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...

Sunday January 6th 2008 A clatter of footsteps in the stairwell is a sure signal to grab the camera and follow the mob. I raced up to C deck and saw a distant spouting. The CTD door was open to the sea so I ran back down to E deck. The CASO crew was riveted, watching a pair of humpbacks curving and spouting. They moved aft and we all jumped like fleas across the trawl deck to watch them coast and roll and play in a large drift close to the ship. I scurried up to the mezzanine, craning over the ship’s rail on the way, keeping them in sight, then made a dash up the stairwell and back onto C deck. Rail spac...

Yesterday morning at 1:45 am we all headed off to the US Antarctic Program passenger terminal at the Christchurch airport in New Zealand. I’d had about 4 hours sleep so was feeling a little groggy, but not too bad. We managed to get changed into our cold weather gear and were on the C17 transport plane by 2:30am. I was glad that we were on the jet, rather than the Hercules prop plane, the jet is way faster and has a cavernous interior. With only 30 or so of us on board there was plenty of room to spread out too. The plane was chock full of supplies for the Antarctic. Bottles of compressed gas but also a huge quantity of beer. I sat facing a 75 cubic feet of Guinness, one of only 10 or so pallets. We sat on the plane for what seemed hours, before being told that one of the ...

Not again..... Lets see, how does this check list go again? Screaming two-year old? Check. Does said child repeatedly kick the back of your seat? Check. Do the flight attendants attempt to dislocate your shoulder every time they walk down the aisle? Check. Is seating area the size of a postage stamp? Check Is there lots of turbulence? Check. Some delays? Check. Ah! But what about lost luggage? Check. 14 hour flight? Check. I must, therefore, be going to the ice. Oh oh, some more! Morning call at 1:45 am for check in at the airport at 2:30am? Check. 8 hour flight on a cramped, slow military turboprop Hercules? Check. Really really bad food on the military flight...

22 December 2007 Westhaven Nunatak, Antarctica. The goal of this field season is to deploy GPS systems on bedrock, so we can understand how the bedrock is moving. These systems are meant to be “permanent”, in that they will operate year round. We get to these sites by helicopter, and a twin otter (a type of fixed wing aircraft). When we are within 200 km of McMurdo, the U.S. base station, we use helicopter support to reach our sites. Unfortunately, weather has been bad this year. A lot of low pressure systems, which means low-hanging clouds, which means no helicopter work. We had an opportunity last week where weather was good, so we took advantage of it and flew both during the day and the night (it’s light here 24 hours a day in the summer). We ...

We were all pretty exhausted after 12 hours in the field, but wanted to take advantage of the weather, so back out we went 45 minutes later, this time to a site called Brimstone Peak. The site install went well (although we will need to go back to finish up one more item) and the weather was great again. Again, about -20C (-4F) and not too much wind. Really ideal conditions for an altitude of 7,500 ft. but still tiring to move all that equipment…. Guick lesson for those who don’t know: The way oxygen works at altitude is that as you get higher, the pressure decreases. Basically this means that your body has to work harder to pump oxygen from your lungs into your blood. That’s why it’s harder to breathe when you are at high elevations. So here’s the catch: the bar...

My name is Stephanie, and I am a graduate student with Ohio State University. My research focuses on using GPS to study crustal deformation in Antarctica, and this blog is meant to document my experiences in Antarctica, or “the ice” as it is affectionately known by many. This is my third time down to the ice, but only my second season. By season, I mean summer in Antarctica, from about October through February, when the sun is out for 24 hours a day. In 2004/2005, I was here putting out GPS equipment throughout the Transantarctic Mountains as part of the TAMDEF project (Transantarctic Mountain Deformation Project). Now I am here continuing that work as part of a project called POLENET (Polar Earth Ob...

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- In a mission of unprecedented scale, scientists are about to cover West Antarctica with a network of sensors to monitor the interactions between the ice and the earth below -- 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. The National Science Foundation (NSF) just awarded the collaboration, called POLENET, $4.5 million to plant global positioning system (GPS) trackers and seismic sensors on the bedrock that cradles the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS). Lead institution Ohio State University will receive more than $2.2 million, and the rest will be divided among partners in the United States as part of an International Polar Year project. As scientists have tried to understand how climate change is af...

Submitted September 7: A dirty little secret. Its 95 degrees Fahrenheit outside just now. I guess I am not in Tasilliq anymore! The last weekend we waited for the weather to clear but the view was the same as always - rain and fog. Sunday wasn't even nice, a change for the books. Monday was worse! It was snowy and rainy. I had booked a ticket to leave Tasilliq on wednesday so we hoped that Tuesday would be better. When I woke up on Tuesday morning the view was blue skies, no clouds and majestic snow capped mountains all around. The autumn was officially here, and frosty nights would be coming very soon. Tuesday was my last chance to go and finish off the two sites to the south that had not had enough batteries installed. ...