With a little help from McMurdo fleet operations Plan B is a go!
After one day I’d say we’re about a quarter of our way through our execution of plan B. A crew from McMurdo fleet operations came out and drilled a series of overlapping 4 foot diameter holes in the ice for us (check out video here). Combined this gives us a “swimming pool” in the ice that’s about 12 feet long (4 meters) and 6 feet wide. The downside to using an auger to make holes in the ice is that no ice is actually removed from the hole during the process. When the operation is complete your “swimming pool” contains the remains of 1.5 x 4 x 2 meters of ice, or 12 cubic meters. Sea ice weights about 900 kg per cubic meter, so that leaves 10,800 kg (24,000 lbs) of ice to remove from the hole! A lot of this is slush and small chunks that can be removed with a shovel or a pool skimmer net over time. The remainder is in very large chunks that can’t be pulled out. We tried anchoring ice screws in these ice boulders so that we could pull them out with the Pisten Bully, no luck! The only way to deal with them is to chain saw them into small, manageable pieces. With the chainsaw spraying cold seawater everywhere and the sides of the pool very slick with ice this is cold, dicey work. Shelly and I had to take frequent breaks to eat (primarily chocolate, a favorite field food for both of us) to keep our energy and spirits up. I got so iced up that I couldn’t sit in the Pisten Bully during these breaks, the cabin was too warm and my pants would start to melt!
Drilling holes in the ice is easy. Clearing all of the ice from the holes after they're drilled is hard. We tried using the Pisten Bully to haul the big chunks away.
We called it a day when we ran out of glycol to lubricate the chain on the saw (we can’t use chain oil because it would contaminate our site). With sore arms and sore backs I think we were both ready to call it quits regardless! Before we finished the seals had already found our hole, which could be a big problem with this plan. We anticipated this but I was still startled when there was a loud snort from the hole. Turning around we saw very large nostrils poking through the slush. This particular seal hung around for quite a bit, and was not even
When that didn't work we had to resort to cutting up the partially submerged large chunks of ice. We made a dent, but we still have a long way to go!
deterred when we resumed sawing on the ice just a few feet away. The seals in McMurdo Sound are quick to capitalize on any opening in the sea ice as a place to haul out and rest and they are pretty adept at maintaining openings. We need our pool to freeze, so if the seals decide they like it we might have a problem. At any rate we’ll be back out tomorrow continuing our ice removal efforts (unless the weather turns!). And we have some help. Sunday is usually a day off for staff at McMurdo, but a couple of hardy volunteers have agreed to spend their day off mucking out chunks of ice with us. A few more days of work and we might have our first frost flowers…
