A Year of Hiking, Week 4: Hut Ridge

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

My world is terribly small here, with hiking options limited, so this week I returned to Hut Ridge, the perfect vantage point for watching the Icebreaker work the now open shipping channel, and to look down on the Maersk Peary, the fuel tanker that sits in port.

90 Degrees South, at last

THE SOUTH POLE, ANTARCTICA

After three hours in flight, the Herc had lulled me to near sleep, if only the seats would allow. Anxiously awaiting our landing at the South Pole, the loadmaster announced over the loudspeaker that poor visibility would keep us from landing, and we entered a holding pattern. Flying in circles over the South Pole, I thought about how cruel it would be to have come so close to the pole and not set foot there. I have been a part of the U.S. Antarctic Program for six years now, and I have often bit my tongue as well wishers comment on my life at the pole. I have spent all of my years in the program at McMurdo Station, a solid 850 miles from the pole.

But at last, on Thursday, sometime in the late afternoon, I set foot on the southernmost point on the planet, where the horizon stretches out endlessly and every direction is North. The air was dry and cold, and when I inhaled deeply, I sputtered a little. Frozen eyelashes and icy wisps of hair were quickly upon me, though mine lacked quite the artistic effect as Molly’s, my polie friend, whose breath froze in droplets on the long strands of hair that hung down around her shoulders, trapped close to her chin by her hood and a headset. I trudged through the snow, as quick as my giant boots and the deep snow would allow, headed to the new station, a sleek gunmetal grey structure that looks straight out of a futuristic science fiction film.

A long hallway stretches from one end to the other, with three wings branching off on one side. The hall was empty. I stopped for a moment outside the station greenhouse, a small room that glowed purple, and produces enough fresh vegetables to keep the station happy, especially in the winter, when there are no flights to provide fresh food. I meandered a bit further. A dark alcove houses a number of rubber stamps, and I quickly settled on one with which to stamp my passport. Our short time on the ground would not allow enough time to check out the galley or the reading rooms or any of the berthing, all places I’d love to see. Instead I made my way into the “beer can,” the roundhouse that caps off the far end of the station, its interior steps descending to the subterranean tunnels that link the station with the heavy equipment shop, and other outlying work centers. I stepped out of the dark into the glaring afternoon sun, and made my way up the slope to the geographic pole. It would seem that the station is already being buried by the snow.

The marker for the geographic pole is moved every year to account for the movement of the ice sheet that is the polar plateau. This year’s marker, a gold orb, marks the 100^th anniversary of Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott’s race to the pole. The nearby sign documents each man’s comment upon arrival, and the sign is flanked by two flags, the British flag on Scott’s side, and inexplicably, the American flag on Amundsen’s side.

I walked further on to the ceremonial pole, marked by the classic candy striped pole and shiny silver ball, surrounded by a half circle of flags, representing the nations that have signed the Antarctic treaty. It really is set up just for tourists, and I am all too happy to have my photo snapped. It is joyful indeed to bound about the snow in the far reaches of the planet. Perhaps someday I will work here- I do think I’d love the tiny community- but whether that should happen or not, I have at least set foot there and have the photos to prove it.  

Last Day in Camp

BYRD SURFACE CAMP, ANTARCTICA

Home Sweet Home

While in camp, I have tried to spend a bit of time with everyone, getting a little glimpse of the work they do, the part of camp they occupy. I chatted with the camp mechanic in his old Jamesway, shoveled snow away from the fuel bladders with the Fuelie, released a weather balloon with the weather observer, rode along with an equipment operator as he groomed camp using a Tucker Terra and a drag. I also watched the hand-crank washing machine in action, watched a movie by the firey glow of the Kuma stove, and shared a scotch in the wash tent. It’s been a blissful escape from the bustle of McMurdo, and wonderful to see what I’ve been enabling with all the work that I’ve done over the course of the season.

Byrd Camp

It is easy, on a day-to-day basis, to feel uncertain of myself, whether the choices I have made for my life have always been the right ones, to wonder if I shouldn’t have more purpose, or more to show for three decades on the planet. But the truth is, I have done some pretty amazing things in this lifetime. Perhaps nothing noteworthy by world standards, but still some fairly unusual, and sometimes wonderful moments.

This is me, standing out on the polar plateau, waving my arms.





And this is what was coming at me as I beckoned it ever closer with my mittened hands.

It is the first time, and perhaps the only time, I have ever marshaled a plane. I realize that some people do this several times a day, every day, for their whole long life. But for me, it was fun, and something new and novel, and something which I am unlikely to do again. I stood in the breeze of an Antarctic summer day and beckoned a 1960’s bundle of metal, props spinning, to come closer to me. I felt very, very small.

Anticipation: Waiting for the Herc to Land

Tucker hauling pallets to be loaded onto the Herc

A Year of Hiking, Week 3: To the Edge of the World and Back

BYRD SURFACE CAMP, ANTARCTICA

 My trip to Byrd Camp was my first trip to the polar plateau, where the world stretches flat white in every direction. I walked out past a distant tower, the remains of an old drilling site, and now the home of perhaps the southernmost geocache. With camp a good distance behind me, the world stretched out endlessly in front of me, windswept snow as far as I could see. I felt so solitary, the lone evidence of human existence, or any existence, in fact. The grandness of scale was truly awe-inspiring. I could actually see the curvature of the earth, the way the sky reaches down beyond the horizon. The low light meant that in some directions I could hardly tell the earth from the sky. This week’s walk makes me wonder the true meaning of the term, “hike,” and whether walking away from a cluster of tents into the wilds of Antarctica, standing agape at the edge of the world, awash in silence, truly qualifies as a hike. But it might just be my favorite.

This One's for the Byrds

BYRD SURFACE CAMP, ANTARCTICA

For months, I have manifested passengers to fly to Byrd camp and then watched from a distance as weather delays trapped them in limbo. More than one group of passengers made the hour long traverse over bumpy snow roads back and forth to the airfield two and three times as flights delayed then cancelled then got rescheduled. When, halfway out to the airfield on Monday afternoon, my flight was put on an indefinite weather hold, I thought surely my turn had come. The long awaited perk of my job as the coordinator for two deep field camps is a visit to the camp in January, once things have slowed down. I have been looking forward to this trip since before I arrived on the continent.

Fortunately, my fellow passengers and I waited only a couple of hours, passing the time knitting and reading and flipping through decade-old magazines. Much relieved to hear our flight called, I put on the required big red parka, which always makes me feel a bit like a toddler in the snow, and climbed into a van for the ride out to the aircraft. Our chariot was a LC-130, better known as a Hercules, or Herc. Even with earplugs and ear muffs, the drone of the plane’s engines is deafening while in flight. Fortunately Byrd Camp is just a short 3-hour flight from McMurdo.  I watched the familiar Transantarctic Mountains fade away as we flew roughly south. Or possibly west. Or maybe a bit north. Cardinal directions get a little tricky at the bottom of the world….

We arrived just in time for dinner, enjoyed in the comfort of a RAC tent. Most of the camp staff are familiar to me, folks I met back in November before they headed for the field and with whom I have since talked with regularly. It was wonderful to see the little world they occupy.

Penguins at Play

HUT POINT, McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

A quiet, still evening presented the perfect opportunity to stroll down to hut point and sit along the edge, watching the few Adelie penguins that had gathered. Three played noisily along the Big John crack, growing ever wider by the day. 

Though at this point in my Antarctic life, I have seen numerous penguins, I had never actually seen penguins in the water, except for one occasion from the seat of a helicopter, and that was from quite some distance.  

These Adelies swam from hole to hole, swimming under the ice bridges, and popping up into the air, flying just over the surface of the water. While the three who played along the crack were constantly in and out of the water, and seemed to be bickering about the merits of each (it is impossible not to attribute human characteristics to these birds!), the dozen or so swimmers were more content to swim from pool to pool. 

The clear skies and beaming sun made for a warm evening, and it was altogether pleasant to sit on the rocky shore and watch the penguins play. We watched for nearly an hour, before the troupe popped out of the water, apparently done with swimming for the timebeing. 

This skua watched from his icey perch. Grown Adelies are too large to be prey for this mighty gull, and far too nimble in the water to be caught by a skua. 

Standing in Flip-Flops on the Frozen Sea

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

Tonight my thoughts are of the 37 men rescued from a South Korean fishing vessel that caught fire in the southern ocean off the coast of Cape Hallet. Three of their cohorts are missing, presumed dead. The 37 survivors have been transferred from the rescuing fishing vessel to the Nathaniel B. Palmer, the U.S. Research Vessel working in the area, and will make their way to McMurdo via helicopter where they will receive further medical treatment, and then will be evacuated to New Zealand. It will be a long way home from here, and I feel the tug on my heartstrings as I imagine them huddled on the hull of their burning ship in their pajamas and sandals. 

A Year of Hiking, Week 2: Ob Hill

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

Observation Hill looms just 800 feet over town, so named for the 360 degree view of the area. Atop the summit, a large wooden cross stands in memorial to Robert Falcon Scott and his South Pole party who perished in March 1912, on their way back from the Pole. The words are slowing wearing away, as the endless wind wears down the wood. Ever so faintly on the upright, I can make out the phrase, “To strive to seek to find and not to yield.”

The trail to the top of Ob Hill winds maybe ¼ mile, nearly every one of the thousand steps vertical. The short, steep climb is not as enjoyable as some of the other walks on the peninsula, which is perhaps why it had been years since I’d made my way to the top. But an early end to the work day, and a nearly cloudless day inspired me to make my way up hill today. 

The South Polar Skua

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

A flash of feathers caught the corner of my eye, and I turned just in time to see the skua swoop down over the woman’s white hair, her reflexes not quick enough to keep the skua from knocking her dinner plate from her hands.

I once read the skua described as the mafia boss of the family of sea gulls to which it belongs. It is certainly the bully of the Antarctic, at least as far as our daily lives our concerned. The truth is, the Antarctic is full of bullies. The scene of the Great Albatross swooping down and plucking a chick right out of March of Penguins is memorable. The Leopard seal is a vicious predator, legendary among old polar explorers for chasing the shadows of men on the ice, ready to snatch anyone who wandered close enough to the ice edge. The latest gem from the BBC, Frozen Planet, includes some incredible footage of Orcas swimming in synch to wash a seal from its floe. No, the Antarctic is certainly not a docile environment when it comes to wildlife. Among the predators, however, it is the skua that is perhaps the most menacing to those of us who call this place home. Fearless buggers, they lurk outside the galley waiting for the exhausted worker headed home with dinner in hand. I have practically tripped over them numerous times, as they sit in the middle of the road, not the least bit intimidated by either humans or their machinery. Broad in wingspan, beady eyed, vocal, and unfortunately protected by the treaty, we are helpless against their frequent attacks.

Though adept at pulling wrappers from food waste dumpsters and picking every last morsel from the packaging from frozen meat products, they are apparently limited in their ability to fly out of tight spaces. Continuing shortages of the refrigerated shipping containers needed for transporting rotting food waste across the equator have left heaps and heaps of food waste, the chicken bones, the melon peels, the overcooked beef of seasons past, left in plastic-lined cardboard boxes in long rows. Though the boxes are banded closed, the determined skuas manage to find the leaky containers and the damaged boxes. Notorious fighters, the battles between skuas over these delectables often leads to the skuas falling into the spaces between the boxes. Their inability to fly straight up out of the space leaves wedged into the cracks, leaving them at the mercy of the workers that they terrorize daily. Starving and pathetic, they stay wedged in the tiny crevices until someone moves the boxes enough to allow the dazed birds to stumble out of their trap. 

A Year of Hiking, Week 1: Hut Ridge

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

Starting off the new year with an old favorite. The open water is visible just past the Delbridge islands, and the Big John crack grows daily. The bright blue skies match the cloak on Roll Cage Mary, one of many memorials to lost souls. 

melt pool

Roll Cage Mary

DIscovery Hut, built 1902

The Next 360 Days

McMURDO STATION, ANTARCTICA

Almost a week into the new year and I have not yet hashed out my new year’s resolutions. Well I guess setting goals in a timely manner will not be one of my new year’s resolutions... Truthfully, I’ve never set new year’s resolutions before. Well, there was one year that a friend asked me what my resolutions would be when I was halfway through a magazine article on backcountry fishing, so I said maybe I’d learn to filet a fish that year. I never did. But in general, I’ve sort of bucked at the idea of setting resolutions, put off by the typical trends towards losing weight and avoiding junk food (both things I should perhaps consider, but not the way I want to direct an entire year’s energy).

I do like the reflection that the new year offers- I think back on all that has happened in a single year. In the last twelve months, I met my newest nephew, with whom, of course, I fell madly in love. I knitted my first sweater, for my aforementioned new love. I survived a massive earthquake, my first earthquake ever, and then found myself in aftershocks in two other countries.I learned the value of facebook in finding one’s loved ones in a natural disaster. I recoiled from a broken heart. I fell in love with Vietnamese food, but less in love with their diminutive bikes. I lived vicariously through my sister’s first garden and reveled in her success. I built a straw bale house from start to finish. I got a real life history lesson on the reservation system in this country and felt my heart break a little more. I did a sweat lodge for the first time. I got my first ever violent bout of food poisoning, not from street food in a developing country, but in an American convenience store. I went to a Pow-Wow. I finally, after several years and dozens of visits, found something lovable about Denver. I took my niece on an adventure in the big city and marveled at how naturally this tiny person sauntered through the big wide world of skyscrapers and crowded streets. I said goodbye again and headed south. I lost a friend (temporarily misplaced, I hope). I mourned the loss of a home in Christchurch, that I hadn’t quite realized felt like home until I saw it in tatters. I worked in the pitch black and the cold and remembered how amazing the darkness is, in this my southernmost home, and then felt a little sad when the darkness disappeared with the arrival of summer, and it’s incessant sun and relentless pace. I took on my first every (mostly) desk job, and have thicker love handles and sciatica to show for it (perhaps not the year’s highlights).

Thinking back on a year like this makes me remember just all that has happened in a year that feels like it flew by. I’ll ponder this all again in a couple months on the occasion of my birthday. And I’ll wish that some things were different, and be glad that some experiences are over, miss the people and places that captured small bits of my heart, and think about how the coming year will be the same or different.

But never before have these reflective moments inspired me to set concrete goals for the coming year. This year, however, I thought I might try it out. I was inspired by a friend last year who had set a goal of visiting somewhere new each month, a bit of a challenge in a region where she has lived most her life. I thought perhaps setting some goals such as these that would be challenging and fun, but also enrich my existence and might bring focus to my often seemingly aimless life.

It’s not that I haven’t set goals before, or laid out plans, but it seems that each time I do, a different opportunity presents itself, or the school I thought I’d attend rejects my application, or the program I thought I’d never work for again calls with a job just when I’m getting desperate, or the person I was making plans with never comes back from dinner. So, you know, life happens. So the allure of making plans is a little lost on me. Oh it’s true, I’m starting off as a pretty non-linear human being without any clear sense of career aspirations, but the failure of plans to work out has left me more reluctant to make them in the first place.

In this, my first ever set of New Year’s resolutions, I am endeavoring to set realistic goals that are both flexible and fulfilling, that address various areas of my existence that I really do want to address. It might be more realistic to set one goal in this, my first go at the whole new year’s resolution thing, but afraid that one singular goal would become too lofty, I’ve instead made several, perhaps smaller goals, that will challenge me the whole year long, but are concrete and measurable. After setting goals in the past like, “maybe I’ll take up running again” or, “I should learn something new” that were vague and allowed no checking off, I have realized the importance of clearly measurable goals. After many seasons of my nomad life, I have learned that rigid plans reliably fail. Doing yoga every morning was a noble goal until I was living in a tent where the frequent rainstorms made my morning practice impractical.

As I mentioned, this plan of mine was largely inspired by the idea of Dixie’s plan of going somewhere new every month. It is the sort of goal that is clearly measurable, but also extremely open-ended, and without the potential for failure that an everyday sort of goal sets up (after all, if just one day goes by, I’ve technically failed….). So I’ve got a small list. (I won’t share the entire list here, as it is fairly personal, and I’m not so certain of my audience here). One of my potential favorites that I’ve set is to go for a hike every week. That’s 52 hikes in the course of the year. I love hiking, but don’t always make the time for it, or find myself inclined to lounge in beautiful places instead of adequately exploring them. I am perfectly content to read in the sunshine, or picnic in the shadow of tall trees, to meander aimlessly on sandy beaches, and to nap in the shade. It is a goal that I hope will serve both my physical needs to be more active, and feed my insatiable wanderlust in some small way. It is something that I can check off every week, something that I can do anywhere in the world, and totally open-ended. I am looking forward to all the places my legs will take me in the coming year.