17 February--Packing in a Few More Visual Treats. Wiki-Leaks Magnitude Download

The weather has been definitely turning colder and colder.  The austral winter is nearly here.  The last 2 of the 6 LC-130s left today.  The last ship will leave tomorrow.  All the field camps are shut down and people pulled in.  The South Pole is now cut off until November.  Only 5 more flights will go north before McMurdo is cut off, too.  The water along the near shore has been freezing into odd shapes and then is blown north by the winds.  It will take several months before the sea ice will be fast to shore and relatively safe to walk on.

This ice reminds me of the giant water lily pads in the Amazon with its slight ridge along the edge.

Multi-depth lenses of ice.  The surge and current were jostling these back and forth.



The molting process isn't always pretty.



A molting Emperor penguin.  Note how thick his down coat will be.  Toasty.



The sun keeps getting lower and lower in the sky and has dipped below the Royal Society Range peaks several times now.  The official first sunset is on the 20th.

This is the most active I've seen Mt. Erebus in my 5 months here.  The trail of sulfur fumes extended miles downwind.

Skuas ground nest while here.

Winterquarters Bay of McMurdo Sound (of the Ross Sea) opened up 2 days ago in front of the station.  Most of the sea ice melting is the result of relatively "warm" currents, not from the sun hitting the surface.  So even though it has been getting much colder, the melting is still going full speed.  The blue colors against the white and grays of the ice were spectacular.  Hiking the Ob Hill Loop today I saw a Minke whale surface and heard it breathe deeply.

"What the...?"  Nature sculpts; man does his best.

Pressure ridges highlighted by the low angle sun.





7 February--Almost in a Condition 1

The other evening began so startlingly beautifully and by the early morning had gone through Condition 1 and back to Condition 3, the normal situation.  I was driving back from Pegasus Field and the first indication I had that something was coming was a bank of low-lying clouds under a line of higher clouds.  The wind picked up and the low-lying clouds were skimming the surface with drifting snow blowing in front of them.  The snow appeared first like tendrils of some sort of white vegetable matter, hugging the snow and ice surface blowing across the ice road and searching out its preferred route.  At first you could see over the ground clinging tentacles to the nearby mountains, but it got thicker and the topography became obscured.  Soon you could only see 10, then 7 and finally I could only make out 4 or 5.

The roads have flags every 50 feet or less to help with navigation in conditions like this.  Normally you can see at least 20 or so, more if you were to stop driving.  When visibility goes down to 3 flags or less, the rule is to stop where you are, call in your position,  and remain where you are until either the situation clears and MAC-Ops downgrades the condition or Search and Rescue comes out to retrieve you. This is precisely the reason we only go out on the Ice Shelf with a full tank of gas and our full ECW bag.
I was able to continue on and get off the Ice Shelf, but a later shuttle driver was out there and a Condition 1 was called and he and his passengers had to hole up in the Galley out at the airfield.   Luckily, things cleared within an hour.  This was only the second Condition 1 we've had this season, something returnees say happens much more commonly.

"Who's the joker who put this on my head while I slept?  Is there someone with opposable thumbs who can get this off ?"



This is Building 155, where I live.  It's a combination dorm, kitchen, dining hall, offices, barber shop, laundry, library, weight room, television and radio studio, ATMs, and computer commons.  During the summer, it's where all the newbies have to live; during the winter, it's the high value real estate.  Overwintering returnees with lots of points fight to live here so they don't have to bundle up to get to meals.





Snout of a glacier near the CTAM camp (not one of my pics).

3 February--Penguins Most Artful

I volunteered again this morning to run a tour out to the group of 14 molting Emperor penguins near Half Way House on the road to Pegasus.  These follow a very long 12-hour shift but it's really gratifying to see how much the people enjoy them.  Some people are desk-bound in McMurdo and seldom get out, leading to the question: why bother coming down here?  Economic necessity?  Wanted by the law?  Perversity?  It was very, very cold out there and some people retreated early to the heated van.  It's not entirely unselfish on my part; I thoroughly enjoy being out there.  it's one of the major reasons i came down here.



Advanced molting.  It looked like you could have grabbed fistfuls of feathers.  One website said it took an average of 34 days for an Emperor to molt.





Penguins seem to really fascinate people.  Kneeling, laying down or otherwise getting low seem to set them more at ease.



There are some very talented people down here and it shows in their art: several outdoor metal sculptures; paintings and ceramics displayed in the library; crafts displayed and for sale.  Penguins and other birds are a common theme, perhaps because there is so little life on or above the ice.  (Below the sea ice and the ice shelf life, it's entirely different.  The Ross Sea is wonderfully rich; the algae and bacteria support an unimaginable richness of krill that feed fish, seals, whales, and other life.)



This is titled "Skua Wants A Cracker."



"Snow Petrel"



Walking house of Baba Yaga, Russian witch of fairy tales.



One year's worth of food waste for retrograde to Port Hueneme and composting.  For scale, each of these Tri-Walls is about one meter on a side.  Any food that leaves the kitchen to go to the serving line and is not eaten must be discarded.  Leftovers can only be made from food that stayed in the kitchen