Scientists discover massive object under Antarctica
- Thread starter Obliviax
- Start date
So, is it true that if a dude walks outside to take a leak there, his pee will have turned to ice before it hits the ground? (Let's assume a generous pee stream, and that the guy aims in an upward and outward direction.)
Sounds like something from Transformers.
The Autobots managed to smuggle the Allspark off the planet, but Megatron blasts off in search of it. He eventually tracks it to the planet of Earth (circa 1850), but his reckless desire for power sends him right into the Arctic Ocean, and the sheer cold forces him into a paralyzed state. His body is later found by Captain Archibald Witwicky, but before going into a comatose state Megatron uses the last of his energy to engrave into the Captain's glasses a map showing the location of the Allspark,
The Autobots managed to smuggle the Allspark off the planet, but Megatron blasts off in search of it. He eventually tracks it to the planet of Earth (circa 1850), but his reckless desire for power sends him right into the Arctic Ocean, and the sheer cold forces him into a paralyzed state. His body is later found by Captain Archibald Witwicky, but before going into a comatose state Megatron uses the last of his energy to engrave into the Captain's glasses a map showing the location of the Allspark,
Tom, I'm not working today, so I will try to write up a few things to share with the group.
I've relieved myself outside at -40C (wind chill approximately -75C) and it didn't freeze until it hit the ground. Two things work against this happening. First, your urine has a lot of solutes (dissolved stuff like urea and salts) in it, which lowers the freezing temperature significantly below 0C. Second, the relatively fast stream of your pee means that it won't freeze mid air (this is why fast moving streams never freeze all the way through).
However, you can do this (which is pretty cool).
Note that the "water" isn't really freezing...it's turning into water vapor (gas) which is then freezing due to the huge increase in surface area. But it's still cool.
https://www.metabunk.org/debunked-b...-you-throw-it-in-the-air-at-40-degrees.t2902/
Back to pee for a second (since you asked):
When you are at field camps on ice (most of the continent), they set up "P" flags where you have to go to "go." This keeps all of the urine in one place and then eventually the ice is dug out and disposed of (environmental compliance is very big down there). For #2, it's similar to cleaning up after you dog (not fun).
When you are at a temporary field camp without ice (i.e. in the Dry Valleys which are not ice covered), you have to pee in a bottle (1 liter HPDE). So everybody walks around with 2 bottles: one water bottle and one waste bottle. The bottles are identical, so everyone writes "P" multiple times in really big letters because you don't want to confuse these two when they are empty. You get used to walking around with a big bottle of urine in your pack.
Regardless of whether it was Buzz Aldrin or John Glenn, I haven't heard anything about pyramids... what is the gist of the story?
found out my wife's 78 year old uncle did two stints in Antarctica when he was in the Seebees. I knew he had gone there but didn't know he did two stints, one for 16 months, the other for 13 months. He worked on the nuclear power plan there. (McMurdo Station).
Here is the "snopes" version with a complete rundown. They claim it to be "false" but if you read it, they really claim that it couldn't be verified.
Since our fearless leader (Tom) asked, I’ll write up some stuff on my time in Antarctica while I’m off work this week.
Part One: Background and Getting There
In the mid 1990s, I spent 2 months in Antarctica while I was in graduate school. This wasn’t actually part of my PhD research, but I was invited to go by advisor and how to you say no that kind of adventure?
Antarctica is the only place on Earth that isn’t owned by anyone. There is an international treaty that (among other things) basically says that no one can permanently live there, and pretty much limits activities there to science. In the past there was a significant military (most communications stuff) there and there were some remnants of this while I was there (there was a small Naval detachment doing comms stuff). Many countries have a presence in the Antarctic, with the Russians, Kiwis and the US being some of the most active. The U.S. has 3 permanent bases in Antarctica: Palmer (on the South American side of the continent), South Pole and McMurdo (the largest, on the New Zealand side of the continent). Our research focused on the microbiology (and geochemistry) of some permanently frozen lakes in the Taylor Dry Valleys (more on that later), so we worked out of McMurdo.
Travel to McMurdo goes through New Zealand. From LAX to Auckland (north island) is a 12 hour flight, then a shorter hop to Christchurch (south island). I was coming from the east coast, so that was a crazy long travel day. You spend at least one day in Christchurch before flying to McMurdo. (as an aside, New Zealand is awesome, and Christchurch is amazing. Granted I was there pre-earthquake and pre-LOTR, so I’m sure it has changed some, but I’d still highly recommend it if you like active (hiking, etc) vacations). In Christchurch, you spend half a day at the National Science Foundation (NSF) support center where you go through some basic training stuff, and have all of the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear issued to you. I’ll run through the ECW in another post, but they do a really good job of outfitting you with everything you need.
When I went (this may have changed) flights from New Zealand to McMurdo are done via 3 different aircrafts: C-5, C-141 and C-130. These are operated jointly by the USAF and the NZ Air Force. The runway at McMurdo is on the sea ice (which is kind of scary to think about, not from a thickness perspective but from a coefficient of friction (i.e. braking) perspective). At certain times of year, they fly exclusively the C-131 because the can outfit their landing gear as skis rather than wheels.
The weather in Antarctica is notoriously bad and quick changing, which can inflict havoc on flight plans. It’s a 5 to 7 hours flight (depending on aircraft and weather) from Christchurch to McMurdo, and it’s not uncommon for flights to be halfway there and decide the weather has taken a turn for the worse and turn around (affectionately called boomerang flights). I was “fortunate” in that my flight was cancelled three times before we left the airport (once when I was still in bed which was clutch) and we never had to boomerang.
When I finally departed, my plane was a C141, which is primarily a military cargo plane. In order to accommodate passengers, they set up bench “seats” consisting of cargo webbing stretch between some framing, with seat belts attached to the cross struts. Not very comfortable. To make matters worse, these seats ran the lengths of the aircraft (rather than perpendicular like on a commercial flight) and in the middle of the plane we had a lot of gear including some very large track vehicles (like this: http://www.pistenbully.com/fileadmi...m4-1-pistenbully-600-3a-produkt-highlight.jpg ) I’m quite tall, so I had to figure out how to arrange my legs/feet around essentially tank treads. For five hours. Oh, and we also had to be fully decked out in our ECW gear (this was officially for survival reasons if we crashed somewhere on the sea ice, but I think it was also to save baggage space), which is not comfortable.
For the pre-flight check, one of the USAF crew members gave a safety brief that was (good naturedly) mocking a normal commercial airline safety briefing (e.g. if you can’t figure out how to work your seatbelt, you probably shouldn’t be going to Antarctica). One line that sticks in my head to this day is “In the unlikely event of a water landing…you are going to die.” (even if you survived impact the water/air temperatures in the Southern Ocean would kill you very quickly).
After an uneventful (if quite uncomfortable) 5+ hour flight, we arrived on the sea ice at McMurdo. The landing was fine (it turns out that when you have miles and miles of runway, quick braking isn’t needed). The 100 or so passengers grabbed their gear and queued up to de-plane. As soon as I stepped through the door onto the stairway leading down to the ice, I experienced my first taste of polar cold. There’s not really any way to describe it. -40C (with a 60mph wind) feels like a punch in the face. Assuming that the fist punching you has daggers for knuckles and is the size of your entire body. My first thought was “What have I gotten myself into?”
If people want to hear more, I’ll try to write more later. Also happy to answer specific questions, rather than just ramble on.
Well since this is an object with mass under ground it can't be his significant other. Had it been a wide, deep crevasse, it certainly could have been her, specifically her vagina.
Basically people are claiming that they've found pyramids on the actual continent of Antarctica and they are starting to be uncovered. Supposedly it's a big enough deal that even John Kerry was sent down there.
The second link in my post above explains it better than I can here. It's pretty cool to see (and you can try it yourself the next time you get a subzero day where you live).
Thanks Tom.
Part II: McMurdo
After departing the C-141, the passengers were shuttled from the ice runway to the base via a very large wheeled personnel carrier called a Terra Bus. Specifically, Ivan the TerraBus (http://www.globalclassroom.org/terrabus.jpg ). People in Antarctica are bored a lot, which leads to bad puns.
The best comparison that I can give you for McMurdo is that is like a remote mining town from the 1970s. Like a small town there are roads (dirt), a fire station, a church, the galley (Navy terms are holdover from days past, so it’s not a mess hall or a cafeteria, it’s a galley), lodging (dormitories), some recreation buildings, a PX (again residual military) and work buildings. In addition to administrative offices, there is a machine shop, a carpentry shop, a vehicle repair shop, some storage warehouses and of course the large science lab building.
As another poster alluded to, there used to be a nuclear reactor that provided power to the base, but that was decommissioned years before I arrived. The base is powered by fuel oil. The power grid was fine while I was there – no issues or restrictions. Water comes from a desalinization plant (ocean water is turned into potable water). At certain times (e.g. during summer when there are a lot of people, or when the plant isn’t working well), water restrictions are in place. For example, you might be instructed to only shower every other day or to take “Navy showers” (i.e. wet yourself down; turn water off; soap up, turn water back on to rinse off). When I was there, you did have internet connectivity, but it was slow. You also had pretty good land line phone access, although it was expensive to make calls and with the 17 hour time difference (the base operates on New Zealand time for logistical simplicity), I didn’t place many calls to the states. This was pre-cell phones or wi-fi, but even today there is not cell coverage (not surprisingly) or wi-fi (which I think is probably a management decision to keep the worker bees working than anything else).
The PX sold a small variety of snacks and sundries (shampoo etc), t-shirts, souvenirs, and most importantly, booze. I’ll come back to booze in a later post. When I was there, the base did not have an ATM, but my understanding is that there is an ATM on site now.
When my flight arrived at McMurdo (aka Mac-town), we were whisked to an administration building for check-in. This reminded me of an antiquated college dorm move in process, where you actually had to stand in a line to get your dorm room assignment and keys. Because we arrived on one of the first flights of the field season (I should have mentioned before that I was there in the spring – October and November), so the people who had been there all winter (there are no flights in or out from April to October), called “winter-overs” were still there and hadn’t moved out of their rooms yet. So we were placed in a short term housing unit called the Hotel California http://s98.photobucket.com/user/orinsalah/media/McMurdo/hocal.jpg.html
The rooms consisted of bunk bed dorm rooms (6 bunks per room) and shared dormitory style bathrooms (similar to East Halls at PSU). Not luxury accommodations. This wasn’t a huge deal because we’d be leaving for the field soon. By the time we got back from the field, they would re-assign us to better rooms – essentially a pair of two person rooms with a shared single bathroom between them. Much nicer! My room even had a TV in the room that one of the winter overs had left behind. A slight aside, because it is a pain to ship stuff back to the States, when people leave, they often leave behind stuff for new arrivals to pick through and take what they want. This could be books, clothes, furniture or small electronics. This is somewhat formalized by having “skua piles” (piles of stuff no one wants anymore). A skua is a scavenger bird (like a cross between a hawk and a seagull) that picks through the garbage at the base. So skua is not only a bird, but also slang that can be used as a noun (i.e. a piece of skua) or a verb (i.e. “I skua’d some decent books from the pile at Hotel California”).
Most of the first week at Mac-town was spent organizing our gear and taking a bunch of training courses. We had a base safety training, which covered the various Operating Conditions (the degree to which outside operations were permitted depended on weather – there were times when everyone was essentially confined to quarters), station rules, health issues (dehydration is a big problem) and other day to day stuff we needed to know. We also had a helicopter (hereafter helo) safety training, helo loadmaster training, a laboratory orientation and snow survival school (aka “Happy Camper School”).
The latter consisted of two days of classroom work which culminated is a camping trip to the sea ice where we practiced making snow shelters, setting up tents in the snow, how to set up and use a field radio, some basic first aid and what to do during white out conditions. We slept out in our snow shelters one night, which happened to be the coldest night of the entire time I was there. I had never been so cold in my entire life. I made the error of crawling into my sleeping bag at midnight to try to get some sleep. I would have been better off pulling an all nighter and staying warm by moving around (which some of my cohorts did).
There were probably 20 people in our Happy Camper class, four of whom would be coming to the Dry Valleys on the same science team I was working on. One of them pointed out to our instructors that we were going to the Dry Valleys, where there was no ice and snow, meaning that snow shelters and anchoring tents in snow would be useful to us. So the instructor spent another hour or so showing us how to anchor tents in the rocky ground. While useful, I was really ready to be inside at that point. Other than that, my new colleagues all seemed decent, but there were some folks who had been to the Ice before (meaning that they didn’t have to do all the training again) that I hadn’t spent much time with. My advisor wouldn’t arrive for another few weeks and I was the only person from my university there.
After a little over a week, we were ready for our first field deployment. I’ll try to write something about life in the field camps tomorrow.
Part III: Field Camp
We were conducting our field work in the Taylor Dry Valleys, primarily at Lake Bonney (http://www.sas.rochester.edu/ees/RareGasLab/images/Lake Bonney-Taylor Glacier_enhanced.jpg ) As you can see from the photo, the Dry Valleys are characterized by mountains, glaciers, frozen lakes and most unusually (for Antarctica) a lack of snow/ice cover. The ground is covered by a very coarse, almost gravelly soil. The landscape appears almost Martian in nature, and it is strikingly beautiful.
To get there from McMurdo we’d travel by helo. There were two types of helos in service while I was there – old Hueys (like you see in Vietnam movies) and smaller French made Aerostars. The latter held 3 passengers, plus the pilot and a limited amount of gear. We primarily used the Aerostars to shuttle people and small amounts of gear (although they could carry a decent payload via sling load: http://adam.antarcticanz.govt.nz/assets/display/83754-max I only rode in a Huey once and it was like riding in a really noisy bus (read: not nearly as fun as the small Aerostars).
At Lake Bonney there was a quasi-permanent field camp consisting of 2 small (10’ x10’) lab buildings and a Jamesway structure (recall the mess hall building in M*A*S*H…that’s a Jamesway). The buildings were heated to about 40F using gas heaters. The Jamesway was used primarily for cooking/eating meals and socializing. There was also a primitive latrine (not heated), but it was better than peeing in bottles. We slept in tents (more on that in a minute).
Most days we spent 8 to 10 hours a day working outside, collecting field samples. There were some days were part of the day might be spent in the lab, prepping samples or running experiments, but I was outside more often than not. We’d wake at 6 am, eat some breakfast and get started. Breaking for lunch around noon and dinner around six. While I was there, it was light for 24 hours a day, so daylight was not a limiting factor. Seeing the sun just make a circle around the horizon and never set is a very weird thing to observe. It’s also strange never to see stars, the moon or darkness for two months. Some people actually had their biological clocks really thrown off by the lack of darkness, but it didn’t bother me. I was able to stay on a normal schedule, mostly because I was very tired at the end of each day. The combination of our very physical field work and the nature of being outside at -40C is exhausting.
Since we are talking about being outside, I guess now is a good time to talk about the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.
On a typical field day I would wear:
Regular underwear (my own, not NSF issue)
Thin base layer thermal underwear
Thicker second layer thermal underwear (later in the season when things warmer up a bit, I might not wear these)
A thermal baselayer long sleeve undershirt
Fleece overalls
A Fleece jacket
A very thick parka with a hood (we also had a thinner “shell” jacket that I used some later in the season)
Wind pants/overalls
Balaclava (like a ski mask hat)
Hat
Goggles or sunglasses
Glove liners
Mittens
Wool socks
Bunny boots (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...unny_boots_in_Point_Lay,_Alaska,_Dec_2011.jpg )
One of the keys to being outside in cold weather is not sweating, so there were times when we’d be unzipping (or possibly even ditching) our parkas for short periods of time. The hardest thing was keeping my face and hands warm. Everything else was usually OK. Sometimes my feet would get cold if I was standing on the lake ice for long periods of time. A problem with my hands was that you can’t really do any work with mittens on, so you end up taking off one mitten to work in your glove liners, do as much work as you can until you can’t feel your fingers anymore, then put your mitten back on and switch to your other hand. We had chemical hand warmers which helped some, but it was a problem. I found that if I had my entire face covered my goggles or sunglasses would fog up, so I spent a lot of time with my nose exposed. I actually have permanent skin damage (basically a precursor to frostbite) on the bridge of my nose as a result. The only time I was really miserable while working is when the wind was really blowing. Antarctica is the windiest continent on Earth (also the highest, driest and coldest) so the wind chills ranged from “Wow, that wind sucks” to “OMFG kill me now.” We had a particularly bad wind storm one afternoon. The wind was picking up empty 55 gallon fuel drums and throwing them down the lake like Styrofoam cups. We nearly lost several tents. Fortunately, it only lasted an hour or so, but it really made a mess.
One of the really challenging things about working in the field is that you spend a lot of time just trying to exist. On a daily basis we had to: check fuel levels in the heaters and generators (refuel if necessary), check the tie-downs/anchors on all structures and tents, obtain drinking water (by chipping it out of the lake ice with an ice pick, then melting it), cook all meals, clean up after all meals, do twice daily radio check ins with McMurdo (at times we had a phone system that worked by bouncing signals between mountaintop transmitters, but it didn’t work all the time) and do any other random maintenance stuff that came up. And all of that is on top of a full day of science.
From time to time, we’d have other scientists that would pass through our camp. They would usually be there for a day or two to do something very specific and then would roll out. It was good to see new faces, as it helped to alleviate the boredom. I’ll address the boredom (and what we did to pass the time) more in a future post.
Occasionally, we would take a day trip (via helo) to another lake. Some of these (Lake Fryxell, Lake Hoare) also had quasi-permanent field camps and it was cool to meet the scientists that were there and learn about what they were doing. On one occasion, I got to go with two other scientists to a remote lake that very few people have ever been to. While I’m sure there were some places near Lake Bonney that I stood where no human had every stood before, when I was at this remote lake I was seeing something that probably only a couple dozen people have ever seen before. I found this to be exciting, humbling and awe inspiring.
One thing that was actually really good (and somewhat surprising to me) about field camp, was that the food was infinitely better than at McMurdo. McMurdo food was a small step up from military chow (maybe similar to PSU dining hall food?). Field teams could request whatever they wanted from the base stores. We had chicken, steak, shrimp, even lobster tails. All frozen obviously. But we got to cook for our little group (4-12 people) which made it much better than the mass produced stuff at base. One thing that I thought was cool about food supplies: at the field camp, we had an outdoor food storage area (freezer) and then a mudroom off the Jamesway that was our refrigerator. There are no insects or rodents to worry about, so you could just leave food out (it was obviously cold enough).
After a long work day, we’d have a satisfying dinner, followed by a couple of adult beverages (many of our team were fans of Wild Turkey; I usually stuck to beer from New Zealand, but would occasionally drink tequila). We talk and share stories until 10 pm or so, then people would either start prepping for sleep, or would read for a bit before retiring.
In retrospect it probably would have been better thermodynamically to sleep two to a tent, but we also valued some privacy, so we each had a tent to ourselves. While the sleeping bags we had were rated for very low temperatures, I had issues because the standard size bag was not long enough (I’m 6’5), so I could not zip the mummy bag all the way up. This didn’t help with warmth while sleeping. Usually before bed I would boil some water to put in my drinking water bottle (1 liter) to act as a hot water bottle. That usually got me through until my body heat warmed the tent to not horrible levels. I’d usually lose my outer layer, but still sleep in a lot of clothing. The one thing you absolutely did not want to have to do was leave your tent in the middle of the night to visit the latrine. While this was only a five minute walk, you would lose all of the heat you had built up in your tent. I had no issue using my “P” bottle to whizz in the privacy of my tent (another reason to have a tent to yourself), but I had one evening where everyone (including myself) had consumed more alcohol than normal where I was worried that I was going to “over fill” my 1 L “P” bottle. It’s quite the moment of panic when you are trying to figure out which muscle(s) you need to use to stop peeing mid stream.
I have one more post I’d like to write (about the interesting social life on the base), but probably won’t get to that until Sunday as I have a lot going on tomorrow.
We were conducting our field work in the Taylor Dry Valleys, primarily at Lake Bonney (http://www.sas.rochester.edu/ees/RareGasLab/images/Lake Bonney-Taylor Glacier_enhanced.jpg ) As you can see from the photo, the Dry Valleys are characterized by mountains, glaciers, frozen lakes and most unusually (for Antarctica) a lack of snow/ice cover. The ground is covered by a very coarse, almost gravelly soil. The landscape appears almost Martian in nature, and it is strikingly beautiful.
To get there from McMurdo we’d travel by helo. There were two types of helos in service while I was there – old Hueys (like you see in Vietnam movies) and smaller French made Aerostars. The latter held 3 passengers, plus the pilot and a limited amount of gear. We primarily used the Aerostars to shuttle people and small amounts of gear (although they could carry a decent payload via sling load: http://adam.antarcticanz.govt.nz/assets/display/83754-max I only rode in a Huey once and it was like riding in a really noisy bus (read: not nearly as fun as the small Aerostars).
At Lake Bonney there was a quasi-permanent field camp consisting of 2 small (10’ x10’) lab buildings and a Jamesway structure (recall the mess hall building in M*A*S*H…that’s a Jamesway). The buildings were heated to about 40F using gas heaters. The Jamesway was used primarily for cooking/eating meals and socializing. There was also a primitive latrine (not heated), but it was better than peeing in bottles. We slept in tents (more on that in a minute).
Most days we spent 8 to 10 hours a day working outside, collecting field samples. There were some days were part of the day might be spent in the lab, prepping samples or running experiments, but I was outside more often than not. We’d wake at 6 am, eat some breakfast and get started. Breaking for lunch around noon and dinner around six. While I was there, it was light for 24 hours a day, so daylight was not a limiting factor. Seeing the sun just make a circle around the horizon and never set is a very weird thing to observe. It’s also strange never to see stars, the moon or darkness for two months. Some people actually had their biological clocks really thrown off by the lack of darkness, but it didn’t bother me. I was able to stay on a normal schedule, mostly because I was very tired at the end of each day. The combination of our very physical field work and the nature of being outside at -40C is exhausting.
Since we are talking about being outside, I guess now is a good time to talk about the Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.
On a typical field day I would wear:
Regular underwear (my own, not NSF issue)
Thin base layer thermal underwear
Thicker second layer thermal underwear (later in the season when things warmer up a bit, I might not wear these)
A thermal baselayer long sleeve undershirt
Fleece overalls
A Fleece jacket
A very thick parka with a hood (we also had a thinner “shell” jacket that I used some later in the season)
Wind pants/overalls
Balaclava (like a ski mask hat)
Hat
Goggles or sunglasses
Glove liners
Mittens
Wool socks
Bunny boots (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipe...unny_boots_in_Point_Lay,_Alaska,_Dec_2011.jpg )
One of the keys to being outside in cold weather is not sweating, so there were times when we’d be unzipping (or possibly even ditching) our parkas for short periods of time. The hardest thing was keeping my face and hands warm. Everything else was usually OK. Sometimes my feet would get cold if I was standing on the lake ice for long periods of time. A problem with my hands was that you can’t really do any work with mittens on, so you end up taking off one mitten to work in your glove liners, do as much work as you can until you can’t feel your fingers anymore, then put your mitten back on and switch to your other hand. We had chemical hand warmers which helped some, but it was a problem. I found that if I had my entire face covered my goggles or sunglasses would fog up, so I spent a lot of time with my nose exposed. I actually have permanent skin damage (basically a precursor to frostbite) on the bridge of my nose as a result. The only time I was really miserable while working is when the wind was really blowing. Antarctica is the windiest continent on Earth (also the highest, driest and coldest) so the wind chills ranged from “Wow, that wind sucks” to “OMFG kill me now.” We had a particularly bad wind storm one afternoon. The wind was picking up empty 55 gallon fuel drums and throwing them down the lake like Styrofoam cups. We nearly lost several tents. Fortunately, it only lasted an hour or so, but it really made a mess.
One of the really challenging things about working in the field is that you spend a lot of time just trying to exist. On a daily basis we had to: check fuel levels in the heaters and generators (refuel if necessary), check the tie-downs/anchors on all structures and tents, obtain drinking water (by chipping it out of the lake ice with an ice pick, then melting it), cook all meals, clean up after all meals, do twice daily radio check ins with McMurdo (at times we had a phone system that worked by bouncing signals between mountaintop transmitters, but it didn’t work all the time) and do any other random maintenance stuff that came up. And all of that is on top of a full day of science.
From time to time, we’d have other scientists that would pass through our camp. They would usually be there for a day or two to do something very specific and then would roll out. It was good to see new faces, as it helped to alleviate the boredom. I’ll address the boredom (and what we did to pass the time) more in a future post.
Occasionally, we would take a day trip (via helo) to another lake. Some of these (Lake Fryxell, Lake Hoare) also had quasi-permanent field camps and it was cool to meet the scientists that were there and learn about what they were doing. On one occasion, I got to go with two other scientists to a remote lake that very few people have ever been to. While I’m sure there were some places near Lake Bonney that I stood where no human had every stood before, when I was at this remote lake I was seeing something that probably only a couple dozen people have ever seen before. I found this to be exciting, humbling and awe inspiring.
One thing that was actually really good (and somewhat surprising to me) about field camp, was that the food was infinitely better than at McMurdo. McMurdo food was a small step up from military chow (maybe similar to PSU dining hall food?). Field teams could request whatever they wanted from the base stores. We had chicken, steak, shrimp, even lobster tails. All frozen obviously. But we got to cook for our little group (4-12 people) which made it much better than the mass produced stuff at base. One thing that I thought was cool about food supplies: at the field camp, we had an outdoor food storage area (freezer) and then a mudroom off the Jamesway that was our refrigerator. There are no insects or rodents to worry about, so you could just leave food out (it was obviously cold enough).
After a long work day, we’d have a satisfying dinner, followed by a couple of adult beverages (many of our team were fans of Wild Turkey; I usually stuck to beer from New Zealand, but would occasionally drink tequila). We talk and share stories until 10 pm or so, then people would either start prepping for sleep, or would read for a bit before retiring.
In retrospect it probably would have been better thermodynamically to sleep two to a tent, but we also valued some privacy, so we each had a tent to ourselves. While the sleeping bags we had were rated for very low temperatures, I had issues because the standard size bag was not long enough (I’m 6’5), so I could not zip the mummy bag all the way up. This didn’t help with warmth while sleeping. Usually before bed I would boil some water to put in my drinking water bottle (1 liter) to act as a hot water bottle. That usually got me through until my body heat warmed the tent to not horrible levels. I’d usually lose my outer layer, but still sleep in a lot of clothing. The one thing you absolutely did not want to have to do was leave your tent in the middle of the night to visit the latrine. While this was only a five minute walk, you would lose all of the heat you had built up in your tent. I had no issue using my “P” bottle to whizz in the privacy of my tent (another reason to have a tent to yourself), but I had one evening where everyone (including myself) had consumed more alcohol than normal where I was worried that I was going to “over fill” my 1 L “P” bottle. It’s quite the moment of panic when you are trying to figure out which muscle(s) you need to use to stop peeing mid stream.
I have one more post I’d like to write (about the interesting social life on the base), but probably won’t get to that until Sunday as I have a lot going on tomorrow.
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