The Blizzard Post

Mount Erebus in Antarctica is the southernmost historically active volcano on Earth. With a summit elevation of 3,794 meters (12,448 ft), it is located on Ross Island, which is also home to three inactive volcanoes, notably Mount Terror. Mount Erebus is part of the Pacific Ring of Fire, which includes over 160 active volcanoes.
The volcano has been observed to be continuously active since 1972 and is the site of the Mount Erebus Volcano Observatory run by the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. 

Mount Erebus was discovered on January 27, 1841 (and observed to be in eruption) by polar explorer Sir James Clark Ross who named it and Mount Terror after his ships, Erebus and Terror.

Air New Zealand Flight 901 was a scheduled Air New Zealand sightseeing flight that operated between 1977 and 1979, from Auckland Airport to Antarctica and return. On 28 November 1979, the fourteenth such flight, operated by a McDonnell Douglas DC-10, crashed into Mount Erebus on Ross Island, killing all 237 passengers and 20 crew on board. The accident is commonly known as the (Mount) Erebus disaster. Air New Zealand discontinued the service after the crash.

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Yesterday as I was working near observation hill I ran into Ohio State grad student Jamey Stutz. He is setting up GPS devices all over the continent to measue how the earths crust is responding to the change in ice loading over the past. So think of that as memory foam stuff some beds are made out of. If you place a load on it, it will depress and sag down. If you unload it, it comes back up!  this is what happens with the earths crust. In the past there was a lot more ice here and it depressed the continent, now that load is less and the continent says alright, time to come back up. They measure that with the help of GPS. Lots of other things are going on too but that is the most impactful aspect of the research, or at least the most understood by yours truly, haha. For more on this and other polenet information check the website at polenet.org. 

I had my 1st opportunity several days ago to drive to NASA sponsored sporadic Long Duration Balloon (LDB) complex and delivery equipment. NASA paid for the six buildings, which were built on the Ross Ice Shelf near the transition to Ross Island about 2 miles from McMurdo Station during the winter 2005. The buildings were erected outside , where the workers had to face months of dark winter days with temperatures dipping into the negative 70s Celsius. After completion, in late September, the buildings were pulled one-by-one behind D-8 Caterpillar tractors in a slow parade to Williams Field. The last one was put into place on October 14, 2005.













In the picture bellow can be seen an aerial shot of the LDB field site.



The first two buildings on the left are the payload assembly buildings. They are both identical. The next is the CSBF mechanical/rigging workshop. The telemetry building is the one with the domes on the top and the next at right is the "mechanical" building which has the heat exchangers and the toilets. The blue structure is the dual generator set, which has the waste heat exchangers on the exhaust system which are connected to the "mechanical" building which has the heat exchangers to provide hot fluid to the rest of the complex. Finally the small cylindrical building on the right is the Jamesway tent structure that is used as a kitchen for the facility. 

Right now they are the tallest buildings in Antarctica and with a weight around 160,000 pounds each, they are certainly the largest moveable structures down there.





















Pictured on the left in payload
assembly Bay 1 is NASA employee Derek Dolby and myself in our Men's Bib Overalls, Sweatshirts and Headwear.

Now, at the end of the summer season, workers free the buildings from the locations where they are currently anchored and move them onto snow berms,where they will be re-anchored for storage. This eliminates the need to excavate the buildings at the end of every winter as occured before with the previous facilities at the ICE. 

A reoccurring problem is that the skis will often freeze to the snow after sitting still and immobilize the building. When it's time to move them, the skis are warmed by electical heating strips to melt the ice cementing the buildings in place. This frees them in a gentler way than many other methods such as using explosives.

The nominal Antarctica LDB launch window is December 10 through January 10 each year. The opening of the launch window is determined by the establishment of the seasonal polar wind circulation pattern necessary to maintain trajectories over the continent. The end of this window is determined by the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) requirements to complete seasonal close-out and retrograde operations. More information can be found at www.csbf.nasa.gov along with www.carhartt.com for your everyday balloon tracking or star gazing attire.

and it is getting colder...









































This is what is displayed in the buildings for us to keep up on Antarctic current events... aka.. the weather. Did i mention that its is a dry cold. hahaha

 The Pogonip has been here!
The last 3 days are testing my endurance. All flight activity to the South Pole, known as "The Pole", and to the research camps have been cancelled due to the pogonip. Pogonip is fog of very fine ice crystals suspended in the air. This only occurs in very special weather conditions, such as it's gotta be flipping' cold among other! These are still considered good conditions, aka Condition 3. There are 3 classes of weather and travel restrictions. Condition 3 is when the wind chill is above -75°F and winds are less than 48 knots. Condition 2 is with wind chills of -75°F to -100°F with less than 1/4 mile visibility. Condition 1 means no travel, only for critical instances with permission, in weather with wind speeds greater than 55 knots, and wind chills colder than
-100°F. If I'm out in that and not wearing my Carhartt Extremes Coverall / Arctic Quilt-Lined just kill me on the spot.
 

Where is McMurdo Station?
McMurdo Station lies on the southern tip of Ross Island, on the shore of McMurdo Sound, Antarctica. It is 2,200m miles due south of new Zealand at 77 ° 51' South, 166 °  40' East. This is solid ground the farthest south a ship can sail. While the continent of Antarctica is 98% covered with ice, McMurdo Station is built on bare Volcanic rock. Picture taken with roommate Chris Thayer and his favorite gear; his Carhartts.

The last leg of our lengthy excursion to Antarctica got underway October 13th in New Zealand and Antarctica, but still the 12th in the States. At 6 am we weighed in our checked luggage and ourselves + carry-on and got our boarding pass necklace. After a briefing and a last chance to touch grass, plants and the New Zealand Immigration K9 that was sniffing everything insight, we piled up our ECW (extreme cold weather clothing) Carhartt's, went through security, boarded a bus that took us to our U.S. Air Force C-17 where we grabbed a snack lunch bag as we entered the aircraft.



























Inside, the C-17 had several big cargo pallets in the back of the plane, with one extremely heavy pallet in the middle and that being a Caterpillar Dozer. In a strictly cargo configuration, 18 Large (8' x 8' footprint, and 9' tall) pallets would fit in the aircraft. However, we had several pallets of airline seats down towards the back of the aircraft as well as two aisles and jump seats lining both the walls of the aircraft. At take off we were at the maximum take off weight, plane, people (all dressed in Carhartt attire) , cargo and fuel. With the large amount of weight the C-17 can carry, it is a very economical and efficient aircraft.





























The C-17 is a very versatile plane, it can be set up at a moment's notice and when lightly loaded can touch down and take off in a shorter distance than the classic U.S. Antarctic workhorse, the LC-130 Hercules. One big bonus for the U.S. Antarctic  program in using the C-17 with their 11 hour range is that in normal conditions the fully loaded plane can travel from Christchurch to McMurdo Station, offload personnel and cargo, load any northbound passengers or cargo, and return to new Zealand without needing to refuel at McMurdo. As McMurdo is supplied with fuel only once a year by a tanker, anything that can be done to conserve it is very useful.





























The trip took a little over 5 hours, and about an hour from the end, we were able to see our first glance of the continent of Antarctica. The four little round windows in the exit doors suddenly became very popular, as did the cockpit for its panoramic widows. Through any window the aerial view of the continent was truly spectacular. Endless reflective white snow, glaciers, and several clouds with the intermittent row of mountains filled me with wonder. I could have stared at it forever quite joyfully - easily neglecting about worldly things such as cold or responsibilities.




 
The interior was cool, we all kept most of our EWC Carhartt gear during the flight, and when we were beginning to descend for landing at Pegasus runway in McMurdo we started bundle up even more - hats, mittens, gloves, hats, goggles, sunglasses all made an appearance.

It was a bit bewildering landing with no windows to peek out of for reference. With no more than a slight bump we touched down for an exceptional landing on a runway made of ice floating on the ocean where the outside temperature was -39 F. The most important factor for me working in Antarctica or any remote area is to stay warm and comfortable. Where might you find out about the best clothing made for these conditions? Carhartt!!

Once we arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand we had the rest of the day to have a look around town. The next day we were scheduled to looking Carhartt in the Antarctic - trying on all of our gear and exchanging for the appropriate sizes at the Clothing Distribution Center Center in Christchurch, New Zealand, which outfits USAP participants for the trip south. The center has more than 140,000 pieces of extreme cold weather (ECW) gear for issue to U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) and mostly Carharrt. That's something to say about Carhartt!!



  

The Flight from Los Angeles to Sydney was on an Airbus A380 which is a double-deck, wide-body, four-engine airliner manufactured by the European corporation Airbus. The largest passenger airliner in the world, the aircraft was known as the Airbus A3XX during much of its development phase, but the nicknamed Superjumbo has since become associated with it. This aircraft is exceptionally comfortable and is equipped with various bells and whistles. My favorite is the A380 skycam, In-seat video feed from the tail available throughout the entire flight gate-to-gate. Great for watching taxi, take-off and landing. Picture is my final approach into Sydney, Australia.

Ever since I was a child and picked up my first globe and saw the bottom of the world way down south, so remote and cold, I've dreamed of going to Antarctica. Tomorrow, I will get the chance to see it. I will be departing Denver for a four hour lay over in Los Angeles then on for an eighteen hour flight to Christchurch, New Zealand via Sydney, a two day layover then a six hour flight on an Air Force C-17 to McMurdo Station arriving on "the ice" as it is called on October 13th. I have accepted a position with Raytheon Polar Services to work as an Air Transportation Specialist at McMurdo Station from October 7, 2009 to March 17, 2010. I will join a team providing logistical support for the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) . The USAP is funded by the National Science Foundation with the goals of supporting the Antarctic Treaty and furthering scientific research. I will be field testing some of Carhartts clothing so follow along on my journey as we discover Antarctica together.