Ringing in the New Year at the bottom of the world: still no polar bears...

1-2-13.

We of course rung in 2013 with style down here in Antarctica.  The main activity New Year's Eve was Icestock.  McMurdo's version of Woodstock.  Icestock first starts out fairly tame with a chili cook-off at 4pm and some mellower music.  All the chili's were amazing with my favorite being the Kiwi's who had a sweet tasting chili.  Shortly thereafter, the alcohol comes out and the music ramps up and all the dancing begins. This year even featured a flash mob.  Also around 8pm (but it feels like it's much later) the roasted whole pigs come out as well as the bratwursts.  It's a bit of a break from the dancing and then it jumps right back into it and goes until 1am.  Of course most people are costumed out.  It was colder than last year, but that didn't really stop people from getting dressed up.  I loved Mitch's outfit the most I think.  I also loved Aunt Karen's icicle outfit.  Elisha went as a woodstockafarian and I had my sweet pink dancing pants and silk shirt (somehow managed to put long johns under both and squeeze into those women's size 10 dance pants)  

The next day was gorgeous and super warm so Elisha and I went for a bike ride.  We biked out to hut point to look for penguins and then we mountain biked the 2 bikeable single tracks on the station.  First we biked the ob hill loop and then we biked the new Hillary trail down to scott base.

As I have mentioned in previous blogs, we haven't had a C-17 cargo plane arrive since November.  On top of that, the few, much smaller, LC-130's that are supposed to come in have not been able to land very often.  The weather here has been super warm, warmer than normal, mixed with a dust storm that hit the snow which also helps to warm it up.  Because of this the snow runway is trashed.  It's slushy.  Thus, the planes, even on skis, can't get enough speed to take off without burning too much fuel to make it to New Zealand (or the South Pole or other field stations for that matter).  The road out there is also pretty nasty, so it's been rather taxing on a super reduced shuttles group.  Anyways, because of the utter lack of planes, cargo in Christ Church is super backed-up.  What this means is that only the most important things are making it down: Science Cargo and people.  But even some of our grantee scientists were bumped and sat in Christchurch for weeks.  So of course the less important things: mail and freshies (fruits and vegetables) are definitely not coming.  Luckily, I had prepared for this.  I grabbed lots of bananas while we have them and Elisha and I froze them.  We haven't seen fresh fruit or vegetables in ages, but our banana smoothies sure have been tasty!

1/7/13

This past weekend I organized what I called the "All Trails" hike.  I had been wanting to do all of the recreation trails in the McMurdo area in one fell swoop.  Elisha was on board with the idea, but turned out my whole insanity group (Monica Magari, Zach Andrews from Supply, and Mitch) wanted to do it.  Last Sunday was gorgeous, so it turned out perfect.  After a tasty brunch, we headed first out to Hut Point where we watched a couple adelie penguins jumping in and out of the water in a crack on the sea ice.  From there we hiked the Hut Point Ridge Trail for nice views along the coast before connecting to the trailhead for castle rock trail.  From there we hiked up to castle rock and climbed up to the rock where we enjoyed trail mix and cheese that we had brought as well as what we call our recovery drink: coors light.  From there we hiked down to the base of the kiwi ski hill (which I call the ski-wi resort).  From there we walked out to Pegasus/LDB road and onto Scott Base.  From Scott Base we headed up the steep new trail, the hillary trail, to the top of the pass and then connected on to the ob hill loop.  The ob hill loop is perhaps my favorite and goes around ob hill with some cool view of the gorgeous blue melt pools on the sea ice.  You can also watch the seals sitting around out there.  From ob hill loop, we connected to the ob hill trail for our last push to the top.  Once at the top we celebrated with another beer and then headed down to feast on frosty boy ice cream back at base as we had missed dinner.  The whole hike is somewhere between 16 and 19 miles.  We left about noon and returned back to base at 7:30.

1/9/13

Yesterday, I had the opportunity to get trained for the room with a view morale trip.  Being part of science support, we are trained with snowmachines, so we get asked to be trip leaders for this morale trip called room with a view.  It is a 10 mile out 10 mile back snowmobile trip to this area that has great views of the delbridge islands as well at Mt Erebus.  Unfortunately it was snowing and foggy, so we didn't get the views of Erebus, but riding out on a snowmobile is always fun.  And the best part was that Shuttle Spring (Now F-STOP Spring) was our trainer, so that was extra special for me as I love her and miss hanging out with her.  The other lab assistant Abe and the Research Associate Liz were the other 2 people on the training.  This coming friday I will be leading a night tour out there for some people on nightshift who will be getting a morale trip.  I'm hoping for better weather this time!

Some pics are included below from the events described above as well as from things discussed in the last blog: gingerbread making, Christmas Dinner, Scott Base Skirt Party, Ob hill uphill run. MAAG, and Crary Staff photos

the last bit of castle rock.  The top 3 pictures are the insanity group at the first cross at hut point starting out big trail hike.  And one doing Diamond Jumps one of the insanity exercises

Zach and his celebratory drink

mitch with his recovery formula

doing moves from our Insanity workouts

ski-wi: the kiwi ski hill

monica, mitch, Elisha, and me onthe way down

beautiful meltwater pools on the ob hill loop

the group (+monica magari) from our camper trip in NZ: Aunt Karen, Monica, Elisha, Jerod, Me

They had tasty pig roasts at ice stock!

Elisha hitting the singletrack of McMurdo

the hippy preparing drinks for the music fest

What we get to look at during mass at the chapel of the snows.  It's hard to see but gorgeous Mt. Discovery and the Royal Society range are visible beyond the window

The new zealand camper crowd at ice stock.  Shafer dressed as an icicle

coffee made my carpenters

We saved bananas for the long no freshies bc no flights period and froze them.  Now we are enjoying post ski and bike banana smoothies

on top of castle rock

The insanity crew on top of Ob hill

Cross to Cross. From the discovery hut Cross to the Ob Hill Cross

love the color of that water

for a place so obsessed with safety, they have an interesting lack of helmets on the base

Elisha and I as shot by some scientists

Mitch and the Research Associate Liz

Mitch had my favorite get-up for Icestock

apparently Elisha thought so too

A flash mob broke out at Ice STock

And of course Jerod knows how to enchant a lady by his dancing

my Suite-mate Kevin welcoming the closing act as they road up in the terra bus

Stef, Elisha, Me, Bev, and Abe

Matt and I took pig ribs to go

Apparently the "amazon women" (6ft plus) were still too short to see the stage

hiking to castle rock

the chili cook-off

The ladies LOVE mitch: Mindy, Mitch, Bamma, Sue, Trisha, and Kris

Crary Staff photo

Crary Staff Christmas photo.  We had a white Christmas

Our Gingerbread waste bin construction crew

Our "nice" gingerbread waste bins

our "naughty" gingerbread waste bins

Elisha and I at Christmas Dinner

Christmas Dinner: Lobster, Steak Wellington, Prim rib, Duck, and plenty of desserts

One of the MAAG games

McMurdo themed gingerbread house

Travina and Elijah at the scott base skirt party

My suite-mate Kevin won Miss Ross Island 2012

walking the runway

skirt party at scott base

obhill run.  I'm in the blue top to the left of the guy in yellow in this photo

approaching the top of obhill

Ice Stock 2013

Elisha and I welcoming in the new year



all the finishers on top of ob hill