Two days and counting

This will probably be my last post from the pole with tomorrow being my last full day here!

IceCube concluded its most successful season to date having upped their record from 19 to 20 strings deployed. Pretty unbelievable considering we’re about 10 days ahead of schedule! All the credit goes to the drillers though, their and impressive bunch. Very impressive considering they were able to build this awesome chariot whilst remaining so far ahead of schedule. I’m pretty pumped I got a ride!

Driller chariot in front of the ICL

For whatever reason I was the only one who saw fit to reveal their true identity for the shot. From left it’s me, Gary Hill, Sirin, Sabrina, Reina, and my mentor and partner in crime down here, Freija. Kinda funny how good you get at identifying people by the color of their neck warmers…

With my departure fast approaching I’m beginning to realize many of my hoped for deeds will sadly go undone (Laurel, I’m trying for the bubbles trick, I promise!). Tonight is the end of the season party for IceCube and with a Eurotrash after-party schedule it should prove to be a blast.

oh and here’s that picture I was unable to load a few days ago…

Drill camp and TOSS

Okay, that’s it for now…next time it’ll be face to face!

Behold the mother of all sundogs!

Howdy all, sorry for the delay in postings! The season is all but finished as the drillers are about 3 hours from getting their drill out of the last hole! Sadly the final string will be deployed during the day so I wont be around for it… The weather’s been swinging between near whiteout to blue skies all week which has made for some pretty sweet sundogs. this one is hands down the best one I’ve seen since getting here.

sundog!

Those blobs on the bottom of the shot are (from right to left) the South Pole Telescope (SPT), the IceCube Lab (ICL), and the IceCube drill camp. Here’s a shot of SPT up close. These two pictures were taken within about 10 minutes of each other just to give you a sense of how quickly the weather changes.

South Pole Telescope

Here’s a shot of drill camp taken from the top of the ICL. The cluster of blue and red structures on the left are where all the heaters and water pumps are and the smaller structures off to the right is the location of the current hole being drilled. Can you spot that cool van with the snowmobile treads?

Crap. It looks like everyone just woke up and decided to check their email so the satellite has slowed to a crawl….

Anyhow, everyone here is gearing up for the end of the season; packing up equipment to send up north or preparing it to be buried by snow for the next 8 months. The temperatures are slowly dropping down to around -20F or -30F and with windchill it’s starting to be more of a challenge to work outside! I don’t envy the IceCube winterovers who will have to walk to the ICL (about 2km from base) everyday during the winter to check on the detector. Especially when the weather’s around -100!

Well, I’ve got 5 more days at pole and I’m happy to be heading home soon but sad that, now that I finally don’t feel like the rookie, I’m already leaving. All right, see you all soon!

Thank goodness for faster satellites

I can finally share some more pics!

This was taken at the midway point of my aforementioned ski; probably my favorite deed since landing at pole.

At the midway point of my ski...pretty unreal!

Here’s an inside shot of my dark and dreary Jamesway hut. This is probably one of only a few places on earth where windows in living space are really bad and dark and dreary sleeping quarters are a godsend.

J11 (Jamesway 11)....home sweet home!

Later that day, I went out behind the station with a few people to snap some shots of the ice/snow sculpture contest. For those of you who’ve seen the Werner Herzog documentary, “Encounters at the End of the World”, you’ll know that it is a sad sight to see Mr. Frosty (awesome ice cream maker) broken down and left for art. I’m sorry to say I was too late to partake in his sugary delights.

Mr. Frosty, may he rest in peace, cold, cold peace.

After taking in the artsy fartsy sights we made our way to the ceremonial pole marker…and got all up in its business.

going clockwise it's me, Emanuel (winterover), Freija (deployment lead), Mark (boss in madison and big reason I'm here), Nathan (DOM tester) and Fabian (IceTop guru)

This week is my second and last full week of work. 10 new IceCubers showed up today so it’s looking like we’ll finish strong. Four more holes to drill and five strings left to deploy. I’ll be home before no time!

Picture time! …kind of.

Ski hut about 2km from base

here’s the ski shack that’s about 2km from the main station.  more pics to follow…i hope!

off into the great beyond

Today was one of the most incredible days I’ve had yet.  As I’m now on the night shift, I get up about the same time evning festivities begin.  This morning was the wine and cheese get together.  Nothing like pounding wine and cheese a half hour after getting out of bed!  After watching a swedish movie with my semi-inebriated coworkers I bid them all sweet dreams and was then able to get my day into a more normal state.

Today just happened to be the most beautiful weather I’ve had since getting here.  It was clear blue sky all the way down to the horison and with very little wind the -40F degree temps weren’t so forbidding.  I decided to strap on some skis and go exploring.  There’s a loop of “groomed” trails heading away from the base with a ski shack parked about 2km out.  I foolishly chose skate skis thinking this place would have the kind of crust cruising only dreams are made of.  Sadly that is just not the case.  The good news was that the snow here is so hard and so dry and the glide so bad that you can kick off of skate skis like they’re classic skis.  Crisis averted!  I skied about 2 hours at a snails pace and had a blast.  Check it out!

All right, this sucks.  The slow satellite seems unable to upload any sort of pictures. crap, crap, CRAP!  I’ll wake up early and see if I can’t upload some via the faster satellite.  If so, get ready for a virtual orgy of pictures!

Sundogs and friends

Howdy all!  I’m pleased to say I’ve made it through my first week of work down here at pole.  With three strings deployed there are five more to go before this season is over for us IceCubers.  Yesterday my friend and mentor for the past 5 days took his return flight back to civilization.  Here’s me and Arne in the B2 science room of the main station.

WOW, I just waited 15 minutes for that picture to load and had to cancel it because the satellite coverage is ending in two or three minutes.  crap.  You see there are two satellite systems that cover us down here.  One is much faster than the other and, sadly, now that I’m working nights I only get access to the slow one.  I will hopefully figure out how to get pictures through the slow poke but until then you’ll just have to imagine my amiable friend Arne.  He showed me the ropes and got me ready to take his place.

Also, sundogs are these cool halo things that form around the sun when the sky is clear and there are a lot of ice crystals flying through the air.  I got a decent picture of one today as it was both super sunny AND windy; a good sundog combo.

sorry for visually boring blog; bye!

yesterdays leftovers…

Here’s what I failed to post before the station lost satellite coverage!

howdy all. here i am at the ceremonial pole…flying!That big black building in the background is the space-age Amundsen Scott station.

Yesterday, a flight came in carrying some new Icecubers and they picked ‘em up in a home-made chariot.Aren’t the snowmobile-treads-for-tires-van pretty sweet?  I think some of the drillers built the chariot on a long weekend.

Well that’s it for yesterday’s leftovers; now for today’s freshies!

Yesterday was my first day of deploying.  I was pretty high stress at first but once I got into a bit of a rythm, I started to feel a little less like throwing up.  My position is known as the PTS ‘guru’ because it’s my job to monitor all of the pressure and load sensors while filling out the log book.  The log book is a 50 page document which details every step of the deploying process.  Not any one of my tasks is hard it’s just that I have about 50 of them to do every 8-10 minutes over and over again! But aside from a little stress, I’m glad to be working; it passes the time a lot quicker!

The end of my first string!

From left it’s me, my boss Tom, Christian, a guy I haven’t gotten the name of yet, Dave, Ralph and Nathan.  And that glass orb in the middle is the last DOM of the string.  We hook up 60 of these to the string and once they’re lowered into the hole and frozen in, they’ll (hopefully) detect neutrinos!  yayy, neutrinos!

well time to go, I started work this morning at around 7:30 and was asked to move to night shift. soooooo…I’ll be working until around 2:00am tonight!  yayyyy!

YA mule!

Howdy folks.  Today marks my first official day on the job down here at Pole.  I was glad to be put to work after three days of sittin around.   I suppose showing up a day before the start of a station wide two-day vacation was pretty good timing but I was beginning to feel like a dang tourist!

Anyhow here’s how I spent my weekend…in no particular order…

Every new years day there is the ceremonial moving of the pole marker.  As I’m sure you already know the Ice here is part of a huge glacier and, as glaciers tend to flow, every year the geographic pole marker needs to be moved about 20ft.  The ceremony was pretty cool; they had us form into a big horseshoe (beginning at the old marker and ending at the new) and pass the pole one by one to it’s new home.  And it just so happened that a film crew from the BBC was there to capture it.  They’re the guys in the crane…

 

After the ceremony the boys from BBC gave us a sneek peek of a new documentary they’re working on.  It’s going to be the sequel of the Planet Earth series and from what I saw it’s going to kick some serious arse.  If that wasn’t surreal enough the next day I went kite “skiing” with a long-time Antarctic vet!  Don’t worry he’s a stickler for safety and it was surprisingly easy to control. We might try using skis next time!

The wind was just strong enough to pull us on out boots.  There was a new years party that night which was surprisingly awesome.  I’ve got some good pictures of it but too bad!  you’re not gettin them!  actually i’d post them but the satellite coverage is just about to end.  till next time…

This snow has a funny crunch

I’m writing to you all from the B2 science room within the Amundsen Scott South Pole base!  I arrived yesterday afternoon and was greeted by my friendly boss Mark Krasberg.  I have to say that going from a pressurized plane to ~10,000ft altitude in a matter of seconds was a less than pleasurable experience but with a healthy dose of adrenaline I was in high spirits.  They shuffled us newbies to the base and showed us a little orientation video; in fact the video was just long enough for our adrenaline to wear off and combined with the cozy chairs, I think we were all ready for a little nap.  Perhaps it’s their plan to get us into a nice, docile state so that we don’t complain when we get our housing assignments which of course are in the drafty Jamesway huts a quarter mile from from the base!

Anyhow, I’m getting off topic I did spend a day at McMurdo station which was pretty amazing.  Have a look at the C17 Globemaster I flew in on.  It’s HUGE!

Two of the four C17 engines. Super bad-ass!

The McMurdo airstrip is out on this huge flat expanse of glacier; It really is beautiful.  The first thing I noticed was how the snow makes this funky almost metallic crunch under your boots.  I think it has something to do with how dry it is but I’ll have to investigate.  The expanse can be seen below in the background; sorry for the gratuitous midrift…

My new buddy John Knox, a welder from Texas, took this after we hiked out to see Scott’s hut which was not necessarily all that cool but pretty crazy to think that he and his crew built it from the wreckage of their ship and that it still stands to this day.

Here’s a picture of the LC130 that took me to pole.  More pole pics will follow…

Well the satellite coverage is ending soon so i should sign off.  I hope you all enjoy the new year’s celebrations.  LATER TATERS!

Drat….light snow wins out!

Sadly I awoke this morning at 4:30 to the news that some light snow at McMurdo had delayed the flight by three hours. Two hours later the call came through giving the big NO DICE to my mornings Antarctic dreams.  Fret not my friends, for there is a surefire antidote to such frustration…Dolphins!  Tiny, super cute dolphins!  Works every time.

Hectors dolphins are cool, playful, endangered and cute!

Action shot, sweet!

Forgot my sunglasses...

Hopefully my next post will be coming from a different continent! If I don’t get to it in time, have a happy new years!