"You've been here too long"

Please don't make me leave

Everyday now it seems more and more people are poring into McMurdo.  With most of the crew already on station, the new folks are generally scientists who had waited for warmer weather.  You can tell who these newbies are because they are the ones bundled up as if hell actually did freeze over.  I was on the way to the gym wearing simply shorts and a down jacket, when I heard one of these Michelin men shout at me, "You've been here too long."  Personally, I thought the day was quite nice with temps around 8 degrees and a windchill of -9 F.  They'll learn soon enough...  I can't believe the end to this dream is so close.  Monday (only a few days away!) is the scheduled leaving day, weather permitting.  Most of station has now joined in the joke regarding weather and our research.  We'll sit around at a meal complaining about the weather, when I realize I'm the only one wanting windier conditions.  With sunshine here day after day, people have started simply mocking us as we pass by.  They might wish, "Hope the weather's awful tomorrow," but their sarcasm is not well hidden. With our luck, it is no surprise that the next big storm is forecasted for Sun/Mon.

Artifacts inside Scott's Hut

A few night ago, I had the sweet opportunity to go inside Discovery Hut build by Robert Scott in 1902, located right near McMurdo.  This is the original hut that Scott's expedition built and used, and contains many artifacts (even seal blubber!) from earlier expeditions.  The Antarctic Heritage Trust preserves this and several other huts from Scott/Shackleton through the Antarctic Treaty. 

Monday we took two marine biologists with us as we retrieved two ice cores relatively close to Scott Base.  Kendra and Heather are planning on taking their own ice cores shortly, and were looking to gain some experience with us.  The sites were chosen to coincide with where the German Zealanders have been measuring atmospheric gases near their base.  The first core was pretty uneventful, and Kendra/Heather probably thought we actually knew what we were doing.  It didn't take us long though to erase that illusion.  Within the next hour, we had a broken drill, bent flights (extension poles for the corer), frozen and stuck connection pieces, flipped a snowmobile, and created a geyser/swimming pool.  The first three are pretty standard as it is a constant fight trying to use a Kovacs corer in the cold with a badger drill, the fourth is my own stupidity when I tried to exchange the drill, and the last was friekin awesome.  

Penguins up close and personal

The site for the 2nd core was on multi-year ice (ice that does not melt out during the summer), our first time not on first-year sea ice.  One of the downsides of coring multi-year ice is that there is a quite a bit of snow on top, on the order of 4-5 feet.  While I returned the frozen drill, Rachel and the marine biologists shovelled away down to the sea ice, creating a nice little playpen for us to work.  When I returned with a warm working drill, everyone was excited to take a break from hand-coring.  We made it through most of the way, when it started to feel like the corer was getting stuck.  Wanting to avoid a mistake from earlier in the season, we decided to core the rest of the way by hand.  Knowing that the ice would be a little thicker here and having a 4 ft bank to stand on, we added a 2nd flight to the corer.  I happened to be the one coring when I punched through to the ocean and, per usual, quickly extracted the core barrel.  However, we were all greeted by a geyser of ocean water through our coring hole that quickly filled the playpen we had shovelled out.  Excellent, we now had our very own swimming pool!  The reasoning is that the weight of the snow pushes down the sea ice such that it is below sea level.  Still, despite all odds, we had successfully retrieved our 8th and final sea ice core.

We must know what this flying creature is

We returned back to McMurdo, completely exhausted, the norm after a full day of fighting the corer, pulling on/off connections, and drilling.  However, somehow word has gotten out that I'm a skate skier (complete fallacy since I've only been 3 times).  Next thing I know though, one of the mountaineers here, who used to ski race, had dragged me out for an evening ski.  We made it over to Scott Base and back in under an hour, when last time the one-way version had taken me 1.5 hours.  Trial by fire one might say.  At least I no longer feel like a duck out of water, and even did a halfway decent job of keeping up.  We might it back just in time for Monday basketball.  Needless to say, I crashed pretty hard that evening.

10,000 penguins in front of a glacier. WOW!

Yesterday was a pretty sweet day as we returned to Cape Bird to disassemble our mini-tower.  Last time it turns out that we had somehow missed the 10,000+ penguins, whose rookery is located on the other side of the hill.  To think I had been so stoked with the couple of penguins I had seen on my birthday.... We still had the few daring ones who came right up to our tower to supervise our work.  However, we then climbed the hill (for the "sole" purpose of helping Lars/Tom move batteries) and witnessed one of the most remarkable scenes imaginable.  An uncountable number of penguins were scattered across a vast rocky landscape with a backdrop of a large glacier reaching out to the sea ice below.  I don't think I actually have the words to describe the scene, so I think might just go to bed with that image freshly imprinted in my mind.