Anna McKee

WAIS Divide Camp at 79.47°S latitude, 112.06°W longitude – high on the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet Plateau.

The snow pit is quiet, still and very calming. I wish I had one at home!

Today I went out the snow pit made earlier in the season by John Fegyveresi. He and Anais Orsi were going to dig it out from the last storm and I hitched a ride. Ice scientists make snow pits to assess the snow pack for a variety of characteristics. John was measuring the physical properties of the snow layers to determine their accumulation rates, variation in storms, annual layers and frost layers. He also took samples to determine their densities.
Back in his lab he will test the ratio of oxygen 18 to oxygen 16 to determine temperatures when the snow fell. There is very little climate information from this part of Antarctica, so all of these measurements help to develop a model for recent, as well as past climate conditions. It took about a half hour to dig out the entrance covered by the last storm, alternating shoveling and cutting out blocks to move the snow. This snow pit has a main room, about 2 meters cubic with secondary pits behind two of the walls. The ceiling of the main room is covered in plywood while the others are kept open to the sky, so that the ice walls are back-lit. The result,
even on a cloudy day, is blue tinted glowing walls, layered with darker and lighter strata showing summer and winter seasons. Snow falling in the summer is less dense (warm temperatures favor larger crystals) so creates a lighter
stratum, winter snow is more dense and darker. Individual storm events are often marked by thin, wind formed crusts that show hard and white.

John and Anais looking at the seasonal layers

I stood gawking while Anais and John discussed the layers and speculated about particular phenomena they observed, informed by their specialty. It was surprisingly difficult to get a good exposure with my limited photography experience, darn it. We kicked in the snow a bit, and then I walked back to camp. The light was particularly flat, so I had one of many experiences of feeling detached from the ground, trusting my feet to find sure footing over the sculpted terrain.

December 21, 2009 – Happy Solstice
WAIS Divide Camp at 79.47°S latitude, 112.06°W longitude – high on the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet Plateau.
Although there are segregated jamesways (a jamesway is a Korean era, modular
arch tent with a wooden framework) to sleep in, they are generally
overheated, and not very private. We all share eating, cleaning and relaxing
space, so having a place of one’s own, even if it is a tent, is a nice
thing.
The bedtime routine is different for me here. Tent city is a walk through
snow, so it’s good to be organized and take everything you will need for the
night. The most important item is a hot bottle of water. I stash everything
in the varied pockets of my Big Red (the massive, warm coat we are all
issued) and head out, ignoring the sun.
My tent is an 8′x8′ “Arctic Oven”. It is double walled; the outside a heavy
duty coated nylon, and the inside some type of insulating fabric. It is
almost tall enough to stand up in (darn it). My bed consists of two dense
foam pads and an inflatable thermo-rest pad. I stow my Big Red between the
pads and my sleeping bag, for downy cushion and to keep it warm.
My sleeping bag is amazing, huge and rated to -40F. It has thick tubes of
loft at the neck and zipper. I was issued a fleece liner, but I use that on
top and sleep in the silk liner that I brought.
While changing and organizing for the night, I toss the bottle of hot water
at the foot of the bag. I hang my clothes on lines strung across the top of
the tent (remember that heat rises??) and snuggle on in. I then slowly
migrate the bottle up the bag to warm my nest. By morning, the tent is quite
warm from my body heat and the sun, so getting out of bed is no more
difficult than at home. The biggest difference is what to do about middle of
the night trips to the loo.
WARNING-POTTY TALK AHEAD!
There is an outhouse at the center of tent city, but my tent is on the outer
edge. Besides that, there is the hassle of getting dressed (easy on a
windless night, not so easy on a windy night). So we are issued a pee
bottle. Yes, a pee bottle. It is usually just a convenience, except for the
unlikely chance of having to wait out a white out in your tent.
We gals share words of wisdom, strategy and general sympathy about pee
bottle maneuvers. Let’s just say that I have to think very hard about the
trade-off between suiting up and making do. It’s a good thing that we are
also issued wipes and Purell.

WAIS Divide Camp at 79.47° S latitude, 112.06° W longitude – high on the West Antarctic Ice Sheet Plateau.

The wind finally abated somewhat during the day on Friday. I took another grid walk in the morning – with similar results. The combination of flat light and drifting obscured my way and made an even pace impossible – what an analogy for life. As the wind died, the crud* built in my nose, so my afternoon was fairly quiet. Around 4pm one of the drill handlers found me to say that a visible layer was in the core at approximately 1580 meters and 8,000 years old. We rushed out to the Core Handling area of the arch to look. Everyone was very excited – they didn’t expect to find visible layers. The Danish scientist has been drilling ice in the field for 6 seasons and has never seen a visible layer. Everyone agreed that it looked like a tephra (volcanic) layer. Chemical analysis in the lab will confirm if it is ash, and what volcanic event it came from. When I first looked at the core on the tray, the layer looked like a fracture line, about a millimeter thick. But up close there is a definite grey ochre cast to the layer. Looking at an angle, I could make out a shadow of the layer deep in the ice. I had heard that Scientists are notoriously understated in their reaction to really cool discoveries and even these young graduate students lived up to that reputation. No one was jumping up and down or high fiving. However, their elation was palpable. The day had been difficult and they were tired, but this thin line of dust came as a gift of energy. I remembered drawing an ash layer at the National Ice Core Lab during my first visit in 2008. It had been from the Newell Glacier near the dry valleys in Antarctica. I found the jpeg of the sketch on my computer, and sure enough, in the notes at the corner of the page was “Newell Glacier, approximately 8000 years old”. It deepened my connection to this place and the core, and yes, I am very excited about it.

*Crud or McMurdo Crud – a low level cold that is a right of passage for almost every newcomer on the ice. It is extremely difficult to avoid, with dry air, and lots of people crowded into small overheated spaces.

WAIS Divide Camp at 79.47°S latitude, 112.06°W longitude – high on the West
Antarctic Ice Sheet Plateau.
Wind speed 18-23knots, temp -18 degrees C, 1 mile visibility.
This morning I noticed very unusual drifting patterns created by footsteps. The steps compact the snow and over time the wind blows away the surrounding snow leaving these beautiful sculpted mounds, distinct from the surrounding drifts. These are marks made by all of us shuttling to and fro with our boots and machines.
At the center of this camp, it seems we are creating an enormous impact to this space, until I remember our flight, seeing hours of white drift patterns in a large sea. We are a small boat, barely visible at 20,000 ft. Within a few decades, snowfall will have entombed it all; my footsteps stretched out by the moving ice.
I thought to photograph these marks, but Anais suggested that I might try to make some patterns myself. After bundling up, I walked out into a space that wouldn’t be plowed and tried to orient myself to stamp out a grid pattern. I began by orienting with the mile marker flags to the north, west and south, used to gauge the cloud ceiling for aviation. I began facing north, stomping out 50 paces and then turned south, counting out. Between the light and my goggles, I found it difficult to make out which of the groups of flags were west, but oriented with the wind and continued. I tried to turn 90 degrees each time, stamping out equal paces, until I had marked out a rough rectilinear maze into the center. As I followed the path back out, the way was sometimes clear, sometimes erased by the wind. I was struck by the powerful metaphor of this activity, my life in a series of paces.
This experience was amplified by the distinct fear I carry about being stuck in a white-out. I know it can come up quickly, and the few hundred yards to the nearest structure would become unreachable. The radio in my pocket reassured my rational mind. But my hind brain still registered fear. Even with structures and flags defining the spaces, the white dominates, creating little ghosts in the edges of my mind.