The SuperGroom Team Gets to SuperTIGER, COSI Launch, and Other McMurdo Happenings: December 27-30, 2014

There hasn't been too much happening with those of us on the recovery team left in McMurdo the past few days. Sunday, three Twin Otter flights from Thomas Hills landed at the SuperTIGER site and the SuperGroom Team set up camp. They've started digging out the instrument and grooming the ski-way. It only took 694 days, but SuperTIGER finally got some company out on the ice.

The rest of us will be joining them in a few days, once the skiway for the Basler has been groomed. We've been officially approved for our most recent modified plan, which involves the rest of the recovery team (Tiger Tail) going through the South Pole on the way to SuperTIGER, and the entire recovery team going through the Pole on the way back. We still don't know when exactly we'll head down to the Pole or which plane we'll take to get there, but we're at the point where it's just figuring out flights and not worrying about too many other things.

COSI had a successful launch yesterday. They sat out on the launch pad waiting for the winds to be right for a long enough time that I fell asleep and missed the opportunity to watch the launch live from the Scott Base hill, but I did get to see it on the webcam.

Dana has been working out at LDB helping pack up ANITA stuff, and Sean and I have been hanging around in McMurdo. The weather has been relatively nice, so I've been doing a lot of hiking, and have walked down to Hut Point to check for penguins every day. There haven't been any that I've seen, although apparently there was one at LDB a few days ago.

Otherwise, we're just waiting. Hopefully we'll be on our way before too long!

(Skua) Christmas and Boxing Day: December 25-26, 2014

Friday night at the VMF Christmas Party I was talking to Jeff and Nathaniel, our friends who work on SuperDARN (Super Dual Auroral Radar Network, a radar experiment with locations around the world) and we came up with the idea of a Skua Secret Santa/Skua White Elephant gift exchange/Skua Christmas. Skua is McMurdo's way of recycling still-useable but unwanted items, mostly things that have been left behind by people leaving town. Every dorm has a Skua bin where people can leave things (and where some of the best Skua finds have happened), and there's also a central Skua building that's full of things that have been left behind. Skua's mostly used for clothing (there are lots of random shirts and shoes) but there's a lot of random stuff as well.

Christmas Morning I went up to Skua Central to see what random stuff I could find. Jeff was also there Skua shopping (or Skua-diving, depending how you look at it). I hadn't been in Skua Central before, so I was surprised how many old pairs of boots there were. There was a whole side of the building dedicated to clothes (Jeff found his whole Christmas outfit there), a wall of boots, and another side that had bookshelves with old books and DVDs, and a few shelves of electronics and other stuff.

The Skua wall of Boots

I filled up a box with a centerpiece for our Christmas dinner table--fake flowers in a blender, surrounded by tinsel--and an assortment of gifts. I got a puzzle (in a ziploc bag, labelled "#3", no indication of what it was or whether all the pieces were there), a broken calculator, a can of black hair dye, a deck of 44 cards, a badminton shuttlecock, a stuffed football, and a set of 3 3-1/2 inch floppy disks helpfully labelled "photos".

Skua Electronics!

After lunch, I went over to Central Skua again with Sean and looked through their books while he found his presents. There wasn't anything that looked good. I then grabbed some tape so we could wrap the presents and wrapped mine up with notebook paper.

Our dinner reservation was at 7pm (you have to sign up for a time for holiday meals because there aren't enough seats for everyone to eat at once), but by the time we walked over at around 6:40 the line to get in to the galley was already very long. I ran into Dana in line, and he gave me a couple of cards from the Wash U Physics department that he'd gotten as part of a package that had come in on Christmas Eve (there were apparently 9 pallets of packages delivered on the Herc flight from Christchurch on Wednesday night that were then available for pickup on Christmas morning). It was good to get some mail, and it worked out great that the cards actually arrived on Christmas Day.

Once we got in to the galley, I filled my plate up with the delicious food that they had (I can't remember all that I grabbed, but it was all delicious). At one point I got in what I thought was the line for Prime Rib, but turned out to be the line for Crab Legs, so I wasted about 5 minutes there (it's a harsh continent).

My Iron from Nathaniel

We had dinner and dessert, and then went out to get our Skua Christmas presents. I got a ball of yarn from Sean, a towel and a hat from Jeff, and an Iron (with a card) from Nathaniel. Sean found some pretty exciting gifts, including a pirate hat for Jeff and a Tyvek jumpsuit for Nathaniel. Someone at the table next to ours offered some sharpie markers to mark up Nathaniel's suit, and after dinner he went around trying to get as many people to sign it as he could.

Jeff, Nathaniel, and Sean after Skua Christmas.

Friday was also a holiday here, so nothing was open and most people weren't doing much of anything. The weather both Thursday and Friday was very windy, so I didn't go on a hike like I had planned to do.  Sean got a call from Thomas, and it sounds like things are going well at the Thomas Hills camp. Apparently the Twin Otter that will take them to SuperTIGER should be there tomorrow. Sean also got a list of things that the SuperGroom team realized they needed, so tomorrow we'll go around and pick those up. Otherwise, there isn't too much else going on. We'll hopefully be leaving here around Monday.

The SuperGroom Team Goes to Thomas Hills! And the McMurdo kitchen: December 22-24, 2014

Monday, after I updated the blog, the container that we'll be sharing with EBEX (who still have stuff left over from their recovery last year) was moved over next to the SuperTIGER shipping containers behind the Science Support Center (SSC). Sean, Thomas, and I re-arranged things between the containers, so most of the stuff that we have down here that we'll ship back is in the shared container, the container that will be staying here for CSBF storage has all the stuff that stays on the ice, and our other container was empty, so that we can fill it up with the recovered SuperTIGER instrument.

While we were packing, James came by and told us that the SuperGroom Team (James, the camp supervisor; Lyra, the mountaineer; Dave, the mechanic; and Thomas, from the SuperTIGER science team) flight out to Thomas Hills was not the backup mission for Tuesday but the primary mission for Wednesday. This was good news, since it meant that the SuperGroom Team might get out before the 2-day no-fly break for Christmas.

Tuesday morning, I woke up and had breakfast with Thomas and a few other scientists that were waiting for flights out, mostly to WAIS Divide, where the SuperGroom Team and Tiger Tails (Sean, Dana, and I) were supposed to go in some of the previous iterations of the plan. After breakfast, Thomas had some errands to run just in case the Thomas Hills SuperGroom Team flight went out on Wednesday. We had all planned to volunteer in the kitchen, so we basically just walked in and talked to them. There was stuff to do right away, so I got to work. My first task was peeling and chopping the ends off of 40kg of carrots that had just arrived the night before from New Zealand. While I was about a third of the way through, Sean showed up and was given 70kg of fresh potatoes to slice. We talked with people that worked in the kitchen for a while while we worked. After finishing the carrots, I cleaned 7 boxes of bell peppers. Just after I started, Thomas came by to help and was put to work in the bakery making cookies and biscotti. By the time I finished all 7 boxes of peppers, it was lunch time, and since I'd been working for 4 hours in the kitchen I was sent home and given a cool hat to thank me for my help.

The really cool hat I got for volunteering in the kitchen.

In the afternoon I worked in our cubicle for a while, and then met up with Thomas and Sean for dinner. Thomas had to Bag Drag at 7pm, so he went and did that while Sean and I went to the store. It was Sean's birthday, so we hung out in my dorm for a while Tuesday night.

Wednesday morning COSI had another potential launch opportunity, but they ended up having to cancel because of wind. I had breakfast with Thomas and then got the Tiger Tail iridium satellite phone and SuperTIGER team pager from him. I went back to my room for a little bit before going up to the Movement Control Center (MCC) where the SuperGroom team was meeting to be driven to the airport. There, I said goodbye to the SuperGroom team and took possession of the official Tiger Tail mascot: a stuffed tiger tail on a suction cup that Ryan, our science implementer, had given James. The SuperGroom team has a matching set of Tiger ears. I got to the MCC just before James, and the SuperGroom team was quickly shuffled out the door because the Air National Guard wanted to move up the flight.

For some reason, Thomas insisted that we take a photo of me with the Tiger Tail instead of a group photo of the SuperGroom team before they left.

The SuperGroom flight to Thomas Hills was originally scheduled for 10am,  but they ended up taking off at 9:15. They got to Thomas Hills around 1:15pm, and the Herc left there at 2 for the South Pole, where it refueled and came back to McMurdo. The SuperGroom team will stay at Thomas Hills until a Kenn Borek Air de Havilland DHC-6 Twin Otter flies up from the South Pole and takes them to SuperTIGER site. Thomas Hills is a camp that currently is home to four members of the G-297 science team, led by Trevor Williams, who has been tweeting updates and photos.

The Tiger Tails will then follow the SuperGroom team to the SuperTIGER site, once a skiway for the Basler (a modified DC-3 airframe) has been groomed. The Tiger Tails will be flying through the South Pole on the way down, and on the way back we'll either go through WAIS Divide or the Pole.

Back in McMurdo, I worked out of the cubicle for most of the day. After lunch, I called home and talked to my extended family, and then Sean and I went to the McMurdo General Hospital. The South Pole is at 9,300 ft (2835 meters) elevation, but the effective elevation because of the air pressure is often higher. Medical in McMurdo has a supply of Diamox, a drug that prevents Acute Mountain Sickness, so we wanted to get a supply before we went down to the Pole just in case.

After dinner, Sean went to a movie night at the coffee house, and I went over to the McMurdo Christmas party in the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF). It was pretty fun, and a kind of surreal mix of traditional christmas--photos with Santa in his "sleigh" (a Piston Bully), photos with the Grinch for those who wanted them, the McMurdo community choir singing christmas songs--and a dance party (this is probably the only part I've ever been at where Christmas songs have been followed immediately by Chumbawumba).

The Tiger Tails aren't on the scheduled Saturday flight to the South Pole, but we'll probably leave sometime early next week, "weather and logistics permitting".

Penguin Sighting!! and our third weekend in McMurdo: December 19-22, 2014

Friday morning there was a launch opportunity for COSI. I walked out to the hill above Scott Base once I thought inflation was starting. After about an hour and a half of standing around in the cold without seeing any glimpse of an inflating balloon, I decided to go back to McMurdo to wait for inflation to actually begin. When I got back I found out that the launch had been scrubbed because of wind. 

After lunch on Thursday, we got a tip that there was a penguin down by the ice pier between McMurdo and Hut Point. Thomas and I wandered down about halfway and saw the penguin taking  nap while Sean got a haircut. Once Sean was done, we all walked back down and the penguin was still lying there. We walked out to Hut Point and looked at the seals that were lying around nearby. On our way back, it looked like the penguin was gone, but then we saw it walking towards land. It walked over onto the dirt area by the pier, and then eventually walked more or less parallel with the road, so we kept walking alongside it. Eventually I got out ahead of it and it walked within about 10 feet of me. 

The best penguin photos are here: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10101175312336475.1073741850.2413422&type=1&l=9192f517a4

Saturday I worked in our cubicle in building 175 most of the day. There wasn't too much else going on. After dinner, we had a logistics meeting with James, from the groom team, and Ryan, our science implementer, and talked about the plan going forward. I'm sure it will change 16 or 17 more times before we go out, but as of right now (Monday) the groom team (the Super Groom Team, as we've been calling them) going to Thomas Hills is a backup mission for the LC-130 tomorrow. If they're not able to get out then, it might not be until early next week. The rest of us (Tiger Tail, our new nickname is) will leave once the skiway at the SuperTIGER site is ready. So we'll definitely be in McMurdo for Christmas, and then we'll have to see.

Sunday was cold and windy and overcast, so nothing too much happened. Sean got our two shipping containers organized, and Monday morning we went over and looked through it all. One of the containers we've been using is going to stay here at the LDB facility, and we're going to use our other container and part of a container that has EBEX stuff in it to ship everything back. Tomorrow we'll go through and put our stuff in the EBEX container and try to re-organize things so it all fits.

Pegasus Crash Site Tour and ANITA Launch: December 16-18, 2014

Tuesday was another quiet day in McMurdo. There was some talk of attempting another ANITA launch, but the weather wasn't good enough for them to even try. I spent most of the day working in our extra cubicle. There's a congressional delegation in town that was scheduled to arrive on Tuesday but it got delayed because of weather.

Wednesday I also spent most of the day in the cubicle. In the evening, though, I got to go on a trip out to the Pegasus crash site. On October 8, 1970, a Lockheed Martin C-121 Constellation called Pegasus crashed while flying in to McMurdo. Most of the plane is still there, abandoned, and the recreation department has been organizing trips out to the crash site. We met in town around 6pm, and even though 10 people were signed up, only four of us and the guide showed up. I was the only SuperTIGER person on my trip; Thomas went Thursday morning and Sean is scheduled to go on Friday. We got into a van for the hour-long trip out to the crash site, which is about a mile past Pegasus Field, the airfield where we landed after getting to McMurdo two weeks ago. Unlike two years ago, though, the ski aircraft are all being flown out of Willy Field, so right now Pegasus isn't being used except as a divert field for incoming planes and a weather observation station. The road past Willy Field had a lot of drifted snow on it and the trip had to go pretty slow.

When we got to the wreck, we couldn't see any of the surrounding area because of the weather. It actually made going around and climbing on the plane a lot cooler. It was strange to think about the plane sitting out there for all these years, and also amazing to realize that in the plane crash there were no deaths and just a few minor injuries.

We brought a couple of shovels from McMurdo, and ended up spending most of the time digging out the UNITED STATES NAVY lettering painted on the side. It looks like the inside of the plane is filled up with snow and ice.

After about 45 minutes at the plane, we went back to McMurdo. I met up with Sean and Thomas and we went to the galley for a snack (really a late dinner for me). On our way in, Sean and I accidentally photobombed some astronauts. The Congressional delegation came in a little after us and had their dinner too. I ended up showing a member of the U.S. House of Representatives where they keep the bowls for Frosty Boy, so that was pretty exciting. Thursday they spent out in the McMurdo Dry valleys, and tomorrow they're going to the pole. 

I got up early Thursday morning to see how the 6th ANITA launch attempt was going. I ended up going back to sleep a couple of times while I waited, but eventually, around 9:30, I saw that inflation of the balloon had begun. Once inflation starts, the launch is normally about an hour away, so I got dressed and walked out to the hill above Scott Base to watch the launch. It was pretty cool.

ANITA just after the balloon is released

The ANITA balloon over the LDB site

ANITA in flight

After that, I went back to town and had lunch. I worked on a couple of things in the cubicle before Thomas showed up with the Iridium satellite phone we'll be using in the field. Once I finished up what I was working on, I went down to Crary Lab, where they have an antenna set up so that you can communicate with the satellites and test your satellite phone from the comfort of a heated room. Thomas came by a little bit after I got there and we tested the phone out, making sure we could make calls. We also got a computer from the Crary tech folks that is able to use the phone as a satellite modem, so we should be able to use that computer to send updates via email in the field (although the modem is excruciatingly slow, even compared to McMurdo internet). Before we go into the field I'll be sure to post where we'll be trying to update.

Friday morning they may launch COSI early, so I'll have more on that tomorrow if it happens.

Another quiet weekend, and four more ANITA launch attempts: December 12-15, 2014

Thursday night, after we got everything into Science Cargo and had dinner, we went over to Scott Base for the store and America night at the bar. Thomas and I walked over, and then I took the shuttle back with Sean. The weather was nice, so the walk didn't seem as long, and by the end I actually was almost too hot. The area in the front near where the store used to be has been redone, and there's now a fancy conference room with a great view next to the new store location.

Since everything but our personal gear/clothes is in the cargo system, there isn't too much else for us to do besides wait around to go to the field. The plan as it stands right now is still in flux, but it sounds like it will be a while yet before we're able to leave.

ANITA has been trying to launch the last few days. There was another unsuccessful launch attempt on Friday, and again on Saturday, and again on Sunday. Sunday's looked promising enough that I spent the afternoon watching the webcam, ready to head out to the hill above Scott Base to watch the launch, instead of doing anything else. Monday we went out to LDB for some errands and lunch (and also because on Saturday and Sunday there was an Emperor Penguin sighting!). There was no sign of any penguins today, but we did get to see ANITA's 5th launch attempt. They rolled out onto the launch pad and were basically ready to go when the weather changed and it got windy, so they had to come back inside. The weather the next few days doesn't look too promising, but we'll see.

There's not much else exciting happening down here--the big excitement this next week will be the CODEL, or Congressional Delegation, of 10 representatives (and staff, and other officials coming with). Weather permitting, they'll get here tomorrow and tour the South Pole and McMurdo later this week.

Container Lake, Pressure Ridges, and Science Cargo: December 10-11, 2014

Wednesday morning, our first order of business after breakfast was to go to the Science Support Center (SSC) and make sure that the generator we planned to bring to the field and the electric saw we’ll need to use would work well together. The first step was to get the saw out of our container, which is where we ran into a slight issue: the puddle in front of the container was now much deeper than Tuesday, had only a thin layer of ice across the top, and had frozen the container latch shut.

A lot of water

We went up to the BFC and borrowed a pair of shovels and a maddock. Back at the container, we started to dig a trench downhill to drain the water from the small lake in front of the container. After about a half hour of digging, we had a trench dug and water flowing, but we still needed to push water from the puddle into the trench to get it going. We kept pushing water down the trench for a while, and we moved what looked like a lot of water. This started to attract attention.

Thomas and Sean work on our trench. It worked well.

Dale Rivers, the head of heavy equipment, showed up looking for the broken water pipe or place that was leaking water and just found us trying to drain our puddle. I thought we had done a pretty good job, but he called in a bulldozer and backhoe and soon enough, most of the snow nearby was gone and we had a deeper drainage trench taking the water away from the container. 

For some reason, the heavy equipment worked better than our shovels.

After two hours, we were finally able to get the saw and test it. It worked fine, so we took it up to Science Cargo and checked it in.

We then went out to LDB for lunch and a couple of errands. Back in town, we stopped by Crary supply to see if we could get some work gloves for the field, and also sorted more of our equipment in our container. When we went inside for a break and to make a list of all the equipment we hadn’t yet acquired/packed, I saw that there was a pressure ridge tour that night that only had a couple of people signed up. Sean and Thomas weren’t too interested, so I signed up. After we went over the list of everything new we’d thought of, we went over to meet with Lyra from the groom team and go over the plan as it stood then (it has changed since, of course).

By then it was almost 6, so I went and got ready for the Pressure Ridge tour while Thomas and Sean had dinner. I was a little surprised not to see anyone else waiting for the pressure ridges, but the group turned out to be just me and the guide, Hasmin. We drove over to Scott Base, and then spent about two hours walking around the Pressure Ridges. This is the area where the land, annual sea ice, and permanent glacial ice from the Ross Ice Shelf all meet and push against each other, pushing the ice up into the air where the wind blows it into really cool shapes and formations. It’s also a spot where seals like to hang out, so we ended up getting pretty close to a few different seals. I took about 900 photos, but I put the best up in an album here.

Thursday we got to work finally packing everything up for the field and getting it ready to be checked in at the Science Cargo building. We also picked up the last of the things we’ll need from the BFC, and then packed most of our tools and stuff in one large box. Other things that we’ll need, like 2x4s for making a frame for the Cherenkov boxes, and foam to put between detectors after we’ve removed them from the stack, has to go separately, but by 2:30pm we had everything checked in and ready to go. We then went over to the office and talked with James and Lyra from the groom team.

The first of three Herc flights to the Thomas Hills camp got off on Wednesday and left the equipment it needed to for the geology group that will be camping there. The second flight was delayed today because of a mechanical issue. The hope is to get as much of our weight on the second flight whenever it does go out, which would allow us to potentially all fly together on the third Herc flight (and skip the need for people to go through the WAIS Divide Field Camp). Whether that’s possible or not is up in the air; in any event, it sounds like the earliest that third flight would happen is Wednesday, so we’ll definitely have a few more days in McMurdo (and probably a few changes to the plan) before we leave.

Thursday was also the first launch attempt for ANITA, but it was scrubbed for some reason. I assume Dana will tell us more at dinner. Regardless, they’re going to try to launch again tomorrow, so we’ll try to see the launch if possible.