Meyer-Kaiser lab

"There is no lake at Camp Green Lake. There was once a very large lake here, the largest lake in Texas. That was over a hundred years ago. Now it is just a flat, dry wasteland...This isn't a Girl Scout camp." - Louis Sachar in Holes Fishing in our hole. You'll notice the fishing rods are pretty small. We don't need to be casting long distances, so we're actually using children's fishing rods, and they come in all sorts of cool patterns like Barbie and Spiderman.  My leather-gloved hand slid into the space between the handle and the box. I straightened my back and remembered to lift with my legs. In front of me, Mark was doing the same. I had insisted I could carry the box with him, but now I was kind of regretting it. That thing was heavy. Like a family of red-coated gypsies, we caravaned down the snowy footpath onto the sea ice, carrying boxes and dragging sleds and holding oversized drill bits in our hands. It was just a 10-minute walk out t...

The Hägglund on the sea ice Friends, I told you there was a lot of required safety training in Antarctica, and I'm just going to go ahead and repeat it: there is a lot of required safety training in Antarctica. I had my last day of required training today, so I am officially qualified and ready for research! Our session today was on the sea ice in McMurdo Sound. We translated all the theoretical information we had been given into practical skills. It was an awesome introduction to the sea ice! Riding in the back of the Hägglund We set out from McMurdo Station in a giant vehicle called a Hägglund. It's basically two metal boxes attached with a tow hitch, rolling on tracks like a tank. The Hägglunds were originally made for the Swedish army, and they do not stop for anything. Granted, the ride inside is significantly less than comfortable as a result of the bellowing engine and hard, non-ergonomic seats, but the Hägglund gets you from A to B across the sea ice li...

“It looks like an old mining town, but it feels like a college campus.” A group of artists at McMurdo drew this summary of the field training class a few years ago. Ben smiled at his own cleverness as everyone in the room chuckled. The bearded, cheery-faced instructor had asked us to introduce ourselves by stating our name, home institution, and a weird observation about McMurdo Station. His observation was spot on. We were seated in a classroom on the upper floor of the Science Support Center. On the white board in front of us, another instructor had scrawled the caption “Risk Management” and drawn a graph to accompany it. The space between the axes, labeled “Consequences” and “Probability,” was shaded with diagonal areas of green, yellow, orange, and red. As you may imagine, working in Antarctica requires a lot of safety training. Three whole days of it – and that’s just for standard tasks. The training here is much more comprehensive than anything I’ve received in...

After arriving in Antarctica on our " ice flight ," my fellow trainees and I got settled in at McMurdo Station. The station is pretty big - actually the size of a small town - and I've been told there are about 700 people here right now. I wasn't quite sure what the station would look like, but in many ways, it reminds me of Longyearbyen and Ny-Ålesund , stations I have worked at before in Sval bard. In fact, McMurdo Station is at 77° S, an analagous latitude to Longyearbyen, which is at 78 ° N. I never thought in my life that I would be able to use the phrase "typical polar research station," but that's exactly what McMurdo looks like. Plain, multi-colored buildings surrounded by unnamed dirt roads, nestled on the side of a mountain surrounded by ice. That's a typical station. Scientists and staff at McMurdo stay in dormitories, and everyone eats out of the same cafeteria in the middle of town. There's a chapel, two gyms, and three bars.  The...

The C-130 that took us to the ice I rolled a small cylinder of yellow foam between my thumb and forefinger, then tilted my head and slid the earplug into my ear. Across from me, I could see my fellow trainees doing the same. I leaned back into the cargo net that served as the back of my seat. I was on board a C-130 and would soon be airborne, bound for McMurdo Station. In the plane with James and Ewa. Photo by Harriet Alexander. When you go to Antarctica, they say you are "going to the ice." We had been warned that the flight would not be comfortable, being in a military aircraft and all. I have to admit the conditions were not what I was used to, but I was perfectly comfortable. We sat with our backs against the side walls of the aircraft and faced each other in two rows. At first I was worried I would be too hot because we had to fly in all of our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, but I ended up just using my parka as extra padding for my back and it was fine. We w...

With my mom and grandpa on the interisland ferry in 2012 After getting everything arranged at the Antarctic Centre yesterday, we had the afternoon off. I was eager to see downtown Christchurch, so two of my fellow trainees and I borrowed bikes from the hotel and set off toward the city center. The last time I was in Christchurch was in 2012, on a trip with my mom and grandpa. I had been at a conference in Wellington and met up with them afterwards for a short vacation. Together, we took the interisland ferry from Wellington and explored New Zealand's south island. I have a lot of great memories from that trip. Christchurch suffered a massive earthquake in 2011, and I remember when we visited it in 2012, most of the city center was still destroyed. The shopping district was shut down except for a few stores that had been set up in shipping containers. There was a makeshift outdoor dance club with speakers run by a modified coin-operated washing machine. There were large area...

The facade of the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch. The U.S. Antarctic Program has offices inside. Friends, I am in Christchurch, New Zealand! I'm actually here for just a few days, and then I will fly to McMurdo Station, Antarctica. I am traveling as part of a training program for early-career researchers in Antarctica, and I am beyond stoked to be participating. As you are aware, much of my field work so far has taken me north to the Arctic , but I have never been to the southern polar regions. I am full to bursting with excitement and cannot wait to leave my footprints on the Antarctic continent. I met most of my fellow course participants at the airport, since we were picked up and brought to our hotel together. Since arriving, we have spent our time recovering from jetlag, getting to know each other, and preparing to deploy to McMurdo. We visited the International Antarctic Centre yesterday to do the bulk of the preparations. Laptops had to be checked out...