Antarctic Winter

I stepped out into a blinding light, into the whitest world under an impossibly blue sky. The naked sun seared me right through my polarized goggles. The next thing that hit was a cold so deep and complete it was surreal. My first breaths torched my throat and chilled my lungs. It was cold from another dimension, from an ice planet in a distant galaxy. And this was summer in the Southern Hemisphere.  *

Photograph by: Kaneen Christensen National Science Foundation	Date Taken: September 23, 2012

The view from Palmer Station.

"I usually look forward to expeditions, but there is such a big degree of uncertainty with this one that looking forward to it is probably not the exact right word. Some people will say it is irresponsible to go unless you know everything, in which case the Americans would never have got to the moon. If humans are going for something new, then unfortunately there are bound to be some grey areas", explained explorer Sir Ranulph Fiennes of his plan to lead a five-member team across winter Antarctica.

He is 68 years of age, and a formidable adventurer. This will by no means be his first venture at Antarctica, and he has amassed familiarity through previous expeditions with Arctic regions of the world.  In 2009 he became the oldest Briton to summit Mount Everest. His hands are absent some of his digits as a souvenir of a North Pole expedition he had undertaken ten years ago. There are some people whose endurance is legendary, as much so as their curiosity of the world around them and their determination to explore as much of it as they can.

Humans at the South Pole experience a phenomenon called "physiologic altitude". The centrifugal force of the Earth's rotation causes the atmosphere to bulge at the equator and flatten at the poles. The mass of air at the equator weighs more than the air mass closer to the Poles, which means the atmosphere is thinner and lighter at the South Pole, ninety-three hundred feet above sea level, than at an equivalent altitude in North America, such as the eastern slope of the Sierra Nevada Range. *

This will be a six-month expedition and since it takes place in the Antarctica winter it will be in darkness. The plan mapped out and released by Sir Fiennes is to begin at the South Pole on March 21 after the polar vessel SA Agulhas has ferried them from Cape Town, South Africa to the world's southernmost continent. From that point their journey will take place in a setting hostile to human life, serene (sometimes, but for storms) and icily beautiful; all four thousand kilometres of the planned trip. Temperatures are known to descend to minus 70 Celsius.

The temperature on the plateau was plummeting. By now it was minus 90 F. and falling, a new record for mid-March. One night I was watching a video with a friend when we heard the most horrible booming noise. We heard more of these ungodly booms over the next few days as the ice heaved in great cracks under the Dome. People were having more trouble sleeping. Sometimes it sounded like the roof was falling in or the floor was caving or people were stamping their feet overhead. Sometimes it sounded like guns or cannons. The ice was breaking around us everywhere. Large cracks ran from the front of the galley and then spider-webbed out to the Dome perimeters. There was a foot-wide crack over the ice road and a crevasse split what was left of the skiway.
The scientists speculated that the ice had never before gotten so cold so fast and the temperature change was causing it to buckle.  *

During the Antarctic winter the cold is so intense that fuel freezes, making it impossible for a rescue flight should the expedition run into difficulties. They will be well equipped, with communications technology at their disposal and high tech gear. Even their clothing will have built-in battery-operated heating mechanisms, along with special breathing apparatuses.  Modified, 20-ton tractors will carry their sledges, along with mounted living quarters and special fuel that won't freeze in the sub-polar temperatures.

This is a multi-purpose expedition. Geared to satisfy the exploratory and scientific curiosity of the expedition team members, and to raise $10-million for a charitable organization whose research seeks blindness prevention solutions. If all proceeds as planned, they hope to complete their journey around September 21. At which point they are prepared to camp out until January 2014 when temperatures become 'warm' enough for their polar vessel to head out over the sea-icy waters to reach them.

This strange world at the end of the Earth seemed more and more normal every day. Even the climate seemed ordinary, something I started to take for granted until it taught me a hard lesson one bright afternoon. That day Joel and I had decided to walk out to Wright's tunnel, about a mile away from the station. The blue ice tunnel was so beautiful and peaceful, we treated it as a tourist destination. But after we had turned back and were halfway home, deep in conversation and not paying close attention to the sky, the wind picked up from the plateau over hundreds of miles of flat ice, and within seconds we were engulfed in a full-blown ground blizzard. It was a total whiteout. We couldn't see a single landmark, and we lost our orientation to the Dome. For the first time in Antarctica, I felt my own mortality. I realized you could die in an instant -- and the quickest way to go was to stop paying attention. Joel and I got down on our hands and knees in the blowing snow and started crawling. Incredibly, we found a set of recent tractor tracks, and like Hansel and Gretel following a trail of crumbs, we crept along the furrows until they led us back to the station.  *

* Excerpts from Ice Bound: A Doctor's Incredible Battle For Survival At The South Pole...Dr. Jerri Nielsen

Photograph by: Sven Lidstrom National Science Foundation

Date Taken: June 17, 2012

A shower of auroras seems to be pouring down onto the South Pole Telescope (SPT) at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. The SPT is designed to study the Cosmic Microwave background. Constructed between November 2006 and February 2007, the SPT is the largest telescope ever deployed at the South Pole. This telescope provides astronomers a powerful new tool to explore dark energy, the mysterious phenomena that may be causing the universe to accelerate. To learn more, visit http://pole.uchicago.edu

Photograph by: Sven Lidstrom
National Science Foundation

Date Taken: June 17, 2012