"Carly, is it foamy milk, or non-foamy milk today?"

When you live at the South Pole, you learn to take life one-day-at-a-time.  You cherish the little things often taken for granted back home.  One of them is good coffee.  We have an espresso machine - it's open 24/7, and can be used by anyone.  However, sometimes the milk doesn't cooperate.  We rotate milk, between powdered and fresh, depending on the in-bound LC-130 Herc flights ("Hercs" after the name Hercules which is the call-sign the Air National Guard gives their planes).  Powdered milk makes lousy lattes.  So, we doctor powdered milk with a bit of butter, trying to give it some fat to foam up.  Fresh milk is celebrated with espresso martini's and alike!  A lousy night of sleep, is made much better with a good latte in the morning!  I've become a member of the "old man's club."  There are 5 of us, all over the age of 50, that meet nearly every morning at 5:45 am and have our morning coffee.  We chat, pontificate - but often time, just sit, and take in the views out the windows of the galley.  The windows over look the ceremonial pole - we chuckle at the rich tourists as they take pictures; some removing all their clothes for a moment - that special selfie they'll undoubtedly put on social media.  

In my last blog, I mentioned SPOT-1.  The South Pole Overland Traverse.  Well, SPOT-1 arrived this week to much celebration.  They brought with them, over 175,000 gallons of fuel, along with much needed supplies.  I want to speak to the fuel for a second.  It takes just over 1700 gallons a day to run the generators.  In the winter, up to 2500 gallons a day.  To use the LC-130's to fly in fuel would be cost prohibitive.  Each flight takes nearly 6000 gallons of fuel - and they can only load 3000 gallons at a time.  SPOT drags in much more - but the traverse takes time:  32 days for this particular evolution.  There are 12 men; one of them a mountaineer named John, who is from Stevenson, WA - just up the gorge from Portland.  Before SPOT sets off from McMurdo, there are flights that use radar and map the ice, specifically looking for large crevasses.  These crevasses can be hidden, and at times 100's of meters deep.  Using ground penetrating radar, the planes map out a safe route.  But even so, this method can have error.  So John the mountaineer along with Dean, the lead of SPOT, drive the first vehicle that has a miniature ground penetrating radar device that protrudes out the front, approximately 25 feet.  For 9 hours a day, they use GPS to plot their route, and watch the radar.  It's extremely monotonous and requires regular breaks.   Here's the scientific way to think of it - can we cross or not?!

We delineated 420 crevasses from ~95 km of 400 MHz frequency ground-penetrating radar data and compared these data with kinematic outputs derived from remotely-sensed ice surface velocities to develop a statistical method to estimate crevasse initiation threshold strain rate values. 

Ah....yeah. Ok.  God bless scientists!  The other men drive specially made vehicles that are spectacular to see.  Made in America by Caterpillar, each stands 18 feet in height, has 16 cylinders, and yet still depend on each other to "sling-shot" themselves up the icy glacier that leads to the summit.  Yes, I said sling-shot!  They use enormous bungie cords to basically pull each other up and over the Trans-Antarctic mountain range with elastic recoil.  Each compartment is built on a sled with specially created rubber insulation that act as shock absorbers as well.  The tires are quite large; the tread....well, look below at my foot next to tread marks in the snow for comparison!  The traverse is made up of approximately 16 different sections - one is dedicated to housing, and another to their kitchen. No real shower facilities.  They learn how to work in close quarters - personality conflict is dealt with quickly and decisively.  It has to be.  Their lives depend on each other too much.  

SPOT will return to us in late January with over 275,000 gallons of fuel, and more supplies.  It's a quick turn around in McMurdo for them.  Potential danger is not only out on the traverse.  Here at the Pole, there are any number of serious and dangerous goings-on, that could potentially keep me busy!

Our Facilities Department started a dangerous maneuver this week.  I alluded to the fact that the station is sitting atop more than 2 miles of solid ice.  It's that ice that provides us water.  But to produce the water takes something called a "Rodwell Dig."  Essentially, this is a brass-coated heating element, that acts like a drill and is lowered into the ice, up to 1500 meters deep.  As it "drills down" it creates its own cylinder of melted water.  At the bottom of the run, it then creates a giant cavern of water that is pumped out and into the station.  We're drinking and bathing with water created from ice that is over 7 million years old!  It has no minerals in it, and almost no bacteria.  Nevertheless, it's treated with chlorine, and some minerals are added.  But it's finite resource - when the well starts to freeze back up, a new one is built - about once every 7 years.  This is year number 7 - so a new one is being drilled.  I'm told that it can be quite dangerous - so much so, that the head of facilities Colin, came to me a couple of weeks ago to alert me to the fact that his men would be out on the ice starting such.  Apparently, pockets of retained water and steam can build up causing explosions.  One half of the base could be lost in a catastrophic event.  Luckily, thus far, all has gone well.  The station should have water for the next 7 years.  

We celebrated Hanukkah this past week.  The final night was a wonderful evening, and everyone watched the 9 candles burn down - small presents were exchanged and the chefs prepared a wonderful meal of brisket, latkes, and matzah soup.  Fire is an ever present danger, and on everyone's minds.  If you look closely at the menorah, you'll notice it's made of a stainless steel base, nuts and bolts!  

I had a visit from Shannon RN, the Nurse Manager from the medical clinic at McMurdo.  It's Shannon's first time on the ice as well; her and I have become good friends commiserating with each other over various administrative and clinical issues.  She came south to the pole to help me with some pharmacy problems and other things.  Namely, she came to enjoy seeing the pole and touring the station!  It was an enjoyable few days with her!  Danny, the nurse practitioner working with me, took us on a tour of some of the less visited parts of the station.  Unfortunately, Shannon has now become a regular member of the station family too!  Her flight back to McMurdo has been cancelled over three times now b/c of bad weather.  Hopefully, she'll get back before Xmas.  Her husband is also working at McMurdo - helping build new dormitories. 

I mentioned we got to tour parts of the station usually not visited.  Some really deep parts, buried under hundreds of feet of ice!  Hardly anyone ever gets down into these parts of the station, and they were eerie to say the least.  One was the fuel depot.  The station has over 20 gigantic fuel containers that can hold over 450,000 gallons of fuel.  (Now you see why we're under 100's of feet of ice!  If they ever caught on fire....). Since there is very little circulating air down there - the only way ice crystals can form on the walls is from human breath!  The fuel depot has been buried under the ice since the days when the US Navy built them - back in the late 1960's.  ALL the ice that is on the walls has been deposited over the years from people visiting during the past 60 years - exhaling moisture into the air!

Now, when I first heard about the "Annual South Pole Head Weighting Party," I thought this has to be a joke. But the truth is, it's been an annual tradition at the Station for the past 7 years now.  Of course, having this many PhD's, experts in astrophysics, Nobel laureates in geophysics (one is pictured below in the pink swimming cap), and countless other experts in fields I've never even heard of - a Head Weighting contest shouldn't come as a surprise.  So, let me set the stage - literally - for you.  The idea was to first get a bit intoxicated (a theme here at the Pole), and then dunk your head into a container of water, and accurately measure how much water is displaced.  This in turn is used to calculate, very scientifically I might add, just how big your head is!  Measurements are also taken by small hand held laser guided device along with specially designed calibrated rulers.  

The largest and smallest head win!  There was the "scientific judging team," made up of not scientists, but rather guys from the vehicle maintenance shop, fire department, and two self-proclaimed experts on determining the affect of beards and pony-tails.  Each member of the judging team also had special ID's that documented their membership into this elite society (IHA - International Headweighting Association).  All of the data was of course, plotted into an Excel spreadsheet, and the winners proclaimed after a nearly two-hour event.  Such is life at the South Pole!

We had special visitors this week to the Ceremonial Pole.  A husband-wife couple that with the sponsorship of Nissan, had traveled from the North to the South Pole by EV vehicle!  They were sponsored by Irridium Satellite Phones, a Solar electrical company in Korea, and Mercer Foods, who is the largest dehydrated food company in the world.  They had 3 trailing support vehicles, and it took them just over 6 months.  We were provided a wonderful evening lecture where they shared their story of adventure!