Science sometimes gets slow due to weather, bad ice conditions, or the availability of equipment. Fortunately there's never a dull day in McMurdo, as the daily events board outside the dining hall shows.
Thanks to the Advanced Biology and Physical Science students of Omak High School for a great Skype discussion this morning, and thanks to teacher Nancy Ridenour for facilitating!
The dust hasn’t settled from yesterday’s flights yet. The McMurdo Station staff is scrambling to accommodate all the new workers and scientists, and there are twice as many people around everywhere you go. Another flight should make it in sometime later today, and more flights are scheduled for Friday. All the chaos has left Shelly and I with comparatively little to do. We aren’t scheduled to revisit our ice core time series site at Tent Island until early next week, and we can’t continue work on the ice edge until the new safety personnel have finished settling in. During winfly Jem and Dan handled safety for science parties out on the ice. During the summer Dan shifts to the communications department, working as a “rigger” to install radio repeaters and other equipment on the high peaks around McMurdo Sound. These radio repeaters allow outlying camps to communicate with McMurdo Station without the use of satellite phones. Jen remains with the department involved in field safety, but has her hands full teaching the new personnel!
We expect things to settle down again by the middle of next week at which time we’ll try to pick the pace back up with our field work. That is if the ice conditions allow. Right now a large crack south of Tent Island is preventing all vehicle travel in that direction. If it closes up just a little bit we’ll be able to drive over it with a Piston Bully. If it doesn’t we’ll have to try and find a way around it, but no one’s found the end of it yet.
With luck, and if ice conditions allow, we’ll be soon be able to switch from using the Pisten Bully to using snowmobiles to reach the ice edge. In addition to saving a significant amount of fuel we’ll gain a significant amount of time; we can travel a lot faster over bumpy snow drifts in a snowmobile. To get ready for this shift Shelly and I took the mandatory snowmobile training course today. We’ve both driven snowmobiles in Alaska but it was good to get some instruction in snowmobile repairs. The thought of being stuck way out at the ice edge with temperatures dropping and a snowmobile that won’t start isn’t pleasant, but I think we can deal with the most common problems now.
Otherwise it’s time to relax a little and catch up on other work. Fortunately McMurdo’s a pretty active place. In addition to two gyms, a basketball court, library, and movie lounge it seems that every night there’s an event (or multiple events) to keep us entertained. Last night there were two “secret life” talks, where McMurdo staffers talk about previous jobs they’ve had. One worked as a space shuttle technician at the Kennedy Space Center for eleven years, the other as a scientist right here in Antarctica!
