Saturday, November 10, 2012

South Pole Season 3

On Oct 25 2012, I left CA for my third trip to the South Pole. 


In the C17


A fellow traveler. At least if we crash we won't freeze to death.


   Shipping crate glamour shot


Mt Erebus


Mt Terror


Apple Hut on the hike to Castle Rock


Castle Rock


Royal Society Range


Thursday, December 29, 2011

Christmas 2011

Christmas at the South Pole...


Lobster!




Ed with the magical vest


Winning the race around the world


Carlos and I at the finish

Sunday, December 25, 2011

All time high

On Christmas it was 10 degrees F, an all time high for the South Pole. Previous record was 7.5 F. I caught the weather page when it was 9.1F :

Saturday, December 24, 2011

Winter Solstice

The winter solstice was Dec 22nd down here. I used the south pole to measure the angle of inclination of earth's axis. I got 24.5 degrees, the real number is 23.5 degrees.


100 years

Dec 14th, 2011 marked the 100th anniversary of Admunsen's arrival at the South Pole. The Prime Minister of Norway was here to celebrate.

Ice bust that never melts


Prime Minister checks out the telescopes

Group shot

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Traverse

  In the beginning of December the traverse arrived from McMurdo. There were 10 guys who drove the ~800 miles in seven or eight vehicles, so of which you can see below. This is only the 6th traverse in history. 
  The main purpose of the traverse is usually to deliver fuel to the station, however, this traverse is on a mission to remove an abandoned station another 500 away from here, so they didn't have much fuel to spare. Usually the fuel come in the LC-130's, and it takes two gallons of fuel to deliver every one to the station. The traverse is much more efficient, it only takes one gallon for every gallon delivered.
   It turns out that I knew two of the guys on the traverse. Cory, whom I had met in the North Cascades doing SCA crews, I knew was coming in, and we chatted about SCA happenings. The other guy was my NOLS instructor, Paul, from a mountaineering course I took in Patagonia in 2007. The last time I saw him were sharing a snow cave we dug into a glacier on the side of Cerro San Lorenzo during a Chilean blizzard. It was pretty awesome to run in to him down here.


These tractors are custom made for the traverse.
I think these are the best looking.

The fuel bladders.



Thursday, December 15, 2011

Eclipse at the South Pole

On November 25th there was a partial solar eclipse at the South Pole. I snapped a couple of pictures with a piece of aluminized mylar over my lens. This worked out somewhat, so I stuck a bunch of them together for the image below.