So you might have thought that I disappeared, but I didn't. I have just been enjoying beautiful New Zealand. I spent a couple of days with Amanda and Shawn in Christchurch and then we went off in different directions. Amanda and Shawn went North towards the Kaikoura Peninsula and Matt and I went West towards Arthur's Pass. Check out our pictures and read about our adventures below.
The red line is the route that we took on our adventure around the south island of New Zealand.
**Day 1: **Collect our camper van (a van with a bed and kitchen in it ---so cool) in Christchurch and head across the south island towards the town of Greymouth. We stopped along the way to do some hiking in Arthur's Pass.
I loved our camper van. It had a bed, refrigerator, microwave, sink, stove, and lots of...
For the last couple of days I have been preparing to leave for Christchurch and then enjoying civilization once I got here. My journey home started with bag drag. Bag drag is when you drag all of your stuff up to Building 140 to be weighed and palleted for the plane the next day. I even had to get weighed in. I had to put on all my ECW (extreme cold weather) gear and hop up on the scale to be weighed with my carry-on. With all my gear and my carry-on I weighed 185 lbs. I am hoping that all that weight is from my gear and carry-on. If not, I must have gained a lot of weight here (it's all muscle, right?). At bag drag we also found out that the plane coming down to pick us up the next day would be a haz-mat flight and would take a little longer. Most flights out of McMurdo leave around 3 or...
One of the cool things that you can do while in McMurdo is that you can sign-up for Delta trips. Deltas are big wheeled buses that are used to transport people across the ice. I took one to happy camper school and they are fun because the wheels are huge and you are so far off the ground. They are really, really slow, however, and it takes a long time to get anywhere in one. The trip that I planned to go on was to a place called Cape Evans and it would take us 6 hours to get there and back.
The delta was our transportation to Cape Evans. Even with its big tires, it still got stuck in the snow.
So what is this Cape Evans place and why did I want to go there so bad? Cape Evans was the main headquarters for Robert Falcon Scott's terra nova expedition. The expedition lasted from 1910 -...
For the past two weeks Amanda and Shawn have been busy in the lab prepping and conducting their experiments and today they would find out if they were successful. They left the field a couple of days ahead of us so that they could get a head start on cleaning, melting, and filtering almost 300lbs of the ice that we collected. It was all in an effort to extract the microorganisms out of the ice so that they could isolate the ATP, DNA, and RNA in their cells. Today Amanda would find out if she isolated the RNA and Shawn would find out if he had ATP.
All of our lab benches were covered in filtering materials, glassware, PCR machines, and everything else that we would need to conduct our experiments.
Remember that two of the important questions that our research is meant to answer are: Are...
It might look cold, but how cold is it???
After living in the Dry Valleys of Antarctica for more than three weeks I will admit that they are cold, but how cold are they? We set up a data logger on our front porch to take temperature, relative humidity, and dew point readings every 6 hours to see how cold it was outside. In the following activity students can use our actual data to graph the temperature readings for our first week and our last week to see how the temperatures changed by hour and by day.
The data logger that I used for this experiment collected temperature, relative humidity, and dew point data every six hours for the entire time I was in the Dry Valleys.
If you had to guess…Do you think this area gets a lot of precipitation? Do you think that it is humid? Do you think...
Yesterday the boys (Brent, Mark, Scott, and Tim) made it out of McMurdo just in time. They were originally scheduled for an afternoon C-17 flight back to Christchurch, but the weather was forecasted to turn bad and they got switched to a morning flight on a C-130. I was sad that they were going to miss my webinar, but it was a good thing that they left when they did. About an hour after they left, the wind started and then the snow came.
Trying to Walk in the Wind Video
In McMurdo there is a system that we use to rate the weather to tell us if it is safe to travel around McMurdo and the surrounding area. Condition One is when the visibility is less than 100 ft., or wind...
Even in Antarctica ice will melt. As the sun stays higher and higher in the sky as summer progresses, the warm sun causes the ice to melt. The questions that we are going to ask in the following activity are: Does clean ice (no sediment) or dirty ice (has sediment mixed in it) melt faster? and Would the ice melt if all the sunlight was reflected away?
The dirty ice portions of the glacier near our tunnel melted like crazy on sunny days.
To complete the following activity, use the pictures below to complete the data tables on the student handouts and then graph away.
The dirty ice is on the left, the clean ice is in the middle, and the clean ice with foil is on the right. Which one do you think will melt first?
After one hour the dirty ice created 3mL, the clean ice created 0mL, and...
Yesterday we had about 3,500 lbs of gear shipped back from camp and today we had to put it all back where it belonged. We started out by laying everything out and then sorting it by what building it needed to be returned to. All of our camping gear needed to go back to the BFC (Byrd Field Center), all the mechanical equipment like our chainsaws needed to go back to the MEC (Mechanical Equipment Center), any communications equipment like our radios needed to go back to Comms, and some of the tools we borrowed needed to go back to the Carpentry Shop. It was quite the task, but we worked together and we finished in time to watch Monday Night Football at 2:30 pm on a Tuesday (this time change is crazy sometimes).
All of our gear had a specific place that it had to go back to and we had to go...
Today was our last day in camp. We woke up early in the morning and started packing all of our personal belongings and taking down our tents. Scott and Tim would be on the first helicopter flight back to McMurdo at 9:30 in the morning. Brent, Mark and I would be on the second flight at 11:45 am. Before we could leave, we had to sling all of the rest of our gear together, take apart our kitchen, and seal up all of our waste barrels and buckets. There was a lot to do in a short amount of time and we were all running around like crazy. With some help from the helicopter pilots and technicians, we got it all done and were on our way.
My tent kept me "warm" for over 3 weeks and it will be weird to sleep in a bed for the first time in awhile tonight.
The kitchen is almost done...
Hooray Snow! I woke up early this morning because it was my turn to check in and I opened my tent and there was snow on the ground. It doesn't snow that often or that much in the Dry Valleys so I was excited to see the little flakes falling from the sky. By mid-morning all the mountains surrounding us were dusted with snow and it was so beautiful.
I woke up this morning to find a snowy camp.
The mountains and Taylor Glacier are all getting a dusting of snow.
All of our tents were dusted with snow, but it all blew away by mid-day.
The mountain that looks down on my tent is hiding in the clouds and is dusted with snow. It was amazing how different everything looked with a little snow and some clouds.
I could have watched the snow all day, but today was the last day in camp and we...
Today was kind of a bittersweet day. All of our sampling is done and today we had to pack everything up. It is great to be done and everyone is excited to go home, but the Dry Valleys are an amazing place and I will definitely be sad to go.
I am going to miss crawling out of my tent and seeing this beautiful view of the Taylor Glacier every morning.
Yesterday the five of us moved and boxed up over 1200 lbs of ice and the helicopters came and picked it up. We were all pretty sore, but we still needed to go up to the tunnel site today and pack up the rest of the ice. We saved all of the big pieces and the ice cores for last. That was some heavy ice. Some of those pieces had to weigh at least 100 lbs. I am pretty sure that I am getting some big muscles. Between chainsawing, shoveling,...
Today was the last day that we took ice samples from the glacier. Tim and Scott are taking clean ice cores of the glacier to answer the questions; What is the age of the ice and What was going on when the ice formed? If they can better understand the glacial processes that were going on when the ice formed that we are sampling, it will help us better understand the microbiology and chemistry of the ice. Usually when you take cores you are on top of what you are drilling and you auger/drill downwards, but Tim and Scott are drilling upwards towards the top of the glacier from inside the glacier. As far as we know, no one has ever done that before and it was cool to see how excited they were when it worked. It was also fun to watch because all of the ice shavings fall on your head when you...
Everything is starting to come to an end around here. The sampling is almost complete and all we really have to do is take some core samples of clean ice. My helo (helicopter) flight back to McMurdo is scheduled for Monday or Tuesday, but between now and then there is a lot of work to be done. The first thing that needs to be done, is we need to send Amanda and Shawn back to McMurdo with all of their ice. They are going to begin their microbiology experiments in the lab back at McMurdo and the sooner they get started, the sooner that they can go home.
Amanda is carrying a freeze safe box out of the tunnel and down the ice stairs. We use the insulated boxes to store and ship our ice samples.
The hardest part about packing the ice is carrying it out of the tunnel, down the stairs, and...
For this experiment we will be asking the question; Is there salt in a glacier? To do this, we are going to melt dirty ice (ice with lots of sediment/dirt in it) and clean ice (ice without sediment) from the Taylor Glacier. After we melt the ice, we are going to test the melt water for pH and conductivity and then determine how much salt is actually in our ice samples.
To see if there is salt in a glacier we collected both dirty ice (right) and clean ice (left) from the Taylor Glacier.
Our ice samples are all melted and ready to be tested for pH and conductivity.
Below you will find a video that shows us doing the experiment. Use the student handouts and record the data that we collected and then answer the questions to see if there really is salt in a glacier.
Is There Salt in a...
The one question that I have been asked the most is how do I stay warm in Antarctica? Yes... it is cold here and yes... I do get cold. The coldest time of the day is when I am in my sleeping bag at night and when I am doing watch duty at the tunnel. Probably the lowest temperature that I have seen here is around a -40°F (wind chill) and the highest temperature that I have seen is probably around 25°F (in the sun). It has been colder than I expected it to be, but there are several things that I have been doing to prevent myself from getting too cold.My first night here I thought that I was going to turn into a popsicle inside my sleeping bag. I wore three layers of fleece, a hat, mittens, and I had a nice fleece liner and sleeping bag. It is a long sleeping bag, so I inched all the way...
We tunneled nine meters into the glacier and then made a four by three meter room at the end of the tunnel and now we are ready to start sampling. Initially we thought that we would have to tunnel downwards at the end of tunnel to reach a sediment layer about a half meter under the tunnel, but we got lucky and found a sediment layer at the end of our tunnel. It is a perfect sediment layer because it is stratified and alternates between clean and dirty ice. This will work really well for both the microbiology and gas experiments. Even better is that it is a lot easier to take samples from a wall in front of you than cutting and digging samples out of a hole. We hope to take samples for about the next week or so and even start sending some samples back to McMurdo to be analyzed in a couple...
I had my doubts on how good the food was going to be, but it has been surprisingly good. The only drawback is that all of the food is expired. The bulk food supplies in McMurdo get resupplied once a year by a huge ice breaker that comes into the sound. It takes a long time for the ship to get here from the United States so by the time it gets here it is all expired. I haven't noticed a huge change in the taste and I haven't gotten sick yet, so I guess that it is okay. They only things that I have noticed that taste a lot different are the pop because it is flat and the granola bars are just gross. The most expired food that I have seen so far is a jar of jelly that expired in 2003. I thought that jelly was supposed to last for a long time, so I wonder when it was made.
I have discovered...
After several days of tunneling, we have definitely made some progress. After Day 1 we were 1.9 meters into the tunnel. After Day 2 we were 4.35 meters into the tunnel. After Day 3 we were 6 meters into the tunnel and currently we are at 8.5 meters. Now we are going to expand the end of the tunnel into a 3 by 3 meter room so that we can begin sampling. Once we finish the room (hopefully today), we get to sample the ice by carefully cutting out specific sized blocks in the dirt layer below the room and then taking cores of the clean ice above the room.
A look at our tunnel from the outside. The pile of debris ice outside the tunnel grows as we make our tunnel bigger.
I'm taking a break in the tunnel before getting back to work again.
I am using an auger to drill a hole into the ice to...
This is going to be the first of hopefully four journals that will show easy experiments that can be done in the classroom or in the field. Each journal will have student handouts, video, and pictures. Feel free to watch the video and see us do the experiment or try to repeat the experiment at home with your own materials. For this first experiment we will be asking the question; Do microorganisms live in Antarctica? Antarctica has such a harsh climate that many organisms cannot live here all year around, but can microorganisms? The research team that I am with is looking at the ice in the Taylor Glacier to see if microorganisms are in the ice and if they are living. It's pretty cool stuff. In our experiment we are going to take ice from the glacier, ice from the lake, and then swab...
Selected areas in Antarctica are considered to be ASMA's (Antarctic Specially Managed Areas). The Dry Valleys are one of these areas so we are bound by law to follow specific procedures while we are camping and working here. One huge thing is that we can't leave any waste here. Everything we bring here, we have to bring back with us. This includes all of our trash, grey water, food waste, and human waste. All of our trash is separated into five different buckets; food waste, non-recyclables, glass, aluminum, and mixed paper. Once a bucket is full, we pack it up and put it into a huge box to be flown back to McMurdo. We also have liquid waste called grey water from washing dishes, cooking, brushing teeth, etc... We store the grey water in buckets and when a bucket gets too full, we pour it...
Yesterday the weather improved and helicopters were allowed to fly so we finally had our supplies delivered to the tunnel site. That meant that today would be chainsaw day. It's about time we got to work!
The supplies arrived by a helicopter sling and we can now start tunneling.
Step #1 - Locate a Good Spot: The Taylor Glacier is a huge glacier and we want to select a spot to put our tunnel that has the ice we want to analyze and is safe to be near. Glaciers are moving rivers of ice and we wouldn't want pieces of ice to break off (calve) and fall on us while we are working. Last week Mark and Brent went on a reconnaissance flight to find a suitable location and they found the perfect place.
Step #2 - Build Stairs: To get to the glacier we have to cross a moat where the melt water from...
I am finally in the Dry Valleys! Yeah! It is so beautiful here. Our camp is located on the shores of Lake Bonney in front of Blood Falls in the Taylor Glacier Valley. All you see when you look around is ice and rock. We got here on Monday by helicopter. It was my first time in a helicopter and it was awesome. We crossed the sea ice and then passed over mountain tops and glaciers. Words can't even describe what an incredible landscape it was.
It was my first trip in a helicopter so I was so excited to take off.
McMurdo is on an island in the Ross Sea, so technically I haven't stepped foot on the Antarctic Continent yet, but this is where it begins and I will soon take my...
Today I visited the heavy machine shop to visit with the mechanics and see what type of heavy machines they have here in McMurdo. Heavy machines are classified as any piece of machinery over 3000 lbs. In the heavy machine shop they have all the tools and materials needed to repair, fabricate, and design pieces of machinery used by the scientists or in support of the scientists. It was really cool to see all the different machines...some were gigantic. If you were a mechanical or electrical engineer it would be an incredible experience to work in the heavy machine shop. The engineers are asked to solve problems and design machinery that can be used in extremely cold temperatures. If you have ever watched the show on the History Channel called Modern Marvels their jobs are a lot like that....
Today I visited the FEMC trade shop to see what type of jobs there are available here in the trades. FEMC stands for Facilities Engineering, Maintenance, and Construction and the shop houses all different types of trade workers. Their job is to make sure all of the buildings function here at McMurdo Station. Some of trades that were represented were sheet metal workers, power linemen, electricians, fire system technicians, welders, pipe fitters, plumbers, and UT's (utility technicians who maintain the buildings and boiler systems). In a separate building there are also carpenters and painters who help maintain the facilities here. Read below to meet some of tradesmen I met at the FEMC trade shop.
(from left to right) Mike, Tad, Walter, and "Moose" took time out of their day to...
Yesterday we found out that our scheduled helicopter flights for today were pushed back until Monday. At first I was really disappointed because I wanted to get out to the Dry Valleys and get to work, however, I took advantage of the extra day and I explored McMurdo Station and met some really incredible people.
When most people think of McMurdo and Antarctica, they think of the scientists and the science being done here. However, the scientists require a lot of support. They need places to stay, vehicles to drive, communication devices to keep in contact with each other and the base, food to eat, water to drink, computers and technology for their research, etc... The list goes on and on. McMurdo Station is like a little city and everything that a city has, McMurdo has. Therefore, there...
