What are men compared to rocks and mountains?

Sledge Golf, Coal Nunatak

2009-05-04T09:30:00.000-07:00

During our field work in the Antarctic, we journaled about our adventures on the IPY-SCOTIA (International Polar Year-Sedimentary Connections and Ocean Thoroughfare in the Antarctic) website (http://web2.geol.sc.edu/barbeau/ipy/index.asp). The following journal entry entitled "72 Degrees South! (BOOYAH, DAVE!)" was published by me on the 6th of January, 2009. Here's what Dave had to say about it:
Editor`s note: As a result of the temporary dismemberment of Sledge Golf detailed below, Ms. Amanda Savrda is now officially (and officiously) the member of Team Barbeau who has traveled the furthest South -- hence her one-upmanship in the title...dlb
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72 Degrees South (BOOYAH, DAVE!)
When Dan and I were uplifted from Belemnite Point on the morning of the 4th, we were unable to land at Burns Bluff because of poor contrast and unable to land at Mars Glacier because of crevassing, so we were put down at Coal Nunatak. Coal Nunatak, located at -72.08 S -68.55 W, consists of some of the southernmost exposed rocks on Alexander Island. Dave and Ferg were able to be airlifted straight into Burns Bluff after their away-day in the LeMay`s because the weather improved, so for a few days, Sledge Golf will consist of Sledge Golf, Coal Nunatak and Sledge Golf, Burns Bluff.
Coal Nunatak, lovingly renamed "CONUN" for sampling purposes, is an even more alien place than Belemnite Point. Sledge Golf`s camp ground at Belemnite Point was nestled amid beautifully stratified mountains with sparkling hanging glaciers in a valley that provided us with a view across George VI Sound towards the crystalline peaks of the mainland peninsula. CONUN, on the other hand, is more subdued topographically, and blocks the view of the Sound to the east. Looking to the south, the view from our camp is nothing but white, and white, and white. Occasionally, in the distance, Dan and I would catch glimpses of a glaciated peak and some insanely immense ice cliffs, probably from somewhere on the peninsula.
Yesterday, the weather was absolutely stunning, and Dan and I were able to get out and sample some of the sandstones on the Nunatak. With blue skies and temperatures well above freezing, we thoroughly enjoyed basking in the warmth of the intense Antarctic sun on the organic-rich outcrops of CONUN. The geologic history of CONUN is quite exciting, because its strata tell the story of a series of sea level rises and falls. Some of the beds of terrestrial sandstones contain entire fossilized forests! We were able to see some beautiful plant and animal fossils, and even some of the coal from which CONUN derives its name. Dan found some beautiful fossilized ferns in the talus piles while I was sampling. The sandstones I sampled contained glints of pyrite (fool`s gold). Needless to say, CONUN has a lot going on for one Nunatak.
Today, we enjoy another warm day without jackets, and bask, yet again, in the unsetting sun of the southern Summer, proped up outside on our P-bags (Personal bags, containing our sleeping bags, etc.). We`re waiting for the for Twin Otter aircraft to pick us up and reunite us with the other half of Sledge Golf, who are already out sampling the granitoids of Burns Bluff.
The final Twin Otter is in sight. Brilliant, beautiful red against a background of the bluest of all sky blues. Its time to finish taking the tent down, and to time to pack the radio away.
In the words of Dan over the radio back to Rothera, "This is Sledge Golf, Coal Nunatak, going clear."

Flying over George VI Sound.

Fossilized flora of Coal Nunatak.

The sandstones of Coal Nunatak. Hammer for scale.

Strata of Coal Nunatak. Dan Fitzgerald for scale.

More fossilized fauna (~100 Ma)!

The slopes of Coal Nunatak.

Cross-stratification in Coal Nunatak sandstones.

Beautiful sandstones.

Dan contemplates the rocks as I sample.

Windscoop.

Sample area.

Scree.

Looking west from Coal Nunatak to our skidoos.

Coal Nunatak.

Marker flag.

Dan.

My crates of Coal Nunatak sandstones for thermochronometric analyses.

My shadow in the snow.

Steve flying in to pick us up.

Steve "buzzing" us.

Steve landing on the "runway."

Taxiing right up to camp.

Dr. Dan "Honky Cat" Fitzgerald. BAS Mountaineer Extraordinaire.

Belemnite Point- Sledge Golf's 1st Camp

2009-04-01T08:04:00.000-07:00

The continuing Antarctic Field Work Saga... better late than never, right?

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Belemnite Point

At the 8:00 AM weather briefing on December 31st, 2008, we received the go-ahead to make the move to our field area at Burn’s Bluff. The flight apron was abuzz with activity, as the two Twin Otter aircraft were loaded up with all of the equipment necessary to keep Sledge Golf sheltered, safe, and successful during a two week stint in the field. Dave and Dan (one of the excellent BAS mountaineers assigned to our project) were on the first flight to ferry our kit (equipment) out to the field site, and a second Twin Otter soon followed them down the runway, disappearing to the south above an ice-berg dotted Marguerite Bay.

The first Twin Otter leaving Rothera to lift Sledge Golf into the Field with Dave and Dan aboard.

Ferg and I waited eagerly to hear whether the other half of our Sledge party would be able to land in Burns Bluff. After mid-morning Smoko, we were told that contrast was too poor to land at the Bluff, and that we would instead set up our first camp at Belemnite Point, a bit further south and some 30km or so across George VI Sound on Alexander Island.

By the time 1 o’clock rolled around, the Twin Otters had returned from the 2 hour ferrying of half of our gear southward and were back at Rothera to retrieve the rest of the gear and the rest of Sledge Golf.

The Twin Otter and Doug, our pilot for our lift into Belemnite Point.

Loading up the "kit."

Ferg (BAS Mountaineer Extraordinaire) waiting to fly to BP.

BAS Twin Otter.

I stood outside of the tiny, pretty, red, twin propellered plane and was almost shaking with excitement. Hoisting myself into the back of the Twin Otter, I walked past our equipment to a tiny bench seat behind the cockpit and sat down next to an oval window. As we lifted off the runway, I could feel my heart beating loudly in my ears over the sound of the propellers. We circled around Rothera once and then headed south as we broke through the clouds.

Rothera Research Station from above.

I soon spotted the high eastern peaks of Alexander Island off to the west. How funny it was to greet those mountains. It was like greeting an old friend. I felt like I knew those mountains because I had studied their history. It was at that moment that I realized then that I knew more about the geography of the Antarctic Peninsula than I did of the state of South Carolina! We continued on above the clouds, passing along the center of George VI Sound between Alexander Island to the west and the Antarctic Peninsula to the east. Ferg, who was riding “shotgun” steered the plane while our pilot read a book. I stared out the window in awe, taking in all of the white and blue.

The peaks of Alexander Island.

Self portrait. Taking it all in.

Descending...

The descent into Belemnite Point was incredible. The Sound remained mysterious and shrouded until we broke through the clouds, as towering, stratified mountains revealed their skree-cut and glacier draped flanks. You know that a place is beautiful when even the folks who make their living there stop and stare and have their breath taken away. As we lost altitude, tiny dots turned into black flags waving to us in welcome along the sides of a snowy runway. Soon the tents and Dave and Dan came into view. Touch down… home sweet home in Ablation Valley.

The Twin Otters at our Belemnite Point camp.

Tracks in the snow. This is one of my favorite photos.

Professional Antarctic Explorers. Dan and Ferg, Sledge Golf's BAS Mountaineers.

The planes getting ready to leave us.

After unloading the rest of the equipment, we watched the Twin Otters race away in the snow and disappear into the sky in the distance, leaving no sign that they were ever there except 4 people, 3 tents, 2 skidoos, boxes of food and equipment, and the traces of skis in the snow.

The last "Twotter" and one of our tents.

Nestled into Ablation Valley along the northern flanks of the fluvio-deltaic sandstones and shales of Belemnite Point, our camp was guarded by a hanging glacier on the peaks to our west. From the doors of our north-facing pyramid tents, we could look north to the flanks of other nunataks, and east across the ice-choked George VI Sound to the mountainous and snowy spine of the Antarctic Peninsula. (A gigapan of our field camp: http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/14977/ )

Sledge Golf's camp at Belemnite Point.

My front doorstep for a few days. Looking across George VI Sound to the craggy, snowcapped spine of the Antarctic Peninsula.

Ablation Valley. Our "runway."

The Sun over GVIS.

Looking ~20-30km across George VI Sound to the Antarctic Peninsula. Burns Bluff, one of our other field sites, can be seen in the left third of the photograph.

For a bit of a New Years Eve adventure, we split into two groups to scout out the field area. Dave and Ferg linked up and drove the skidoos around the Point in search of sampling locales and uncrevassed travel space. Dan and I hiked around Belemnite Point taking a series of gigapans of the Ablation Point and Himalia formations. Dan and I returned to camp before Dave and Ferg, so he brewed some tea in our tent and made some extremely delicious pesto and sundried tomato in olive oil tri-color pasta (thanks, Dan!). When Dan and Ferg returned to camp, we all toasted to the New Year over sips of very warming whiskey.

Dan fires up the stove in our tent to get dinner started.

The next morning we doubled up on the skidoos and went to take our first sample of Antarctic rocks. In the cold, dry air on New Years day, I busted off a chunk of Antarctica with my rock hammer and placed it in a bag labeled “BP1” for Belemnite Point, Sample 1.

Collecting sample BP1.

Collecting sample BP2 on New Years Day.

After a lunch on the rocks of tuna, corn, cheese, and biscuits brown, we split up to do some sampling. Dave and Dan fought their way up the skree for several hours to collect some higher elevation samples, and Ferg and I traveled east to collect some coarse sandstones lower in the section. After a long day of sampling, Dan made chili con carne for supper, which we had with mango chutney and aubergine (egg plant) pickle. Done with our sampling in the area, we spent the evening relaxing in Ferg and Dave’s tent, and Ferg acquired the nick-name “Fergilicious” and Dan became “Honky Cat” (if you see me sometime, I’d be happy to tell the stories behind those nick-names).

January 2nd, 2009, the weather was poor, so the earlier portions of the day were spent contemplating the geology of the area. When things cleared up a bit, Dave and I ventured out to take gigapans of some of the spectacularly folded strata at Belemnite Point (see one of our gigapans at http://www.gigapan.org/gigapans/15006/).

Dave advertising for Mac, warm and comfy during the early-day lie-up on the 2nd.

A shout out to my Alma Mater. War Damn Eagle!

January 3rd, we awoke to winds gusting more than 30 knots and nil visibility, so it quickly became a no-fly lie-up day. The wind whistled around the tents and it was quite snowy and cold. After lunch, Ferg and Dave came to visit Dan and I in our tent for a game of Scrabble. Dan kicked our butts, and I think Ferg made up a word.

When we woke up on the morning of January 4th, the weather had improved enough that we were given the go-ahead to relocate to Burns Bluff. The plan was for Ferg and Dave to go into the LeMay Range for an “Away Day” of sampling and for Dan and I to fly into Burns Bluff if the contrast had improved enough.

'Round Rothera Point and a Ridge Named Reptile

2009-03-11T19:22:00.000-07:00

The following post includes my first few days on the Antarctic Peninsula in December 2008. If you've yet to read about my time in Chile and my flight to Antarctica, see previous posts!

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I had trouble sleeping the first night at the Station from all of the excitement. I was in total shock to be in Antarctica… to feel, as I did in Tierra del Fuego, that I was on a completely different planet… and once again, lucky as hell to be there. The Dash-7 had safely deposited me in the middle of stunning, white, glaciered, iceberged nowhere. I awoke early on the 26^th of December to what would be the first of many spectacularly beautiful days on the Antarctic Peninsula. Blue, blue skies, blindingly brilliant snow. I shared a room with my friend Mel, who I had befriended during my time in Cambridge, UK at the British Antarctic Survey’s Briefing Conference and Field Training in September 2008. From room 31 in Admiral’s Accommodation Block, we had a spectacular view of the gravel runway, Mt. Leotard, the South Cove, Reptile Ridge, the ski-way, the Traverse, and the airplane hangar, and the 4 or 5 feet of Winter snow that still hadn’t melted around the Station.

Admiral's room 31.

The spectacular view from room 31.

After breakfast in a dining room lined with windows that faced the ink-blue and iceberg-strewn North Cove, I went for a walk around Rothera Point with several folks, including Chris (sculptor extraordinaire), Celine (meteorologist), and Adam (plumber) who I had also met at Conference earlier in the year. The jaunt around Rothera Point was beautiful. The icebergs stood out crisply colorless against the deep blue water. Weddell seals sunned themselves lazily along the shoreline, easily mistaken for fuzzy granitic boulders. Penguins zipped through the water, threw themselves onto rocks, and sat, curious and staring, wiggling at all the humans walking past in their funny hats. It was amazing. Blue and white and a tiny bit of rock, as far as the eye could see. After the nice tour around the point, I got to have lunch with Terri (marine biologist), Johnny (mechanic), and Tony (electrician), several more friends from Cambridge.

North Cove.

The runway, apron, hangar, and Reptile Ridge.

Celine and Chris during our walk around Rothera Point.

Looking east toward the Antarctic Peninsula proper.

Lazy seals. (center)

Gorgeous.

Penguins! (center)

Ink-blue Antarctic water flaunting icebergs.

One of the BAS Twin Otter aircraft. (center)

Mmmm... icebergs!

Mt. Leotard from the deck of Old Bransfield.

Some weird ice.

The 27^th of December was a beautiful, busy day of orientations and on-Station training. In the morning, we spent some time at a first aid refresher courtesy of Doc Matt, and had the chance to give intramuscular injections to a sponge, which, I must say, was well doped-up by the time the 10 or so of us had stabbed it with our luer-lok needles. In the afternoon, Johnny gave us some instruction on skidoo driving, and Celine and I were freaking out as he was telling horror stories of people rolling skidoos over on slopes because they were not distributing their weight correctly. My first skidoo ride consisted of me cautiously and nervously driving myself up and down the ski-way, with a spectacular view of the Station below, strangely anthropogenic and anomalous against the snow-covered peaks of the Antarctic Peninsula saw-toothing the blue sky across the Bay.

The Ski-way, the Traverse, and a Ridge named Reptile.

The sun over Mt. Leotard.

Mt. Leotard around 2 AM.

That afternoon, Sledge Golf (our field team, consisting of Dave, myself, and our two BAS mountaineers, Dan and Ferg) gathered to look over maps and discuss field work plans. We gathered together a bunch of “kit” (BAS-speak for gear or equipment) for the next day’s crevasse rescue training and pyramid tent camping. I was given my “female urination device,” called a “She-wee,” which is, for lack of a better way of describing it, a prosthetic penis of sorts, to allow a woman to pee standing up without having to remove her trousers. In my journal, I described it as “a grotesque pink/flesh-colored monstrosity.” Haha.

The 28^th of December was a Sunday and everyone on base had the day off, but Dave and I began our field training. We started with a crevasse rescue refresher in Fuchs House, where I had to recall all that I learned while training with BAS in Derbyshire, UK. I repelled myself down from the loft to sway back and forth in mid air in front of the entrances to the hallway and equipment rooms, where I then switched out my abseiling (repelling) kit for jumaring kit to make my way back up the rope. After lunch that day, we walked across the gravel runway over to the hangar to load up our skidoos for an afternoon of training and our evening out.

As I drove across the traverse, my skidoo caught a rut, and because I wasn’t throwing my weight up-slope as much as I should have, my skidoo started to zip off down the hill outside of the red and black flags that marked the safe area of travel. At the time, I vividly recall thinking that I was going to die, but I slammed on the breaks just outside of the flags and managed not to unwillingly “explore” any crevasses. Dave and Ferg had to help me get the skidoo back on track, because I almost flipped it over. You may read this and think “Man, she’s an idiot,” but you had to be there, and after the fact it was all quite hysterical, especially since Dave did the same thing about 2 minutes later, except he got his skidoo lodged in the snow and had to have Ferg help him dig it out (which afforded me some time to take some nice pictures). Needless to say, after that I understood that Johnny was exactly right when he told me I’d have to do a little extra throwing of weight with my small stature… I would have to put my entire body on the uphill or outer side of a turn whenever I was driving.

Sweet Caroline. My training 'doo.

Looking east, from the Traverse, panning from north to south:

A view north along the Traverse from the seat of my skidoo.

We didn’t have to drive very far before Ferg pulled over next to four red flags and told me to gear up in my crampons and “jingly-janglies.” We were going to repel down into a crevasse!!! Ferg moved a large piece of plywood from the snow and revealed a gaping, glowing hole in the side of the Traverse. Ferg went down first, and then I roped up and went down, digging in my crampons and showering icicles on Ferg below as I bumped them off of the back and top walls clumsily with my helmet. After about 3 meters of descent, the crevasse opened up into a cavern, where Ferg was standing on an icy floor in the eerie, but stunning, bluish glow of down-lit glacial ice. I linked into the guide ropes on the wall and climbed over into the “Waiting Room,” a vestibule with ice pillar walls, so that Dave could descend into the bluish darkness, too. We followed Ferg into the bowels of the glacier as I attempted to master crampon footing for the first time. We traveled down and around and in and out of all sorts of narrow spaces and ledges placed precariously over deeper holes. We dug our crampons into floors, walls, and ceilings. In the icy blue glow, we marveled at the icicles- stalactites, stalagmites, and pillars of the glacial world. Ferg turned on his headlamp and shined it upwards so that the tiny crystals on the ceiling caught the light, dispersing sparkles in all directions like stars twinkling through an atmosphere of synthetic night sky. I have no pictures of our journey into the crevasse. Only images afforded through words. It was beautiful and silent and blue.

After exploring the crevasse and getting a quick lesson from Ferg in ice screw placement, I jumared up the wall of the crevasse’s entrance, followed by Dave and Ferg. We re-packed our skidoos and turned back down the Traverse to sit at the top of the Ski-way and snack on turkey and coleslaw sandwiches while taking in the view. Rothera, below, sat nestled into the bay among epic, glacier-cut mountains that swept their steep sides gracefully, but decisively downward, to plunge into the deep icy blue of calm Antarctic waters dotted with the whites and blues of icebergs.

Having sufficiently refueled ourselves, we geared up and linked up and trudged our way into a snow bowl to practice traversing a near-vertical windscoop in crampons and self-arresting on steep, snowy slopes. We descended into the bowl as another training group was doing their self-arrests. I watched and laughed as Mel, Terri, and Magda threw themselves down a slope that would be dumb to even walk on if you were anywhere else in the world. They were having a blast being rough and tumble in the snow. They left while we were doing our crampon work and we took over their self-arrest spot, where a nice ice slide had been formed through the softer snow. We started by going feet first, face down and digging our axes in… then feet first, face up… and then head first, face down… and finally head first, face up! I very nearly concussed myself on some waylaying chunks of ice, but still had a blast.

After self-arresting, we hiked out of the windscoop and back up to the skidoos, and then tore off towards the Caboose. We ate some biscuits and had a couple of cups of tea, and then began to set up the pyramid tent that we would sleep in that night, next to the igloo that Graham and Chris built a few nights earlier. It was a nice, albeit child-sized, igloo built from ice-bricks that they quarried from a nearby snow-pit. We dug out a large square area of softer snow and then set up the faded orange tent, laying the ground sheet and packing in all of the wooden boards, wooden kits boxes, and personal bags, the same way we would during our weeks in the field. After a bit of HF training, Ferg cooked rice pilaf for dinner. After peeing (quasi-successfully and quite hysterically) with the aid of my She-wee at the pee flag, I spent my first evening in a pyramid tent quite warm and quite comfortable, and awoke in the morning to my first Antarctic snowfall. Beautiful chunky snowflakes racing down from graphite gray clouds.

Looking up at the ceiling of the Caboose.

A view from inside the pyramid tent of snow falling on the Caboose with Reptile Ridge in the background.

The 29^th was a busy day of more crevasse rescue training, which included making snow anchors and me throwing myself blindly over a ledge while roped to Dave to simulate falling down a crevasse. It was fun, despite the fact that an allergic reaction to a nasty mix of sunscreen and melting snow in my eyes resulted in symptoms similar to those of snow-blindness. My eyes and nose were watering so profusely when I was rigging up the Z-pulley system to pull Dave up from over the ledge that I could barely see and I had to wipe my boogers in the snow. I think it amused Ferg to no end. Despite the discomforts of cold and the plethora of boogie, I managed to remember all of the technical stuff… I was able to put in snow anchors, abseil down over the ledge to “check” on Dave, jumar back up over the ledge, prep the ledge, and then pull Dave up over the ledge using the Z-pulley system I rigged myself. Not bad for a gal from Alabama with little snow experience and no mountaineering experience what-so-ever... and boogers running down her face.

After a day of rest and preparation on the 30^th, Sledge Golf received the go-head on the morning of December 31^st, 2008 to fly via BAS Twin Otter to our field sites further south. I was going to celebrate New Years along George VI Sound at about 70 degrees South!

(Next Post: Antarctic Fieldwork)

"Dash-ing" Across the Drake Passage

2009-03-11T08:33:00.000-07:00

Alas, it is taking me forever to get my entries up to date with the present day, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely, bowing first to the will of classes and teaching. Ladies and Gentlemen, join me now on my Dash-7 flight south from Punta Arenas, Chile to Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula.

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Our flight was supposed to leave Punta Arenas on the 21^st of December, but because of foul weather on the Antarctic Peninsula, we were held up in Chile. After five days of restless anticipation, we were told at 6 PM on Christmas day that we’d be leaving for Rothera at 9 PM that evening. I waited excitedly in the lobby of Hotel Diego de Almagro along with Dave (my thesis advisor), Dan (one of our BAS mountaineers), Becky and Christian (Geologists from the UK), and Andy (Antarctic old-timer), as Rev (BAS Air-mech), and Nico and Mark (BAS pilots) bustled around making sure all of our passports were squared away and that we’d all have a bite to eat on the plane.

Two vans pulled up to the front of the hotel, and we threw all of our bags inside and piled in for the ride to the airport. We stood in Punta Arenas’ empty airport on Christmas evening, waiting for the security guards to drive in to work to check our baggage. And then we sat waiting in an empty terminal for the plane ride of a lifetime.

Waiting...

I stood staring out of the window and watching my fellow travelers lounge around and cat-nap, and felt my heart skip a beat with excitement as the big, beautiful, bright red Dash-7 aircraft rolled down the runway and taxied up to the terminal. This was it. I was about to board a blazing red quad-engined beauty bound for Antarctica!

Daisy, the BAS Dash-7.

We were led onto the tarmac and walked up the steps into the back of the plane. We settled down in several rows of seats in the back of the aircraft, behind the missing 2/3rds of the plane’s seats that were replaced by kit and cargo.

Nico netting the cargo.

After the last of the cargo was secured and we received a quick briefing from Nico, Mark and Nico began to taxi down the runway. The Dash-7, which can operate off of less than 2000ft of runway, leapt swiftly and gracefully from the blacktop, ready for it’s five hour journey south, and hungry for Antarctica and the gray gravel runway of her Summer time home.

A final glimpse of green... and cutting through the clouds.

From the windows of the Dash, I caught what would be my last glimpse of trees for a month, and then we began our ascent through a thick, white wall of clouds. After several minutes of nothingness, the Dash popped up above the cloud cover and continued to ascend into the lowering Summer sun as we sped our way south. As we flew above the Drake Passage, the gateway between southernmost South America and the Antarctic Peninsula, the sun never set that Christmas night. Here is some of the beauty that Earth and atmosphere gifted me with that evening.

Sun over the Southern Ocean.

Nico and Mark. Two awesome pilots.

No other aircraft is more fit to make such a journey.

A view of the cargo-filled cabin.

Mark telling me about the plane's GPS before he let me fly the Dash!

Utterly stunning.

Instrumentation.

The lowest the sun got that Christmas night.

Rev and Dan.

The ink-blue water of the Southern Ocean finally displays itself beneath the clouds.

The Antarctic Peninsula comes into view. My first glimpses of ice-shelf and iceberg.

Looking east toward the Antarctic Peninsula from 18,000 ft.

Mineral H2O.

Beautiful.

Mountains, Glaciers, and Ice-sheets.

Views from the cockpit as the plane banks toward Rothera.

As we neared Adelaide Island, I moved from my cabin seat up into the cockpit to sit on the jump-seat between Nico and Mark. The Dash banked steeply to the left and the gravel runway of Rothera Point slowly leveled out in view. At 2 AM on Friday, December 26^th, 2008, Boxing Day, my Antarctic adventure began as I, a girl from Auburn, Alabama, stepped out of the Dash-7 at Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctica.

Approaching the runway at Rothera Point.

(Next posts: Around Rothera, Antarctic Field Work)

"I Tread the Land That's Ne'er Been Trod..."

2009-02-07T00:33:00.000-08:00

Prior to my travels south, I fully intended on posting frequent entries, but with journaling for the IPY-SCOTIA project’s website (go to http://web2.geol.sc.edu/barbeau/ipy/index.asp and click on Journals and Photos to see entries and images from December and January), I never really found the time to keep up with my own online “journal.” I was, however, able to keep up with my written journal, and will now share some of the highlights of my journey, thus allowing the compass needle to cease its spinning and to realign itself with ~0 degrees declination in the northern hemisphere.

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After leaving Columbia the evening of the 11^th of December, 2008, Barbeau and I found ourselves a hop (to Dallas, TX), a skip (to Santiago, Chile), and a jump (to Punta Arenas, Chile) away from South Carolina. We arrived in Punta Arenas on the evening of the 12^th, after an epic journey of connecting flights, including a brilliantly beautiful daytime flight hopping southward along the snowcapped and cloud-crowned Andes, Earth’s exterior scars of subduction and melting, en route to the “most Austral city in the world.”

"Sandy Point," Chile

We spent a couple of days in Punta Arenas preparing for field work in Tierra del Fuego, taking in the sights of corrugated tin, stray dogs, and pastel painted houses on the hill, and visiting old (to Dave) and new (to me) friends on the Lawrence M. Gould and Nathaniel B. Palmer, the United States Antarctic Program’s (USAP) research vessels.

Lunch on the Gould with Captain Joe (Uncle Joe), Dan, Greg, and Lindsey.

View of Punta Arenas from the pier on the bridge of the Nathaniel B. Palmer.

Aboard the Palmer... "Do Not Freeze."

On the morning of December 14^th, we packed up our red rental Mitsubishi 4x4 with camping gear borrowed from the USAP and ventured north and east towards the narrowest part of the Straits of Magellan. The road wound us between low hills, occasionally zipping us through small towns, and along the shores of the Strait, affording us glimpses of haunted shipwrecks, oxidized by waves. At the narrows, we caught a ferry across the sound to the Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego, escorted by dolphins racing playfully in the wake that whitened the blue-gray water.

Shipwreck along the Straits of Magellan.

A view across the Straits to Tierra del Fuego from the ferry.

One of our many escorts across the Straits.

Soon after we filled our gas cans with extra diesel, the paved highways of the South American mainland transitioned into the far less frequented gravel roads of Tierra del Fuego. The Mitsubishi kicked up dust, tracing its way along the map I was navigating from, taking us ever southward through flat, scrub-filled plains dotted with sheep and guanaco (goofy looking llama-like creatures) to rolling hills with winding streams, until we started to spot snow-kissed mountains in the distance. Ten hours after leaving Punta Arenas, the truck was zig-zagging back and forth along mountain switchbacks in a fog-laden darkness that mud-coated headlights were too dim to cut through. Under the cover of darkness, we pitched a tent along the road next to Lago Deseado, and ate a dinner of chicken and rice courtesy of food dehydration, airtight packaging systems, and a dragonfly camp stove. Tierra del Fuego revealed its breathtaking beauty in the warm sunlight of the morning, and I ate cereal and drank orange juice in a camp chair, perched on the banks of a sparkling, cold, deep, wind-whipped lake nestled amidst green mountains, underneath the bluest of all blue skies.

Lago Deseado over breakfast.

Red Mitsubishi with switchback sign at Lago Deseado.

Waterfall en route to Lago Fagnano.

The truck climbed higher in the mountains to then descend upon what is probably the most spectacular lake in Tierra del Fuego- Lago Fagnano- brilliantly turquoise (see Gigapan photos taken by Team Barbeau: http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14087&window_height=575&window_width=1007 and http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14089 ). Stretching east to west, the well-worn Rocas Verde stare across the lake at the heights of the Tobifera and Cordillera Darwin, the lake- a watery delineation of the strike-slip fault that separates the South American tectonic plate from the Scotia plate. For a few days, home was a small yellow tin-sided and red corrugated tin-roofed cabin at Estancia Lago Fagnano (see http://www.gigapan.org/viewGigapan.php?id=14094 ).

Looking south across Lago Fagnano to the Scotia Plate!

Field work consisted of a half-day hike up Monte Hope on the north side of the lake to collect sandstones, followed by a full day of hiking and sample collecting that included a zodiac ride across the lake in an epic quest to eventually reach the Cordillera Darwin by foot. We spent the 16^th of December scrambling up the sides of mountains, through langa-choked forests, over and around beaver dams, thrashing along thorn and brush-choked river banks, and moonwalking across turba-filled bogs in search of Cordillera granites. Finding ourselves still a considerable distance from the Cordillera after hiking and sampling for more than seven hours (~5 miles south of the lake), we reluctantly turned back north towards Lago Fagnano, so not to miss the boat that would return for us in another six hours. All in all, the trek totaled to 13 hours of what is probably the most physically (and mentally) arduous experience of my life thus far, but it was also extremely gratifying. There is something powerful about such a walk through such a wilderness… something primal and innate about navigating “no where,” and it’s a feeling I won’t soon forget.

Cordillera Darwin (snow-capped in the distance) from Monte Hope (1st field day).

Looking east from Monte Hope. Rocas Verde to the left, Estancia Lago Fagnano in the mid-right, Argentina in the distance.

Dessication cracks (mud cracks) and turba (orange) on Monte Hope.

Stomping grounds for field day 2. Snowy peaks = Cordillera Darwin.

An early morning rainbow I spied piercing the Scotia Plate on field day 2.

Yours truly, bagging a rock sample about 3 hours into the epic trek.

Beautiful. Cordillera Darwin.

Sitting on the Scotia Plate. Trusty ol' Vasques.

7+ hours in at the turn-around point and still smiling despite the discomforts.

On the 18^th of December, a packed Mitsubishi churned the gravel of Tierra del Fuego for the last time, fuel cans rattling in the truck bed, on the way back to the South American mainland and the small city of Punta Arenas. Back in Punta Arenas, I sent my parents an e-mail letting them know I was well, and awaited the next leg of my journey to the bottom of the world.

Sedimentary rocks of Tierra del Fuego. Me for scale.

(Next post: second leg of the journey- Antarctica)

A Place of Penguins

2008-12-11T06:51:00.000-08:00

From childhood, Antarctica is a continent shrouded in wonder and mystery. A place of penguins, a glittering white monstrosity most often viewed through the wise and watchful eyes of the Wandering Albatross, Diomedea exulans.

With the exception of the few Research Bases that dot its shores and occasionally reach into the hostility of its interior, and the wind that etches the echo of time into its glaciers, Antarctica is vast and silent. It is the coldest, windiest, highest, driest, most extreme continent in the world. The result of endless collisions of smaller terranes over hundreds of millions of years to become what it is today. An ice covered world at the end of the Earth.

As a child, I wanted to be an astronaut. Then, as now, the possibility of traveling to the Moon seemed more plausible than ever setting foot on the Antarctic continent, than ever standing on a glacier at the bottom of the world. And now, what was never even a possibility, what was never even a thought in the dreams I schemed as a child… is tangible. My passport is sitting next to my computer and my kitchen table is covered in a half month’s paycheck worth of cold weather gear. I am going to stand on a glacier at 70 degrees South. I am going to drink water melted from the ice at the bottom of the world.

I am going to Antarctica.

I’ve prepared for this trip all semester. I traveled to England for three weeks in September to train with the British Antarctic Survey and I presented my thesis research proposal in mid-November. But even with all of the preparation, and all of the times I’ve explained to friends and family why I wouldn’t be back in Auburn for Christmas, the reality of the journey I am about to undertake hasn’t really sunk in until now.

Geologists tend to think in terms of things that are big. Big Bang. Big Dinosaurs. Mass Extinctions. Deep Time. It’s difficult in a world as immediate and finite as our day to day lives to grasp the tiny glimpses of the infinite. But the world is a big place. The imaginary lines that bound my world as a child, the Tropic of Cancer, the Equator, the Tropic of Capricorn, are now lines that I will cross. As I cross these boundaries, these impossibilities, the world becomes bigger… and more beautiful.

- - -

My thesis research is supported by the National Science Foundation. The project is part of a series of grants centered around the International Polar Year. There are many people working on such projects. I am just one piece in a global scientific jigsaw puzzle trying to better our understanding of the Antarctic and its global influence on things like climate change over time. The project I'm part of involves an international team of scientists from all over the US and other countries including the United Kingdom and Argentina.

Last year, members of the research team spent several weeks cruising on the Lawrence C. Gould, an American research vessel, collecting rock samples from all over Tierra del Fuego (southernmost South America) and the northern portion of the Antarctic Peninsula.

One of the Primary Investigators on the current project is a scientist at the British Antarctic Survey (BAS). This year, my thesis advisor (Dave Barbeau) and I are utilizing our project's connection to BAS, and we are going to do field work from Britain’s largest Antarctic Base Station, Rothera.

This evening (December 11^th, 2008) we will fly from the United States to Punta Arenas, Chile. Before leaving for Antarctica, we will do a week of field work via 4x4 and foot in the mountains near Punta Arenas on the Peninsula Brunswick and Isla Riesco, and across the Straights of Magellan on the Isla Grande Tierra del Fuego (you can see all of the places I’m talking about on Google Earth!).

In Punta Arenas, the United States Antarctic Program will outfit us with all of our cold weather/survival gear. Once properly equipped, we’ll join 5 or so other people on their way down to Rothera Research Station on Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula aboard a British Dash-7 aircraft (December 20^th).

After arriving in Rothera, where ~120 support staff and scientists make their Austral Summer home, we will undergo some onsite training regarding camping on glaciers, crevasse rescue, skidoo driving, etc. Once all of our gear is packed, my professor, two Antarctic field guides, and I will be dropped off via Twin Otter aircraft on Naess glacier at Burns Bluff along George VI Sound (probably just before Christmas), where we’ll spend a couple of weeks studying the rocks and collecting samples by way of cross-country skis and skidoos. We will be camping in pyramid tents at the base of Burns Bluff on the ice and snow.

The planes will fly in to relocate us at least once during that time (to Belemnite Point). After completing our far-field work, we’ll come back to Rothera and take day trips by boat to sample rocks at several other locations (Anchorage Island, MacKay Point). At the moment, the plan is to return to the U.S. around the 1st of February, 2009.

Right now, it looks like I’ll be spending my Christmas and New Years in a tent on the Antarctic Peninsula. Talk about a white Christmas.

Most of the rock samples I will collect will be granites. These rocks, like all rocks, are textbooks of Earth’s history. By studying the rock types, their locations, and the minerals in the rocks, we can learn things about when and how and why the rocks formed, and ultimately things like when and how and why the continents moved, and what these continental movements may have affected.

It is believed that the timing of the opening of the Drake Passage (which lies between southernmost South America and the Antarctic Peninsula) is intimately linked with the thermal isolation of the Antarctic continent, related to the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current. This circumpolar current and the configuration of the continents is known to ENORMOUSLY influence the global climate system, not only today, but millions and millions of years ago. The opening of the Drake Passage and the formation of the Antarctic Circumpolar Current are thought to have played an important role in the glaciation of the Antarctic continent more than 30 million years ago!

So, the bit of work I do in the southern Antarctic Peninsula is just a tiny contribution to the research being done by scientists from around the world aimed at increasing our understanding of the Antarctic continent. By understanding the influence that Antarctica has had on past climate change, and how the continent influences global climate at present, we can better understand the role we expect the Antarctic to play in the future climate of our planet!

Here are some of the places we are going (you can see many of them on Google Earth):
Chile
Punta Arenas
Peninsula Brunswick
Isla Riesco
Isla Grande Tierra del Fuego
Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula
Anchorage Island
MacKay Point
Northwest Palmer Land, Antarctic Peninsula
Naess Glacier (70 deg 22 min 53.64 sec South, 67 deg 51 min 22.52 sec West)
Burns Bluff (70 deg 23 min 39.12 sec South, 67 deg 52 min 46.10 sec West)
Alexander Island
Belemnite Point (70 deg 39 min 14.43 sec South, 68 deg 31 min 6.53 sec West)

- - -

When I was home over Thanksgiving Break, my Aunt Cheryl gave me an early Christmas gift. When I opened the box, my eyes met the glitter of a pendant necklace consisting of a tiny shooting star within a circle reading, “Explore. Dream. Discover.” The gift box displayed the quote that inspired the necklace:

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do… So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” -Mark Twain

- - -

To my family, thank you for giving me an early Christmas over Thanksgiving Break. Thank you for teaching me to dream big, work hard, and love life. Your constant support gets me anywhere I’ll ever go. I am the luckiest. I love you guys.

Much love and many thanks to my friends for their love and encouragement. I will do my best to bring back all of the penguins I can, since this was the most popular request, with Antarctic rock samples for my geo-nerd friends taking a close second. To those of you requesting ice for their mixed drinks, I must remind you that despite its relative abundance on the Antarctic continent, ice melts, so meeting those requests is highly improbable if not impossible.

Happy Holidays, everyone!

- - -

Off I go, to explore, to dream, and to discover.

Kool-Aid Kid

2008-12-08T21:35:00.000-08:00

I was a Kool-Aid kid.

As a child, I was just as comfortable reading books in the shade as I was building rock dams across the creek in my backyard. I was all about being barefoot, bicycles, bedtime stories, swing sets, sandboxes, and sidewalk chalk, and the tune of “Do your ears hang low…” echoing through the neighborhood as the Ice Cream Man made his warm-weather rounds.

I loved to explore and experiment. I would burn ants with magnifying glasses, search for crawdads in rocky crevices, and see how long it would take to fry eggs in the Summer heat on blacktop. If I had been a cat, curiosity would have killed me nine million times over. I employed the scientific method before I even knew what it was.

In third grade, I had a teacher who loved poetry, and I feel in love with it, too.
In third grade, I wrote for a class assignment:
A butterfly is not fairly big when it sits on a swaying twig.
A butterfly has nice designs. They flutter about, as if making invisible lines.

I was fascinated with the world around me, and fascinated by others expressing their feelings and experiences of it, and fascinated with expressing the way I felt about it. The beginning of a love affair with the written word.

I loved to draw, and I was a mapper. I created detailed colored, aerial views of Tacoma Drive, Sundilla Court, Tacoma Creek, the First Desert, the Second Desert, the Fifty Foot Drop, and innumerable cool, shady trails, all mapped on the crisply lined pages of composition notebooks. Mixed in with the poetry, of course.

On Summer days and nights, I liked to sit and listen. The whirring of crickets and frogs would hypnotize me for hours as I sat there slowly pumping my legs on the swing set in the shade of the big Tulip Tree- the “Batman Tree,” I called it, basing its name on the shape of its leaves. I remember breathing in deep, content breaths, thinking about how happy the world made me. There’s nothing like the smell of honey suckle and freshly cut grass, or the smell of water from a sprinkler through a rubber hose warmed by the sun.

The freedom of Summer was exciting, but man, man did I love Fall. I used to bury myself in ridiculously large piles of leaves and let myself sink to the bottom, trying my best to disregard the granddaddy-longlegs crawling slowly over my face, just breathing in. Just smelling. The smell of Fall, and it’s crisp, cool air. The “In-between time,” I told my dad.

Dad had a garden. I remember the sound of the snap of a raw green bean, the shuck of an ear of corn, the “ppfffftt” of spitting a watermelon seed off of the maroon picnic table, hoping it’d make some watermelon vines grow the next year.

I loved feeling the wind rushing past my face on my bicycle, as I ceased my ferocious peddling and let myself fly down the big hill, narrowly avoiding the loose gravel that contributed to most of the scars I still have on my knees.

As kids we were kings and queens of the hill. Civil Engineers and Ecologists. We were Herpetologists, Entomologists, Physicists, Medical Doctors and Nurses, Geographers, Chemists, Geologists. Poets and painters, armed with crayons. I think we all start out as everything, jacks of all trades, building dams and keeping cats from bothering chipmunks. In our childhood curiosity we study reptiles, amphibians, and insects. With our tricycles, bicycles, rollerblades, and wagons, we study centripetal force, inertia, friction. We’d help carry the victims of childhood accidents to moms with rubbing alcohol, band-aids, and snacks. We knew the lay of the land better than we knew how to tie our own shoes. We knew that if the water captured the light just right, you could make a rainbow in a sprinkler. We felt the grit of the mud from the creek bed in our hands, and watched it swiftly race downstream, making tortoises of the larger pebbles and boulders.

To a kid, a tiny creek is the Rio Grande, the Mighty Mississippi, the Amazon, the Nile, the Ghanges.

If we learn best by being, then I think we can learn a lot from our younger selves. We knew a lot then, but didn’t know it was knowledge. There was always something to anticipate, to read, to understand, to explore. Experience was the best teacher we ever had.

Petrus Severinus, a Sixteenth-Century Danish Alchemist once said, “Go, my Sons, burn your books and buy stout shoes, climb the mountains, search the valleys, the deserts, the sea shores, and the deep recesses of the earth... Observe and experiment without ceasing, for in this way and no other will you arrive at a knowledge of the true nature of things."

I think he’s right (except for the whole “burn your books” part). ;)

(Written August 9th, 2008, in Columbia, SC)

The Needle of the Compass

2008-11-28T23:26:00.001-08:00

… and by Compass, I mean Brunton Compass.

For you non-native geology speakers in the audience, the Brunton Compass is one of several tools fundamental to a Geologist, augmenting the ever reliable (and delightfully nerdy) geologist’s handlens, field backpack, acid bottle, Rite-in-the-Rain notebook, and the Excalibur of excaliburs—the rock hammer. Brunton Compasses aren’t your traditional, everyday, run-o’-the-mill northseekers. Not at all. If you use them just so, they reveal secrets about the tilts of strata, the bends of folds, and the orientations of mineral grains. They are guides and translators. They allow rocks to talk, and you’d be surprised to hear just how much even the tiniest grain of sand or alpha particle from the radioactive decay of Uranium-238 to Lead-206 has to say. It just takes listening really closely. Really, really closely.

Earth is beautiful, and ever so awesome. What a great thing to listen closely to, what a great thing to be thankful for, a place where I can “wonder as I wander,” as Robert Frost so eloquently put it. The world is my first love, my healthy and endless obsession. It and everything in it: science and people, pictures and words.

This blog will be an outlet for my obsession with the Earth and all that it has to offer us, and an outlet for sharing with others the wonders I encounter during my wanderings. It is about time I started blogging (thanks, Ceec), and isn’t time fundamentally what Geology is about, too?

Afterall, what are men compared to rocks and mountains?