Dispatch Four: Hell On the Plateau
By John Pollack
82° SOUTH, 122° EAST, Antarctica -
n this desolate, frozen plateau, the surrounding horizon is as flat and white as bone china. There are no mountains or hills here, no rocks or lichens. Nothing except the ceaseless, blowing snow that races across an icecap older than humanity.
It is here that our team has made its base camp — a cluster of small tents, a few fabric Quonset huts, and a snow runway staked out with hundreds of bamboo poles. Despite a distinct lack of surrounding topography, we call it TAMCAMP, the Trans-Antarctic Mountains Camp. It marks the mid-point of an ambitious, 500-mile array of seismometers we are installing to better understand the geophysical origins of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.
Put another way, "it's the middle of nowhere," says TAMCAMP Director of Operations Matthew Kippenhan. So middle of nowhere, in fact, that even the HF radio antenna just south of camp must strain to pick up scratchy communications from McMurdo Station, the main American research base on the continent, across the distant mountains on the Ross Sea.
The isolation here — and the shared hardship of tent living at -30 centigrade — fosters a warm and ready camaraderie among the people here. There are 14 of us in camp. Led by Penn State seismologist Andy Nyblade, the group includes researchers from Washington University in St. Louis, the scientific instrument consortium PASSCAL, support staff, and the flight crew of the Twin Otter ski-plane that carries us even deeper into the field.
At the heart of our camp is the galley, a small, fabric Quonset hut nestled between drifts that get higher by the day. The galley serves as kitchen, radio shack, and — thanks to the big kerosene heater called a Preway — camp's most popular gathering place. Fueled by a 55-gallon drum, this heater fights the good fight against the south wind, which slaps at the galley in determined gusts and somehow manages to deposit snowdrifts not just outside, but inside, too.
No matter where you go on the plateau, you're going to end up shoveling snow," says camp cook Rosemary Garofalo, philosophically. "It's all part of it."
everal times a day, Garofalo scoops fresh snow into a giant pot on top of the galley's heater. The pot, which has a spigot near the bottom, transforms the snow into piping hot water. Above the pot is a clothesline of sorts, a wire strung with an ever-changing assortment of leaden socks, gloves and facemasks, all thawing like frozen steaks.
It is in front of the Preway that the people who wear this gear thaw themselves out, too. Late in the evening, when the day's work is done and the dishes have been washed, the galley gets quite cozy. Gathered around the warmest (and only) hearth for hundreds of miles, campmates start swapping stories from around the world — of man-eating bears in Alaska, of pendulous strippers in Australia, of charging hippos in Tanzania, felled by a desperate rifle shot at the last possible moment.
These stories reflect the eclectic and well-traveled group that finds itself thrown together here on the highest, driest continent on earth; scientists and wilderness guides, paramedics and pilots, writers and carpenters. Despite our differences, we all share a love of the wild, a tolerance for discomfort, and a healthy sense of humor.
Laughter is essential for emotional survival. If you can't laugh about having to shovel your way into your tent at night, or joke about relieving yourself over an ice-pit toilet that emits a strange, black light (and worse), two weeks at TAMCAMP might seem something like a Siberian work camp.
Camp humor — from graffiti in the toilet tent to banter in the galley — sometimes takes on a ribald flavor. One day, high winds and blowing snow grounded our plane. The resulting idle hours in the galley inspired an earthy sonnet about the "slop bucket" — a plastic pail that serves as the galley's drain and spittoon alike. Its verses flow as follows:
It's a nasty bucket, a bucket of slop,
a bucket so vile, so full of brown glop.
It holds Tayloe's chaw, and Dustin's foam spittle,
and all of the scrapings of Rosemary's griddle.
It fills up so quickly, too quickly for some,
but others at TAMCAMP, their senses are numb.
Numb to the smells that set nostrils aquiver,
and numb to the cold that makes most of us shiver.
The bucket, they say, has a life of its own,
in which creepies and crawlies might quickly be grown.
By the warmth of the Preway it simmers and bubbles,
'til some selfless soul finally goes to the trouble.
Risking the slosh that will slap at the rim,
and a staining of Carhartts that's ever so grim,
They take out that bucket right into the blizzard,
and dump it straight down our camp's freezing cold gizzard.
So hard by the galley now lies a brown stain,
forever in ice, forever to reign.
A record for scientists centuries to come,
to ponder the 'baccy and every last crumb.
But for now and for next week the bucket's a-fillin',
its heinous admixtures with each meal a-swillin'.
Darker and darker its depths grow more murky,
with dishwater, toothpaste and bits of beef jerky.
It oft has been said that this brew's thick as Guinness,
a primordial soup, a disgusting health menace.
Already this bucket has claimed its first prey,
A warm glove, a cup lid, whatever it may.
So a warning this is, to all who come near,
hang on to those objects which you may hold dear.
Be it toothbrush or bottle or mitten a-dangle,
the drop to oblivion's a very sharp angle.
That pail, they say, will live on in history,
its contents forever an awful mystery.
And that, my dear campmates, is the tale of our bucket,
'til one of us summons the courage to chuck it
Sonnets and tall tales aside, the day-to-day work at TAMCAMP is hard. Keeping snowdrifts shoveled, generators running, the Twin Otter fueled and flying — this keeps everyone in camp busy. Installing the seismometers at remote sites can be particularly taxing. Typically, the Twin Otter pilots will fly a team of three people to a predetermined site, identical in appearance to all the other locations, save for the GPS coordinates.
he Canadian pilot — a cheerful fellow named Scotty Lippa who's so relaxed he wears sandals around camp — always brings the plane in low to scout a possible landing strip. If there are two many snowdrifts, he cannot land without risking a crash, as the plane's skis might catch and flip the plane over. If Scotty doesn't like what he sees, he'll search out smoother ice until he can put the plane down safely.
Once down, we unload about 900 pounds of equipment, often amidst temperatures so far below zero that the wind burns painfully, as if we were being sprayed with tiny shards of glass mixed into Tabasco sauce. The prospect of such pain, and the risk of severe frostbite induce us all to layer up like mummies, peering out through masks and hoods and frosted goggles like astronauts on a foreign planet.
In many ways, the Antarctic plateau is a foreign planet. Chances are, not a single person has ever set foot where we land, and for good reason. The surroundings can most charitably be described as "majestically bleak" — all the more so when the plane roars off into the blue sky, leaving us alone in this vastness to install our equipment before the elements get the better of us.
Many hours later, the plane returns to pick us up. By this time, our feet often feel like blocks of ice, our balaclavas are encrusted with frost, and our minds are numb with cold. Amidst all our discomfort and nagging nightmares about being stranded out there, the approaching roar of the Twin Otter's props is like music to the soul.
Once gratefully aboard and winging our way home towards camp, thoughts usually turn to a warm dinner in the galley, and perhaps then to a glass of Glenlivet. We may have to sip our scotch from plastic mugs, but then again, we know we're never going to run short of ice.
This dispatch from Antarctica is the last of four describing the Trans-Antarctic Mountains Seismic Experiment, a collaborative project between Penn State University, Washington University at St. Louis and the University of Alabama.
