I've been getting to know McMurdo a bit better, but am still struggling with how best to describe it to you all. So I've included some pictures to give you a sense of the place.
A Mattrack, this one belongs to the fire department.
A row of dorm buildings. Annie stays in one of these; my room is behind where I took this shot from, in the same building as the cafeteria. The coffee house (steamed dry milk is weird)/wine bar and one of the pubs are just out of the shot to the left, and the other pub is behind me.
A monster of some sort under the bridge we take to get from the cafeteria building to the science labs. The bridge goes over a series of pipes that cross the station. I have yet to figure out what the monster or the pipes do.
A lone, red-clad figure walks between buildings in the last few hours of the storm. You can't quite tell from the picture, but he's carrying a 6-pack in each hand.
Front of the "hospital". Good place to go if you want to get the McMurdo Crud, a pernicious upper respiratory problem that plagues many residents. We hope to get out of here before it grabs hold of us.
There is a library with lots of windows in the upstairs of the science building. This is the view from there, looking westish. In the foreground is the runway, with ski-equipped LC-130's for flights to the South Pole and other places, air traffic control and various support paraphernalia. The ice runway is just past all the red. This is all on 2-4 m of sea ice, and with the coming of summer all will have to be relocated to the ice shelf within the next couple of weeks. This runway is only a 10 or so minute drive from the station, but the ice shelf is 45 minutes away. We will fly from the ice shelf when we leave in 2 and a half months. The mountains in the distance are on the mainland, 40 or so miles away. It was a very beautiful view as the storm cleared.
Inside the dining room, or galley. There is seating for a couple hundred people, but there are over 1000 here now. Each meal time lasts for two hours, and there seems to always be a seat somewhere. In the background you can just barely see people loading plates with roast turkey, steaks, mashed potatoes, frozen pees and carrots, fresh bread, stir fry and rice, or some other mass-produced goodie (we don't get all of these every night). One or two days after planes arrive there is fresh green salad. The food isn't extraordinary by any means, but there lots of it and there are a few shining stars. They play movies on the screen up on the wall.
Today Annie and I had sea-ice safety training all day. We drove in a Hagland north from McMurdo out onto the sea ice. There we searched around for cracks, and when we found them we drilled holes to determine how thick the ice was in the crack (the water had re-froze in all the cracks we found). In general, ice more than 30 inches thick is safe to drive any of the lighter vehicles over (snow mobiles, Haglands, Deltas, Mattracks). Different rules apply for heavy stuff like loaders and cats.
The Hagland. The tracks on both units drive. Tey're loud and slow, but tough to get stuck, unless you fall through the sea ice. (I've seen pictures of this!!! Yikes!!)
Annie drilling a hole. The motor is a small 2-stroke, and the screw is 1 m long with a carbide bit on the end. If the ice is thicker than 1 m then you have to add more sections to the screw part. We got up to 4 sections, which got a little tricky to pull out of the hole.
Later we got to walk through an area of pressure ridges, where the sea ice is being pushed up against an island by the northward-moving ice shelf. There were wonderful shapes and patterns in the tumbled jumble of big ice chunks. There was also drifted snow all over from the storm. It was like walking through the halls of a giant, natural, ice-carving contest.
Pressure ridges with Mt Erebus in the background.
While walking through the pressure ridges, we came upon a group of five Weddell Seals, basking in the sun out of the wind. These big seals (can be over 1000 lbs) live right in the closely packed sea ice (called Pack Ice), and have forward-facing incisors to chew breathing holes. Apparently the seals are a good clue that cracks are in the vicinity, though they may be covered by drifted snow.
Mother and pup Weddell Seals.
Mother and pup Weddell Seals.
Grant flew to Crozier today, and Annie and I are scheduled to go tomorrow at 2 pm. Apparently the Internet link to McMurdo has been acting up lately. The backup option is to hook the computer up the the satellite phone, which is also a bit temperamental. Not sure when my next post will be, or how many pictures I'll be able to include, but I'll do as much as I can, as soon as I can.
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