Pressure ridge tour

We went out to look at the pressure ridges close to Scott Base (New Zealand's research station). Pressure ridges are formed when the sea ice collides with the ice shelf or land. When the two collide the ice is lifted up and creates some very impressive ice/snow formations. There is a flagged route out there, but we still have to go with a tour guide. The tour guides are volunteers that works here in McMurdo that are doing these tours on their spare time. Our tour guide was Kathleen that is a lab research assistant in the Crary lab during the day.

Scott Base

Castle Rock in the background

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Roadend trip

Digging up fuel drums in -22F and with wind speed at 25 knots, it makes it a very cold experience. At least we got to actually step on to the continent. We were 8 of us that went there with 2 pilots in a Twin Otter operated by Kenn Borek. Luckily the pilots stayed and helped. The plane was also used as shelter during our breaks during the work. The 27 fuel drums were dug up in approximately 4 ½ hours. It was a very cool experience and as things are getting busier here I will hopefully get more opportunities like this during my stay here.

Roadend Trip from Jonas Landstrom on Vimeo.

Sunday

Sundays usually means sleeping in a little (usually to around 0800), go to the gym and go and have brunch. Today after the brunch I headed out to the ice runway and got the opportunity go in and look at the Challenger that FAA uses down here to certify the runways.

Inside 

On the Ice runway

We went out hiking for a few hours. We did to trails today, the Observation Hill loop and the Hut point loop. The weather the past 2 days have been fantastic. Sunshine, blue skies and barely any wind in town. Out on the trails it is always windy and when we got up on the hills it was really windy and cold. I have learned how to dress to stay warm here now, so it was not an issue with the cold. The wind beats on the face pretty good and I have not found a solution to the fogging up of my sunglasses when I have to pull up the gaiter to cover up most of my face.

Neal and Liz at the beginning of OB Hill trail

OB Hill trail

End of OB Hill trail with Mt Erebus puffing up smoke in the back

The cross raised for George T Vince by Discovery Hut "To the memory of George T Vince of the "Discovery" who was drowned near this spot March 11th 1902"

Cracks in the sea ice

Dinner tonight was lamb, a little bit over cooked but ok. The best part is that we have been able to have salads almost everyday this week and the Caesar’s salad tonight was fantastic. I need to remember to write a comment card to the galley about that. We have been told that we should be able to expect to have “freshies” available the whole month of November, but things can change. We are enjying it while we can.

Tomorrow I am actually going to be heading to Antartica for real. McMurdo is actually not on the continent itself. It is an island close to the continent. I got signed up to go and assist in digging out a fuel cache in a place called Roadend. It is going to be really exciting. Everybody has told me to dress warm, it is apparently really cold out there. Pictures will follow.  

Life in McMurdo

Things are starting to settle down and I am getting in to the groove of living and working here. The clinic is not very busy yet, because we are still waiting for a lot more people to show up here. A lot of the flights to get down here has been delayed and normally there would be one flight a day from Christchurch to here and it has been one flight a week. Most of the delays have been caused by weather either here or in between here and Christchurch.

Our military collegues arrived 2 days ago. The flight surgeon is Dr Tom Watts from South Carolina, Flight Nurse is Emelie and Tech is Alfredo. They are both stationed in Okinawa. The three of them are going to be here for approx 4 weeks. After that we are getting a new crew.

The LC-130s should arrive sometime next week, so currently we don't have any aircrafts that are stationed here capable of going to New Zealand and due to the delays most of the time there are no flights back to Christchurch. I guess it is a good thing that nobody has needed to be transported to Christchurch from here yet.

We are preparing for our annual MCI (Mass Casualty Incident) drill. Our job as medical providers is to train and prepare other staff to become part of the medical team. We have a fair amount of EMTs, WFRs and a few paramedics available to us. The drill is scheduled sometime next month so we have a few weeks to train and prepare. In our training it will be training people to do x-rays, run the lab and the walking blood bank. The volunteers that showed up today seems to be really positive and wants to be part of this. In reality if there would be a MCI the whole station would be activated and everybody would have a role to fill.

Things I found in the store here

At 2130 last night 10/23/13, no more sunsets this year

Today I got to experience how cold and windy it can be down here. It is -7.6F (-22C) and with windchill of -45.4F (-43C). Happy that I don't have to be outside for too long.  

Saturday night in McMurdo, Antarctica

Another Saturday night is here. Finished work around 1700 and went to the gym and ran a few miles. The weather here is still not good enough to run outside, I don’t know if it will ever be good enough. The forecast for Sunday is not very good either, so it will probably be a day spent watching a movie or go to the gym. They have a brunch every Sunday here, not as fancy as it sounds (I will write about the food another time). Below are photos of a Fata Morgana, which is an optical illusion.

Fata Morgana, an optical illusion

Saturday is also my “assigned” laundry day. My roommate has an advantage, because that is his day off. He is working in the galley as a steward. Since the galley is open on Sundays, they have different off days. Almost everybody else is off on Sundays.

Yesterday they decided to start to sell alcohol again at the station. It was shut down during the “drawdown” process. I decided to visit the bar here on the station yesterday for the first time since I got here. Not as packed as I thought it would be, but I heard that there was a long line in to the store when they opened yesterday.

The alcohol selection is not that great here and they are pretty pricey.

On Arrival Height with McMurdo in the background

 

When the government ended the shutdown and NSF (National Science Foundation) got their funding back there was a sense of relief at the station. Fortunately we have not been able to get a lot of flights in due to bad weather, so there were still a lot of “laid-off” people on the station. I feel sorry for the winter overs that are trying to get off the ice. This week we have had one flight that arrived.

I heard today that around 85% of the people that were either sent back from the ice or turned around in New Zealand is returning. Anybody that had a contract to work here this season were welcome back.

Now there will be a mad rush to try to salvage as much as possible of this research season.  We should know next week which research projects they are going to do this season. It matters to us, because we supply all the field camps with a med kit and we have to go through all of them and make sure that all the meds are correct. It’s a task that takes a while to do.  It is also very exciting that the science is starting up again. On Sundays there are presentations from different researchers down here and from what everybody tells me they are very well attended. I have been told that there will potentially be opportunities to assist different research groups with their work here. I will keep you all posted.

Lab in the Crary Lab building

Watertanks in the Crary building

Getting a private tour of the NASA McMurdo Ground Station

Satellite traking dish

Satellite tracking dish, 30ft in diameter

Antarctic Field Safety Training video

Untitled from Jonas Landstrom on Vimeo.

Antarctic Field Safety training A.k.a "Happy Camper"

So, my camping adventure on the ice is completed. It was a very interesting experience to sleep in a tent out on the ice. We were only about 5 miles away from the town, but it felt like we were out in the middle of nowhere. The weather was nice on the day we went out, the temp erature dropped down to around -7F and it was not very windy. The night after it was very windy and in the morning it was Con 2. I have a new found respect for the cold and I learned a lot. Below are some photos from our trip out on the ice. The other participants except the Doc that I am working with were PHI helicopter pilots. A very nice and funny bunch. (I created a video as well, but the internet is very slow here and it will take me a very long time to upload.)

Packing the Hagglund 

Getting organized

Setting up tents

Setting up kitchen

Camp almost completed

A very cold me

"Ice Bar - Antarctica style"

People that didn't make the "cut" has starting to leave McMurdo. Today was a bad weather day so today's flight was cancelled. Tomorrow and Friday there will be big groups leaving. When everything is said and done we will be approx 370-400 people here and at the end of January beginning of February they will draw down even more and start prepare for the winter staff to come in and take over for the winter season.
We were told today that our contract length has not changed, but things can always change.

We have been told that there is going to be "freshies" on board the flight tomorrow (freshies= fresh food and vegetables). It is strange how much you are looking forward to things that we take for granted when you are living back home. We did get some fresh fruit that arrived when our latest team members arrived on Monday, it was awesome.

Discovery Hut and other things

Tonight we had the opportunity to go inside the Discovery Hut, which is located approx 3/4 of a mile from McMurdo. They told us during our arrival briefing that at the end of the month it was going to close so this would be one of the last times to go and visit it.

Discovery Hut was built by Robert Falcon Scott during the Discovery Expedition of 1901–1904 in 1902. It pretty much looks the same way as they left it over 100 years ago. It is colder inside than it is outside and that was probably one of the reasons that Scott and his crew never lived in the hut. They used it for storage and hang-out. 

Cook top

Old Digestive Bisuits, still some in the box

Long Johns from 1902

Inside the hut

Old supplies

Supply box from Scott's Expedition

Seal blubber and skeletons

Still no word about how things are going to pan out down here. We have not been told anything, so I guess that is a good thing. A few of the people I met in Christchurch and was on the same flight down to the ice are scheduled to leave on the next flight out. The flight today that would bring down 2 more of our team was cancelled due to bad weather that nobody knew about either here or in Christchurch. This is leading to more speculations as to what is going on. 

All I can do is to continue to do my job and see what happens. I have today finally got all my transport equipment put together and feel that I am ready to go on flight if needed. I am going to try to meet with PHI next week to check out the helicopters if needed to utilize them on a transport. They have 2 A-stars and 2 Bell 212 down here. Monday and Tuesday I will do my survival training, also called "Happy Camper". 2 days and one night out on the ice. I will post pictures and write all about it when I am done.