The Dry Valleys

Rumor has it that our communications link might be going down tonight due to some sort of power issue related to black magic or someone sneezing heavily. I thought that in the event that I wasn’t able to process pictures in time I would write a brief entry about the ridiculousness of communication out here.

One of the most common questions I’ve been asked is how the hell I have internet in Antarctica. It doesn’t stop at simply having internet – I have wireless access from my tent. The official reason for this is that as scientists we need a solid line of communication in order to transmit our data back to the real world. Thus, an incredible amount of resources has gone into communication. While I was at McMurdo I asked one of the IT guys how the data transmission process works. This is what I vaguely recall: My laptop -> Local wireless router -> Radio transmitter -> Radio repeater -> McMurdo -> Space -> Queensland, Australia -> The internet. If you didn’t understand that’s ok. Neither did I. Details aside, our internet speed is around 730Kb/sec (equivalent to 27 carrier pigeons per hour), which is why I have such an excellent ability to update and communicate.

Other forms of communication abound. All field camps also carry Iridium satellite phones, HF radios left over from the Vietnam War capable of transmitting around the world, and handheld VHF radios. The reason for the redundancy is safety. If one line of communication goes down we have three others as backup. Every morning we are required to check in by 10:00am or else Search and Rescue (SAR) is activated immediately. In fact, at the McMurdo communications center a flashing alarm starts going off at 9:45am. If we haven’t checked in by 10:00 on the dot, the SAR team is activated and a chain of commands goes through the system to begin our rescue. Sleeping through your alarm clock is a huge mistake.

By far the most common method of communication is our personal VHF radios we carry with us everywhere. We use them to report back to base, arrange pickups with helicopters, and relay profanities that would otherwise take too much energy to shout. Military radio protocol is followed; when we speak we sound like terrible impersonations of melodramatic action movies. “3 1 Lima , 3 1 Lima, this is Bravo 4 2 1 on Taylor Valley, how copy?”

Did I hear a 'niner'?

When our small team is split up we occasionally need to get a hold of one another. That’s where our own personalized names come in when hailing each other. It’s a simple recipe to make your own: take your teammate’s first and last initial, add a bit of creativity, a heaping cup of insult; combine. My initials are MB. Let your imagination go wild.

If a lot of this seems convoluted that’s to be expected. To make matters worse Antarctica also has its own special language. Spawned from the terrible union of the military and scientific communities, acronyms abound and jargon is tossed carelessly about. As an outsider first arriving I found it nearly impossible to understand my first conversations with local residents. However, as time progressed I realized that this language existed out of necessity – it is essential that communication be understood clearly and that no time is wasted in relaying it.

To every useful phrase there exists an opposite but equally useless expression. And with that I leave you with my ten favorite Antarctic slang words:

10. Hollywood Shower: used to denote a shower in excess of 2 minutes. Only McMurdo residents get proper showers.

9. Boondoggle: a ‘working’ day-trip out to somewhere awesome like a penguin rookery or the Dry Valleys

8. Hero Shot: traditionally a picture of yourself naked at the geographical South Pole in -40F/C weather. Only boots allowed.

7. Antarctic 10: there’s not many women on base so standards change. Best used in context: “She’s a 10, but just a plane ride away from being ugly.”

6. Boomerang: to start a flight to/from Antarctica only to turn around due to bad weather. Think 10 hours of useless flight-time.

5. Crud: the strange malaise/sickness that circulates endlessly around McMurdo since it’s such a confined society.

4. Toasted: the burned-out appearance and demeanor of people who stay for the sunless winter. See my entry “Winter-over”.

3. Beaker: a nickname for scientists (occasionally derogatory)

2. The Ice: Antarctica

1. Freshies: fresh fruits and vegetables. Number one because we don’t get any in the field.

All I want is a salad. Please.

Last night our team went over to a different field camp for dinner and a change of conversation. As we sat at the table with our three person team on one side and the limnology research team on the other I noticed a drastic difference in our faces. The three of us were sunburnt, tired, and dirty. The three of them had even complexions, clean cloths, and appeared rested. They had just come back from town. It was only then that it occurred to me that we’ve been out here for a while.

It’s officially been a month since I’ve entered the field. I made the decision on day one that I wouldn’t shave or cut my hair until I return to McMurdo. Just for giggles.  I hadn’t showered in two weeks by the time the second photo was taken. Month three will be frightening.

Night 1: Shaven, clean, apprehensive.

Month 1: Dirty, dark, oily.

Prior to leaving for the field I had the opportunity to visit a place on Ross Island called Cape Evans. It’s a small little cove that houses Scott’s Hut – of the same Robert F. Scott I had written about previously. Scott’s hut (built in 1911) differs greatly from the Discovery Hut I had described before. In a nutshell, it’s comparatively a mansion. During his Discovery expedition (1901-1904), Scott and his men had found the first hut to be quite cold and uncomfortable living quarters. For his next walk in the park, the Terra Nova expedition (1910-1913) of disastrous fame, Scott built a new hut on Cape Evans to serve as a warmer base of operation. Despite the improvements, a foreboding shadow hangs in the air as this hut was to be the last residence of Scott before he died on his attempt to reach the South Pole.

Doesn't look haunted at all.

There are several noteworthy additions to Scott’s Hut that make it more livable. Heating seems to have taken priority: double-planked walls, quilted seaweed insulation, and a supplementary stove to burn fuel. This isn’t a far cry from how we heat our own shack in the Valleys (sans seaweed). The new hut was also big enough to create different sections to address the specific goals of the expedition. There’s a darkroom for photography (a closet), an area for scientific research (someone’s desk), and private sleeping quarters. Having come from a military background, Scott would divide sleeping arrangements based on who was an officer and who wasn’t.

Stables. The British brought ponies to Antarctica...

Science!

Private Quarters

The bunks provide an insight into the private lives of these early explorers. A few trinkets litter the bedside along with shoddy clothing, repair materials, and leftover books that I presume were bad enough to warrant leaving behind. Above one bunk are two large boards consisting entirely of dog photos. Clearly an unmarried sailor. On one table is a newspaper and a stuffed emperor penguin. However, of all these interesting odds and ends there lies a haunting edition near the side of one bed. Scrawled in pencil a somber message reads “R W Richards August 14, 1916. Losses to Date: Heywood, Mack, Smyth, Shak (?).” These words were written not by Scott’s party, but by Shackleton’s Ross Sea Party that were forced to use the hut as an emergency shelter during a later expedition.

Check the date

Must have been a great read

Cozy. You can see the dog pictures above the bed.

A depressing tally

During Shackleton’s Trans-Antarctic Expedition (1914-1917) there were two ships: the Endurance (of epic survival fame) and the Aurora (an often overlooked story). Essentially, Shackleton’s party on Endurance were to land on one side of Antarctica while the Ross Sea Party on Aurora were to land on the other. The Ross Sea Party’s goal was to lay supply caches for the last leg of Shackleton’s attempt to cross the entire continent. In an incredible twist of fate, both ships encountered disastrous ends. Endurance was trapped and crushed in sea ice, never able to reach the continent, and is a tale of survival against the most brutal odds and conditions. This epic is made even more compelling by the fact that Shackleton brought all his men back alive. The Ross Sea Party was not so fortunate. While they were laying supplies Aurora broke free of its mooring and left the shore party stranded. These ten men were marooned on Ross Island indefinitely. They gathered the remaining stores from previous expeditions and made Scott’s Hut their new home. Only seven men were to be rescued three years later. The names written near the bed list the three deaths of the Ross Sea Party, and the unanswered fate of whether the other party’s leader Shackleton (Shak) had died. Spencer-Smith, Hayward, and Mackintosh all died during their expedition to lay depots for Shackleton’s crossing.

Scott's Hut and the cross on the hill

On January 10, 1917, the remaining 7 men of the Ross Sea Party were shocked to see Shackleton aboard the Aurora as it arrived to rescue them. When they saw his face they realized that he had never been able to attempt the crossing, and that their efforts and companions deaths had been in vain.

Last Sunday I finally had time off. After procrastinating from fun all day, I decided to go for a hike. At the crack of 9pm, and after dinner of course, I set off down the valley towards Explorer’s Cove. Explorer’s Cove is where Taylor Valley meets the Southern Ocean, and I had hoped that I might see some penguins if the sea ice had melted. It hadn’t, but my night was incredible nonetheless.

Hiking in the Valleys is an experience. There’s no trails, so you decide on your destination and set off in any direction you see fit. For me, it meant hiking east through the middle of the valley over rolling dunes. As I was walking, I couldn’t escape the idea that in all likelihood my foot was touching someplace no one else ever had. As true as this was for the most part, I would occasionally come across a lone footprint – a captivating encounter.

Footprints are a funny thing here. The ground is made up of sand, gravel, and rocks of varying sizes. The landscape heals incredibly slowly – there is no vegetation to grow over a footprint, there’s no rainfall to wash it away. Each step along the ground creates a small crater, generally no more than an inch deep. As you get accustomed to the look of the earth, you can easily notice slight disturbances like these from 100 feet away. This means that as I came across a lone footprint in the middle of the valley, it could be a year old, or decades old. It would look nearly the same.

To be environmentally friendly, this means that when I hike I try to step on big rocks and disturb the ground as little as possible. Each footprint I leave in the sand could last decades and affect the untouched aspect of this place. I have big feet.

During my jaunt, I noticed one of these slight disturbances – but it wasn’t human. I looked down to see small footprints and a set of trails along a small lake. It was bird feet. I looked around and saw small depressions in the sand in the shape of a bowl. To my amazement one of them had a single brown egg. My heart jumped a little. I’ve been in the field for a month and haven’t seen a single living thing, and here was this large egg. I looked around and in the corner of my eye I saw a small head poking out of a pile of rocks on a hill. It was a skua.

Best served with a side of bacon

Sharp and pointy

The South Polar Skua is quite similar to what a large brown seagull would look like, except it’s highly aggressive. They eat fish, but are also known to kill other birds, eat penguin eggs, (and as I mentioned in the last post) rip the eyes out of mummified seals. They breed in November and December usually having 1-2 eggs. They’re also known for dive-bombing the people who work at McMurdo station.

I watched the bird (from a distance), hop about the rocks and circle in the air for a bit, paying no attention to me. It’s incredible to think that this bird would come into this desolate valley simply to lay a single egg when there’s no food source around. This also means there’s no predators. As I realized this, it occurred to me why the small ‘burrow’ nest was over open ground – the skua had nothing to fear. There were perfectly accessible protected sites nearby where it could defend territory easier. But this bird lays its egg in the wide open simply because there’s been no predatory pressure to teach it otherwise. How cool is that?

After spending an inordinate amount of time observing the bird and egg from an incredible distance*, I walked back to my tent.

All in all, I was able to walk to the sea ice and back in around 4 hours, finishing at the early hour of 1am. 9pm to 1am, bright as day, alone in places where no one has walked, and in short sleeves. What a good night.

*To NSF or Raytheon employees who may read this: ALL photos were taken with a huge 300mm telephoto lens from a distance of over a hundred feet, abiding by environmental non-disturbance rules.