12/21/2010 To the South Pole

After spending almost 10 days in McMurdo Station for the preparation of our project at the South Pole and field camp, we finally headed to the farthest south - South Pole. This is my third visit to the Pole and the rest of our members, Bob Clauer, Kshitija, and Joseph were very excited about their first visit. We took off from McMurdo at 9:30am taking about 2.5 hours to arrive at the Pole by U.S. Air Force LC-130 plane.
 

 

 LC-130 passengers and cargo to the South Pole

 

As usual, the Air Force crews kindly allowed us to look around the cockpit during the flight. 

 

We finally landed at the South Pole! It is always interesting to experience quite a big temperature difference between pre-flight at McMurdo (approx. 32 deg F or 0 deg C) and post-flight at the South Pole (approx. -10 deg F or -25 deg C) and very significant difference in barometric pressure (sea level vs 10000 ft or 3000 m) for such a short time.

Soon after we arrived and had lunch, Bob, I (Hyomin), and Father Devlin (from left) went to the geographic south pole located in front of the newly built U.S Amunsen-Scott South Pole Station. Surprisingly and thankfully, I felt pretty well this time whereas I was very sick about almost one day as soon as I arrived at the Pole 2 years ago because of high altitude sickness. Father Devlin flew with us today for his mass at the Pole and will get back to McMurdo tomorrow. This would certainly be the most expensive mass in the world!
 

 

 Getting the Antarctic stamps (both McMurdo and South Pole) on my passport is one of the things that I like to do as soon as I arrive. No visa or entry process is required to enter Antarctica, though. This is just for fun!

This is my dorm room at the Pole. Unlike at McMurdo, everyone at the South Pole lives in a single dorm. Especially, almost half of the South Pole station population stays in the very nice brand-new building as seen in the picture. The current total population here at the Pole is about 245.

12/19/2010 Hiking and Discovery Hut

    McMurdo Station and Observation Hill

The two small black spots are seals!

Look! Seals!

 A sleeping seal behind the sign. "Whatever..." the seal says.

 

Discovery Hut and McMurdo Station. The Discovery Hut was built by the Discovery Expedition led by Robert Scott in 1902. After the Ross Sea Party led by Shackelton left the hut in 1917, it has been preserved as it was until now. So what we see inside shows items that the expedition brought including food, clothes, kitchen utensils, and even seals and penguins that they hunted.

 

Being preserved by the temperature which seldom rises above freezing for nearly 100 years, seals and penguins still hangs inside the hut. However, slow bacterial decay still occurs, which makes the hut filled with rancid smell.

Even just before the expedition left the hut, they were cooking some kind of meat on a pan. Seal blubber still remains on the surface of the ax. 
 

Food cans and partly bitten biscuits arranged on the shelf. This seems to me that they were trying to save food eating only a small bite of biscuit. 
 

Mittens and clothes

12/18/2010 Preparing Our Camping Gears

Here are our camping gears to bring - three Scott tents, one mountaineer tent, sleeping bags, food, tools like shovels, pick ax, and saw, radio, toilet kit, kitchen utensils, etc...so many things to bring for four of us to camp for only 5 days!

After spending more than one week at McMurdo Station taking camping classes, organizing flight schedule, coordinating with radio operators, and preparing food and camping gears for our next trip to the South Pole and our camp site, I felt somewhat relieved and am now in a mood of having some extra time here in McMurdo Station!

These are the mountains across the sea ice near McMurdo Station.

12/17/2010 Camping Food Pullout

For our camping, we were provided with food that will serve 5 day regular meals and 7 day emergency meals. Due to very limited cooking utensils and extreme weather during our camping, our meals need to be simple and easy-to-cook such as instant soup, just-add-water type of food, canned food, biscuits, etc. Also, since everything will basically freeze, we have to limit the amount of liquid (e.g., powdered milk and juice). This picture shows the McMurdo Station's food storage for campers. We were supposed to go over their food items and pull out whatever we thought would be necessary. Although we are scheduled to camp for 5 days, we also have to bring extra 7 day emergency foods (dehydrated ones) assuming we will have 2 meals per day in case of delayed flight due to severe weather or other more urgent flight schedule.

This is how much we will bring for our 5 day camping (plus 7 day emergency). Hopefully, we don't get tired of having those instant food (we will bring some frozen meat and vegetable to cook, though).

12/15/2010 Field Camp Training at McMurdo (2nd Day)

 On the second day of the field camp training, I tried to step on the top of the trench roof to find that it was sturdy enough to support my weight.


















We practiced how to handle a worst-case scenario that we might possibly face while in Antarctica. Our first scenario was our plane crashed and burned so we had to evacuate the plane. There was one casualty (that was me!!! with one leg broken) and what we were able to remove from the plane was one survival gear and one HF radio. While others were working on making a snow wall, installing a tent, and trying to send an emergency signal via the HF radio, I had to lie down on the snow all the way...

 The HF radio we learned how to use was PRC-1099, which reminded me of PRC-77 that I used to use while I served as a signal corpsman in the military. It had a very similar package although 1099 is more upgraded version than 77. It was pretty useful and interesting class for me.

The next scenario was that one of our team members got stranded outside in the Condition 3 weather. The Antarctic Station here classifies the weather condition into three levels, Condition 1 being normal and Condition 3 being the most severe. In Condition 3, often times, we can't even see our own hands because of snow blowing around you, which could make you completely disoriented not being able to see anything in front of you. We simulated this condition by putting a white plastic bucket over our head and walking outside on the snow relying on a rope tied to each other in an attempt to find the missing person. It may look funny but I don't even want to think of me being in the situation!

 

12/14/2010 Field Camp Training at McMurdo (1st Day)

This is my fourth visit to Antarctica but it is going to be my first time to be in a field camp where we will stay in a tent, cook in a tent, and use a toilet in a tent. Being a couple of hundreds of miles away from the South Pole, we will experience absolute remoteness in the field camp where there will be nothing but four of us (three Virginia Tech members and one mountaineer to help us) and 360 degrees of a flat snowy plateau. In preparation for such event, our deployment team is required to take the 2-day field camp training course offered at McMurdo Station. We learned many useful snow camping skills - from setting up tent to survival skill for emergency situation.

The field camp course trainees carrying their own ECW gears and walking to our camp site. 

Kshitija standing in front of one of the most frequently used passenger transportation vehicles in McMurdo Station - "Delta".

 

"Single file!" One of the most important rules in snow camping (or work on the snow) is that everything that we have must be either in your pocket or secured and clearly marked with poles since things can be blown away or covered by snow very easily and quickly. 

The first thing to learn is to set up a tent. This pyramid shape tent is called "Scott Tent", which is very commonly used in this type of condition and very reliable. 

Next step is to build a wall placed perpendicular to the most likely wind direction to protect our camp site. Saw is a helpful tool to make blocks so wall-making is as easy as Lego!

 

Our kitchen where we basically melt the snow around you to make water. 

Dehydrated food in case of emergency, which we had for dinner at the camp. Pouring two cups of boiling water into this package is all we need.

Thanks to our camp member's wonderful teamwork, we had a very luxurious table for our dinner.

 

Instead of sleeping in the tent, I decided to join some of our campers who were making their own trenches, which are to be made in an emergency case. 

 

Making a trench - kind of a one-person version of igloo - was not as difficult as I thought it would be. I dug a hole big enough for me to lie down comfortably and made a roof from snow blocks. The blocks serve as a roof quite impressively.

The big block is my door which I shut after I crawled in the trench. 

 

The interior view of the trench. Staying in a tent would be much nicer but this wasn't too bad...

  

Mt. Erebus seen from our camp site, which is the southernmost active volcano on Earth. The elevation is ~3800 m (12000 ft). 

 Our tents and the snow wall.

Our camp from a distance, taken when most of campers were sleeping - it was about 11pm. Still too sunny!!