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We have finished our work in Antarctica and are coming home!!!  I was suppose to be on the Thursday (1/20) flight but it was cancelled due to warm weather.  When it is too warm the plane damages the runway and then it takes a lot of work to repair it.  So hopefully we will get out on the Friday flight.  I will probably be back in CO on Sunday (1/23) or Monday.  Day to day slip if the flight gets delayed out of McMurdo.

I did a really great Nordic ski trip yesterday and have great pictures to post.  I am planning to tour around NZ for 1 day and will post pictures from that.  They have a tour called the "Lord of the Rings Tour" I hope to do.

My last post will probably be around 1/25.  I hope everyone has enjoyed the pictures and stories, it has been a great adventure and experience.

Ice cream

They have two all you can eat ice-cream machines.  For some reason they are famous around McMurdo.  Maybe because they are named, Frosty Boy & Frosty Girl.

Jokes...

I really don't have any jokes but the standing joke around everything is about the constant day light:
- We will work until dark
- Don't worry, it is not dark yet
- What do you want to do, it is still light out
- Can't believe it is still light out

I saw today the next sunset is Feb 20.

I basically have been wearing sunglasses for 2 weeks straight, the sun is very bright here.  You even wear them inside in some rooms depending on the windows and where the sun is.  It will be nice to not have to wear them.

Pressure Ridges

These pictures are from a tour I did of the pressure ridges.  Pressure ridges are formed when the permanent ice shelf meets up with the sea ice.  The differences is that sea ice will sometimes completely melt then later reform.  The current sea ice has been around for several years.  The two will meet then start to push up ice/snow like sculptures.  They were amazing to see and walk through.  Hopefully you can really see them in the pictures.  It was also cool because all of them had this blue glow to them from the water and ice.  In some of the pictures you can see the rich blue/green color of the water.

This first picture is my first steps on the sea ice (Where I landed when I arrived at McMurdo was on the ice shelf).

This obviously is my favorite picture.  I took about a hundred of them holding the axe with different poses.  Directly behind me looked like a rip curl from a wave.

Violet, this is the closest thing I could find to an igloo.  Violet wanted a picture of an igloo while I was down here.

Ice Breaker

Here is the ice breaker that came into McMurdo.  It was a really cool thing to see.  It is hard to see in these pictures but when the ship came in it pushed all the ice like one big sheet of ice.  It was almost scary.  And pushed huge ice chunks up onto the land.  Then you could also see the huge chunks of ice being crushed and tossed by the ship.

Chunks of ice that were pushed up onto the land.  Hard to see the real size of them.

The second ship is another ice breaker but also does science missions as well.

Me...

Today was a beatiful day (warm and clear skies).  The moutain range across the ice was just great. 

I originally had two roomates, they both left on Saturday.  So now I currently am in a room by myself, hopefully it stays that way.  I got to move off the top bunk to a bed with a real matress.  You don't know how nice that is!!!  I don't think the food is getting better but I am more used to it now, which is good.  I was pretty hungry for the first week.  I think I only ate jello and bread for a couple of meals.

Work is going good, things are moving forward well and hope to be home a few days early.  It is an amazing experience down here but I sure do miss Mikaela and the girls!  There is no place like home.  Thank you to everyone who has helped out and kept Mikaela and the girls busy.  I am glad that I am with some other people from work, otherwise it would be extremely lonely down here.

This second picture you can see Pepe and the ice breaker ship coming in.  This ship breaks the ice so the big cargo ship can come in.  Once the ships come in the close the bars because the crews of the ships get to crazy.

This is a group of seals.  A lot more of them are starting to layout and sun around McMurdo.  They are pretty inactive and just lay around.  We keep wanting to see them go in and out of the water.

Inside Scott's Hut

We were able to get a tour inside of Scott's Hut.  This is a hut Captain Scott and his crew built but was never really was occupied because it was too cold.  I guess the design of the hut was from Australia and not good for windy and cold locations.  So the mainly used it for storage and short term stays.  It was pretty cool to see some of the original items and remains.

This is original seal blubber that was in the hut.  It is still like oozing.  It is so dry here things do not really decay.

 Cool how they marked all their cargo.

These are the original sheep hanging from early 1900's.

Pepe's back...

This is the same penguin as before, I heard he was popular so I thought I could post some more pictures.  He has not moved.  We have named in "Pepe" (the story of his name is not for the blog).  We are not sure if he is stuck, trapped or just lost.  The ice breaker ship is on its way in and people say once the ship breaks the ice up more wildlife will start coming closer to McMurdo.  Maybe then Pepe can reunite with his friends.

Pepe is only about 25 feet from us when taking these pictures.  We are standing on the edge of land and he is on the sea ice.

This is the team at the site of where the next antenna will be installed next year.  Pepe decided to join us on the hike.

Work stuff...

This is the antenna and radome that was built this year.  Most of this work was done before I came down.  It is pretty cool to see the antenna moving around tracking satellites in the radome.

Panoramic shot of the antenna with Mt. Erebus

Recycle

They recycle like crazy here and break everything out.  They have too because everything has to be packed and taken off of Antarctica.  No waste fields here.  They are very resourceful with everything.

This was a bag of potato chips.  As you can see it was for the 2007 Pro Bowl.  We did not see that until after we ate the chips.  Things they sell here are usually old.  Most items only come in on the boat in January and they are used throughout the year and future years.

Hikes

I have done two defined hiking trails, Hut Point Ridge Trail and Observatory Hill (Ob Hill) trail.

 Hut Point Ridge was about 3 miles.  This is where I first was able to Mt. Erebus the volcano.

 Ob Hill hike was not very long but it was straight up and gave great views all around.  There was a lady who was running it up and down 5 times.  I ran for about 100 yards and my legs felt like cement.

Picture of town from Ob Hill.

A lot of parts of town look like a junk yard.  There is stuff just stacked all over.  If it does not have to stay warm and can freeze they store it outside.

Volcano

There is an active volcano called Mt. Erebus (12,448 ft).  It is only 1 or 3 volcano's that have a visible lava lake.  They have a live camera on it and I was able to see the lava lake and some activity in it via the camera.  You can see smoke coming out of the top of it.  The antenna in the picture is owned by New Zealand.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Erebus



Mammoth

Mammoth has made its way to Antarctica.  Really it has been here awhile because this building is one of the first dorms.  They are now classified as the smallest and worst dorms to live in.  I have heard people say "Mammoth Mountain Inn" is on the other side of the tracks.

I posted this because I have an Aunt and Uncle that live in Mammoth, CA.  These dorms have no relation to the real Mammoth, CA which is great place.

Warning....

Kids be careful...

Penguin

Here is the first sighting of a penguin for our team.  We saw it right by Scott's Discovery Hut.  It is an Adelie penguin.  We think he was there because he had to get out of the water because a seal was chasing him.  We saw the seal then stalking him.

 

Scott's Hut
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott's_Hut












This is the just the sign you have to get a picture with while at McMurdo.

The crazy thing about this picture is that it was taken at Midnight.  I cannot explain how different it is to have daylight 24/7.  It does not bother me when finally going to sleep.  It just makes it hard to even think about going to sleep.  You can be up for 20 hours (really tired) and then you go outside and you think why would I go to sleep it is day time.  But it also gives you more time to do things, like go hiking.

This is at Scott Base, this is the New Zealand antarctic base.  This is about 1.5 miles away from McMurdo.  Americans are only allowed there to visit their store (ie: take our money).