Week 2: Training, Gear, and the Social Scene

Week 2 started out with a very relaxing Sunday. Knocked out some laundry before brunch, had a chance to get on the Internet, watched trashy TV, and finally got out on my first hike!

There are several trails that are apart of the “Ross Island Trail System”, including some out on the Sea Ice! Decided to go with an easy one, which I started at 8:45PM. It’s about a 1.5 mile hike out to Discovery Hut, which was erected in 1902 when members of the British Discovery Expedition, led by Captain Robert F. Scott, of the 1901-1903 were the first to set foot on land at the present site of McMurdo, where 25 men spent TWO winters here. I’m hoping that they will have some organized tours of the hut while I’m here. At this point, there is also a cross erected to commemorate the life of Seaman George T. Vince who lost his life sliding down the cliff into the sea.

At the point, I finally got to get some decent photos of the Wendell Seals, who were just below the cliffs. A lovely way to end the day off work.

Next morning, I awoke to my first snow storm of Antarctica. Winds blowing to around 40 MPH with snow and blowing snow reducing visibility down to under 1/8 mile at times. Even with that, we only dropped from Condition 3 to Condition 2 (Winds 48-55KT sustained for one min or visibility less than ¼ mile but greater than or equal to 100 ft, or wind chill -75F to 100F). It made for a fun walk to and from buildings for the work day. Fortunately, in the afternoon the weather cleared up.

This week in work was spent with some more training to prepare up for the field, as well as getting our equipment together to get into the cargo and hazmat system. I never fully realized all that goes into putting in a remote field camp, especially with all of the paperwork to have aircraft fly our gear. Since our camp will only have 12 permanent party, we all have to help each other out. So, when I’m not doing meteorology or running communications, I could be shoveling snow, palletizing old gear to ship home, washing dishes, fueling machinery etc. So this week had a lot of classes in cargo theory (yay Algebra lol), waste management, setting up HF, UHF, and VHF radios, fuel, pallet building for aircraft. More excitingly, we got an overview on the snowmobiles that we will be using at camp! and we got some of our weather gear that we will be using out in the field

The primary mode of weather observing will be the Portable Polar Meteorological Kit (PPMK). It can run through either solar or battery power and we can transmit via iridium. It does have it’s own “wifi” network, so we can encode the observations on either our phones or via the included tablet. Sensors include: wind (speed/direction), temp/humidity, and pressure. We manually observe visibility, weather/precipitation, and clouds/sky cover. While out in the field we will be minimally doing the synoptic observations and on flight days will be be doing hourly + continuous metwatch with SPECI observations every 20 min if conditions are changing, so it will be feast or famine for sure!

Outside of work, I decided to check out the social scene! And there sure was a lot going on this week. Got crafty and made another tie dye shirt, went to a Hocus Pocus watch party (which was great with a lot of Kiwis who have never seen it before), trivia night, Rocky Horror Picture Show on our Halloween (some great creative costume and probably the raunchiest dialog that I’ve been to in years, which was a lot of fun), I’m officially training to be a DJ on 104.5 ICE radio and I have access to the extensive vinyl room!

104.5 Ice Radio has been at McMurdo since 1955! Which is pretty cool. It’s all ran by volunteers working here. There’s a training session and from there we can sign up to host our own show. This year, they’re trying to see if that can get it internet broadcast, so folks outside of the McMurdo area can enjoy, but for now it’s still limited to the folks at McMurdo and nearby Scott Base (NZ). I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet, especially since I won’t be here much longer, but how cool would it be to say I DJ’ed in Antarctica?!?! Additionally, here on McMurdo, is one of three of the largest vinyl collections. At last count, it’s somewhere near 20,000 records ranging from 1963-1997. I look forward to spending sometime in there to dig up some hidden gems. So, stay tuned for that!

On Saturday, my field team got a chance to get out on the frozen Ross Sea for some hiking! We were testing out some of our issued cold weather gear, as well as our personal layers, to figure out our laying system based on the conditions of having to be outside. It was by far one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Getting to walk out on a frozen sea, where the ice was about 2m thick, and not only that Mt. Erebus was emitting a smoke plume! So, I additionally saw my first active volcano! It’s defiently challenging hiking out on ice and snow in over 20lbs of gear, but the sights and the experience was like no other.

Finally, we had the big Halloween party Saturday night! It’s started off with a costume parade/contest through the galley, with some pretty creative costumes. Judging categories included: individual, group, and Antarctic themed. This followed up with a party over in the “big gym” which I hung out for a bit before retreating to enjoy the quiet dorms and get some much needed sleep before the big week ahead.

This week coming up, we are finishing up the training and getting to go on an overnight camping trip to test out our tents and sleep kits outside before we head out ~850 miles from any civilization.

Thanks all for the love and support! And I’ll post next week 🙂