Laura On Ice

Hi everyone! I’m not going to be writing much for a few more days since we have end-of-month inventory and I’m extremely busy! Hopefully I’ll get back to you when that’s done with more pictures!

Just had to give a little cheer out to Ryan, the Spirit of the Rockies! AMAZING - the World Series in Denver, and I’m missing all the fun! But GO ROCKIES - they have lots of fans, even in Antarctica!!

(Also for you weather fiends, it was glorious today - it was about 12 degrees F with wind at around 10 knots. So a windchill of roughly -4. I was walking around with no hat or gloves and my coat open - it felt hot out!)

Here’s a map of the island I live on, Ross Island (click the image to enlarge).

McMurdo is at the end of the long spit of land at the bottom of the island. Erebus is the mountain on the left, and Mount Terror is on the right. Terror is a dormant volcano. If you look at the map carefully, you can see where the permanent ice is - it’s grayer than the water on the map.

Here’s a simple map of Antarctica (click the image to enlarge). McMurdo is located near the Ross Ice Shelf.

Since some of you don’t necessarily know what I do down here on the Ice, I thought I’d write a bit today on what it is like to live and work at McMurdo, and write about what I do a little bit. (Now that I’ve been down for a week, which seems like a month, I feel like I’m qualified to say!)

My current job here is as a Beverage/Recreation Accounting Clerk, and I work in the Recreation department. I work for a company called NANA Services. It is a subcontractor of a Raytheon. Most of the day-to-day operations of the station are run by these two companies, as well as companies that fly the planes and helicopters.

My job is to keep track of the finances of the handful of places on the Ice where you can spend your money - the bars and the Station Store. McMurdo has three bars - Southern Exposure, Gallagher’s, and the Coffee House. I count all the money and keep track of all the beverage inventory. When people ask me what my job is, I tell them I am the Vice Girl - I handle the alcohol, the tobacco, the money, the movies and the chocolate! It’s very busy, with lots to do, because really and truly, there’s not much people can spend their money on!

This sort of gets to what it is like to live at McMurdo. It’s not very big (1,100 people max!), you’re limited in where you can go to a handful of trails, and you have a roommate. So it’s very different than the life most people are coming from. For this reason, it’s a good thing that we’re working 6 9-hour days (or for some, 5 12-hour days!) - it keeps you good and busy! However, the function of my department is to give people things to do on the days and times they have off. So there is a music room, with instruments you can check out (guitars, a bass, keyboards, etc.), you can rent skis, you can do things in the craft room, or you can chill out in the library. We coordinate the different activities that go on here, like concerts and classes and trips.

It’s really different being down here - not just because it’s cold with no plants (and no bugs!) It’s a different way of life, which takes some adjusting. There are lots of people around all the time, and it’s not easy to have private time. But the good thing is that most of the people who make it down here are nicer and more interesting than average, so it really makes it fun.

Hello again! It’s been a long first week here at Mactown - it seems like I’ve been here a month! There is a lot of meeting new people and so on, so it gets tiring! For the most part, though, the people are very nice and generally friendly (sometimes a little bit quirky!), which makes it easier to get along.

Here’s a photo of part of McMurdo:

These are a number of the main living and working areas in McMurdo. The four similar buildings in the back are dorms (not my dorm - it’s off the picture on the far right), and the dining hall building where I work is on the right, just in front of the rightmost dorm. Believe it or not, that sort of dirty open area behind those dorms is the Ice Pier, where they do all the vessel offloading. It’s frozen solid now but eventually it will be open water, and that dirty spot, which is ice bound with steel and concrete (not sure how that works!) will be the only ice in the bay.

Some of the other buildings include the Chalet, which is the NSF’s headquarters, and the Crary Lab, which is the main science building. 

This is a picture of the historic Hut Point, taken from above the town. There is a building at the lowest point of the jut of land, and that is the hut that Robert Falcon Scott’s Discovery expedition built in 1901-1904. They built the hut out of Jarrah wood from Australia, in an Australian fashion, with wide verandahs and a high ceiling - which is excellent for the hot Australian climate but doesn’t work so well for the Antarctic. The hut is a short, 20-minute hike from town.

Those two little dark things in the background are vehicles driving on the sea ice.

Finally, here’s a picture of our friendly neighborhood volcano, Mt Erebus. That little bit of cloud you see at the top is steam, because Erebus is a pretty active volcano! You can’t see Erebus from town very well, but my department drove up to the side of one of the hills and it was amazing how close it was!

OK, OK….here are Ice Pictures, as promised!

Here I am, visiting the cockpit of the C-17 as we began to fly over the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. This is when I REALLY began to get excited.

This was the view from the window of the cockpit. The lumps in the snow are mountains, ranging between 8,000 and 10,000 feet. This was my first view of the continent!

On the ground, finally! But it was COLD! And as you might be able to tell, it was WINDY! We landed on the sea ice, so all that white ground you see was actually rippled and sort of bluish. I didn’t get a picture of the ice because I was running like crazy to get to the vehicle. This photo was taken from the warmth of the airporter.

Here are my peeps in the airporter. Notice the fellow with the bow tie - that’s Fleet, the dentist. I have yet to see him NOT wearing a dress shirt and bow tie.

After this, I was tired and vaguely stunned, so I didn’t take any more pictures that day. But next time, I’ll have some pictures of town for you!

Thanks to all my fans at Jimbo aka James’s office! I’m glad you’re interested and I hope I can provide you more interesting adventures!

Hi Everybody!!

 I’m settling into work and all that good stuff, but I finally uploaded some photos! I’ll give you a few of the good ones:

Hey! That doesn’t look very Antarctic-y!! But it is the very pretty river that runs through Christchurch, which has all sorts of punters on it.

Yes, Christchurch does have a Subway.

Here’s the C-17 we rode! And look, no windows!!

And here’s everyone waiting at the Antarctic Centre!

 Next time, actual pictures of THE ICE!!!

I love and miss everyone - I’ve loved all your comments! Keep ‘em coming and I’m thinking of everyone!!

Whew! Now that I am here, it’s a lot like coming to college for the first time. I have a roommate, Bay, and she has already been here more than a month, so she’s got the room all set up. It’s okay though, I like what she’s done with it. It’s very homey. She gets big ups for recognizing the Robert Plant doll as Robert Plant, so I think we’ll get along well.

I’ve visited my office, which is also very nice, and the store, which is actually pretty good! It’s bigger than I thought and seems to be reasonably well stocked. You can also rent videos there.

Last night I had supper with my friend and now boss Lisa, and we had some wine and spaghetti, and then I met my friends Holly and Sharona and went out to one of the bars. The bar we went to is called the Coffeehouse, and it had live music, which was awesome.

It’s also great that we arrived on a Saturday, because that means I get Sunday off, so I’ve been goofing off all morning so far. We were supposed to do a walking tour of the town, but it was cancelled because it’s still really windy and cold.

I miss everyone, but I’m really happy to finally be here. It’s pretty cool!

Hi everyone!

 I’m here at McMurdo, made it safe and sound, and I managed to arrive on one of the coldest days they’ve had here! I’m still trying to figure out a way to get some pictures on here, but til then, I’ll just give you a long post about my trip down.

So once we arrived in Christchurch on Thursday morning, I went to my hotel, the Windsor, which is a very cute B&B near the Botanic Gardens and the Art Museum. They have a great dachshund named Winnie, and they feed you well! Gotta love those English Breakfasts. I won’t go into too much detail on Christchurch, because I mostly just wandered around there and didn’t really do much except look at the gardens, eat and shop. When I get back I’ll do it up right!

On Friday, we tried on all our cold weather gear, which was kinda funny. Among other things, we got a big red parka, wind pants, gloves, mittens, a variety of hats and neck gaiters, socks, long underwear of several kinds, and these big, white, rubber boots called bunny boots. We tried all these things on in a big room and traded out what didn’t fit, and decided which to put in our checked luggage and which to wear on the plane. Since we have to wear certain items on the military flight, we wanted to make sure we had them in the right bags. Everyone who had been before told us that the plane was heated and usually you just take everything off when you’re flying anyway, so I didn’t get too excited and I just packed the bare minimums I needed for the flight.

The next morning, you have to get up very early to get to the military flight. The people at the Windsor also packed us a little snacky bag so we’d have some breakfast. They are so nice! You go to the Antarctic Centre at the airport, which is a funny combination of the Antarctic operations for the US and for New Zealand, and also includes a really nice museum type thing as well.

When we got to the Antarctic Centre, we picked up our bags and got dressed in our cold weather gear. I was wearing wool socks, bunny boots, wind pants, a shirt, a fleece, my big red coat, a balaclava, a hat and goggles. Mind you, it was about 65 degrees in Christchurch, so we were pretty hot for a while. You have to go through security, and so we lugged everything through, and got on this bus to go out to the plane.

 And WOW, the plane was really impressive! It was a C-17, which was HUGE! When we got in, the plane was almost entirely full of cargo, so we had to sit in jump seats along the side, which actually weren’t too bad. It was a five hour flight, and it was LOUD! You don’t realize how much they insulate the cabins of commercial jets until you ride in the cargo hold of a big military plane like that. Since we couldn’t really talk, I read a book and ate my lunch. There was only one window on the plane, so every once in a while I’d get up to look out.

For a long time there was only ocean, but finally, one time when I looked, the water was all frozen, and it was just great sheets of ice as far as you could see! It was pretty amazing, but the best part was when the loadmaster of the plane started letting people go up onto the flight deck! When I got my turn, we were very close to McMurdo, so when I looked out, we were flying over the Transantarctic Mountains, which are between 8,000 and 10,000 feet! At that moment it really hit that I was going to the Ice! It was a really amazing moment.

So shortly after that, our plane landed, and it was really strange, because you can’t see anything, it’s sometimes hard to tell if you are down. Also, it was a bit of a rough ride coming in. We put on all our gear and got ready to go out. We noticed that the plane’s cabin started to get a LOT colder so we were glad for our gear.

Finally, we all got up and were ready to step out onto the sea ice runway. (Amazing to think that the ice was strong enough to hold such a huge plane!) And when we stepped out, it was amazing! The wind was blowing SO hard and it was SOOOOOOO cold! There was NO doubt, I was in Antarctica!

 It turns out it was the coldest day since Winfly in August, and the wind was blowing so hard they almost turned the plane around. With windchill, it was -51 degrees.

We made it, and I am very glad to be here!

Hi everyone!! Just a quick post to let you know I made it safe and sound, and everything is great! More tomorrow!