Weather: Cold, with very low winds. Clear skies to partly cloudy. Temps -55F with windchill near -80F.

Since the winds were low, I had to go outside for a cold weather run. It’s rare that winds are steadily below 5mph and that makes a huge difference in staying warm. Put in about 7 miles toward my ‘Run to McMurdo’ challenge! Roads are still nicely compacted (although there are some decent drifts you need to look out for). Now I only have about 820 miles to go!

It’s an interesting experience, running in this cold… I’m not sure how best to describe it. Running is usually pretty meditative for me, but this is different. Maybe because of the balaclava, and hat, and goggles. The sounds you hear are different than usual. The crunch of the snow is muffled, the sound of your breath amplified as it rushes past the frozen edge of the facemask. I feel more machine than human, like a steam locomotive each exhalation creating a huge puff of frozen steam. The feeling of being fully covered, some parts of the body frozen, others soaked in sweat, is a bit disconcerting. As my pants start to freeze, I become slightly nervous. I know that if I stop running, I will certainly freeze entirely within a few minutes. Knowing how to thermalize properly is difficult. Not to freeze, and not to sweat. It’s a fine line. Another difficult decision is whether or not to completely cover one’s face. I feel claustrophobic with my mouth covered, so I leave a small hole through which to breathe. This, of course, means breathing directly in -55F air (or whatever temperature it is). The cold air intake is brutal not only on my lungs, but on my lips, and my tongue as well. My mouth generates more saliva to keep it from freezing, but that makes it harder to breathe, so I work a delicate balance trying not to freeze my tongue but also not choking on saliva. One of the worst parts, which I have still not figured out, is how to keep my goggles from freezing over. Today I made a nose protector out of duct tape (to try and keep the exhaled moisture from flowing up into the goggles, and to keep the wind off of my nose), but that still didn’t seem to work. Even just sweat from my head underneath the goggles will tend to freeze up in them, so I’m not sure how to fix that.. and I need to protect my eyes/face from the cold as well, so I need something there!

As far as work goes, the telescope is telescoping very smoothly right now. Yay!

Weather: Getting colder. We have dipped below -50F with windchills below -80F at times. Generally clear skies and light winds.

I went skiing with some folks on Sunday, got about 6miles. It’s a slow slog at times, but can be kind of meditative once you get into a groove.

After a small readout hiccup that kept me up most of Saturday/Sunday, things have been going very smoothly. People around station have been going all-in on the ‘Triple Crown’ challenge and we’ve removed most of the tables/chairs in the galley to give us more space (and a cool little lounge area).

A neat little schematic has been sent around which explains the coming sunset and twilight periods:

As we get settled into winter, I am beginning to do some data analysis as well as get into a workout schedule. There are also different sports/events scheduled each night. It’s really easy to be active here… but with that comes the need to eat – A lot! I still have not gained any weight despite being in the gym everyday… I guess I’ll have to go for 6 meals a day!

Cheers!

Weather: Cold, windy. Temps near -40F , winds nearing 20knts (~10m/s) ((~20mph)), wind chill -70F. Lots of snow blowing along the ground, lots of snow building up behind any structure. The sun continues it’s descent and is now at about 12 degrees elevation.

Today was a very smooth workday, observations went on without a hitch, I volunteered in the dish pit, we had an all-hands meeting to discuss the coming winter, and the work schedule, including house mouse (housekeeping) and dish pit, and we greased the elevation gears of the telescope.

Here’s a video of some blowing snow, just to show you how quickly snow can accumulate when there is something to obstruct it; even small chunks of ice will build up large drifts. Already today there were some ~2ft deep drifts along the walkway out to DSL — https://drive.google.com/file/d/1L53xLIrNuNzxyi8KVyxtUHlgUpaGhL8y/view?usp=sharing

As promised, here are the videos (super low-res, sorry) videos of the EHT optics installation from a few weeks ago. WARNING: Strong language, view discretion is advised :P, and also I did not edit the video at all, so there will be plenty of boring parts to skip over!

Installing the crane

Lifting the Secondary Mirror

Lifting the Tertiary Mirror

Installing the Secondary

Installing the Tertiary

Let me know if there are any problems with the videos.

Time to go watch The Thing (all 3 versions!!!).

Cheers!

Last day of Summer!!

The last LC-130 flight will take the remaining few summer crew people out in a few hours (mostly fire-crew who needed to stay here to bring in the LC-130s). Yesterday more than 60 summer people left, and the station is now preparing to move into winter schedule.

The weather has been getting colder over the past week as well, and we’ve had some steady winds keeping the windchill quite cold. Today we were nearly at -40F with windchill down near -70F.

As we move into winter, the station feel is much different. Obvious differences are the lack of people, the quiet hallways and galley, and the lack of heavy machinery driving around outside. The attitude of those left behind is general excitement to begin the winter. There are tons of rec activities planned already, including, of course, the annual start of winter tradition of watching The Thing – a movie about an alien shape shifter taking over an Antarctic research station. Something I’m excited about is the so-called South Pole Triple Crown; a fitness goal for the winter season where we strive to complete 3 fitness challenges (see image below).

The three activities, to be completed before station open in November, include:

Distance: Running, biking, rowing, or stair-climbing to McMurdo, which is a distance of 835 miles; approximately 3 miles per day assuming 250 days.

Weight: Lifting the equivalent weight of what the LC-130’s brought to South Pole this summer (something like 1.75 Million lbs), which amounts to about 7000lbs per day assuming 250 days (which is actually not that much, though it seems like it).

Elevation: Climbing the elevation equivalent of Mt. Everest using the stairs in ‘The Beer Can’, which is basically a cylindrical aluminum stairwell that runs from the station down to the arches underneath the ice. 542 beer cans — about 2 per day assuming 250 days.

Running on the treadmill is the worst… so we will have to see if I can adapt. I imagine outside running will become very difficult once the groomed paths blow over with snow, it gets dark, and the temperatures continue to drop.

Anyway, that’s about it for now. We are awaiting the last flight to leave before we can officially celebrate the beginning of winter with The Thing!

Since the sun is still up, it doesn’t feel much different from Summer, just a bit quieter, and I’m not jammed in a corner of the SPT area in the B2 science lab 🙂

Weather: Cold, clear, windy. Temperatures around -30F, windchill -60F.

Cold and getting colder. Winter is fast upon us now. People are clearing out of the station and outbound passenger lists are long. We’re getting quite a few flights each day now (hopefully) carrying pax in and (mostly) out, bringing in cargo and taking out waste.

It was neat watching the planes today; I saw one land and one take off, all within a few minutes of each other. I have a video, hopefully I can upload a reduced resolution version soon.

Station officially closes in 5 days. Most pax are out on the 13th, including the rest of the SPT crew.

Excitement for winter is growing… all we need now is the rest of our food for winter, and our shipment of end-of-year freshies (which is hopefully on the flight tonight!).

I am slowly uploading video chunks of the EHT optics install that we did a few weeks ago. I have to break the videos up so that I can upload them within the satellite pass. Hopefully in a few days I’ll have the whole ~hr long process uploaded and can share that… not too exciting, but perhaps interesting to see.

Weather: Crappy observing weather; overcast but not windy today. Temperature: -26C nearly no wind chill. Quite pleasant outside, except that there is very low contrast.

Big news: my hockey sticks did arrive! My ridiculous packing job worked!

I tried out my roller blades on the gym floor… they kind of worked, though I can’t turn very well since the floor is some slick rubber tiles (see rubbery tiles in above image).

I decided to go out for a run today, though it became more of a hike, as I went off the beaten path for a while; following a flag line down the visibility markers (1km spaced large black flags used for measuring visibility). It’s actually quite terrifying because the snow can settle in a weird way, and kind of collapse a bit around you.. Makes a creepy noise like the ground is about to give-way, but it just settles by an inch or so. It’s also really hard to run in, because you sink in 6-8 inches so it’s like constantly running stairs. The low contrast today was another difficulty, because I couldn’t tell what the level of the snowtop was, and was bumbling around over sastrugi and falling into softer snow.

The flagline I ran down is the one followed by cross-continent skiers as they approach the South Pole and leads to the tourist camp (which has been cleaned up for the season for about 3 weeks now).

About 2 km out past the tourist camp, at the edge of the dark sector is a welcome sign for travelers that I had never seen before!

It was extremely difficult to get my phone to auto-focus since everything was so flat white, but I did get one shot from the end of the visibility flagline. It was definitely an interesting vantage point for the facilities at Pole.

I suppose skis would make traveling on this unpacked snow a bit easier, but I can only imagine what spending MONTHS traveling across the continent would be like. It was really tiring just hiking the ~4 miles I did today, and trying to stay thermally equilibrated was a challenge too. I had my jacket off most of the time since it wasn’t windy, but as my legs tired and I had to walk more often, I cooled off pretty quickly. I was also only wearing trail-running shoes, so my feet were pretty cold by the end (though the ice that forms on my socks helps insulate my feet :P) .

Tomorrow is the last brunch of the year 😥 . In Winter, the galley staff has off on Sundays, so we have to cook for ourselves… it’s a harsh continent, I know.

Next week marks the last week of summer here at Pole, and flights will start shuttling people out in large numbers; we’ll have to lose about 100 people. Saturday February 15th is the last flight out. Then, the station is closed to LC-130s. We still have a few smaller planes passing through for about 1 week after station close; stopping to fuel-up and continue on their way up to South America, and on then on up to Canada.

Weather: Unusual winds blew warm air and moisture over the mountains and up to Pole. We even got up to -6F today(!!!) which is crazy warm for mid-February! It has been cloudy and windy for the past few days so temps are on the warmer side. This afternoon we had -26F with a -44F windchill.

Yesterday, Brad (SPT) and Junhan (EHT) left Pole. Today Maclean left. We have about 1 week until station close so things are getting busy in preparation. Multiple flights per day are landing to bring in supplies and take out PAX and waste (even in some pretty crappy weather).

It was a tough goodbye. We had built a solid friendship after going through team-building, EHT training, and a few weeks at Pole.

Soon there will only be myself and Geoff left for SPT, and about 40 others on station to keep things running over the long 9 month winter.

Tonight is the Super Bowl viewing party, and there will be chicken wings served! I’m excited for some yummy bar foods (don’t really care much about the game). I think most people on station know the outcome, but there are a few people trying to keep it on lockdown.

I finally received all my mail yesterday (things that I shipped in November), so now I have soap! And the 4 day shower/laundry ban has been lifted so I can also shower tonight!

Weather: Colder, -30F with windchills nearing -55F. We did have a day or two of high winds and clouds a few days ago but generally the weather has been nice; sunny with few clouds and light winds.

We are now less than two weeks from station close; nominally on Feb 14th. We had our first winter-over meeting where we met the station manager and talked about the winter ahead. Wayne White is this year’s manager (and was also last year’s manager, and will be the first person to be the winter manager at the South Pole Station 3 times).

Some of the other SPTers leave later this week, and we are preparing to finalize the summer work and return things to a stable configuration that Geoff and I will maintain for the winter. We did our last EHT observation yesterday (a mock VLBI schedule — where we pretend we are part of the extended telescope network and observe sources on a tight time schedule). We will turn off their electronics, and cryogenics until later in March when we do the real observations.

The temperatures have been steadily decreasing. We’re now around -35F with windchill down near -60F. It has been nice and sunny though, which is a plus!

This week has been busy with EHT training, and mock observations. In order for the EHT receiver to observe, we have to install special secondary and tertiary mirrors on the telescope cabin which pick-off the beam from the primary 10m dish. This means that we’re outside on top of the receiver cabin for about an hour each time we set up or take down the EHT optics (which we’ve done twice and need to do one more time next week).

I still haven’t started wearing my full ECW (extreme cold-weather) gear yet, so I got pretty cold while up there… maybe next week will be a good time to start wearing at least the boots.

Once the optics are installed, we can begin to observe sources in order to calibrate the EHT camera’s pointing offsets and make sure that the signal chain is doing what we expect. During the real observations, we will want to calibrate pointing on sources nearby the target source; but these past two days have been to use sources semi-evenly distributed around the sky.

Below are some photos from Brad Benson during the optics installation process (the internet was not cooperating, so I’ve had to reduce many of these images’ resolutions to the suggested ‘thumbnail’ size…) :

I also took a head-mounted video of the 2nd installation we did a few days later. It’s about an hour long, so there’s no hope of uploading the entire thing, but I might try to cut out clips, or photos showing climbing the ladder, and looking out from the boom.

Weather is calm and getting colder. -25F today.

Yesterday was Science Sauna Sunday, our weekly sauna session and since the winds were nice and low, we decided to do a Pole run.

A Pole run is a popular event here, where one enjoys the heat of the sauna and then runs out to the geographic pole in their swim suit (or whatever attire they’re in in the sauna). The best way to enjoy a pole run is to do a few cycles between sauna and outside before the run. On the last sauna cycle before you go out, you endure as long as possible so that your body absorbs as much heat as you’re willing to endure.

With the sauna cranked up to 220 F, and a few rounds of water on the coals, we endured as much as we could. Outside temps were probably around -25F, so I don’t think we quite managed to get a 250 degree differential, but it was still a nice run and we were able to take it easy and hang around the sign to get some pics.

After the pictures, with shorts frozen solid and hair white with frost, we made our way back to the station for a quick warmup in the sauna, then to some much needed showers.

Tomorrow, we perform some practice EHT observations. This includes setting up the pick-off mirrors and observing some bright sources (planets, mostly). Should be a busy and interesting day!

Cheers!