Day On The Water

A group of us went out a couple of weeks ago for some boating. Sean took all of these pictures, which means he's not in any of them. On our day off we hopped in the Zodiac and headed over to Loudwater Cove, which is an odd name for such a peaceful place. No sooner did we arrive than the boating hours were over and a front was moving in anyway. It was fun and we were able to nap a chunk of bar ice.

Me. It looks like I'm wearing makeup, but I'm just cold after reducing my facial hair.

Bru was there too.

Jeff caught a big one.

Heading home.

Sledding

Last week I got to do a little sledding on the glacier. I still haven't made it up to snowboard. Riding down the hill on a thin piece of plastic was still fun though, especially because I was always going backwards and was completely out of control. Luckily, there are rocks at the bottom that keep me from going into the water.

Pretending to not be sitting still.

Famous Again

I was interviewed last week by my hometown newspaper. It's pretty cool, I don't think I've been in the paper since I graduated high school and they had everyone's senior picture displayed. The interview appeared in an article yesterday. I wish I could share the article with you, but you'll either have to pay for the online version found here or just drive to Lawrence County, IN and grab a print copy for yourself.

The Teaser.

Suffice it to say, I think the article was well written and I don't think I came off as a complete dork. Krystal, the journalist writing the article, picked a favorable picture of me. Compared to what else she could find on this blog, I'm glad that's the one that made the cut.

GSAR Exercise

At Palmer, the members of station fill many roles outside of their normal job description (actually, everyone's job description has "other duties as required" listed, so it is covered). In addition to my "normal" job as a research associate, I am on several emergency response teams. One such team is the glacier search and rescue team (GSAR). If somebody finds themselves in a bad situation on the glacier, in the backyard, or out on a bumpy spot on one of the islands, they call GSAR to save the day. That's a scary thought considering the combined experience level of those of us on the team this winter. Unfortunately, it's just not possible to put together a super ninja outdoor rescue squad when there are less than twenty people to chose from. We have four dedicated souls on the team and each of us have our strengths that we can add to the cause: Jeff is an experienced skier and has ice climbed before, Kris can also ski well and can drive anything, Webster is also an excellent driver and is great with knots, and I'm tall. Maybe not the ideal group for search and rescue, but we train for the worst case and hope for the best.

With Ryan, our leader, heading out on the next boat, it was important for us to get a full day out in the field to practice some basic skills. We had a break in the weather and made a go of it last weekend.

GSAR is pretty gear intensive. We spend a lot of time getting everything gathered up, put on, checked, and double checked.

One of the first things we ran across in the backyard was our overturned cache. The winds had been pretty wild and knocked over our supply shed that we keep near the glacier's edge.

We warmed up the snowmobiles to practice riding them for a quicker response.

We didn't have enough room for everyone to ride, so I got to walk up the glacier.

Ryan shows Kris and I the finer points of ice ax handling while a group of seals relax in the background. Also notice that you can see my work center, TerraLab, across Hero Inlet.

Hero Inlet facing the glacier.

Me setting up ice screws to prepared for being lowered over the edge of the glacier.

As I was being lowered over the edge, a couple of penguins showed up nearby. They're very hard to see, which is probably the intent of their black and white coloring.

A closer view. If you look right at the edge of the rocky outcropping, you can see them. They were probably about 10 feet (3 meters) from where I set down at the base of the glacier. Unfortunately, I didn't have a camera with me at the bottom, so I relied on Webster's pix (for all of these shots atually).

Freaky

It's just never this calm here. There is no wind whatsoever. Strange. First it doesn't snow, then it's not windy. Heck, it's not even that cold outside. I'm not sure that I'm actually in Antarctica anymore. Of course, it does this on the days where I need plenty of windy for air sampling. Apparently, I did something to irk mother nature.

A Calm Winter's Day.

Snowperson

I have checked one thing off of my list from the last post....

It's a snowperson in a dress.

I still haven't made the angel or gone snowboarding or eaten a snowcone or anything else. It didn't continue snow long after my last post either, so we don't quite have the epic blanket of powder that I had hoped for. Tomorrow is a day of search and rescue training on the glacier, so I will get a good idea of how conditions are up there.

Heaps

It has been a snowless chunk of Antarctica here for several weeks. The only 'snow' around has been the compacted remnants of a dusting we got early in the month. The well-worn paths around station have either been devoid of snow from being in the sunny areas or been compressed into icy sheets by constant foot traffic. For weeks we have had fairly low winds, abundant sunshine, and hardly any precipitation at all. That's fine for some, but this is supposed to be (and as it turns out, it really is) Antarctica. It's supposed to be howling winds, crazy sideways snow that burrows into your skin through your parka, and eternal, gloomy night for the whole winter. Finally today we took care of at least part of our un-stereotype.

I woke this morning to see snowflakes out my window. Not just a couple of wayward lost ice crystals with a hopeless meandering downward drift, but actual sleigh bells and toboggan snow. It's the kind of snow that when I see it in the real world, I start getting my fake cough ready so that I can call in sick to work and head for the mountains for some snowboarding. I leaned up enough to see that we did indeed have a little accumulation already at a pretty early hour.

One of my tasks here at Palmer is to measure snow. This is done in two ways. First, there is a meter stick in the ground that I used to determine the total amount of accumulation we have on the ground at any one time. The measured amount goes up and down as snow falls, drifts and melts. We also have a bit of railing set aside used to measure the overnight accumulation, before being wiped clear, giving a snapshot of the current snow precipitation. That rail reading was 3cm this morning and I measured it again later to find it was over 7cm and still falling. We'll see what the final tally is tomorrow, but it's likely to get close to matching the total for the time I have been here so far.

Until then I will start laying out my plans for snowballs, snow angels, snowmen, and snowboarding.