Letters from Antarctica
Page Two
McMurdo
Station is Antarctica's first city. Founded in 1956, it has grown from
an
outpost of a few buildings to a complex staging facility of more than
one
hundred structures. Winter-over population is typically ninety to 130
persons
while in the Austral summer there may be ten times that many scientists
and
support personnel, journalists and visitors of one kind or another.
Greater
McMurdo includes a seawater distillation plant (80,000 gallons/day),
radio and
television station (call sign KICE), airport (Williams Field, out on
the ice)
fire department, telephone exchange, post office, medical facility, a
galley/dining hall that can serve literally thousands of meals a day,
and one
stop sign. Two miles away, on the road to Williams Field is the
neighboring New
Zealand research facility of Scott Base. Like most major cities,
McMurdo serves
as an international center where people of different cultural
backgrounds meet
and exchange ideas.
The entire
community is built on an old and crumbling lava flow which extends,
like a
peninsular, south from the active volcano Mount Erebus. Erebus, at 3796
metres,
towers above the station even though it is 18 miles away. Nothing grows
here,
no trees, no grass, no insects, no dandelions. The only animals are
penguins,
seals, skuas, and whales; penguins have the right of way at all
crossings.
It may
interest you to know that the Masons have been here. Admiral Byrd was
the
founding member of the Antarctic Circle Lodge Number One and there is a
plaque
here, placed by that lodge in 1985, attached to a monument to Byrd that
was
placed by the National Geographic Society.
My room is
pleasant enough. Beige walls dominated by a large print of Autumn
coloured
maple leaves on one side and a sprinkler head on the other, just above
my bed.
All the furniture, bed, desk, dresser, chair, is made of wood. The bed
is
comfortable enough but I am still not sleeping well; between the cold,
which is
most over and the incredible dryness of the air, the conditions are
difficult
at best. "Its a harsh continent" as they say down at the bus stop.
And not only that but the coffee is lousy and the milk is powdered.
Bleechqt!!
Magnetic
declination is about 145 degrees East but the lines of force are so
near
vertical that my compass drags its needle. Not to worry though, all the
hiking
trails we are permitted to use are flagged. Red flags on the right mean
your
returning to base. Today I went on a hike to Castle Rock, three and a
half
miles away on the road to the volcano and about 1400 feet above sea
level. Of
course with the sun up all night there is no problem about getting a
late
start. Castle Rock is at the north end of a somewhat wedge shaped
ridge. From a
distance it looks like a volcanic plug not unlike Devil's Tower in
Wyoming but
when you get up close you see that it is made of multiple layers of
sandstone
more like the red-rock formations of the American Southwest. In amongst
the
layers of sandstone are layers of a looser conglomerate of volcanic
cinders.
Overall this makes for an unstable condition and the mass weathering
which
takes place in the Austral summer produces considerable loose rock on
the trail
which circles up the steep north approach. Going up is no problem, it
is sort
of like climbing a rickety rocky ladder, trying to get past several
cats or
kids on their way down, whilst keeping track of the several other
unmarked
paths coming in from both sides. The view from the top is grand. Erebus
to the
north is in and out of the clouds and venting a wisp of steam of its
own; to
the south, out of sight below and beyond the dump is MacTown with
Observation
Hill to the left and way beyond that is Mount Discovery whose summit is
10,000
feet above sea level. Snow and ice cover the valley all round but
Castle rock sticks
up bare and warm in the midnight sun. Going down is scary to say the
least.
Akin to walking on the down escalator as the loose debris underfoot
carries you
along past your exit to a dead-end of shear drops on all sides. Awesome!
My work
here primarily involves the maintenance of several communications
systems using
various satellites for both voice and data back to CONUS—That’s
milspeak for
Continental United States. The Earth Station for one of these links is
on Black
Island, west of McMurdo, across the bay and it is to there we journey
next. But
first a closer look at this end.
The Navy
operates most of the communications, COMS for short here. Using such
frequencies as 4770 kHz for the nearby Beaker Teams (Beaker is a sort
of
affectionate term for any scientist), 8990 kHz for aircraft operations,
and
11553 kHz for COMS with Siple, South Pole, Downstream Bravo, and
Catchment
Basin. Tall towers, large rhombic antennae, several 10 kW transmitters
and
various remote receiver sites, not to mention the HAM shack, keep the
Navy ETs
busy. Several of these frequencies in the HF band are used for teletype
messages as well as voice for Stateside traffic however most such
traffic goes
by satellite via ATS-3 or INMARSAT.
ATS-3, put
up by NASA a long time ago, is a sort of free use satellite. Working
long past
its expected lifetime and wobbling out of orbit, it is useful only
about five
hours a day. ATS-3 is used for data by the cosmic ray lab here and may
be used
for both data and phone patch by Siple and Pole. INMARSAT provides high
quality
data and telephone service on a continuous basis but costs ten dollars
per
minute. The SATTRAK project runs up a bill of some $15,000 a month on
it. The
Earth station on Black Island consists of two terminals for INMARSAT, a
microwave
link to McMurdo, several other receivers, power sources and batteries
and
buildings and towers.
The ride
over the ice shelf to Black Island in a Bell Jet Ranger takes about
twenty
minutes. We fly along the boundary between the annual sea ice and the
Ross Ice
Shelf. Seals are visible as well as the wreckage of a crashed airplane.
Maintenance is done on the windmill, the Ormat and INMARSAT and the
towers and
antennae are inspected. Three other technicians and myself live in a
Jamesway
for the four days we are there. A Jamesway is a portable, wood framed
double
walled tent. This one has a gas stove and two kerosene heaters. It is
well
stocked with all sorts of canned and dried foods but we must bring
water from
McMurdo. We ate mostly canned food. The only fresh was some chicken
left from
an earlier trip that hadn't gone bad yet. Food lasts a long time here,
there
are no germs, no flies, no mice; actually I guess I miss the mice, they
would
help keep the place clean. The skua, sort of like a seagull, is the
local
scavenger; we put out a lot of bad meat but they are more
discriminating about
what they eat than the raven of Mount Washington. Skua ate the smelly
steak but
left the scallops (imported all the way from Maine by the way) and the
shrimp.
I found it
interesting that after several hours of working in a small shack with
no
windows and without looking at a clock my body would know it was supper
time
(not that I was hungry or anything...), my head would know it was dark
outside.
Then I would go out to go to the Jamesway and find some supper; the sun
would
be still up, way past west headed south, my clock would say
"half-past-evening-no-wonder-your-starving-stupid" and my head would
be going round in circles following the sun.
On the
flight back we stop at another small island and pick up two Kiwi
researchers
and drop them off at Scott base before returning to MacTown. Later,
when the
helos are put away for the long winter, a traverse by tracked vehicle
will take
most of a day in the dark.
Today is New
Years Eve, and snowing. You may not find that unusual but its
mid-summer here!
Now we are
a few days later; the sky is clear and the temperature above freezing
again.
The ice in the bay is melting and I have seen my first penguin
close-up. They
are very pretty birds. Their feathers shine in the sun and they use
their
stubby wings for balance as they run about the ice and jump from floe
to floe.
There were two of them in close and twelve people stood along the shore
taking
pictures and laughing at the one which danced around and fell in the
water and
jumped out again and again. The other stood in one place turning this
way and
that making a clucking sound or a raspy throaty caw. In the distance, a
few
miles away, the Coast Guard ice breaker is steaming in, cutting a
channel
through the sea ice for the resupply cargo ship which is due here in a
week.
—30—
This
letter is COPYRIGHT by Alfred J. Oxton, 1988-2009, McMurdo Station,
Ross
Island, Antarctica.
No portion
may be reproduced by any means without my express written permission.
