Summer is Coming, and Scott's Hut 10K

11/28

It was an absolutely gorgeous day so Elisha and I skate skied the Armitage loop over to Scott Base. Along the way we came across a cute little juvenile seal laying in the middle of the road. At Scott Base we met up with Linnah and Deany (from supply) and did a pressure ridge tour that Linnah led. The pressure ridges are basically frozen waves near to the shore. Due to the strong forces at play they create giant frozen walls and waves of ice, but in between are little pools of water and lots of seals. The ice in the pressure ridges takes on a beautiful blue hue, similar to a glacier

11/30

We again skied over to Scott base on the armitage loop, this time for American night, to have some beers and hang out with Mitch and some others.

12/1

Crary got to take a tour of LDB (NASA's long duration balloon facility). From this place, they launch these giant balloons 30 miles up into the air. When they are up above the atmosphere and in space, the balloons are as large as an NFL stadium. Because of the 24 hours of daylight, the polar winds that are circular, and the lack of people/countries in the area, this is an ideal place to launch. The daylight keeps the payload powered with solar powers, the circular wind allows for flights up to 60 days, and not having other countries around allows for easy recovery of the payload. They also launch in Sweden, but it's more difficult there b/c if it lands in Russia, they can't get it back. LDB studies all manners of things, and they typically launch 3 balloons each season. Due to budget cuts, they are launching just 1 this year. The payload this year will be investigating cosmic rays and neutrinos which are used to study how stars and planets are born and die and how they become black holes. They're also putting some bacteria on the flight that are common on humans and that would inevitably make it to Mars when humans make it there. They are curious how the bacteria survives with all of the radiation of outer-space.

12/3

I checked out a fat tire bike and biked on the snow road out to Willy Field and then to LDB, a total of 20 miles. It was a beautiful day and great for a bike ride. There are always superb views of Erebus, Mt. Terror, and the royal society mountains. While I was out biking, Elisha did some crafting and surprised me by decorating the room for Christmas, which was super nice!

12/6

We got a group of crary folks together and went to trivia night at gallagher’s bar. It was a lot of fun, and we did quite well considering none of us are great at pop culture. I think we finished 6^th out of 12 groups. It was a full day for us with mitch’s exercise class, volleyball, and trivia.

12/7

Today was another portion of the governor's cup between NZ and the USA: manhauling. 4 people pull a sled with one person on it. The route is on the sea ice from mcm to scott base on the cape armitage look, so about 3 miles. Elisha and I watched the start of it from up high in the crary library using the spotting scopes, so that was cool. The USA ended up winning both the men's and women's race.

With the budget cuts shuttles operate less frequently, so it’s been harder to get out to the snow roads to ski. We took advantage of the American night scott base shuttle, and skate skied out on the Willy Airfield road. 

Elisha surprised me with a large cardboard tree that she made, so now we have a Christmas tree in our room!

12/8

Carolyn reserved Hut 10 for her wool dying project, so several of us went over to hang out with her and do crafty/project things.

A new biology group arrived on station today. They are a collaboration between BYU and CSU. I recognized the head PI from CSU, Dianna Wall, because there is a very large photo of her in the Denver airport in front of a huge glacier as an advertisement for CSU.

12/10

Early this morning we ran the Scott Hut 10k, which goes around Scott's historic Discovery Hut. The 10k follows the same extremely hilly route as the the 5k and then adds the leg around discovery hut twice. It had been pretty nice weather recently, but last night it was windy and snowy, so Elisha wasn't sure if she'd run it. This morning it was clearish, but pretty chilly. 12F with a windchill of -2F. Elisha said she'd try it, and then if it was too cold just run into the dorm when the route went by it. But once she started, she got into it, and did the whole thing. She did great, finishing 3rd amongst women. I was feeling much better than I did during the turkey trot, though I still have a pretty good cough. But I felt really good running and did well, finishing 4th overall, and first in the over 30 division. I wasn't far behind the winners and probably could have been in the race for first but I hadn't wanted to push it too hard b/c of some muscle cramping I had had while exercising since I got sick and not wanting to cramp on the course. The race wasn't technically a 10k (=6.2 miles). My time was 42:10, which would be extremely fast for me for a 10k, and my watch measured the distance as 5.67 miles.

The had the annual McM craft fair today. As usual it's SO amazing how crafty and creative people are down here. I ended up buying a couple of cool ornaments that Shuttle Jen had made

The science talk tonight was given by 2 NASA scientists, Tom and Kelly, who are working on a project that not only maps ice extant across the globe but also ice depth to the nearest centimeter using green lasers (LIDAR) from a satellite that they are sending into orbit next year. They have to do some ground trothing, so they’re driving portions of the satellite’s path down here on snow cat with a highly precise GPS. When doing climate models and predicting ocean rise, it’s important to know as accurately as possible the depth of both continental and sea ice. They were both really good speakers and their project is interesting, but the coolest part is that in Greenland I was involved in ground trothing for their project. The ICESAT traverse I used to do on snowmobile was ground truthing for this NASA project. They showed some clips of summit science techs driving our gps on our transect, so that was really cool to be able to say, “hey, I helped out with that project” 

12/12/17

Well ignoring what the title of my post is, the last several days have been quite cold and snowy, and it seems as though summer has gone away.

daffy at scott base

skiing through the pressure ridges

erebus

road to LDB with erebus and mt terror

ICEBRIDGE basler

LDB camp

LDB camp galley

ob tube

jelly fish

at LDB

payload for one of the balloons

obtube from below

American manhauling team

American team finishing

kiwi team

That's me rounding Scott's historic discovery hut

rounding dicovery hut

Coming in 4th place

Elisha and me coming down the home stretch (I ran back to do the last km with her)

Elisha finishing

10k race start

running throught the dorms