This story deserves a special post of its own because it is hilarious.

Random Picture of the day: looking up the runway at Pole.

So there I was. Eating lunch in the Galley on Saturday with the rest of the SPT folks. This red-head girl walks up to the table and taps me on the shoulder. "Are you Kyle Story?" "Um, yes…?" and she just turns her head and walks away! About 4 seconds later I turn to the exit where she just left and throw out a, "And you are…?" We were all sitting around the table saying, "what just happened?" After discussing various conspiracy theories about how she would know who I was, we decided that the best course of action would be for me to figure out her name by asking around, and the next time I saw her in the hall, walk up to her and say, "Hey, are you Alexis?" (name changed for anonymity) and walk away.

Fast forward 5 hours. I'm now stuffing my face with pizza at dinner after a quick workout at the climbing gym. This guy Jason who I know from the Cornell Outing club goes past and I flag him down. I had just met him 2 hours previous on my way out to the wall and found out he was working as a GA (General Assistant). So I ask him if he knows a red-head GA, and tell him about how she knew who I was at lunch. He says, "huh, you must be famous!" and walks away.

Fast forward 2 more hours. I am now hanging out in the Science room, at a Wine and Cheese party thrown by the Metrology folks. Us SPT people are standing in a circle talking, when we notice the red-head is across the room. The guys start goading me, telling me I should go over there and talk to her. We find out her name is Alexis. So 10 minutes late I wander over to her group. I budge into the circle next to her, but she is talking to an older gentleman. So I stand awkwardly for several minutes, trying to listen to the gentleman. The SPT folks are obviously watching and laughing at me (I'd be doing the same in their place, for sure!). Finally the conversation dies down, and I ask the gentleman about an awesome silver ice-axe and goldline pin on his lapel. I find out that he is from Silverton CO and has done a fair bit of climbing and skiing. In any case, he decides to go get a glass of wine, and I turn to Alexis, who just starts cracking up. Turns out that Jason, my friend from Cornell, is indeed responsible! He dared Alexis to ask talk to me at lunch. She meant to say more at that time, but started cracking up and high-tailed it for the exit. Jason was watching the whole thing, and apparently the reaction of our table was priceless! Well played!

Jacking, Trivia, and Banff

I have now been at Pole for a full 3 days. Man, feels like I never left. The station is the same, and I already know my way around. Important things like dinner times and how to clean the bathroom, are old-hat. But it is good to be back.

Flying over the Antarctic Ice Cap

Inside the C-17

Thursday after arriving, I headed out to the telescope to have a quick look around. It is the summer season here, and we do most of our observing during the winter. Thus the summer season is mostly used for maintenance of the telescope. The main piece of maintenance this year was fixing the azimuth bearing. "Fixing a bearing? No problem!" you might say. Well, let's review the situation. This bearing is about 12 feet in diameter, and the ENTIRE 700,000 lb telescope sits on top of it. Add to that the fact that the whole castle is build on ice - no solid ground for over 3 kilometers straight down.

The plan was to jack the entire telescope up, pull the bearing out, pop in a new one, and set the telescope back down. Sound simple? Well, we hired a Dutch company, Mammoet, which specializes in heavy lifting, to do the job. By heaving lifting I mean things like bridge trusses and entire buildings. A 700,000 lb telescope would be no problem, they said. The jacking was supposed to begin on December 25 (Yes, people work on Christmas down here. Seriously, what else are you going to do?) Well, they had that bearing out by Dec 15, no sweat! By the time I got here, the telescope was completely back together and we had already fired the detectors back up! So ol' madam SPT was looking in tip-top shape.

Tijmen and Ross verifying that the STP is in tip-top shape.

After so much travel and being at 9300 feet above sea level, I was feeling wired and ready to rumble by dinner time (for Caswell, that was SARCASM), but my friends from the KECK experiment convinced me to sit in my chair long enough to play pub trivia. Three rounds consisting of something important that I don't remember, Wold Languages, pictures of people who you had to identify and say how they died, and random facts. My favorite answer to the person identification round was "Richard Nixon, shot by Viet-Cong." Needless to say, we got destroyed.

Friday night, I went out to the climbing gym. That's right they have a CLIMBING GYM at the south pole! It is a small wooden wall that is *very* steep, but well constructed given the small space. Lots of good holds too! Someone had changed out most of the holds from last year, which was great. I put up a new problem that is quite hard, didn't get it Friday or Saturday, but hopefully I'll get it tomorrow.

After climbing, they had a showing of the Banff Mountain Film festival in the gym. It was a pretty sweet setup - projector throwing images of people and mountains up on a huge white sheet hung on the wall - full on big screen. The films were entertaining. A crazy film about Alex Hanold free-soloing Moonlight buttress (8? pitches, 5.12d) and the Regular NW face of halfdome (23 pitches, 12b) followed by some quality heli-skiing followed by some other films? The last film was the longest and best. It captured the adventures of a British chap who decided that it would be a good idea to take a tandem bike to the arctic circle, and bike to the Torres del Fuego at the southern-most tip of Chile. By himself. The idea was that he would pick up random people to ride with him wherever he could. What a cool idea! In the end it took him over 2 years to make the voyage, and he picked up 220+ random passengers. He entered Mexico not speaking a word of Spanish, and exited as a fluent speaker. Very cool film.

Bed time for Kyle. Till next time, live life to the fullest!

Back to the Pole!

Woahhhh. I'm stuffed. Hungry stuffed. Mmmm, curry and steak for breakfast. Too much curry, wayyyy to much curry! I want to go to sleep. Wow that clock is huge! They really flew that thing in here!? What time is it? 7:30pm. But I just woke up...

Not sure what time it is in McMurdo. Notice awesome $5 hat.

So there I was. This would be yesterday evening, Wednesday January 5. I had just slept from 10:30am to 4:30pm in a room with 5 other beds in the McMurdo Station. My sleep schedule is so messed up my body has no idea what time it is. But let me start from the beginning.

Welcome back to my Antarctic blog! This year, I am going to try to write entertaining and informative stories for all of you to enjoy. I'll also try to post accompanying pictures, but this is always satellite-dependent. Hopefully you can all get a sense for life on the ice, and keep up with what I am doing. So enjoy! And feel free to comment!

I started traveling last Saturday. Wow, Saturday!? That's 6 days ago! I check in to O'hare with 3 large bags, and the baggage person tells me I'm going to have to pay for the 3rd bag. $100. Ouch - but I expected that. THen he finds out that one bag is 65 lbs (I blame the fan that I am bringing for the backup power supply), and slaps on another $60. Double ouch! Fastforward to my arrival at McMurdo, I'm sitting in the NSF office,

NSF building in McMurdo.

and the travel coordinator Liz hands out pieces of paper informing us that our baggage limits are 2 70lb bags. After the briefing, I go talk to Liz, and tell her about my fees. "So they charged you 60 dollars for the 65lb bag, then another 100 for the extra 50lb bag? That wasn't very nice of them." She is working on the case as we speak.

Ok, that flight got me to LA. I immediately start seeing United States Antarctic Program (USAP) tags on every third bag. Guess I am in the right place! The intercom comes on and tells us that carry-on bags will be limited to 15 lbs. What! My backpack probably weighs 35. And I already have a "personal item," my camera. But they don't count the coat! So I stuffed my coat pockets with my books, toiletries, computer power cord, and small camera. Pack comes in at 12 lbs. After weighing the pack, I pack it right back to its 35 lb state of glory.

This flight goes from LA to Aukland, NZ. 13 hours. Fortunately it is overnight, and as you know I sleep like a rock. Anywhere. At night, on the bus, at parties, in class, um, well, you get the point. My plan was to watch The Godfather, which I started high above the Pacific ocean last year but never finished, then ponder the back of my eyelids for most of the flight. Fatal flaw to the plan - they don't have the Godfather! Well, I cried myself to sleep and still slept like a rock.

The lady next to me works as a secretary in a chicken-packing plant in Atlanta. Apparently if the company does well, the owner sends about a dozen of the best employees on a cruise in random parts of the globe. This lady had been to Africa and South America, and they were doing a 12 day New Zealand - Australia cruise. She was nice enough, but an amusing strain between her and the flight attendant arose. At breakfast, the lady's blanket prevented her tray table from coming out. So the flight attendant grabbed the blanket and stuffed into the overhead compartment. The lady was cold, and as soon as the flight attendant went past, she stood up and got the blanket back down, spilling her breakfast in the process. Then when the plane was getting ready to land, the lady wanted to keep her bags and purse under her feet. The flight attendant said, "no," and put the bags up. When the lady tried to keep a pillow down, the flight attendant grabbed it and glared at the lady. Fortunately, the flight was soon over and lady told the flight attendant she had had a good flight, so no harm done.

We now get to Aukland, and get all of our bags to go through customs. They are EXTREMELY strict about people bringing in biological pests (seeds, grass, dirt, etc) into New Zealand, and they inspect any tents and boots that you have. Fortunately, I knew this from last time and my gear was all clean. I walked my bags over to the Jetstar terminal to check into my last flight to Christchurch. Here I was met by the most impressive display of incompetence I have yet seen at an airport checkin. First, the entrance was poorly designed, with no room for a line. The entrance quickly turned into a mob. There were self-checkin kiosks, but 1 out of 4 seemed to be working, and it was not clear if I need to use them or not. There were 10 checkin posts, but only 3 had attendants: One for pre-checked passengers who only needed to check bags, and another for the passengers whose flight to Queenstown was supposed to leave in 20 minutes. After waiting for 1:20 in a 15 person line, one lady got the impression that 6 of us were together in a group because we all had USAP tags. She took our passports, then figured out we were not together and gave them all back. Fortunately we were early enough that time solved the incompetence problem and we all made the flight.

I arrived in Christchurch in the early afternoon, and checked into the Windsor Bed and breakfast. What a great, homey place! After the fancy and impersonal Crowne Plaza hotel from last year, the Windsor was a nice change. A lady shaped like a large pear checked us in. She sang loudly, presumably to herself, as she took me to my tiny room. They serve breakfast from 6-7:45am, and the menu is simple enough to be painted on a sign on the wall: eggs with your choice of meat, baked beans, pasta, creamed corn, and tomatoes. Mmmmm, yummy. They had these small containers the size of individual jam-packets labeled "tomato sauce." I couldn't figure out the purpose of the funny little ridge in the middle - until I squeezed the package and the ridge broke and squirted ketchup all over my face.

At a Restaurant in Christchurch.

Random People in Christchruch.

The landing strip at the McMurdo station in Antarctica is on the Ross Ice shelf. It has been warm enough that the landing strip was in bad shape. As a result, we flew in Tuesday night. We got all of our warm clothes from the Antarctic Center at 6:30pm, and were on board by 9pm. Guess what - I slept the whole 5 hour flight - and woke up as the plane landed at 4:30am.

Getting off the plane at the Pegasis Airstrip, Ross Iceshelf, McMurdo Station.

On the drive to the McMurdo Station.

Keith and Tijmen from McGill were on the flight with me; they had been traveling continuously and hadn't had a good night's sleep since Sunday. After getting to the McMurdo Station, we decided to stay on a reversed sleep schedule and go straight to bed. So I slept from 10:30am to 4:30pm.

This brings me back to the introduction of this blog. Having just woke up from 6 hours of sleep I stuffed myself silly with curry and steak for breakfast.

My Bed at McMurdo.

My body is thoroughly confused as to what time it is - 7:30pm, just woke up but still dazed. We have two papers that are supposed to get published by the SPT collaboration on Wednesday by 4pm CST. And there is still plenty of heated discussion about the papers. So Keith, Tijmen and I head up to the Creary library and settle in to work for the night. I'm editing, Keith is exploding about various emails, and Tijmen is trying to run IDL job through an SSH connection half-way around the world in Montreal. My mind gives starts fizzling and poping at 1:30am, and I crash on the couch. "I'll sleep for 1 hour, the wake up and edit the rest of the paper."

BZZZZZT! BZZZZZT! (Huh?) BZZZZZT! (Alarm?) BZZZ-slam! zzzzz… (groan, stretch) "oh, its 4:30am" So much for the 1 hour of sleep. Tijmen is jacked on caffeine and hasn't slept yet. Keith passed out at the same time I did. A quick breakfast and we are headed off for the plane to Pole at 6:45am. I have written this blog while sitting on a C-17 flying over the Trans-Antarctic mountains. I'll finally be at Pole, 6 days after starting, in about an hour!

On the C-17, flying to Pole.

Adventures around Mt Cook

Huh, time slips by quickly. I have been back in the US for over two weeks and have still not written about the end of my New Zealand trip. But do not be afraid! Here it comes...

In Wanaka from whence the flowing prose that last graced A Playful Search for Beauty last arose through daft key strokes on my keyboard, Orin and I secured provisions then drove north. The following day we arrived in the village of Mt Cook. Mt Cook itself is clearly visible from the village, rising over 3000 meters above the village. We had plotted to attempt the North ridge of Mt Sefton, a rock ridge that rises for 2000 meters of technical terrain. However, the weather report for Wednesday was poor, so we abandoned the plan. Then I had a crazy idea: the weather was supposed to be poor for Wednesday only. So if we hiked into the base of Mt Cook on tuesday and huddled in the tent all day Wednesday, we would be in a perfect position to climb Mt Cook itself on Thursday!

With this itinerary in mind, Orin and I climbed at the Sebastapool Bluffs on Monday. It was enjoyable cragging, on less than vertical rock with blocky crimps reminiscent of Devil's Lake in WI. We climbed a few sport and gear pitches, then simul-climbed a five-pitch 5.8 in about 15 minutes. We spend the night below the village in a medow by the Tazman river. The sunset was striking! It was disconcertingly windy all day, and we read that the winds up high were around 60 km / h.

Tuesday we arose early, filled out the intention form at the visiter's office - this is the form that tells the park where you are going, so if you don't return they can send out a rescue - and started hiking shortly after 8am. A quick 8.5 km hike up a grassy lateral moraine brought us to the point where we were forced to drop onto the glacier. The glacier has receded significantly in recent years, and the moraine wall is steep, loose, and around 50 meters high. We dropped to the glacier at this point. This part of the lower glacier is completely covered by dirt, gravel and rocks and you wouldn't even know you were walking on ice. We trudged up the valley for several hours over the glacier, navigating a few exciting stream crossings on the surface of the glacier. At 2pm we arrived at the base of the Hass ridge which we intended to take up to the Grand Plateau and our staging area for Mt Cook. The Hass ridge is a 1500 scramble of loose moraine, very steep grass, and loose rock. Despite the fact that it is the easiest approach to the easiest route on Mt Cook, there was very little sign of trails at all. I am still a bit confused why there was so little trail, though I know that this is in a large part due to the fact that virtually all clients who hire a guide to take them up Mt Cook fly in and are dropped off on the Grande Plateau.

The climb was brutal with full packs. Steep moraine walls are always horrendous, however even after we had finished the moraine I still used my hands constantly to pull on grass or rocks. There were sharp plants similar to yukka to watch out for and the grass under-foot was very slick. After much struggling, we arrived at the Hass hut near the top of the ridge at around 6pm. The wind was fairly fierce, and we took a break in the hut. I was waiting to see if Orin would suggest just stopping there for the night, and I think he may have been waiting for the same thing, but neither of us actually suggested it so we kept going with the goal of reaching the Grand Plateau by night. We donned our crampons and slogged up a steep snow slope. Hoping to cut directly across to the Plateau Hut instead of gaining the extra 200 m to go over the dome at the top of the ridge, I traversed around to the right to a small saddle in the ridge. The Plateau Hut was directly across from me, but separated by a steep slope capped by a threatening serac and guarded on the bottom by a large bergshrund. Orin arrived and we decided that we were too tired to continue to the Plateau that evening, especially because it would require traversing back around to the right and climbing a loose 4th class gully of rock.

In the growing wind we kicked out a platform for the tent on the edge of the snow and set it up off of stakes and trekking poles buried dead-man style, a cam, and a baby-andle piton driven into the rock. After a delicious pasta meal, we went to bed quickly. The wind blew hard all night, shaking the tent loudly. Despite by fatigue, it took some time to fall asleep because of the shaking of the tent. I rolled over many times, especially when the tent was blowing so hard that the side was almost laying on my face.

None the less, I woke up the next morning feeling rested. The storm hadn't blown in yet, though the wind gusts continued to intensify gradually. We could see clouds building over the ridge, but they did not seem to be approaching quickly. We decided to leave our camp where it was and climb up to the Grand Plateau to have a look around. The usual climb was barred by a large bergshrund, so we traversed around to a steep, loose rock gully which lead quickly to the Grand Plateau. We descended to the Plateau Hut to get a better look at Mt Cook. The wind on the Grand Plateau was fierce, pelting us with snow bullets that stung even through a Gortex shell. We could see some of the Linde Glacier route - our intended decent - and it was VERY cut up by crevasses. In the Plateau Hut, the log book spoke of successful ascents in late January and a few in early February. The last successful ascent, by a team from eastern europe, had taken place a bit under a week earlier and talked of endless traversing to avoid crevasses. We called down to the main DOC office to get a weather report. In abbreviated form it went something like this. "Today, the storm will continue to build. Heavy rain and winds up to 90 Km / h expected at 3000 meters. Tomorrow, rain passes by early morning, but winds remain high." Orin hugh up the phone, we looked at each other and pointed down. There would be no climbing Mt Cook this trip.

We decided to try to hike most of the way out that same day. Returning to camp, we packed up and headed back down the ridge. Instead of taking the grass down as far as possible, we quickly dropped into a moraine gully. The wind was now flinging rain drops around. Often it would blow directly up the gully, sand-blasting our faces with dust. Several times I had to sit down because I could not see anything. Despite the wind, the gully was efficient and we arrived at the glacier in 1 hour. During the slog back across the glacier the rain started in earnest.

We came to the old site of the Ball shelter at 6pm soaked to the bone. I mean, completely soaked through. Oh man, budget soup never tasted so good! There's nothing that says, "honey, I love you" like budget soup... After a delicious meal I drifted off to sleep in my damp down bag and clothing.

The next morning was beautiful. We had a leisure hike out to the car while the wind continued to whistle through the high peaks. All in all, it was an intense experience but enjoyable in that removed, retrospective sense. I certainly have a good idea what it would take to climb Mt Cook now, and am looking forward to a return trip - earlier in the season when the crevasses are covered.

Fiordland

Oh man, what a beautiful day. When I woke this morning, the first thing I saw was pink clouds reflecting the first rays of sun over the tops of the grass stocks just beyond by bivy sack. We had camped in a gravel pull-off on the way back to Wanaka, where I am now. I am typing in the Info center, in front of a full window looking out over the beautiful blue Lake Wanaka, with the high peaks around Mt Aspiring in the background. It is warm, sunny, and beautiful.

The wireless here does not seem to want to load my pictures, so you will have to see those later. Sorry!

We are back here after spending a few days in the Milford Sound area. What a dramatic landscape! We drove down there 4 days ago. The valley on the east side leading up to the crest is a long flat glacier valley with steep peaks and temerate rainforest on both sides. We stopped and picked up a german hitch hiker in the last major town of Tau Ana. Dan is in his early 20's, and his stated plan for time being is, "I'll be traveling for the next 10 years. India, China, South America, we'll see!" He has already been on the road for over a year, in Australia primarily.

We spend the night at a primitive camp site (picknick table, toilet, and a pullout). The next day we drove to the Milford Tunnel, which burrows through the continental divide. Milford Sound is in the heart of Fiordland, the drastic south-west coast of New Zealand. This rugged area is a glacier-carved territory that gets a large amount of rain year around and hence is a temperate rain forest. The very steep and deep valleys are filled with lush vegetation, and are surrounded by tall granite walls covered with more moss and vegetation. Above that are the peaks, which top out at around 2000 m and have granite summit caps above glacial hanging valleys. It turned out to be a beautiful day, but we found this out too late to climb anything big. After dropping off Dan at the tunnel, we ended up scrambling Moir's Mate (4th and easy 5th class). We were hoping to climb the North ridge of Moir, but the 5th class downclimbing would have turned dangerous if it rained and we did not have a rope, so we descended prematurely. We still gained over 1000 meters in a few hours.

The next day we drove to Milford sound early, arriving by just before 8am. This place is very busy, with lots of tour busses, boats, planes and helicopters. However by arriving early we missed many of the crowds. The morning was very pretty, with some clouds and mist and some blue sky.

That afternoon we went to one of the sport crags on steep granite that are in the area. The crag we were at was called the Chasm. The climbing was fantastic, with highly featured steep granite sport climbing. We first climbed a 3 pitch mixed gear and bolt route with short 5.10 then 5.11 trad pitches. The third pitch was a fantastic steep black dike with sandstone-esque pockeds that went at 5.12c. This pitch was called "But 't Milford." If only I had endurance I could have onsighted it...

Then down and over to another 2 pitch sport route. I wound have onsighted the 11d second pittch, but there were two exits and I chose the left hand one which turned out to be quite a bit harder than 11d. Then we went over to an excellent 2 pitch route that was the first route on the cliff, called "High Ideals and Big Ambitions." My lead on the second pitch was mostly on gear, with the 11a crux protected by 2 bolts. At the end of the day I tried to top rope one more pitch of 12a that was directly under the rappel, and made it after several hangs, content to call it a day.

Today we are on our way to the Mt Cook area. We are still undecided as to what to do, because we have 5 days left and the 3rd day is supposed to have bad weather. The big objectives that we want to do (Mt Sefton, Mt Cook) would be best in 5 days, meaning climbing on the 3rd day. So we will probably do two 2-day trips and develop plans for future years. That is about it! I'm excited for the last week here, and excited to get back to life in Chicago. It is good to be excited about what you are doing!

Mt Aspiring

Yes, New Zealand is pretty awesome. At least the mountains are! As most of you know, Orin and I made it back to New Zealand and off of Antarctica one week ago, on February 11. We spend a night at the hotel, then picked up our rental car early the next morning. The most valuable piece of advice about New Zealand driving that I got was from the man at the rental company, "Stay left, stay left, stay left!" Indeed, they drive on the left side of the road here! That also means that in our manual shift car the stick goes in your left hand instead of your right. As long as you pay attention, it is not too bad. No problems so far!

We picked up the car, mailed off Orin's extra stuff, checked out a few outdoor shops, then drove out 40 min to my new friend Kate's house. Kate has been extremely friendly and gracious in helping us get oriented and on our way for the trip. Kate is a friend of a friend from Cornell, and had agreed to let Orin and I sleep on her floor for the night. She has a very cute house with an amazing view of the bay. We slept well with bellies full of curry rice.

The next day we drove back to Christchurch and picked up guide books and groceries, then cruised down south to Wanaka, a 6 hour drive. We gave a ride to hitch hikers on two different occasions. We arrived too late to stop by the Department of Conservation (DOC), so we drove up a valley and slept in a field for the night. Why pay for a $15 campsite when you can camp for free?

The next day we were at the DOC by 8:30am to get some information about Mt Aspiring and sign in. You can sign in with trip forms, and then if you don't come back out they will go look for you. Much more formal than anything I have ever worked with. We told them we would be out a full day later than we expected, because we were not planning on needing a rescue!

A beautiful drive up a narrow canyon brought us to the trailhead, and we started hiking by shortly after noon. It drizzeled all day. The lower part of the valley is effectively a temperate rain forest and was filled with thick, lush vegetation. Following the advice of the guide book and the fact that I had a bivy sack but Orin did not, we left the trail and bushwacked through the sopping underbrush for 40 minutes to find Oat's Rock bivy. This was worth it, as we spent the night under the protection of a small rock overhang. I was soaked to the core, but it was warm so I was reasonably comfortable and my pack stayed dry enough.

We woke to a brilliant, sunny day. After a late start we hiked up to the head of the valley then started the scramble towards Bevan Col. It was solidly 4th class up the initial gorge with heavy packs, but we made good progress. After that it backed off to 3rd class scrambling and we climbed to the col by 4:30pm. The climb was about 1300 m of elevation gain, with the col at 1851m. After scouting the approach to Aspiring and eating dinner, we slept.

Up at 3:30am, the stars were amazing! A quick cold breakfast of granola and we were off. We quickly gained the glacier and crossed the Bevan Glacier. There were quite a few clavasses, but we stayed where they were small and easy to cross. We arrived at the base of the South West ridge and left the glacier at 7am. What a fantastic route! We scrambled up some 4th and easy 5th class rock to gain the snow arete. This sharp snow ridge separates the West and steep South faces of the mountain, and rises continuously at 45 to 55 deg for around 400 m. We arrived at the crux of the climb shortly after 10am, placed a solid 2-screw anchor and roped up. The gully which is often filed with ice and snow was dry, so Orin lead a mixed pitch with several fixed pitons for protection. The climbing was not too hard but engaging with plenty of exposure. The climbing was probably 5.6, but in gloves and crampons. I followed the 30m pitch, and we put the rope back in the pack. One more hour of steep snow, and we were on top by 12:30!

Orin on the SW Ridge, in the middle of the snow arete.

Orin above the crux, nearing the summit.

What a spectacular summit! At 3033 m, it is the highest peak in the immediate region. The summit is a sharp snow cone that drops steeply off in all directions. We could see all the way out to the ocean to the West, down to more high peaks to the south, up to Mt Cooke to the North, and out to the planes to the East. Totally spectacular day.

After 1/2 an hour, we began the descent down the North West ridge. This took longer than expected, 3 hours. It was full on very exposed 4th class scrambling with one rappel. By the time we reached the hut at the base of the NW ridge, we were very tired indeed! But not done yet...

Back across the glacier to the Bevan col and our packs we went, arriving at 6pm. We ate some soup and packed up, then headed back down towards the West Matukituki valley. We bivied just above the 4th class gorge in growing clouds and wind.

The next morning we woke up late and it still hadn't rained, much to our glee. After breakfast we downclimbed the gorge, and hiked out, a 7 hour day. I was really tired by the time we arrived at the car! Much more than usual.

Today it is raining a bit and we are resting in Wanaka, re-stocking on groceries, and planning for what is next. We will probably go down to Milford Sound and the Darrens, where there are long rock routes. We probably won't climb any of them though, because the weather report for that part calls for rain for the foreseeable future. Then I would like to head back up north to the Mt Cooke region and try to climb the North Ridge of Mt Sefton, but we'll see what time and the weather have in store for us! 10 more days is NZ...

Keep living your dream!

parting thoughts

Well, it is my last day at the Pole. The plane from McMurdo will arrive here at 11:30am. I will hop, skip and jump onto the plane and fly to McMurdo. After a transfer I will then fly on to Chrishchurch and the land of days and nights.

But first, Bubah is back! I don't know how we got him back, but if I find out more, I'll let you all know.

Second, a few parting pictures.

Above is a picture of Dan and a tech worker changing the gain on the optical pointing telescopes on the side of the SPT.

Above is a picture of the official South Pole Marker. Each winter the machinest makes a pole marker for the new year. This years was a miniature bronze model of SPT. It is about 3 inches high. The inset in the flat plate is cut out in the shape on Antarctica.

Curiously, it doesn't really feel like I am leaving. More so today than yesterday, nonetheless it still feels like another day at the pole when I wake up, eat, and sit down at my computer to work. Work is going great, as usual. I am continuing to work or the C analysis pipeline, which I assume that I will be working on for some time now. I am currently completely re-writing the function that reads data out of fits files and into a C struct which we can then easily manipulate. The previous function is something like 12000 lines long for a SINGLE FUNCTION, hence the reason for re-writing it. It is really fun working with smart people - in this case I am referring to Erik Leitch - who know a lot about a subject. After talking to him I have figured out a much cleaner way of re-writing the function which is actually pretty elegant. It involves writing a nested set of arrays of structures which contain function and memory pointers. Then all I have to do is loop through this pre-defined array and call one general read function for each column of data. Still haven't compiled it yet, but I am working and testing in small steps. It should be awesome! But I digress.

Yesterday I didn't feel like I was leaving at all, and just worked the whole day through on the above programs. Now it is finally settling in that I am indeed leaving in a few hours. So what are my last thoughts while here? Well, I am very glad to have had the opportunity to come here. First and foremost it is incredible to finally be down here and see the telescope that I will eventually be writing a thesis on. I have learned much more about the project than I would have in the equivalent amount of time in Chicago. This is the best part of the trip. I also feel incredibly fortunate to have the opportunity to be somewhere that a small fraction of the population will ever be able to go to. Antarctica is an incredible continent. I have been living on kilometers of ice in all directions, including down. It is like being in the middle of the ocean.

I am nevertheless excited to leave and get back to my life in the "outside world." It is fun to visit here, but it puts the rest of your life on hold for that time. I am quite glad not to be staying for winter for that reason. I am sure that mentally I would be able to handle it and would have a productive and eventful year, but right now I am not willing to miss a year of my life in the outside world.

An interesting observation that one of the people on the Ice Cube neutrino detector project made last night in the sauna is that the South Pole is like living in a nice youth hostel. There are many people in their 20's and early 30's. You can hang out with other young people every evening, get to play sports and watch movies, and have parties and dancing every weekend. The only difference is that you get your own room, the food is much better, and you are surrounded by hundreds of kilometers of ice.

The one thing that I am not sure about the whole endeavor is the consumptive nature of this entire enterprise. Everything we do here relies completely on being flown in on an airplane. All of the energy we use comes from gas that was flown in. As far as I can tell the station does a reasonable job of being frugal with their energy uses - buildings seem well designed, and there aren't too many energy-consumptive extra luxuries (the sauna is an exception). However, thinking about just the flights makes me cringe a bit. There are 4 or 5 flights from McMurdo to Pole and back six days a week, weather depending, all summer. Keeping a population of around 250 people for the summer and 40 people for the winter takes a lot of food and gas.

The only two justifications that I can see are as follows. Geo-politically, the united states would have a station at the pole regardless of the science. I am certainly not convinced that this is a good reason, but right now it is a political reality. The second reason is why I am here, namely that the South Pole is very nearly the best place on earth for doing CMB science. Between the 6 month winter, the extremely cold and stable atmosphere, and the rotation pattern of the earth below the sky, this is pretty much as good as it gets without going to space. And if we are thinking about expense, a satellite is usually at least 100 times as expensive as a ground-based experiment. The science we are going after is as big as it gets - the nature of the universe as a whole. And mark my words, right now we are in a golden age for experimental cosmology. This field will open up our understanding of the universe immensely in the next 10-20 years. I hope that it will eventually lead to ways of testing and finally understanding gravity, which will probably lead to a complete revision of our understanding of the fabric of space-time itself. So is this worth the expense and the consumption that maintaining a science-support station at the south pole entails? Well my feet are saying "yes" by working on this project. I am unambiguously in support of spending lots of money on science, so why not just chalk up the expense to the name of science? I do believe that the pursuit of knowledge is an endeavor worth sacrificing for. It is what I am dedicating my life to. So is it worth it? No answers today. To my readers, think about it. One of the greatest capacities we as humans have is the ability to think. Use it!