to this.  You get the idea.  If this photo was taken a few years ago it would like similar to downtown Chicago and you probably wouldn't see the sky due to the buildings...

I think every person should have to-at some point in their life- be a server at a restaurant, but I now also think everyone should see some type of devastation of human development.

My first experience with this was in Chaiten, Chile where a mudslide from the eruption of the Chaiten Volcano took out the town.  I visited there in November 2011 and many of the buildings still stood, evacuated, but buried under anywhere from three to twenty feet of volcanic ash.  Many people still live there.  Only a few business operate there. It will never re-develop like Christchurch will.  I feel like Chaiten will always be touched in a way we will never understand and forever be buried.  Christchurch wasn't buried; it fell down.  Easier to repair? After being in Christchurch, I am furthermore reminded of (despite all our human efforts) the power that nature has over people.  

 On that note—off to Antarctica.

We had a nice walk along the beach in sandals...something that won't happen for awhile.

Another Post from LAX

The daze has already set in and I'm one short flight into this time traveling journey.  I say time travel because Thursday September 27th barely exists for me.  I take off from my favorite airport on earth (ha-LAX) at 10pm on a Wednesday and after a 15 hour flight I land in Sydney at 6am on Friday the 28th.  Time travel is totally possible, because time really doesn't exist.  Argue all you want, but time as we know it only exist because numbers exist and numbers exist only as a way to mark things that regardlessly exist.  On my way back in 6 months I'll get that day back. I'll land in LA many hours before I left Sydney.

Some of the leaves along the Clark Fork River think it's fall.

The company that I work for in Antarctica purchased this ticket for me.  They were really smart about it, because they waited until two days before the flight to get it.  Two days ago I received a ticket with my name spelled wrong.  No good for an international flight.  Late that night they re-ticketed me with the correct name.  Then I promptly got an e-mail saying the first flight wasn't actually ticketed.  Finally, less than 24 hours before I was supposed to leave things were all taken care of.  Until I got to the airport this morning and the flight still wasn't officially ticketed!  After many phone calls things got settled.  It really helped that the flight was delayed an hour.

This photo conveys my emotions of Missoula right now.

Afternoon sun in the Montana summer air.

When I fly I think of the take off and landing process in three different phases.  Different levels of pain or death.  The first phase begins when I board the plane and ends when it picks up speed on the runway and then begins again when the plane starts to really really slow down after landing.  Barring a massive explosion I feel like if the plane was to crash at any moment I probably wouldn't be seriously hurt during phase one.

The second phase begins when the plane starts to pick up some serious speed during take-off and ends soon after the plane is airborne and begins again when the plane is just about to touch back down and ends again when the plane slows enough to enter back into phase one.  This is the scariest of the three phases.  If the plan crashed in this phases you might not die.  Well, not right away.  You'd be seriously injured and then maybe die.

Phase three is the time in between the the periods of phase two; this is really probably the safest many people with every be anywhere.  But also if the plane were to crash in this phase you'd die instantly. Much better than what would happen in phase two.  All this goes through my mind almost every time I'm on the plane-except when I get into my seat and instantly fall asleep and wake up again when the plane is landing.  This is happening more and more and it's great!

(I wrote that last part back in Denver and after this last flight I want to add a phase 2.5.  This is probably my favorite part of the flight.  You're still low enough to the ground that everything you're looking at still seems real and the movement of the plane is more akin to an amusement park ride than the usual stationary floating sensation you feel at cruising altitude.)

Another afternoon sun shot.

I'm feeling pretty darn good after last week's appendectomy. My stomach is a little sore, but I could ask to be feeling much better.  I was extremely lucky to be at home and only about 30 minutes from a hospital.  I had an invite to go up to Glacier National Park.  I also had an idea to fly back to AK because some friends were backpacking in Denali State Park.  Either way I would have been in the backcountry and much further from definitive care.  But worst of all I could have been on the Northern Patagonia Ice Cap.  This blog was originally created because I was going to spend the next year in South America.  But I got screwed over by a company that I used to work for so that meant the whole trip was off.  The Northern Patagonia Ice Cap is one of the more remote places in the world with some of the worst weather anywhere.  This means getting to medical care in a timely manner is almost impossible.  If the Chilean Navy did happen to feel like flying in to get me the weather probably wouldn't have allowed for that.  And then the only real good medical care would have been up in Santiago.  I most certainly would have died.  So I do have to thank my former boss for being a dick...you saved my life.

One of the first shots I took with my new Sigma 120-400mm lens!

 I will be in Christchurch for a few days of orientation and "Extreme Cold Weather Clothing" issue.  Once I get some photos from their I'll post my address at McMurdo Station, Antarctica and other random stuff about being down there.  Also, by the time you read this I won't have a cell phone number anymore so don't bother.

Sunrise through the clouds and smoke.