Living on Ice

SANAE Station, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica

Day 8; January 30, 2009; Vesleskaervet, Dronning Maud Land, Antarctica
Average Daily Temperature: 15.26˚ F
Average Daily Wind Speed: 22.82 mph
Feels Like: -18.97˚ F

My first day at SANAE felt a bit like the first day of school. The splendid, albeit institutional, accommodations coupled with the rules and safety regulations orientation had me oscillating between the pure excitement of being were I was, and the childhood irrational fear that that arose when the first school bus of the year peaked around the bend. But the mood of the base, and of the fantastic people who live and work here, was quite jovial, welcoming, and intimate. With only 80 people on the base, it was hard to feel like an outsider for very long.

The base is run on cooperation and collaboration—it wouldn’t function otherwise. We all have cleaning duties to help distribute the general workload of running such an immense undertaking in the middle of the lonely continent. Upon waking, I made my way down to the dining room for breakfast. Ross Hofmeyr, the Base Commander for the 2008 season, which is just coming to an end, very apologetically said that he was putting me on the morning’s schedule for what’s known as “skivvies,” and my task was to clean the dining room throughout the day’s meals. Having only had 5 hours sleep after the long day of travel, I was a bit downhearted to take on a project. Yet, there is really nothing like cleaning to make you feel like you are a part of a place. Thus, as I set about straightening cereal boxes and learning the particular ways to wash dishes and floors in an environment that requires conservation of water and reduction of waste, I felt myself settling in to my curious new home on the ice.

Water consumption and waste production are very serious matters in Antarctica. The Antarctic Treaty has very strict rules as to how to exist sustainably in this environment with as little contamination as possible. Absolutely everything you bring to the continent must come back out with you. This includes all trash, food scraps, and even human excrement. Grey and black water are processed here in the waste facility in the lower level, and undergo normal treatment before they are stored in large containers that are marked “Return to South Africa”. They will be dragged by tractor to the coast, loaded onto the ship there in late February, and brought back to South Africa for final disposal.

Water here is melted from the snow around the base by a smelting machine that people here call “the smelly.” Everyone must volunteer their time to shovel snow into the hole at the top of the machine, as this can only be done manually. Our sole source of water is through this process, so if winds are high and conditions make it difficult to accomplish this task, then we go on high water alert, and no unnecessary water consumption is allowed. In normal water availability, showers are still limited to every other day, and laundry requires sign up days in advance, and is limited to 4 people twice a week.

The base itself is a three-segment structure, denoted by the letters A, B and C , all of which are connected by indoor links. Sleeping quarters are upstairs in the A and B blocks, and science labs and research offices are on the main floor below. C block is mostly the utility rooms, the generators, and at the far end is the helicopter pad. But there is also a library, a pool hall, a bar, a sauna, a media room, a gym, and, of course, wireless internet throughout the base. Homemade meals (although all are fashioned from frozen or canned foods) are served 3 times a day, but then there is also “pie” at 10:30am (always fresh made!) and “tea” at 4pm. For those who think I’m roughing it, I must confess that as long as I’m up here at the main base, I cannot claim anything of the sort. Our mobile base, however, will not be so well endowed with amenities.

The first order of business after my cleaning stint was setting up our offices. A long 24 foot desk built into the wall would be long enough to accommodate all four of us ITASC crew. As I started pulling out my almost 80 pounds of electronic gear, I was stopped suddenly by the view out my two windows. I have the far corner of the building, and so I see both the easterly and southerly directions.

Realizing that I was never going to get used to the breathtaking landscape, I just sat a while and watched as the wind carried the top layer of unconfined snow up the long incline. Things that happen here seem to be somehow imbued with a sense of infinity. The longer you watch, the deeper into time you go.

ICEPAC, our mobile field base

In the afternoon we all four piled onto a skidoo and headed to ICEPAC, our mobile base 1 kilometer away down the gently down-sloping ice field behind SANAE base. Firstborn, with the generous help of many people from the base, had already erected the geodesic structure and the tarps and initial insulation were intact. The design is incredible—the slightly oblong shape, and the manner in which it is secured under the snow and ice below, keeps it completely steady and stable. The black outer layer and even the first layers of insulation keep it substantially warmer than the outside air.

We checked the wind generator and the solar panels, as well as the weather station, and then tried out our fancy ice saws. Amazed at how easily they slice through the packed snow and ice, we cut the first few blocks in only a couple of minutes—we would be able to construct an igloo in no time at all! After picking the igloo site, which would become the outhouse for our mobile base, we laid down the first two slabs and then promptly sat down on the ice to have a beer.

The interesting thing about drinking a beer outdoors in the Antarctic is that the longer it takes you to drink it, the colder it gets. As with anything here, if it is exposed to the open air, it drops in temperature rapidly. At first we had put them in the snow to try to chill them, but even after 30 minutes they were still only just slightly cooler than room temperature—because the snow actually insulates the bottle.

Hurrying back to SANAE to catch the end of dinner, and then back to our office to catch up on emails, I prepared for what would be my first art-making in Antarctica. At this time of year here, the sun descends toward the southern horizon at around midnight and then rises again shortly thereafter. Tonight was the last night that it didn’t actually fall below the horizon, so I wanted to document the light in eight directions: north, south, east, west, northeast, northwest, southeast, southwest. The light would be slightly different in intensity and color depending on what direction I faced, and I wanted to capture the full surround of this phenomena.

To accomplish this piece, I decided to shoot it from the rooftop of the SANAE base, where I would have the best 360-degree view of the horizon. The panorama was remarkable up there, and the clouds and snow mist in the distance created an incredible array of warm sunset colors, mostly in the pink hues, although I did see a bit of subtle lavender and hot orange as well. The snow seems to soak up the hues, and in fact requires that I reconsider something I said in my very first blog, when I was imagining coming to Antarctica. I said that my mind was abound with all the possible permutations of white. Yet now that I’m here experiencing the light as it changes minute by minute, I realize that I’ve, in fact, seen almost no white in Antarctica. Every surface of snow and ice is suffused with the ambient colors of the sun’s rays refract through the air particulate and ice crystals—everything white, holds light.

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