Archive for December, 2006

“Dance ’til the sun goes around”

                                                                                                                                           The flyer for the New Year’s Eve party — IceStock — at Antarctica’s McMurdo Station tells a lot about the weirdly normal vibe here: “Come out and dance ’til the sun goes around.”

Unlike almost every other location on the planet, the sun won’t go down on New Year’s Eve at this outpost on the frozen Ross Sea. It won’t even get low in the sky. It won’t really set until March, and then it will stay down for six months. But just because it won’t get dark is no excuse not to celebrate, so McMurdo’s denizens definitely will.

Despite being at the literal end of the Earth, the people at this base seem to prize the small comforts that make this strange place homey.

For example, bring your credit cards for the McMurdo store, where you can buy T-shirts honoring everything Antarctic, from penguins to “Ivan the Terra Bus,” the large-wheeled vehicle that acts as the airport shuttle. Beer, wine and liquor are also for sale. There’s an ATM on the main corridor leading to the dining hall, such a busy route that it’s known as Highway One, and the McMurdo store takes U.S. dollars.

But if you go to the South Pole, you will be warned: bring cash. No credit cards are accepted at the store at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, where the proceeds help pay for workout equipment.

Most people tend to get something of a workout just walking around in their Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear, including the Big Red, a parka so massive it can conceal four or five layers of clothing in its depths. ECW adds an extra 30 pounds to your body weight, especially if you count the insulated bunny boots, which weigh about 11 pounds per pair. On days when the temperature rises to near freezing, this can seem extraneous. But when it snaps cold and windy, you treasure every stitch of the ECW getup.

You also learn to love the dining hall, known as the Galley. The center of social interaction here — because everybody has to eat — the Galley provides the fuel you need to keep going, 5000 calories worth a day for some outdoor workers. Even so, weight loss at McMurdo is common.

The food is surprisingly elegant for what is essentially chow. Cuban pork roast, shepherd’s pie, dressing with cranberries and walnuts and herb foccacia were on a recent lunch menu. Have all you want but clean your plate: whatever you leave has to be shipped back to California. The guilt — and the constant reminders around the dining hall — is usually enough to make people eat up. If that doesn’t work, the do-it-yourself tray return, where diners scrape their own plates before turning them over to the dishwashers, often does.

The food is part of the package deal at McMurdo, so no money changes hands at the cafeteria, a room that looks a bit like it could be in a well-stocked hotel in the American Midwest. Only when you look outside the window and see the patches of snow, the mountains and the heavy equipment — and the round-the-clock sunlight — do you realize you are in Antarctica in springtime.

McMurdo is no classic beauty. Built in 1955-56 as part of the U.S. expeditions known as Operation Deep Freeze, it is a collection of mostly corrugated metal buildings and shipping containers reconfigured as offices and storage areas, set against a brown pebbly slope the color of used coffee grounds.

As tough as it looks from the outside, everything you really need in Antarctica is here. Theres not much luxury residents double or triple up in dormitory rooms, sharing bathrooms and other facilities but the showers are hot, the bed linens are clean and the meals are wholesome, plentiful and free.

For those who prefer drinking in bars, there are three: Gallaghers Pub, where there’s a burger buffet several times a week; the Coffee House, where the bartender will happily pour some Irish whiskey into your café latte for a price, and will provide an Ethernet cable so you can surf the Web while you sip.

The third bar, Southern Exposure, is one of the few interior spaces where smoking is allowed. Outside is another story, and teams of scientists and others have been known to fire up cigars on an outdoor deck that overlooks the heliport and the frozen McMurdo Sound.

But make no mistake, this can be a dangerous place, and instruction is mandatory for those who venture out even for an afternoon.

Erik Johnson teaches the field safety course, giving matter-of -fact advice on what to do if you or someone in your party is suffering from frostbite or hypothermia. Important tip: one of the early and continuing signs of hypothermia is apathy, so the sufferer is likely to not care that he or she is slowly freezing.

If youve never learned how to assemble and light a camp stove or set up a tent on snow-covered ground, you will learn it here. For those whose projects take them onto the Ross Ice Shelf on a daily basis, a rigorous snow school is required. The highlight for many snow scholars is being able to construct their own trench, hole or igloo to sleep in overnight.

Still, there are few complaints. That is probably because nobody really gets forced to come to Antarctica. The people here want to be here, for however short a time.

And the views nourish the soul. From the reading room on the top floor of Crary Lab, the main science building, you can see mountains and glaciers brooding across the Ross Sea. And the WiFi is great.

Editors note: Deborah Zabarenko, the Reuters Environment Correspondent, is reporting in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation Grant. You can read her articles here 

Diary of a video embed – Part 3

This is the third posting from Laurent Hamida who is embedded with the British Army in south Afghanistan. 

A few hours later, when I woke up, everything was quiet, the desert had not changed, but we had the visit of a new friend: an icy, dusty wind.

We were all looking like ghosts, keeping our eyes down to the ground and moving slowly. Went to see the Royal Marines to talk about the following day. They told me the plan was to move into the central district of Garm Sheer. I could choose where and with whom I wanted to be. I chose the Marines of course. They trusted me, told me everything about the plan. It had taken me one week to get there, not bad.

Before I sank deep into my sleeping bag at night, the commander told me to be ready at 03:10 AM.

Woke up at 02:30, cold, cold. Beautiful sky, almost full moon, and the stars…

Silence, nobody was talking, everybody was packing their things, nothing to be left behind.

Went to join my platoon, got into the Wiking and waited to move forward. We drove for about an hour, then stopped. The radio broke the silence: one of the tanks had a visual on 15 enemies, it asked for permission to engage them.

Wait, you need to wait, everybody has to be ready. The voice came back on the radio: “they are collecting weapons and I think that they will move soon, permission to engage them.”

It was still before daybreak when we heard the first explosions. The voice came back again: “Killed three, the other are taking cover.” There we go, I thought. I have covered many wars, much turmoil, and still could not get used to people killing each other. I felt sad.

I jumped out of the APC and started to move on with my platoon. Running, watching, filming, running… A lot of bursts, air stike, artillery …

The first few hours we went OK, moving forward, slowly. But forward. A lot of air stikes. Apachee helicopters, jets. I was scared of those things, felt very small, very mortal! Every time they come you want to bury yourself into the ground like a rat.

We arrived in a ditch, a natural trench, the Taliban were facing us in a sort of compound at about two hundred meters. At the beginning there was silence. Then I recognised the sound of the Kalash. We started to take in a lot of fire. Everybody jumped into the trench.

The first round of the artillery landed too short, about 30 metres from us. I learned a few English words when the guys I was with screamed what they where thinking about the Royal Artillery.

Then there was fire everywhere, a lot of air strikes, really close, way too close! Could even feel the gusts of those bombs. Then we started to take fire from the right, then the left. One casualty, a second hurt. They were just trying to outflank us!

They were counter-attacking with a lot of guys. A perfect manoeuvre, I thought. It had happened a couple of times before that I had had those guys running after me, the Taliban, I mean. The sections I was with were trying to extract themselves from the trap. One by one, they were leaving the place, covering each other. Left with the first one.
Running, running, no pictures, just praying.

I found myself almost at the place where we started. Everybody was trying to recover his breath. One guy was carrying the helmet of the guy who had been killed, he was looking at the floor.

After dark we went back somewhere in the desert, to the guns line. I wondered who had fired the first round…

Nowhere to sleep. Set up a canvas, slept on the floor with all my clothes on, long day.

At 6 I could no longer sleep, I had to move, too cold. Ice everywhere, everything was white. The sun was coming up, beautiful.

If you have any questions for Laurent please use the comment box. 

Click through to see his first and second postings.

Material gathered by Laurent includes:

Embedded troops in Afghanistan

Heavy firefight in Afghanistan

Driving on a frozen sea

Editors note: Deborah Zabarenko, the Reuters Environment Correspondent pictured left, is reporting in Antarctica on a National Science Foundation Grant. You can read her articles here 

When you drive on a frozen sea in Antarctica, you learn to respect the weather. Even if the temperature is below the freezing mark, and there are no clouds on the horizon, and the experienced folks assure you that the ice road has been checked and rechecked by safety experts, and you know the ice is about 15 feet (4.5 meters) thick — well, sometimes you worry.

There has been beautiful spring weather this week at McMurdo Station, the coastal base for many U.S. science operations here. So an offer to ride out onto the sea ice with scientists was irresistible. We saw an Emperor penguin, a pair of Adelie penguins and seals lolling about on the ice.

But seals are not always a good sign for sea ice drivers, as the scientists knew: where there are seals on the ice, there must be a hole in the ice that the seals use to get out of the water. And much of the ice “road” flagged for use by research vehicles was messily tracked and covered with slushy pools of melted ice.

We were in a vehicle called a Mattrack, which looks like a heavy pickup truck with triangular tank-like tracks where the wheels would normally go. The driver was picking his way through the melt pools when the rear tracks broke through the surface of the ice, down about two or three feet. We were in no danger, but it was startling to realize that all of a sudden, a few miles (km) from our home base, we were not going anywhere under our own power.

The driver called for assistance, and all got back to base without mishap. One comforting note: at least there was no question that the vehicle and its passengers and driver would have to stay out after dark. The Mattrack was towed back to McMurdo Station.