To get to Dufek is a bit of a haul. We flew about an hour and a half to a site where the New York Air National Guard had kindly pushed 40 barrels of fuel from a low flying Hercules. Trouble with that is that the fuel barrels were attached to parachutes (or more correctly drogue chutes). Drogues don’t slow ‘em down, they just make ‘em go in the right direction. One barrel of fuel is 44 US Gallons, or about 210 liters, so weighs about 200 Kg or 400 lbs. Four of these barrels per pallet ejected from a plane at about 500ft, with effectively no parachutes equals big holes in Antarctica. Big holes that we had to climb into and then extract the barrels from. This further equates to absolutely back-breaking work. Still, it kept us warm, I guess, although maybe a little too warm. There wasn’t a breath of wind, and the sun was beating down – tanning weather, anyone got sun block?
We dug out (hauled/dragged/extracted/removed/swore at) 16 barrels of fuel before heading off to Cordiner. On the way we scouted out several alternative sites, as we were not sure if a parallel British experiment (also part of POLENET) at Cordiner had taken up all the available real estate. We saw a weird glacial lake with open water on the way north from the fuel cache. The lake may be worth looking at in the future. At Cordiner we found the British system was a lot more compact than we expected and so deployed our system nearby on a big block of banded iron formation. The Dufek, looming to the north, was extremely impressive, all jagged spires and imposing ridgelines. Even so we didn’t hang around (mores the pity) and headed back to the fuel cache for, you guessed it – more digging.
The otter started ferrying fuel to Cordiner in preparation for the follow on mission, while we dug more holes and stared at the amazing fata morgana mirage that was going on nearby. The snow at the site was soft, which is good for the airdrop (none of the cans of fuel were damaged) but bad for us, every step we sank into a foot of sugary crystalline snow. After a couple of hours of digging the “twotter” came back. We got home just in time for breakfast and … a shower!
Solar showers are weird, they’re basically black plastic bin liners full of mildly tepid water. You fill them with cold water and then are supposed to leave them in the sun where, anywhere else but Antarctica, they might not freeze. Here we fill them with “hot” water. The “hot” water first comes from a continuous propane heated boiler which you immediately refill with snow and ice. You heat the “hot” water on a large propane stove before putting it in the black plastic bags, trying not to burn yourself, as I did in the process. After cutting out a couple of dreadlocks I managed to get my hair washed. It was absolute bliss! I feel clean!
I spent the rest of the day sleeping in preparation for a night trip. The “day shift” – a misnomer here where its always daylight, managed in the meantime to install yet another system. When I got ready for going this evening I had been pre-empted other folks were going off to finish the site at Cordiner. No worries though, there’s still plenty of work to go around. One more site from Patriot Hills and we’ll be done, then a few more from McMurdo before home. In the meantime keep warm! Its probably warmer here than it is there!
Cheers
Mike