Antarctic conservation blog archive

George, Monday 5 July 2010

Temperature: -31°C
Wind Speed: 10 knots
Temp with wind chill: approximately -45°C
Moonrise: n/a
Moonset: n/a

Yesterday I had a very special day. A four man team from the American Antarctic Research Station McMurdo and New Zealand’s Scott Base were going on a scientific field trip in a five-seater Hagglund vehicle – a Swedish-built snow tank. They offered the remaining seat to the Antarctic Heritage Trust as the trip aimed to reach Captain Scott’s hut at Cape Evans. After drawing names from a hat, I found myself lucky enough to be packing my ECWs (extreme cold weather gear).

From left to right: Steven, Science technician; Georgina, AHT conservator; Matt, carpenter; John, the man with the drill from McMurdo; Tom, Field Support and Base Manager © S. Sun/Antarctica New Zealand

We travelled out across the ice field, an area of the frozen Ross Sea, winding our way carefully along a marked route using GPS, avoiding known areas of thin ice and tide-cracks. The weather began to deteriorate, and as the wind whipped up flurries of ice and snow around our vehicle we lost visibility.

Contacting the weather people at McMurdo via radio, the forecast was grim, and so we decided against pushing on to Cape Evans, instead setting up the scientific recording equipment where we were. Two test holes were drilled, showing the ice to be a suitable 1.5m thick and then we erected a probe to measure the rate and extent of the growing sea ice which will stay in place for a year.

The newly-erected probe, set up to measure growth of sea-ice over a year. The black box is a recording device. © S. Sun/Antarctica New Zealand

But the weather here is fickle and instead of the predicted blizzard, the wind died down as soon as we began work and everything became perfectly still. It was quite extraordinary being in such an expanse of moonlit ice, and after so many months in the comfort of Scott Base, it impressed on me again what an eerily beautiful and quite desolate place Antarctica can be.

Panoramic view with Mt Erebus and Hagglund © Tom Arnold/Antarctica New Zealand

Posted in Antarctica, Climate & weather, Environment, McMurdo, Scott Base

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