WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 20, 2010 — Today the drill reached approximately 2400 meters! After work, I decided to go skiing across the ice sheet. The conditions for skiing, especially skate skiing, are excellent right now. One of my favorite things to do is to head off across the ice sheet, either walking or on skis. I like to place camp behind me with nothing human made in my view. There is no trail or footsteps to follow or anything to head towards. There are basically no restrictions as to where I go or what path I choose. It is a strange sense of freedom. I always know that anywhere I step outside of camp, I am possibly the first person to ever step there!

A lone set of ski tracks marks my path out across the ice sheet.
and over the sastrugi (long, wavelike ridges of hard snow, formed
perpendicular to the direction of the wind and common in polar regions).

Bathroom talk:

So lets get down to business. What do people really want to know about life in Antarctica? One of the most popular questions I get is “How do you go to the bathroom in Antarctica?” Well, there are actually several options which I will now describe in too much detail.

Unheated outhouses. Yes, they are outside, and yes, they are unheated. Actually, I have not used a flush toilet since my ride on a Herc to WAIS back in November of 2009! We have several in a row right outside the galley tent (very handy), one outside the arch (also very handy), and one in the middle of tent city (only handy if you didn’t set up your tent out on the periphery like I did!). They are very simple wooden structures with a wooden box–like structure and a foam “seat” positioned over a generous hole in the ice. The toilet paper is usually suspended by a rope to keep snow from getting on it (trust me, that’s not very nice) and there is a bottle of hand sanitizer. Over the holes are a variety of creative covers that help keep things like mittens and hats from accidentally being dropped where no one will ever want to recover them.

A line of conveniently placed outhouses just outside the galley tent
(far right side of photo). Notice the P flag (left side of image —
this one has both a green and yellow flag).

The most … shall we say interesting? … aspect of the outhouse is the large mass of frozen ”material” that collects at the bottom of the hole. It literally forms a rather impressive tower of … well, lets just say it’s a tower. Visualize an upside down icicle if you will, or if you are familiar with cave terminology, a stalagmite except not nearly as beautiful and with many more lumps. Around camp, we have many very creative and colorful words for our “towers,” but I am afraid they are not appropriate for a public blog (I will let you use your imagination). As one can imagine, with a stationary hole, the “inverted icicle” is able to grow and grow and grow, and will eventually reach the top of its hole. To solve this problem, we have a very long “stick” (we also have many very colorful names for the “stick”). Some unfortunate person is assigned the job of occasionally putting the “stick” down the hole in the outhouse and knocking over the “tower.” To make up for what they might lack in luxury, each outhouse has it’s own unique display of poems, sayings, artwork and general chatter (once again, I will let you use your imagination). This has proved to be rather entertaining (what can I say, we don’t have cable out here) and everyone is, of course, welcome to add their own individual input to the inside of the outhouse. Everyone seems to have their favorite outhouses and targets those to check for recent updates.

The outhouse is strapped down so it won’t fly away in the wind
(we wouldn’t want that to happen!). Outside this outhouse is the “stick”.
Notice that the end of the stick is kept wrapped in plastic. NOBODY wants to
accidentally touch that! Underneath the ventilation holes
are hooks on which you can hang your big red.

Outhouses are simple wooden structures that consist of a foam “seat”
positioned on a bench over a hole in the ice. Note the toilet paper suspended
by a rope to keep snow from getting on it. Also notice the hole cover
in the shape of Antarctica! Such covers help keep things like mittens
and hats from accidentally being dropped down the hole. This is a brand new
outhouse and thus the walls are not yet covered with writing and drawings.

The “P” bottle. If you can’t make it to the outhouse, there is another very popular option available, the “P” bottle. This is essentially a nalgene bottle with a big letter “P” printed on the top and side to make sure it is NEVER confused with a water bottle. These are very handy in one’s tent on those cold -20 degree nights. However, one must be careful not to let one’s “P” bottle freeze as then one must find creative ways to thaw it out in order to empty it for further use. (I’ll let you use your imagination for that one as well). These bottles are a brilliant idea and are actually part of the issued gear! Many conversations around camp have ventured into how much these bottles are missed once one leaves Antarctica and why society has not accepted a big “P” bottle on the nightstand as simply a necessary household item. Think about it, they’re very handy. However, it must be emphasized that extra special care must be taken with one’s “P” bottle. Mishaps are common, embarrassing, and not very fun especially in an environment with temperatures below freezing. Let’s just say that spilled liquid is much easier to clean up than thin layers of frozen liquid especially if one does not really want to touch the liquid in question. Just an important safety tip, be sure to carefully secure the lid of your “P” bottle TIGHTLY after use.

A “P” bottle posing in the snow

The “P” flag. For the gentlemen (or very adventurous ladies), there is yet another option— the “P” flag. Yes, we actually call them that. Better yet, they’re yellow! These flags mark spots where it is acceptable to relieve one’s self. Since we use the snow for our drinking water, it is highly desirable to contain this. What they say is really true, “Don’t eat (or drink) the yellow snow.” There is usually a “P” flag that accompanies each outhouse but there is even one right in the middle of town! Well, there aren’t any trees or bushes to hide behind anyway. They seem to be very popular with the guys, but with the cold temperatures and sometimes 20 knot winds, I can’t imagine the experience is terribly fun. I must admit, hanging out in an unheated outhouse with a nice “cool” breeze blowing up through the ice at your bottom is an experience I will not soon forget!

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 12, 2010 — After work today, I helped to dig a snow pit. This is the third snow pit we’ve dug out so far this season. A snow pit consists of one main large rectangular hole in the snow, about 6 to 7 feet deep and wide enough for several people to stand in it, and another thinner rectangular hole that borders one side of the main hole (usually the back wall). The thinner hole allows sunlight to illuminate the fine layers in the snow. Not only does this create a beautiful glowing wall of snow layers, it is also useful scientifically to study snow composition and accumulation over the most recent years.

Digging out a snow pit. Shovels, saws, a chain saw and multiple people were used
to create one large pit and an adjacent, narrower, and smaller pit (current
covered with a board behind the pit where people are digging). The smaller
pit allows sunlight to shine through the layers in the wall of the larger pit.
The smaller pit is covered with a board to keep snow from blowing in and filling it.
Other helpers are loading snow onto a sleigh to be transported to a dumping
ground in the background of the photo.

Constructing a roof for the snow pit. The main snow pit needs a solid roof to
keep out blowing snow and sunlight. It must be dark in the pit in order to see the
layers in the snow illuminated by sunlight shining in through a smaller pit
behind one of the walls of the larger pit. The flags mark the location of the pit and
warn people to be careful in this area. In the forefront of the picture is the
entrance to the pit which, although you cannot see them here, has snow stairs!

Outside view of a finished snow pit. The wooden roof covering the smaller pit
(behind the main large pit) is removed to allow sunlight to illuminate
the snow layers composing the back wall of the main pit.

Inside a finished snow pit. I am pointing to a bright layer potentially deposited
during an Antarctic summer season just a few years ago. The layer is brighter
because the snow is less dense due to the larger snow crystals that form in
the warmer summer temperatures.

One of my fellow core handlers and a graduate student working with the Ice and Climate Group in the Department of Geosciences at The Pennsylvania State University, John Fegyveresi, has been doing some work with snow pits here at WAIS Divide:

“The snowpit project is simply a side project that my advisor wanted me to do to get familiar with the process of picking out seasonal and annual layers near the surface.  There are several things he wanted to me to look for and be able to identify, such as wind crusts, depth hoar and hoarfrost layers, individual storm events, annual layer groupings, surface sastrugi, and any other notable features.  As an additional step, I decided to take density and water isotope samples from the pit.  Using the density samples, I should be able to get a better idea of the annual layers based on the principle that the winter snow consists of smaller flakes (due to colder temps), and therefore packs more densely.  Conversely, the summer snow forms larger flakes (due to warmer temps), and thus packs less densely.  A density plot for a snow pit should take the shape of a rough sine curve, with the peaks representing winters, and the valleys summers (with an overall increasing density trend with depth).  Generally, with the known average accumulation rate at WAIS Divide, one can see about three years of history in a 2 meter snow pit.   The water isotope samples will be analyzed to get a ratio of ¹⁸O to ¹⁶O isotopes, which can be used as  a proxy for temperature.  So this plot should also coincide with the density plot with the more negative ¹⁸O/¹⁶O ratio equating to colder temperatures in the winter.  This work will probably not be incorporated into any type of publication, but is a great learning tool for physical properties studies and helps me to understand what we may see in the ice core.”

John Fegyveresi, a core handler at WAIS Divide, is smoothing out the wall of a snow pit.

Other interesting research that John is working on while at WAIS Divide involves studying the physical properties of the ice.

Studying the Physical Properties of an Ice Core

This section was contributed by John Fegyveresi, a core handler currently at WAIS Divide and also a graduate student working with the Ice and Climate Group in the Department of Geosciences at The Pennsylvania State University:

The physical properties work that I’m doing with the WDC06A core (the core being drilled at WAIS Divide) is based on a separate grant and project number (I-168) through my advisor, Richard Alley, and Joan Fitzpatrick (USGS).  The overall goal of the project is to look at various physical aspects of the core to reconstruct climates, determine information about the direction and properties of ice flow, look for stratigraphic deformation of the ice near the bed, analyze the c-axis fabrics of the grains, and hopefully try to learn something about clathrates (a solid compound in which molecules of one substance are physically trapped in the crystal lattice of another) and their relationships to the bubbles they formed from.  The easy way of thinking about physical properties is to simply think that we are looking at the geology of the ice.  Just like the chemistry folks look at isotopes or gas concentrations, and the microbiology folks look at bacteria, we look at how the ice has moved/flowed, deformed, and what’s going on inside it (physically speaking, i.e. bubbles, clathrates, crystals, etc).  More specifically, my task here on-site is to obtain both a horizontally and vertically oriented piece of ice from the core from a depth of every 20 meters.  This sample I shave down smooth with a medical microtome and mount between two glass plates.  One side is mounted with a small bead of water around the edge, and the other with a special cold temperature "super glue".  The samples are then sent back to the National Ice Core Lab, where they are cut in half, and each half is used to make a separate thin section.  The glued side is shaved down to about a half a millimeter, and put into a special machine that is used to determine the c-axes of the ice crystals.  The water-tacked side is shaved down to about 1.5 millimeters and is digitally photographed so that the bubbles and/or clathrates can be studied/analyzed.  My masters thesis project involved looking at the bubble number-density (number of bubbles per given volume), and then using both grain-growth and firn-densification models, combined with a new paleoclimate technique developed by another one of my advisor’s former students, Matt Spencer, to reconstruct climates over the 2 millennia prior to 1700 C.E.

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 11, 2010 — Drilling has been going very smoothly lately and we are averaging just over 30 meters of core a day. A round trip drill run at our current depth takes about 2 hours to complete, and typically produces an ice core that is ~3.2 meters long. We have been averaging ten runs per day, which corresponds to 32 meters of core, or about 365 years of snow accumulation (the record for the longest core so far is 3.482 meters!). We have finished packing the ice that will be shipped back to the U.S. this year and the last pallet is ready to be picked up. The rest of the ice drilled this season is being stored in the snow-walled basement of the arch. At the start of my shift today, we were at almost 2200 meters depth.

Today was a sunny day with very few clouds. One nice thing about sunny days is that ice crystals which form on the surface of the snow reflect the light and sparkle like diamonds. I have seen this many times in the northeast U.S. where I grew up, but not nearly as intensely as I have seen this effect here. I guess because almost everything is covered with ice crystals, it really feels like you are walking through a field of diamonds. Even better yet, sometimes you can actually see tiny ice crystals floating in the air. When the sunlight hits them, they also sparkle like floating diamonds above and all around you (sometimes called diamond dust). It almost makes you dizzy as it is hard to focus on all the tiny flashes moving so quickly in all directions.

I’m standing in front of the sun with a halo. Note the white dots above my head.
They look like dust on the camera lens but they are actually tiny ice crystals
(diamond dust) floating in the air and sparkling as they reflect
the light from the sun
[Photo credit: Robert Lee Hotz, The Wall Street Journal].

After dinner, I decided to take a walk. I wandered off across the ice sheet towards the white endless nothing. I put town behind me and out of sight, and headed out into my mystical world of floating, sparkling diamonds. Antarctica can be a magical place.

Antarctic Factoid

A sun dog is an atmospheric phenomenon that creates bright spots of light in the sky, sometimes on a luminous ring or halo on either side of the sun. They sometimes form during very cold weather, when the sun is low in the sky, from ice crystals (diamond dust) drifting in the air. Light is reflected and refracted by the ice crystals and may split up into colors due to dispersion. The crystals behave like prisms and mirrors, refracting and reflecting sunlight between their faces. Sun dogs and halos are red colored at the side nearest the sun and grade through oranges to blue.

Antarctic Factoid

Fog bows can be seen on foggy days when the sun is still able to shine through the fog. Fog bows are similar to rainbows, except that they appear white and have no color. The lack of color is caused by the smaller water droplets, smaller than
0.05 mm, that create the fog.

Halo around the sun. Sun dogs (bright spots of light) can be see on either side
of the sun and above the sun. It is hard to see but the sun dog above
the sun is curving in the opposite direction of the halo (away from the sun).

This is my best attempt at photographing a fog bow.
About half of the fog bow can be seen arching over tent city.

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 10, 2010 — I have had many people ask me how we get our water and whether or not we can take showers and do laundry. So I thought it was time to talk a bit about this subject.

We get all of our water at WAIS Divide by melting snow. There are two melters: one in the kitchen to provide water for cooking and cleaning dishes, and one in the wash module (at the back of the rec tent) that provides water for general washing up as well as for showers and for laundry. Everyone is responsible for helping to keep the melters full of snow. One simply shovels snow into a 45-gallon barrel, dumps it into the melter and pumps excess melted water from the melter into a holding tank.

The melter, holding tank, and the 45 gallon barrel in the wash module at the
back of the rec tent. When full, water is pumped from the melter into the
holding tank. This water is used for general washing up, showers,
and doing laundry.

The snow melter in the galley tent. This water is used primarily for
cooking and cleaning dishes.

Because it takes precious fuel to melt snow, we are limited to only one 2-minute shower once a week! To take advantage of this shower, one must first shovel snow to fill one 45-gallon barrel and add it to the melter so that water is ready for the next person. I tried to shovel my snow after a shower once and within minutes, my wet hair had completely frozen. We are actually lucky to have showers at all. Many field sites do not have showering facilities and individuals at these sites will often go 2 or 3 months without a shower!

There are two showers in the wash module, each with a small changing area.
Each person is limited to one 2-minute shower a week. To take advantage of
this, one must first shovel one 45 gallon barrel of snow to be added
to the melted.

We are lucky enough to have both a washer and a dryer, but are limited to one load of laundry every two weeks. For this one load of laundry, one must fill three 45-gallon barrels with snow and add these to the melter.

While there is plenty of snow to provide us with water, the fuel needed to melt the snow is expensive and must be brought in via LC-130 cargo planes from McMurdo. Because of this, everyone does what they can to conserve water. For example, the water we use to fill our hot water bottles at night, is dumped into pots the following morning. These pots, filled with water, sit on top of Preway heaters (the heaters used to keep our Jamesway tents warm) and slowly heat up during the day. At night the same water, now hot again, is reused to fill our water bottles (only for heating sleeping bags though, not for drinking!). Our efforts at conserving water have resulted in an average use of only 5 gallons of water per person per day. This includes all uses of water such as drinking water, water for cooking, cleaning, etc. The average person in regular society is estimated to use 90 gallons of water per day!

The melter, holding tank, and the 45-gallon barrel in the wash module
at the back of the rec tent. When full, water is pumped from the
melter into the holding tank. This water is used for general washing up,
showers, and doing laundry.

Today we celebrated the third annual WAIS Divide “Summer” Olympics. The Olympics this year consisted of Antarctic gear twister (particularly humorous with the large heavy boots and puffy big red parkas), frisbee, beach ball and mini golf with moving obstacles!

 Antarctic gear twister! This was particularly hard to do in those big blue
boots and puffy red parkas!

“Beach” ball! Athletes earned points for each time they could hit the ball
back and forth with the paddles.

 Mini golf. In this hole, the windmill rotates to block your ball.

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 9, 2010 — A driller named David Ferris cooked a big Middle Eastern Feast for us tonight. It was a lovely change in menu and good timing as we just received a bunch of “freshies” on a Herc this morning (this is only the second Herc to make it to WAIS since December 23 due to bad weather conditions in both McMurdo and WAIS!).

Along with the Herc came a bird. I am not sure what kind of bird it is. I have heard that sometimes they follow the planes. I found the bird flying around the arch and he stopped in the snow for a little rest. This little guy looked a bit lost and confused but he wasn’t afraid of me and after about 5 minutes of preening (cleaning his features) and putting himself in order, he took a short running start and disappeared in the direction of McMurdo Station and the coast. This is the first animal, besides humans, that I have seen since November. Very rarely, a few birds will fly overhead but I have not seen any yet.

I saw this little guy flying around the arch. He stopped for a short rest and
then flew off again in the direction of McMurdo and the coast.
This is the first animal I have seen, besides humans, since November.

After our feast, several headed outside for a spontaneous game of croquet in the snow around the center of town and the outhouses!

Kendrick Taylor, WAIS Divide chief scientist, and others playing croquet in the snow!

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 6, 2010 — I have been talking about events that happen every day but I have not given an overview of a typical day in Antarctica.

“A Typical Work Day at WAIS Divide (from a science technician’s point of view)”

As a member of “Shift 1,” my day usually starts around 5 a.m. I crawl out of my sleeping bag and begin the process of putting on layers. I usually put on one or two layers of socks, two layers on my legs (a base layer plus jeans or wind pants), three layers on top (two base layers and a sweater or fleece), hat, goggles, light boots, gloves and my Big Red. I then crawl out of my tent into the snow and walk from tent city to the rec tent. In the rec tent, there are three sinks. Here, I brush my teeth and generally wash up. I then head to the galley tent for breakfast.

The heated Jamesway tent next to the arch

Around 6:30 a.m. I walk from town to the arch. There is a heated Jamesway tent next to the arch. Before heading to the arch, I stop at this tent to add a few more layers. Altogether, I usually head to work with a base layer, fleece pants, and compressor pants or carharts on my legs, two pairs of socks, my big blue FDX boots, and about 4 layers on top.

Inside the Jamesway. This tent serves an office for the science technicians and drillers.
It is also a heated area where we can warm up during our shifts and
where we can put on our extra layers before heading to the arch. Pictured here
is Bo Vinther, the science technician that currently shares Shift 1 with me.

My shift starts at 7 a.m. until 4 p.m. with a break somewhere around 12 p.m. for a walk back to the galley tent for some lunch. At 3 p.m., “Shift 2” joins “Shift 1” to complete any work that requires extra people (moving heavy objects or working with the gantry). By 4 p.m., I usually strip off my extra layers and head back to tent city or back into town for some free time before dinner at 6 p.m. “Shift 2” begins at 3 p.m. until 12 a.m. and “Shift 3” begins at 11 p.m. until 8 a.m. the following day. Drilling operates 24 hours a day, six days a week. After dinner, I often play the harp, go for a ski or hike, get some work done on my computer, or socialize with my colleagues before heading back out to my tent in tent city.

This is where the drill operates (the taller section in back) and where we process
and pack the ice cores (the shorter section in the front).

Inside the core processing and packing section of the arch. As a science technician,
this is the area where I do most of my work.

The work commute: Shift 3 heading back into town at the end of their shift.

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 4, 2010 — I am still recovering from stomach flu. The worst part about getting sick in Antarctica is trying to live and especially work in such a cold environment on little or no food. Eating properly makes an amazing difference in your ability to stay warm. There are a few zombies around town trying to refuel and recover from the flu. Most people I have talked with admit that they eat a bar of chocolate before bed to stay warm. One of the nice parts of living in a cold environment –.eating lots of chocolate!

Today we drilled down to a depth of 2000 m (~6000 feet)! This ice is at an elevation equivalent to 242m (~700 ft) below sea level and was deposited as snow on the ice sheet roughly 12,000 years ago.

The drillers and science technicians who helped to drill and bring up the
ice core from 2000 meters (~6000 feet) below the surface.
The ice in this core was deposited as snow ~12,000 years ago.
Sign: “WAIS 2000m. Jan 4th 2010 – 12,000 yr BP (before present).
242m below sea level.”

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 3, 2010 — I was not feeling really well today and later in the day realized that more than just packages had arrived from McMurdo on the last plane. Apparently a stomach flu came in with one of the passengers and is currently finding its way through camp. I was given the last two hours off from work to go hide in my tent and get some sleep. It is very difficult to work in a cold environment like the arch when you have not eaten sufficient food. Eating enough food and staying hydrated are extremely important parts of staying warm and being able to function effectively.

Launch of BESS-Polar II in 2007. Photo by John W. Mitchell,
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

A group of scientists left WAIS Divide today on a Basler to pick up the BESS (Balloon-borne Experiment with a Superconducting Spectrometer)-Polar instrument. BESS-Polar II flew for 24.5 days in 2007-2008 and landed on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. Although the data was collected in February of 2008, the instrument has been sitting on the ice sheet for two years. The scientists have now left to meet up with the instrument and spend 1-2 weeks dismantling it. They will load it piece by piece onto a plane (Basler) to get it out of the field so they can fly it again. The BESS program uses elementary particle measurements to study the early universe. To learn more about the BESS program, see “Additional Antarctic Research in WAIS: BESS.”

WAIS Divide, Antarctica, Jan. 1, 2010 — Today was a regular day of work starting at 7 a.m. and finishing around 4 p.m. Much like our December 25 celebration, we had a big dinner to celebrate New Years Day. Appetizers started at 4 p.m. followed by a wonderful dinner featuring shrimp scampi, prime rib and mashed potatoes. Since most of the people at WAIS are from the continental United States, we decided to celebrate midnight for each of our time zones. We started our first countdown at 6 p.m. (midnight on the 31st on the East Coast U.S.), followed by one at 7 p.m. and 8 p.m. and so on. We didn’t want to leave anyone out!

John, one of our chefs, carving the prime rib for New Year’s dinner in the galley