86.80033 deg S, 54.45187 deg E 3151 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 23 to - 34 °C We spent much of the day exploring alternatives for completion of the first traverse season. A US tractor traverse has been turned around on its way from South Pole to McMurdo Station, and arrived at South Pole late this evening. This traverse will stand-by at South Pole for a few days to assist us if we experience further break-downs on our last stretch. Due to the situation we have received permission to travel through the Clean Air Sector, a specially managed area in the vicinity of the South Pole, in order to shorten our remaining distance. It is clear that we can not pull all our equipment with the two operative vehicles and thus some equipment will ...

86.80033 deg S, 54.45187 deg E 3151 meters above sea level Maximum & Minimum temperatures: - 25 to - 35 °C Today we experienced a break-down of the transmission transfer-case on Chinook. This means that Chinook shares the same destiny as Sembla and is not operative anymore. Functional spare parts are unfortunately not available. Thus, we are not able to pull all our equipment to the South Pole without receiving support. Currently, we are exploring the possibilities to receive support from the United States Antarctic Program (USAP). - Jan-Gunnar Photo: Sastrugis – Nature’s beautiful creation (Photo: Jan-Gunnar Winther) This contribution is from the log of the Norwegian-US Scientific Traver...

We had a slight “event” a week or so ago, when our group was at a site called Mt. Paterson. Mount Paterson is about 550 miles west of McMurdo, somewhat near the coast. I would have put a post up about this earlier, but it was a somewhat sensitive issue. Enough time has elapsed now, and I think it is important to talk about, so I’m putting up some photos. In short, we had a plane crash in the Basler. If you have read previous posts, you will know that a Basler is a fixed wing aircraft, slightly larger than a Twin Otter, and therefore capable of carrying more weight. It uses skis to land, just like a Twin Otter. I wasn’t on the flight, another member of our group, Bob, ended up taking my place. There were six people from out group total (3 GPS, 3 seismic) and 4 people from fixed wing...

Yeah, you better believe it. The wind has been ferocious here. It is hard to describe just what a physical presence it has, its own personality each day. One day its a continuous ground blizzard that makes getting between the tents “fun.” Some nights you can barely sleep because the your tent is being rocked about, with gusts occasionally bending it completely out of shape. You lie there wondering if you’re about to blow away. When the lulls come they are glorious, the silence is absolute, much more so than anything you can find around McMurdo, where there is always the noise of a generator or a vehicle backing up somewhere. The people here are a nice bunch. They seem pleased to have scientist in their mix. The staff are regular explorer types mostly, with a few hardy ...

Patriot Hills is a nice spot. Well sort of, its very pretty to look at, really rather good to eat at, but not so great when the weather is concerned. The wind blows constantly here, which is why the camp is actually here. The wind screams down from the mountains and strips the top layer of snow off, leaving slippery, polished blue-ice, that very large Russian transportation aircraft can land on. Unfortunately most of that snow ends up in the tented camp a little bit to the north. When I say the wind screams, I mean it just absolutely howls through the camp, throwing up whirlwinds of snow, battering tents, and putting spindrift into any available orifice. It’s a tangible presence here twenty-four hours a day. Anything not locked down is gone with the first ferocious gust. W...

It’s been a few days since anything really happened. There was the New Year, which was ushered in with much hilarity and scotch, and the helo-hanger party where the blue grass and rock bands from Ice Stock played again. And there was the visiting members of Congress that we had to talk to, and several fire drills, but conspicuously there wasn’t much work to be done. Weather has not been our friend, and we have had some logistical knock on effect from the plane crash that our group was involved in earlier in the season (Google "Antarctica Basler", to read-up on it, if you are so inclined). I’m writing this from the belly of a LC130 ski-equipped Hercules aircraft. Four of our team, myself, Brian Bonnet, Don Voigt and Thomas Nylen (yeah him again) are l...

Contents: 1. St Petersburg SCAR/IASC Meeting, July 2008 2. Other impending conference deadlines 3. IPY Science Day: Changing Earth, March 12th 2007 4. APECS update 5. Videos on IPY.org Report no. 9, January 2008 From: IPY International Programme Office To: IPY Project Coordinators cc: IPY Community Google Groups 1. Joint SCAR/IASC Open Science Conference, 8-11 July 2008 Arctic and Antarctic Perspectives in the International Polar Year St Petersburg, Russia Information about this conference can be found at: http://www.scar-iasc-ipy2008.org/...

Which way did the camera go first: north or south? The Antarctic edged out her northern counterpart by only a handful of years. James Clark Ross' narrative of his 1839-43 expedition does not reveal any photographic outfit in its inventory, but one of his medical men later noted just such an apparatus for posterity. Dr. Joseph D. Hooker was lecturing about the historic expedition at the Royal Institution of South Wales in 1846 when he offered these words: I believe no instruments, however newly invented, was omitted, even down to an apparatus for daguerreotyping and talbotyping, and we left England provided with a register for every known phenomenon of nature, though certainly not qualified to cope with them all. The responsibility for any photographic ...

The 3rd International Conference on Polar and Alpine Microbiology will be held in Banff, Alberta, Canada from May 11 - May 15, 2008. The meeting sessions and official accommodation will be at The Banff Centre. Register for the conference will be via the Banff Centre Information on the conference program, travel and other activities are available on the conference web site Abstracts should be submitted through the conference web site. We hope you will be able...

The IPY exhibit at the Exhibition on Earth observations during the Ministerial Summit of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) 27-30 Nov 2007 in Cape Town, South Africa was well attended by ministers and visitors. Dr Pierre Cilliers from the Hermanus Magnetic Observatory and Mr Michael Nxumalo, professional officer of the Souith African IPY office at the National Research Foundation set up and attended to the stand on behalf of the International IPY office. The stand also featured several posters on topics related to the South African IPY programme. The themes of the posters were among others "The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, Contributions to Global Observations of the Earth's Geomagnetic Field", "The Hermanus Magnetic Observatory, Space Weather Observation for disast...