Frostbytes

Ice Caves and 24 Hour Sunlight

2008-10-30T14:38:04Z

The sun is above the horizon 24 hours a day now, and won't set for another 4 months.
For some reason I find it is actually easier to adjust to 24 hour darkness than it is to 24 hour sunshine.
There is something just plain weird about stepping outside in the middle of the night and having to put on sunglasses.

I am finally due to be getting out of here November 10th for some much needed time off in the real world, Christine will be following a few days later.

In the mean time, last weekend we joined in a trip up the coast to Cape Evans in some Delta trucks to have a look at the newly formed ice caves in the Erebus Ice Tongue Glacier...

Delta dragging a sled of emergency survival equipment across the frozen sea ice.
Later this summer this will be open sea water here.

Christine and I down inside an ice cave

Climbing back out into the light

Outside the cave looking back towards the sun and the Delta parked on the sea ice

Alas the Deltas don't like soft snow and get stuck very easily. This one had to be dug out about 6 times on the way back to town.

McMurdo Station as seen from a recent helicopter trip to Black Island.
Mount Erebus is smoking in the distance in the background.

T3 Syndrome

2008-10-13T09:17:27Z

Summer is here. Today the temperature is only about -10C / 14F.

A week from now the sun will be above the horizon 24 hours a day.

The station population is up to around 800 people now.

It's a lot for my toasty winter-over brain to deal with, but the sunlight and activity is starting to relieve the typical T3 symptoms.

Polar T3 syndrome is an unusual thing that typically affects people who spend the winter down here the hardest.

It is thought to be caused by a combination of things, lack of sunlight, lack of new stimulus, low vitamin D levels, and T3 hormone being diverted from the brain to the muscles.

Common symptoms are fatigue, short term memory loss, zoning out with a 1000 mile stare, or forgetting every day things.

It's something you just get used to and typically have a laugh about. It also means that you have to be very well organized and write everything down, or there is no way you will remember to do something.

Thankfully the effects are only temporary, and go away once you get a bit of time off the Ice.

In the recent interviews I have been doing with people for the Year on Ice movie I'm making, I've been getting them to give examples of how it affects them.

Here's a few examples people have given me:

-Constantly forgetting appointments, meetings, and social functions.

-Walking into the next room to grab a tool you need to do a job you are working on, when you get there you have absolutely no idea what you went there for.

-Suddenly forgetting the name of someone you have known well for years.

-Forgetting common random words halfway through a sentence and having to stop to remember what the word was.

-Trying to remember which day of the week comes first, Wednesday or Thursday.

-Forgetting the phone number of the house you have lived in all your life.

-Forgetting the name of every day objects like the salt shaker on the dinner table.

-Forgetting which key opens the office door you unlock every morning at work.

Consequently people typically become less articulate.

Another often-wintered couple, Tom and Lynn along with Christine & myself have had people comment to us quite often about how we seem to communicate by grunts and pointing. When it comes right down to it, it is amazing how little articulation is actually required to communicate.

Here's a couple of still photos from recent time-lapse film sequences...

Crescent Moon setting over the Royal Society Ranges

Nacreous Clouds in the sky behind one of the small satellite dish enclosures

End of Winter Start of Summer

2008-10-13T09:18:30Z

The Winfly plane flights came and went a couple of weeks ago, now everyone is ramping up for the first flights of summer which were supposed to start happen this week.
So far the weather has prevented any more planes from getting in, which means there is now a backlog of 4 flights worth of people waiting in Christchurch, taking up a lot of the available motel space in the city.

Once all the new people do actually start to make it down here things start to get really hectic. The station population will increase about 4 fold, and the summer research programs really get underway.

Most the winter-over staff will head north to warmer climates over the next couple of weeks, but Christine & I will be here until the start of November.

I had changed a bit since she last saw me at the start of winter...

Da Plane Da Plane

2008-09-05T10:38:43Z

The first plane after winter has arrived.
It brought with it new people, mail, fresh fruit and vegetables, and of course most importantly my darling wife.

It tends to be a time of sensory overload for the winter staff, seeing unfamiliar faces, and some old faces back again.
The new people look really strange with their tanned skin. After getting used to seeing nothing but pale winter staff for so long, the new people look orange to us, as though someone has turned the saturation up too high on the TV.
Eating a fresh banana is like mana from heaven. Your body is craving the fresh fruit after going without for so long. Of course, not being used to it, it makes for lots of grumbly tummies afterward too.

The other bad thing about this time of year is typically new cold and flu viruses will be introduced by the new folk.
Living in close quarters with so many people typically means they spread very fast too.
Over the winter all the cold and flu viruses had burned out, so our immune systems have not had much to work on. Any new viruses tend to hit us quite hard.
Hopefully the new policy this year of requiring everyone to have a flu shot will relieve most of that this time around.

The sun is up for 8 hours a day now. It's still taking a while to get used to seeing the sun in the sky again.

Return of the Sun

2008-08-28T20:31:26Z

Yesterday I finally got to see the sun again for the first time in just over 4 months.
It rose last week, but because of Mount Erebus being in the way to the north, you can't see it unless you get out of town just yet.
It is up for a few hours a day now.
In another 3 weeks it will be above the horizon 12 hours a day, 4 weeks later and it will be above the horizon 24 hours a day, not setting again until late February.
This is what it looked like at just after 1.00pm in the afternoon...

48 Hour Film Festival Winners

2008-08-22T11:10:43Z

The votes for the Winter International Film Festival of Antarctica were tallied, and this is the result...

Best Film: Tied for first Place
Rothera (UK) FNG
Neumayer (Germany) Neumayer Nemesis

Best Acting:
Casey (Australia) -Don't leave Home

Best Cinematography:
Rothera (UK) FNG

Best Screenplay:
Casey (Australia) -Don't leave Home

Best Use of Required Elements:
Casey (Australia) -Don't leave Home

See the links in the previous posts for where you can watch the films.

Nacreous or Polar Stratospheric Clouds

2008-08-15T18:58:58Z

Here's another couple of photos of the Antarctic Nacreous Clouds from today at Black Island...

They are most impressive to see in real life. It looks like the whole northern sky is on fire.
Regular photos really do not do them justice.
I took a whole lot of High Dynamic Range shots, but they will have to wait until I get back to McMurdo to be processed.

Winter International Film Festival Antarctica

2008-08-13T20:06:49Z

We got a total of 12 entries in the 48 hour film making competition from around the continent.

The randomly drawn requirements the films had to contain were the following:
-A Cardboard Box
-The character of an FNG (New Guy)
-The line "What do you mean you want a day off for mid-winter?"
-A bodily noise other than speech.

We received films from:
McMurdo Station -USA (four films)
Scott Base -New Zealand (two films)
Halley -Great Britain
Neumayer -Germany
Casey -Australia
Rothera -Great Britain
Mawson -Australia

The films can be viewed here...
http://cid-f32c1f3f4fb6d9e5.skydrive.live.com/browse.aspx/Antarctic%20Movies

Direct link to the movie from Rothera...
http://greenmug.co.uk/rothera

Be warned, some of the movies contain offensive language, so view at your discretion!

Voting is still underway to decide the winners.
Any winter residents in Antarctica are eligible to vote.

I was most impressed with the overall quality of the films.
We had our screening here at McMurdo on Saturday night to a capacity crowd that had a great time.
There were some very clever ideas of how to integrate the character of the new guy in a winter film. At most stations we have no outside contact with the rest of the world during the winter.

I'll post the results of who won what next week.

In the mean time, light is returning to the sky for us here. The stars have disappeared in the middle of the day now, and the sun is due to peek over the horizon next week for the first time in 4 months.

Here's a picture looking north from Black Island, with some polar stratospheric or nacreous clouds in the sky.
PSCs form when ozone depleting gases in the upper atmosphere crystallize in the extreme cold at this time of the year...

Antarctic Winter 48 Hour Film Making Competition

2008-07-29T22:53:27Z

This weekend Stations all over Antarctica will be taking part in the first ever continent-wide 48 hour film making competition.
I have run them locally at McMurdo Station and Scott Base the last two years, but this year I thought I'd see if people at the other Antarctic stations that have a winter crew were interested in joining in.

So far teams from McMurdo Station (US), Scott Base (New Zealand), Mawson Station (Australia), Casey Station (Australia), South Pole (US), Palmer Station (US), Neumayer (Germany), Halley (British), and SANAE (South Africa) have all said they will be participating.

So just how does it work?
A random draw of elements that have to be included in the film will be done on Friday afternoon, and an email sent out to everyone at the time.
Films then need to be completed by Sunday night. Films can be any length from 5 seconds to 5 minutes long, and be on any topic or style they like.
All the stations that submit films will be eligible to vote for what they think is the best.

This is the film I made two years ago for the local competition.
The required elements for the films that year were they had to contain an ice cream cone, a bowl, the sound of a phone, a sleeping person, and the line "We've lost another one"

Here is a link to one Christine did from the same competition, which emphasizes the "Toasty" personality that anyone who has spent a winter here can relate to all too well...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RQOTDXB5LNA

I'll post some links to any of this year's videos that are available on line in a couple of weeks.

The Wind at Black Island

2008-07-15T21:52:38Z

I had to make another emergency traverse out to the Black Island Satellite Station yesterday to make some repairs.Three of us are going to be here for a couple of days doing repairs, and waiting for the weather to clear. It is surprising that McMurdo and Scott Base can miss so much of the bad weather that hits out here, as they are not all that far away.

It gets pretty windy out here on a regular basis during the Antarctic winter. I've never really given it too much attention, as it is just one of those things you get used to.

Then Ken Klassy, one of the guys traveling with me this time pointed out that right now we are in the middle of the equivalent of a Category 3 Hurricane.

Well, looking at it that way, out here we pretty much get a category 1 hurricane every week or two in winter, and a category 3 hurricane once a month or so.

A couple of years ago we had the equivalent of category 5 winds here. One of the smaller satellite dish housings blew away then.

It's a hard this to photograph or film stormy weather effectively. It's dark outside, and even with good lighting you can only see a few paces in front of you in the blowing snow.

In the living area the preway heater is turned up to maximum, and extra rooms closed off, and it is only just keeping up with the heat.

At least the urinal is still working. It will often freeze up, meaning we have to go in a plastic drum inside until we can get outside to remove the offending frozen bits with a heat gun.
It may sound like a glamorous job working as a Satellite Engineer in Antarctica, but wrestling with barrels of frozen pee and manhandling large plastic containers of frozen poo soon puts that image to rest in a hurry.

With the very fine snow and big winds, it also means that the smallest gap in any door seal will let through a lot of snow...

All this snow came in through the gaps in the door seal

The Kitchen area at the Black Island Camp. Note the large "I" beams running through the structure for strength.

Looking at some of the satellite equipment electronics

Out and About in the Antarctic Winter

2008-07-07T16:35:07Z

Last week I traversed out to Black Island again to do some maintenance on the Satellite Earth Station out there.
At noon a glow can be seen on the horizon to the north behind Mount Erebus. You don't really get to see this from back at McMurdo or Scott Base, as you are too close to the Mountain.

The lights of McMurdo and Scott Base can be seen in front of Mount Erebus. In the larger version of this picture a faint glow from the lava in the crater at the top of the mountain can be seen too. Some light green auroras are in the sky above the constellation of orion.

This photo of some light auroras over the Black Island Facility was taken at 11.30 in the morning

And this was the same view at 11.30 in the morning back in March

A view of the Ice ridges in front of Black Island, looking north in the middle of the day.
This was a 30 second exposure photograph.
I used my LED flashlight to illuminate the ice in the foreground by "painting" it with the white light.

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After I got back to McMurdo, as few of us went out to the A-Frame for the weekend.
It is a small cabin Scott Base has out on the ice shelf, a nice place to get away for a bit of peace and quiet.
It takes about 20 minutes to drive there by hagglunds vehicle.
The temperatures out on the ice shelf were probably sitting at about -40 degrees with about 15 knots of wind.

We had a go at making some "light graffiti" a long exposure photo with moving light sources

Finally Some nice Weather

2008-06-28T19:17:20Z

It has been pretty much murky overcast weather for the last month. Last night the weather finally cleared, giving me the chance to get out a camera or two...

Aurora over one of the McMurdo Dorm buildings

Vince's Cross at Hut Point The memorial to the first person known to have died in Antarctica

Once again I got roped into taking the Winter-Over group photo this year.
A portable flood light unit provided the light in an otherwise dark day.

Mid Winter

2008-06-24T20:35:45Z

June 21st marked the winter solstice for us, meaning the sun is gradually on it's way back again. We still have another two months before we get to see it again though.

So, how do we celebrate mid-winter?
It is the premier Antarctic holiday, when all the bases exchange greetings with each other, and world leaders send messages of congratulations.

Locally two big events typically mark the middle of winter for us.

First up is the mid-winter dinner, the one day we take the time to dress up and have a formal dinner together...

The Dining Room at McMurdo all dressed up

An Ice Scultpure made by one of the locals

Folks take to the dance floor after dinner

The second way of celebrating Mid Winter is the Polar Plunge.
Over the hill at Scott Base they spend a day digging down through about 2 meters / 6 feet of ice (plus a bit of snow on top) to get to the sea water underneath.

Folks then take turns jumping in, with a safety rope attached in case they pass out or get into other difficulties...

Brody, our Computer Tech in the plunge hole

Some people love it.
Personally I regard it as an IQ test and have never bothered doing it myself.
If I was going to be raising a substantial amount of money for a charity by doing it I might give it a go, but I feel if I really want to feel discomfort and an adrenaline rush it is easier to just go slam my thumb in the door.

Moonlight

2008-05-24T17:00:12Z

A couple of months ago we had a safety meeting, where the Station Manager mentioned a previous incident many years back when a vehicle dropped through the ice. Later that same day two bulldozers got stuck when they broke through a pocket in the ice shelf.
Last week we had a safety meeting when he talked about fire danger, and showed some old videos from many years ago when the chapel burned down, and another incident when the Vehicle Maintenance Workshop burned down. An hour or so after the meeting, one of the buildings out at the runway caught fire and went up in smoke along with about 700 gallons of fuel. There was no one out there at the time, but the flames could be clearly seen from back in town.

View of the fire 9 miles /15km away from McMurdo in the noon twilight.

We have told him whatever he does, don't talk about volcanic eruptions at the next safety meeting.

We have a full moon now, providing a lot of light in the absence of the sun.
Next week with the moon gone it will be pretty much black skies and stars all day and night.
At noon there will be a bit of a glow to the north, but still black overhead.

This picture is from the middle of a time-lapse movie sequence I got last week, where green auroras can be seen in the blue sky with the stars out.
All the light is from the moon. There is a shooting star on the left of the picture too...

One last photo, here's one of me the other night while I was out getting aurora photos. It was quite a warm night as you can see, as I am not dressed very warmly...

Working in Twilight

2008-05-07T15:08:01Z

The sun has gone, but we still get some noon twilight for a couple of hours each day for another couple of weeks.
The brightest stars can still be seen all day though.

Here's a couple of photos taken in the middle of the day during the latest traverse out to Black Island to work on the Satellite Ground Station...

The two Pisten Bully vehicles driving across Black Island

Some of the ice formations created by the summer melt on the ice shelf in front of Black Island

Now that it is dark most the time, we have also begun to see auroras a bit more regularly too.
Here's a shot taken on Sunday night out the back window of the dorm building where I live.
The display was only average in terms of brightness, but it lasted steadily for about 3 hours, and allowed me to capture some great time-lapse sequences of them moving across the sky.

The Aurora Australis or Southern Lights. These are the southern hemisphere equivalent of the
Aurora Borealis, or Northern Lights.

Last of the Sun

2008-04-27T19:35:57Z

Normally the last plane out before winter is in late February.
This year was unusual, in that we had a plane come down in April, to take out extra staff who stayed on in support of researchers who were studying the various life forms that exist in local lakes as they freeze solid for the winter.

The plane has come and gone now, leaving us with a Winter Population of 125 people at McMurdo, 91 Men and 34 Women. Over the hill at Scott Base there are 16 people, 12 Men and 4 Women.

There were many happy people, as we got to get mail from home, and a resupply of fresh fruit & vegetables. Normally by this time of the year we are pretty much down to just frozen food.

And the sun has set for the last time this season now. During the last week it was just popping up above the northern horizon in the middle of the day for a couple of hours. We will not see it again for another 4 months.

Some Links

2008-05-15T09:44:38Z

An article has been posted on the NSF's Antarctic Sun website about or work on the Artists and Writers Grant here...

http://antarcticsun.usap.gov/features/contentHandler.cfm?id=1402

The movie "Ice People" is having it's premeire at the San Fancisco Film Festival shortly, and a trailer is on line here...

http://icepeople.com/

Anne and her crew came down in August in 2006 on an Artists & Writters Grant.

I took them out to Black Island with me on a traverse prior to them deploying to the Dry Valleys with the Geologists. We had a nice bit of weather blow in while we were out there, some of the footage in the trailer is from that trip.

The "Condition 1" video clip just keeps on going and going. It was on the Good Morning America show a while back, and I keep hearing about how it appears on various TV shows around the world. A couple of days ago it popped up here...

http://www.g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/684573/Around_The_Net_041508.html?utm_source=g4tv&utm_medium=rssfeeds&utm_campaign=TheFeed

For a completely different view of life on the ice, check out "Big Dead Place"

http://www.bigdeadplace.com/

Nick asked to use one of my more gruesome photos here...

http://bigdeadplace.com/frontierwatch/?p=62

Here's a shot of the very organic looking ice patterns that formed as one of the windows out at Black Island froze over as our presence slowly added humidity to the building...

When the Sun and the Moon Align

2008-04-11T08:49:44Z

Some of the time-lapse sequences I get take a lot of patience, sometimes waiting for many months for that few-minute window when hopefully the weather behaves and the camera doesn't freeze up.
I keep track of the relative positions of various local land marks, and compare them to the local star charts to figure out when things will align.
Here's a few still shots taken from some recent work...

The cross on top of Observation Hill was erected as a memorial after Robert Scott and his men died returning from the Pole in 1914.

On the ridge to our north, the "Our Lady of the Snows" shrine is a memorial to Richard Williams, a SeaBee (US Navy) who died when his bulldozer broke through sea ice in 1956.

Locally the shrine is affectionately referred to as "Roll Cage Mary" because of the steel frame surrounding the statue.

Only Two Weeks of Sun Left

2008-04-06T15:24:09Z

In just over two weeks the sun will be gone for four months. We are down to about 6 hours of sunlight per day now.

Last night I went out looking for Auroras, but did not see much. There were some faint ones behind Mount Erebus, and Erebus itself was lighting up the smoke it was pouring out with the hot lava in the crater. (See the small red glow to the left of the picture)

This summer I did a lot of my footage in High Dynamic Range, a technique where you take multiple exposures of the same subject at different settings to give a more dynamic result.
Here's a quick example from some of the footage I have been processing recently...

This is a normal photo taken on an overcast day of Robert Scott's original hut with McMurdo in the background...

Because of the relatively flat light, the brightness of the snow, and the darkness of the volcanic rock, the camera can't quite handle it all very well.

Here's the same scene using HDR techniques, it is a lot closer to what I was actually seeing with the naked eye at the time...

Back on the Ice for winter #8

2008-03-26T12:55:33Z

Antz here,

What's happened since the last post… ?

The plane did finally make it down for us to leave, although it was at 4.00am when it finally got here.
We had some much needed time off back in the warm world, where liquid water, fast cars, too many people, biting insects, and small furry animals all grab your attention until you gradually get used to it all again.

Christine is keeping herself busy with some jewelry making courses back at home, and is not due back down here on the Ice with me until August. I got back to McMurdo a few weeks ago for my 8th winter-over. Counting this one I’ve spent 8 out of the last 10 winters in Antarctica now.

The sun set for the first time this year about a month ago for us. Right now it is spending about 12 hours above and 12 hours below the horizon. In another 4 weeks it will be below the horizon 24 hours a day, not to be seen again until the end of August.
Down at the South Pole, the sun has already set, and won't be back until September.
Temperatures are beginning to cool off from the summer highs of around freezing, and are generally sitting closer to -25 C / -15 F.

In my spare time I am busy processing the footage we got this summer, and constantly gathering more. I'm also going back through all my original photos and re-mastering everything in Hi-Def. Quite a mammoth undertaking.
By the end of the year I hope to have a rough cut of the film completed, with the final cut ready for release next year.

My regular job here that pays the bills in the mean time is working as the Satellite Engineer, keeping us in contact with the outside world.
The satellite ground station is a remote facility across the permanent Ice Shelf from McMurdo on Black Island. It is unmanned in winter, but I have remote control of most functions from McMurdo. It will automatically page me (often in the middle of the night) for most serious problems.
We have no helicopter support in winter, they don't fly in the dark, so when needed, I have to traverse out there in tracked vehicles across the Ice Shelf to do repairs.
It typically takes about 6 hours to get there. If the ice conditions are bad, it can take as much as 12 hours. Sometimes the weather will not behave, so we may be delayed a few days at either end before it is safe to travel outside.

The Black Island Telecommunications Facility.
There is a 7.2 meter diameter satellite dish in the dome on the left, an 11 meter dish in the big dome, and a 2 meter dish in the little dome on the right.

While they picked the best available location in terms of accessibility and satellite coverage for the facility, it is also one of the worst locations for weather out there. During the winter is normal to have storms blow through every week or two, typically with average wind speeds getting up between 80 - 100 mph (130 - 160 kph) . A couple of years ago there were winds of 157mph (253 kph) sustained, and the peak gust speeds are typically about 50% higher again.
Given that the highest officially verified and recorded wind gust ever on Earth was 231 miles per hour (372 kilometers per hour) on the summit of Mount Washington in 1934, do the math and it gives you some perspective on the winter conditions out there.

A camera set up looking north across the Ice Shelf towards Mount Erebus, smoking in the distance under the mid day sun.
McMurdo Station and Scott Base are at the base of the hill in front of Mt Erebus.