Krissie's Blog - 9

Jun 19, 09:48 PM

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Let’s talk about the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.

This is a photo of the entire Station from about 4 miles out. There’s nothing else out here for about 800 miles. It’s flat, cold, and high ~ 9306 ft. (Photo by Andrew V. Williams, NSF) This view is from above the skiway (that line in the snow), looking “north.” Let’s take a look a little closer in looking “south.” (Photo by Scot Jackson, NSF. Labels by me.)

You can see there’s a little more going on. The science buildings are farther out, so they’re not included in this picture. Over the coming weeks, I’ll be giving you a tour of the Station. There are so many things to see, so I’ll have to break it up into a few segments.

At the South Pole, every direction from here is north, as illustrated by our flagpole’s compass rose. For flight operations and for weather observing purposes, we have a grid system. The Prime Meridian is our north, and everything else falls in place after that.

The South Poles are north of the Elevated Station. The Ceremonial South Pole is in front of the horizontal link, surrounded by the flags of the countries that initially signed the Antarctic Treaty. We took the flags down on ANZAC Day and hung them in the galley. They are raffled off to the winter-overs and are replaced by new ones after sunrise. This picture was my very first trip to the Ceremonial Pole. This Pole never moves.

The Geographic South Pole is a little farther east. The world is spinning in my arms, see.

Like I said in my last entry, they move the Pole marker about 30 feet east (and a little south) each New Year’s Day. Each year the Pole marker is different.

Designs are created by winter-overs. We vote on which one we like best. That design is sent up for approval by the NSF. Our metal worker, really for reals named Steele, will create the Pole marker, and it will be unveiled to the world on New Year’s Day. The polls closed three days ago, but I don’t know which of the 12 designs won. Steele will tell us next weekend at the Mid-Winter Festival.

This is a postcard I scanned. If you rotate it 180°, that’s how we see it, but this picture matches the aerial view picture.

It’s basically a 400 ft long E, divided into pods. I live in upstairs A1 and work in the B2 Science Lab. It’s a commute of a couple hundred feet, but it does feel like I live and work in different places. In the summer, the Station houses 150 people in A1, A4, and B1 on both floors. This winter we live in only A1 and B1, which is plenty of space for 43 people. A4 is used for cold storage.

We’ll start our inside tour with the Beer Can. On the postcard, it’s the vertical tower near A2. It’s a big silver silo-like thing around a staircase that goes down into the bowels of the Station. There’s also an exit in it close to the Geographic Pole. The walls are whitish because they freeze over in the winter. It’s very cold in here. There are 92 steps in the Beer Can, and climbing them at this altitude is way fun. This is where the one elevator is (the cage on the right), but it doesn’t run when it’s colder than about -80°F outside.

This is one of three coat rooms.

This is the sauna. Blech. Who wants to sweat? Not I. More Europeans than Americans seem to like this room.

Now we’re in A1. Each berthing wing has two floors of four rows of rooms – two facing outside and two facing inside. This view shows two rows of A1. Fun fact: my bedroom (and the bedroom on the floor below me) are the closest to the Geographic Pole. That means that, at times (when I’m sleeping in my room and nobody is in the galley), I am moving slower and the shortest distance than anyone else on the planet…unless there’s a sub parked at the North Pole.

This is the main entrance, Destination Zulu (DZ). It’s between A1 and A4. All of our doors leading outside are freezer doors. If they are off the main corridor, they have these plastic monster car wash fingers in front of them. It’s easy to get caught in them.

This is one of the recycling areas. We recycle 70% of our waste. The other 30% is food waste, bio waste, hazardous waste, and non-recyclable material. Waste is broken into several recycling categories. I’ll go more in depth on waste management at a later date. You’ll never see just one trash can in an office space. There will usually be around 5 or 6.

This is the post office. It’s obviously closed during the winter. In the summer, it’s open twice a week. We use US postage rates, but everything coming in and going out has to have customs forms because it all goes through New Zealand. In the summer, our letter mail is sorted into those cubbies, and package mail is laid along the wall in the hallway. It’s VERY exciting to get a package here.

The store, which is behind that door in the middle of the post office, is open for an hour each day at 6 PM and at noon on Sundays. The store sells souvenirs, toiletries, snacks, all forms of alcohol, and loans DVDs. We have already run out of certain alcoholic drinks, peanut M&M’s, and Twix. I’m sure there’s more we no longer have, but the Coke is running low, which concerns me. I still have a hefty supply of Dr Pepper though.

This is the greenhouse, which is just a large converted freezer. The light bothers my eyes, but in there are the only plants we have. It’s also warm and humid…if you like that kind of thing. It’s nice to go in there to warm up, but because it’s near DZ, you’ll get a chill as soon as you step back into the hallway. You can talk on the phone, surf the web, listen to music, nap, or read in the anteroom. Greenhouse Joe can also put on bird noises. The greenhouse always needs volunteers to plant and harvest “freshies.”

We have 6 working washers and 4 working dryers. We are allowed one load of laundry per week. Tide is provided. The dryers are glycol dryers, meaning they tap into the Station’s glycol heating system, rather than using electricity to generate their own heat.

The B1 pod is called the “life boat.” If the Station burned down, B1 is where we would live until rescue planes came. The logistics of getting just one small plane down here would take one month in the winter. Big planes can’t land because they would stick to the ground. As my sister told me, “It’s easier to get to the Space Station than it is to get to you.” Anywho…this is the emergency power plant. B1 is the smallest berthing wing because of the power plant downstairs and a lounge upstairs. Downstairs there is also an emergency laundry room; although, if the Station did burn down, I doubt we would have any other clothes to wear than what was on our backs. We do have a cache of ECW that’s stored away from the Station, in case we didn’t have any on during the incident.

The Quiet Reading Room is the larger of the two libraries we have. This is where I would nap after my shift and before dinner during the summer. I didn’t want to walk to Summer Camp and back. Yoga meets here on Tuesdays. That’s why that lamp on the right has been pushed into the corner.

The Arts & Crafts room is full of fun…and sewing machines.

This is the Comms shop, where we built the Race Around the World stuff. It’s really more known for where the offices of the Comms Tech (radio guy), Satellite Tech, Network Engineer, and the IT Manager (in the summer) are.

These are Pole markers from previous years, displayed in the hallway along with other South Pole memorabilia. Another coat room is just across the hall from this.

The B3 lounge is the supped up TV/movie room, with tiered seating, a great sound system, and a projector. This is where my crew and I watch Battlestar Galactica.

The music room is good times. I meet with my A cappella group here on Sunday afternoons. We’re practicing to perform at the Mid-Winter Festival. I have used this room to blast my music and belt, because there’s really no other place on Station where one can get away with it.

This is the gym in B4, which supports many, many activities: volleyball, soccer, basketball, Wiffle ball, badminton, the ancient art of boffing, circuit training, morning stretches, concerts, the drive-in movie theater, trauma overflow during a mass casualty incident, etc. This was a summer game of Wiffle ball. (Photo by Brian Churchman)