Linda
Ivany, TMSC Alumna, Heads for Antarctica again!
Linda, in "balmy" Syracuse.
Tuesday December 4, 2001, 9pm
Hello All!
We've finally made it aboard the Nathaniel B. Palmer. It's been a long
few days of traveling, packing, and organizing, but we're just about
ready to go. We're scheduled to leave port tomorrow at noon. I'm
sitting in my cabin on a chair with my feet propped up on my bunk and my
computer in my lap, relaxing with a cup of hot chocolate after unpacking
and setting up my home for the next few days. I thought I'd take the
time now to fill you in on the details of what's happened thus far.
It all began with a flight to Dallas TX on Friday evening, where the 4
other members of the team and I rendezvoused before flying on to South
America. The flight to Santiago, Chile, took nearly 10 hours. We then
had several hours in the airport before boarding the flight to Punta
Arenas, and that flight took about 4 more hours, with one stopover in
Puerto Montt, about the halfway mark. By the time we arrived in Punta
Arenas late on Saturday afternoon (they are 2 hours ahead of Eastern
Standard Time), we were all exhausted.
The last couple days have been spent taking care of last-minute details
before leaving. We had to bring together and organize all of the things
we will need on the island for the coming month, and pack them into
containers that could survive the transport from the ship to the island
without getting wet or blowing away. We got our extreme weather
clothing from the Raytheon warehouse here at the pier and packed that
up. We went shopping for everything we had forgotten in the States,
including a sledge hammer and large chisel, flagging tape to mark
sampling locations so we can find them again, last-minute food
additions, some chairs and folding tables to cook and eat on, extra camp
stoves, lanterns, and fuel, etc etc etc... I also picked up a couple
bottles of nice wine to help us celebrate the holiday season. All of
this got loaded into a shipping container (like the back-end of a
tractor trailer truck) and craned onto the ship late this afternoon.
One of the most useful things we did was to practice setting up the
tents and "weatherport" shelter we'll be using to keep out of the
elements. The tents are Scott tents, their design effectively unchanged
since Scott used them in his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole
years back. They look much like a teepee, with 4 long poles joined at
one end and draped with a double layer of heavy duty waterproofed
canvas cloth. You tip the poles up, pull them apart as far as they'll
go, bury the ends in the snow or soil, and tie the whole thing down with
what looks like far more ropes and stakes than are necessary, and voila -
ready-made tent. They're tall enough that you can stand up inside,
which will admittedly be nice since we'll be living in them for a
month. I'll have my own tent too, a luxury on a trip like this. The
door on Scott tents is an oval tube of cloth that can either be rolled
back and tied out of the way around the edge of the oval opening or
gathered up and tied with a string like you might tie the top of a
bundle of dirty laundry wrapped in a blanket. When the tube is not
rolled back, moving in and out through it is much like being born all
over again, and watching someone emerge from this long neck of material
with a little opening in it is really amusing. I'm not convinced that
this door is the best design, but that's what we have to work with, and
it will provide great comic relief.
The weatherport is a much more substantial structure. It is a
mini-building in itself, about 8‚ x 16', with a plywood floor and heavy
rubberized fabric stretched over a metal pipe frame. It even has a door
with a doorknob that is mounted into the frame at one end. This will be
our main living quarters, where we'll cook and eat our meals and gather
to talk, work, and relax. The material is virtually opaque, so although
there will be essentially 24 hours of daylight there, we will need
lanterns inside so we can see what we're doing. We'll also have a
couple of little propane heaters to keep the place toasty when the camp
stoves alone aren't enough to heat it. The whole thing, when it's
collapsed down, fits on a standard wooden pallet and is a pile only a
couple feet thick. We're lucky we practiced setting it up, because we
got screwed up more than once trying to figure it out. Had we had to do
this for the first time on the island, potentially with blowing wind and
cold temperatures, we would have been really miserable. As it is now,
we'll have no trouble at all.
In case you were wondering, the people I'll be spending the next month
and a half with are:
Dan Blake, Professor of Geology at the University of Illinois and one of
the "principal investigators" on this research. Dan is a paleontologist
whose passion is echinoderms - animals like starfish and sea urchins and
brittle stars. He's probably around 60, tall and lanky, on the quiet
side and maybe a little bit awkward around people he doesn't know, but
with a great dry sense of humor and eyes that always seem to be
smiling. Dan has been to Seymour Island twice already, the first time
in '95 and again last year, on the trip I was part of, and is an
excellent field geologist. He is one of the driving forces behind the
project.
Alex Glass, a graduate student of Dan's at Illinois and also interested
in starfish. Like Dan, Alex is tall and lanky, maybe even more so. He
has the most striking pale hazel eyes with dark rims, and an
ever-present shock of brown hair that almost hangs over them but never
quite seems to. He's outgoing, friendly, and well read, and strikes up
conversations about books, movies, politics, or science with anyone
interested. He carries a video camera with him, as he did on last
year's trip, instead of a still camera, and will be filming this whole
shebang in bits and pieces. Alex will be working on some of the
bivalves found on Seymour Island for his thesis.
Ryan Moody, a new graduate student of Rich Aronson's (the other PI of
this research who couldn't be with us on account of his wife just having
a baby!) at the Dauphin Island Sea Lab in Alabama. Ryan is young,
having just finished his undergraduate degree, but all fired up about
mollusks and the things that eat them. He knows an incredible amount
for someone of his experience, and is eager to learn more. He and Alex
make a good team, each of them feeding off the other with the bad jokes
and potty humor that seems to characterize their age-group and gender
(no offense!), but also working together well. He is the neophyte of
the group, having never been to Seymour before.
John Evans, a project manager with Raytheon Polar Services, the
organization with which the National Science Foundation contracts to
make sure all the polar research gets done safely and smoothly. John is
a mountaineer, having scaled a number of difficult peaks early, before
many people (if any, in some cases) had begun climbing them, and has
spent a great deal of time on the ice and in remote campsites. He's
probably 60ish, strong and capable, and wonderfully polite, patient, and
helpful. He is coordinating all the logistics of this project, and we
would be lost without him! This is his second time on Seymour Island.
All in all, I couldn't ask for a better bunch of people to be stuck on a
remote island with. We all get along famously, we're all hardworking
and motivated, and none of us is a whiner. We should do just fine.
The last few days here in Punta have been a mix of blue sky, clouds,
rain, warm sun, and near-constant wind. A real mixed bag. When the sun
is out, it can be downright warm if you're out of the wind, but as soon
as the clouds come in you feel the cold. The wind has been just
ferocious in the last day or so, so much so that it's actually hard to
walk around out in the open. I really hope that doesn't mean we're in for
a rough crossing. The Palmer, though, is a much bigger ship than the
Gould we were on last year, and I'm hopeful that she won't roll quite so
"enthusiastically". The word is that this will be a comparatively
smoother ride.
I'm going to sign off now for the night. Hopefully I'll get my computer
hooked to the ship's network tomorrow and can send this out to you then.
I'm sharing my cabin with a woman who is a computer technician onboard,
so I think my chances are good!
Wednesday, December 5, 2001
Well, it's 2:30 and we're still at the dock. Not surprisingly, a few
last minute problems arose, but nothing that should keep us here much
longer. One of them was that our water supply for the month on Seymour
didn't arrive early enough, so we had to wait for that. It should be
aboard by now though, so I'm not sure what else is holding us up.
I am now connected to the network here in my cabin, and so I have email
access right here. Makes life easier. The way email works is that they
send it out and get new messages twice a day, I think at 9AM and 6PM our
time. So everything you get from me will be sent at about the same
time.
(Just got the new estimated departure time - 4:00PM. Bummer. Not sure
what's up. Someone said it was all just paperwork problems, perhaps
with the Customs officers that have to come aboard to clear us to
leave.)
We spent the morning loading our Seymour Island fresh veggies and other
perishables on board the ship. Crates of apples, pears, tomatoes,
lettuce, cheese, milk! All gets swung on board with the crane, then we
pack things into smaller more easily transported containers. We also
got the first delivery of water - 150 2-liter bottles, and several cases
of beer that we hope to bribe the other scientists on board with in
order to get them to help us unload on Seymour. The ship is dry, but
the island isn't! And we can use all the help we can get. The other
group on board is out of Hamilton College, in NY, and includes about 12
people. I think at least 8 or 9 of them are undergrads too - great
experience for them. They'll be staying on the ship the whole time,
collecting water and sediment samples around the Peninsula. I confess I
don't fully understand what they're up to, but we'll have a science
meeting once we're underway to talk about our respective projects.
Well! I just got the update on why we're late. Apparently John Evans
was up on top of our container, securing it, when there was an accident,
something slipped and he got hit in the face with the end of a big
ratcheting device. He's just gotten 4 stitches in his lip. Thankfully,
nothing broke and it's not serious, but it could have been much worse.
Good thing it happened while we were still at port, I suppose, but it's
really too bad. I just saw him and he seems fine. At least he's still
smiling and laughing about it
Hi - Here are a few pictures... the wonders of digital photography...
One shows the Palmer tied up across the pier from the Gould on our first
full day in town. You can see how much bigger the Palmer is than last
year's ship. The Gould left a couple days ago, but it was interesting
to see the two side by side.
These are now clickable for larger pics! - JP
Another shows the view from the bridge of the Palmer looking back down
the pier toward Punta Arenas - basically what I can see now if I go
outside.
The last is a picture of my colleagues in the process of setting up our
Weatherport shelter. It's not spacious, but it'll be home!
The email size limit is only 76K, so I'm going to send these out
one at a time... Hopefully you'll be able to see them.
Wednesday December 5, 2001, 4pm
Right on time! We're underway. Punta Arenas is slipping away to the
stern, and we're making our way out into the Straits of Magellan. (Why
is it "Straits", and not "Strait"? There's only one way through!.) The
depth-sounding pinger has just started pinging, sounding like a cricket
with hiccups (at least on this deck) as it echoes through the hull.
Feels good to finally be on our way. Now we have 4 days of not much
happening. Eat, sleep, write, eat, sleep, look outside, read, sleep!
Pretty dull. Hopefully.
Dan and Alex have put their seasickness patches on and are now entering
a scopolomine-induced funk. Makes your mouth dry and makes you groggy
and sleepy. Both of them are walking around looking a bit like zombies,
and will for another few days. Me, I'm going with meclazine, the stuff
in Bonine. Let's hope it does the trick. I'm not quite brave enough to
try it without.
Wednesday December 5, 2001, 7:30pm
We're starting to roll a little now, but still very mellow. The
Nathaniel B. Palmer is quite a ship. It's 308 feet long and 60 feet
wide, much bigger than the Gould from last year. In addition, it's an
ice BREAKER, not an ice "pusher", like the Gould was. This one is rated
to cruise through 3 ft of ice at 3 knots. Given what happened last year
on the Gould (stuck in the ice for several days), this will be a welcome
change. I just saw a satellite image of the ice around the Peninsula,
and Seymour looks clear on the NW side, which is just what we want. As
long as a wind doesn't come up and blow ice in, we should be OK. As far
as getting on (and off) the island, ice will be our limiting factor. If
there is too much ice in the water, either solid sea ice or broken lumps
of floating ice (brash), we won't be able to navigate the Zodiacs to
ferry us and our gear to shore. In that event, we're doomed to sit on
the ship and wait while the other science party does their thing. Maybe
we'd be able to try again to get on the island a little later on in the
month, but we'd be very limited in the amount of time we'd have for
collecting.
Thursday December 6, 2001, 8:45 AM
We're about half way down the coast of Tierra del Fuego now. Seas are
remarkably calm - just a nice gentle swell, and hardly any whitecaps at
all. It was rougher at the pier in Punta Arenas! Sun is out, and it's
relatively warm, so I may go out on the deck and read a bit to pass the
time.
I tried to send out a few digital pictures, but apparently they aren't
permitted unless it's for science. Don't know if you got any of them or
not - there were 3. Oh well.
December 6, 2001
Just came in from the deck. It was beautiful out there for a while.
Bright warm sun. I sat down in the lee of the wind and dozed for a bit
- it was actually warm enough to be in a short-sleeved shirt! But about
a half hour ago the clouds thickened and it got cold as soon as it got
cloudy, so I'm back inside now.
So where exactly is Seymour Island and why am I going there? (This is
the message that those of you who already know what I'm up to can
delete.) Seymour Island lies just to the east of the Antarctic
Peninsula, the part of the continent that sticks up toward South
America. It's a small island, only a few miles long, and shaped rather
like a kidney bean oriented N-S with the bean indentation on the west
side. We'll be camping on the NW coast. It's a unique place because
it's really one of the only spots in Antarctica that preserves fossils
from the time period we're interested in and isn't covered with snow or
ice all year. The sediments on the island were deposited in a shallow
marine setting, when sea level was higher and the island was underwater,
and are mostly sands and muds. The southern half of the island is all
of Cretaceous age - the time of the dinosaurs. We won't be working in
that part much, but will likely venture down there to check it out if we
have some free time. The northern part of the island is all
post-dinosaurs, and most fossils come from a time period called the
Eocene, spanning the time from about 57 million years ago to about 34
million years ago or so. The Eocene is a particularly interesting
period in Earth history because it encompasses a really dramatic climate
change. Early in the Eocene, global climates were very warm. There was
no ice on Antarctica (or anywhere, really), there were palm trees
growing in the northern Rocky Mountains, and there were crocodiles
living above the Arctic Circle. A very different planet from today.
But toward the end of the Eocene, things started to cool down, and by
about 33 million years ago, there was a full-sized continental ice sheet
on Antarctica. This transition had a profound effect on the organisms
living at the time. My colleagues and I are interested in this climate
transition and how shallow marine ecosystems responded to it.
Specifically, we're interested in predator-prey relationships and how
they were affected by cooling. An interesting fact about Antarctic
waters today is that there are very few things out there that hunt down
and crunch up shelled animals (mollusks) and eat them. The primary
animals that do this at lower latitudes are fish, rays, and crustaceans
like crabs and mantis shrimp. They're abundant in warmer waters, and
clams and snails have developed a whole suite of defenses to protect
themselves from the marauders. Some clams can burrow into the sediment
to escape, and many clams and snails have grown stronger thicker shells,
often with spines and/or coarse ribbing, to protect themselves against
becoming a meal. The shells of these mollusks bear the scars of living
in such a dangerous world - they show evidence of failed predation
attempts in the breakage and repair of their shells. Animals that can't
defend themselves against the predators simply can't live in shallow
warm waters today because they are too vulnerable. Interestingly, in
the Antarctic today, there are lots of animals that would otherwise be
excluded from shallow-water settings by predators, and the mollusks that
are present have relatively thin and unornamented shells. In fact, the
ecosystem has a distinctly ancient aspect to it. Echinoderms of all
types are abundant, and not only are starfish and urchins present, but
also brittle stars and crinoids - animals very vulnerable to the
snacking behavior of fish and crabs. Crinoids were one of the most
abundant animals in Paleozoic shallow seas, before those types of
predators evolved, but are now nearly entirely absent from them, being
relegated to the deep sea as a refuge from predation. As you might
predict, there are also virtually no fish, rays, or crabs in Antarctic
waters for the prey species to worry about. Back in the early part of
the Eocene, this was not the case. Crabs and shark teeth are among the
fossils recovered from the lower part of the section on Seymour Island.
Correspondingly, the snails and clams present are thicker shelled and
often lumpy and ornamented, like those in warm water today. Further up
the section though, in younger sediments, the crabs and shark teeth
disappear entirely. There is another twist on this story in that shell
crushers are not the only predator in the fauna. Some snails are
capable of drilling holes in their fellow mollusks, and they prey on
them by slurping the tissue out through that hole. Evidence of their
predation is easy to see in the fossil shells because the holes are
preserved. In Antarctica, if shell crushers disappeared and left the
mollusks to their own devices, the shell drillers would be the only
predators left in the ecosystem.
My colleagues (Dan Blake, University of Illinois) and Rich Aronson
(Dauphin Island Sea Lab), have predicted that in response to the loss of
shell crushers, there should be a trend in the mollusk fauna toward
thinner, less ornamented shells and a noticeable decline in the evidence
for shell-crushing predation as we go upsection into younger sediments.
In addition, they predict an increase in drilling predation upsection as
the predatory snails go unchecked by shell crushers. This may actually
negate the trend toward thinner shells, since the thicker the shell you
have, the more difficult it will be for a snail to drill a hole in it.
They further hypothesize that these trends are the result of cooling
temperatures that excluded the shell crushers from Antarctic waters.
We are going to Seymour Island to test those hypotheses. We plan to
collect representative collections of mollusks up through the section
and document trends in 1) morphology (shape) of their shells, to see if
they in fact get thinner and less ornamented, and 2) predation intensity
on those shells, to see if in fact the shell crushers become less
important with time and/or if shell drilling became more prevalent. In
addition, I will be collecting shells to analyze geochemically, in order
to reconstruct the temperature history of the ancient Seymour Island
environment. The ratio of 18O to 16O in shell carbonate (CaCO3) can be
used to determine the water in which the shell was grown, and this will
allow us to test the hypothesis that the change in the makeup of the
fauna was a result of temperature change. The other interesting aspect
of this research is that, because we're studying the effects of global
cooling on ecosystems, our results may shed light on what may be in
store for faunas in a time of global warming. As the seas warm,
predators may be reintroduced to areas from which they had been formerly
excluded, and the story could run in reverse.
As I finish this letter, it's about dinner time. We've been cruising
down the east side of Tierra del Fuego all day, and are about to enter
the Drake Passage. The water has become noticeably rougher, and the
boat rolls more with the larger swells. The sky has been clouded since
around 11am, and now it's raining gently. A couple of giant petrels
have been wheeling about near the ship, looking for fish. Not much in
the way of anything else though. I'm going to head off for dinner now.
December 7, 2001
So, you might ask, what about plate tectonics? Doesn't that push
continents around over time? Where was Seymour Island during the
Eocene? Couldn't the cooling trend you talked about just be due to it
moving closer to the South Pole?
That's a good point. And yes, that could in theory be responsible for a
cooling trend. Some plates, like India, moved a considerable distance
during the time frame we're talking about. However, Seymour Island and
Antarctica have been pretty much sitting in the same place, centered on
the Pole, for the last 200 million years or so. The history of
Antarctica has been one of progressive isolation with time as the other
continents pulled away from it and moved north. First Australia, New
Zealand, and Tasmania, and then South America later on. The Drake
Passage, between South America and Antarctica, opened around 34 million
years ago. That's also about the time when we first start to see a big
ice sheet forming on Antarctica. The two events are not unrelated.
Prior to the opening of the Drake Passage, any water flowing around
Antarctica was diverted by the land connection up toward the equator,
where it was warmed up. Warm water flowing down from the equator mixed
with the waters around Antarctica, keeping the continent relatively
warm. Once the Drake Passage opened, there was nothing to keep the
water around Antarctica from just circulating around and around the
continent, isolated from more equatorial circulation and hence staying
cold. When this happened, there was no longer any warm water input to
the Southern Ocean, and Antarctica got much colder. That's when ice
began to accumulate and not melt off in the summer, building up a
glacier. Researchers have found that this ice buildup happened very
rapidly once it got going, and within a couple hundred thousand years
you had a full-size ice sheet covering Antarctica. That transition
happened at about the boundary between the Eocene and Oligocene Epochs.
We're hoping to be able to see that big kick toward glacial conditions
on Seymour Island, at the very top of the stratigraphic section, but we
fear that it has been eroded away, and the section only goes up through
the later part of the Eocene. Either way, we'll have at least the early
onset of cooling represented in the sediments.
The Drake Passage is renowned for having some of the worst seas in the
world. The swells in the Southern Ocean can get huge because of the
essentially infinite fetch for the wind (fetch is the area of water over
which the wind can blow and build up waves via friction at the
surface). Because the ocean is uninterrupted all the way around, the
wind can just blow and blow and pile up huge waves. The Drake Passage
is the narrowest passage in the Southern Ocean, and all that water has
to shoot through it, so it speeds up and piles up. We're in the middle
of it right now. And we have been lucky! The seas are almost calm for
this part of the world. Right now, the barometric pressure is rising,
and I just looked at the map of isobars and they're all spread way out
across the passage, so there's no pressure differential to give us a lot
of wind. We should have a nice smooth crossing if it stays that way.
The temperature now is 4 degrees C, and about -10 with the wind chill.
Winds are light, only around 10 knots. The skies are cloudy but bright,
and there are almost no whitecaps. Some big swells, and a light chop,
but we're in really good shape.
Like the pied piper, we've picked up a cadre of birds following along
with the ship. Basically the same cast as last year. There are cape
pigeons - actually medium sized petrels with beautiful black and white
patches on the top sides of their wings and white below, and giant
petrels - bigger, mostly dark, and rather stout and torpedo shaped.
There are a couple of albatrosses too. About the same wing span as the
giant petrels, but they're more graceful and elegant, not so thick in
the body. They're all just hanging out back there, playing in the wind
as it swirls around the ship, swooping and wheeling about. There are
some smaller gray and white birds fluttering at a distance too, hovering
over the waves. I'm not sure what they are yet, but look like terns.
I'm not sure they'd be this far away from land though, so I'll have to
check on them.
There are going to be a few web sites set up back in the states that
will document this trip and show pictures of what's going on. One will
be the Hamilton College web site, in New York State (the other science
party on board is based there), another will be the New England Aquarium
web site, and the Talcott Mountain Science Center in Avon CT will have
one too, containing these emails. We have permission to send out
digital pictures for at least the first 2 sites (I'm working on the
3rd). There will be lots of pictures posted of our deployment to
Seymour Island, when the time comes. I'll get the web addresses from
people and send them so you can check them out.
December 8, 2001
Getting close now. If all goes well, we'll be through the Bransfield
Strait this evening around dinner time. That'll put us out of the Drake
Passage and into the Antarctic Sound, water protected by the Peninsula.
That's when we can expect to see our first icebergs, and the water ought
to calm down. In fact, though, the crossing has been really mellow this
time. Last night I slept like a baby, rocking gently. I even dared to
think that I've experienced worse motion tied up at the dock in some
boats! The Palmer is fantastic. Of course, the weather has been
cooperating too, so far. Looks like things are picking up a little
though. It's raining pretty hard, and the barometer is falling fast.
The seas are a hard gray today, rather than the deep sun-sparkled blue
they have been, and there are more whitecaps. Looks kind of foggy in
the distance - the horizon is hard to pick out, because the wind is
picking up foam and blowing it around, plus the rain obscures it a bit.
The temp now is about 2 degrees C, the water temp about .5 degrees, and
the wind is blowing around 10 knots. We've picked up a good bunch of
cape pigeons - there must be 100 out there, cruising around the boat en
mass. We'll probably see more and more birds as we get closer to land.
The ETA for Seymour Island is sometime tomorrow morning. We'll probably
eat breakfast on board and then begin to coordinate the off-loading
teams. Everything we have to go ashore will be delivered by Zodiac, an
inflatable rubber boat with an outboard motor and a plywood bottom.
Dan, John, and I will go ashore first and start searching for the best
place to make camp. We'll probably send the weatherport shelter ashore
in the next run, and Alex, Ryan and I will start setting that up while
other folks load the Zodiacs, ferry things over, and unload on the
island. Setting up the shelter is the big job, and once we have that
functional we'll be able to start work on the rest of the camp. We plan
to get as much done tomorrow as we can, then spend tomorrow night on the
ship for one last hot shower and some clean laundry. Take care of the
rest of the setup on Monday, then the Palmer disappears off into the
mist! I really hope it's not going to be raining for the next couple
days. Ugh. Snow would almost be better, if we had to have something.
December 8, 2001 10:30pm
Ah, finally, a respite. We had hoped that once we got to the Bransfield
Strait we'd be home free. But no, instead, once we passed the South
Shetland Islands and got into the waters between them and the peninsula,
the seas kicked up into the worst we've seen the whole trip. It was
raining/snowing, 0 degrees C outside with 30 knot winds and a wind chill
around -18 degrees C, and the seas were just roiling. A number of folks
were feeling pretty bad. Alex was green, and Ryan, who'd been braving
the trip without seasickness meds, almost lost it. The ocean was just
gorgeous in a dark and cold kind of way, and looked almost alive. Huge
swells were rolling past, and piles of water were mountaining up all
around to crash at the tops and explode into foam and spray. Most of us
just went to bed after dinner and tried to sleep through it. Through it
all, the cape pigeons were seemingly unperturbed by the less than
optimal weather. They kept whirling and swooping in unison around the
ship, their collective body going from a speeding mosaic of black and
white to a flash of brilliant white as they lifted and curled up and
away from the ship as one.
About 20 minutes ago, things started to settle down markedly. We
finally made it to the peninsula, and are now in the little passage that
cuts through it into the Antarctic Sound. The views are breathtaking.
We're in that perpetual sunset part of the day now, so the clouds are
lit up in streaks of yellow and gold, with tinges of pink and purple
against a pale blue sky. Craggy, ice-covered mountains are off the
starboard side, dripping in what looks for all the world like thick,
white, cake frosting. Out in the sea, big slabs of ice are floating by,
along with many smaller chunks that have broken off and are being
churned to eventual destruction by the waves and wind. A fleet of 5 big
ones, the size of city blocks and several stories tall, just slipped by
in the distance. Lenticular clouds are lit up like gold overhead, and
shimmer like a veil over the land in the distance. Our escort of cape
pigeons seems to have left us at the edge of the open water - only a few
have stayed with us.
Now, hopefully, we should have smooth sailing all the way to Seymour.
Knock on wood!
December 9, 2001
Well, this has been quite a day. Best laid plans and all...
When I woke up this morning, we were sitting just offshore of Seymour
Island. The sky was blue and the island was completely free of snow!
all looked wonderful! except for the wide stretch of sea ice the wind
had blown in all along the shore. Between open water and our campsite,
there was a layer of broken ice several hundred yards wide, rising and
falling with the waves. Impossible to get through.
So we hemmed and hawed and paced and looked out the bridge windows with
the binoculars and paced some more and looked at the weather map and
paced! We elected to case out the other side of the island for a
potential campsite, to see if that was an option if the ice doesn't blow
away. The problem with that though is that it puts us far away from the
rocks we need to collect in, and to get there we would have to hike up
one side of the mesa and down the other, then do it all over again with
full packs going back to camp. Every day. And the mesa is a not
insignificant climb - probably 700 feet or so of elevation? So we're
not too happy with that option. But we decided to check it out as a
backup just in case, and then give it a day to see if the ice blows out
of the west side. The other science party on board needs to do some
work in this area anyway, so we'll give them a day and then try again.
We brought the ship around to the east side of the island, and it looked
a lot better as far as ice was concerned. But the whole shoreline is
basically a cliff. Not too hospitable for a campsite. We put a zodiac
in the water and cruised in closer to shore to check it out. The first
two spots we tried were completely impossible - no flat ground anywhere,
and lots of mud in the drainages. Ugh. We finally found a spot on the
east side of Cross Valley that was flat enough to set up a campsite, but
it's pretty far from our collecting localities. The island was
distinctly unpleasant this time too - the sky had clouded over, the wind
had picked up, light snow was starting to fall, and the seas had kicked
up pretty high. Silt and sand was blowing off the cliffs and getting
everywhere, in our eyes, hair. At least the geology was cool - this
side showed beautiful bedded strata, with lots of channeling and
cross-cutting of beds. Very interesting. Not many fossils though, from
the little we looked at. Definitely not the ideal place to make a base
camp. Oh well. But it will work if need be. We climbed back in the
Zodiac and headed back to the ship. A long ride back, with heavy seas.
I confess I was getting a little nervous, but the rest of the guys in
the boat were all loving it (or at least that's what they said after we
made it back safely!). Hell, the waves were mounding up way over the
guy's head who was driving the boat. And climbing out of the zodiac up
the ladder onto the ship was treacherous in itself, with the seas
heaving the zodiac up and down the side of the ship, crashing into the
ladder. I think I'm getting too damn old for this crap!
So now I'm back on board the Palmer, sitting in my cabin, freshly
showered, and waiting for my laundry to finish. Ah, the comforts of
home. At least for another day. Tomorrow we make camp, and do it all
in one day. Hopefully it will be on the NW side, if the ice blows out.
If not, we're stuck at the east end of the so-called Valley of Doom, as
we dubbed it last year, because of the deep boot-sucking mud that
blankets the west end of it. Gads, I really hope the wind changes! Why
did I want to come down here after all?!?
December 10, 2001
Well, folks, this is going to be the last email for a while. We're
going ashore today for the next month. We're approaching the
off-loading spot now. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have
to go with the base camp on the east side of the island. Lots of hiking
in store for us! The west side is completely packed in with ice. At
least we have a good day for it - bright sun, clear sky, low seas.
Should go smoothly and relatively quickly.
There's a lot of ice in the waters around here this time - pack ice, sea
ice, and a lot of the big tall slabs of ice sheets - way more than last
year. Makes for striking scenery, and lots of places for penguins and
seals to lounge. There will be penguins on our island, in fact we saw
some yesterday just down the beach from our proposed camp site. Should
be fun to have them as visitors. There's a colony down the island to
the south too, and we plan to go check them out at some point during the
month.
I should be back on the ship sometime in the first week and a half or so
of January, and I'll send my log for the month along at that point. I
don't know how good I'll be at making entries on the island, but I'm
going to give it a shot.
I wish everyone the best of holidays, and a Happy New Year!
Take care, Linda
December 12, 2001 10:30 pm
It is the evening of our third day on the island. Thought I‚d sit down
and relate the events of the past few days before they blend together
into an endless string of days where we get up, hike up to the top of
the island, go back down the other side, collect fossils, then carry
them all back up and down again to bring them back to camp. It‚s
becoming apparent that we are a long way from where we really want to
be! It will be workable though, and as you'll see we have at least one
opportunity to make working this far away from camp more feasible.
We came ashore on December 10 and set up the base camp. It took
something like 15 different trips from the Palmer with the zodiacs to
get all our stuff here! Folks from the ship all came along to help
carry our provisions and equipment up the beach to our site. It took
the better part of a day to get everything off the ship and moved up the
beach, and then the rest of the day to set up our Scott tents and
weatherport shelter, and to start organizing and unpacking. Almost as
soon as the first wave of people arrived, the penguins showed up to
check us out. One adeli was first on the scene and has been
particularly friendly, and as humans are wont to do, we have named him
Seymour. He seems to be especially fond of Ryan, and has gotten close
enough to try and nibble on his fingers more than once. Ryan seems to
enjoy this immensely, except when Seymour follows him to the beach for
his morning constitutional and gets a bit overly curious!
Although we're stuck on the wrong side of the island for making work
optimal, we really have a beautiful camp site. We're just above the
beach in a valley fed by glacial meltwater. I say glacial, but that‚s a
loose translation - the ice that‚s left here in the valleys now is
covered in dark brown mud that gets all bubbly-textured on the surface
from where the ice is melting below. I didn't even realize until today
that there is ice effectively right here, next to camp. It‚s disguised
very effectively. We have a spectacular view of the ocean from camp,
and there are many large slabs of ice, the super tall and city-block
sized ones, floating offshore to add to the scenery. Penguins and seals
are regular visitors to the beach, and I've gone to sleep each night
thus far listening to the waves breaking on the shoreline. Not a bad
place. The only detraction, save from the distance we have to hike each
day, is the fine blowing dust. It gets everywhere, and is hard to keep
out of your tent and your eyes and your clothes. Each time we've come
back to camp, our tents are shrouded in a pale brown powder.
The first day of hiking, yesterday, was a long day. We started off, as
we apparently will every day, with a long steep hike up to the top of
the mesa, about 700 feet up or so. We then worked along the edge for a
bit before dropping back down to the west side of the island and working
in the lower part of the section. We found a location there with lots
of spectacularly preserved fossil starfish, and Dan and Alex were in
heaven. I've never collected fossil starfish before, really, so it was
a new experience to find such things for me.
It became clear early to me on that we were going to have a problem
keeping the group together in the field. Dan was anxious to see as much
as he could, so he got out in front early. We got our signals crossed,
and John and I started hiking down one ridge thinking that Dan, Alex and
Ryan were going to be hiking a parallel ridge and we‚d be in sight of
each other all the time. Somehow though, Dan ended up going way down
the mesa before dropping onto a ridge well out of sight of the rest of
us, and Alex and Ryan were left to their own devices somewhere between
us. The next time I saw them, they were perched precariously near the
top of a sheer drop, happily collecting fossils and working their way
slowly down the cliff face. I nearly had a heart attack! Not that I
don't trust their abilities, but Dan and I are responsible for their
well-being out here, and I really didn't want to see anything happen.
One wrong move and you could really be in trouble, and we're a long way
from any medical attention. Thankfully, after we spotted them, John
eased them down the face safely from below, and we all met up with Dan
later on. This morning, I talked to him about our policy, and I think
we've agreed that no one will work alone, and to either all stay
together or be very clear about where and when we would meet up if we
separate.
We covered a lot of ground that first day, and we were all suffering the
consequences from it this morning. Ryan‚s boots were new, and he wound
up with bad blisters on both heels. This morning, he duct-taped
moleskin onto both feet in the hopes of keeping them happy for the day.
Alex was plain exhausted, and had a hard time waking up and getting
going. I was feeling stiff and a bit sore, and had a hard time getting
motivated this morning myself. In point of fact, we were so sluggish
that we didn't actually leave camp this morning until near 11am!
Embarrassing.
Today we hiked up the mesa (again) and went to visit the Argentine base
camp, Marambio. They have a small air force base on the island to
strengthen their claim to the land - Chile also claims Seymour as their
own, but has no presence here. The Argentines were wonderfully
hospitable, and invited us in for lunch with them and gave us a tour of
the base. The facilities are much nicer and more extensive than I had
imagined. They've also invited us to come up and stay a few nights with
them if it would help our research, and so we plan on taking advantage
of that! Probably the day after tomorrow, we'll stay there for the
evening so that we will be that much closer to our most distant
collecting localities. Hopefully we will be able to stay with them for
2 nights. It will make our work on the far northern part of the island
much easier, and hot showers are a big lure, even after only a few days!
While some of us got dinner going, John and Dan worked on battening down
the hatches even more than we had done previously. We put 4 extra ropes
each on the 3 Scott tents, each anchored to a little girdle that went
around the apex of the tents and that would function to hold them down
in the event of wind. They also put a huge amount of rope on the
weatherport, anchoring it down on all sides. Seemed a little bit
excessive to me, but I guess better safe than sorry.
The nights here have been really pretty. It never gets dark, but we
have a prolonged twilight from about 11 to 2 or so. On the first night,
I went out to pee on the beach around 11:30 and the sky was all streaked
with purple and pale blue and peach, the water was calm and reflected
the sky, and the icebergs in the distance were an austere white. The
waves lapped gently on the shore, only a few inches high, and long
parallel wave trains curved gracefully toward shore on their approach.
The temperature has even been almost warm, in the 40s. Just beautiful.
December 13, 2001 3:00pm
Guess it‚s a good thing we put all those extra ropes on our tents. It‚s
the middle of the afternoon, and I‚m sitting in my sleeping bag writing
this as the maelstrom howls outside. We were awakened about 4:30 this
morning with the wind howling and the tents flapping and smacking and
the dust pelting the fabric like a sandblaster. Three hours later, it
hadn't let up a bit, in fact seemed even worse, and so we hunkered down
to see how long it would last. Given that we were all so beat from the
last 2 days, the wind was blowing hard enough to make walking difficult,
and it had started raining to boot, we decided to just make it a camp
day.
It is probably good that we have a day in camp to regroup and relax.
John has been sick with dysentery for a couple of days, and has had a
rough time of it. He‚s even gone so far as to bath in the ocean to get
cleaned up, and that water is -.5 degrees C! Through it all though, he
has had the most unbelievably good disposition, and jokes about the
whole ordeal as if it hasn't bothered him a bit. I didn't even realize
he was sick until this morning. The source of it is as yet unknown, but
we think it may have been something he picked up on the ship. We're all
hoping that whatever it was is not contagious, as that would really be
inconvenient and unpleasant if we were all to come down with it in
sequence!
Even if we were all healthy and ready to roll, it would have been
unworkable out in the field. The wind has been blowing steadily at ~25
knots, and frequently gusting to near 40. You can't keep the sand out
of your eyes. In the weatherport, where we spent most of the morning,
the wind would hit the sides of the structure so hard that it sounded
like what an earthquake must sound like, violently shaking the whole
thing with the force of a locomotive running over us. We're pleased,
though, that the little shelter has held up so well. It seems to be
withstanding the blow with no troubles (knock on wood). The thing is
trussed up and tied down with so much rope though that I‚d be surprised
if even mother nature could move it. If it failed, it would likely be
by the fabric of the shell ripping under the strain. Hopefully we
haven't tested its strength too badly with this episode.
Boy, some of these gusts are downright scary, they hit so hard. I‚m a
little afraid this tent will just fold up around me and roll on down to
the ocean. They're supposed to be designed for just these conditions
though, and worse, so I guess I'll have to have faith. The sound it
makes in the ropes is a real howl, and there is so much sand being
hurled at the tent it‚s like someone has turned up a radio or TV with no
reception on the highest volume. Now I can see why some of those
starfish fossils we found the other day looked like they‚d been sand
blasted. They had.
In spite of the storm outside, my tent is pretty cozy. With only me in
it, it‚s spacious too. The floor is about 6 or 7 feet square, and the
sides slope up high enough to stand up in the middle. I've got my
sleeping bag on a cot along the west-facing wall, away from the door
(and on the side that the wind is hitting hardest right now!). Under
the cot I've stashed my computer, books, and miscellaneous items I won't
need very often. One corner I've set up for dirty stuff - muddy boots
and field gear. Another corner/side is for clean long underwear and
socks, in a duffel bag, and my camera. Outer wear goes along the side
next to the dirty stuff. In the middle, I've got open space and my
Therma-rest chair. There are pockets all along the sides about 3 feet
up that hold a variety of toiletries and sunscreen and raingear and
towels, etc. I've also got, in the dirty corner, my own private!
bucket. The potty policy on the island is that everything goes in the
ocean, below the high tide line. So if you've gotta go, you need to
truck on down to the beach. Not bad, you say - a nice view and all! and
this is true. But when it‚s below freezing, as it gets at night, and
the wind is blowing, it can be pretty unpleasant to have to get out of a
warm sleeping bag and put on all your outerwear and go out to brave the
elements. That‚s the way we did it last year, and for the first couple
days here. But now, I've got a bucket with a tight-fitting screw-on lid
that I can just pee in during the night, and then take down to the beach
in the morning. Much more convenient. The guys have it easier - they
can just stay in their sleeping bags and use a water bottle devoted to
the purpose, and they never even have to get up. I‚m envious.
Our meals so far have been rather elegant, for living in tents this far
from civilization. Breakfast and lunch are more-or-less do it yourself
operations, but dinners have been wonderful. Two nights ago, Ryan
cooked up some conger eel in garlic and oregano, and I sautéed a pile of
fresh veggies to go with it and made a big salad. Last night, Alex
cooked pork chops with seasoned pepper and salt, Ryan made real mashed
potatoes, and I cut up green and red peppers and onions to cook with the
chops. One night, John sliced a bit of Regianno parmesan for an
appetizer, and on another, I made fresh guacamole. Dan sliced fresh
peaches and nectarines for dessert. All very nice. We're going to run
out of the fresh frozen meat soon, as it thaws out and we have to eat it
up, and the fresh veggies and fruit won't last very long either, but
it‚s nice while it lasts. Once that gets thin, we have a variety of
pastas and rice and beans and canned meat, and the potatoes and carrots
and onions will probably last the whole month.
The batteries in my computer are running low, and so I think I'll sign
off here and wait out the storm with a good book. Hopefully this
weather will break soon and the conditions will improve. Dan fears this
may go on for several days though, given his past experience. Oh well.
At least it‚s not snowing!
December 14, 2001
The wind blew hard until around 9 last night, and then died down. About
1:30am, though, I was again awakened by the tent shuddering and the wind
in the ropes moaning. It blew all through the rest of the night. At
about 2:30am, like the afternoon before, it was blowing so hard I was
getting worried about the tent blowing away. I actually went so far as
to gather up all the loose clothing in the tent and pack it into the
duffels, so that when the tent blew off over my head (the bottoms are
not attached to the sides), at least my clothes wouldn't be scattered
all over the beach. I went outside to check the ropes, and tightened a
few up that had loosened a bit under the strain. That was enough to
convince me that we were anchored down about as tightly as we could be,
and the likelihood of the tent actually collapsing was very low. I
think there are 18 foot-and-a-half long metal spikes holding each tent
down, plus the flaps that run all around the outside of the bases are
buried in piles of dirt and rocks, so the wind can't get under them.
We're in pretty good shape.
At 7 this morning, the wind was still howling, so we slept in. By 9 or
10, we were all gathered in the weatherport wondering whether we‚d get
anything done today at all. The wind was dying down though, and by
11:30 it was calm enough that we decided to give it a try. We got all
our things together and got dressed and set off up the hill from camp.
Once we got to the first little rise, we nearly got blown off the
hillslope. Alex and I are the lightest ones, and we could have flown
back down the valley if we‚d wanted to. So, after a short huddle, we
reluctantly decided that it just wasn't going to be feasible to hike all
the way across the island and then get some work done. Especially since
the wind was blowing from across the island, where we were headed, and
it was fearsome only a little above our campsite and we were planning to
be working at a much higher elevation. We all trundled back down the
hill, and I am now sitting here writing this.
We've now lost 2 days to the weather out of the 5 we've been here. Hope
that ratio doesn't persist for the rest of our stay!
About all you can do when you get weathered out is hang around in the
tents or the weatherport. We pass the time by some combination of
eating, sleeping, and sitting around yakking about things you‚d never
dream of spending so much time talking about normally. Bodily functions
are a big favorite, seeing as how they are inevitable and unavoidable,
but often extremely unpleasant or difficult in weather like this. Ryan
ventured down to the beach with the bucket yesterday, and the wind
caught it and sailed it out into the ocean. He came back dejected and
really really cold after trying to chase it down. His only consolation
was that he had managed to save the seat! Luckily, later on that night,
when the tide came in, said bucket came back to us. John rescued it and
came back with the story of triumph. Thankfully too, John seems to be
over his bout of gastrointestinal distress. Things were back to working
order this morning.
The penguins are a favorite topic of conversation too. Watching them
has been really interesting. We must be in their spot, because there
are consistently between 1 and 2 dozen of them around, sitting or
sleeping or gathered in little bunches talking back and forth. They
don't just come up to the beach to hang out, either. They go hiking
too. We've seen them hopping and flopping their way up the slopes to
surprisingly high elevations. You‚d look up and there would be a little
face peering down at you from on high. And they seem to like to pick up
rocks too. They pick them up and put them back down somewhere else,
then pick them up, etc!. Alex and Dan were wondering what was going
through their little penguin brains to make them do this. Walking up
steep slopes and picking up rocks over and over! who could imagine why
anyone would want to spend so much time doing such things?! Hmmm!
This morning, there has been a young elephant seal basking on our
beach. He just lies there. No one has seen him move, save for his
breathing. He looks very content though, almost smiling under his
little seal whiskers. Well, not so little. Sure, he‚s a youngster, but
he‚s still awfully big. Probably 5 or 6 feet long? And rather
blobbular. A large rounded elongate mass of brown that doesn't move.
Ryan walked right past him on his way to the beach this morning and
didn't even notice him until his return trip, mistaking him for a rock
at first.
The wind is still blowing and my batteries are dying. I think we'll try
and crank up the generator later on today, but for now I have to sign
off. Cheers!
December 15, 2001, 12:45pm
Still blowing. One more day stuck in camp. At least the sun is out,
and it is truly glorious outside. Down here in camp, the wind isn't
really that bad at all. Dan got all outfitted up and went out for a
hike to see how bad it was over the hill, figuring that if it wasn't too
bad he‚d just tough it out and go reconnoitering. He was back within
less than a half hour. For Dan to say it was too bad to work, it had to
be pretty bad. He said he nearly got lifted off the ground and flipped
over backwards when the wind caught the top of his frame pack. So, even
though things aren't that bad here at camp, they're bad enough up higher
and to the west that it‚s not even worth trying to go out.
I‚m sitting in my tent now writing this, with the computer plugged into
the generator. Seems to be working well. This ought to charge up the
batteries long enough to give me another few days‚ worth of writing.
Before we got this hooked up, I was sitting out in front of my tent in
my Therma-rest chair, all bundled up and reading a book. It was cold
and windy, but the warm sun and a beautiful view of the ocean made it
very worthwhile.
The tide is way out now and there‚s a huge long stretch of intertidal
zone exposed on the beach. Wandering around out there, we've found lots
of Panopea - goeducks - they seem to be the dominant bivalve down here.
I haven't really seen any others, now that I think about it. They have
thin shells down here, and are very easy to break. I've collected a
number of them to bring back though. Their shells are lying open all
over the beach, as the skuas seem to pick them off during low tides and
leave the shells behind. We've contemplated trying to harvest some and
have a nice clam dinner, but are unsure of the policy regarding
consumption of Antarctic wildlife! Limpets are relatively common too,
although we haven't found any alive and attached to their substrate yet,
only dislodged and empty shells. Ryan and Alex have brought back other
treasures from their intertidal wanderings! the best are the
arthropods. They found a large isopod, probably 6 inches long or so,
that had been freshly gutted by a skua and was in beautiful condition.
The poor guy was even still wiggling a leg or two despite having no
insides left. Rough way to go. Another exceptionally cool thing was a
pyncnogonid - a sea spider. It was also on its last legs, but in great
shape. About palm sized with its legs curled under. The coloration was
striking - it was nearly black with dark red bands on its legs. Really
beautiful. If you didn't like spiders though, it could creep you out in
a big way! Ryan also picked up an acorn worm (?) today, a short one,
about 1-2 inches long. Interesting little thing - bulbous at one end,
with a set of gills at the other that looked like a bunch of miniature
grapes. My worm taxonomy is a little rusty, so we aren't positive about
the ID.
We talked to the Nathaniel Palmer this morning on the short wave radio.
They are just north of here, having passed by the island yesterday on
their way back up to the Gulf of Terror and Erebus to do more work.
They were getting 45 knot sustained winds and saw nothing in the
forecast to suggest that the weather pattern would change in the next
couple days. Not a good sign. We're all starting to get a little
stir-crazy in camp!
December 15, 2001, 6:00 pm
Still in camp. The wind seems to have died down substantially, so
perhaps tomorrow will be a better day. The major events of the day!?
Well, we set up and ran the generator today for the first time, and I
charged up the batteries for my computer, digital camera, and Alex‚s
video camera. We reorganized our fresh veggie stash and threw out the
ones that had started to rot. I read part of a dumb novel and, more
productively, wrote a review of Palaeobiology II for Warren Allmon at
PRI, as I had promised to do. John and Alex busied themselves digging
little ditches and building little levees in the drainages on either
side of our camp so that we might confine the meager flow to a smaller
channel and thereby make the ground less muckily to walk on (basically,
they played in the mud). Ryan communed with Seymour and drew pictures
of fossils. I discovered that when one eats turkey jerky inside a Scott
tent, the yellow light it (the tent) casts on everything makes the jerky
look disturbingly like mold. All in all, a very exciting day!
December 16, 2001
We got up this morning and it was calm all right, no wind. But it was
snowing!
Thankfully, the snow only lasted for an hour or so, and didn't amount to
anything. It was cold though, much colder than it had been in the AM,
and cloudy. Probably because the wind had shifted to the south, even
though we weren't feeling much of it in camp. We got packed up and
headed for the field bright and early. Not surprisingly, the wind
picked up as soon as we got out of camp and climbed a bit. We pressed
on though, and headed up to the mesa and along the west side to the
vicinity of „Ruby‰, a benchmark that had been named after the wife of
the person that set it. We nearly got blown off the ridge on a couple
occasions, but succeeded in sampling from 6 different localities in the
upper part of the section (Telm 7, for those in the know). The walk
back to camp with full packs was ! trying. We need to hike along a good
part of the mesa before heading down, and it just goes and goes,
featureless and flat. Easier than climbing uphill with full packs,
true, but it just seems to go on forever. We were walking into the wind
too, and it made the trip that much more difficult. The tears were just
whipping out of my eyes, and I was leaning into it the whole way.
By the time we got halfway down to our camp, the wind started to die
down and it got more pleasant. I unpacked my load and relaxed in my
tent for a half hour or so, and when I came back out the sun had come
out and the skies were clear. It was a beautiful evening. The penguins
were hanging out in front of our camp, and I took a few pictures of
them. Through the evening, we watched as they went from being active
and wandering about and chatting, to just standing in a group, and then
they curled their heads down onto their shoulders, and finally they all
laid down on their tummies and went to sleep. Dan said they looked like
little penguin bread loaves. Cute.
The young elephant seal is still out here too. He hasn't really moved
since he got here a few days ago. Just lies around and wiggles his back
flippers every now and then, or looks over his shoulder at us. He
doesn't seem to have even gone to get food or anything. We were
starting to wonder if he was sick or something. John had talked with a
marine mammal biologist, though, and apparently the juvenile elephant
seals will haul out and moult, and it will take them 3 weeks to do so.
During that time, they don't eat anything either. So we figure that
maybe that‚s what‚s going on here. We hope so.
Dan, John, and I will be going up to Marambio for a couple of nights
tomorrow. We want to collect in the northern part of the island, and
it‚s just too far away to do it from here. Alex and Ryan will stay at
camp and work out in Telm 2, where we collected on the first day. We'll
check in with them each day to make sure things are going OK. I‚m a
little nervous about leaving them here, but Alex is very competent and
knows the place well.
Everyone has gone off to bed and I‚m alone in the weatherport typing. I
can hear the sound of the surf on the beach, only 50 yards or so away.
Tide is high, so the waves are close in. Every now and then, I hear the
squawks of penguins talking to each other. It‚s 10:30pm and the sky is
still blue. The sun has gone behind the hills of the island, so
everything is shadowed, but it‚s still quite light out. The sky is pink
along the horizon, and the sun is glowing pinkish off the huge white
icebergs offshore.
Good night.
Wed, 19 Dec 2001, 8:34
We got here two days ago, to the base on top of the island. We wanted to
do some work in the northern part of the island, and since we're camped
SOOO far away, to the south, we thought we'd stay here for a couple days and
work out of the base. They've been really nice about letting us stay.
Anyway, we did one day of field work, then I got some kind of bug (ugh)
and didn't go out yesterday. But Dan and John did, and by the middle of
the afternoon it was snowing like hell. There are about 6 inches of snow
out there now, and it's still snowing. Supposed to keep going all day,
and the wind is supposed to blow like heck too. Needless to say, we're
stuck for the duration. Alex and Ryan are still back at the base camp.
They were planning to do some work lower down, so we split up for a few
days. We didn't exactly expect this though! We talked to them this morning
on the radio, and they're doing fine. They seem to be loving this, and
will have lots of ammunition against us later for slacking off and
lounging at the base camp while they tough it out in tents!
Sorry about the typos - I can't see what I'm typing until a minute or two
later, because this thing is so slow...
So, yes, I got a bug. We seem to have been plagued by some kind of
creeping crud so far. John got really sick for a few days earlier, and
Dan had it before then, when he got off the ship. Looks like I picked it
up the night before last. Kind of unpleasant. But luckily we were here
at Marambio, and I had a real bathroom, and there is a doctor here who is
very good and he checked me out and said I wasn't going to die or
anything! I'm feeling almost back to normal now.
So this is kind of disappointing - out of 9 potential field days so far,
we've lost 4 to the weather. Bummer. But we have managed to get a lot
done regardless.
I've been writing up a log on my computer, but I don't have it up here. I
guess this will be my entry for these few days.
The weather here has been a real mixed bag. We've gotten some beautiful
calm sunny days, but also a lot of wind, and some rain (sprinkles), and
now snow. Oye. Hope it doesn't keep up like this. There is a LOT of ice
out in the water off the island. Lots of big huge slabs of ice sheet
that are floating around out there. Lots more than I remember from last
year. It looks pretty cool when you look out on the water and see them
out there. One of them must be almost the size of the island, but it's
way off in the distance. The sun makes them glow brilliant white when it
shines, and it's just gorgeous. At twilight, which lasts for about 3
hours, between 11 and 2, the sky gets rosey pink and the bergs reflect
it. Quite stunning. Wish you could see it.
Marambio is not a bad place to get snowbound, but I think I'd rather be back
at our camp, where everything is under our own contol. Here, we have to
eat their meals with them, and have no food of our own to cook. No one
here speaks much english, if at all, so John and I are doing our best to
stumble through it. Dan doesn't speak a word of Spanish, so it's tougher
for him. We're welcome here, but I get the impression that they won't be
disappointed when we leave either. It sounds like the Argentine economy
is in a bit of trouble, like our own, I guess, and the military and this
base are feeling the effects. Dan says that when he was here last time, in
95 I think?, they had a ton of food and wine, and you could just go make
yourself a snack at any time you wanted - food was just left out all the
time. Now, there is nothing around to munch on at all, and you get one,
maybe two servings for lunch and dinner. Breakfast is toast and tea or
coffee. Nada mas.
Wed, 19 Dec 2001, 2:13 PM EST
The wind is still howling. I think it's stopped snowing though, so that's
good, at least. If the wind dies down, we may be able to get some work
done tomorrow. The wind has blown so much that it's cleared most of the
snow off the island, at least the parts we can see from here, so we can
actually see rock again. I imagine the trip down the hill to the camp
will be interesting. There are some pretty big snow drifts curling off
the edges of the plateau here, so I imagine the other end, where we have
to go down, will be as bad.
I've spent the day reading and watching out the window and talking with
John and Dan. I just played a game of pool with Dan - we both stink, but
it was fun! Then we played that little soccer-ball guy on a post game,
whatever it is - foozball? Dan's idea, not mine - I've never played it
before, I don't think. Anyway, turns out I'm pretty good at it. My
wrist is sore now though. Ah, the trials and tribulations of field work
in romote places...
They have a TV here in the common room, and it's tuned in to the Argentine
equivalent of CNN most of the time. I think it's a satelite hook-up.
Their theme music is the stars and stripes forever. Strangest thing, to
be sitting down here in Antarctica waiting for the storm to blow over, in
an Argentine base where no one speaks English, to be hearing snippets of
the Stars and Stripes Forever all day long. Pretty neat. It reminds me
of my Dad all the time - he's a big fan of Sousa.
Hope all is well. Miss you all, and can't wait to be back. Well, can't
wait to get out in the field again either, but that boat isn't going to
come too soon, that's for sure!
Thur, 20 Dec 2001, 7:35 AM EST
The sun has come out. It's just gorgeous out there. Sky with blue streaks
and white clouds, deep blue/gray ocean with whitecaps ( you can see them
even from up here, 850 ft above it and maybe a half mile away - must be
really whipping out there), and a dusting of snow left clinging to the
rocky bits that stick up all over. Crescent shaped overhangs of white
wherever there is a drop of any significance. All the buildings have big
long icicles hanging off of them - the insulation isn't so good here. You
can tell because it's mighty cold, even inside. Luckily, my room (the
women's dorm - I'm the only one in it) is warmer than most of the rest.
They must think I have thin blood or something. OK with me.
December 20, 2001 1:30pm
We´ve been stuck at Marambio for three days now, waiting for the snow to
stop. Yesterday, the skies cleared toward the end of the day and we
were optimistic that we would be able to get some work done today and
then hike down to our base camp, but when we awoke this morning, the
snow was coming down hard again and the fog had returned. Now, it´s
still snowing and you can´t see more than 20 feet or so before
everything becomes featureless and white. At least the wind isn´t
blowing today, but that may mean also that this weather pattern will be
with us for a while.
We arrived here four days ago, with the intent of staying for a couple
of nights while we worked in the north end of the island. Dan, John,
and I are here, and Alex and Ryan stayed back in the base camp to work
in Telm 2, closer to home. We got in one good day of field work, and
then that night I came down with some kind of bug and wasnt able to go
out the next day. Dan and John went out while I rested up, and by the
time they made it back to Marambio that afternoon, it had started to
snow. They had a hard time finding their way back because of the fog -
they made it back up to the top of the mesa, and wandered about until
they found the runway for the base, but they still couldn´t see the
buildings at all, and didn´t even know which direction they were. They
made it back, of course, but they were impressed with how quickly the
clouds could settle and reduce visibility to next to nothing.
The next day, I was feeling much better, but the snow was still falling
and the wind blowing about 35 knots. As I mentioned above, we were
encouraged by the sky clearing last night, but this morning bad weather
had resumed with a vengeance. There is no indication that things will
let up for a long while. We are hopeful though, and now plan to just
pack up and go as soon as we get the chance. Even if we wanted to get
more work done up here (and we do), the snow is deep enough now that we
can´t see the rocks and/or the fossils, and it will probably be several
more days before it melts off enough.
I think we´re all getting to the point where we´d prefer to be back at
our base camp, with all our own things, and cooking our own food. The
folks here have been more than hospitable, but we are not in our
element. I, especially, would like to be back so I can eat something
different - this is an Argentine base, and they serve beef with or as
just about every meal. It´s hard when I don´t eat beef! So I´ve been
going a little hungry. The place is comfortable enough, I suppose, but
I´d rather be back at camp and be experiencing this a bit more
first-hand, not watching through the window of a sterile (but not as
clean as you might like!) dorm room. I´ll bet our little camp is really
pretty with the snow. And I´d like to know what the penguins do when
the weather is like this. Do they even notice?!
Yesterday, I was able to get through to the states on email. It was nice
to communicate, even for a little while. Today, though, we have been
offline and I haven´t been able to get through. I hope that changes
soon! But if not, I guess them´s the breaks.
Existence here has been pretty uneventful. I think if things don´t
change soon, I´m going to go nuts. There´s nothing to do but sit around
and read the few English books they have in the library - a strange mix
of Michener, D.H. Lawrence, Tony Hillerman, and Louis LÁmour. I think
we´ll all read most of them by the time we get out of here. They also
have a pool table, ping pong, and foozball in a game room, which has a
beautiful view if we could see more than 20 feet away from the
building. That has kept us occupied a bit, but gets old. So we live
from meal to meal, book to book, hour to hour. It has only been today
that I managed to get a floppy disk so I could write something, and
that´s a nice change.
The spanish version of CNN has been on TV in the dining room, where the
only computer (and I) am now. Apparently things are quite bad in
Argentina now. Their economy has taken a turn for the worse, and there
are people rioting in the streets. The news coverage is pretty
disturbing, even though I can´t understand many of the words. Pretty
scary. I wonder how some of these guys here feel when they see it -
those are their home towns, I imagine. Be hard to be so far away.
A big Hercules C-130 airplane flew in to supply the base on the first
night we were here. It´s quite the event, it seems, and makes a heck of
a lot of noise. They only come once a month or so, and bring in
everything they need here along with people coming to the island to
work. That includes military personnel as well as scientists who come
through to work here or to get to other smaller bases in the area. The
planes are huge - you can drive a truck into the back of them when they
let the tailgate down. It´s amazing they can land here, with so little
room to do it. The base has a Twin Otter plane that makes routine
supply runs between research bases in the area. It can carry 15 people
or so, max, and transports them back and forth between bases as well.
At least in the Twin Otter, people have seats with windows to look out.
In the Herc, they ride in back with the cargo, and there are no
windows. Doesn´t sound fun, but I´d do it in a second if it meant I
didn´t have to get back on that boat for four days!! The trip by air is
only a few hours. I guess NSF could not arrange for us to do things
that way though. Too bad.
Looks like the snow may be letting up a bit. I´m going to head back to
my room to read for a while, and then see how it looks. I am still
hoping beyond hope that we may be able to leave today. At least now
though, I have a disk so I can write here on the computer. For some
reason it makes me feel a little less unconnected to the world, even if
you guys may not be reading this for a few more weeks!
Fri 21 Dec 2001, 8:30 AM EST
OK, it looks like we're out of here! The sky is clear and
the sun is warm. The ground is really soggy and muddy, but at least we
can go back to camp now. There's supposed to be another storm coming in
tomorrow though, so that news is less than optimal. Hmmm... We're going
to try and get some sampling in on the way back home, so the day won't be
entirely wasted.
It's been nice to have this little bit of communication. More
than we expected!
December 23, 2001, 3:30 pm
We finally got a break in the weather and returned to base camp from
Marambio after 4 days being snowbound. We got up the morning of the
21st and found the skies clear and blue and the sun shining, with
scarcely a breath of wind, so we decided to pack up, go out and work for
half a day, return to Marambio to get our things, and then hike home.
By the time we actually left the buildings, the sky had clouded over
again and it was bitingly cold. We got as far as the edge of the mesa
and the wind hit us like a ton of very cold bricks. It was amazing how
fast the weather had deteriorated again, and how much difference there
was between the conditions at the base, set well back from the edge of
the mesa, and the edge itself. Brrr! So, despite our best intentions,
we turned around and slogged back to the base through the mud and snow.
We packed up all our things, and not wanting to be stuck there for even
longer, high-tailed it for the base camp through the weather. As we
were leaving the premises, I spotted one of the guys driving around in a
little ATV-like truck, and I jokingly stuck out my thumb for a ride.
Happily, he turned around and picked us up! He drove us and all our
rocks in two batches as far south along the mesa as he could manage and
dropped us off, which ended up saving us a good half hour or 45 minutes
of walking. That was significant then, too, because the top of the mesa
was covered in maybe 5 inches of drifted snow, and the wind was blowing
hard up there. From there, we hiked the rest of the way home.
When we dropped below the lip of the mesa on our descent, the wind died
back and it got almost pleasant. The going was rough because the snow
was piled up deep in places, and where it blown away or melted,
everything had turned to a deep, sticky, slippery mud. So we were
constantly slipping and sliding, or our boots suddenly disappearing down
into trenches filled with snow and hidden from view. When we finally
got back to camp, the penguins came running, literally, to greet us. It
really seemed as if they were welcoming us back. Alex and Ryan emerged
from the weatherport and welcomed us back to what they had dubbed „Camp
Mud‰. The place was entirely surrounded by this deep sticky sinking
gooey mud. Where we had formerly been able to walk around in the
slippers we wore in the weatherport, there were now a good 4-5 inches of
mud, with every depression filled with cold muddy water. The stuff
stuck to our boots like no tomorrow too, gobbing on until we had inches
of the stuff stuck to them. And you couldn't get it off no matter how
industrious you were. Ick. We busied ourselves for a good couple of
hours digging drainage ditches in the hopes of drying the place out, and
carrying flat stones from the beach to make a patio of sorts that we
could at least stand on outside the weatherport without sinking. The
sun was out though, and things had dried noticeably by the end of the
day.
We awoke the next morning with tenuous hopes of getting back into the
field, but the weather was questionable and the mud was still making
things effectively impassable. We hemmed and hawed about it a bit, and
John and Dan took a walk up the hill to see how bad the wind was.
During the time they were gone, I convinced myself that the weather was
improving and we‚d be able to go out, then 15 minutes later I looked out
again and there was a big blackish cloud moving in over the pass to the
so-called Valley of Doom (Cross Valley, renamed during last year‚s
adventures). Over the next hour or so, bands of dark clouds would
appear and just as quickly disappear, and the wind would pick up and die
back and pick up again, so we weren't quite sure what to expect next.
The weatherman at Marambio the day before had suggested the possibility
of another storm coming though, so we were cautious, and decided not to
go out. Early in the afternoon, I noticed tongues of fog sneaking up
and over from the pass into the VOD, slipping down toward our camp in
streamers. Mist had started to form over the stream next to camp too,
and it gave everything an eerie ethereal look. By mid-afternoon, things
had worsened, and by 4 or so it was snowing again. We watched as the
mesa got progressively harder to see through the blowing snow, and soon
it disappeared altogether. It snowed through the evening and into the
next morning (today). It stopped early though, and when I poked my head
out at 7 the mesa was dusted in a fresh coat of white. The sun has been
trying to come out all day, but given the added moisture the mud
returned with a vengeance, and so here we sit.
So far, wind, snow, and mud have kept us from getting into the field for
9? days, more than half our time on the island thus far. Let‚s hope
that rain isn't the next weather pattern we experience! In addition,
we've all had some kind of illness or injury since getting here - John
and I with some sort of gastrointestinal distress, Dan with a cold, Ryan
with badly blistered feet, and today Alex burned his hand on the propane
heater in the weatherport. John got us all started even before leaving
PA with the stitches on his lip (you can hardly even see a scar now,
he‚s healed fast), and Dan had the gut thing before leaving the ship.
Sounds like we've had more than our share of bad luck on this trip!
It‚s bound to change soon, she said hopefully!
December 23, 2001, 7:00 pm
It‚s gorgeous outside. Bright sun, blue sky, a puff or two of innocuous
white clouds, barely a breeze to stir the air! looks good for tomorrow.
Finally!
December 24, 2001 4pm Christmas Eve
I guess I shouldn't have been so encouraged by the weather yesterday
evening. Last night, at about the time I turned in, I lay in my bag
drifting off and heard the faintest moan of the wind in the ropes,
sneaking back to visit us. A feeling of dread washed over me, but I
shook it off figuring it wasn't a big deal. But by 4:00AM, the wind was
howling again and the tent was crashing and flapping under its
influence. I couldn't believe it. I stuck my head out around 7 and the
sky was gray-black and stormy, the air cold and damp. I just groaned
and went back to bed. Such a disappointment. We were so convinced we
were going to be able to get out today. But alas, here we are sitting
in the weatherport once again.
We've added a bit of Christmas cheer to the place. John brought a big
red bow and duct-taped it to the door. He then emerged with a big
purple sack and pulled from it a ratty looking little fake tree, about a
foot high. With a little tender-loving care, we bent all its little
wire branches back into place so it looked like a tree again. Then he
produced a set of little ornaments and we commenced decorating. The
darn thing is awfully cute now! I also brought with me a little tree
that Dad made, and a candle. The place is actually looking a little bit
festive.
Dinner this evening will be fit for the occasion. We have some canned
hams, and will make mashed potatoes with parmesan cheese, and right now
Dan and Alex are out digging around in our provisions for the big can of
green beans that Dan is sure he saw before. Ryan is starting the stove
with the hams. I‚m contemplating making candied carrots, but it seems
there aren't many fans of cooked carrots here!
People have been humming and/or singing Christmas carols for the last
day or two. Makes me a little homesick, actually. I think I‚d almost
prefer to be here and work and not really acknowledge the holiday,
because I miss being home for it. I've missed 3 of the last 5
Christmases now, due to various trips. Next year I‚m staying home for
sure. I‚m going to try and call Gramma later on on the iridium
satellite phone, and try and call Brown‚s place tomorrow when my folks
should be there. Alex and Ryan called home earlier today and got pretty
good connections. Amazing that we can call home from a place this
remote and have it sound so close by.
Christmas Day, 2001, 8:45 AM
We've finally got a good field day! It‚s bright and sunny and even a
little warmish! The wind has just started to blow a little bit, but
we're ignoring it, and will be striking out in another few minutes.
The penguins woke us all up last night with their nightly
conversations. They must go wandering in the night, because I can hear
them seemingly right outside the tent. Sometimes even their little
footfalls as they walk around, and little snuffling noises as they
breath while they walk. Last night, one was right outside my tent,
talking to another that was apparently across the little stream out
here. Back and forth, back and forth! sometimes they almost sound like
a dog barking. Sometimes it‚s more like a raspy low cooing noise.
That‚s my favorite. Kind of soothing. Early in the morning, we
sometimes hear the terns too. They just be flitting around doing
early-morning-tern- things, rather than their standard tern things,
because they almost sound like songbirds twittering. During the day,
they flap over us and scold us continually if we get anywhere near their
nesting areas. I've never seen an egg, at least this year, but I‚m
always really careful to look where I step. The other guys in the group
are getting tired of them always yelling at us. Terns are not their
favorite bird, by a long shot, now. I still love them though.
Hmmm! the wind is really starting to pick up. This would just be too
much if we lost yet another day. The water looks rougher now too.
Earlier, it was like a bathtub, with little friendly waves lapping at
the shore. There are whitecaps now. And there are still a lot of big
icebergs out there, offshore a ways. Huge slabs. They got moved around
a little with all the wind we've been getting, but they're still there.
Or at least they've been replaced by more of the same. Dan and Alex are
leaving now to get a few GPS positions for earlier sites, and John,
Ryan, and myself will catch up to them as soon as those two get back
from their respective trips to the beach. Ryan supposedly knows where
the site is that we're heading for. Looks like we're definitely going
out!
Christmas Day, 2001, 11:25 PM
We put in most of a good field day today, but got blown off the outcrop
in mid-late afternoon. Not surprisingly, once we got over to the places
we needed to be in, the wind was cooking right along. The first few
hours weren't too bad, but after lunch the wind really picked up. Sand
was blowing along the surface of the ground, and as soon as you tried to
pick up anything or work on an outcrop, you got a faceful of it. Alex
and I both got some in our eyes during the afternoon. Alex and Ryan had
gone up on this promontory, and Alex literally could not stand up on the
upwind side. He had to crawl around to the lee side and hide out. Ryan
has a bit more mass to him so he was able to stay out there a little
longer, but he really took a beating. Down below, Dan, John, and I were
having a slightly easier time of it, but the wind was just abominable.
We managed to collect about 7 different sites before we gave it up and
called it a day.
We dined on rice and beans for supper. I made the beans, but I had to
improvise on my ingredients. No chili powder, not much tomato sauce,
and the beans were dry to start with. I didn't think the last would be
a problem, despite having never started with dry before, because I had
soaked them for 2 days and then cooked them for 3 hours, then let them
sit for another day, then cooked them again. That should have done it,
but they were still pretty crunchy. Not optimal. But they went down
well nevertheless.
The wind picked up all through the evening, and by 7 or 8 we had
sustained winds of 30 mph. The highest gust we measured was 44 mph, but
there were a number of others that had that one beat, we just weren't
standing outside with the anemometer to measure them. This has really
been the worst wind we've had the whole time, and that‚s saying a lot.
The sides of the weatherport bend way in and shudder with those gusts,
sounding like thunder, and it makes you wonder how much more it could
stand before the whole thing rips open. After everyone else went to
bed, Dan and I were sitting and listening and watching, musing about how
well tethered the thing was to the ground. He seems pretty convinced
that there won't be a problem, but the wind is hitting full force from
the west, straight at one of the long sides of the structure. Seems to
me that it could, in theory, roll the whole thing right over. That
would take some doing, but I suppose it‚s possible. What a mess that
would be. We‚d be in deep doo doo then.
On my way back to the tent, I rechecked the ropes holding things down
and anchored some boxes better with bigger rocks and such, fighting the
wind the whole time. I still had a chance to notice the sky though, and
it was really quite striking. To the southwest, the sky had cleared and
there was blue showing, with high streaky swaths of cirrus clouds that
glowed yellow-white in the low sunlight. Not low enough to give it any
color, but still nice. Hopefully that‚s a good sign?????!
Good night, and a peaceful and merry Christmas to all.
December 27, 2001, 10:30AM
Yesterday began with a good wind. Blew like hell, actually. But by
midday things had settled down and we set out for the field. It
actually turned out to be a beautiful day, with bright sun and little
wind at all. There was an hour or so when we were in the field that
things got really cold and gray and we were watching a big gray cloud
approach with trepidation, but it blew over and turned very nice. We
put in a good day‚s work, even with the late start, and didn't get back
to camp until around 8:30 or so.
The sunset yesterday was spectacular. Well, it really wasn't sunset
because the sun didn't set, but it got really low and cast that
beautiful golden glow with long shadows that I remember so well from
last year. We haven't really seen much of that all season this time,
because the weather‚s been so bad. Last night made up for it though.
The light on the rocks turned them a deep glowing umber, and the sea
below the cliffs turned an almost surreal aqua color. The bergs
floating offshore were brilliant white against the water and sky, and
the sky itself was a pastel blue and pink and pale purple. With no
wind, the water was tranquil and flat, with long low waves that swashed
up on the beach rhythmically. Just magic. There were also about 20
penguins gathered together on our beach, getting ready for bed. They
seemed to enjoy the sunset as much as we did.
There was not a breath of wind last night, all night long. When 7am
came, I unzipped my sleeping bag to get ready for the day, and
immediately the wind started to blow. It was almost comical if it
wasn't so depressing! It‚s been blowing off and on all morning, and so
we haven't left camp yet. I packed some fossils into crates, cranked up
the generator and charged batteries, and am now fiddling with the
computer, but it‚s been a pretty uneventful day so far. We're hoping
things will settle down later on and we'll be able to go out.
December 27, 2001, 8:50 PM
Well, the wind didn't die down. Once again we spent the day in camp,
dejectedly waiting around and looking hopefully at the sky every so
often. It‚s blowing about 25 mph now. The weatherport flaps and
rattles and shakes, and things on the tables and shelves wobble and
rattle. Occasionally something falls off onto the floor. By now we've
stopped really paying much attention to it. I think Dan is really
getting worried about the field season altogether. I am too, but I‚m
still hopeful that we'll be able to get at least 3 or 4 more days in
before we have to leave. That would do it for me in a pinch, but the
rest of the project hinges on large multiple collections from multiple
localities even more than mine does, so we're really cutting it close
now. Only 11 more days to go. At the rate we're going now, we can
expect only 3 of those days to be productive ones. Not a good average.
Another seal visited our beach today. He was probably a Weddell seal,
more graceful looking than the elephant seal, and blotchy light and dark
in color. He was lolling on the beach for a while this afternoon,
seemingly smiling with contentment and lazily scratching his side with a
flipper now and then.
The penguins are still hanging around. Not as many as last night, but
they're a constant presence. They're talking to each other right now.
They remind me of the way a kazoo sounds. One now is sounding a little
pitiful, actually - maybe he‚s gotten separated from the bunch and
trying to get back to them.
Hope this weather lets up!
December 28, 2001, 9:05 AM
When we went to bed last night, the wind had died down a little bit. It
was overcast though, and thick gray clouds were flowing down over the
top of the mesa, obscuring it from view. Looked pretty ominous. I woke
up at some point in the middle of the night and heard the ticking of
snow against the tent. Ohhhh gggoooddd, says I to meself! here we go
again. When I woke up at 6:30, I untied the door to my tent to peek
outside, and a trickle of water leaked in onto my floor. Ugh. Once I
got the door open, I looked out to a sea of mud before my tent, and snow
on the hills that were visible from my limited vantage point. Groan.
No real reason to hurry this morning.
I tried to go back to sleep for a while, but was unsuccessful. For some
reason I‚d been cursed with being wide awake on a morning during which
there was no real reason to be awake. I decided to treat myself to a
bath of sorts. Personal hygiene on the island, as you might imagine, is
of a lesser quality than any of us might like. Strangely, though, it
just doesn't seem to matter most of the time. We're all grimy and
unwashed, and our hair stays put wherever we stick it, and we have grit
in our ears and under our fingernails and in our hair and ground into
our knuckles! you don't seem to sweat as much as you might in warmer
weather though, so you don't get quite so stinky, and it‚s cold enough
that you just don't want to strip down to clean up and put on a clean
change of clothes. Your long johns get awfully familiar, taking on a
personality of their own, but they're warm! This morning, I finally
broke down and did the deed. I did as good a job I could with a half
dozen or so baby wipes, starting at the top and working down, staying
part way in my sleeping bag for as long as I could. I had stuck the
baby wipes in their little packets inside my bag for 10 minutes or so to
warm them up, so they weren't as icy as they had started out. A final
dusting of baby powder furthered the illusion of cleanliness, and then I
put on a fresh set of long undies. I have to admit it felt awfully
good.
I‚m sitting in the weatherport now with Dan and John, reflecting on the
field season so far and talking in hushed and dire tones about the
remaining 10 days. We're still committed to sticking it out til the
bitter end, trying to eek out as many days in the field as we possibly
can. It sounds like the ship may be coming back for us a day or two
early, but in our morning conversation with them, we emphasized that we
aren't willing to sacrifice any potential field time. They may be here
early, but they're fine with waiting for us. They say they can come in
and take some of our packed sample crates back to the ship, and other
things that we don't need, while we're off in the field collecting (we
hope).
This iridium phone we have with us is really impressive. It‚s a
satellite phone, and runs off of rechargeable batteries. Iridium made
them at first, but now Motorolla has taken them over. The darn thing
can call anywhere, and it actually sounds pretty good. There‚s a delay
on the line, not surprisingly, but you can hear loud and clear. Calling
another Iridium phone is free, and there‚s one on the ship, so we check
in with them every morning. Regular long-distance phone calls are
another matter though - not cheap. We're limited as to the number of
personal calls we can make, trying to keep it to one or two while we're
here. I called Gramma on Christmas Eve, and asked her to pass along my
holiday greetings to the rest of the family. She sounded thrilled to be
talking to me from Antarctica, and I was glad I called.
The mesa above us is dusted with a fresh coat of white snow, sticking to
all the layers in the rock and making it look stripy. The sky is thick
and overcast, with gray clouds still swirling about up high on the
island and hanging over the top of the mesa. The ground has once again
turned to a dark brown sticky gooey mess with the added moisture.
Walking around is even more of a chore, because not only is the wind
blowing icy cold but now we have to worry about sliding on our tushes
every time we step outside. It makes getting back and forth between
tent and weatherport an ordeal too, because you don't want to get mud
all over the place inside. We have a boot mat set up in the
weatherport, so you can step in on a piece of cardboard, take your boots
off and put them against the wall on another piece of cardboard, and
trade them for the little booties or slippers that we all have in here.
This is made more difficult by the wind, which often rips the door out
of our hand and slams it back and open against the wall. Going back to
the tent is the reverse process, and once you get there you have to
basically sit down backwards with your feet sticking out, scooch your
butt into the tent, pull the boots off, and leave them outside if it‚s
not precipitating or carefully bring them in and put them in the
designated dirty boot spot inside. It‚s tough to do when there‚s a
puddle of water just inside the tent door though, from the melting
snow. These tents weren't designed for conditions where the snow
actually melts!
The rest of the group is trickling into the weatherport now, groaning
about the weather and rubbing their hands over the little propane heater
to warm them up. I think I'll sign off at this point and let them get
their breakfasts. It‚s 5 minutes til 10 now. Another long and
uneventful day ahead of us, it seems!
December 28, 2001, 1 PM
Snowing like hell now. Not a whole lot of wind, but it‚s mighty cold.
All is gray and formless and ethereal around the camp. The nearest
landforms are dusted with accumulating snow, but most of the landscape
disappears off into a gray snowy fog. The ocean is a hard gray color,
and the waves are kicked up with whitecaps as they approach. The snow
makes a quiet hissing sound on the tent - almost a peaceful relaxing
sound when the wind isn't blowing. We've given up all hope of the sun
coming out and drying up the mud any time soon. We'll be here all day
today, and almost assuredly tomorrow too. Now the talk has turned to
„Why didn't we get helicopter support and just stay on board the
ship?!‰.
December 29, 2001 8:50 PM
It snowed through much of the night. When I awoke the sky was a hard
cold solid gray, and the ground was a sea of mud. I think I was in
denial. I just stayed in my tent, eating bits of whatever I had left in
my backpack for breakfast, not wanting to face another day in camp. By
noon though, I was sick of reading my book and was getting hungry, so I
decided to get up and cook something. I've been making polenta for
breakfast and/or lunch, and it‚s been one of my treats to myself. I
make up a loaf of it in the evening, then slice it up with onions and
fry it in butter the next day. Just wonderful. And it‚s warm and fills
you up. I cooked up a plate of that for lunch, and settled in to read
for a while in the weatherport. Dan, Ryan, and John walked down the
beach to look at limpets, and Alex stayed behind to read too. We ended
up talking about dissertations and universities and paleontology for a
long time. Kind of a nice break from having everyone around, when
conversations seem to degenerate to the difficulty of conducting basic
bodily functions in this climate, or some such thing. It‚s true though,
you just don't appreciate the luxury of heated indoor plumbing until
you're stuck without it in a place like this for a month.
By late afternoon, it had started snowing again. Hard this time,
looking more like a blizzard than a flurry. I went out to take care of
one of my basic bodily functions, and ended up looking at the snow for a
while. The flakes were really amazing. It was hard to even call them
flakes. They were more like little bombs. They have the standard
6-sided shape of normal snowflakes, but they look like they're on
steroids. The arms are anything but delicate and thin. They are beefy
and fat and fuzzy, very three dimensional. They look a lot like the
cookie-press cookies I used to make with Mom for the holidays - they're
supposed to be little stars, but the arms get all fat and smooshed out
in the oven so they join together. Imagine cookie-press cookies, just
tiny and white and crystalline. Not even that tiny - each was probably
a good 3-4 millimeters across. You know it when they hit you, and they
make a lot of noise hitting the fabric of the tent or weatherport.
With the new bout of snow, the mood in the weatherport took a decided
turn for the worse. While up until this time, we had been irritated
with the snow but reasonably optimistic about getting back in the field,
now we are starting to fear the worse. Dan even said, „I wouldn't be
surprised if we‚d seen our last day in the field.‰ People are now
starting to talk about getting out of here and going back home, even
getting back on the ship (which is a lot for those folks who tend to get
seasick). Anywhere with a heated indoor bathroom! Before it had been
„only 9 days left for doing field work‰, now it‚s become, „9 more
godforsaken days til we get off this island!‰
I‚m sitting in my tent now and the snow is hissing against the fabric.
The surf on the beach is booming in the background, the tide being high
and the waves up. The door flap of my tent is frozen into position, and
I have to crunch it open when I want to enter or exit. The ground,
though, is still not frozen, and so the mud builds up. The temperature
hovers around the freezing mark. I almost wish it would just get really
cold so we could at least walk around on frozen ground rather than
wallowing in this goop.
I‚m starting to fear for the viability of our project. If I can't get a
few more days in the field, I will be in trouble for saying anything
meaningful. Much less be able to explore some of the other potential
projects I was hoping to investigate. This is not what any of us
expected down here, but then I guess we have to remember that we're in
Antarctica, and the weather doesn't always cooperate. Hard to believe
this is mid-summer.
December 30, 2001 3:55 PM
I‚m beginning to hate mud. It‚s everywhere. I can't get in and out of
my tent without getting it on me. I can't go anywhere without hearing
it shlucking and schlooking under my boots, or feeling like my feet are
about to slide out from under me and land me on my tush in the middle of
it. My boots instantly collect a good 5 pounds of extra weight as soon
as I step into it. I have it in my hair. All over both pairs of Gortex
pants. Covering all my boots. It‚s creeping ever farther into the
recesses of my tent. Soon I'll be dreaming about it in my sleep. What
a nightmare.
As one might imagine given that intro, we didn't get into the field
again today. Way too wet and slippery. It wasn't snowing in the
morning though, and the tide was way out, so we decided to take a couple
hours and walk down the beach to the penguin colony a few miles down.
With the tide being that far out, we didn't have to worry about the sea
cliffs collapsing on us (which they frequently do - collapse, that is),
and the intertidal sand was well enough packed that the going was easy.
Or would have been if the wind wasn't blowing a steady 25 mph, right in
our faces. We toughed it out though and made it down to the colony.
There were thousands of pairs of Adelie penguins nesting and cavorting
on the slopes of rock by the beach. The pattern of their black and
white bodies against the golden-brown rock and blue sky was almost
surreal. When you would stand in the middle of them, and someone would
walk up from the beach, they‚d all turn at once to check them out, and
the whole slope would flash to black, as their little backs faced you
all at once. The sound was a continuous din of long, low, drawn out
squawking, punctuated by bursts of loud, pulsed, higher pitched
squawks. The smell was really something too - a blend of penguin poop
galore tainted with the decay of the unfortunate ones that didn't make
it. There seemed to be more of that in this colony than in the one by
Palmer Station last year. Not sure if I just didn't notice it as much
last year, or if this colony really did suffer greater losses due to
predation or some kind of malaise. There were definitely skuas around,
waiting for their chance at a chick or an adult on its last legs.
Despite their unpleasant ways of making a living, the skuas are
beautiful birds. Big and strong and intelligent looking. Like big fat
dark brown seagulls with more intimidating beaks. They would stand
around watching for an opportunity, and there‚s really nothing the
penguins can do when they make their move. I guess it pays to have a
nest far from the outside edge of the colony!
The youngsters here were softball-sized blobs of gray fuzz with little
peeping heads that wobbled around seemingly independent of their
bodies. They were a little bit further along in development than those
I saw last year at Palmer. Some of them were venturing out a little bit
away from the nest, and a few had even been left alone for short periods
by their parents, I guess while they went out for food. Those that were
wandering about seemed to have a hard time telling their little bodies
how to move, because they‚d just stick their heads out in the direction
they wanted to go and their bodies would just roll that way, feet over
stubby wings, and their heads would still be craning out in the right
direction and twisting about as they rolled. Pretty funny! There were
no eggs to speak of that I saw. When Dan was down here alone nearly 3
weeks ago now, they were nearly all still in eggs, and so these guys
must be between 2-3 weeks old now.
On the way back from the colony, I stopped to photograph some of the
icebergs that had been grounded on our beach. The light was shining
through them just right, and the ice was a deep crystalline blue. The
sides facing the sun were all melting and dripping little sparkly drops
of water, and the surfaces were pitted and irregular, like the surface
of the inside of a cave underground. You could still see the original
layering of the snowfalls in many of them, and they melted
differentially so some layers stood out more than others. The penguins
liked the smaller ones, and we saw a number of them pecking chunks of
ice off and eating them, I suppose for fresh water.
I also did a bit of tide pooling on the way back. There were places
where there was outcrop sticking up through the sand further out along
the beach, and I explored the water pooled up around the rocks. The
fauna is depauperate in comparison to those in the northeast, or on the
west coast. The only species I saw were a couple of bivalves, a limpet,
an isopod, and a few amphipods. The limpets are huge, and are the same
ones they harvest in Punta Arenas. They're really tasty, as I
remember. The bivalves are Panopea - the common one I mentioned before,
and a little oval-shaped rare clam I don't know. The isopods were
pretty common, and ranged from an inch to several inches. They look for
all the world like big fat cockroaches, so it isn't hard to see why the
common name is sea roach. Not very appealing little guys. Interesting
though.
When we got back to base camp, we drowned our mud woes in a big mess of
fried potatoes and onions. Some of the guys made eggs too. Nothing
like a big pile of home fries to make you feel better. And we had the
stoves roaring for a good long while in the weatherport, so the place
got really toasty. We even had to open the door to let some cool air
in. Our conversations have really degenerated after being stuck inside
so much. We alternate between punch-drunk silly, tasteless and crass,
and dejected. We've only been able to work for 2 of the last 9 days.
Ugh.
Now, I‚m back in my tent and the generator is running, charging my
batteries. It was nice when I first came in here, but about a half hour
ago it suddenly got really cold. I peeked out the mud-encrusted door of
my tent and saw snowflakes falling. Such good news. Joy. There‚s
still a lot of snow up on the mesa, and more only makes the situation
worse. We really need a few days of sunny weather to melt the remaining
snow and dry out this muck before we can get back in the field. Our
hopes are fading!
December 31, 2001 10:15 PM New Year‚s Eve
We finally made it out into the field today! It was still pretty muddy
last night, but by morning things had dried out considerably, the sun
was shining, and the wind wasn't blowing. We waited until about 10AM to
leave camp, to give the ground a little more time to dry out. Alex,
Ryan, and John went the low route, over the pass and through the Valley
of Doom to finish collecting in the area Alex had started the other
day. Dan and I went up the mesa, planning to reconnoiter and sample in
the uppermost part of the section. The mud wasn't too bad at all on the
slopes up, and the snow at the top actually provided good footing. We
made good time getting up there, and ended up having a very productive
day.
When we first got to the top, there wasn't a breath of wind and the sun
was out in full. Just a gorgeous day to be out. The views on top were
spectacular, and we sat for a while savoring them. The sun shone
brilliant white off patches of snow, the bergs in the ocean, and off the
glaciers to the west streaming off James Ross Island. Ice dotted the
bay to the west, and huge slabs stretched out in the Weddell Sea to the
east. One especially large one lay north of the island, probably
exceeding it in size. The water was deep blue, and long parallel wave
crests drifted in from offshore, bending gracefully to mirror the
coastline as they approached. Far below us, we could see the other
three making their way across the valley and over the low-lying hills,
three tiny specs moving across the panorama of the island. Both of us
realized that this may be the last time we'll ever be able to see all
this again. Despite all the grumbling over the last week about „this
wretched island!‰, we agreed that moments like that made it all worth
while.
The wind picked up gradually but continuously all afternoon long. By
about 4pm, the skies had clouded up and there was a thick shroud of mist
over Cockburn Island immediately to the west, between us and James Ross
Island. Cockburn looks like a giant sombrero, a truly stunning looking
island, and it serves as our barometer while we're in the field. Alex
says that when he can't see Cockburn anymore, he heads for camp fast.
It had gotten colder too, and our fingers froze quickly as we took our
final field notes and packed up the last of our specimens. We headed
for home, our packs full and heavy, feeling very satisfied with what
we‚d been able to accomplish. The view from the mesa was different now,
with gray skies and hard gray water and thick low clouds to the west.
We all made it back without incident and enjoyed a nice hot dinner in
the weatherport. The wind has been picking up all evening though, and
now as I write this it is shrieking through the ropes that hold the tent
down and rattling and flapping the sides of the tent around me. I‚m
afraid we may not be able to make it back out tomorrow.
This is New Year‚s Eve. I think I‚m going to go to bed early though.
Can't quite stay awake that late, although if the wind keeps up, I may
not be able to sleep! I have a little bottle of Drambuie here that I'll
have a celebratory nip of, and wish for better weather next year. Peace
and best wishes for everyone in the coming New Year.
January 1, 2002, 9:40 AM
The wind blew like hell all night long. Shrieking and thumping and
beating the tent. It‚s still blowing now. There are times when it
still scares me a little, but now I‚m more just tired of it. I can
sleep through it. I just don't relish the idea of leaving the tent for
anything. So much for another field day.
January 1, 2002, 4:30 PM
Around 11:00 AM, the wind suddenly backed off almost completely. It
took me by surprise, as I was holed up in my tent reading another
Antarctic disaster story - this one of the men who‚d gone to set up food
caches for Shackleton‚s ill-fated crossing of the continent. I was
completely immersed in the story, and when I finished a chapter I
realized all of the sudden that the tent was no longer flapping and
banging. The sun was out as well, so after a short conference we
planned to try and strike out for the field a little after noon. A
recon trip up the hill by Dan and John reassured us that the wind wasn't
too bad up higher, but it was enough that we were reluctant to work up
high on the mesa. We decided to cross the island down low, and go to
look at rocks in the lowest part of the Eocene section. We got about an
hour or so into the hike, if that, and the wind picked up and the sky
got ominous. Alex noticed clouds of pale yellow-gray dust blowing off
the higher parts of the island to the north of us, and we started to
feel the sting of sand against our faces, even in the lower more
protected area where we were hiking. The clouds were amazing. They
were blowing in from the north at breakneck speed, enough to make you
dizzy if you looked straight up at them. The upper layer, still very
low, was dark gray and swirling, rippling and bulging down as it roared
along toward us. It was a „Spielberg Sky‰. We wondered if we were
seeing the beginning of something really bad approaching. Without
further a due, we turned around and headed for home.
Now, I‚m back in camp, sitting in the weatherport. Dan just tried to
come in, and opened the door just in time for a gust to take it and him
and slam them back against the side of the structure. At the same
moment, Alex and I felt the floor of the whole thing lift off the ground
a couple of inches. We kind of looked at each other, hesitant to voice
what we‚d each just noticed! Hmmm!. After that, John went out and
double-checked our ropes, coming back in a few minutes saying there‚s no
problem, everything‚s fine. The wind is really fickle now. There will
be moments of almost calm, then a strong gust will hit us out of the
blue and shake the whole place. Doesn't bode well for field work!
January 1, 2002, 7:45 PM
Sitting in the weatherport after dinner, talking about outcrops and
fossils and typing up field notes! The wind is still pounding us, with
gusts in the 50 mph range. The weatherport is shuddering and thumping,
and we are all timidly looking up at the flapping sides and ceiling,
watching the pole frame bend and flex under the strain. It started to
rain about an hour ago, but the ground is hardly wet because of all the
wind. I think we're all about ready to go home now.
January 3, 2002 8:05 PM
I haven't been able to write until we ran the generator again, and so
now that it‚s running, I‚m going to do two days in one entry.
Yesterday was an eventful day. Not only did we have a beautiful sunny
calm day to go out in the field and get some work done, but something
really cool happened in the morning too. Ryan and Dan had just left for
the day (we split the group in two again), and Ryan and I were standing
outside the weatherport enjoying the sun while John grabbed a couple of
last minute things out of his tent. We heard kind of a crash, and I
turned toward the beach in time to see waves spraying up well over the
berm that separates our camp site from the beach. I wondered what was
going on, and Ryan explained it by telling me there was a big chunk of
ice stuck on the beach about there, and the waves had been breaking and
splashing on it. Hmmm, I thought, that‚s unusual - none of the other
bergs had really done that. And the sea was almost flat calm today. As
we stood and pondered it, Ryan noticed something odd out in the water.
He pointed, and I saw a big dark line of something rising out of the
water well off shore and rolling toward us. My first thought, in the
back recesses of my mind, was the Loch Ness Monster. Then reality took
over and clicked in my head. „Jesus, it‚s a rogue wave!‰, I yelled, and
called to John to come and watch. We saw the wave grow up out of a
seemingly flat sea and pile up, in two separate lengths with a lull
between them, a long dark sinuous line of water building up and up as it
approached. It must have reached a height of about 5 feet or so, maybe
more. It started to break well out from shore, much farther than the
normal smaller waves do. It rolled in and broke on the beach, sending
water spraying up and out almost over the berm. We watched entranced,
and though I was still holding my camera from some earlier penguin
pictures, I fought the urge to run down to the beach to see it up
close. Something flashed in the back of my mind about tsunamis and
curious onlookers. I figured that maybe that wasn't the smartest thing
to do, at least until I knew how far the water would reach! As the
first wave dissipated over the shore, another big swell emerged from the
sea and grew to similar proportions, piling up ever higher until it
started to break, and rolled in to shore as a tower of foaming hissing
spraying water. A series of maybe a dozen waves came in like that, the
first few the biggest. After those hit, we ventured closer to the beach
to watch, and I finally remembered that I had my camera. By the time I
took a picture though, the incoming swells had diminished
substantially. The splash we had heard moments before must have been
the first wave as it hit, crashing into the sea cliff that rises away to
the north of us. The tide was falling at the time, and if it had been
fully in, there‚s no question that those first few waves would have come
over the berm and maybe even reached up to our camp. We all stood by
the water, watching the rest of them in silence, with our jaws dropped.
Just amazing. I imagine that a big iceberg had calved out offshore from
us, and the waves we saw had rippled out from the huge pile of ice
falling into the sea.
Ryan‚s blistered feet were in pretty bad shape, so John convinced him
that he should probably stay in camp for a day. He grudgingly agreed,
and John and I took off to get some work done on top of the mesa, all
the way to the north. We had a long walk to get up and out there, but
the weather was good and there was no wind, so it was a very pleasant
trip. We were looking for shell beds in the top of the section, as high
up (young) as we could find them. I was scrounging about looking at the
sediments when something unusual struck me. I was trying to clear away
what I thought was just material pushed over the edge by weathering
and/or the folks at Marambio when they made the landing strip, because
it looked like lots of pebbles and cobbles held together with mud. I
noticed that the more I dug into this stuff, the further it went into
the cliff face and the more it started looking like real rock. It
occurred to me that the top of this section is somewhere in the upper
Eocene or maybe even the early Oligocene, and some time in there is when
glaciation started on Antarctica. The deposit I was looking at looked
exactly like a diamictite - the sediments left behind by a glacier as it
plows up dirt and rock and flows over it. I dug further, underneath the
layer, and there was a sharp contact with the normal marine muddy sandy
sediment that made up the island. The layer itself was about 2 ¸ feet
thick, and on top of it was more marine mud, only this time the mud had
big pebbles and cobbles floating in it on occasion. Those are
dropstones, rocks dropped out of floating ice bergs as they melt and
deposit their load of frozen sediment. What I was looking at seemed to
be the evidence of the first pulse of glaciation in this region. I
collected samples of the sediment above and below the diamictite, to
send to colleagues who look at microfossils of plankton that lived at
the time. From those fossils, they can tell how old the sediment was.
One of the controversies about Antarctica is when glaciation first
started. Was it the earliest Oligocene, about 33 million years ago,
when we know there was a big expansion of ice here? Or did the first
pulses happen earlier? How extensive were they? The sediments on top
of Seymour Island, forming a veneer over the surface of the mesa, are
Oligocene glacial deposits. If I‚m interpreting this section correctly,
we have evidence for the first pulse of glacial ice that reaches to sea
level, and it must have happened before the major interval of ice
expansion that generated the till well above it, because there are
marine sediments separating the two intervals. Once the dates come
back for the sediment above and below, we'll know how old it is. The
coolest part of the whole thing is that we found encrusting corals
living on the cobbled in the top part of the diamictite, all on the
upper surfaces. It looks like after the layer was deposited by/under
ice, the sea came back in and corals grew on the surface of the layer,
taking advantage of the hard substrate available to colonize. After
that, deposition of normal marine muds ensued and everything went back
to more or less normal again for a while, except for the dropstones
occasionally falling out of the bits of melting ice floating on the
surface. This whole thing may make a very interesting story once the
pieces come together. That is, if someone hasn't already noticed this
before!!
That discovery really made my day, and we were pumped up for the
remainder of it. We finished our work collecting fossils from the upper
part of the section and headed back home as the wind started to pick
up. We had full heavy packs and were feeling very pleased with
ourselves and what we‚d accomplished!
As we came over the last ridge toward camp, and could look down on it,
we noticed that Ryan had been busy. He had drawn a snail in the dried
mud outside the camp using his feet, and it was about 20 feet high! It
actually looked really good, and was easy to see from very far off. I
took a picture of the artist standing out near his creation.
There were seals on the beach that night too. Weddell seals, because
they were pale brown with splotches of white. They lazed on the beach
with smiles on their faces, napping in contentment. They're big
animals. Maybe 6 feet long, with girths that I wouldn't be able to even
begin to get my arms around part of. Not that I was going to try!
These were probably juveniles too, as John suggested, but they were
still big.
The night was a calm one, and when I woke up this morning the tent
fabric was hanging limp above me, glowing bright yellow in the
sunshine. A good sign! But alas, as I was waking up and realizing that
I was mighty stiff and sore from yesterday‚s work, the tent started to
move. Just a little waving at first, then the lowest of moans from the
wind in the ropes. It wasn't too bad at first, but the gusts steadily
increased in both frequency and intensity. By the time I was in the
weatherport, things were flapping pretty well. I was the first in
there, even though I was a little late myself, because John and Dan had
noticed the wind too and were taking their time. I got some coffee and
hot water going and they came in, looking discouraged and rolling their
eyes. Here we go again. I ate my breakfast and went back to bed for a
bit, grumbling about how I could be so tired from the day before.
Surprisingly, things started to taper off around noon, and we decided to
give it a try. Alex and Ryan went west, to find the lowest part of the
section, and John and Dan and I went back up on top where we‚d been
yesterday. This time, we had the GPS with us and we wanted to get good
locality information for the sites that John and I had collected. We
tentatively climbed up toward the plateau, wondering if the wind was
going to be bad enough to force us back to camp. We knew it would be
blowing a good deal harder than it was down below, and had prepared
ourselves for an unpleasant hike. It wasn't quite as bad as we‚d feared
up there though, so we kept going, leaning hard into a headwind. By the
time we‚d gotten about half way to the end of the mesa, the wind was
really starting to crank. We stubbornly pushed on though, and made it
to the north end where we‚d started the day before. We ducked in behind
a fuel tank that Marambio uses and caught our breath for a minute before
going to our first locality. When we stepped out from behind the
shelter, the wind literally picked me up off my feet. It had
strengthened even more as we were hiding. John now estimated it was
blowing 70+ mph sustained. John‚s a mountaineer, and knows how to gauge
these things. I had no trouble believing him at all. It was nearly
impossible to move. The wind was lashing at everything you had,
whipping your jacket and pants and all the straps on your backpack
around and ripping your hood from your head, flailing the little
pull-cords on it into your face and flinging sand in your eyes like a
sandblaster. I was leaning over at a good 45 degree angle to the ground
just trying to stay on my feet. Dan literally had to hang onto my arm
to keep me from blowing away for a while there. I felt like a kite. We
really struggled to get all those GPS positions, and even managed to
collect a new locality whil
