Summertime at the South Pole runs from the beginning of November to about February 15. During this time, the station’s population swells to its maximum capacity of around 150 people. The current South Pole elevated station was completed in 2010 and replaced the iconic dome structure that had served for many years. It is a beautiful design and, I think, a work of art. The station sits on giant pillars sunk down in the ice that can be raised as the ice level around the station rises each year with new accumulation and causes the station to sink. The station is elevated, faces the prevailing winds, and its aerodynamic shape allows the wind and ice crystals to pass under the building. This prevents excessive drifting to its windward side. Drifting does occur to the station’s downwind side. During the short summer, the drifts are removed with the aid of heavy equipment. Directly under the station is a hard icy surface, in some places resembling an ice skating rink as the relentless winds have scoured it. Having the capability of raising the station on its massive support pillars will allow it to stay above the new ice whose level rises at about a foot a year. Being able to be raised, it will serve as the U.S. monument to its interest at the South Pole for longer than the initial station built in 1956/57 and the later geodesic dome built in 1974. Both were eventually overcome by rising ice levels, buried, and had to be demolished. The current station, known as the elevated station, is approximately fifty thousand square feet in size and includes a galley, greenhouse, gym with basketball court and weight room, sauna, arts and crafts room, music room, library, several lounge areas, and 150 one-person rooms. It is a vastly different experience from Roald Amundsen and Captain Scott’s tents.
After my first arrival and during a discussion about the upcoming winter led by a visiting NSF representative, I was introduced to the assembled group as “the captain of the ship.” During my years at the South Pole, I found that title accurate as there are nautical aspects to the station and the position itself. The station sits on nearly two miles of ice that move toward the Weddell Sea at around thirty-three feet per year, the station is like a ship as it is self-contained, with power, water, and food, and it moves with the frozen sea of ice. There is a “crew” who eats in a “galley.” There is an “observation deck,” and some of the interior windows are of porthole configuration. In the direst of emergencies, a wing of the station can be sealed off and will function as a “lifeboat.” The station and crew, especially in winter, require a captain of sorts, and an effective WSM will function in that role.
On my first arrival, I climbed down the short Basler ladder and immediately felt the temperature of minus 58 Fahrenheit. I had never been in such cold as that. Now, with ice and not land beneath me, I took my first steps and looked around in awe at the extreme whiteness of the frozen sea I stood on. It seemed to go on forever, devoid of any large natural features. It was ice, hundreds of miles of dead ice in every direction. Ice I did not yet know or understand. While lingering around the aircraft helping the other crewmembers assembling baggage for transport, someone told me the tip of my nose was turning white and I should get inside the station. It stung a little and surprised me with how quickly it happened. This was my first minor lesson in how extreme cold affects the human body. It would not be my last cold weather learning experience, and over time, I would become quite proficient at dealing with it. That first day it really caught my attention and scared me.
I arrived at the South Pole with a vision and a plan. First, I would need to know and understand the station itself. I needed to know how things physically worked and where any vulnerabilities might be. Initially, I was most concerned with the state of the power plant as that had been so important out on other remote sites I had worked. At the South Pole it became much more important as it would keep us from freezing to death. There had been power reliability issues during the winter prior, while my crew was being formed. I would listen to phone calls between the power plant people at the South Pole and the Denver technical experts and at times found it disturbing. The South Pole power personnel were struggling with generator units that would suddenly drop off-line, and they did not always know why. Making it worse was the fact that the technical wiring diagrams were not accurate and up-to-date. During the phone calls, you could sense real stress from the South Pole personnel. They were being advised to do things to fix the problem, but they were seeing wiring that was different than what the Denver personnel were seeing on their diagrams. They had a bad computer system that regulated the units and ended up spending much of their winter running the generators in a manual mode. They struggled through the winter, and I really wanted our winter to be smoother. Fortunately, that summer, major repairs were initiated, and while we had some power issues during the winter, it was not to the extent of the previous year. The power plant was incredibly important, but it was only one system of many. I needed to have a solid understanding of them all.
Secondly, I needed to understand the crew and how I could best interact and lead them. I knew I would maintain a distance but would have to determine how wide the gulf would be. I had learned that the distance should be enough to maintain a level of respect but not so wide as to appear uncaring and aloof. By this time in my career working at remote sites around the world, I knew I had not seen it all. What worked out on a tropical island or in a war zone might not work here. These people were different than most people I had worked with on military projects around the world. With the Defense Department projects, there were usually many military veterans on staff. The projects had a sort of quasi-military organization and feel. While I had witnessed that they did not respond well to true military leadership, they did understand a chain of command of sorts and responded to it. During a crisis, they could revert to a military mindset and tackle challenges that way. During the interview process that put the South Pole crew together, I had few military veterans and quite different types of people. They were more eclectic and free thinking. While unsure of some of the specifics, my early plan was to lead by example and promote the concept of a crew. A crew that for each year would become an entity that could never be repeated. I wanted to foster the concept that what people did during their winter mattered and counted. It was permanent. I wanted the crewmembers to be proud of their individual and crew accomplishments. I wanted all of this and to accomplish it in an atmosphere that understood and respected those that had gone before us.
After arrival at the South Pole, I immediately met the WSM that I would be replacing and was quite impressed by his level of professionalism and dedication to duty. He was retired military, and it showed. Unfortunately, the military mindset does not work well in the USAP unless under the direst of emergencies. He had faced a lonely year with a crew that marched to a different drummer and some who openly antagonized him with antics that would seem funny if they were done anywhere but over a South Pole winter. The winterovers we would be replacing were pale and shaggy, and I envied them tremendously. They had all done what I had not, they had successfully wintered at the South Pole. They were now members of an exclusive club that at that time numbered only 1,500 people. Over 5,000 had summited Mount Everest, most of them paying customers. There was a different price to be paid for a South Pole winter. I attended the ceremony where they received the Antarctic Service Medal with winterover clasp and was truly humbled as they each received the medal and a few words said. Standing in that room and feeling the strong bond that had been created between them was a remarkable experience. I was happy for them and wanted so badly to experience it myself. I was to be at similar ceremonies for three South Pole winter crews that I was to lead, and each, for me, was always slightly overwhelming.
My initial room assignment was in the “B” wing. In that wing, the rooms are slightly smaller and close to the B-1 lounge. For some people that is an advantage and to others a nuisance. After a couple days in that room another became available that I wanted. That room was at the end of the hallway near the outside exit doors, B-219. I was to spend three winters in that room. The B rooms are small, approximately eight feet wide and twelve feet deep. The rooms have either “hard” or “soft” walls. The soft walls are modular and can be removed to form larger rooms if there are couples. My room had a soft wall, which was not fully sealed. I thus became intimately knowledgeable of my neighbor’s habits each summer. The rooms that are located along station exterior walls have windows and are known as outside rooms. The outside rooms are usually preferred, especially by new summer people who do not fully understand the impact of the twenty-four hours of daylight and the fact that sleep may be difficult. There are also inside rooms that have no windows, and a few people, usually with sleeping problems, will ask for them. Most people want a window, but for winterovers, the room’s windows are covered after the sun sets so it does not really matter. All rooms in the B wing have a small desk that faces the window, or the end of the room if it is an inside room. There is a small twin bed and a wardrobe cabinet. My room had a bed raised approximately five feet off the floor. To get in it, I climbed a beautiful, wooden, curved, shop-built ladder. This ladder had been built at the South Pole and I always marveled at the craftsmanship but never knew who had built it. On the bed, I placed a light with a flexible cable set up for reading. This arrangement gave me room under the bed to store things, such as all the boots and shoes I had as well as my large canvas travel bags. My small room was remarkably like a cabin aboard a ship, and I loved its coziness and efficiency. My home in Texas was filled with exploration and exotic items from around the world. It had become so packed with such things that I had bought the home behind me as a guesthouse. At the South Pole, my world was quite compact.
The summers are a busy time at the South Pole. The weather is relatively warm and will at times get above 0°F. The sun is up for twenty-four hours. During this time, any major construction that needs to be performed occurs and scientists swarm the station along with gaggles of graduate students who serve as labor. Science at the South Pole consists of four major projects. The Ice Cube Laboratory, ICL, is a true ice cube that functions as a neutrino observatory. It consists of a cubic kilometer block of ice below the surface, which has around 5,200 digital optical modules, DOMs, embedded throughout. This massive subsurface ice cube can detect incoming neutrinos. The neutrinos are products of cataclysmic events that have occurred throughout the universe and can be traced back to their point of origin. The South Pole Telescope, SPT, is a telescope with a ten-meter dish that is utilized to detect emissions from cosmic microwave background, CMB. This is used to find distant galaxy clusters. The SPT is a collaborative organization that consists of several other scientific organizations located throughout the world. The Martin Pomerantz Observatory, MAPO, is another astronomical observation system that has been the site of several very prominent projects. As technology has progressed, the systems have been upgraded and utilized to support astronomical projects, from detecting neutrinos to measuring CMB. The Atmospheric Research Observatory, ARO, is run by the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA. This project measures greenhouse gasses, stratospheric ozone, and many other things. It is part of the global atmospheric monitoring community, and the data is used to try and understand things like climate change and its root cause. In addition to these major, year-round science projects, during the summer there is a frenzy of other scientific activity, with other types of research being performed. One project I found fascinating was the SPICEcore project that drilled down more than a mile into the ice. Ice core samples that dated back thousands of years were extracted and scientists were then able to assess ancient atmospheres.
According to some winterover personnel, there are four types of people and a hierarchy of sorts at the South Pole Station during the summers. The first, and at the top, are the winterover personnel who are also there for the summer and will be part of the station’s emergency response team, ERT. They will be staying a year at the South Pole and look at things with a long-term perspective. They see the station as a home rather than a motel room. Second are the “summer people” who deploy from the Denver ASC HQ or scientists who come from various institutions. They remain on station throughout the summer and from the first day of arrival, know approximately their departure date. They are usually making their travel plans home far in advance of that. Some of these people have been making the trip down for years, and a few have wintered in previous years. Some of these people see this as an escape from their daily drudgery and use this time for antics they might not do at home. Next come the “visitors.” These people are on specific short-term assignments that might range from a single day to a couple of weeks. The bottom of the hierarchy is the “tourist.” They pay fortunes and arrive by airplane, vehicles, skis, and even bicycles. They are mostly ignored and somewhat disdained by most of the station staff, and other than some getting station tours, tourists are confined to a nearby tourist camp and, thankfully, quickly depart.
During my first summer, I concentrated on learning about the station’s infrastructure. Of primary importance was the main power plant. The power plant has three Caterpillar diesel generators rated at about 750 kilowatts each. There is also a small “peaker” unit rated at around 450 kilowatts. These units supply all the needed power to the main station, the science projects, and other buildings. They are the heart of the station and were to me, with my years at remote sites, of extreme importance. Understanding that importance, the first note I made in my notebook after arrival at the Denver office concerned power issues then occurring at the South Pole. The stations water comes from a well system known as a “Rodwell.” The name comes from the fact that a very smart fellow named Rodriguez developed the simple yet ingenious concept. Warm water is injected down deep into the ice and a bulb of water forms. This water is pumped to the station, where it is placed in water tanks. Although quite clean, it is then sterilized for drinking purposes. I enjoyed South Pole water and soon learned the location of what I thought was the best drinking water fountain in the station, where I would obtain my water. As the climate is so dry, the drinking of water is highly encouraged, and most people are not far from their water bottle. The B pod is the station’s “lifeboat” as it has large freezer doors that can be shut, which effectively seals it from the rest of the station. This lifeboat can contain a winterover crew and would only be used in the direst of emergencies. It has a fully functioning emergency power plant, the ability to make water, a small kitchen, and even a washer and dryer. To date, it has never been used, and I hope it never sees service. If it ever does, it will mean the rest of the station is effectively cold and dead.
The summer construction projects take advantage of the twenty-four-hour-a-day light and the relatively warmer temperatures. While South Pole summers are cold by most standards, they are not that much colder than a North Dakota winter. This brings an influx of construction and maintenance people who are quite different from the scientists. It is an interesting mix, and really, they do not mix all that well. Many of the science people are socially awkward and tend to stay with only their own small groups. The construction and maintenance people are more gregarious and tend to be able to cross boundaries, with most having an interest in the science that is occurring and a major interest in the South Pole summer social scene. It was an interesting mix of people, and I saw all kinds. I remember one summer person who stood out; he was a complainer. He complained about one of my winter crewmember’s T-shirts that had the outline of a rifle printed on it. This delighted my winter crewmember, who did not hold back as to what he thought of the fellow. I do believe he may have worn his rifle t-shirt more often that summer. The complainer then focused his complaints on the galley and the music they played during the time between meals. This delighted the galley supervisor, who then played the song “Afternoon Delight” over and over while the complainer ate. At one point, many in the galley were singing the silly song because after hearing it so many times, they knew all the words to it. The complainer had issues with a few other things that summer and was the kind of person that should never be on a winter crew.
During the summers, there are many social events and most involve alcohol. I have found alcohol to be the bane of most remote assignments, and the South Pole is no exception. During the selection process for winterovers, candidates face scrutiny for signs of problems with alcohol. This starts with a question during the medical evaluation asking how much alcohol the person drinks. The challenge is that most people answering that question will usually say they drink less than they do. Lessons learned through the years indicate that when a candidate says he or she has X number of drinks per week, that actuality translates to that many per day. The winterover crewmembers are scrutinized for signs of problems with alcohol during the period after the formal selection process. This will include pre-deployment training, deployment itself, and for most, a summer at the South Pole prior to winter. The summer people are less scrutinized due to their short stay and the fact that they can be sent home at any time.
The summer was a good time to evaluate personnel for winter fitness, and there were epic meltdowns by some. One winter crew that was not mine lost over 10 percent of their members due to summer antics. One of their most prominent meltdowns concerned a fellow who stated to others that he was a “human weapon.” He was able to, in what he later claimed was blackout drunkenness, threaten and punch a couple of station residents and slap a female on the ass. His winter contract was quickly terminated, and he found himself placed on the next aircraft out. In his case, and much to the station residents’ dismay, someone saw in the fellow’s hometown newspaper a story based on an interview with him. In that story, he detailed his heroic efforts while at the South Pole and left off anything to do with his early departure. I believe station residents sent in a couple of rebuttals to the newspaper. That crew also had the honor of having another winter crewmember losing his job during summer for being so drunk as to pass out on the floor of a restroom, pants down and shitting himself in the process. He was discovered in that state and sent home.
After the first summer, when I lost one good fellow due to his drinking, I became much more involved in evaluating crewmembers and their habits with alcohol prior to deployment. I also began to accept information that came from technologically savvy and concerned crewmembers who would perform internet searches on new crewmembers, specifically self-posts on social media. One newly selected crewmember had repeated self-postings on a social media website in which he stated many times that he was drunk and bored. Sometimes, this would include photos of him that certainly supported that statement. For a South Pole winter, this was not a good combination. Interestingly, when I forwarded this information to his employer, there were some in his management who were more concerned that we were cyber stalking than with their employee’s public online persona. As he had already been hired, he started pre-deployment training and was able to quickly show he had probably spent too much time in his life drunk and bored. He was not a fit for a South Pole winter crew and was terminated. I made a point of talking to my crews about the importance of not posting stupid things on social media. I explained to them that it would be even better not to do stupid things, but if one does, posting them for the world to see forever is not a good idea. For my second crew, after experience gained with the first, I made it extremely clear that interviews were not over with their arrival at the South Pole. I explained that they had to get through summer to get to winter. That crew was extremely motivated and careful, and we did not lose a single member during the summer for any type of disciplinary reason.
While the selection process for winterovers was quite rigorous and continued during the pre-deployment emergency response training, teambuilding, and completing the summer prior to winter, there was a loophole. The loophole involved late hires who were filling positions opened by crewmembers who had voluntarily departed or were terminated in the summer. In these cases, there were no face-to face interviews, but rather, last-minute phone interviews. These phone interviews could almost take on an air of desperation, which we tried our best to conceal, as we needed to fill an important position. That ran totally against how we would have been when we were hiring months earlier. Making it worse, the candidate had not gone through emergency response or teambuilding with the crew. The phone interview and maybe a short time after their arrival at the South Pole was all we had to determine if someone was fit for a South Pole winter. By this time in my career, I had completed many phone interviews and realized that not physically seeing the candidate was a major handicap in determining their level of fitness for the job. In the case of a South Pole winterover, the need to determine fitness was much more than I had ever experienced. It was extremely difficult to determine by a phone conversation if a person who on paper was technically qualified would fit with an existing crew. The hiring of these people was my greatest staffing concern. In the worst case, it was possible to have them join the crew just prior to station close. There would be only a short amount of time to assess them and send them home if they were found unfit. The crew could then be stuck with them for the winter. During three South Pole winters, there were always a few late joiners on the crews, and either by masterful recruiting, successful phone interviews, or, more likely, just luck, on my crews there was never a person hired late who turned out to be a major problem.
During my first summer, I began to develop what would be my leadership style, which I held to for my nearly three years at the South Pole. The basic tenant was that I was “on duty” twenty-four hours a day and thus would not drink while on station. I wanted to always be ready for any type of emergency and considered a risk matrix with one axis for probability of occurrence and the other for the severity of the incident. In essence, you would probably have more minor emergencies, but you always needed to be ready for a big one. I never wanted there to be any question about my being fully fit for duty in an emergency and thus followed this regimen. At the same time, I wanted my crews to have the relief that alcohol in moderation provides and did not discourage drinking, but I did monitor it. I wanted to instill in them the need to exercise good judgment in their socializing and for them to take care of each other. One winter, on a Saturday evening during my walking rounds through the station, I noted a crewmember that surprised me with his high level of intoxication relatively early in the evening. He was seated in a station lounge with his friends and given his condition, conducting himself relatively well. A little later, I followed behind him and the two crewmembers, one on each shoulder, who were helping him navigate to his room. They got to the fellows’ room, opened the door, and placed him in bed. The next day, I was approached by one of the three, who asked if they were in trouble for what had occurred the night before. I laughed and told him that in no way were they in trouble and that I was extremely proud of them for taking care of their drunken crewmember. The other thing I did religiously was walk thoroughly through the station, especially during Saturday nights, when people were socializing and drinking. I would visit the various social events, never staying long, and would usually engage in short conversations but in no way wanted to dampen any festivities. The crew really needed those times, and all I wanted them to know was that even if I was not engaged in many of the social activities, I was there if they needed me. There was nothing more important to me than being there for them.
During the first summer, I started a regimen of running and walking outside. My goal was to ensure I was outside every day I was at the South Pole. I began to log miles from the first day. I had done this with running in the past and had once gone over ten years without missing a day. In order to not miss days given my working around the world and frequent traveling, I had to do somewhat ridiculous things like running in the middle of the night outside hotels after arriving late at foreign locations. The first day I missed after more than a decade was in Africa, when I was staying at a place with many lions. After missing a day, I figured out a way to keep running, and it involved running with a local game tracker. He could at least spot the beasts, and he knew all he had to do was be faster than me to avoid danger. I kept calendars going back many years in which I had daily logged my running miles, and it was by this time over forty thousand. Having that kind of background, it was natural for me to keep track of my miles walking, and sometimes running, at the South Pole. What was more important to me than miles attained was to never miss a day. In two summers and three winters, I never missed a day. To do that, I was outside many times in conditions that humans, and I think most animals, would find unnerving and uncomfortable. My goal was not so much mileage as it was the hours and the experience of being outside. It was all about understanding and effectively dealing with the cold. The cold that had scared me during my arrival and would later, in the darkness of winter, drop to a level that made it almost unreal. Such cold as I was to experience in the dark of a South Pole winter would feel closer to being on an alien world than any earthly experience. An interesting facet to this walking was that I would always be alone. Prior to my arrival at the South Pole, I had always run alone and enjoyed most things alone. To be alone was important to me, and after the first couple thousand miles outside, I was as comfortable out on that ice as anywhere else, and probably happier.
Starting my walks at only a mile, I quickly worked up to more and added running as the weather warmed. I had run for many years, and while I had considerably slowed and suffered some chronic overuse injuries, I was still consistent. My running had gone from being a “runner” to a “jogger” and now was what I termed a “slogger.” I was considerably slower than when I was younger but still consistent, and overall, I felt strong. For the South Pole, I had bought an incredible pair of running shoes designed for snow and ice, with cleats that would grip the ice. They had a zippered cover over the laces to keep out the ice crystals. These made running outside easier, and I was able to slog a few miles most days during the summers. I would then go for a walk sometime afterward. There were several routes I would take over the years, my favorite being to follow the remnants of the South Pole Overland Traverse, SPoT Road. I logged many miles on it.
The first summer I learned what to wear, what worked and what did not. Especially vexing was eye protection. I had no luck with goggles as they quickly fogged up. I tried the classic glacier glasses with the leather protection on the sides, but all I did was turn the lenses into minor glaciers. I ended up favoring no eye protection and simply covered my face with balaclavas and a fur hat to expose only slits for my eyes. I was able to do that even during the winters, in temperatures colder than minus 100°F, with no ill effects. On my second year, during the summer, to deal with the harsh rays of the twenty-four-hour-a-day sunlight that was reflected off the ice, I experimented with classic Inuit sun/eye protection. The Inuit are extremely ingenious people and have made their eye protection from natural products such as wood, bone, and leather for millennia. My sunglasses were a simple leather eye covering with small slits to look through that tied with leather straps around my head. I fell twice the first time I wore them as there was little peripheral vision and I would clip a boot on a hard edge of uneven ice as I walked. I pictured the Inuit wearing them, stumbling around the Arctic. I learned through practice how to walk while wearing them and how to watch for possible obstructions. They worked!
The icy surface at the South Pole is interesting. It is not what I knew growing up in the Midwest with snowfall. It is comprised of tiny granular ice crystals, and rarely are they the true geometric snow crystals that one experiences in the north. One question I asked prior to deployment was “is the surface slippery?” I was to experience the fact that, in general, it was not. At the South Pole, it never gets warm enough for it to thaw, and thus the ice crystals retain their shape. The ice crystals do not interlock and under normal South Pole conditions, will not form solid ice. It is never wet so does not form the slipperiest ice, such as what I experienced so frequently in the Alaskan Aleutian Islands. Compression by things like heavy machinery pulling equipment, such as the AARF (aqueous film forming foam) sleds that contain firefighting foam required as fire protection for the military aircraft, could create a slippery surface. After the ice was run over by the heavy sled there was an extremely hard, shiny surface resembling something left by a giant ski. This new, hard and level surface of compressed ice crystals looked inviting to walk on, but with a few grains of ice on top, it could be slippery. The natural form of the ice at the South Pole is sastrugi. Sastrugi is formed when wind blows over the ice in the same general direction over time. The sastrugi forms icy points in the direction of the prevailing wind. Walking on the virgin sastrugi can be challenging as you sink a few inches with each step and the surface can be quite uneven. Skis would certainly be preferred for long trips as you do not sink and can glide along the surface, saving much energy over walking. My first summer, I tried skis, as I had some basic training with the old cross-country version during U.S. Marine cold-weather training years prior. At that time, I had shown some aptitude with their use. After a couple of South Pole trials, I quickly saw that any aptitude I had for skiing was now gone. I then tried snowshoes and found them unwieldy and mostly unnecessary. I abandoned both. I was out for exercise and found walking, and sometimes running, was best for me.
I started my outdoor walking regimen the day after my first arrival, in October of 2016. It was an easy start, a mile walk wearing the issued USAP clothing. I had little experience in my new environment and took the situation quite seriously. I quickly found the Big Red parka heavy and somewhat cumbersome but used it until something I had ordered arrived. I also had a military surplus Generation III Extended Cold Weather jacket and pants set, which I had bought for seventy-five dollars. I had thought that, due to its light weight, I would use it for running. This military ECW proved much too warm for running but turned out to be a major bargain as I used it on many of my summer and winter walks. What I was awaiting via the mail was an anorak made in Norway of a heavy canvas material that was roughly what Roald Amundsen and his men wore while at the South Pole in 1911. Amundsen and his men wore furs at the start of their trip to the Pole but cached them as they were much too warm for the December summer temperatures on the polar plateau. They are wearing the heavy canvas anoraks in the famous photo of four of them looking at the tent they erected at the South Pole.
The day came when the Norwegian anorak arrived. I took it to my room, and upon first inspection, its raw beauty overwhelmed me. It was simply heavy, wax-coated canvas with a liner made of a type of flannel, and yet, to me, it had an aura better than any king’s robe. The great Amundsen had worn such an anorak, and when I put it on for the first time, I felt that. Now I had a dilemma. My dilemma involved wearing such a historical looking item without it appearing as a sort of costume. It boldly stood out in the station’s sea of issued Big Reds. I was concerned I was not worthy of wearing it. I decided not to wear it until I had been outside and had walked for over a hundred miles. The first time I would wear it would be the day Amundsen and his men had arrived at the South Pole, December 14. I wore it that day, and many after that, and found it extremely comfortable with its loose fit and ventilation. I found it was comfortable to about minus 55°F. It was not nearly warm enough for a South Pole winter, which was something even the great Amundsen had not experienced. It hangs in my home as a display now.
I slowly increased my walking miles and learned valuable lessons as I progressed. I experimented with clothing and face covering and had some minor frostbite while learning. The fact is that the South Pole during summer weather is not much colder than a cold winter day in the upper Midwest. Still, it could be lethal should one become disoriented and lost. For the most part, the weather did not change rapidly, and I made it a habit to check the local weather report prior to walking. I learned to spot bad weather approaching with high winds that might obscure visibility. Out a few miles from the station, I would continually scan back in the direction of the wind, as I could see ice clouds as they were coming my way. I learned that with a compass and some practice I could get back to the station in any condition, and that I should be aware of the direction of the winds, as I could use that for rough navigation. I learned not to think I could return to the station following my outgoing footsteps as the wind quickly filled them in with blowing ice crystals. A friend told me a horrifying story that had occurred some years prior. He was out about seven miles from the station on skis and lightly dressed when the wind picked up and obscured visibility. This fellow was quite a tough outdoorsman, seasoned South Pole veteran, and very adept on skis. Even so, he quickly found himself in a life-threatening situation. He struggled back but said, after that experience, he never went out like that again. I approached my walking, even though it was just for exercise, very seriously.
I learned to dislike walking on days when there was a phenomenon I called “flat light.” During this very overcast condition, you could see things in the distance, but everything nearby was white and dull. When this occurred, you had no depth perception, and when you placed each step, you did not really see the surface. I would proceed carefully and quite slowly to try and avoid a fall, which could then result in an injury. On my second year, after I had the experience and clothing to get back in any condition, I had an interesting thing happen when I ran into the South Pole Overland Traverse, SPoT group in their special tractors bringing us fuel and coming from McMurdo. I was several miles out from the station and heading away from it when we met. Later, I heard that they were quite surprised to see someone in an Amundsen anorak solo, on foot, and that distance from the station. I walked farther and farther out, was extremely careful, and tried to learn to be ready for winter. People have crossed vast sections of Antarctica; thus a mere walk a few miles from the station should not seem to have any danger. But those making long trips do it in the summer; are self-contained with shelter, fuel, and food; and can make camp at any time. I had nothing and needed to be careful even during the relatively warm summers. Winter was entirely different, and the danger escalated with the unworldly low temperatures and darkness.
Boots were an especially important part of my South Pole outside wardrobe, and I started with the standard USAP issued boots made by Baffin and later changed to the old blue FDX Asics. I found the Asics to be extremely warm, and I never used the chemical heating packets favored by some. I also found the boots extremely heavy and clumsy and only wore them on the coldest days when I would get out some distance from the station. I purchased and tested several types of lighter boots and ended up favoring a lightweight mukluk made of canvas and moose hide. These mukluks were only rated to keep your feet warm to minus 40°F, but I found I could use them on days when the temperature dipped to colder than minus 100°F. This was only if I was in a situation in constant motion, such as on the flag line that ran out approximately a kilometer to the telescopes. I would do multiple laps on that. I would never wear the mukluks on extremely cold days when I went on my own track grid south. This was because if I experienced a problem and could not stay in motion, my feet would get cold. At worst case, cold enough to lose them. I was concerned that they would not be warm enough after a fall with an injury. In addition, they had a gum-rubber sole. After several miles in minus 100°F temperatures, I could feel the cold coming in from the soles and knew they were frozen. It caused me to wonder if extremely low temperatures could cause them to freeze and break. Having the soles freeze and break some distance from the station would be a very bad thing. I wore silk-based sock liners and heavy woolen socks. Keeping one’s feet warm in such a lethal environment is extremely important, and I never had an issue.
While preparing for my second winter, I decided I wanted to try a new style of anorak based on Inuit and historical polar expeditions. I had seen an old photo of Roald Amundsen wearing wolfskins (furs) that appealed to me, and I began a search to acquire my own. My search led me to a furrier in Russia that made custom clothing utilizing the fur of Siberian wolves. I contacted them, sent photos and my measurements, and after some back-and-forth correspondence on minor points, the anorak was completed. I made it truly clear that I wanted the anorak to be functional, sturdy, and not a fashion statement. I am not a fan of furs that are from animals raised for that purpose and find that process heinous. After some research, I found that the Siberian wolf was in a very overpopulated state and now so prolific that wolf packs were wreaking havoc on the Indigenous population’s reindeer herds, killing pets, and even threatening children. These people’s very existence and way of life was being threatened by the ever more aggressive wolf packs. With that, they were culling some of the wolves and selling the fur to bring in income. I could live with that.
I received the anorak, and as I had done with the Amundsen canvas one, took it to my room and opened the package. Although I had seen photographs of it from Russia, nothing prepared me for the first sight of it. It was shocking to note the beauty of the wolf fur and its weight and thickness. It had a silky material as a lining, which aided in putting it on and taking it off. I put it on by pulling it over my head, and as I had given the furrier my body measurements, it was a perfect fit. Initially it was almost overpowering to wear it, as it had such a wild look and feel. A few days later, I wore it for a summer walk and learned my first lesson: it was too warm for summer weather when one was really moving. After some experimentation, I found it needed to be colder than minus 50°F with no or little radiant sun to be comfortable walking in it at any speed. The rule changed somewhat if it was windy or if I was standing still; it could then be worn at warmer temperatures. The second lesson was that when I wore it, some people liked to pet me. I began to understand how a dog must feel.
I would wear the wolfskins on the coldest days and during the dark and cold of winter. I found them warmer and more comfortable than the modern extreme cold weather clothing I had. Minus 100°F and colder was not an issue when I wore that anorak, and I really felt the wolves’ presence. The anorak, to me, had a wild, primordial feel to it that I respected and treasured. Those animals had died, and now they were protecting me from a frigid death. When out walking, I not only respected the wolves, but I also felt their presence and power. Wearing that anorak on one unforgettable cold, dark, and clear night, I walked under the light of a full moon. Some distance from the station, I stopped and stared long at it. I will admit to experiencing an urge to howl. I was then enveloped in a wave of sadness as I realized that those wolves had once stared at that same moon. I ask no pardon from anything earthly for wearing those furs but hope the great spirits of those wolves can forgive me.
One of my very few minor disappointments while at the South Pole was something I never expected to see, tourists. Most Antarctic tourists arrive via cruise ships and make landfall at the end of the Antarctic Peninsula. Some never even realize or maybe do not care that they have not even crossed or just barely crossed the Antarctic Circle. I imagine those cruise ships are fun and could be educational. I hope that they do all they can to prevent any kind of environmental damage that could be caused by their voyages. What I did not realize was that the South Pole had tourists, although in far fewer numbers than the cruise ships had. I had always endeavored to pay a price to immerse myself in a location I really wanted to visit and had several experiences where I paid a price of sorts. An example was a fascination I had with the South African Zulu War of 1879. I had read books on the subject and had a solid general knowledge of the war and its battlefields. Of primary interest were the great battles at Isandlwana and Rorke’s Drift. I traveled to South Africa and, rather than an organized tour or even just a drive to the battlefields, decided to walk. It was late 1993 and the country was in turmoil with a great election looming. There was also an interesting practice occurring between taxis that ran from village to village, called the Taxi Wars, in which it became acceptable to shoot up any rivals and their passengers. It was probably not the best time to go. I tried to retrace the steps of the famed British Twenty-Fourth Regiment on its way to their great disaster. I wanted to see Zululand somewhat as they had and started my walk at Pietermaritzburg, where they had started. Of course, many things had changed since 1879, and I found myself at times walking on the shoulders of busy roads with cars hurtling past—the drivers probably wondering what the idiot with the backpack was doing. I walked every step, which turned out to be approximately 120 miles. Noting that, the men that ran the battlefields let me make camp at Rorke’s Drift and Isandlwana. This was a rarity and an honor. It turned out to be a rather interesting experience at Isandlwana as the dead still reside there and, on that night, they tolerated me. After the long walk to get there, when I surveyed those battlefields, it was a very intense experience. I wrote nothing about it and claimed no silly first. It was just a walk. This was much preferred over arriving on a tour bus. At the South Pole, most of the tourists did just that, but instead of a bus, they arrived by aircraft.
The USAP does not actively support tourism at the South Pole but realizing that it is a fact, makes minor allowances for it. Most tourists arrive via a Basler aircraft charted by tour companies. Immediately after disembarking, they head straight to the ceremonial and geographic South Pole markers to take their hero photographs. Once sufficiently photographed, some groups receive South Pole Station tours on a not-to-interfere-with-station-operations basis. Station personnel lead the scripted tour and for the most part, enjoy the role. The tourists then head back to their aircraft and depart. The entire process is only a couple of hours and horrifically expensive. For the same price as that trip, a person could buy a sailboat and travel the world for quite some time. While we did not pay the price in such a gallant effort as to ski and dog sled from the Bay of Whales, as Roald Amundsen, or pull a sled from Cape Evans, as Captain Scott did many years earlier, my crews and I paid our price of admission in years of dedication to supporting important science projects.
When tour groups were allowed to visit the station there was never a shortage of personnel wanting to serve as guides. I noticed that the station personnel who served as guides were not always the most knowledgeable. The station’s tour guides were supposed to follow a script that had been put together to show the station and its personnel in the best possible light. It was always important to show our station this way as one never knew who these rich tourists were and what they might say later. Knowing that, I was somewhat horrified when I overheard one of our very exuberant tour guides explaining in detail about all the alcohol that the station had and the inner workings of the 300 Club. The tour guide was quickly retrained and promised to follow the script on any future tours.
I was responsible for one faux pas when I was asked to say a few words to a group of visiting tourists. I would sometimes identify myself as the WSM while they were receiving their tour and discussed specifics that I knew they would like to hear about winter things, such as the low temperatures, length of darkness, size of the winter crew, etc. On this occasion I had not been sleeping well and was quite exhausted. I use that fact as an excuse for what happened. This group of around eight or so was quite unique as it included a couple that had been married after their arrival at the South Pole by a minister that was in their group. The expense of that wedding must have been staggering. My speech started normally enough as I identified myself as the WSM. Then I asked if they were the group that had a newlywed couple who had just been married. They answered yes. I then, for some reason, blurted out, “Well I’ve been married three times and can’t really recommend it.” I noticed the look of shock on the bride and groom’s faces and then noticed my inspiring words being captured by the wedding’s videographer for an eternal memory. Trying to recover, I stated, “Well, if it makes you feel any better, for me it got better every time.” Realizing I had done enough damage and having no possible recovery, I quickly departed the group.
There was a tourist camp a half a mile or so from the station that was comprised of tents and had several vehicles. Some tourists who paid even more than the exorbitant fee charged to just fly in and out actually overnighted there. I visited the camp a time or two and said hello to the camp staff. I was amazed by what they had brought to camp to be able to feed and house their rich clients. They could only operate in the summer season. Just prior to winter, the tents were taken down and everything was packed and left in place for the next year. Winter storms would cover it all, and the next summer, it would be dug out and reerected. The tourists were usually quite wealthy, and from talking to one of their camp staff, some were very generous with tips done for mundane things. In general, I found the tourists to be nice people with most genuinely interested in Antarctica and our station, but personally, I would have been embarrassed to see the South Pole the way they did.
Others arrived on skis and even bicycles. I imagine someday they will arrive on modified pogo sticks and skateboards, because many want to claim some kind of “first.” This will be done by creating ridiculous, obscure niches that no one else has already claimed. To me, these trips were simply safe, yet expensive, self-promotional stunts that created a circus atmosphere, which I found distasteful. I had little time for the antics of so-called expeditioners, with sponsors; aircraft to drop them off and pick them up; and satellite phones, traversing routes that had been done many times, all the while with expensive rescue plans ensuring their safety. Most of those trips are funded by donations, and an almost universal statement used by those seeking funding for their great adventure is that their objective is to “raise awareness about Antarctica.” The truth is that their objective is to get someone else to pay for their trip. Many people are quite aware of Antarctica and its current challenges. If someone was truly concerned about Antarctica and its fragility, I would imagine they would think twice about a trip that causes aircraft to fly unnecessarily and its other impacts.
While I believe those trips could be physically very rigorous, real danger was minimal, and there was absolutely no type of true exploration involved. I saw self-promotional attention seekers performing these stunts, with exaggerated publicity being of paramount importance to the participant. It was just another example of the current “me, me, look at me” lifestyle. The product was then fed to an unknowing and gullible public via books, lectures, and other means of self-promotion. Some of the participants would later become “motivational speakers,” who, I imagine, unmotivated people were supposed to look to to become motivated. Personally, I do have an attraction to the idea of a longer ski trip, but I would consider it a very rigorous athletic event. I believe those ski trips would be extremely physically challenging and interesting, but I was horrified to see people who participated in them sometimes getting international press that compared their very minor achievements to the likes of Roald Amundsen, Ernest Shackleton, or Captain Scott. Those brave men, who lived in the heroic age of Antarctic exploration, were true explorers, breaking new ground with their backs truly up against the wall. Their safe return was not guaranteed. They were playing for keeps. They are true heroes and there is no one like them today.
There were several such instances that were generated by the fact that up to now no one had ever crossed Antarctica “unsupported and unaided.” What unsupported and unaided meant was subject to much interpretation. One of the best stunts started with a flight to an inland starting point, skiing over the same route that many others already had done and adding the USAP’s South Pole Overland Traverse SPoT Road to complete a “crossing of Antarctica.” The debacle ended on a glacier that had nothing to do with any early exploration and was hundreds of miles away from the ending points of the earlier historical expeditions at McMurdo, Cape Evans, Cape Royds, or the Bay of Whales. The SPoT Road is recut every year and used for tractors that pull fuel bladders and cargo from McMurdo to the South Pole. There are three round trips made in the summer. While it gets somewhat drifted over after storms, remnants of the road are always there in summer, and I favored it for exercise. The best part of our SPoT Road for the modern-day, self-proclaimed explorer is the fact that there are marker flags every several hundred feet and the entire road is surveyed for crevasses by ground penetrating radar. If only Amundsen, Scott, and Shackleton had been fortunate enough to have had such a well-marked, crevasse-free road.
The one type of summer traveler that I did have some interest in was the motorized expeditioner. There was no pretense of being a Scott or Amundsen among these folks. For them it was simply about getting from point A to point B, and in some ferociously fast times. Of interest to me was the fact that they were testing out new cold weather vehicular technology. The downside to this was the running of vehicles across Antarctica and the negative effects of that. During my second summer, Russians came through the South Pole in two incredible vehicles on their way to their Vostok station. It was an unusual route, and I was intrigued. They were filming the adventure and had a Russian “star” from their TV with them, who was unrecognizable to us. The producer was a beautiful woman of Armenian origin who was quite vivacious. As the U.S. relations with Russia were somewhat sour at the time, they did not get an exceptionally warm welcome, but they did receive a standard tour of the station.
Over my life, I had developed a great respect for Russia and its history. I had no interest in their communist era, except for their incredible heroics during World War II. My interests in Russia went back earlier, to things such as George Kennan and his book Tent Life in Siberia written in the 1860s. Also, of major interest to me was anything to do with the USS Jeanette expedition of 1880. The Jeanette was frozen in and crushed by the ice while attempting to get to the North Pole. The ship and crew had followed a hypothetical warm water current called the Kuro Siwo, thought to exist by the German cartographer August Petermann. Utilizing this warm water current that supposedly flowed north through the Bering Sea, the expedition had planned to be the first to reach the North Pole. As it turned out, this warm current did not to exist, and the Jeanette was soon icebound and later, crushed. With the ship crushed, the crewmembers made a desperate journey in three open boats to try and get to land. In that journey, one boat and all crewmembers aboard it were lost. The two boats that made it to land ended up in a desolate and sparsely populated area in northern Siberia. The survivors then made an extremely difficult trek through the Lena River area of northern Siberia. That any survived at all was due to the incredible leadership and tenacity of several members of the Jeanette’s crew and the efforts of the local Indigenous inhabitants. The Russian czar at that time was extremely helpful with the rescue operation and the treatment of the survivors. I had read about recent plans to locate the Jeanette in Russian waters, and this did influence my desire to meet Russians.
I decided to do what I had never done with any of the summer tourists and make a visit to our small station store to buy them all South Pole hats, a pink sweatshirt for the producer, and a bottle of vodka. That bottle of vodka was the only alcohol I ever purchased while at the South Pole. I walked out to their two vehicles parked near the ceremonial pole. After waving at them through their windows, they welcomed me into one of the vehicles. Once inside, the vehicle’s interior was quite impressive. Covering all the walls was a dark grey, felt-like material, which made it feel warmer. It contained a small kitchen area, and in the rear were sleeping quarters. There were five of us crowded into the vehicle sitting as best we could. This included the Russian TV star, the beautiful Armenian producer, a young and outgoing cinematographer, and a grizzled Siberian mechanic. I distributed my gifts, and they received them with much graciousness. The Russians then brought out bread and a type of pork-fat spread and some dried fish. Their English was not good, and I had no Russian, but we conversed as best we could. I could sense a slight tension in the air as I was an American and the countries’ relations were strained. I am sure they wondered what I really thought of them and their country. I felt bad that we could not just meet as friends with no suspicions.
The vodka was opened, and my new friends insisted I have the first drink. I told them I wanted to but was on duty. To me, my duty was the year I was to be at the South Pole, and it would end with a drink with my crew once we were relieved by the incoming crew. This was a long way off, and understanding my situation, they made me some excellent tea instead. The conversation became less tense as the vodka bottle made the rounds, and they told me they had started with more than 100 liters of whiskey, but they had drunk it all. I was shocked by how fast the bottle of vodka disappeared between the four that were drinking it. At some point, they asked if I could get more. I told them I could not as we had a ration for alcohol. After some eating and drinking, I had some plastic trash in my hands and asked my new friends where I should put it. The beautiful Armenian producer was sitting on a trashcan with just a slight opening between her legs. She motioned to put it there, pointing down between her legs, and everyone, including her, exploded in laughter. I felt my face turning a bright red, and I muttered that I would just put the trash in my pocket. I was glad that I had extended myself and hoped the Russians enjoyed the experience. I wished them well on their way to Vostok.
We had our own USAP/ASC versions of tourists, and I learned to dislike the South Pole summers after experiencing the first one. For me, there were too many people blowing through with little to do and some outright boondoggles, where USAP/ASC and other government agencies had dreamt up some type of excuse to need to make the trip to the South Pole. Some of the worst were the U.S. military chaplains who would hold services to the pitiful handful that wanted such. One chaplain, after arriving on an extremely late flight from McMurdo, showed her true priorities when all the arriving passengers on her flight were waiting together to start the mandatory station briefing. The briefing was a station requirement before these tired people could get their room assignments and go to bed. As people sat in the lounge awaiting the introductory video and discussion, she was nowhere to be found. I learned she was out at the Geographical South Pole obtaining her “hero” photograph. The tired group was waiting, and it was quite easy to see what mattered most to her.
The summer in-briefs for arriving passengers were fun to do, and I did a lot of them. The arriving passengers ran the gamut in level of enthusiasm, from the starry-eyed people who had just fulfilled a lifetime dream of being at the South Pole to the veterans who had done it many times and it had long ago lost any sort of novelty. One memorable event occurred when a group had just arrived and one of the passengers tried to hand me his plastic pee bottle filled with urine. He did not know what to do with it and insisted I take it. I told him what the protocol for disposal was and he reluctantly placed it in his travel bag. The briefing started with a short discussion, which the station doctor or I would give, on the possible adverse health effects of arriving at the South Pole. The main concern was that a person had departed from sea level and three hours or so later was at an altitude of 9,300 feet. Making it worse was a physiological factor caused by the low barometric pressure that could make the body feel like it was exposed to an altitude of over 12,000 feet.
I would always start the briefing by asking how everyone was feeling. I would usually get a thumbs up or “great,” especially from the excited personnel who had arrived at the South Pole for the first time. I would then tell the group that if they began feeling any symptoms of an altitude related illness, to immediately report to the clinic. The major symptoms involved headache, shortness of breath, and extreme fatigue. Most people arriving at the South Pole will feel tired, and they might also be dehydrated, with the dry environment and probably not drinking enough on the incoming flight. We explained to all incoming personnel that they might have trouble sleeping and that some people had been known to wake up gasping for breath because of the lower oxygen levels. We had a few that immediately exhibited signs that they were suffering from serious altitude sickness and were placed on flights back to McMurdo shortly after arriving. Some with milder cases were able to suffer through it with medical assistance from our clinic and felt better in a couple of days. This is a potentially lethal illness that requires immediate medical attention, with the best remedy being a quick trip down to a lower altitude. I never had an issue with the altitude but would feel a little tired on the day I arrived and maybe the next day too.
I continued the briefing with a video that explained the station and the arriving persons’ responsibilities. These included things such as the fact that you were only supposed to take two, two-minute showers per week to save water. At the same time, you should constantly be drinking water to hydrate due to the dryness. There was also a short section instructing the newly arrived on the way to properly close the massive, freezer-like, exterior station doors so as not to disturb one’s neighbors. At the end of the briefing, questions were answered and rooms assigned. The South Pole Station has a capacity for about 150 people. There were a few people who, due to the station being full, had the interesting experience of staying in one of the heated, Jamesway-Quonset-hut-style buildings a couple of hundred yards away. They had outdoor plumbing, and no one preferred those.
One of the first summer traditions is a small tribute for the U.S. Marine Corps birthday on November 10. The day after is Veterans Day. The USMC birthday is observed if there are Marine veterans on station that care enough to do something. I did, and every year there was a photo taken of any Marines on station with a Marine flag that I had signed by John Dale out on Wake Island. John Dale was a veteran of the great battle that occurred there in World War II. He had made a return visit years later, during which I had him sign my USMC flag. (I had taken that flag all over the world with me, including Iraq and Afghanistan.) We would also have a short ceremony in the galley, along with cake. This is a Marine Corps tradition. Veterans Day was slightly more formal as there were usually several veterans from various services on the summer crew. We would do a reading of a U.S. government proclamation honoring the day and take photos; if there was enough interest.
One year the ceremony was slightly marred when a National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, NOAA, “officer” wanted to speak about the “uniformed services.” This was her way of including her group of government employees who worked for the Department of Commerce and never served in the armed forces with the military. I did some research on this, and NOAA had put out a directive that specifically told employees that they were not veterans. Some of them seemed to have a hard time accepting that. Since that time, pseudo-veteran status has been granted their organization, much to my dismay. The fact is, they did not serve in the U.S. Armed Forces. They were civilians who could resign at any time, unlike military personnel. I would cringe when a NOAA “officer” would wear the uniform to a South Pole function as it looks remarkably like a U.S. Naval uniform but, to me, had the authenticity of a bartender on a civilian cruise ship. Even with my disdain for the mock-military uniform and veteran status for people who had never served in the U.S. Armed Forces, I must say that the organization does do great things, and all three of the NOAA uniformed people I had on my crews were fine crewmembers, and each contributed greatly.
Thanksgiving at the South Pole is a beautiful event. The galley is decorated and the staff go all out to prepare a meal described by some as the best they have ever had. Thanksgiving is a wonderful holiday to give thanks and to be at the South Pole, for many, a lifetime dream, which makes it all the better. It is a wonderful holiday as it can be observed by most any person on the planet, to give thanks for what they have. I gave a couple of Thanksgiving dinner speeches and liked to end with saying that if a person could think of no other reason to give thanks, to give thanks to being at the goddamned South Pole. Christmas is slightly different and observed in a mostly lukewarm manner as the program and most of its participants are not overly religious. One year we had problems getting volunteers to put out the Christmas tree and decorations. Other years we had more participation. The USAP is a government organization and thus does not promote religion, but it in no way discourages anyone’s right to practice. As the program participants, in general, run to the left politically, Christmas at the South Pole takes on a very nonreligious nature for most.
News Year’s is a major holiday at the South Pole, and there is a large party in the gym. The problem with that holiday is it will involve excessive drinking, and many of the station residents stay up extremely late. I always prepared my winter crew for the holiday with the fact that, historically, an idiot or two would end up being terminated for their New Year’s Eve antics so to beware. There were several examples, but one that I think truly hit the trifecta for stupidity and bad judgment was the winter engineer who in his drunken stupor had described himself as a “human weapon.” He then proceeded to try and convince others of that fact. Another epic meltdown occurred with a fellow who had arrived to work during the summer only. On the day of his arrival, I overheard him in the hallway talking to a coworker about his desire to winter. Interestingly, we were at that time looking for someone with his skill. But after just a minute of listening and observation, I was immediately against it. By this time in my life, I had developed a good ability to sense people with problems, and I quickly surmised that the fellow was full of them. I went to the summer Human Resources person and told her what I had heard and that I had no interest in having him on my winter crew. I then stated I was going to watch the guy as maybe I was wrong. I was not.
Soon afterward I began hearing somewhat bizarre stories of the fellow’s after-hours behavior. One that caught my attention was how he had dealt with being turned down by several women for any form of companionship at a social event. He left the event and made his way to one of the lounges. Once there, he drunkenly requested another drunken individual to strike him in the head with a piece of wood. I will never know exactly why he wanted to be struck by the piece of wood but thankfully, the request was declined. To remedy the lack of being brained by the piece of wood, he started slamming his head into a wall. The positive in this was that, at that point, at least it was only his own head and not someone else’s. While he should have been immediately terminated and sent home when queried afterward, his drunken friends declined to make any kind of formal written statements. Fortunately for the station, he guaranteed his release a week or so later when he thought it a good idea to take a snowmobile for a drunken ride. He did not kill himself or anyone else in the incident, but it sealed his fate. He was immediately sent home, and it was quite clear that he was not winter, or even summer, material.
The ice tunnels that run under the ice out from the main station draw some of the most interest at the South Pole. The purpose of the tunnels is to contain the freshwater piping that brings water from the Rodwells into the station for further treatment and distribution. These tunnels also contain the station’s wastewater piping, which transmits station sewage out of the station. The waste is then injected into one of the old Rodwell bulbs beneath the ice where fresh water was once obtained but has been abandoned. The tunnels are cut through the ice; their total distance is around two thousand feet, including branches. Their dimensions are approximately six and a half feet wide and eight and a half feet tall. As the ice compresses, the tunnels’ dimensions slightly diminish, and some summers, the walls and ceilings need to be trimmed with a chainsaw. It is quite an operation to behold, with a chainsaw operator doing the trimming and chunks of ice being pulled out of the tunnel on a sled. The tunnels run at a depth below the surface of about forty to fifty feet. An interesting feature is that they maintain a relatively constant, year-round temperature of around minus 50°F. While they may seem a cold place in the summer, they are relatively warm in winter. Walking down those lighted tunnels can be somewhat eerie when you ponder how many tons of ice are above you and then hear a D-8 bulldozer running aboveground. There are a few escape routes to the surface, in the event of a collapse, but if such an event occurred, it would be quite possible there would be no way out. I noticed while down there that there was a marked bowing of the ice from the massive compression. It was not a place that I really enjoyed spending time.
Some of the most interesting aspects of the ice tunnels are the makeshift “shrines” located in square cutouts along the wall for the first fifty feet or so. There are several objects enshrined there, such a Russian sturgeon and other items whose meaning is now lost to history. There is one though that I am very aware of and witnessed the event that caused its creation. During the summer before my first winter, we received a message that Buzz Aldrin, former astronaut and second man on the moon, was coming to the South Pole as a tourist. Normally the tourist flights are ignored by most of the station personnel, but once people found out Buzz was to visit the station, they became quite interested. On that day, our NOAA officer decided to wear his formal dress uniform for some reason. Other people who would normally be performing tasks in different parts of the station found their way inside and around where Buzz would be during a station tour.
The tourist Basler aircraft landed, and the passengers deplaned. A couple of station personnel who would be their tour guides met Buzz and his entourage at the aircraft. The tour group with our guides then began the usual walk to the station, several hundred yards away. I watched from a window as Buzz walked along with a fellow carrying a video camera filming every step. You would have thought he was back on the moon. Soon we received a frantic radio call from our tour guides that the tour group wanted transportation to the station. This was declined, as the USAP is quite clear that we have extremely limited responsibilities for tourists. The station does not provide transportation. I watched as the entourage continued to move slowly toward the station. Upon entry, it was learned that Buzz did not feel well. He was immediately seated in a chair near our first floor Designation Alpha, DA, entrance. Soon afterward, nearly everyone on station found a reason to be at that location. Our doctor was called, and Buzz’s basic vitals were taken. It was apparent that he was ill. He was taken to the clinic where a further evaluation was performed.
At that point, there was a discussion among the tour group, which also included Buzz’s son, who demanded that the group be allowed to overnight in the station. This was thought necessary because Buzz was ill, and the tour company’s pilots were supposedly short on flying hours. Tourists overnighting in the station is not a usual event, and my boss, who was there for the summer, was in his office with the door closed on the phone with a NSF representative trying to get some direction. I was outside trying to deal with Buzz’s irate son. I found the fellow rightfully concerned with the situation of his ill father, but we were working on getting transportation for Buzz. We also knew that the pilot for the tourist aircraft had enough flight time left to safely depart the South Pole. There was no need to consider an overnight in our station. I visited Buzz in the clinic and spent a few minutes talking to him as he noted my Explorers Club hat. We were both members of that organization—he being an especially prominent, if not the most prominent, member. During my time in the clinic, I heard the end of a story Buzz was telling that had to do with Neil Armstrong. I found it fascinating that I was listening to a man who had participated in one of the greatest events in human history. He must have been perpetually pulled back to those days in 1969. Most people would probably expect him to constantly relive that incredible event and not care what he thought about the weather or other more mundane matters. After an hour or so, we received direction that we could send Buzz and his assistant to McMurdo Station on an incoming LC-130. The tour company would then depart on their own aircraft with the rest of their group. We transported Buzz out of the station to the awaiting LC-130, and it departed for McMurdo. There was discussion afterward by some, questioning how Buzz received special U.S. government evacuation while he was on a foreign-owned tourist company’s trip. The aircraft Buzz departed on was a regularly scheduled USAF LC-130 that was already inbound when Buzz was found to be ill. The somewhat negative discussion surprised me as Buzz is a national icon of unparalleled status. Personally, I would have not had a problem with a special flight. At the same time, I was fine with the rest of the tourists on that trip making their own way out, and in the end, they did. The incident should have ended there, but for us, it did not, as it then gained South Pole immortality.
After Buzz departed, I noticed that the tissue he had used while he sat on the chair near our DA entrance was on the floor. I picked it up and, knowing its great value, presented it to two of my crewmembers who aspired to become astronauts. Several weeks later, I learned they had found a Plexiglas case for it and wanted to place it in the ice tunnel. On a Sunday, a small group of us met in the ice tunnel to commemorate and consecrate the shrine to Buzz. The shrine consisted of the encased tissue Buzz had used, placed on a plastic glass it was thought he had drunk from. We had an unveiling, which I started with a prayer of sorts. This was all on video and probably the only video of such an event for any of the shrines. It was our hope that this shrine remain appreciated and unmolested for the millennia it will take for that ice to flow into the Southern Ocean. It was also our hope that, if desired, Buzz could at some point in the distant future be cloned from any fluid preserved on the tissue. On the Plexiglas case that contained it, there was a warning of sorts: “Buzz Aldrin’s tissue, medevac 2016. Caution: Space Germs.”
During the winter, the crew designs and builds the South Pole geographical marker for the following year. In the summer, on January 1, the marker is unveiled and planted in the ice at the Geographical South Pole. It is a popular tradition, and many station residents show up for it. The area manager from the Denver office carries the new geographical marker, which is on a pole and under a cloth cover, out to the Geographical South Pole area. As the ice moves at around thirty-three feet per year, the new geographical marker and the Geographical South Pole sign will need to be placed in a new location, which is set up prior to the event. The area manager removes the cover, unveiling the marker to the assembled group who will marvel at its beauty. The pole marker is then passed along a line of people who each pass it on to the person standing next to them. This is a great thing and makes everyone feel a part of the tradition. Eventually it ends up at the geographical pole and is planted in a precut hole in the ice. I learned that in the past it was simply planted by whoever was the last person in line. That person may have been someone who had spent a great deal of time at the South Pole or just someone visiting for a few days. During my first summer, I planted the pole marker. Later I tried to establish a tradition that the incoming WSM would always be the one with the singular duty to plant it. I felt it important that someone who had interacted with and relieved the outgoing winter crew would honor them by planting it. When I planted the pole marker for 2017, which had been made by the 2016 winter crew, I said under my breath, “I now declare this icecap Hvitt Hjem,” which is Norwegian for “White Home.” I claimed the South Pole for myself.