Antarctica and Beyond

Turning the heat up

2011-11-04T15:42:00.000+13:00

Our Fosdick Mountains team is still in McMurdo playing the wait-for-good-weather game until we can get an aircraft in to the field site. The Fosdicks are roughly 750 miles from McMurdo across the Ross Sea. They are a coastal mountain range and are thus subject to severe storms and long stretches of bad weather. What has come to be known affectionately as "The Great Storm" pinned down the G097 crew in 2006 and ruined most of their camp. The most famous "casualty" of that storm was a Skandic skidoo that was carried a few hundred feet by the winds.

Overview of Fosdick Mountains (satellite imagery from Polar Geospatial Center). We will be working mainly on the north side of the range.

Dr. Jo-Ann Mellish's B470 crew invited us out to help them collect infrared images of seals as they haul out of the water through holes in the sea ice.

The Fosdick crew in infrared while out helping G470 collect imagery of pupping seals

Seals hauled out. NMFS 15478

Detail of Weddell Seal and blowing snow. NMFS 15478

Weddell seal and blowing snow with Royal Society Range in background. NMFS 15478

We've been keeping busy in Mactown but the time is coming for us to get out! I remain optimistic. Every day for the last week Chris Yakymchuck (phd student) and I have been scheduled on the Basler aircraft for put-in to our camp. But each day we've been cancelled due to weather. We've been coming up with a variety of ways to increase our chances of good weather. This morning Chris shaved his head to appease the weather gods. Photos soon to come and we'll find out how that worked tomorrow, our next shot to leave town.

Marie Byrd Land Awaits

2011-10-30T15:07:00.001+13:00

Another season in Antarctica has begun again. The addictiveness of this place is palpable. From the moment I got the invitation to join the Fosdick Mountains geology expedition last spring, my excitement has only increased. Marie Byrd Land is on the opposite side of the Ross Ice Shelf from McMurdo Station and the transantarctic mountains. It is a barren land. The Polar Plateau flows towards the ocean and cuts through a variety of micro ranges. The Fosdicks are a sub-range of the Ford Ranges.

Drinking beer in ChristchurchThe Fosdicks are the site of perhaps the most notorious storm in recent United States Antarctic Program history. Five years ago their camp was overtaking by an unusually strong storm with near-hurricane force winds approaching 100 knots. The winds were so strong snowmobiles were thrown through the air, tents were destroyed, and it took all they had to huddle inside of their best shelter, a ninety pound canvas tent called a Scott tent, and hold the walls in from collapsing. It is a story that is retold every year in the survival school here. The snow is too hard to dig down adequately for snowblocks, so we've decided, upon the recommendation of the legendary mountain guide who was with the Fosdicks crew in the "Great Storm," to bring a chainsaw to cut down.

Getting to the Antarctic Terminal in Christchurch, New ZealandOur project is under to co-leadership of Dr. Michael Brown, the principle investigator, Dr. Fawna Korhonen, co-P.I., and Dr. Christine Siddoway, co P.I. Christine has arguably spent more time in Marie Byrd land than any other person, since her first trip to Antarctica in the late eighties as a grad student.

First sighting of the continentThis season we have two halves. The first includes myself and Tim Burton as mountaineers, Fawna, Chris Yakymchuck (PhD student), and Tim Ivanic (Curtain University, Australia). We are all packed and ready to launch for the Fosdicks as soon as the weather and availability of aircraft allows for our departure. The plan this year is to put in an advance team that includes Chris Y and myself with a Basler (a retrofitted DC-3 twin engine aircraft) to the north side of Bird Bluff (named for the massive snow petrel rookery that lays their eggs there each austral summer). Then two LC-130 ski equipped aircraft flown by the New York Air National Guard will bring in the remaining three team members and the remaining thirteen thousand pounds of gear. We have a total of seventeen thousand pounds in total, which includes skidoos, twelve drums of fuel, tents, climbing equipment, cooking and survival gear, and food for two months for five people. It is a staggering amount of gear and it took five of us nine long days to pack and prepare all that gear. The support staff who run McMurdo station, where our project is based out of and supported from, have done an amazing amount of work to support our project as well. Everything from building and preparing skidoos, to preparing cargo loads, to checking and repairing field gear. The field area demands that we camp on glacier near the mountains that the geologists are most interested in sampling. We have moderate amounts of over-glacier travel with skidoos and large payloads to accomplish in order to build camps in the variety of locations in which me might work. Tim and I have spent considerable time preparing out five sleds (think Santa sled not kiddie sled) to be appropriate to handle the loading and packing needs of our travel. While establishing new routes over the glaciers, we will rope the skidoos together and the riders to the machines in order to prevent certain death in the event that one punches into a crevasse. The ultimate goal of our travel choices are to avoid at all costs a crevasse fall. This we accomplish by careful route selection and a fair degree of conservative choices. We have hundreds of pounds of one-inch nylon rope that we've spliced together and prepared specifically for use with our skidoos and sledges.

All of the geologists have been trained in the basics of glacier travel and crevasse rescue in the case that Tim or I punch into a slot and need rescue. Most of our time will be spent either at outcrops mapping and collecting samples, traveling to and from sites, or sitting in the kitchen tent during bad weather. We have two, two-burner stoves, ten cornish game hens, two stovetop ovens, a bunch of baking supplies and a deep reservoir of cooking talent. It will be a memorable season now matter what happens. The logistical complexities of our five-person project are just a small piece in the bigger picture of the many, many projects going on this year in the United States Antarctic Program. All of this is under the direction and funding of the National Science Foundation. Our project, unlike many of the larger projects that now seem to dominate the "landscape" of Antarctic science, is small and old school. Get dropped off, do a bunch of science for a while, get picked up. We have no support staff. We do everything for ourselves once we are out there. It is a good feeling to know that simple projects like this still happen. Luckily the only tools we really need for the science work are rock hammers and Brunton compasses. The "outcrops" we are sampling and mapping are really 500-800 meter granite peaks that make the rock climber in me drool uncontrollably. But the most efficient way to access the rock is to stroll up the base of the cliffs. There will be some ropework involved; specifically roped glacier travel and perhaps some fixed lines to help the geologists access certain parts of the outcrops. The Fosdicks are located on the coast, which combined with a variety of other factors make it magnet for bad weather. The season is going to be a great one with many adventures, follies, and successes ahead of us. The landscape here is no different than it ever was. It is a surreal wash of ice and rock with a few living things scattered about the perimeter. Snow and ice rule the world here, as does the wind. Seeing the tenuousness with which life exists gives one pause to reflect on the value of these brief yet beautiful lives we lead.

CTAM

2011-02-19T17:44:00.013+13:00

On November 29th seven members of my field team arrived at McMurdo Station. With me we had eight; two mountaineers and six scientists. Our project was to complete a transect through the Transantarctic Mountains placing magnetotelluric data loggers every ten kilometers. Loads of work went into the planning and preparation for the trip.

G494 clockwise from bottom right: John Stodt, Graham Hill, Jamie Pierce, Kate Selway, Phil Wannamaker, Yasuo Ogawa, myself, and Virginie Maris. The brainpower in this group was astounding. Each of the geophysicists brains must be worth a million dollars. They never ceased to impress me; both with ability to explain in simple terms the complex science we were attempting, but also their dance moves.

G494 is our project code, G for "geology." The project was based out of the Central Transantarctic (CTAM) helicopter camp. Below you will see an aerial photo of camp. The runway is 2 miles long and the buildings behind are enough to luxuriously support up to eighty scientists and staff. CTAM is located precisely where it is because of its proximity to sites of geologic importance and because of its beautiful weather. Often called "The San Diego of Antarctica," CTAM was THE camp to be at this season, and our project's success was largely due to the incredible support provided by camp staff, the helicopter and fixed-wing teams, and the perfect weather we enjoyed.

CTAM camp was a carbon copy of the standard Antarctic field camp, scaled to size for this particular operation. We had a 2-mile military spec runway which allowed the Hercules LC-130 aircrafts, operated by Air National Guard from New York, to carry large loads in and out of camp. We had 2 dedicated Bell 212 Helicopters (think MASH: Vietnam era machines), one Twin Engine Otter flown by Ken Borek Air out of Canada, a mechanical tent, a communications tent, two fifty-foot science tents, a 130 foot dining and kitchen tent, a wash tent with hot showers, two heated berthing tents, a medical tent, six outhouses, two pee-holes, a tent city for personal tents, a large cargo yard, a 5-mile recreational trail, 2 50 KW generators running 24/7, three 5000 gallon fuel bladders, 15 skidoos, and many other things I'm forgetting to list. The community "tents" are in fact wooden-arched canvas-topped tube-shaped buildings with wooden floors and diesel powered stoves. This ain't your average camping trip. The main theme here is fossil fuel. Lets just say that each banana we had at camp was probably the most costly banana on Earth.

A Herc landing.

My responsibilities as mountaineer included helping decide where to put the transect. We did this using a combination of GIS and on site information. Before ever leaving the US there was a rough plan to put the line over the mountains, but flying at altitude would have severely limited our cargo capacity in the helicopters, in addition to the poor weather often in the mountains. So we decided to put the line as close to camp as possible, but also in a place which offered a line as close to perpindicular as possible, and lastly in locations that were free enough of crevasses that we felt safe landing and being unroped. I won't mention how many times I got out of the helo and immediately stuck my ice axe directly into a crevasse. Most of the unseen crevasses were small, thankfully, and we had no incidents.

After we picked out the line on the map and assigning GPS points to each preliminary guess Phil, Jamie and I flew over the line twice, once very close to the ground, then at high altitude, to get a sense of general crevasse patterns and likely hazard, then low to look for what kind of aircraft we'd need to land there. Many places were too rough for the Twin Otter so the helicopter was the only option.

The helicopter shadow provides reference for scale. The shadow's length is 40 feet, so the crevasses are roughly 3 times that wide here.

Twin Otter shadow for scale as we bank a turn while scouting sites on the plateau.

Then we trained everyone in crevasse rescue and developed a protocol for how to establish the sites safely. Ropes would have made everything much to complex on account of the 1.2 kilometers of electrical wire we'd be laying down. Jamie and I luckily had the foresight to bring our skis just for this purpose. Skis are a common risk management tool on glaciers, and often negate any need for a rope. So Jamie and I were therefore tasked with laying out the electrical lines at each site. Each site has a center where the data logger, batter, and solar panel live, and then in a + formation aligned with the compass directions, there were four 150 meter electrical lines. At each site we had to establish a safe zone for site center, then drag each electrical line out, and the end of which we buried a titanium mesh sheet which served as an electrode, attached to which was a preamp that would boost the low signal strength Phil and the team expected from the snow of the glaciers on which we were placing the instruments.

Jamie Pierce out working the electrical lines. This is what we did at all 33 sites.

Site center. Yasuo Ogawa connects all the bits and pieces to the data logger while John Stodt works in the background.

The season was a great success. We got 33 sites installed, and good data from all but one site. Phil wants to return next season to extend the ends of the line further and thereby increase the depth to which the MT data will be accurate.

Other bonuses of being at CTAM were good access to ski touring terrain, paragliding terrain, an awesome party scene, and the chance to be in vast amounts of unbelievable terrain.

Jamie skiing up the local hill behind camp.

Moraine underneath Mt. Achernar. Scale is impossible to express. Its fair to say that Manhattan would fit there.

An unnamed paraglider cruises past in an unspecified location...

Jamie and I next to the Bell 212, which was the key to success for our transect.

Veteran Antarctic pilot Paul Murphy makes sure that the movie was correct: white men can't jump.

A rare species of Antarctic Gorilla showed up at our last party of the season. I think he ate acclaimed mountaineer Peter Braddock that night.

All good parties look like this in the beginning. John and Graham using their PhDs for the good of all.

And then we danced.

...and kept dancing

...until there was only a paleontologist and a geophysicist left standing at 3:55 A.M.

Jamie Pierce takes a load off on one of our many Twin Otter reconnaisance flights.

Our transect line worked through the mountains from top to bottom. As we head further south we end up on the Polar Plateau. Pictured here from 1,000 feet above ground is an area where the glacier is being pulled in multiple directions, causing this kind of crevassing to appear. Certainly we would not be able to land there.

John Stodt in the science tent. Graham, Jamie, and Kate in the background.

Back at camp one of our esteemed mechanics was coerced into having a fake tatoo of a rose placed on a freshly-shaven spot in his beard.

Marie having fun in the helicopter.

Skidooing out on the Wahl Glacier behind CTAM on the way to go skiing.

My ski tracks. It was unusual to leave any tracks at all. Normally the sastrugi snow is solid, but we had a dusting a few days previously.

Ted and Phil walking out on a rope team to the electrode end.

Mike Robert's and Kathy Licht's camp 12 miles from CTAM on the edge of Achernar's great moraine. For scale, the camp has 5 skidoos, a large cook tent, and multiple 4-season mountain tents.

Mt Achernar. Up there are petrified forests.

A view down our transect line. Each site is 10 km apart, so we can see 3 sites worth of distance, or roughly 20 miles for the metrically challenged.

P.I. (Principle Investigator) Dr. Phil Wannamaker contemplating.

Site CTA8, 120 feet above sea level. This is as far as we got on the Ross Ice Shelf. And this photo is a great representation of why Dr. Wannamaker dreamed up this project in the first place. The relief between where the photo is taken and the mountains is 9,000 feet. The higher peaks rise up to 15,000 feet. The project seeks to determine what is holding up these giants deep inside the Earth.

The team at site center with icefall in background.

Skiing off the Wahl Glacier

Me standing on a pedastal of rock on the edge of site CTA6. We were eagerly anticipating this site because we knew how dramatic the exposure would be. In the distance are the transantarctics, below which is a sea of clouds. That cloud layer was our nemesis later on in project, as it prevented us from getting onto the Ross Ice Shelf to extend the A sites.

Robbie the helotech on what must feel like the edge of the world. Transantarctics at left and the cloud-covered Ross Ice Shelf in the background.

Waiting in -30 for the rest of the team to be done.

Kate's legs from inside the igloo.

Bija and I up on "Compost Hill." The site 5 miles away from camp that had heaps of fossiliferous glossopteris leaves. So essentially an enormous old leaf pile. Coalsack Bluff, about ten miles from here, was the source site from where David Elliot of Ohio State in 1965 found the fossil that forced the world geology community to finally accept continental drift. The fossil he found then linked Australia to Antarctica and irrevokably proved that the two continents were once one.

Twin Otter out on the plateau

Jamie on an early morning ski mission. This day we destroyed one skidoo and also proved to ourselves that "snow" at 83 degrees south is more like ice. Still fun though.

Geophysicists defy gravity.

Yasuo looking dismayed that the helicopter isn't coming back for us tonight.

CTB4. One of the more scenic sites, butted right up against the mountains.

Karen and me

A little snowgolf anyone?

Heading north back to Christchurch. The view from the C-17 cockpit on the way north to Christchurch. Like an out of body experience, floating over these smooth, white peaks.

An amazing season and we accomplished a lot. I can't wait to go back again. Thanks for reading.

Edge of the world

2010-10-31T21:59:00.003+13:00

Season number three on the ice (localspeak for Antarctica) just started. Feels similar to the first two only more familiar. Taking this place for granted is too easy sometimes. There are so many distractions from the essential fact that we here are living and working on the most remote continent on Earth. I was having coffee with my friend Karen this morning and she mentioned what it felt like to be at the shore last season, water lapping up on black volcanic sand. She and two other friends just kneeled, facing north towards New Zealand, a few thousand miles away, the closest land. They were on the very margin of the world. Where no human has ever, or will ever, be able to sustain life without outside resources. A place so harsh that even in the best of conditions few animals visible to the human eye can exist. A few birds, some seals, not much else.

Here is an example of some of the coolest birds there are, the Adelie Penguin(s).

There is a wild energy at McMurdo now because the powers that be overbooked the season here beyond the capacity of the station and the logistical support. There are Australians sleeping on childrens cots in the gym, and South Pole people crammed five to a room where only four should be.

Luckily parts of my job involve going out of town into the landscape, which is the primary reason I come here. While driving on six feet of sea ice, beneath which is a thousand feet of twenty-eight degree ocean water, arcing around grounded icebergs and birthing seals, my own troubles seem trite. The cycles of ocean, land, and sky are harsh and predicitible. Today the wind bit with a cold force yet the sky was clear and I could see eighty miles to the north.

Karen driving our Hagglund around a trapped ice berg, which is larger than most city blocks. Keep in mind that the sixty feet showing above ice is one ninth the total height. That makes it 540 feet deep.

Here is my group posed in front of another iceberg on a sea ice course my second day at work.

Karen, Julian and I made it out to Cape Royds to check out the sea ice route conditions. This is as far north as I get on our island. The background is frozen ocean, which extends for a few hundred miles north and gradually melts out on its circumpolar course. Beyond the horizon is New Zealand, the direction from which the early explorers came from.

Karen was right that this place is about adventure. There is no other continent that is uninhabitable. We are visitors and like another friend said to me once as we were looking out at a similar vantage..."we're lucky, aren't we." He couldn't have been more right.

Sawtooths

2010-08-26T16:25:00.005+12:00

June on the 5.9+ pitch on Astro-Elephant. The best route ever.

June and I on the summit of the Elephant's Perch.

Cliff jumping

Awesome glacier polished slabs and the Blue Rock Lake Rock

Summit of Warbonnet after the forgettable E. Ridge, III 5.9

The awesome summit ridge of Warbonnet

Warbonnet's E. Ridge

Top secret routes in the Sawtooths.

Japan Peak from the Feather Lakes

North Ridge of Packrat Peak, IV 5.10 Reid Dowdle FA

June hiking in to Warbonnet Lake

2010-08-06T18:13:00.004+12:00

Nearing the summit of Mt. Baker on the North Ridge route

Sunset over the Fraser River valley. We slept on the summit, the first time for me.

Approaching the North Ridge of Baker on the Coleman Glacier

Base camp and the Southern Picketts, from right to left. McMillan, Inspiration, Degenhart, Pyramid

Alasdair looking inspired on McMillan

The Southern Picketts and base camp.

Mt Stuart from our base camp in Mountaineer's Creek. The N. Ridge, our route on the right.

Moonrise over eastern Washington from the summit of Stuart

Eric and Jeremiah on the summit of Mt. Stuart

On the ultra-classic N. Ridge of Mt. Stuart

The snow couloir getting on to the N. Ridge of Stuart

Summit ridge of Dragontail Peak

Mt Stuart

The Colchuck Glacier

From the bus window

2010-06-20T15:12:00.004+12:00

One of our porters and part of la familia

Today we drove back from Pinaya, a pueblo at 13,500 feet. Juan, our local guide and fixer lives here, as does his entire extended family, including wife, children, aunts, uncles, mother's-in-law, and countless other people I can't keep track of. This is one of few places I've been on Earth that is entirely self sustaining. They grow all the plants and animals needed to survive and they do so with an ancient grace.

Sunrise over the Altiplano as seen from basecamp of Illimani, 15,000 feet.

On the way out of the village today we saw men plowing fields behind thin vacas (cows) with handheld iron plows. Here they grow some of Bolivia's two hundred varieties of potatoes, raise sheep, cows, horses, and llamas, and generally live the way people have been living for millennia. The recent addition of electricity and the cell-phone has done little to alter the way day to day life happens in Pinaya. The homes are centered in the middle of a steep-sided valley. Each has a small field for animals and an irrigation creek that runs broadside. There is a small schoolyard, a main courtyard that doubles as a soccer field and meeting ground. Homes are made from mudbricks. These people are Aymara natives. They speak mainly Aymara and some Spanish. Most families have at least 3 kids by the time the parents are mid-twenties. People age quickly and by the thirties people are dark and weathered. But beautiful.

Kids working as porters. They can do two laps in the time it takes us to one.

We were in Pinaya because it is beneath 21,122 foot high Illimani, which soars like an eagle above the pueble. Illimani means golden eagle in Aymara. We came to climb the peak. I was last here in 2007 with a group and this time I stayed at base camp with a sick client while Alasdair climbed with someone else to the summit.

Mamerto and Andela portering gear

It is always an adventure getting here. Juan's father died when his car fell off the road about a decade ago. On the incredibly dusty, bumpy, and precipitous ride from La Paz, I forced the bus to pull over so I could vomit profusely. There isn't a road in the US I've been on that is even slightly as dangerous, narrow and steep as this. And yet the road to Pinaya is quite average for this rugged country. If there is one quality which both the land and the people share it is ruggedness. And perhaps this is a quality that is not unique to Bolivia but to the third world in general.

Illimani's North Summit and the Koya Koya route

Either way I am grateful for the opportunity to go on a trip here. When we showed up in town, we then proceeded to hire half the town as porters, arrieros (people who handle the horses), horses, donkeys, and cooks. All in the name of climbing for us. But for them the stimulus of US dollars in invaluable.

Its been a great trip with more than a fair share of sickness, lots of climbing success, and most of all, some learning along the way. And my Spanish is slightly less bad than it was last year. Nos vemos!

Expect the unexpected

2010-06-16T01:04:00.007+12:00

Outside the El Rey Palace Hotel window red-brick homes rise disjointed up the walls of La Paz. If Picasso was secretly an urban planner, than this was his city. There is no homogeny to this place. Bolivia is a poor country, said to be the poorest on the continent. But all places have their contradictions, such as the Landrovers that cruise the Zona Sur (the rich, southern part of the city) past Aymara women sitting crosslegged on filthy sidewalks under massive dresses and bowler caps selling ten dollars worth of fruit on a good day.

Most people here don't like their picture taken. This guy asked for it. So now he's on the internet

The main form of public transport, minibuses, can take you hours in any direction for around a dollar.

The Rio la Paz

Here on the altiplano (high plain) of Bolivia all life exists above 11,000 feet. Pueblos dot the desert landscape. The walls are made of dirt. The people look as though made of dirt. The land here forgives nothing. It is tough and rocky and one needs only a jeep or a bus ride across a barren stretch to feel the earth's unyielding thrust upward. And it is into this rocky hard ground that these colorful and inventive people have been making their lives for thousands of years.

This entire family showed up at camp the morning we left to help us pack and to load their donkeys with our things.

In current day Bolivia, where the majority religion is Catholicism, Jesus is everywhere.

Sunrise and Huayna Potosi

Panorama of the mountains we've been climbing. The Condor is the middle of the snow covered peaks.

But poverty has a whole other meaning here. Everyone here is poor. Everyone lives in the dirt or the naked land or the grime of the polluted city. The Rio La Paz, which runs through the city, is literally a river of shit. And a few weeks ago, Alasdair, Susan, and I went to go climbing in the southern part of town we followed this river for a few miles. And it didn't surprise me as I saw dozens of people handwashing their clothes in the rio that could have easily been the intake of a sewage treatment plant at home. Bolivians live in the dirt, they live in the filth. But there is money of course. One has only to walk around through skyrises and fancy French restaurants to know that there is incredible disparity here. But disparity is a norm of the world I suppose.

From the relentlessly dry altiplano rises the Cordillera Real (the Royal Range). This mountain range pierces the always-blue sky of sunny Bolivia and its jagged and dark peaks are capped with tight fitting glaciers. This place is a desert. Even the glaciers are deserts among glaciers. In 4 total months of travel and work I have felt rain once seen a total of 4 inches of new snow. The snow and ice shrink wrap these mountains, and the little amount of runoff they produce is all damned and stored to feel over a million people whose tear their living from the dust and grass.

The main form of transport in the mountains.

The climbing is fantastic. My friend Susan says Bolivia is where one goes for "sport" high altitude climbing. What she means is that within a 1.5 hour drive a person can go from the center of the metropolis to the base of a 6,000 meter summit. A few years ago my friend Andrew and I did a one-day ascent of Huayna Potosi and climbed its west face, which is the largest face in Bolivia (but not the hardest). In the Himalayas, for example, it might take two weeks of trekking to reach base camp of the high peaks. Here people come to have easy access to high-elevation peaks with reasonable routes.

This is what is looks like to do an alpine start. We left camp at 5 am this day, and Diccon was trying to find the stoke.

Our base camp at night. The stars here are amazing. The southern cross is always out and reminds me of the CSNY lyrics, "when you see the southern cross for the first time, you understand just why you came this way,"

Trekking into the Condoriri Valley with the west face of Huayna Potosi (19,975 ft, 6088 m). Andrew Wexler and I climbed the shadowed face coming off the left hand summit, in a day, in 2007. Here's his story about that climb, http://www.aai.cc/wex_huayna_report07/

This might be the best place on earth to gain first experiences climbing at altitude. But don't come for the rock, this is a range of beautiful ice and snow faces and ridges. The occasional desperate local climber or the occasional eastern-European climber has done mixed routes up the rock, but mainly because, "it is there."

Here is Diccon climbing up the Direct South Face on the Izquierda de Condor

The S. Face of La Izquierda. Our route went up the left hand line. After 6 pitches of ice and snow, Alasdair radioed from camp and said we were only 2/3 height. Which meant we had to turn back before the summit.

Walking on the rope team, Huayna Potosi

We've got 4 days left of the guided trip, then I have a week on my own. The possibilities are endless here. From all of the summits we've reached, to the east is the Amazon basin, the Yungas (valleys), which are perpetually covered in cloud. To the west the altiplano dips into Chile and then eventually the ocean. And there are countless mountains left to climb.

In this place I expect to be surprised, because nothing is ever the same as it was. Bolivians are proud people. It doesn't matter that they live in the dirt and live off of nearly nothing. They are happy living freely under the constant blue sky. There are many problems, yes. But I've learned through these people that simply being alive is a gift, and one not to be foresaken.

These boots were made for walking

2010-05-13T12:45:00.005+12:00

Just got back from 7 days in the Wrangell Mountains of Alaska with Joe and Dylan. Our plan was to ski from Solo Lake, where a bush plane dropped us off, to McCarthy, over the wall of Regal Peak. After a few days of experiencing incredibly low snow conditions, avalanches, and generally high pucker factor, we bailed early on the trip down the Nizina glacier and valley. What this meant, though, was 30 miles of walking in ski boots over dry glacier, river bed, and bushwacking.

We drank lots of J-Dubs, shot many bottle rockets and roman candles to ward off the grizzly bears. We actually ran into bear tracks in the middle of the Nizina glacier miles from nowhere, and then a few miles later saw a mother and two cubs cruising down the edge of the glacier.

Heading into the upper Chisana Glacier

A hard slab I remote triggered

This type of trip is what one would call an ultra-slog, and if there were an award for the most miles walked in ski boots, with skis on packs, we might win that award. Unfortunately there is no such award, because this is against the point of skiing. But, we did have a good time and as usual for a trip like this, learned a thing or two about the mountains and how they affect a person.

Alaska!

2010-04-25T20:52:00.004+12:00

There are few places on Earth that compare with Alaska. Any self-respecting American needs to go there at least once in a lifetime. Here there are mountains beyond mountains, and rivers beyond rivers. Animals and plants rule the land, while glaciers the size of average east-coast cities plunge headlong toward the ocean. There is more adventure here than one could handle in a lifetime.

Aside from the natural wonders of Alaska, the trip is worth it to see the other state treasure: Alaskans. They are a breed apart. Truth be told, though most have come from somewhere else, people who call themselves Alaskans, do so with a pride not found in the lower 48.

Cece skiing a couloir off Mt. Dimond

Putting the "mountaineering" in ski mountaineering on Mt. Dimond

Cece on Mt. Dimond

West Face of Mt. Dimond

In Valdez the mountains rise strait from the ocean

Mt. Dimond and a couloir we skied off the right shoulder.

In the Yukon on the AlCan Highway...a lone wolf!

Enjoying the evening light

The mighty and intricate Chugach

Skinning up Girl's Peak

I'm up here skiing with my friend Cece. For no other reason than fun and adventure. The Chugach range, home of American heli skiing, and perhaps the past center of the modern extreme skiing movement, is like no place else. In any direction there is not color to see but white, in the form of snow draped peaks and monstrous glaciers. Each valley, of which there are thousands, could hide the average American downtown.

These mountains were made for skiing.

Canada eh!

2010-03-31T18:23:00.005+13:00

The first AMGA ski mountaineer guide's course is happening now in the Coast Range of British Columbia. We've been getting dumped on for the past two days, luckily avalanche hazards subsides quickly with this wet snow. Here are some photos from my pre-course trip with my friend Jeremy. In Canada we are able to be from the car to glaciers in a matter of hours on our skis. From Whistler and Blackcomb mountains, it is even quicker.

Lots to write about, no time though!

Cooler Climbing!

Jeremy skiing the Aussie Couloir of Joffre Peak

On the Anniversary glacier

Rabbit hole

2010-03-18T20:59:00.003+13:00

The Naked Lady

2010-02-13T19:52:00.005+13:00

The recent lack of new snow in SW Colorado has left our snowpack relatively stable...stable enough at least to ski the line I've been oogling over coffee each morning out my kitchen window. And it was my roommate Sheldon's birthday!

2009-12-07T19:02:00.009+13:00

June on the Campground Couloir

Ascending in Red Mountain Pass

Dawn mixed climbing in the Skylight Area, Ouray

Looking out from Skylight

Looking up at the last pitch of Skylight

Gary descending from Hoser's Highway

Gary on Hoser's Highway

Approaching Hoser's Highway

Erik climbing the second pitch of the Direct North Face in South Mineral Basin

Outside my window snow is falling onto red mountains. Another long day in the mountains and I feel a deep satisfying tired. Weeks of climbing the frozen waterfalls of ice which drape the valleys and faces that surround Silverton, has left me ravenous for more. I can't remember the last day when there wasn't work or some other adventure requiring coffee and Nutella sandwiches.

Leading a nice waterfall with the San Juans for company

Where'd the time go?

2009-11-10T18:32:00.005+13:00

Andrew on the last pitch of Cloud Tower in Red Rock

Paul taping up for Cardinal Pinnicle.

Dana peak and the Dana Couloir in the Sierras. Diccon and I did roughly 10 pitches of ice to get up that thing.

The Sierra

North Couloir on North Peak, Sierra

North Peak in the Sierras. Ice climbing is great here in the fall.

Layla, on the "Silent Line." Best Chimney I've ever climbed, well, not quite as good as the Narrows in the Steck-Salathe

Chantel and I at the base of Half Dome the night before the climb. We were visited by a Ringtail that night.

Base of half dome.

Chantel on the "Death Slab" approach to Half Dome

Darkstar: the longest alpine climb in California. Car to car 15 hours. Like the Complete North Ridge of Stuart but easier approach.

Aidan and I on the summit, only halfway there.

Another crazy sunrise

June on "Cryin' Time Again." Her first multi-pitch. Woo-hoo!

Brian and Cece and me. My Antarctica friends. Brian is down there now.

Two months ago my truck, the Red Rocket, lumbered out of Boise headed to California. The sky was clear and hot as Nevada disappeared at 75 mph in the rear view mirror. I arrived to Touloumne Meadows under bright stars and a dark sky, my friends were already asleep I'd been so late on the drive.

It seems pointless now to retell the stories of late nights and early mornings; late mornings and early nights. Campfires, long rock climbs, dreams of the future, and dreams of the past. Stars, the full moon on top of Half Dome guiding Chantel and I down after twenty pitches. The moonlight so bright I turned my lamp out. Passing out in middle of trail because we couldn't find our way down. Another dark top-out. Rappelling off of bushes. Playing Shady Grove on the Mandolin for the thousandth time at the campfire. Hearing OId Crow Medicine Show sing, "My baby plays the guitar, I pick the banjo now" at a free show in San Francisco and busting dance moves in the aisle. Two degrees of separation at most. Las Vegas, city of sin, city of amazing rock climbing. Accomplishing goals. Getting shut down. Bob Dylan at dusk. Bob Dylan in the morning. Four rounds of coffee as a minimun, every day. A mouse started living in my truck. Climbing every day. Being dirty. Rivers down main street in Bishop. The first snow in the Sierra. The search for motivation. Constant travel. Where to sleep? What to eat tonight? Burritos again! Eggs in the morning. No knowledge of the date or time. Has the sun hit the tent yet? Okay, its time to get up. Oh, again? Why can't we just take a rest day? No rest days, life is too short!

I can't possibly capture the last two months in words. I'm simply grateful, supremely grateful, for the opportunity to live a beautiful life surrounded by amazing people. So thanks to everyone I've traveled with and met on the way, safe travels!

Finding the right way

2009-08-31T16:59:00.005+12:00

Seven of us just finished out alpine guides exam which took place in the North Cascades in Washington. Here are some photos from the 10 days. I'm too mentally tired from it to say much more at the moment. I learned a lot, and I can't wait to find out if I passed!

We climbed the ridge that is split by shade and sun, and then descended the left hand ridge. This is Mt. Forbidden.

Tom on the Quien Sabe glacier with Boston Basin in the background.

Me on the summit of Sharkfin Tower

Dawn guiding us up Sharkfin

One of the examiners having a good time

Dawn sending

Forbidden from the slabs where the glacier used to be.

Tom following on the East ridge of Forbidden

Tom on the East ridge of Forbidden

The North Ridge of Forbidden.

Forest

Head in the clouds

2009-08-14T21:16:00.004+12:00

Mt. Baker

Its been a crazy summer for a lot of people in the climbing community this summer. I'd like to send out my best wishes and respects to the memory of Craig Luebben, who died in a climbing accident this week, and his wife and daughter who are left behind. He was training for AMGA alpine exam in the North Cascades when a chunk of ice he was climbing over collapsed on the bergshrund underneath Mt. Torment. I've never met Craig, but he was a beloved person in the climbing community and he will be missed dearly. He was supposed to be my instructor on an upcoming guide's course in Colorado and even through the brief email I received from him describing the course, I could tell how much passion he had for climbing.

Lily and George on our two day crevasse rescue course on Mt. Baker.

I've just returned from an alpine ice course I taught for the American Alpine Institute on the north side of Mt. Baker. The two guys on my trip were especially awesome and despite the torrential downpour managed to keep spirits high and we climbed the Roman Moustache route which consisted of a number of pitches of alpine ice. I'd driven strait from the Phish show at the Gorge to make it for the 7 am rendezvous last Saturday, where I saw my brother (congrats Matthew for your first Phish show!) and some of my best friends on earth. In addition to seeing an incredible show I left the venue and received a message from my best childhood friend telling me he just got engaged to his long standing girlfriend, so woo-hoo to Jeff and Ruby!

Chandler painting Andy before the Phish show

Darren getting pumped for the best rock and roll on earth

Russ, Chandler and Andy hanging at the Gorge. Russ had the flag dress custom made for the Phish show and other places I'm. Sure. You have no idea how many comments he got. Apparently patriotism is still in style.

As everyone knows, there are sometimes too many things to possible describe in words, and as writers have known since the beginning of time, words can never replace experience. How can I describe the way the clouds whipped the summint of Baker, the cumulous clouds seemed like a magic surfboard could just ride them into the white yonder. They morphed from shape to shape and the sun came and went like a flitting spotlight. At times we were enveloped like the inside of a ping-pong ball, sometimes we were in this giant clear fishbowl looking out on the world from up high. The Coleman glacier's crevasses could've fit average houses inside of them, and despite my years of climbing I still get a mighty pit in my stomach when I step over those great dark holes in the ground.

I've spent a lot of time in the mountains at this point and I take many things for granted that used to make me so excited. It was exciting seeing the guys on the trip being so enamored by simple things like camping out up high on a big mountain, and smelling the flowers on the hike out. The high alpine environment is devoid of plant life and when you eventually descend the smells of the mountain flowers are overwhelming. It feels like I've never been able to smell until that moment, and then it becomes normal again.

Ice cragging on the Coleman Glacier

We walked out the long road from Mt. Baker in a downpour. It gave example to why we call this area the Pacific Northwet. I ran ahead to get the car and shorten the trip for the guys. Running through the rain and green forest all alone I felt incredibly grateful to be alive and to have the simple ability to feel the mist and smell the thick woods. In light of the recent deaths of friends this summer, life is feeling even more precious now. When people pass away all of the things that seem like problems become inconsequential in comparison to the big picture: just being alive and living well each day. I think that each of us strives to be as good as we can be; to ourselves, our families and friends, and the world. I'm no closer to the answer of what a good life consists of, than I was when I became aware of my desire to live one. I do know that to act from the good intentions of the heart seems to be the best gesture I can make.

I wonder if my pondering really mean much. Whether or not, its nice to spend a little time reflecting. Life seems to be going at its usual crazy pace, with only a few rest days between now and my trip to Pakistan where I'm going this fall to teach climbing to porters in the Karakoram, a few AMGA courses sprinkled in between and hopefully some quality time with the friends and family. Maybe even some time to stick my head in the clouds and feel the wind on my face.

What else is there, really? The seasons come and go, time goes on and life continues despite us. It feels good to just appreciate the basic things now and again; the laugh of good company, the crisp air of morning, and the summits that I am lucky enough to visit. Sometimes the sun shines bright and then there is the hard rain. May it rain where you want it to, thats what a read on a sticker one time, and how true those words are....

May the rain fall where you want

2009-08-03T18:38:00.004+12:00

I saw a sticker that said, "May the rain fall where you want." There's some wisdom in that. The rain could be a metaphor for some other difficulty in life, but in the case of my last trip to the mountains, rain was no metaphor at a all. Neither was lightning or thunder.

Ben psyched about being soaked and headed home

Ben Mitchell and I went to climb Eldorado Peak to prepare for our AMGA alpine exam. There is a lot of time, experience, opportunity, and money at stake in the exam so we thought we'd train a lot in order to do well. Of course, that training paid off greatly when the two of us were packing for the trip in the parking lot and I casually tossed the neon yellow rain tarp in the "stay at home" pile. And what did Mother Nature do? She pissed on us, and shook her thunder and lightning stick relentlessly. So what did we learn? Always take something for the rain in the Cascades, even if the forecast is for 100 degrees in Seattle.

Columns of rain over the North Cascades National Park

On the positive side, we did learn the approach to Eldorado quite well and saw a beautiful storm roll through the mountains. Our little bivy site on the shoulder of the peak was somehow protected from lightning strikes, which seemed to be happening all around us. Only once did I feel the buzz of electricity.

Here is a time lapse of lightning during the night. Its a bunch of photographs put together and played at high-speed, which means there was three times as many strikes as what the camera captured.

We woke up the next morning cursing the fact that between us, we had zero waterproof items, and our sleeping bags and all our clothes were soaked. I slept mainly underneath my sleeping pad, and not on it, to protect from the downpour.

The lesson for me is that things will happen that don't fit with the plan. Maybe we didn't climb the mountain, but we did see an amazing show and had a good hike none-the-less.

Enjoys long walks

2009-07-24T19:54:00.005+12:00

"...Two roads diverged in a wood, and I, took the one less traveled by. And that has made all the difference." Robert Frost obviously never tried to climb mountains in the North Cascades, or he wouldn't have said this. The past three days Ben Mitchell and I have been training for our AMGA alpine guide's exam. Basically we are trying to "guide" each other up long and complex alpine routes. In the North Cascades to get to most of these kind of routes involves a fair amount of off-trail travel just to get out of treeline, then hours of plugging up boulder fields, talus slopes, morianes, snow slopes, glaciers, ect, until the "good" piece of climbing is reached.

An old-fashioned camp out. Notice the hood on to protect from mosquitoes. Ben Mitchell Photo.

Mountain flowers were blooming all over the route. If anyone knows what these are, please tell me!

Trying as hard as we could to get into the north ridge of Mt Stuart up mountaineers creek, we still managed to lose the vaguely marked trail, both on the way up and down. We lost the route on multiple other occasions and in total ended up adding a number of hours to the trip on account of it. There was moderate dehydration, mosquitoes, bushwacking, complaining, laughing, sore feet, tired legs, and empty stomachs. But these were the tough parts of Mt Stuart. The good parts were beautiful endless pitches of granite rock climbing, thousands of feet above the closest flat ground, miles from the nearest other human, sleeping on a tiny ledge and being woken by the sunrise at 4:45 am, frigid glacial meltwater rejuvenating dry mouths, alpine flowers that put the best of gardens to shame, hummingbirds doing fly-bys all day long, and feasting on salmon back in Leavenworth.

Ben on the lower ridge

Where's Waldo (or Ben in this case). Midway up the North Ridge.

There is something quite twisted about this kind of pursuit, and something a little contradictory about training to be a guide as well. We all begin down this path because we love climbing and we either want to get paid to do more of it, or we want to help other people have similarly rewarding experiences as our own. After a year or two of guiding, that original feeling I had (insert inner monologue voice here: "oh my god, they're paying me for this?!") turns into something different, and like all jobs, it starts to feel like a job. That is okay, because I love the job, and don't get me wrong, I am so utterly grateful for the opportunity. But to be a professional mountain guide, you have to treat guiding like work. It is not the same as climbing for myself. So what Ben and I are trying to perfect now, are all the skills and techniques that go into creating a safe a rewarding climbing experience for others.

Me leading the off-width pitch. Ben Mitchell photo.

Mr. Ben Mitchell guiding me up the ridge.

Ben

Our alpine exam is next month and there are 8 candidates including us. Most of us are now in the Cascades doing similarly arcane alpine routes to get ready for a 10-day stretch of long climbs, high stress, and hopefully success!
For now though my legs are tired and I'm ready for another day of training tomorrow in Snowqualmie Pass where we're doing some route, the name of which I can't remember, and we'll probably do laps up and down, up and down....

Stuart though was amazing. Despite getting a little off on the walk in, we managed a reasonable time of 4 hours to the base of the North Ridge, which is a 3 thousand foot climb that is considered one of classics of the PNW (Pacific NorthWet), and one of the classics of the US. As is often the case with alpine climbs, getting to the top is just half the climb. Getting down from Stuart in any direction involves descent and then more climbing to get out of the basin in which it sits. In this way it is quite a demoralizing climb. Being east of the hydrologic crest of the Cascades, Stuart is a dry mountain. I took 2 liters of water which lasted from 4 am, when we started from the car, until about 10 am the next morning when we found some more water. Thats about 21 hours of moving and what would have been six hours of sleep if the buzzing of mosquitoes hadn't kept me awake all night.

Negotiating some unknown terrain on the descent.

Just before we arrived at our bivy (sleeping) spot, we climbed the most famous and beautiful section of the route, the great gendarme. A gendarme is basically a tower, or turret, that protrudes from a ridge. This one was so beautiful and the climbing so perfect...I wish it weren't so hard to get to!

Ben on the top of pitch one on the gendarme, a 5.9 layback that he styled with his pack on.

Ben following the second, 5.9 offwidth pitch on the gendarme.

Summit! Ben Mitchell photo.

An open mind

2009-07-14T21:37:00.005+12:00

Huayna Potosi, 19,975 ft. The west face is showing.

I'm just returning from my second trip guiding in Bolivia. Two years ago I came down with the illustrious, if not, infamous, Andrew Wexler to guide and climb some stuff on our own. Check out his blog on my sidebar, if you don't come out laughing from his writing, I don't know what will make you smile. Also on his sidebar is a link to an article Andrew just wrote for Gripped, a Canadian climbing rag, in which he details some of our shenanigans from 2007 and highlights the other peaks in the range.

Rodolfo and Emma approaching the Pirimide Blanca.

La Paz on the drive in. It sits in a bowl about 1500 beneath the dusty metropolis of El Alto (which has 1,000,000 people). La Paz has 2 million and it is the last place I would ever want to be in an earthquake because the homes are all built on the steep sidewalls of the valley. Unfortunately the valley is composed of very loose old riverbed rock which is totally unstable. We also met the urban search and rescue team which is responsible for extricating people when their homes collapse, which happens often.

The Condoriri Valley with Rodolfo, Steve, and Emma

El Cabeza del Condor, the capstone peak of the Condoriri Valley, at night under the full moon, with headlamp tracks in the foreground.

If you want to feel tall, go to Bolivia. This is Nestor and his esposa Louise who are subsistence farmers and also will take your gear into the Condoriri on their donkeys and llamas.

This trip was a short one, one 3 weeks, but I'm headed home a bit early now because a combo of a lung hack from last month and the altitude have proved too much this time. Even walking around La Paz at 11,500 feet feels strenuous. But we've had a great trip so far with a few unexpected adventures here and there. Bolivia is always that way for me, expect the unexpected. Its not that the country is disorganized exactly, probably no more so than my own, but they do things a little different here.

Our trip began with an 8 day climbing session in the Condoriri Valley. On day one in basecamp one of our trip members needed to descend because of altitude illness, but then we were off and running with a practice day and two climbs, Pequeno Alpamayo and Pirimide Blanca, both great warm-ups to the higher peaks of the Cordillera Real (Royal Range). I haven't done any climbs here that are complete walk-ups, most involve some amount of pitched climbing, or can if you want them to anyways.

Rodolfo, Steve, and Emma on the summit ridge of Pequeno Alpamayo, 18000ft.

Emma and Rodolfo climbing the final summit block of Pirimide Blanca

The climbing here is described as "high altitude sport mountaineering." Which isn't to take away from the seriousness of high altitude and steep icy slopes. But what might take a week or two to get to in Nepal or the Himilaya is only a few hours drive and a few hours walk from your hotel in La Paz. This trip was different and didn't involve any real fiestas for me. It is easy to get sucked into the vortex of late nights out and early mornings out to the mountains. All the roads here are bumpy and dusty and a good hangover usually leads to a healthy dose of carsickness. I recommend Pepto Bismol and Coca-Cola for that.

Steve on the summit of Pequeno Alpamayo

Looking back at climbers on Pequeno's summit ridge

Some trips are bittersweet. This one was just that with some health issues to complicate my job here and the fun I would usually be having. But it is always nice to be here and see the friends I've made. There is no better perspective for understanding how lucky we 1st-worlders are than 3rd world travel. People here are very very poor, on average, the poorest in South America. Basically everyone is selling something most of their waking hours. The problem is that everybody is selling something so theres not much money to go around. There are many subsistence farmers in the rural areas, and aside from the few middle and upper class people, I would say that Bolivia is largely composed of subsistence livers; people who make barely enough, and often not enough, to simply eat.

Most of these people could literally not leave the country because it costs too much. Its rare that I meet someone of the lower classes who have left Bolivia, and sometimes even this small region, for their whole lives. I've met friends with college degrees who can't come to the United States because the paperwork, beaurocracy, and cost, is much more than their middle class earnings allow.

Part of the issue is that Bolivia has natural resources, gas and oil, but they are landlocked (a sore spot which has caused more than one war with neighboring Chile) and therefore cannot cheaply export their goods. And despite the economic hardships of life in Bolivia, people still seem happy and go about their daily lives with less stress and anxiety than most people in the first world.

I hope to get back here next year, we'll see though, I've got to keep an open mind.

The life of a travelling man

2009-07-01T04:52:00.007+12:00

The other day I was frantically packing in my friend's Bellingham driveway for a trip in to Mt. Shuksan in the Cascades. It was nearly dark and I'd strewn my possessions across the asphalt driveway. I feel like a pinball knocked all over the inside of the machine sometimes. Here I am writing from hotel in Bolivia looking out on the expanse of La Paz as it sweeps in shanty-brick homes up the hillside to 13,000 feet. Last week I was being drenched to the bone on Shuksan where I supposed to take two Texas lawyers up a challenging route. We didn't half the distance I'd planned before we threw down our tents and spent the rest of the day and night listening to the pouring rain. I made hot water bottles ever hour just to keep warm because my bag was soaked and useless. Its not too often I feel sorry for myself, but shivering all night made me feel a little bad.

Since leaving Antarctica in early Feb the tick list went: New Zealand, California, Idaho, Alberta, Wyoming, Colorado, Alaska, Washingon, and now Bolivia. Its hard to complain but there is a growing, or maybe lingering, longing for a place I can call my own. Today I walked down the streets of La Paz and saw all kinds of people going about their day under a cloudless sky. Bolivia is an easy place to go as an American to feel lucky. I mean that people here are poor, and their opportunities for advancement are severely limited by their poor economy and lack of opportunities. And here I am, complaining about being stuck in a wet sleeping bag on a mountainside, and getting paid for it. Most of these people couldn't in their whole lives even get the mountainside that I lay soaked on a few days ago. I feel so lucky for the opportunities afforded me simply because of where I was born.

So many people I know and meet, including myself, have dreams to do all sorts of things. Its just so amazing to me that at any moment in time, any one of you out there reading this could, if you wanted to, actually accomplish that dream. It might take quitting your job, achieving a deeper level of honesty with ourselves, selling the house, dumping that girlfriend, or maybe even asking a new one out on a date. I have no idea what you dreams are, I'm having a weird enough time sorting out my own. But I do know that whatever your dreams are, they are achievable. And one more thing I've learned is that to achieve our dreams won't bring happiness. Sometimes it might open more desires and dreams. So where do we get our happiness from then, if not from the achievement of dreams?

Perhaps living a good and honest life is part of happiness, I don't know. I just got back from the Telluride Bluegrass festival which I went to with my dad (over father's day, how cool!) and I met two amazing friends there, Hol and Susan. I saw a lot of other friends too. I swear that I only saw one unhappy looking person the entire time, out of nearly 14,000 people. The festival I think may offer some answers to my question of "where does happiness come from." Obviously the music is a central theme. And bluegrass, more than most of forms, is a populist music. It is made for the people, it is deeply rooted in our history and it seeks to illuminate (or at least dwells upon) life's most challenging questions. Not the soon to be forgotten questions like what should we do about Iran or is it a good time to by that house I've always wanted, but instead this music asks: what is love, why do I feel it so deeply, and why can it hurt so much, why does it redeem me so, and so many other questions. Sometimes bluegrass might seem shallow to the observer, it is infatuated with whiskey, but the whiskey is a symbol for the greater issue at hand, pain, and how to deal with it.

Water fights are the most dangerous part of the festival

David Byrne (formerly of the Talking Heads) headlined night one. His band brought the love.

But I said its a populist music. This means that everybody in the band has an equal share and is encouraged to share themselves by taking breaks and harmonizing on the vocals. In the tall arms of the beautiful San Juan mountains in Telluride, surrounded by sunshine and beautiful people who have come to experience as a group what it means to care for one another, I found out that happiness is the result of allowing life's beauty to overtake me, without judgement or reserve; to dance my own dance under the stars, and surrounded the people I love.

Susan and me, having a blast

Before Telluride I returned from Alaska, which was a two month long adventure filled with guiding and my own climbing, and a whole bunch of shenanigans in between. My last trip was six days on the Pika Glacier teaching greenhorns how to live on a glacier and the basics of alpine climbing. We had no clouds in the sky for the first five days, then the ceiling dropped like a judges gavel and we got picked up by a skiplane just before the weather locked the glacier in.

Dante, from Harlem, first time on a glacier, ascending out of a crevasse. I think the place blew his mind, which always inspires me to keep going at this work.

My big trip was guiding Denali which was awesome, although anyone who says that Denali is awesome is lying. There are awesome parts to it, there are scary parts, and there and grueling parts. No one is bummed when flying back to Talkeetna and the infamous Fairview Inn where all post-mountain trips should be celebrated. Luckily I was working with the best friends and guides I could hope for, Gabe and Paul. Here are some photos from the trip.

"I love this shit!" Good on ya Paul!

17,000 foot camp.

Paul at the edge of the world.

I'm still here in La Paz wondering what the meaning of this post is and why I felt compelled to write. Basically I'm wondering why I'm not more psyched that I'm being paid to travel to Bolivia and climb some mountains with some people. Shouldn't that be exciting? I used to think so, but now we'll see. With such great experiences just behind me I long for the feelings that those people and those places gave. The challenge is mine, to live presently and explore my world here with zest and a beginners mind. A mind not attached to outcomes of any sort. I'm already feeling better knowing that a whole city of people I don't know awaits me, a whole mountain range, and a whole life to come.

On a mountain so high

2009-06-07T09:01:00.003+12:00

Its a rare day that I do everything I set out to. Thats just life though; we do the best we can with what time we have. This April the infamous kiwi Mike Madden and I took to the Alaska Range to try the Harvard Route on Mt. Huntington. It was first climbed in 1965 by David Roberts and others from the Harvard Mountaineering Club. The route was the mountain's second route, and in was a futuristic line for the era, raising the bar of alpine climbing in Alaska. Even today, as Mike and I discovered, actually summitting Mt. Huntington is a tantalizing and difficult task.

There is no easy way to the summit. As my friend Dylan Taylor says, mountaineering is defined as climbing up the easy way, alpine climbing is climbing up the difficult way. Any route up this peak is a true alpine adventure.

Paul Roderick flew us and three British dudes into the Tokositna glacier on April 13th. I've done a fair bit of flying in the mountains between helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and this was an exciting flight to say the least. Mike called it the most hairraising flight he's been on. We barely made it in, banking between patches of mountains barely visible between breaks in the clouds.

The following are some photographs of our attempts on the West Face Couloir and the Harvard route, both spectacular climbs.

West Face couloir

The bottom of the ice in the West Face couloir

The west face of Mt. Huntington

Mike Madden in the icefall leading up the the base of the West Face.

Tokositna Base camp

Its a rare day that I do everything I set out to. Thats just life though; we do the best we can with what time we have. This April the infamous kiwi Mike Madden and I took to the Alaska Range to try the Harvard Route on Mt. Huntington. It was first climbed in 1965 by David Roberts and others from the Harvard Mountaineering Club. The route was the mountain's second route, and in was a futuristic line for the era, raising the bar of alpine climbing in Alaska. Even today, as Mike and I discovered, actually summitting Mt. Huntington is a tantalizing and difficult task.

There is no easy way to the summit. As my friend Dylan Taylor says, mountaineering is defined as climbing up the easy way, alpine climbing is climbing up the difficult way. Any route up this peak is a true alpine adventure.

Paul Roderick flew us and three British dudes into the Tokositna glacier on April 13th. I've done a fair bit of flying in the mountains between helicopters and fixed-wing aircraft, and this was an exciting flight to say the least. Mike called it the most hairraising flight he's been on. We barely made it in, banking between patches of mountains barely visible between breaks in the clouds.

The following are some photographs of our attempts on the West Face Couloir and the Harvard route, both spectacular climbs.

Mt. Huntington's West face and on the right skyline, our objective, the Harvard Route.

"Mad" Mike Madden jugging the Spiral Pitch on Mt. Huntington's Harvard route

Tokositna Glacier in April, from the "Nose" bivy.

...beyond

2009-03-19T18:43:00.004+13:00

Its been over a month since leaving the ice and a lot has happened since then. I'm too tired now to say much, but here are a few photos from ski touring today in the Canadian Rockies with my friend Andrew Wexler. It was a beautiful, but blustery day in the mountains and to say the least, my trip to the Rockies has left me thirsting for more of what Canada has to offer. Up here is most likely one of the world's epicenters for ice climbing and alpine climbing.

These photos are from a day spent skiing up on the Wapta icefield, which is a famous and popular ski traverse in Canada. Andrew is training for a ski guide's exam which meant that I saw a lot of his backside as he was way out in front making me feel out of shape most of the day. The Canadian mountain guides tend to take themselves pretty seriously; luckily Andrew doesn't, so we manage to have fun no matter the situation. We almost decided to ski a run off a peak at the end of the day, then later realized had we skied off the peak we probably would have gotten buried in an avalanche. My whole body is tired and beat from a week of ice climbing and skiing here in Canada, and if anyone knows a nice Canadian woman that is interested in marrying me for citizenship will you please forward my email address? Just kidding...well, only sort of :-).

Bittersweet

2009-02-06T11:50:00.006+13:00

Tomorrow I'm leaving for New Zealand. Bittersweet is the best way to describe the feelings I have. Bitter because I have to leave behind people I care about that I may not see again, and also leaving the land which has etched itself into me. Sweet because the road ahead contains so many experiences yet to reveal themselves. I am caught between wanting the continual surprises that time brings, and the calm that is brought by knowledge of the future. But that is how life works it seems. Surprises happen when I least expect them, and never seem to come soon enough when I am waiting for a change.

My friend told me yesterday that we can only lose what we've had. Maybe what I feel about leaving is not loss really, but an absence of knowing what tomorrow will bring. Life is full of times when I don't know what is around the corner, like now, and it makes me keep my senses about me, and my thoughts sharp. When life becomes predictable and habitual, I don't need to be as aware.

A kiwi friend of mine at the kiwi ski hill rope tow.

The bitterness of loss always gives way the sweetness of potential. But I think that the potential manifests itself through my own actions and the strings of the great puppeteer, who, or whatever that may be. Maybe time and circumstance is all that drives the outcome of our lives, or maybe there is a plan tucked neatly away in some dark cave or on some bright mountaintop.

My friends and I saying goodbye to my roommate on her way to the airfield and then New Zealand.

This place has changed me more than any place I've lived. I'm not sure though if it is Antarctica that is doing the changing, or it is us who are transforming ourselves. The social space here is one of extremes: people become close to one another quickly, and they also can choose to remain distant just the same. The energy here is confusing. At times eclectic and incredibly creative, and at times overridden by the corporate-ness of the management. I remember vividly last year feeling like a part of me was being assimilated into something larger than myself. Not greater or lesser, necessarily, but larger. And I suppose that society works by assimilation, its not a bad thing necessarily. In fact to create society, we each must (tacitly) give part of ourselves over to it.

What underpins all of us here? Is it the continent itself, or something else. I think at first we come because we want to see Antarctica. But after that first experience the reasons for returning are too numerous and complex to list or even understand. And many of the reasons have nothing to do with the land, but with the people we have the chance to live with here.

Thanks for joining me this season. I wish you all goodness in the new year still left to come!

Faith

2009-02-01T23:18:00.003+13:00

Exactly one month ago I sat at Cape Royds under the midnight sun while penguins cried and sea ice groaned from the ocean's swells. Now that ice is gone, blown and melted back to the ocean where it was born. I observed the lifestyle of the Adelies and tried to understand them. What I concluded is that life is a gift. Who or what gave us this gift I do not know: the laws of physics, the big bang, god, allah, Mother Earth, the Flying Spaghetti Monster. It is fact that in the relative scale of Earth History (roughly 4.5 billion years) we are but glints of light in the eyes of the universe as it travels through time on its great road trip we call existence. The penguins are but one of a near-infinite example that all creatures are trying in their own humble and beautiful way to survive.

And so are we, the human species. We are doing exactly what any species would do if given the capabilities we've been given. Spiderman was told "With great power comes great responsibility." This is exactly true for we humans. We have proven beyond any shadow of any doubt that we are capable of great things, but also of causing much damage. To each other, to the planet, to ourselves. My Adelie penguin friends try as hard as they can to make a good home for themselves, and to raise their offspring. This story is no different than the story of the American dream, or the dream of any species.

So here we are in 2009 and it is a fact that the earth is getting warmer and that we are a significant cause of this warming. Who really knows how much damage we have caused, or how much damage we can now reduce by changing our behavior? No one really knows. Time will tell. The answer to that question actually doesn't matter. What matters to me is that I try to be responsible to my penguin neighbors, who live twenty miles down the coast. Because our world is so irreversibly connected, you all who read this in places far from Antarctica are also, in a sense, neighbors of these Adelies. I could argue that as a member of planet earth I am, in ways small and large, neighbors of all who dwell on the blue planet.

So in the name of supporting science I have travelled thousands of miles of my home on jet powered aircraft to make my home in an entirely fossil-fuel dependent and consumptive community which exists to allow science to happen. In what ways will the lives of the penguins improve if we discover more about their diving habits, or reproductive behaviors, or anything that the people here strive to know.

In what ways does traveling across the world to do a climbing trip benefit the world, either human or non-human. I have a firm belief that I can make a difference in the lives of others, if by no other way, than by being a good person. Perhaps this belief is overly sentimental or too simplistic. If nothing else, it is a fine starting point for being a good citizen of the planet. But then how do we define "good." Maybe that is impossible, but at least I can strive to live a beautiful life and have the smallest negative impact on the lives of others. The world is so complex that I will never fully understand the consequences of my actions as the ripple out in the fabric of the planet. Countless ripples emanate from all things in a continues movement driven by time and governed only by the laws of the universe. I hope that my ripples don't make it worse for others too much. It might be more simple to answer this question if I chose to live in a treehouse somewhere or on an island.

All philosophizing aside, my bluegrass band played its final show last Tuesday at the Coffeehouse and we tried to spread the love we had through the music we make. We have a full band: fiddle, dobro, guitar, banjo, mandolin, upright bass, and vocal harmonies that have made me nearly cry more than once. I feel ultimately privileged to be playing in such fine company. We play a mix of originals and lots of traditionals.

The band on stage at the Coffeehouse

John putting some feeling into the fiddle. This man plays from his heart, and if one day I hope to put as much feeling into my playing as he does.

The Coffeehouse.

Julie and the empty house, before the show.

The season is coming to a close at warp speed and the answers keep getting lapped by the questions, and I'm totally okay with that.

Breaking out

2009-01-25T23:09:00.012+13:00

In less than two weeks I'll be smelling living things. Its been one long day, or so it seems, in the land where the sun never sets. Last week after two weeks of being on hold for weather, the NASA team and I flew in a Basler DC-3 airplane to retrieve their CREAM payload. CREAM is an instrument payload, roughly 4,000 pounds, and was flown by a massive balloon as part of the LDB, or Long Duration Balloon project. The balloon flies at roughly 125,000 feet in the upper atmosphere for a few weeks gathering data and then NASA cuts the payload from the balloon, deploys a parachute, and the payload with parachute falls down to Antarctica. Our job was to fly out and retrieve as many of the instruments as possible. No one gave me a good answer about how much the payload and its instruments are worth. Its in the millions though. Check out the website for more detailed info: http://cosmicray.umd.edu/cream/.

Flying away from Ross Island, on which McMurdo is built. In view is Mt. Erebus (12,500ft top left), Mt. Terror (9,000 ft top center), Turks Head (the rocky outcrop on the center right of the image) which is one of the largest Weddell seal colonies in Antarctica.

I went because CREAM was dropped near the coast where crevassing can occur, in which case I'd be responsible for getting the scientists to their instrument safely. Fortunately the Canadian pilots flying us out in their Basler, ski-equipped plane landed within 50 feet of CREAM. They are some of the best mountain pilots in the world.

We flew northwest from McMurdo.

The sea ice is breaking out right now at an incredible rate (as usual for this time of year), and unlike the helicopters which aren't permitted to fly over open water, the Basler flew at 12,000 feet over the broken ice and open water for over a hundred miles. Seeing the process of sea-ice breakout is incredible and gives me a better sense of how enormous the processes going on here are.

Satellite photograph of the McMurdo area sea ice on September 18th 2008. This is when the sea ice is at its maximum thickness and extent. The scale is roughly 100 miles from right to left. Many Rhode Islands could fit into this image.

Satellite photograph from January 23rd. The sea ice is nearing its minimum extent. Look closely and you'll see hugs slabs of sea ice that are now disconnected from each other and floating. This ice is very soft and thin, but over the winter, whatever hasn't already melted, will get locked in again to next years sea ice.

Sea ice north of McMurdo breaking out. Some of those chunks could fit are a mile long and half a mile wide.

Looking north at the broken sea ice and Ross Sea from 12,000 feet elevation in the Basler. In the foreground is a massive channel, or lead, in the sea ice which might be a mile wide. In the distance the ice breaks up even further and the open ocean is visible to the north.

The Drygalski Ice tongue. This is an amazing feature; essentially a valley glacier which has floated onto the ocean and maintained its form. The Drygalski is 40 miles long and an average of 12 miles wide. At 200 knots (over two hundred miles and hour), it took a few minutes to fly over. Most of the Tetons would fit inside.

The Transantarctic mountains surrounding Terra Nova bay. Somewhere around here is an Italian station, Mario Zucchelli station, which isn't in operation this year.

The Transantarctic Mountains as we fly inland toward the CREAM drop site.

Eventually we land on the snow in the flattest whitest place there is.

The Basler at the landing site, 500 miles from McMurdo in east Antarctica.

The scientists retrieving essential pieces and parts off the payload, including trip computers, GPS antennaes, harddrives, and who knows what else.

The payload with the Basler in the background.

I spent much of my time digging, but I also devised a haul system to pull CREAM onto its side, which enabled us to retrieve the most critical piece, which is housed underneath.

Loading up after a successful trip

The flight home was just as breathtaking. Unfortunately my camera battery was dead. The whole season seems to be crashing to an abrupt end all around me. Just like the sea ice, floating away and hopefully warming up soon. Standing in a place where no one has before is an honor, and also reminds me that we humans don't belong out here. Through science and art and exploration we put our tentacles into as much as we can, but the complexity of the earth, and the complexity of our lives, just like the East Antarctic Ice sheet, dwarfs my attempts to truly behold its essence. I was lucky to have brushed the surface and breathed the air. And yet, it is the same air I might breathe months or years from now in wildly separate parts of earth. The ice contained in East Antarctica might, thousands of years from now, hydrate some other creature in some far off land.

Time again

2009-01-20T07:12:00.003+13:00

Its a new year and its catching me off guard, again and again. Whats the point of expecting the expected when I know that things will change? Isn't the saying: "change is the only constant."

In nature this is true and for me it is true also. Every moment that passes a part of us dies and is reborn at a cellular level. Our DNA roughly governs the process, but only inasmuch as blueprints might guide a builder. Another law of physics is that matter cannot be created or destroyed, from which must assume that all the matter in the universe is finite and keeps recycling itself in different forms.

My body is composed of the same matter that was present at the big bang, a "theory" that the physicists I met at the South Pole claim is more proven than the "theory" of evolution. It follows that my body, being constantly rebuilt by the original matter of the universe, is also being rebuilt by matter that has been shed by other life forms, potentially you who read this right now. It wouldn't surprise me if you and I have breathed many of the same molecules of air. Maybe last year I breathed in some oxygen, exhaled carbon dioxide, it travelled back to the pine tree in your yard, and got stripped of its carbon, turned back in oxygen, then you breathed it.

We're all connected in this way, and in infinite, immeasurable ways. Our lives are absolutely bound to one another. In a strict sense, my life does not exist without the life of the penguins or whales here. I would not exist without the wind and the snow, the darkness and the light. Everything that exists here on earth, and everything else which makes up the universe, mostly unknown to us earthlings, makes possible our existences at this very moment in time. I am bound to each one of you and you are bound to me.

Understanding this life of ours might be impossible, but living it well isn't. All I need to do that is to be good to myself and others, and to appreciate every moment. Its challenging for me to feel connected to the rest of the world from here. I walked into the dining hall this morning where Barack Obama's innauguration address was showing. I paused for a moment and listeded to his words. They seemed similarly political in the way that all who have come before him might utter. I walked quickly to where the oatmeal was and got a bowl, and left for work.

Maybe this disconnect I'm feeling will lessen. All I can think about now are the bigger questions looming in my mind and in the environment directly present. Hopefully the questions won't loom too long and I can replace them with fresher ones. Hopefully soon the answers come too.

A little moment in time

2009-01-02T15:49:00.013+13:00

Gillian Welch sings, "Its a wonder that I'm in this world at all." Right now I couldn't agree with her more. I've spent so much thought on the idea that we humans, we creations of the universe, mountains, rivers, ice, molecules, penguins, cars, science, families, music, love, happiness, sadness (the goes on forever...), are but momentary and mere sparks off a metaphorical fire bigger and hotter than our brains have the capacity to imagine. But who am I to presume the capacity of the human brain?

Its just that life is filled with uncrossable gaps of reasoning. For instance, it is within the best interest of each individual on earth be they a human, a nematode, or an algae, to act first and foremost in his/her/its own best interest. In many cases we species of planet earth have evolved, if you will, with community- or family-minded behaviors that benefit the greater good of our species, and in some cases of other species. So at once we are inextricably bound to do what is best for our selves, and yet each of our selves are irreversibly bound to each other, to other species, and to every rock, particle, tree, and human on earth. The problem, most notably, in the modern world of humans, is that we are unable to see, or have become disconnected with the binding tenets of ecology which presuppose that we do in fact live in a web of life. We are members of this web, and our actions directly affect all other members. In most cases our effects on our brothers and sisters in the great web of life are inperceivable to our distracted modern eye. Technology has and will continue to exacerbate the issues facing humanity. Every piece of technology that has ever been invented by humans since our beginnings have distanced more and more from the laws of nature which most other species live by. By this I mean that humans are able, whether fairly or not, to acquire more resources, to create more resources through the application of technology, than we actually need. Simply observing nature I notice that virtually all resources available are utilized. This is why as the human ability to create resources with technology has increased over time, population has increased to use up those extra resources.

An elegantly stripped penguin skeleton.

All this is to say that we do not use all our resources, and we certainly don't use our resources with mother earth's health in mind. I have no idea what the solution is, I'm not even sure if personal awareness and responsible action will reduce our impact much if at all. As with any venture in life, if we do the best we can, then we've done the best we could.

Last week I was out at Cape Royds with photographer John Weller who is here gathering images above and below water for his project to protect the Ross Sea, potentially the last intact and pristine marine ecosystem. He is about to launch a site complete with his photographs detailing the mission he is on. We were intending to head two miles out from the penguin colony of roughly 10,000 penguins, out on the sea ice, to a 15 foot crack where the Adelies have been feeding on krill for the past week. Unfortunately the ice had thinned too much since John had first been there and we couldn't make it to the crack.

Part of the colony at Cape Royds

This did allow us to hang out with the penguins in the colony all day and all night. Antarctica is a stark place. The small amount of visible life that exists on the surface consists of seals, penguins, and a few birds. There are microorganisms such as nematodes that survive all over the coastal areas though. Yes penguins are remarkably adorable, but the more I hung out with them the more clearly I saw the brutal existence they face on a daily basis. The colony was strewn with half-rotted penguin carcasses, failed eggs, and predatory Skua birds waiting for the precise moment to attack the Adelie's chicks and drag them out of the colony for a kill.

The yearly life cycle of the Adelies begins in the late spring (February) when their chicks have all taken to the water and all the birds move out to the edge of the pack ice where food and light is more plentiful. Then in the late winter, around September, they return to the same colony, with the same mate, to the same nest of rocks, year after year, ad nauseum. Each year they successfully mate, they potentially have two eggs, and if they're lucky, two chicks. If they are really lucky and they've chosen a good spot in the colony, deep inside a group of penguins, then they are less likely to lose a chick to the skuas. Although penguins are very non-territorial when outside the colony, once on their nest they will not move for any reason except to switch places on the eggs or chicks with their mate. All summer long this rotation happens; either male or female will be out on the sea ice headed for the nearest open water feeding grounds. The length of each rotation depends on the proximity of the feeding grounds. Right now a workable open water crack with a nutrient stream is within two miles of the colony, so the Adelies can switch almost daily. The chicks look fat and unwieldy underneath the parents.

Dead seal on the black sand beach at Cape Royds

Skua parents guarding their freshly hatched chick.

In the colony nothing is wasted, any edible biomass is consumed by one organism or another. Penguins will occasionally eat each other or kill each others chicks. The Adelies have a remarkable range of postures they adopt for various purposes: to indicate aggressiveness, fear, relaxation, and even a self-defensive posture they use while sprinting through the colony as other birds peck at them.

John and I, with the help of the scientists who spend the entire season working at Cape Royds, carried hundreds of pounds of gear over the rough volcanic terrain a moderate way to a black sand beach where they'd been able to access the sea ice the week before, it was quite melted out by this point unfortunately.

Barne Glacier in early morning light

John in front of volcanic rocks

Air penguin

Adelie penguin airing out over a sea ice crack

"The Penthouse" at Cape Royds

Mom (or Dad) and chicks

Penguin on a mission

Adelies, chicks, Cape Royds

Adelies heading in from feeding in the ocean

Penguin sex

Parent and chicks

Adelies at a sea ice crack

Adelies return from a feed

Swimming

An Adelie taking air over an open water crack

Granite glacial erratic in the midst of Cape Royds volcanic rocks

My day observing penguins at Royds made me feel even luckier to be alive. The penguins spend nearly every moment during the early life of their chicks doing things to ensure the survival of their offspring. One unlucky moment and a Skua bird will swoop in and drag a chick away where it will be torn apart and eaten. The world of nature is brutal, and the distance we humans are separated from the direct and brutal economy of nature contributes to our misuse of the earth and maltreatment of our plant and animal neighbors. No one is exempt from the distancing effect humanity has played on us. It is up to us though to act with the consciousness of how our actions affect the creatures that share the world with us.

Parent and chicks

John's project is called, "The Last Ocean." There is a movement growing among many of the Antarctica scientists, based on the notion that the Ross Sea is the last pristine marine ecosystem, to keep it pristine. Right now the Ross sea's main threats are New Zealand fishermen and there is action being taken to reduce or remove fishing from this ecosystem. There are few, if any, ecosystems on Earth which have not felt a measurable impact of humans. This movement is perhaps one of the most important environmental movements happening on Earth today.

There is, and will always, be a battle between those who want to extract use from environments, and those who want them to be left alone. There are no clear answers or justifications that make either side unambiguously correct or incorrect. Any battle to preserve an environmental resource is a battle that must be fought forever. The moment a mine is built, a ski area is developed, a species is driven to extinction, an oil pipeline is installed in a pristine land, or an ecosystem begins to show signs of human presence; once any of these battles are lost, they are lost forever. We cannot recreate pristine.

Adelie and Erebus

Being in the colony reminded me that each one of us is connected to every other living and non living thing on earth, in the universe. We are made of the same atoms, and when we die the material that we are made from will go back naturally to be a part of other organisms in the future.

As I write this the air I'm breathing is air that most of you have breathed, or will soon. Gillian was right, it is a wonder that we're in this world at all. Thank you for being on this journey with me.

Finding the middle ground

2008-12-21T14:26:00.010+13:00

Its Sunday and quiet in McMurdo. The roads, normally dusty from constant truck and Cat traffic, are still and clear. The sun is overhead, as usual. Up in the "ballpark", where the cranes and broken heavy equipment lives, a softball tournament is underway. Sunday here is for brunch, when the Galley lays out its proudest supply of "freshies," our term for fresh produce, and the community is eerily quiet.

Cloud formations from 20,000 feet over the polar plateau from a Hercules c-130 aircraft.

Normally the sounds of flying helicopters, the beep of reversing trucks, the crunch of moving gravel, and the deep grunt of diesel engines create a chaos of noise that becomes normal after a while. Today is the Summer Solstice and the sun will make another high swoop of sky as it slowly creeps towards the horizon over the next two months. At McMurdo, 77 degrees south, the sun won't set until February 22nd.

Its been nearly three weeks since I've written and so much has happened around here. On October 23rd a train of nine farm tractors and industrial vehicles set off from McMurdo for the South Pole, an overland journey of 1032 miles. The point of the trip was to deliver fuel and goods to Amundson-Scott South Pole station in a more efficient and cost-effective way than the usual method of air delivery by LC-130 Hercules ski-equipped aircraft. For four years now, the United States Antarctic Program has funded "proof-of-concept" South Pole Traverse trips that were charged with establishing a road, of sorts, to the South Pole, and simultaneously adapting techniques and practices for dealing with the hazards of driving heavy machinery over the worlds largest ice shelf, the Ross Ice Shelf.

Me in front of a D8 bulldozer at the South Pole

Also this year a multinational collaboration was happening high on the Polar Plateau to establish a science camp from which small aircraft mounted with ground penetrating radar could fly transects across an area of the ice sheet which they believe is covering the largest buried mountain range on the continent, the Gambertsev range. The project is called AGAP, but we've been referring to it as "Ass-gap," because its been such a pain in the ass. The South Pole traverse this year was finally charged with going fully operational and was carrying full loads of fuel and supplies, many of which were bound overland to AGAP. After the Traverse was to reach South Pole station, I was to join up and drive 400 miles deeper into the continent to deliver fuel and supplies to AGAP. Unfortunately the South Pole traverse took 52 days, instead of the estimated 23, to reach South Pole, and they cancelled the leg to AGAP.

Tracks left by the South Pole traverse, just south of McMurdo 25 miles in October

On the seventh of Demeber I flew to the South Pole station to lead a recreational camping trip for the "polies," as we affectionately call people who live there. South Pole station is in the flattest, driest, most barren environment on earth, and the only recreation that happens there is a little bit of cross country skiing and anything they can devise to do indoors. For this reason my department, the Field Safety Training Program, sends instructors of three consecutive weekends to take people camping a few miles out from the South Pole station. It so happened that the South Pole traverse was estimating their arrival at the South Pole to coincide nicely with the first camping trip, so I got sent out.

Preparing drinks on the South Pole camping trip.

The flight to South Pole from McMurdo is absolutely phenomenal. I flew in an LC-130 Hercules aircraft piloted and crewed by the New York state Air National Guard, who for years have been contracted to run air operations down here. From McMurdo we flew over the transantarctic mountains and then were over the plateau. The transantarctics are like the Rocky Mountains or North America; a general name for many many subranges of mountains. Glaciers are like rivers, they are accumulations of snow, in Antarctica thousands of feet thick, and they flow downhill. The Antarctic Plateau, divided in the East and West Antarctic ice sheets (this is a hydrological divide, like the continental divide in the US) look flat as a pancake until, on their gentle downhill journey, they encounter the Transantarctics, much like a river encounters boulders and forms rapids, the ice sheets form incredibly violent rapids of ice that tear through the mountains at a glacial pace, on their way to the ocean. Eventually, hundreds and thousands of years from now, all of the ice on the continent will make its way downhill to the ocean and break off, floating over the ocean as an iceberg, north and north until they eventually melt. This is the cycle. As long as the amount of ice that breaks off on the edges of Antarctica is equal the the amount of snow that falls on the interior than the continent is in balance. In times of largescale climate change, such as now, it is possible that this balance is off. More ice may be in the process of being lost than is forming, then we get thinning glaciers and higher ocean levels. Only time will tell, and more time than we have left in our lifetimes.

The Transantarctics.

The Transantarctics

The Transantarctics

I arrived at South Pole and was greeted by the familiar faces I'd met last year, and by many others whom I didn't know. Three Fridays ago I met with the twelve "polies" who had signed up for the trip I was leading. Except for one person, it was the first year in Antarctica for all of them. We spent a few hours talking about hypothermia and frostbite and how to avoid them, and then broke for the night. They next day, Saturday, we set off in Pisten Bully vehicles to our campsite, where we stayed up till 4 am setting up tents, digging snow shelters, and making dinner, in the -25 ambient and -45 windchills. It was about 55 degrees colder at the Pole than at McMurdo. Needless to say it takes a lot of work to stay warm in temps like that. You need to make yourself eat and drink a lot, and stay active. It helps to have lots of insulation, but even with all the insulation in the world, a person still needs to move around to generate heat.

Prepping the gear for the camping trip with Sarah from Alaska. "Spoolhenge" is in the background. Most of the cable from those spools is thousands of feet down under the ice as part of the "Ice Cube" neutrino project.

An obligatory shot from the ceremonial south pole marker.

They were by far the best group I've had all year. It is a recreational trip for them so there is no impetus to perform and no pressure. It was just pure fun. I slept in a snow shelter called a quinzee, and it was my first night sleeping out this season. We slept until 9 am then went back for the amazing South Pole brunch.

A snow trench survival shelter

Some of my campers and me.

C-17 doing a fly-by after it air-dropped supplies to South Pole

My "quinzee-mate" crawling in for the night.

The next week was spent awaiting the arrival of the South Pole traverse. Day after day they were creeping along plagues by equipment failures and rough snow conditions. They decided not to go to AGAP and I was sent home. A month's long trip to AGAP and back, a first traverse, got pulled out from under us. The real losers of the situation are the science teams at the field site, who need the gear and fuel from the traverse.

Hercules LC-130 ski-equipped aircraft taxiing at South Pole runway

Heading in to the fuel arches at South Pole.

The new South Pole station from afar. It is built on stilts and is designed to be raised when necessary to accommodate the accumulation of snow underneath. The station has a lifespan of 40 years; simply because it will be buried in that amount of time.

At the end of the snow tunnels underneath South Pole, where old winterovers left a large fish in homage of something, I've forgotten the story already. I think the fish used to belong to some Russians though. It is -60 F year round in here.

The flight back to McMurdo gave clear views of the transantarctics and they shone white with pieces of rock sticking through in places. One mountain in particular showed clear layering, which means that it was formed in the ocean and then was uplifted to its current place. The layers could have been deposition of river plains that were carrying grains of disentegrating mountains out towards an old ocean, then lost speed and were deposited. Over time the deposition collected deep enough that the sheer weight of the sediment on itself caused it to solidify.

Transantarctics

The next morning I flew in a helicopter to the Taylor Valley to guide a photographer around the glacier. We spent all day exploring the ablation (melting) zone weaving in and out of semi-frozen melt pools, flow channels, and finally, rapelling off the side wall about sixty feet to the rocky ground below. Then we walked as fast as we could to the helicopter pickup we were late for.

The lower Taylor Glacier. We worked and photoraphed the lower left hand portion.

Taylor Valley is like no place on earth. Glaciers hang like goblins off the valley walls, bedrock a mix of granite, volcanic, and sedimentary rocks. We descended a portion of the glacier that is more surreal than a Salvadori Dali. Ice frozen in grotesque forms as it slowly melts into nothing towards the terminus, or end, of the glacier. The ice is turquoise in places and water currently runs down it in streams.

Taylor Valley

Friis Hills

Lisa is a photographer who has received an Artists and Writers grant from the NSF to make art down here. Her website is, www.lisakblatt.com.

The Matterhorn

Lisa on the lower Taylor Glacier

Lisa and meltpool on the Lower Canada Glacier

Lisa and her 4x5 view camera looking up the Taylor Valley towards the Friis Hills, a.k.a., the Oreo Mountains.

Lisa after rappelling off the Taylor Glacier. To the right side of the frame is a flowing stream.

After we were stuffed into a full helicopter and bound on the hour long flight back to McMurdo, the landscaped zoomed by; glacier after glacier seen through the scratched plastic windows of the helo. This place is under my skin and it's obvious why so many people invent asinine science projects with the sole aim of studying here. They could invent worthy studies that could take place anywhere else in the world, but they choose to come here, to the Dry Valleys where geologic time seems at once frozen in place, and also naked to the astute observer. The processes of mountain building, the plow of the glaciers into the Earth, and the continual scouring of wind are all responsible for the jagged peaks, lobed glaciers, and ventifacted rocks.

Upon return to McMurdo I phoned my colleague and leader of the SAR team to ask if there was a skidoo available for me on the annual Mt. Erebus ascent that was taking place the next day. I'd missed the trip the year before because it was my first year and I'd been ask to stay in town and be a part of a response team, if any other search and rescue events happened. This year I was luckier, and at seven that night he said, yes, there was a skidoo for me and that we were leaving at 7:30 am.

The next morning ten of us set out on skidoos, hauling sleds with survival gear, fuel, bridging timbers for open water crossings, and technical gear to ascend 12,000 foot Mt. Erebus, the volcano upon whose flanks McMurdo is built. We (the Joint Antarctic Search and Rescue Team) ascend it on skidoos each year to train ourselves on the route in the case that an accident happened on the mountain and helicopters were unable to fly up for a rescue. Often days, if not weeks, can go by in which helicopters are unable to access the upper hut from which many scientists conduct studies in volcanism. Mt. Erebus is unique among the worlds active volcanoes because it contains an active magma lake in its crater.

Mt. Erebus. Our route goes around the left hand side of the mountain, then up the north, and out of view of this image.

Ascending Fang Gully

The residents of Fang Camp saying hi and watching our progress.

Joe describing the next section.

The last folks approaching Fang at 10,000 feet. The sea ice and Erebus Bay in the background.

We drove 25 miles out to Cape Royds on the sea ice, bridging an open water crack, then dropped gear and refueled at "Backdoor Bay." From here we began a gradual ascent around the flanks of the mountain, past Fang Camp, used for acclimitization, then up to the Lower Erebus Hut, at around 12,000 feet. We rolled one skidoo, and the mechanics on our team were able to keep all the machines running despite multiple hangups. Once at LEH, we met Tim Burton, the field mountaineer for the science group working up there. His work this season includes installing 70 seismic stations all over the mountain's flanks, and then installing and detonating explosive blasts. The information gathered is helping his scientists build a picture of the volcano's structure.

Brian climbing a steep bit.

Riders ascending a sidehill with the Fang Ridgeline in the background.

Dylan.

Paul hauling a full sled.

He took us up further on skidoos to the crater rim, from which we could look down into the magma lake, hot and red, like a zit of the earth. We spent an hour oogling and shooting photos and watching steam rise out of the mountain. Then we descended, were treated to a beautiful dinner by Tim and his crew at LEH, then took an hour to check out the fumaroles. Fumaroles are ice caves that form when the hot sulfur gas that erodes cavities in the snowpack on the surface as it exits the mountain. The inside of the caves show all hues of blue and green as the ice absorbs the other colors of visible light out of the spectrum on its way through the ice.

Fang Camp and riders approaching

Downed helicopter from the '70s. No humans were on board.

Fumaroles

Fumaroles

Fumaroles

The crater of Mt. Erebus, inside of which is an active lava lake.

Field Mountaineer and Brit, Tim, leading us up to the crater rim.

Ascending to the crater rim.

The trip down was fast. We stopped little and weather had moved in. One section of the route involved driving through a cloud layer that made navigations more challenging. Eventually though we emerged from underneath the clouds at around 6,000 feet and the expanse of Erebus Bay, miles and miles of sea ice, icebergs, mountains in all directions, all orange in the early morning light. I felt so alive and surging with energy as we made our way steadily towards the sea ice at Cape Royds, where we parked our fuel stash earlier in the day. I was in the back of the skidoo train, I paused to watch the others as the drove off the mountain onto the slick sea ice below. Like children in a playground they simultaneously began spinning and sliding in circles on their skidoos. From above it seemed fitting to end as we began, with a sense of wonder and childishness. It is this very sense of wonder that drives us to come down here in the first place. Everyone chooses to be here, for one reason or another.

The moment, like all, was fleeting, and before too long we had the sleds packed up and we sped back at fifty miles per hour. In the air were tiny particles of ice that glittered in the sunlight as we sped around the Dellbridge Islands into and through clouds and fog. Maybe it was the exhaustion at two am, or it was the magic of the moment, but I felt in my place on planet earth, though I can't express why in words. The bank of clouds of the Hut Point Penninsula describes more eloquently in image than I ever could in words. The land was covered by marshmallows of sky and in places the land was poking through a veneer of fog. All the while speeding headwise into the wind, my sled bouncing violently on the bumps of the sea ice, the whine of the engine gave my thoughts no time to coalesce into something poetic, only the feeling of being a small part of something much greater than myself. I don't believe that God is the name for it, but what else, I don't know. The sea and stars know what I'm grasping to describe, if only I could speak their language.

2008-12-02T07:15:00.004+13:00

So long now that time has been passing. Since May 22, 1983 to be exact. Memories are like an infinite roll of plastic wrap layering over my eyes and body. It was four years ago that the night wind stirred birch leaves around my porch on Messalonskee Lake. I lay at night then pulling the covers close until the eastern sun rose onto my face at dawn. The lake was still as glass. Cold air scraped my lungs. I was listening to Thoreau and trying to witness the infinite dawns that a life of living presently could have. I would breathe in and out and feel the air and listen to its sound through leaves and skimming the lake.

Me jumping away from chunks of snow my Happy Campers are throwing. Photo courtesy of Neil Lucas

Now I wake in a dark dormitory on a cold spit of volcanic rock protruding into a grotesquely frozen ocean. Each morning I trod through the galley and pick up a few muffins and some oatmeal, then off to the morning meeting. Outside the classroom in which my colleagues and I meet are thirteen thousand foot mountains, colossal glaciers, an occasional skua bird, and constant wind.

Getting ready for helicopter step out training in October, brrrr!

More wind blows on this continent than any other. It is higher and drier and deader than any other. And yet, buried under thousands of feet of ice are numerous mountain ranges, each with their own tale of glorious lives that once existed. Stories yet to be told. The thrust of this entire Antarctic project, the United States Antarctic Program, is our desire to know these stories, to make sense of the lives that have lived here before us. The characters are glaciers, volcanoes, microbes, plants, minerals, plate tectonics, Earth history, climate, Adelie penguins and invertebrates of all types.

This land has more stories to tell us than we have time or ability to discover. Often, the story of Antarctica is anthropomorphized and we hear about the heroics of the explorers, past and present; the difficulties they faced, the challenges of living here and working in such a cold place. But to term this continent inhospitable is to personify that which cannot be personified. We humans have the tendency to characterize our worlds in human terms.

Yes Antarctica is a challenging place to maintain human life. Humans are not equipped naturally to exist here, and the intervention and clever use of technology that we enjoy our comfortable existence on the ice. Our relative level of comfort is just that: relative. As I write this my roommate is cramped into a life support vehicle bound for Amundson-Scott South Pole Station with 180,000 gallons of fuel in tow. She sleeps in bunks, more like compartments in the sleeping quarters that her group of ten people, men and women, are towing with glorified farm tractors across the Ross Ice shelf, the biggest single ice shelf on our planet.

Comparatively, I am sitting in a dorm room in McMurdo typing on a computer in my own dorm room, listening to music on my ipod, contemplating tomorrow’s breakfast choices, eggs or oatmeal? Perhaps I’ll wake up early and get a workout at the weight gym, or have some coffee at the coffee house.

Outside my drape-covered window is the constant sun that shines above the horizon from October 20th to February 20th each year, the wind is still blowing the same that is has since the prehistoric Antarctic era. Our (read: human) history, only began a century ago. The wind has been blowing here since before humans invented the concept of time. The rocks of the Dry Valleys are evidence of this. In the Dry Valleys are ventifacted, or wind-carved boulders that have stood in their sentinel positions for who knows how longs, much longer than McMurdo Station anyways.

I am fascinated to know what lies beneath the ice. I marvel at the way Adelie penguins seem like children; playful even in the face of the brutal conditions of life here in the Antarctic. Despite that the land here is devoid of visible plant life (and even visisble is a relative term, ask a microbiologist and they’d say that there IS life here in the ice!) the story of Antarctica is a strange and interesting one indeed. To unfairly personify this continent I would describe the shaping events of its history as violent and slow. Imagine a whole continent buried alive my snow over years and years. Every year gravity pulls the thousands of feet of ice towards the ocean, the ice claws its way to water where it will eventually melt. Underneath, though buried, life still might exist.

Vostok Lake, under the Russian Vostok station (where the coldest recorded temperature on earth was recorded -128 F), is 500 meters deep, and is buried by two miles of ice. Scientists and governments are arguing about whether or not to drill into the lake to search for life. What if contaminate Vostok Lake and ruin all possible evidence? Vostok is not alone. And incredibly complex and barely understood network of hydrologic flow exists under the masses of glaciers all over this continent.

From Antarctica’s perspective, life has been a long and varied endeavor. If memory to me is like plastic wrap surrounding my mind’s eye in layer upon complex layer, then Antarctica is surrounded by miles of these plastic memories, each layer of plastic might represent a thousand years of existence. The humans studying this continent are trying to piece together enough to have a glimpse into its past. Perhaps this will give us a better notion of our own future.

Antarctica lays like I did, awaking each morning and simply reacting to the world around it. Snow falls, wind blows, glaciers scour, sea-ice forms, animals live and die. IF there was ever a more beautiful story, I’ve not heard it. And yet, we each have our story, if only we could understand what the meaning is?

Underwater ferraris

2008-11-25T17:07:00.008+13:00

Last week I went out to investigate the transitional crack between multi-year and first-year sea ice on the road to the penguin ranch. The penguin ranch is a study site on the sea ice, far away from other sea ice cracks. Scientists essentially kidnap emperor penguins by helicopter and brin the penguins to the site to live inside a pen. The penguins are provided with two dive holes from which to enter and exit the ocean, which the use for fishing. While I was out the the penguin prison, oops, I mean penguin ranch, the head scientist invited me to take a peek down the observation tube. The Ob tube is a twenty foot deep steel cylinder dropped into the sea ice surface that allows humans to get underwater and look from the penguins' perspective. This was my first chance at seeing the Antarctic ocean from the underside, and especially to see the sea ice from the underside.

Emperor Penguin swimming in the Erebus Bay under the sea ice.

Becky drilling sea ice. Underneath our feet emperors, seals, and other types of life are currently swimming.

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

Emperor

I was lucky because the emperors happened to be diving when I was there, and seeing this was one of the coolest events I've witnessed in nature. Compared with the 800 pound Weddell seals, the emperors, around 60 pounds, are much more manueverable, like little darts in the water. Its like comparing a Chevy Suburban to a Ferrari.

Becky, who came out with me, also thought it was quite amazing to see them swimming.

No time like the present

2008-11-21T09:29:00.033+13:00

Its been a while since checking in and so much has happened! The weather has turned warmer and we've had countless days of limitless sunshine with no clouds. I've tagged Weddell seals, watched penguins swim, visited Adelie Colonies, and toured the inside of Ernest Shakelton's hut at Cape Royds. Helicopters, snowmachines, bluegrass practices, tons of survival and glacier travel courses. Life moves faster than my memory can keep up.

Penguin on the sea ice.

Cape Royds Adelie Penguin colony and thousands of penguins!

Shakletons Bed.

Cape Royds, sea ice, and friends.

New age explorers in Shakleton's hut on Cape Royds.

North Basin.

Rope travel through ice formations.

Self portrait

Glenn Stouffer posing in an ice frame.

B009 in the North Basin.

Tagging a Weddell Seal.

North Basin with Jay for scale.

Jay Rotella approaching a seal.

B009 Weddell Seal team in the ice formations of the North Basin.

Roping up for glacier travel into the North Basin of the Erebus Glacier tongue on a sunny day.

Glenn Stouffer near the skidoos.

Sea Ice hole and seal urine.

Weddell pup and mother.

Ice canyon in South Basin.

Sea ice, glacier, and sky in the South Basin of the Erebus Glacier Tongue.

Me in the South Basin searching for seals.

Dr. Jay Rotella, Weddell Seal scientist, in his study area, Erebus Bay, Antarctica.

Sea ice formations, Weddell seal pup and mother, South Basin

Weddell Seal pup and mother

Weddell seal mother at her pupping grounds in South Basin

Sea Ice landscape that Salvadori Dali would have loved, or maybe Picasso

Jen Mannas looking through a hole in the sea ice in the South Basin of the Erebus Glacier tongue

Sunshine all day long

2008-11-10T22:07:00.010+13:00

Adelie penguin surprise-attacked my sea ice course.

XC skiing Sunday on the Cape Armitage loop

Ceiling of the ice cave. The bright spot is a crevasse! This is why we rope together when traveling on glaciers.

Sea ice students next to iceberg in Erebus Bay. This iceberg grounded here sometime in the Austral Fall.

Huge facets from inside the ice cave. These are caused from the continuously cold and still conditions inside.

Mt. Erebus with the glacier tongue in the foreground

Danny exiting the Ice cave

Exiting an ice cave on the tip of the Erebus Glacier Tongue

Drilling sea ice, approximately 1.7 meters deep

My sea ice students near Inaccessible island

Adelie penguins on a mission in the Dellbridge Islands

The past is the present

2008-11-05T19:44:00.012+13:00

A century ago Shakleton and his men disembarked from their Ship "Endurance" while the pack ice devoured like a spider flushed down a toilet. They faced an unknown and harsh continent, and they did so with none of the modern technology that we use today to make our existences here.

Antarctica as early explorers portrayed it. Southern Flank of Erebus as seen from helicopter above McMurdo Ice Shelf.

I teach Happy Camper courses that are supposed to impart survival skills to new Antarcticians freshly arrived from the north. It must be shocking to go from Thai restaurants in downtown Christchurch, New Zealand, to rehydrated meals and survival rations cooked over a camp stove while a -30 windchill whips over the snowwall you just constructed. I sometimes lose perspective about the fact that many of my Happy Campers have never slept on snow before.

The new ones want to believe that technology is the answer. But ask Shakleton about chemicals handwarmers, if you could, and he'd look at you puzzled. Its not what gear you have, its how you use it. Of course some amount of clothing and technology is helpful in Antarctica, but without tactics for keeping warm, such as maintaining good hydration and nutrition, those 1000 dollar Everest boots won't keep a person warm. Either way its not easy staying warm and I credit all those who try hard at it.

When I looked into the hole they'd blasted for the scuba diving at Little Razorback Island last Sunday, I could clearly see white starfish at the bottom of the ocean, some forty feet below. The water here in the clearest on Earth, with visibility up to 600 feet. Ask any diver you know what the best visibility they've had is; it won't compare. During the Austral winter, when sea ice covers most of the area, the algae dies entirely and all that remains is a relatively sterile body of cold water (28 degrees Farenheit). Some of the water flows all winter underneath the multi-hundred mile wide Ross Ice Shelf. The biggest ice shelf on Earth. An ice shelf is the part of a glacier that has flowed off of the continent and now float over the ocean. Underneath hundreds of feet of ice is the coldest, darkest water on earth, and the imput of this water into our ocean system gives us the most remarkable visibility anywhere.

Doug Allen, the wry Scottsman, resurfaces after a 45 minute dive collecting HD video of Weddell Seals underwater for the Planet Earth series, "Life."

After Dylan and I spent some time hanging out with Doug and his crew, we scouted the Turks Head seal colony and route. This route leaves Little Razorback Island and travels over sea ice to the edge of Mt. Erebus, the 12,000 volcano that shed its massive glaciers into the Ross and McMurdo seas. We found high winds and stark landscapes framed by ice and blue sky.

Dylan getting gear from his pack on the Turks Head route, Barne Glacier in the background.

The sea ice is over ten feet thick here. Wind and ice are do most of the erosional work in Antarctica.

Flag on sea ice in wind.

Sea ice and wind.

We rode our Tundra skidoos fifteen miles home in a gushing wind. By the time we returned it was time for dinner and a little relaxation before bed. The sea ice is in its final stages of growth. This continent is 1.5 times the size of the US, and the sea ice which surrounds Antarctica forms and melts each year. The amount of growth and melt each year is roughly the size of the US. Imaging being able to drive from Portland, Maine to Los Angeles on ice that is roughly three to six feet thick, then having that route melt out. Each year this happens. This is potentially the most dynamic landscape on Earth.

My bosses boss Brian, and I, rode in a helicopter last Friday to scan a 10x10 mile box called the "White Out Zone," an emergency landing strip, for crevasses. We saw none. The landing strip is near the terminus of the McMurdo Ice Shelf, within ten miles from town.

McMurdo Ice Shelf

As we speak, and while I made the flight last week, the South Pole Traverse, a vehicle-powered trip destined from McMurdo to South pole some thousand miles overland, was cruising through the "shear zone" of the ice shelf. The shear zone is an area where opposing pressures inside of the ice shelf cause massive crevasses to form. In order for the ten-vehicle train, which is carrying huge arrays of sleds upon which rest 180,000 thousand gallons of fuel, to pass safely, the massive crevasses must be mapped by Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), then drilled with a hot water drill to determine depth, then blasted with heavy explosives to fill in what is deemed unsafe to cross. This might sound complicated and involved, and it is. In fact the SPT (South Pole Traverse) has only made twenty miles in 9 days. Once they pass through the shear zone all the blasting work should be done and the remaining road to pole should prove smoother. Once the train of vehicles reaches South Pole Station, my roommate Karen (www.karenhilton.com, an amazing photographer) who is working as the field mountaineer on the trip, will leave the trip. I will then fly out to South Pole Station and take over as field mountaineer and will be in charge of negotiating crevasse related hazards on our way to AGAP. AGAP is a brand-new, multinational project (sometimes referred to as ASSGAP in town here :-)), that seeks to uncover information about Antarctica's largest buried mountain range, which sits under three kilometers of ice at 11,000 feet on the East Antarctic ice sheet. We are creating a road that has never been driven before. Although the satellite images make the road look flat, Paul Thur, the project boss, says my section will be "white knuckle driving." We'll be driving ten hours a day, so thats a lot of white knuckle!

Tracks left by the vehicle train of the South Pole Traverse

On Monday I taught a snowcraft II course, which focuses on techniques for glacier travel. I designed Monday's course specifically for B009, a science group that travels all over the sea ice gathering data about the Weddell seal population. The Weddell's end up in an area around the Erebus Glacier Tongue that contains such a mess of jumbled sea ice, glacier, and crevasses that they roping together is necessary.

Megan from B009 in a whiteout at the Silver City Icefall.

Galen Dossin in the area B009 and I will be traveling next week to find seals. (Photo from January 2008)

A new president was elected today back in the States. Its a great day for the world, and even here, people are excited. It feels a little unreal being so far from the parts of the world that are affected by things such as presidents and politics. Even here we feel the world's effect on itself. Climate change is the hot topic back home and yet we don't hear about it much down here. Perhaps Antarctica is such a large Earth system that is has yet to respond to the Earth's warming climate in any noticeable way. Though last year the Wilkins Ice shelf near the Antarctic Peninsula (South of South America) accelerated its flow into the ocean at a record pace. There are changes happening here too.

This year feels different in other ways too. Budget cuts have reduced the Antarctic Program across the board. I feel strongly that in the face of a changing and increasingly demanding world, Antarctica is the last frontier, the only bastion free from the influences of economy that have ruined or impacted of similarly fabulous environments across the Earth. Issues such as drilling in ANWAR make more sense down here. Alaska is the United State's Antarctica, our last frontier. As David Brower put it once, and I'm paraphrasing here, we only get one shot to preserve the natural state of a place, once we've used it, it is forever changed. We need to preserve all we can as we only have one shot.

Little Adelie penguins are currently nesting at Cape Royds, twenty five miles from here. It seems that the creatures of the Earth, the rocks, the oceans, the sky, the trees, have the wisdom we seek. If one studies the history of life of Earth a clear pattern develops. The more a creature climbs up the food chain and evolutionary ladder, the shorter its lifespan on Earth. So who has it better, us or them?

When my colleague Kevin teaches Happy Camper he tells the students that there is something better than sitting all night with frostbite, being unable or unwilling to ask for help from neighbors or tentmates. He says, "be the buddha, end the suffering!"

We are suffering as humans, we are fighting the Earth in a way that will ultimately benefit no one. Even the Antarctica Program is fighting, using too much to do too little. But we do it because we believe in ourselves and our purpose as humans, whatever that purpose may be. I hope for the sake of the penguins, the seals, and the whales of Antarctica, among all the life forms, that our purpose is a just one.

Picking away the time

2008-11-01T17:29:00.005+13:00

The sun made its final dip under the horizon ten days ago. Life continues on here for us as usual. Aside from doses of NPR we get piped in on our station radios I feel distanced from the normal world. Its late on Saturday and I'll write more tomorrow. For the time being enjoy the photos and be good out there!

Final sunset as seen from my Happy Camper

Martha waiting for the SAR team to find her.

The backside of Ob Hill where I hid Martha. We were a 5 minute walk from town.

One of my many Happy Camper crews through a fisheye lens taken after a day's worth of digging!

The Hagglund with the JASART looking for Martha. Pretty difficult in this light.

Mmmmmmm...I wonder whats for dinner in the galley tonight?

My FSTP crew (Field Safety Training Program). On the bottom from left to right, Brian, myself, Dylan, Pam, Jen, Kevin, on the top, Nick and Karen.

Fire trucks and van in McMurdo.

Scott Tent class and setup

Scott Tent and Happy Campers

Mt. Discovery after the final sunset

Counting the days

2008-10-19T23:55:00.003+13:00

Tonight the sunset was at 11:58 and it will rise at 3:52. In two days the sun will set for the last time until February 22nd. There is something quite surreal about constant daylight. At this point many of the hours are twilight, but soon, the light will be harsh and bright all 24 hours. Life moves fast, even when I'm paying attention.

Sunset over Blue Glacier

Tonight the producers and directors of the BBC's "Planet Earth" series presented a lecture about the work they are doing at McMurdo this season for their series called "Life." I had them as students on my Happy Camper course last Tuesday and Wednesday, and in retrospect I should have been more coercive about passing them for the course in exchange for a job on their film crew. Lesson learned.

Their presentation was fantastic and included some recent footage of a snow leopard on the Pakistan/Afganistan border. After 11 weeks of camping out, their cameraperson captured a snow leopard hunting down an animal; the first footage of its kind ever recorded. The galley was packed with McMurdoites and we were all drooling.

Specifically they are filming Weddell seals, which have a known population of roughly 1,400 individuals in our McMurdo sound, and also to capture underwater time lapse imagery of the unique sea life that inhabits the under-ice waters here.

Sunset over town

Today at dinner I sat with a new friend of mine who was a student on my Happy Camper last week. Marco is an electrical engineer who designs navigational systems for submersible robots. He is the driver and navigator for an underwater ROV called "Skinny" that is only 6 inches wide and 4 feet long, and will allow researchers to deploy this new, thinner robot to more locations more easily.

Marco, an experienced diver in his own right, just today had his first under the sea ice. The excitement on his face lit the table as he described the blue glow of light through the ceiling of ice.

Castle Rock from Ob Hill

I am filling the days with band practice for two different bluegrass bands, "Phatter Ass Bluegrass," and "Derelict Junction," and getting ready for our first shows on Saturday night at Gallaghers.

Mt Discovery

A lot of the people buzz with the excitement that working in such a wild place brings. The day to day work though is quite industrial and mechanical. Most people do lots of manual labor and I personally have experienced a fair bit of injury from overuse here. Something about the cold makes us more susceptible to hurting ourselves. Just the other day a fireman ran over another fireman with a snowcat and broke the other person's leg. Mostly though, I feel safer here that crossing Main Street in the average American town.

Mactown

My friend Philip is a dining attendant (a.k.a. dishslave) and has come here from Colorado to see the white continent. He dragged me out to Ob Hill for a hike tonight to see the sunset. Ob Hill is the 750 foot hill that rises directly from town.

Philip

Last night, Saturday, some friends had a party at which we made sushi, pad thai, and homemade pizza. Even at the bottom of the world people create beautiful little spaces for themselves. What strange creatures we are.

A lot of people seem to think that Antarctica disproportionately male. Though the ratio is off, roughly 35:65, it doesn't seem that bad. The culture here puts a lot of emphasis on dating. The hall I live on is filled with couples; some married, some not. Many people who meet down here end up married. Some people have "icewives" or "icehusbands." These partners are generally exclusive to Antarctica and one's time here and some people are rumored to have both icewives and real wives back someplace called home. Again, what strange creatures we are. I've noticed that there seem to be a disproportionate number of people here who are not married; part-time workers and full time travellers. There are also a fair number of people who work full time for Raytheon, the contractor that runs McMurdo.

In my last entry I discussed the possibility that people age more quickly here. I'm not sure if this is true. Its more that we live in a time vacuum where our biological clocks are wacked out. There are fewer biorhythmic markers to tell us that time is passing. I know it is Sunday when pineapple and cantelope appear in the galley and people suddenly stop working. Weeks pass between calls "home" to the outside world and it only feels like days.

Time is relevant only because we have a limited amount of it. Antarctica measures time by the slow creep of glacier, the gape of crevasses, the groan of birthing seals, the saltation of snow over the ice cap, and the ceaseless tilt and spin of the earth. Endless days and endless nights give one pause for thought that maybe life here makes sense as much as anywhere. Its what I have for now and I'll take it.

Living high

2008-10-16T00:06:00.006+13:00

"Living high, high on life,
just 'bout as high as those northern lights.
We're livin' fast man,
We're dying young.
If we're gonna get through this world,
We gotta have a little fun."

Chris Starz 1983-2006

Words from a friend, now deceased from a car wreck on an I-80 one winter day two years ago, blast from my speakers as I sit down to summarize the last week of life in Antarctica for this blog. Outside the wind is ripping through McMurdo at a windchill of -30. Much colder than its been recently. Tonight's sunset, one of 5 sunsets left this summer, was orange fire extinguished by a cold glacier on the horizon of the Royal Society range. Particles of snow are blowing across the sea ice and punishing any objects they encounter. It is certainly frostbite weather out there. The glacier in the sunset photo is enormous, it flows slow like a snake of ice eating its way through the coast mountains, eventually pouring icily into the sub-zero waters of the McMurdo sound.

The sun setting over the Royal Society range as seen from town. 10/15. Only 5 more sunsets!

If recounting the events of the life Antarctic were the main aim of these photographs and writing, I may as well quit. Rather, I want to learn something from my time here and share whatever those learnings may be. I want people to get a sense of what life is like here. In the last week I've spent time walking around icebergs, teaching virgin Antarcticians how to sleep in a tent, and practiced bluegrass with some friends. Tomorrow I'm learning how to step out of a helicopter while its running. Yesterday my SAR team got called in to prepare for what was presumed to be a helicopter crash, but it turned out to be a miscommunication and everyone was perfectly safe. Most days are routine becaues I am used to life here now. It doesn't surprise me when I don't see fresh food for days at a time, or helicopters warm up outside of dorm rooms.

McMurdo scene

History surrounds McMurdo. We have two huts withing our vicinity that were build by Scott or Shackleton back when Antarctica was a blank spot on the map.

Scott's Hut, from the early 1900s, before electricity came to Antarctica.

My friend and coworker Dylan and I went skiing last Sunday on Castle Rock loop.

Dylan on the downhill of Castle Rock loop

Flag on a route. There are thousands of these around our area that mark routes in every direction. The road to S. Pole, all 1,000 miles of it, is marked with flags like these. Antarctic highway 101

Dylan is the warming hut on the Castle Rock loop.

Dylan powering skate skis up the ice hill.

Town is comprised of dozens and dozens of structures of various sizes, mostly steel-sided unassuming buildings with tubes and wires streaming out of them in all directions. The people around town look similarly utilitarian. This look may be a result of the clothing they issue everyone to wear for the season.

Town scene

Yesterday and Today Dylan, Jen, and I taught a Happy Camper course, which is the essential course that all field-bound scientists and workers are required to take. It is essentially Antarctic winter camping and the them is "weight is great." In other words, when camping in Antarctica, take as much as you want, because a helicopter or airplane is carrying it for you generally.

In the distance yesterday was Fata Morgana which is very similar to a mirage in the desert and is caused by low lever temperature inversions.

Fata Morgana: like a mirage. It makes images on the horizon appear much taller and distorted.

Juxtapositions of massive machines against even more massive landscapes gives scale to the scene.

Heavy machinery on the sea ice.

My fellow field instructor Jen, at Happy Camper, taking notes on Dylan's stove class.

This is what a typical dorm looks like from the outside.

My dorm. I was trying to capture its essence.

Derelict Junction. Perhaps a metaphor for McMurdo itself?

We all come down here to "have a little fun..." I think the difference between adult and child life is that in adult life we seek to live in as childlike a way as we can get away with. They say youth is wasted on the young. I'm trying to take that to heart. And at the same time, I know that age is relative. More years don't equal more answers, just more questions.

The second go-round

2008-10-11T19:16:00.005+13:00

Its been relatively warm and beautful in McMurdo compared to the same time last season. Work has filled last week with constant organizing and catching up and simply getting into the flow of a new environment.

Disembarking the C-17

I got off the aircraft and was greeted by my friend Nichole who came running. She works in the "real world" as an ER nurse but down here as a carpenter helper, which means that she flies all over the continent in helicopters and airplanes to install field camps.

We arrived to a station full of folks who've been living here in relatively small numbers all winter, and it seemed like our fresh tans may have scared them a little.

But back to work nonetheless. I'd mentioned earlier that the sea ice this year is in a different place than it was last year at the same time. My friend from Boise, Jill Reardon, was wondering about this, so here are some images to help explain.

September 18, 2008

September 22, 2007

Both images are enhanced satellite photos, and you'll notice varying amounts of cloud cover in each one. Ross Island is the 3-pointed island set off from the mainland, and in the image from 2007, there is a thin peninsula visible which extends down, or south, from the island. This is the Hut Point Peninsula, so named because Captain Scott built a hut and lived here during his adventures in the early 20th century. More importantly, McMurdo is on the southern tip of that peninsula.

The point of the two images is to compare the amount off sea ice between 2008 and 2007. In the upper, or more recent image, the sea ice extends much farther north of our island. Much of that ice is quite thin and in todays modis image (available here http://rapidfire.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/subsets/index.php?subset=RossSea.2008285.terra.500m), I can already see the sea ice edge being blown out to sea by winds, swells, and ocean currents.

Today I taught a sea ice course, the point of which is to show people how to navigate sea ice safely. The second point of the course is to go out onto the ice and have an amazing time seeing amazing things. Our course was no exception. It was my first time on the ice since February and everything is different. There are numerous, massive icebergs parked in our McMurdo sound, all of which will be staying with us for the season. The icebergs got here last fall (read: Antarctic fall, which is late Feb to early May) when the sea ice was at its minimum and allowed many of the glaciers off of Mt. Erebus (the 13,000 ft volcano that is the dominant feature of our island and which is covered by massive glaciers radiating down from all sides) to calve off and release huge chunks of ice. Unfortunately for my dear readers, my camera was not functioning today, and hopefully tomorrow I'll go back and get photos of the iceberg I walked next to with my students today.

We also saw Weddell seals, which number roughly 1,400 in our region. They are the southernmost mammal and weigh roughly 1,000 pounds before the females give birth, at which point they lose up to 60 percent of their body weight.

The landscape here, now familiar to me, seems foreshortened. It takes a conscious effort to realize that it is the most expansize landscape I've yet witnessed on Earth. Below is an image taken from the C-17 on the way into McMurdo on Monday. One year ago, when I first looked out and saw Antarctica with my own eyes, this is what greeted me: the Admirality Mountains.

Each of those peaks is buried by thick sheets of glacier (I'm not sure how thick they are here), and there is not a single visible living thing in the image. There are, on the other hand, living things visible to microscopes in much of the more coastal regions of the continent.

When I first saw this image with my eyes, I was totally blown away. It was exactly what I came down for. And here I am again. Feeling small in a big place. Feeling like the worlds we create around us, our own lives, are specks of dust on huge painting. But this feeling of smallness does not account for the beauty that exists in what makes up our selves and our lives, and does not account for the fact that beauty really is in the eye of the beholder. Antarctica, though radical, is a speck of dust in the infinite beauty that makes up the entire universe. So its all relative, I'm scaling my perception however I need to in a particular moment. I hope you all are doing well out there on planet Earth.

Sunset over the Royal Society range with frozen McMurdo Sound in the foreground.

Landed...finally!

2008-10-08T18:25:00.002+13:00

Its been eight days of attempting and finally the first flight of the season landed yesterday with me on it. The weather was beautiful, almost warm enough for running (about 0 Farenheit). But today its cold and windy. The flight that was meant to land here today from Christchurch flew 5 hours, circled McMurdo, which was covered in a blanket of clouds, and flew right back to Christchurch. We call it a "boomerang" flight and its not the most fun thing to do. The station is quiet now, only about 300 people are here so far, but this number will increase shortly.

The place is the same as I remember it, only more familiar. I have lots of expectations for the season which is now upon us, I'm sure it will be a beautiful year.

The sea ice is much farther out than usual and already I am beginning to see ways this might affect things for the local sea creatures such as adelie penguins and weddell seals, though no one knows yet.

The last free continent

2008-09-28T22:22:00.006+13:00

Welcome back dear readers to another season of "Antarctica and Beyond." This year is shaping up with new stories to tell and adventures yet to come. I want to thank all of you for tuning in.

Currently, I am still in Christchurch. Myself and 107 other people were scheduled to fly onto the ice on Tuesday, but weater conditions haven't been favorable and our flights have been cancelled each day. Many other people have arrived for subsequent flights to the ice and they are even more backlogged. On Wednesday we geared up, flew out 3 hours over the South Pacific (more than halfway to McMurdo) and then turned around. Potentially tonight they are trying to squeeze in our flight before another storm arrives.

Christchurch, New Zealand has been amazing and my friends and I have been using our new free time to go mt biking in the Port Hills, fly kites, eat like royalty, enjoy hot springs, surf, and stock up on supplies for our summer on the ice.

We fly down on an Air Force C17. We all sit on cargo-net seating with the gobs of cargo that also accompanies the flight. It is actually much more comfortable than a commercial airliner.

This year with so many important things happening in our world, such as elections, economy crises, and continued global warming, I am reinvisioning why supporting science in Antarctica is still important to do and write.

Antartica, unlike any other continent, is not owned by any nation (though some have territorial claims there), and in accordance with the Antarctic treaty, nothing can be taken from the continent for economic gain. No mining, no drilling; just science and exploration. It is the home of dreams, the frontier. It is the most barren, lifeless, coldest, highest, and driest continent on Earth.

And yet, life in McMurdo itself is quite civilized. We have bars, gyms, saunas, a greenhouse, and a bowling alley, to name a few things. We live in a climate-controlled environment and I rarely feel that my job there is hazardous, especially when compared with my work as a mountain guide and climber in other parts of the world. I strive to remain connected with the reasons that we crave places like Antarctica. The dream continues...join me.

So thats it then?

2008-02-11T11:42:00.000+13:00

In an hour I'm headed out to the runway to hop a plane back to New Zealand. My flight got bumped forward from Wednesday to today. Lots of emotions. So much learned and experienced in the past five months. Impossible to summarize. Why try. I feel a whole new energy and exitment for the future, and for today. In a few short hours I will be in a place where sunsets happen, stars are visible, and things grow.

I can't help but miss this place already and especially the people that make it amazing. Everyone asks each other, "will you be back next year?" Even though no one really knows. This place draws you and repels you at once; cold, desolate, a scale beyond comparison, unsustainable. But we seek places that expose new surfaces within us, places that are new and challenging. Perhaps next year, perhaps never, the future is infinitely uncertain by definition.

Jocelyn, one of the many amazing people here.

Karen, another one of my muses; long lost sister.

Well see what happens!

The day is bright and clear, and I'm leaving with a feeling of anticipation and curiosity to see whats around the next corner. Thanks for tuning in. Until next time, Danny.

Do you realize?

2008-02-07T21:41:00.000+13:00

Today Susan and I taught ten folks from the New Zealand army a snowcraft II course. This involves learning how to travel on a glacier and how to ice climb. The NZ army has lent McMurdo some of its people as a work donation, because the Kiwis rely on the U.S. to fly its Antarcticians down here on our airplanes.

The weather didn't look to promising last night. This is where ice cores are stored for transport back to the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver.

These guys were awesome. None of them had done much climbing before, and the spot we took them to was overhanging. Quite challenging for a beginner. These snowcraft II courses are the closest thing to regular guiding and climbing that my fellow mountaineers and field instructors get to do around here, so it was a blast.

Susan in the Hagglund, she's an amazing mountain guide who works for Exum when she's not babysitting scientists in Antarctica. Asked about the value of a house she told me, "like a weight around your ankles." The things you own, own you equally.

The day was a bit cold, fall is on its way. I have exactly one week left. Town is amok with activity and departures. The energy feels focused not here but on elsewhere; plans for travel, beaches climbing areas, foreign countries. People are antsy. I can understand though. I haven't seen the leaf of a tree since October second. The closest thing to living I've smelled is seal poop. One day I found a live lady bug in the lettuce that had been shipped in from Christchurch. It was amazing to see living things. Now and again I'll see a shadow cross the floor that looks like a spider or a mouse. I then remind myself that those things do not exist here.

Climbing with Susan was great because she has incredible energy, despite having spent five seasons here. I look forward to seeing her in the future.

One of my students climbing up the ice, looking very red.

Two others racing each up overhanging routes. Learning ice climbing is a little like learning Chinese; everything seems totally foreign and unnatural at first. On the other hand, I've never learned Chinese, so maybe ice climbing isn't like it at all.

Topping out and feeling excited about it. Don't fall off! This was a nice end to the day.

Finding reasons to focus on here is becoming more difficult when seeing next week approach so quickly. The whales are still in the water sloshing around. The seals haven't gone anywhere either. Life will continue here as normal with or without any of us. Being here has become so normal feeling that joining the regular world is going to be interesting and telling. The bustle of a city, paying for gas, children, dogs, living things. All of these do not exist here. What does exist here is a land higher, colder, darker, more foresaken, more beautiful than any I've seen. More inhuman as well. Until later....

When words can't express

2008-02-05T20:30:00.000+13:00

Yesterday morning Joe, Susan, Karen, Bob, and I were supposed to depart on our much anticipated trip to find a feasible route up Mt Terror. Days had been spent planning and many resources were at our fingertips. In the morning the weather forecast looked unfavorable. Because we were traveling on an unfamiliar glacier on 700 pound snowmachines, absolute care had to be taken as far as what conditions we would travel in. We decided that we couldn't travel in poor visibility, which is what the satellite images were telling the forecasters.

Mt. Terror on the right. Our proposed route traverses the ridge on the skyline to the summit at 10,000 feet.

We canned the trip for the day. Maybe later in the week, maybe not at all. At about dinnertime Joe called us all and said that the weather had improved, lets go. So we ate dinner, packed two pickup trucks full of stuff and set out from town to the ice shelf where the snowmobiles were parked.

Joe riding with our gear on the way to the snowmobiles. The roads around McMurdo are a little like the old west, dusty and dirty, strewn with naked pipes and hoses.

We rode up to Room With a View, where the known path ended, and we were trying to find a new way. We knew where the difficulties would likely be, but as my experience has taught me, I can't know until I try for myself what will and wont be difficult. We took about two hours to hook up the hundred pound ropes between our snowmachines and then from ourselves to the snowmachines. The whole proposition of plummeting into a crevasse with a large steel object makes us cautious in the entire approach to our ascent.

Susan figuring out the ropes

We began from Room With a View, filled up at the 50 gallon drum cache that Bob, Joe, Brian, and I had left a few days ago, then proceeded into new terrain. It didn't take more than a mile or two before we encountered a hill that we just couldn't get up.

High point

The snowmachines could have probably gotten up the hill on their own, but the weight of the sleds with all of our gear, and the friction of the ropes on the snow, made it impossible. We tried multiple times and ended up stuck in many different positions. The Nansen sleds were tumbling down the hill again and again. The hill could not be attained this way. Unfortunately the entire safety of the linked rope set up relies upon the Nansen sled in between the snowmachines to stop the fall, so we couldn't de-sled.

Joe and Bob on day 1

This "Hill of Doom" required a lot of digging and charging, but ended up thwarting us. Perhaps with different tactics, like shuttling lighter loads, or packing the trail and letting it harden overnight, or perhaps with less new snow, but now the snow is too deep. In addition the whole point of our imagined route is to be a rescue route; one that can be done inside of a day, this would require a few days of an expedition perhaps.

Bob and Karen getting the snowmobile out. The snow on this side of the mountain was knee deep when I got off the snowmachine

So we decided to head back to Room With a View to camp out. People had camped there last week and it would take less time to set up on known terrain. The light was dramatic. Yellow and pink light draped itself over miles and miles of snow slopes, glaciers, ice shelf. The sun danced between the clouds and the ocean sparkled in the distance. Far off in the open water icebergs the size of New York City were visible drifting off toward the ocean.

Looking down from the flanks of Mt. Erebus. Beneath the Hut Point Penninsula shoots out into the sea ice and McMurdo Ice shelf; rocky points stab through the penninsula like glass. The symmetrical mountain left of center is Mt. Discovery, rising 9000 feet from the sea. The mountains right of center are the Royal Society range, rising almost 14,000 feet from the sea. Directly center of the image is the Erebus Glacier tongue which protrudes out from the penninsula into the ice over six miles. To the right of the end of the EGT are Tent and Big Razorback islands. Behind Tent Island, the bigger of the two islands, is open water. Four months ago open water was not visible from here and the entire expanse was covered with sea ice. This photo is taken from my snowmobile on the glacier. Off to the far right are steeply dropping ice cliffs which eventually pour into the frozen ocean. This is approximately two in the morning. This is as beautiful and incomprehensible of a landscape as I've ever seen. My group was very focused on the task at hand, it would have been nice to stay in this spot for a while. Click on the panorama to see it more closely

The ride back was marvelous. I was riding behind Karen and Susan; the snow being thrown up from the rope played with low light of morning, the penninsula looked foreboding and dark, though around it was bright warm light. Our track stretched our before us like a snowy red carped, beckoning us home, and soon we arrive at our campsite, tired and ready for bed.

Riding at the end of the train

Our track

We arrived back and set up a tent, while Susan and Karen crawled into an old snow cave. They made room for me to squeeze in between them. But I wasn't ready for bed yet. I brewed up some tea and took in what is possibly the most astounding view I've ever encountered. Mt. Terror's crevassed sides looked warm in the early morning sunlight. The glaciers all around were frozen in the delight of their own existence. I tried to let my loud brain be still for a while. Sometimes its helpful for me to shut the door to my thoughts and just allow my senses to be in immediate consciousness. Soon enough though thoughts break down the thin barrier and crash in again. Perhaps tomorrow we'd make another attempt.

We slept in till noon, snoozing like babies in our snowy crib. When I got out to make the morning radio check the world looked entirely different. The sky was totally white with clouds, there was no definition of the snow surface which would make travel on an unfamiliar glacier stupid. Not all things are meant to succeed. But we did succeed. I was more bummed than the others that we hadn't pressed on, but the reality is that it was really late and no one had slept in while, and we hadn't gotten to the hard part yet. We learned a lot about roped-skidoo travel though. It is a quickly disappearing skill in the Antarctic. In the old days, the same style of travel used to be accomplished with dog teams. The Antarctic Treaty banned dogs and all foreign animals and people replaced dogs with skidoos.

Joe and Bob on day 2

It feels slow and weighty to travel by skidoo. In reality it is the best method for much of Antarctica. Unfortunately Mt. Terror is a bit too steep for this mode of travel. I look forward to being able to try again with different techniques, a different route and more favorable conditions.

Karen back at Room With a View Camp holding the link rope with Mt. Erebus and our route in the distant backdrop. Maybe next year, maybe never again....
Karen and rope

Last night before I crawled into the snowcave to bed down between my two companions, I tried to take in the moment as much as I could. Unfortunately the nature of moments is that they are infinite, and they are infinitely fleeting. Now that time is gone. Knowing that I will never be able to return to the past to experience things as they were then teaches me to enjoy the present as well as I can. I don't want to regret anything.

The Nansen sleds in the sunset

Terror of Terrors

2008-02-03T08:23:00.000+13:00

This last week has brought noticible change to town and myself. The days are noticibly shorter, the sun lower, and the temperatures eeking back down. In front of base, the sea ice seems to be getting more frozen. There are two large open areas of water around the base; one is from the Swedish icebreaker Oden, the other is from general melting. An hour ago I went on a walk around Observation hill to see if any whales were about. I saw nothing and kept walking around the mountain. I hung out watching for half an hour to no avail. I got up and walked up and around the hill. As soon as the open water was out of view I heard the unmistakable pssssss of a minke whale coming up to breath. I turned and ran back, limping a bit because my knee is still a bit bum from the marathon two weeks ago. When I got back to the good viewpoint I stood and saw a number of surfacing whales. It feels good knowing that under the ice and in the cold cold water live marvelous creatures, right next to us.

Hut Point and still water. This water is open because the icebreaker Oden broke up the ice. Now and again Killer whales and Minke whales can be spotted here.

The other week a friend of mine Tim, a British field mountaineer here accompanying a team of geologists at Minna Bluff, and I were up at Room With A View fixing some flags. RWAV is a nice high point on the Hut Point Penninsula and has 360 degree views of our area. I was talking about all the things I wish I'd had the chance to do this season that didn't happen. We were just sitting and lounging on our snowmobiles, shooting the breeze, beneath us fantastic expanses of ice spread out, open ocean met cracking ice, jagged and uncountable mountains protruded up through the crust of the earth towards the stars and blue sky, and clouds swirled around restlessly above. Tim said, "We're lucky bastards, aren't we [insert British accent]." He couldn't be more right.

Folks from town in wait to see whales rise and seals hang out. The day was still and clear.

I call them "aha" moments. When the gleam of the sun off the water, a friend's smile, deja vu all over again, or the blank smell of snow reminds me that I am alive NOW. At this moment. There's nothing luckier in life than to be alive, no matter what the conditions. I'm constantly taking for granted the time I have here, this little spark of life, a single frame in time's film reel.

A minke whale surfacing for some air. Its amazing to see with my own eyes that big creatures live and thrive under the dead ice.

McMurdo is currently 15 miles from the open ocean. Between us and the open water is sea ice, up to 3 meters thick. The station is supplied primarily by two ocean going vessels; a fuel tanker called the Polar Star, and a dry goods ship. A third ship, the Oden, is a Swedish Icebreaker, is contracted to come down each season and break a channel through the sea ice so that the other ships can make it to our port. Oden has been here for a few weeks doing its job and keeping the channel clear.

A few days ago I was at my desk in the morning doing a little department administrative borinness, when my bosses boss walked in a handed me the keys to our SAR Hagglund (refer to earlier posts for photos of the Hagglund). He said my job was to drive the Captains of the Polar Star and the Captain of the Oden, who were in town, out to the Oden, where the Polar Star captains and I would receive a tour of Oden from Oden's captain. Pretty cool. I picked up my passengers in the Hagglund and drove out on the sea ice to the edge of the channel where the ice breaker was cutting. It was powered off. We got out of our vehicle and walked over to a crane which had been lowered to bring us aboard.

Oden is specifically designed for icebreaking, its forward hull is at least twice as thick as tradional hulls. In addition it has a hydraulic system that allows it to transport many tonnes of water from one side of the ship to the other in a matter of seconds. The ship can tilt to 8 degrees on either side, but generally needs only 1 degree of tilt for icebreaking. The tour was amazing. This was so efficient and clean (leave it to Scandinavians for efficiency) that we wore only socks around the ship. At the end of the tour the crane dropped us back off on the ice below and I drove the Polar Star captains back to McMurdo.

Today Bob the mechanic, Karen and Susan the field mountaineers I work with, Joe the renaissance man, and I were supposed to be establishing a new skidoo route up Mt. Terror, the second tallest mountain on Ross Island. We are trying to find a route up the south side, which is heavily crevassed. Our mode of travel is snowmobile. Because we'll be moving over massively crevassed glaciers, we're roping our snowmobiles together with inch thick rope; a technique for travel used no were else but Antarctica and potentially in Greenland. Its very questionable whether or not a snowmobile can stop the fall of another snowmobile. There is anectodatal evidence that it has worked, there are also stories that it won't work. Our idea is that we'll only proceed if we feel very good about the terrain and the likelihood of falling in. We're planning on one night out, but it might happen in a long day, or perhaps three. There are six snowmobiles, 150 gallons of gas, food for five days, tents, stoves, cold weather sleeping gear, GPS for navigation, a couple hundred pounds of climbing gear including ropes, crampons, ice axes, anchors, and multiple sets of radios and a satellite phone. Doing anything new down here takes proposals, NSF approval, good conditions, and tons of gear. Because we're travelling from sea level to 10,000 feet in elevation, we'll have to change the jets in the engines, which is the hole that allows gas to enter the piston. Bob is our ace mechanic who recently fabricated a "Snow chopper," a combination of snowmobile and motorcycle, built from garbage, for the McMurdo Alternative Art Gallery. And it runs.

We have helicopter recon photographs and a potential GPS route to follow that Joe prepared last year after a recce flight. We have dedicated weather forecasters who can give us constant updated weather info. Its astounding the amount of resources we have available to us here, simply for the purpose of exploration for the Search and Rescue team. We know that there exists the possibility that a rescue would need execution on Mt. Terror, and it is quite often that helicopter travel is impossible, so we need another way. This is the justification for the trip.

At a basic level, we're gonna go out and see what we see. It is a great opportunity to do something new and somewhat unknown. I'll let you know how it goes, we're now leaving tomorrow morning if the weather cooperates.

Life is a labyrinth

2008-01-22T23:18:00.000+13:00

Each moment presents an infinite selection of choices, again and again and again. Sometimes this knowledge overwhelms me, but usually it just excites me. Our behaviors are programmed to work habitually, so when I woke up this morning I immediately thought that breakfast was the next logical step. Of course I also had the option of cleaning the room, counting to 153, smelling the air at the sea shore, or any number of other imaginable activities. The point is that when I feel stifled by my options in life, I step back and realize that my options for action are only limited by my own imagination. The trick is kicking habit, cutting new surfaces of experience in life. Its not easy.

The South Basin Panorama, with Brent in the foreground and four other hikers in the distance.

Last weekend Galen and I led a trip to the Turtle Rock area on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound. The goal was to take down a line of bamboo poles that had been marking a route. We take out the routes each year just before the sea ice melts out to reduce the waste dropped into the ocean. On our trip were two carpenters, T-bird and Jeremy, and two folks from town on a boondoggle.

Galen at the end of his South Basin walk with glacier in background

To get to Turtle Rock we drive in a Hagglund out to the transition between sea ice and glacier ice on the east side of the island, then hop on skidoos and drive over top of Hut Point Penninsula to the Turtle Rock area, crossing tidal cracks in the sea ice, and removing the plywood boards we've been using to bridge them for vehicle crossings.

Digging out a buried bridge. The small crack in the snow has open sea water inside.

The South Basin is an area where the Erebus Glacier Tongue (EGT) extends like a floating finger or ice into the ocean, protruding into the sea ice at a rate of one foot a day. Where the EGT falls off the island and begins to float on the sea bed exists an area of huge ice cliffs, deep pools of water, cracks, crevasses, and the occasional seal. The difference between glacier ice and sea ice is so difficult to determine with the naked eye, yet the two types of ice are unrelated.

T-bird, Galen, and Brent at the end of our walk into South Basin

Hundred foot high clean, blue ice, extends from the ground like proud-chested soldiers in a Picasso. All grotesque in shape and form, and all borne from the same mountain. The area invites like a labyrinth, drawing us in closer until we can't proceed. In climbing there comes a point when the mountain and its conditions ask me, "can you go on safely." These moments are non-verbal, intuitive. Usually it is a pang of fear like a distant blip on a sonar screen entering my consciousness. The blip is present nonetheless. In more serious situations in the mountains, the pang turns into a roar and I turn back without question. The gray areas are the most challenging; when its not obvious what decision is the right one. Both have positive aspects. This is just like regular life.

Crown of clouds around Erebus and walkers

Every day many choices appear in front of us that we make without the blink of a an eye. There are also choices that require thought, and have more consequence. When I am invested so heavily in my own happiness and the happiness of those I love, its easier to look back upon decisions with insecurity. On the other hand, I've realized that because there is no way to change what has passed, there is nothing to gain from putting energy into thoughts of the past. I try and move on.

Glacier pieces broken off of the Erebus Glacier tongue

Many times my climbing partners and I have had to turn around halfway, or even nearly up, a mountain somewhere. Sometimes the weather was coming in, sometimes our problems were all inside of ourselves. There is always a moment when I turn around during the descent, when some distance and time has passed between myself and my decision to retreat, and in that moment look at the situation in retrospect and say, "we could've done it." All we can do is make decisions based on the information at hand, and be forgiving of ourselves.

Galen and others weaving through the labyrinthian South Basin

The textures of the snow and Ice here are quite appealing to the black and white photographer. This is the windiest and coldest continent on the planet, and the wind, above all, shapes the look of the surface features.

Sastrugi and Sea ice pressure ridges

Skuas are the only flying birds we have down here. They fly great distances in constant search of food. They also prey on unsuspecting McMurdoites who try and leave the Galley with trays full of food. For this reason they are seen as pests down here and talked about with distaste. To the camera's eye though, they are quite beautiful.

Skua chick

Skua mom

Ivan the Terra Bus, the largest vehicle in Antarctica

Do you remember?

2008-01-16T17:26:00.000+13:00

****SECOND CALL FOR POSTCARDS!! Dear readers, please email me at duhlmann@gmail.com or post on this site the answer to the following question and give me your address to send an Antarctic postcard to: "What is your favorite thing about being human?"

McMurdo is located on a volcanic arm extending off of Ross Island, at the center of which is Mt. Erebus. Volcanoes, to the space alien, are essentially where Earth vomits when it needs to. Volcanic rock is dirty, varied, often containing chunks of many types of rock intermixed in a matrix of molten rock. The "Room With a View" is the intersection of the Hut Point penninsula, our arm of Ross Island, and Mt. Erebus. We call it Room With a View because it affords a panorama in all directions.

I got to ride on the back of the skidoo for awhile. My driver, Ann dal Vera, was on the first all-womens expedition to ski from the ocean to the south pole in the early nineties.

Recreation is limited here because our resources are fairly scarce. People aren't free to simply hop on a snowmobile or one of the many vehicles in town and just drive into the horizon. On the other hand, permission needs to be granted for just about any off-base activity. My job allows me a lot of time off base travelling and working in environments as diverse as sea-ice, glaciers, and plateaus. I feel incredibly lucky to have a career and skill set that allow me to have this job. In a society as bare-bones as McMurdo, the only place I've ever lived where money means absolutely nothing, a very different set of qualities make one valuable.

From left to right, Kevin Emery and wife Kate Koons, of Victor, Idaho, with Bob Sawicki of Dubois, Wyoming enjoying a quite moment on a trip out to a crash site of an old Navy DC-3. In the background is Black Island and lots of sea ice.

We have a recreation department, which provides access to folks to places out of town. Room With a View is one of the best trips. Folks get to ride skidoos through powder, visit wrecked airplanes, and finally, ride to the top of Room With a View. Two weeks ago I was involved in a trip to train some of the community members who are currently helping to lead these trips.

Julie Raine, co-lead singer of Phat Ass Bluegrass and coordinator of Fixed Wing aircraft in Antarctica, calls the Fire department to get permission for crossing a runway at the airfield. Search and Rescue leader Kevin Emery in the background, in a rare, hat-free moment.

This Monday I co-led the first Room With a View trip with Toby the skidoo mechanic and Paula who works with scientists in McMurdo's lab. It was the first successful trip of the year, the three previous were cancelled due to weather. We had much better luck. Absolutely still skies and a peaceful energy filled the day.

Scott Tent at the Room With a View, Mt. Erebus in the background. Scott Tents were first used and designed by Scott for his early 1900's expedition. They are still in use because they are the strongest tents available; double walled canvas and around 85 pounds makes them a little cumbersome for anything but vehicle, or animal powered trips. This photo is a blending of multiple 35mm digital images and has similar aspect as a large format print.

In the past week the skies have opened up thick sheets of snow upon the land. It was past the knees when getting off the machines. The deep snow made for an incredible ride back down the hill.

Toby Weisser, skidoo mechanic, leads a pack of boondogglers on a skidoo trip to the Room With a View. RWAV is a viewpoint on the Hut Point Penninsula from which the sea to the north, and the ice sheet to the south, are visible.

I think everyone had a good day, they were lighter than air.

My Room With a View crew jumping for joy at the top, Mt. Erebus proud in the background

At the end of the day of skidooing we all piled into our Hagglund and cruised home for dinner, faces tanned and spirits lifted.

Looking through the back door of Hagglund 007, AKA "Moonraker". This was at the end of our fabulous day to Room With a View. Clear skies, nice temps, and deep powder accentuated our day of snowmobiling.

Town has an all new energy now. My first good friend is leaving town today. Perhaps I'll see her next year. It takes quite a bit of emotional energy just living here, and its so much different than anything else I will experience on Earth. People are asking each othe, "are you coming back next year." The old supervisor of my department used to make his field instructors wait until April to make any decisions. Like any serious relationship, sometimes one needs space. The conclusion is that all of these people who are leaving I may never see again, despite having shared this intense experience with all of them.

Looking north from Hut Point. The frozen ocean looks as if its been paused by god, or whichever almighty force handles things around here. Meltpools are beginning to form in the tide cracks visible. If enough ice melts out this year, we'll be seeing Killer whales from town.

Many people here are wanderers. This job leaves one with a chunk of money and an open-ended international plane ticket. It attracts those who are looking for the answers to their pressing questions in some of the world's most interesting places. So many of the things that define a person at home seem less important here; age, race, financial stability, profession, possessions ect. Each person is only allowed 75 pounds of cargo on the way down, so we each come down with the essentials. Imagine if your own material identity only amounted to 75 pounds. Unfortunately the majority of the world pays attention and cares about how much one owns. Here we get away without as much of these pressures.

Cross at Hut Point with McMurdo in the background. A great example that McMurdo is the largest populated station on the continent.

In a Happy Camper school I taught earlier this week, one of my students, Jaime, a NASA scientist working of building robots for travel to Mars, explained that NASA is testing the Robots in the Dry Valleys across from town about fifty miles, because the dry valleys are the closest analog to Mars on Earth.

This place has become no less striking with time. The more time I have here the more I appreciate the place. And the more I appreciate Earth in general. What a striking thought, that humans will at some point live on Mars. On one hand I was disgusted that we would travel all acrosss the solar system to take over another planet. On the other hand, the simple fact that we can accomplish this is beyond amazing. Out humanity follows us wherever we go, to the highest mountains, the coldest continents, and the farthest planets. Humanity is far too complicated to be reasonably described or contained in any art or science. We are funky, surprising, and beautiful. Hopefully the Martians will think so as well.

The Greatest Day

2008-01-13T22:54:00.000+13:00

Today is the greatest day of my life. I woke up with buzzing energy, the sky was clear after a long spell of storm and snow. A crisp wind blew. I spent the day ice climbing with a friend on a small bit of glacier that falls into the frozen, rolling ocean. The landscape here continues to boggle my mind. Its like Kurt Vonnegut's mad scientist dropped Ice-9 into the ocean, waves frozen in grotesque tension, mountains static as a painting, animals so small they almost don't exist.

There is no day that in reflection stands out as the best in this spark of time which is my life. All of our lives are like little sparks borne from an eternal fire spreading and breathing for a precious moment on their way to the starry sky and cold night. Brilliant and effortless, gasping and primitive, desirous and limited. And, of course, beautiful. So many days and nights blend together in memory, none stand out. Superlatives are too relative to be useful. The best day is today, simply because it is the day in which I exist. None of us exist in any day but today.

**********Attention dear readers! I heareby declare the beginning of the "Great Antarctic Postcard Project." If you want a postcard the great white continent please respond to the following question and post your answer on the "Post Comment" section of this blog. The question is: "Why is today the best day of your life." Please also list your address.**************

This last week has been an exciting one in my Antarctic life. Early last week a scientist flipped his snowmobile and required a rescue off the middle of a mountain. Two of the SAR team members, Susan and Matt, were sent out in an A-Star helicopter. A storm was approaching, but the pilots were able to land. The victim went from bleeding on a mountainside in Antarctica to a hospital in Christchurch, NZ in eight hours. Luckily though. The storm that rolled in hours after he was plucked away lasted for three days.

A-Star Helicopter in action on the Hughes Glacier

Yesterday Karen and I took ski-doos (AKA snowmobiles) out to a place called Windless Bight. Its about fifteen miles from McMurdo and contains the CTBT, which is a seismic site linked to sites worldwide whose sole purpose is the monitoring of nuclear activity. The network of these sites that exist worldwide are capable of triangulating the exact position of any suspected nuclear testing being done illegally.

The snow on the way out to windless bight was higher than my knees and the ski-doos barely made thirty miles an hour. Karen and I spent most of the ride in flat light, in which the contours of the snow are difficult to see. We bobbed back and forth in the soft powder on the edge on the McMurdo ice sheet; a downward moving glacier hundreds of feet thick flowing on its way to the ocean.

This past week the Swedish Icebreaker "Oden" made its way from the ocean through the two-meter thick sea ice, and is now sitting in port at McMurdo. Seeing a boat here is incredible. The channel it cuts through the ice is already busy with activity from Killer whales, who will hopefully make their way in all the way to McMurdo before too long.

Tomorrow I'm leading a recreational ski-doo trip to "Room With a View", which is a high point about ten miles from town from which one can see the McMurdo sound, Mt. Erebus, the Royal Society Range, and multiple other ranges and fantastic geographical features of this area. Most of the folks on the trip are those who work mainly in town and don't have very many opportunities for outside travel. It will be awesome to go out with them.

Every day here is different and presents different opportunites for growth and exploration. Tomorrow is just another best day of my life, and I couldn't be more excited for it.

A wonderful community

2008-01-05T16:56:00.000+13:00

Life here has begun to feel very normal. The solstice has passed, every day less light will grace the land here. The new year hit me like an unexpected punch. Wham! 2008! Our next sunset is February 20th, in which the sun will barely touch down behind the mountains before rising again. The sea ice has been thawing, cracking, melting, and shrinking. The environment feels at a tipping point; between the constant bright of austral summer and the approaching fall, animals have begun to slow down, the world is readying itself for something.

Back of the Hagglund with my friends.

The last two weeks at McMurdo contained Christmas parties, New Years parties, time off from work, and a general sense that the station was taking a deep, well-deserved breath before the second and final half of the season gets running. My band, Phat Ass Bluegrass, played a few packed shows, one at Ice Stock, our annual music festival, and one at the Helicopter Hanger party. Despite being at the edge of a great ice sheet, surrounded by uninhabited mountains, with no living plants to be seen anywhere, and few animals, McMurdo fosters a bright culture of music, art, socializing, and energy in a cold place.

Phat Ass Bluegrass at Icestock

Phat Ass Bluegrass in the blue room warming up for playing in the snow

Phat Ass Blugrass on the stage at IceStock

You won't find a more generous, forgiving, crowd to perform to than here. People are generally excited, encouraging, positive, and stimulating. People here are weird. Anyone who wants to come here does so with some desire for adventure, despite the reality than many jobs involve very little opportunity to leave town, or indoors.

Two days ago a plane full of DV's, or distinguished visitors, arrived on station to do the usual. The usual includes being pampered and toured around to all the spectacular locations by helicopter, at 140 miles per hour, and around 10,000 dollars an hour. Usually these are people who hold some stake in the upper decision making in the NSF or the US government. In other words, they are who give the NSF its money. Unfortunately the budget for the USAP was cut this year. I'm glad that these people have a chance to see what an unbelievable place we're working in, and perhaps they get some sense of the importance of the science that happens here.

This is my first season. Yesterday I went and helped a fish scientist pull up some traps from the ocean through the sea ice. The traps were 1500 feet down and under 40 feet of ice, very low light conditions. He studies the antifreeze properties of fish. His first trip to McMurdo was in 1961 as a twenty-one year old, which makes him the second longest visitor to the station. I imaging that things have changed a bit since then. He told me being given dynamite to make holes in the ice and being told to "take care." Nothing more. Nowadays getting aspirin from the medical department is even difficult.

We caught one fish, about five inches long, and a few jellyfish about the size of a small muffin.

Before new years Cece and Karen, two fellow mountaineers, Toby, a skidoo mechanic, and Davie, director of planning at New Zealand's Scott Base, went and deflagged the pressure ridges outside of Scott Base. The pressure ridges are an area where the McMurdo Ice Shelf, an enormous floating glacier, impacts the sea ice. Where this impact happens, ridges and folds form.

Melt pools

When the ice buckles enough to form troughs, sometimes the troughs are below the water level, and they flood. That is what the water in the photo above is from. It was a gloriously sunny day of exploring and doing a little bit of work.

Pressure ridge towers like this form from the buckling of the sea ice when it gets pressed against the McMurdo ice shelf. Around it ocean water is visible.

Cece and Davie taking down the flags.

Then, last Thursday Cece, Kevin and I conducted a training for the secondary search and rescue team in the Silver City icefall. We were practicing industrial crevasse rescue. Again, the sun shone bright. The snow was cold and soft. Many inches had fallen in the preceding days. The new snow covered up crevasses and the sun-cooked snow. The glacier seemed new and warm, though cold as snow.

Cece teaching the secondary team the kiwi coil. We began with some basic glacier travel techniques and then walked up and into the icefall.

The secondary team listening to Cece talk about roping up for glacier travel. The two vehicles in view are Hagglunds, from Scandanavia. They are quite old, despite new paint jobs. These are supposedly able to float, a reassuring fact when travelling over thin sea ice cracks. These are the flashest rides in McMurdo. In the background is the edge of the Silver City Icefall, which we use to train people in glaciated terrain.

Up Silver City. The closest person is Kevin Emery, a fellow mountaineer and fly fishing guide from Victor, Idaho. He is the head of the search and rescue team down here.

We practiced hauling a victim from the crevasse a few times. The day went by clear and bright. All my friends on the secondary team were having a blast. I love being with people the first time they encounter new environments, such as the bottom of crevasses. New experiences cut new surfaces on peoples' consciousness.

In a Happy Camper I taught last week on New Years day I exclaimed, "I can't believe one WHOLE day of 2008 is already gone." One of my students, a professor and pHd of something or other, responded by saying, "well I can't believe that we HAVE 364 days left!"

The difference in outlooks startled me. Vince, the professor, had an equally true point of view. We choose how we interpret the raw data that our senses intake. Of what use is pessimism? Of what use is optimism? Life is a continuous series of situations all flowing into and away from one another like waves in the ocean. They are nothing more or less than what they ARE, and it is my interpretation of each situation that determines how I will move from it. I can honour each moment in time as being equally beautiful and relevant as all other moments, or I can choose to see that moment as less or more worthwhile, in a sense, casting judgement upon experience. It seems that judging experience is a process of reflection, in which the past consumes our mental energy and space, rather than the present. I'm trying to take a less judgemental stance towards life, and it feels good when I am more accepting of each moment.

Tom and Andy prepping the edge for a crevasse rescue

After rescuing our volunteer victims from the crevasse we descended to the Hagglunds and drove back to town.

The back car of a Hagglund, with Andy Scheidel in the foreground. Behing him are Steve Kish of the recreation department and Dave Kelly who is a firefighter in town. Behind us is the orange Hagglund, 007. Our favorite.

After training I went skiing on my own up to the top of Castle Rock. I didn't see anyone else on the trail, and I had a nice 1,400 foot gain on the ski. At the top of Castle Rock I was able to capture this panorama of the McMurdo sound and surrounding mountains. In the foreground is the Hut Point Peninsula as it extends into the Sound. On it the trail is visible extending into the distance. In the far upper right the open ocean is visible, icebergs afloat. Between now and late February this boundary between water and ice will move as more ice melts out.

McMurdo Sound Panorama

I've started stiching photographs together instead of confining the viewpoint to a single photograph. Photography is both limited and unlimited. It is limited because it cannot represent my exact experience of a time or place in the environment. On the other hand, it has an unlimited ability to represent specific parts of experience. I just wish I could let other people see this place through my eyes, to see its magnificence for an instant. In these panoramas I hope to show a fraction of what I saw at that moment. Perhaps trying to see through another person's eyes is an impossibility, but worth striving for nonetheless.