Antarctic hat!

I finished (almost) knitting my Antarctic hat! I wanted to make a funky hat with the shape of Antarctica on top of my head. And I finally managed to finish it, almost. I have some fleece I was thinking of sewing into it to make it warmer. In these photos it wasn't quite finished - I had some geographic problems to finish. I made two peninsulas (whops) and the Ross Sea is way too big. I have since fixed these and will have to post more photos of that once I'm done with the fleece lining. The hat is awesome, if I do say so myself!


Much news to report! We are all leaving the ice early. We finished our work and are getting booted because it is too expensive to keep us here to simply play. My plans to go home can't change in terms of dates because I am meeting Jay in Hawaii on the 17th (maybe the 15th). So I will just have to bum around New Zealand (oh damn) until my flight to Maui. I am really going to miss this place though. Antarctica is gorgeous and I have appreciated every view I get of the mountains and the ice. I love the skuas, I love the diving, and I love most of the people down here. What an experience! But, I can't wait to see Jay!

Here is a picture from the inside of Shackleton's hut. There are husky prints on the wooden beam here. Their dogs must have left their prints on the wood before it was used as a shelf. The photo below is a piece of wood with Shackleton's signature on it. Wow.

Skua barf. A whole fish!

The Barne Glacier in gorgeous light

Cape Royds

Finally! I was able to see some penguins here in Antarctica! Yipeeeee! And, to top things off, we visited Shackleton's Nimrod Hut and stop by the Barne Glacier. Things got even better when we arrived back in Mac Town because the store finally restocked the beer. That's right, a serious emergency had occurred - McMurdo Station had been out of beer for a WEEK! Eke. We all survived, but we are happy to have some beer back on the station. Now, on to other important information.

We spent hours in a lovely Pisten Bully (snocat) driving very slowly over the sea ice to get to Cape Royds. We had to cross some wide cracks in the sea ice, but the Pisten Bully can handle that stuff just fine. We stopped in front of the massive Barne Glacier to take in the very blue view. I can't believe how close you can stand next to glacier here - but they are frozen solid and are very stable. We were practically on top of the glacier and it was very imposing and gorgeous.

The Barne Glacier

We continued on past the glacier, over some really bumpy ice, and eventually made it to Cape Royds. This spot became famous because of Ernest Shackleton but it also happens to be the home of the most southern population of Adelie penguins. I am sure many of you have heard of Shackleton's famous Endurance journey that occurred in 1914-1917. But many of you may not know that Shackleton had visited the Antarctic as the leader of the Nimrod Expedition starting in 1908. During this time his crew built the Nimrod Hut at Cape Royds. From here the crew split into various parties and did an amazing amount of totally dangerous things - like climbing Mt.Erebus, trying to get to the South Pole, getting to the Magnetic South Pole, and reaching and studying the geology of the Dry Valleys.

Somehow they survived all of this - here is a great quote that means so much more to me now.

“For a joint scientific and geographical piece of organization, give me Scott; for a winter journey, Wilson, for a dash to the Pole and nothing else, Amundsen: and if I am in the devil of a hole and want to get out of it, give me Shackleton every time.” Apsley Cherry-Garrard, ‘Worst Journey in the World’. British Antarctic (Terra Nova) Expedition 1910 – 1913 led by Captain Scott.

Inside the Nimrod Hut

Mt. Erebus and the Nimrod Hut

Everything in the hut is unique and interesting. I felt like I stepped back in time....

After walking through the hut, which was being renovated by a group of Kiwis, we headed out to the Adelie penguin colony. This is a special site that is visited a lot by people, so we stayed outside of the marked boundaries to give the penguins some space. But we could smell and hear and watch everything that was going on just fine. What funny animals! Man, I could watch and laugh at them all day.

Watch this video I took: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaNovember#5542659464809446290

Or this one: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaNovember#5542665355577895730

Look at my egg!

Julie and the Adelie penguins

Lots more in video and photographs are here, just scroll to the bottom for the newest images: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaNovember#

Evans Wall - Ice Wall

Yesterday was our Sunday, so we got to sleep in and then play! Our work is going really well, so I think work stress and tensions are easing and we are being given some free time to explore this awesome place. Kamille arrived late because she replaced John when he was sent home with kidney stones. So she missed our fun dive out at Evans Wall. Well, this just wouldn't do! She had to go on the coolest dive in the world! So Jennifer and I volunteered to go out and be her dive buddies and this time we took a camera. It was an awesome day. We puttered out on the Tucker to Evans Wall, jumped in the water, and stared at a huge wall of ice and rocks for 45 minutes. It is such an awesome dive. Sadly for the camera, the sun was blocked by the glacier above, so we were diving in a shadow - making the dive a bit darker than it was when we were there over a month ago. So there are some spots in the video where the camera doesn't know what it is looking at - if it is all blue and hazy - that is an ice wall. You will get the idea once you watch the entire video (go here to watch: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaUnderwater#5542097865579051250). We ended the day by stopping at the ice caves again because they are so beautiful. And the entire time, of course, Mt. Erebus was smoking and dominating the view.

Tomorrow we are going to Cape Royds to visit Shackleton's hut and hopefully see some penguins! Cross your fingers that the wildlife behaves. Speaking of birds, I love the skuas around here. When we are underwater we are surrounded by gorgeous living critters. But above the water, there isn't as much going on in terms of living organisms. Except for birds! And the skuas have arrived! These are a big gull with gorgeous markings on the wings. They love to eat and they appear to be very good predators (killing penguin chicks) and scavengers (eating anything dead around like seal pups, placentas, etc). I think they are totally cool birds.....

Skua!

Carnivorous sponge (the long white lines) at Evans Wall

Jennifer on the ice wall

Check out this link to see the ice bottom too: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaUnderwater#5542087190521661234

Little Razorback dives and Erebus Tongue ice caves!

Ahhhh....this has been a great week. It will get nuts again tomorrow because the rest of the crew will come back from New Harbor and we will dig into finishing sites here. We have about three weeks of hard core diving time left and a week to pack everything and then we are done! Jeez.

Yesterday Kevin and I decided to do a fun dive in the morning and a work dive in the afternoon. How lucky for us that this involved a two hour drive north towards Cape Evans. We passed the Erebus Tongue (a funky glacier) and stopped to checked out some ice caves. Then we puttered along in the Tucker (an awesome snocat) to Little Razorback Island. Be sure to turn up your volume with the video - I put in a bunch of video for you and in some the audio is more interesting than the video because you can hear the Weddell seals vocalizing!!

Julie heading into the ice caves

Hee hee - isn't this place AWESOME?? More ice cave pictures can be seen here (scroll to the bottom): http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaNovember
or here (these are Kevin's pictures, ice cave shots are at the bottom):
http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/2010_10_AntarcticaKevin#

We were diving right under this ice at Little Razorback

Kevin and a big crack in the ice

During this dive we heard tons of Weddell seals chattering back and forth - really neat sounds to hear while you are diving. We also headed up into a shallow spot (this was a first for us, we are usually down at 90 ft!!) and checked out brine tubes under the ice, ice cathedrals (Kevin swam in, I watched), and the best part - we saw a seal fight underwater! And I got it on video...so be sure to watch that one! There are a lot more videos from the dive here: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaUnderwater# Video seems to do much better with the low light than still photos. =)

Brine tubes under the ice

Kevin heading into the ice cathedral

Julie happy

Listen to this video! You can hear Weddell seals!

You can watch a seal fight here!

Weddell seals and great dives!

Kevin and I have been having a grand week back here in McMurdo. We have been diving at a site we will spend a lot of time at next week and mapping out the location of all of Paul’s old experiments (cages and transects and settling plates). The dive is awesome! I love the huge volcano sponges, you can see why in the photographs.

Nudibranchs mating

Here I am with a big volcano sponge!

Yesterday we took a break from the dives to head out to a spot called Turtle Rock. Stacy and Paul have both worked there in the past and we needed to drill two dive holes out there to start working. Turtle Rock is also totally surrounded by tidal cracks in the sea ice. These can be dangerous to cross, so we had to be very careful. Lucky for us, the driller that came with us is very experienced with sea ice conditions and we just followed behind him the entire time. BUT – with tidal cracks in the ice come seals. Turtle Rock was covered with mamma seals and their damn damn cute little fluffy pups. What an experience! And because Weddell seals have no predators on the ice they don’t care about you wandering around. The other fun sighting was a bird! I have finally gotten some great views of skuas – the one I saw was eating the placenta from a seal birth. Yummy! Sounds like a skua to me!

In the end we were not successful at drilling holes (we drilled a hole down 22 ft. and never hit water because the ice was so thick and there were too many dangerous cracks to get close to the other spot to drill). But the day was gorgeous and it was a real treat to spend some time with the seal pups. Be sure to turn on your volume up to watch the seal videos.

All those dark spots are seals!

New Harbor - Antarctica

My week in New Harbor was simply amazing. We worked so so hard, but the payback was awesome. Paul Dayton is a joy to work for, he is so excited about the work we do for him that you finish the day feeling like you did something awesome for him. Plus, who could complain about having to work in a place so gorgeous you can't believe your eyes? I loved waking up to views of Mt.Erebus smokin' everyday. Ahhhh....

A typical day might start with a 3am run on a skidoo out on the ice to fuel and check our generator that runs the "hotsy" (a machine that melts a hole in ice for divers and SCINI). Back to bed for a few hours and then grab some oatmeal before heading out for a morning dive. There was only one hut here and we were not doing much work out of it. We didn't do a ton of dives here because SCINI was doing most of the diver's work. SO I would either dive and collect stuff for Paul off of his old experiments OR I would be the scientist for the SCINI crew. I would record the waypoints of interest and help guide the SCINI pilots around experiments. If we were lucky there would be a break at 6 or 7pm for cocktails on the ice before we would head to dinner. Then we would work after dinner to clean up photos, draw underwater maps, bicker (this would be the chiefs), and maybe check email. The days were long and hard, but they felt good.

Typical transportation to a dive site

Kevin and Jennifer get ready to dive on a gorgeous day

Paul and Stacy having fun

Team meeting - David, DJ, Jennifer, Stacy, Bob, Paul, and Julie (Kevin took the pic)

On our last day in New Harbor, Kevin and I did a morning dive for Paul. When we finished the dive we headed off on a hike for a few hours to the Commonwealth Glacier. WOWWWW. This was a huge glacier that you could walk right up to (frozen solid compared to glaciers in Alaska). This hike was one of the best treats yet during my time here. You can see why from my photos....

The Commonwealth Glacier

Mt. Erebus

Kevin and I left New Harbor today, trading places with Tina and Kamille (they were in McMurdo last week). The rest of the team stays out there until next Monday. Kevin and I have some tasks to accomplish here - in fact we will be diving tomorrow at Hut Point (right by Discovery Hut). But the week will be fairly mellow with just the two of us here. I think we are both looking forward to that.

My pictures from New Harbor are here: http://picasaweb.google.com/111221596171793333099/AntarcticaNovember

Happy Birthday to my man

Happy almost birthday to my love! I wanted to post that early just in case the internet died again out here. You are the love of my life and I miss so.....

New Harbor field camp

The sea ice!

The camp

New Harbor is gorgeous! And now I've set foot on the continent of Antarctica (remember that McMurdo Station is actually on Ross Island just off the coast of the continent). The email here is super slow, so I'm not going to write much until we get back from the camp. I am supposed to be here through Monday.... we have views of Mt.Erebus from the camp, the sea ice is super knarly and it makes it fun to walk out to dive sites. SCINI has been doing most of the diving, tomorrow will be my first dive in New Harbor to look for some of Paul's old experiments. Today I mostly built roads through the ice for skidoos, marked possible sites for diving with flags, checked depths, drilled holes through the ice, fueled the various bits of equipment, and helped collect GIS data and photos from SCINI during a SCINI dive. Lots of work.....and lots of fun.