A Long Year In Antarctica

My first views of Antarctica from the window of the contracted Australian Antarctic Program's Airbus A-319.

A year ago today I arrived in Antarctica and it has been a pretty crazy year.  I’ve learned a lot about myself and a lot about Antarctica.  I’ve been introduced to dynamic people and weather and ice like I never could have guessed existed.  When I arrived here I was excited to be living in one place for four and a half months since that is the longest I’ve spent in one place in years.  I never thought that a year after my initial arrive I’d still be here and have almost two months left.  I’m really excited for travel in New Zealand, Fiji, the US, South Africa and Turkey over the next six months, but I’ve also realized that I need a home to come back to.  Missoula will always be home, but I look forward to the day when I live there (or somewhere else in the mountains of the West) and I don’t get asked how many days or weeks I’m in town for.  I don’t want travel and adventure to end:  I’ll still guide mountains and come back to Antarctica, but I want a more concrete answer when I’m asked where I live. 

October 2012: Just a couple of weeks after I arrived in Antarctica I was doing some monitoring work on the sea ice and saw a few black dots in the distance.  This group of curious Emperor Penguins  slid and waddled up to us to investigate us.  It was definitely one of the coolest experiences of my life.

November 2012: Many of my field days during my first few months were spent on the sea ice of McMurdo Sound monitoring cracks and ice thickness.  The Barne Glacier is an iconic feature north of Cape Evans that I never get tired of seeing.

December 2012: The Dry Valleys Region of Antarctica is filled with bare rock and dry glaciers.  This area is known for its strong winds that flow off the polar plateau and wear away at the boulders and ridges leaving valleys full of strange rock formations.  I was fortunate enough to spend three days in the Taylor Valley on a search and rescue training trip.

January 2013:  I spent most of January at the South Pole and high on the polar plateau at one of the most remote sites on earth.  While it was a neat experience to be at the bottom of the world and at such a remote place I hope to never have to go back.

February 2013: Half of February was spent in a daze working nights while the shipping vessel was unloaded.  The sea ice had melted and McMurdo Sound was busy with a Russian icebreaker, fuel tanker, cruise ships, research vessels and finally the Ocean Giant shipping vessel with a year's worth of supplies for that station.

March 2013:  After (what we thought then was) the last flight of the summer on March 9th life slowed down quite a bit.  We all settled into our winter routine while there was still sunlight.  The month was full of amazing sunsets over the still open water and periodic ice flows.

April 2013: It is funny to look back and remember how excited we were for the sun to finally set for the winter.  I remember staying inside the Arrival Heights building soaking up the last few rays of sunlight through the window.  Four months later we did the exact same thing through the same window with the first rays of sunlight.  Each time left my eyes burning.

May 2013:  In May the dark started to encapsulate us for most of the day.  The moon and a glow on the horizon was the only glimmer in the fading light.  While the sun had been down for weeks the reality of the darkness hadn't fully set in yet.

June 2013: Although I saw my first auroras in late April the darkness of June allowed us to see them at all hours of the day.  This photo was from a late night above McMurdo viewing one of the best displays of the year.  The time lapse video from this night is on my Facebook Photography Page.

July 2013:  In the middle of winter I felt like the darkness would never end.  Now it seems so fleeting and I wish there were a few other night photos I could have taken, but in July the glow on the horizon told of the sun on its way and that was almost all I wanted at that point.

August 2013: August brought lots of change.  The sun arrived, the moon and venus and nacreous clouds put on an amazing one-night-only display and many new people arrived on station.  It was both scary and a welcome awakening.

September 2013: "Wake me up when September ends."  That has been my theme this past month.  All the 54+ hour work weeks from the last year have been catching up to me and I'm exhausted.  But the sun is up and gives everyone the needed boost.  The end is also in sight...the end of my winter job and a welcome change back to my summer job for a fantastic finish to my long season in Antarctica.

I don’t know what I’m going to feel like when I leave here.  I don’t know if I’ll remember how to shop for groceries or cook or even how to digest a real vegetable for that matter!  It’ll come back just like riding a bike I suppose.  The first few days after I arrive back in New Zealand in late November I just want to sleep and feel hydrated after living in the driest desert and eat real food and see and here animals and sounds besides just diesel engines and smell and feel plants that only exist in my mind now.  A year ago one of my coworkers told me to take care of myself because it is a long  (4-5 month) season.  That was a year ago.

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.