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Letters Home from McMurdo Station

You don't need to be crazy to work here, but it helps...

Greetings from the land of ice and snow!

I'm just getting over a flu, referred to here affectionately as the "McMurdo Crud". It's the gift that keeps on giving. I've been sick for going on two weeks, with no end in sight. What a strange sensation it is to be simultaneously burning with fever and shaking from the extreme cold! They say that this has been an exceptionally cold October. I'd believe it. We had a few days where the temperature went down to -65 C when the wind chill is factored in (and believe me the wind chill DOES make a difference). The highs on most days have only reached about -10 or -15 C.

The weather notwithstanding, the experiments are going well. Paul has already completed several temperature studies. The new TDRs (temperature & depth recorders) are working well. They have a much higher depth resolution than the old ones and he can now see that our feathered people are coming up several times to the underside of the ice layer, presumably to catch fish. They must be eating a lot, because after diving for several hours, their stomachs look very, very full. The amount of guano produced also is an indication that the pickings have been good.

Some of the birds are very smart. They have learned out that the corks we put over the dive holes at night to stop the holes from freezing shut, also prevent them from diving in the morning. At least one bird climbs on the cork each morning and complains about this to any person who happens to pass by. The other day, one of the birds grabbed one of the handles on the cork and tried to drag it off the dive hole. They've got the system down very well.

This weather gives me a renewed appreciation of the penguins that live down here. Through it all of this they have been totally unfazed by the conditions, unlike this wimpy human being. When the temperatures really drop and the wind picks up, the birds huddle together to form a sort-of "scrum". You can see heat waves coming from the scrum. The birds take turns on who gets to be in the center. It's very democratic.

Most of the time, however, they sleep with their heads tucked under their wings or lie down in the soft snow. The snow is essential since it is far warmer than the sea ice. Snow is a surprisingly good insulator. We build a snow wall for them each day and add a layer of new, clean snow near the wall for them to sleep on. It's rather like mucking out a horse's stall. Unfortunately, the penguins love to eat snow, too, so the snow blocks needs constant renewal, no matter how large we cut them. The wall can also act as a wind shield for them.

A number of you have asked about the people that come to McMurdo. The percentage of the population (roughly 1000 at the height of the season) down here that are actual scientists is very small, only about 5 or 10%. The vast majority are support people. This includes everyone from the cooks to the computer support people to the mechanics, etc. Some of these support people come year after year. Many of them have colorful backgrounds. Most of them are very dedicated and work very long hours trying to make the research down here easier to do. It seems that the average age in McMurdo has grown considerably older than I remember it to be the last time I was here. I suppose that it is because the Navy has pulled out of McMurdo. The enlisted personnel for the Navy were quite young. Thirteen years ago, the average age was probably in the late twenties or early thirties. Now, I would say that it is in the late forties or early fifties. I thought that I'd describe a few of support people to you.

One of the key people in our lives is Ed. He's in charge of the snowmobiles. He works on them, he teaches the safety classes for them, and he is a general Mr. Fix-it. The other day, when the holes drilled in the sea ice were freezing faster than we could keep them chipped them out, he rounded up a small group of volunteers and came out with a chain saw to cut them back to a reasonable size. Ed spends roughly half his year down in McMurdo and half his year up on the ice sheet of Greenland. He's been doing this for years, eleven, I think. When he is home, which seems rare, he lives in the small town where the TV show, "Northern Exposure", was filmed in. I asked him if the inhabitants were really like those in the television series and he said that the series was a bit more colorful, but not by much.

The housekeeper in our dorm looks like someone's grandmother. That's exactly what Doris is, in fact. She and her husband retired about four years ago. He had been a plumber. Last year they thought it would be fun to come and work in McMurdo, so they hired on. They had such a good time that they returned again this year. The first year shocked their friends and family. Now, I guess they are used to it and accept Doris and Ed's yearly trek down here as part of their interesting quirks.

There are a number of helicopter pilots in McMurdo. Helos are used for a number of projects. All of the helo pilots are Vietnam War veterans, with the requisite number of hair-raising stories to tell. Most of them are a little, shall we say, eccentric. As John, one of the pilots, said the other day, you don't need to be crazy to work down here, but it helps. John had a rich uncle (as in Sam) that taught him how to fly a helicopter and he hasn't stayed still since. Most of these pilots fly part of the year down here and then the rest of the year out of Galveston or New Orleans, flying workers to and from the oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico.

We have a professional SAR team (search and rescue). Most of the SAR people are professional mountain guides and tour leaders when they aren't down here. They also teach the Snow Survival classes and the Sea Ice Safety classes. Ty is one of the members of this team. He speaks fluent Nepalese. When he is not in McMurdo, he guides tourists around the Annapurna. Sounds like an interesting life.

I guess the last person I should mention is Father Brendan, the Catholic priest from New Zealand. He's young, looks like a lumberjack, and has, not too surprising, a degree in Forestry Management. I think that this is the second or third time that he has come to McMurdo. He wants to do a mission in Columbia, but his local bishop keeps sending him down here. Strange and mysterious are the ways of the Lord. Either that or the local bishop has a sense of humor.

Okay, I hope that gives you a taste of the type of people down here. There are lots and lots more. Oh, by the way, for those of you that do research in meteoritics, Robbie Score is in charge of the Crary Lab in McMurdo. You might remember her. She was one of the curators of the meteorite collection down at Johnson Space Center.

I hope that Halloween was fun. It's a little hard to be scared by things that go bump in the night when the sun doesn't set for Halloween. I guess that's why you never see a vampire down here this time of year.

Be well.

Kathi