Punta Arenas, Chile

After a about 30 hours of travel, we made it to Punta Arenas, Chile. We met with Mark Whetu, our mountaineer for the season and Franco Sobrero, grad student at OSU. 

In Punta Arenas, with all our bags.

We have a few days here to collect remaining items (mainly Extreme Cold Weather clothing).

Mark Whetu at the USAP warehouse

Jim's ready

Antarctic Flight briefing at ALE's office

And we wait... 

Tropical Jim with his flip flops

Hotel Cabo de Hornos

Fortunately the life is pretty good in Punta Arenas!

Flying Day

And here we go… Jim picked me up at 4:45am this month and we headed out to the airport.

He was right. Traveling on Thanksgiving day is so good! Or maybe it was because of the hour…

Breakfast of champs

Denver to Atlanta. 7hrs layover. And some southern fried chicken. We could not find turkey...!

Improvised Thanksgiving lunch/dinner

Jim invested in a neck pillow

We met with Terry in Atlanta for a few drinks and took off for Santiago, Chile.

Sunrise over the Andes

From Santiago, we took another flight to the bottom of the world, Chilean version: Punta Arenas. 

Volcan Lonquimay... Lots of memories... 

Packing Day

Leaving in less than 2 days… Time to pack! 2 trips to plan. Antarctica and the Falklands. Fortunately... I am the Master Packer!

The Great Migration South...

It's this time of year. About to leave for Antarctica. I will be leaving for Punta Arenas, Chile on Thanksgiving day (November 28th) with my friend/coworker Jim.

After a week in Punta Arenas, we may fly, weather allowing, to Union Glacier Camp, our base camp for 5 weeks. 

From there we will be flying to remote sites on the Icy Continent to perform maintenance on GPS/Seismic autonomous stations for the NSF funded project, POLENET. 

(Photos from last Antarctic Season)

Boeing 757 on the blue ice runway

Union Glacier (UG) Camp

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Tent City @ UG

Map made with Great Circle Mapper.

Union Glacier Camp is operated by Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions (ALE).

Antarctica 2017-18: Ohio Mountains

One of my favorite place in the Transantarctic Mountains, the Ohio Range and Bennett Nunatak. This range is quite small and the blue ice is magnificent. 

It was quite a cold day out. After spending hours trying to dig a seismic sensor out, in -25C temperatures, we abandoned the site and went to my GPS site, about 10 miles away, near the rock. Still cold, but easy work and time to enjoy the stunning landscape.

We made another stop to refuel the plane and went back to Siple Dome, on time for dinner.

Bennett Nunatak.

For once someone took a photo of me!

Mark Whetu teaching us how to use crampons in blue ice.

Back to the plane.

Refueling at the Ohio Mountains fuel cache.

I love those boots!

Mark Whetu, amazing mountaineer from New Zealand, and fun person to have around.

Antarctica 2017-18: Siple Dome

Welcome to Siple Dome! We spent 2 weeks there early December. We went there with the expectation of being stuck and not being able to work at all, due to the notorious bad weather in these parts... Well.. Siple Doom (as we liked to call it) did disappoint! 2 weeks of incredibly beautiful weather! We worked 6 days straight and finished our work, spending the second week in tshirt weather (McMurdo weather being bad, no plane could come and rescue us...!).

The dome is 100km x 100km located on the East side of the Ross Ice Shelf, off the Siple Coast. Originally an ice core camp, Siple Dome now is a refueling camp for science parties traveling Marie Byrd Land. In 1999 the science team at Siple recovered the deepest ice core at 974m... for a climate record of 97,600 years!

The mess tent and the Tucker used to groom the runway.

The mess tent where we eat and hang out. Small but very cool!

Nice after fieldwork snack made by our great cook.

Scissors do well with pizza.

Yummy food. Rob Teasdale from NZ.

Every year, a new game is learnt. Carcassonne is pretty fun!

Emily, our amazing cook - and seismic instruments shoveler.

When you climb Mt Everest every year - and other 8000ers, you relax in Antarctic. Richie Hunter from NZ.

Is Mark Whetu getting tired sometimes?

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