Hello from Allan Hills, Antarctica! We flew here from McMurdo three days ago and we have been pretty busy since then, helping set up camp and other parts of our field site. It is extremely cold and windy, much more so than McMurdo, and living out of a tent here is quite a bit of work.
The Twin Otter that flew us here, pictured at Williams Airfield at McMurdo
We flew over the beautiful Transantarctic Mountains
Our camp site consists of three large, heated communal tents (Polar Chiefs) - one for cooking, one for hanging out (the “Chill Chief”), and one for storing drill fluid and other things that cannot freeze. There are two Scott tents set up as toilet tents. And the rest of the tents are our personal sleep tents. Some of us have opted for the larger Scott tents that are shared by two people - I am in one of those, because I do not want to sleep on the ground (we get a cot!) and I like being able to stand up inside my tent. The rest are single-person mountain tents.
Home sweet home! Large blue tent in the foreground is our cooking tent. The yellow tents shaped like pyramids are Scott tents. Mine is the third one down.
My half of the Scott tent, featuring a Wiggy Bear sleeping bag (rated for -60) on top of a cot, with all of my bags shoved underneath. Note the handy little pockets around the walls of the tent.
Inside the toilet tent. Admit it, you were curious.
Inside the communal tent. Large Kuma stove to the left, snacks next to it. We each have our chair and we can store a few things here too (but not too many things).
It is strange and beautiful here. It is also incredibly inhospitable. It is easy to overlook the fact that in addition to being the coldest continent on the planet, Antarctica is also the highest and the driest. It is a polar desert, with very little annual precipitation. Antarctica has the highest elevation of all the continents, with an average elevation of about 6,500 feet. That’s a lot of altitude for a lowlander like me, so in addition to getting used to the cold, I am also acclimatizing to the elevation.
The typical temperature so far is around -20 to -30 degrees C (-4 to -22 degrees F), with winds around 15-20 knots making it feel even colder. By comparison, McMurdo was often around -12 degrees C (10 degrees above zero F), and often not very windy.
Being here is an amazing experience and an incredible privilege, but I don’t want to romanticize it. Even the simplest things take more effort and time here. Just to go between tents at camp requires several layers of clothing, and you have to be particularly careful about your face and hands. Every time I step outside, I put on a hat, a fleece buff, and a pair of ski goggles, plus two pairs of gloves (merino wool liners and thick outer gloves). You should basically never take off your glove liners while outside - I did so while taking one of the pictures above of our camp and that was so stupid. I had to rush inside a tent and put my hands in my armpits for a few minutes to regain feeling.
It helps to be here with an awesome group of people, a good mix of old-timers and newbies who are all looking out for each other. A lot of effort goes into trying to make life reasonably comfortable. The food has been great - one night we had shrimp coconut curry for dinner, and today for lunch we had grilled cheese sandwiches and tomato soup. And I am really looking forward to getting started drilling the ice cores, which should happen in just a couple of days!