ENDURANCE

West Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley, Antarctica
Reporting from Blood Falls Basecamp

In accordance with our hopes, the winds died down enough by this morning that helos were flying today. In addition to the much-anticipated delivery of the bot, we were expecting several other sling loads, including the final bits of plywood for the bot house floor and the roll-away cover for the melt hole, now referred to as the moon pool. These items arrived first thing in the morning and we wasted no time getting everything in place. The next sling load to come over the horizon was a black oval with yellow feet and flame-decaled yellow fins. Everyone scurried to pull out their cameras and hunker down behind the various large shipping crates that are scattered around the platform. With a 2000 lb sling load, a Bell 212 helo creates a tremendous amount of rotor wash and certainly a lot of noise. The physical turbulence made the emotional rush of seeing the pilot set the bot squarely down on the platform all the more exhilarating. The pilot unclipped the cable and thundered off. Now it was time to get to work.

We look on nervously as the helo lowers the bot onto our Bot House platform.

The next step on our agenda was to build the polar haven tent structure of the Bot House around the bot. We learned the procedure in McMurdo: assemble the pipe arches and walls that make up the frame of the haven; pull the insulated blankets (tarps) on the end walls; pull a liner tarp over the arches and tie it down to the floor on either side; on top of this go insulating layers over the arches; and then finally a large, weather resistant cover goes over it all. Our entire practice run in McMurdo took six hours.

Things started off well enough. Though it was slightly breezy, we made quick process in constructing the pipe frame. Two people worked from the top of some scaffolding and the rest scrambled around arranging pipes and fitting them together. Over the course of the afternoon the wind began to build, but in our concern to get a shelter built over the bot we didn’t take much notice—yet. Once the frame was together we pulled out the liner tarp and prepared to install it on the 16-foot-tall frame. We lined the tarp up on the ground along one side of the arches and tied ropes to one edge of the fabric. Then we threw the other end of each rope over the entire frame to people standing on the other side of the structure. Half of the team pulls the ropes to drag the tarp up and over the arches while the other half feeds the tarp up and manages any snags that occur. This is when we really noticed the wind. We were trying to pull the tarp from the upwind side of the structure to the downwind but the force from the wind meant that the tarp simply pressed against the pipe frame with enough pressure that it was incredibly difficult to drag it up to the peak and over. Once we did get it over the top, everything got worse. With no wall to press into, the downwind end of the tarp whipped up violently against the four ropes we had tied to it. It became a sail. Helpers jumped in to assist the rope haulers, who were nearly being whisked away on the ends of their ropes. The points where we had tied the ropes on the tarp began to rip through, giving the raging beast a greater range for its erratic motions. With the whipping and cracking of the tarp, the gusting wind, and our layers of hats and hoods, shouts and instructions were snuffed out. This was the stuff of epic sea chanteys, not field robotics. Somehow we managed to tie down, at least marginally, both sides of the tarp. Worried that the liner tarp would rip further unless we put up the end wall tarps quickly, we plunged into this next struggle. By now we had been working on the tent for about eight hours. After some time spent fighting more of the same battle with the first end wall, Peter made the call that we were in a losing battle; the wind was just too strong. The rest wearily agreed and after the equally arduous task of removing the tarps from the frame and corralling the unruly masses of fabric back into boxes for the night we dragged ourselves back to camp. Sometimes it’s just best to try again tomorrow.

Members of the team work together to construct the final pipe arches (there are 17 total) of the tent frame.

With the frame completed we begin to unroll the liner tarp on the up wind side of the structure. We plan to tie ropes to one edge and pull it over the frame to tie off on the downwind side.

This quick photo, the only one snapped during our epic battle, does little to convey the chaos of the gusting wind and the tarp that threatened to carry us all away.

Reporting by Vickie Siegel

West Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley, Antarctica
Reporting from Blood Falls Basecamp

Since our next moves can only happen after the bot is delivered tomorrow, today was a natural day to just take a break. The winds continued to barrel down the valley but some folks decided to take the free time as a chance to do some hiking anyhow. The others caught up on office work, read books and drank cocoa. Around the dinner table Peter explained the origins of the incredible wind we’ve been experiencing. The Antarctic continent is shaped like a giant dome, more or less. The land in the interior of the continent is covered with a massive ice sheet over two kilometers thick and the highest elevation of this dome is around the center of the continent. During the winter the rock and ice radiate their heat out to space and temperature drops. As the land cools, the air does, too. The air grows denser as it cools and gravity starts to drive it downhill. The phenomenon is called a katabatic wind and in Antarctica they are known to be fierce, cold and persistent.

This diagram by Hannes Grobe was copied from the Wikipedia page on katabatic wind.

Reporting by Vickie Siegel

West Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley, Antarctica
Reporting from Blood Falls Basecamp

In US Antarctic Program tradition, Thanksgiving is celebrated the Saturday after the actual holiday so that everyone gets a long weekend, both Saturday and Sunday off work! Of course, we are hardly the sort of people to argue with that kind of a tradition and we had an invitation from John and the folks at the Lake Bonney camp to join them for turkey dinner. Around midday we headed over to the camp on the east lobe of Lake Bonney. Most folks opted for the 20 minute ATV ride to the camp and Bill and Vickie decided to walk. Along the way they came across several mummified seals. For unknown reasons, seals and penguins occasionally wander away from the sea and travel up the Dry Valleys. A long way from home and with no chance of finding food in the barren valleys, these animals die before finding their way back. Since there are no insects to consume them and the climate is extremely dry and cold, the corpses remain remarkably intact for years.

Hiking from Blood Falls Camp to Lake Bonney camp, Vickie and Bill found several mummified seals on the ice.

The last stragglers arrived at Lake Bonney Camp just as the turkeys were coming out of the oven. Noshing away on our stuffing and sweet potatoes we admired our surroundings. Unlike our camp at Blood Falls, the Lake Bonney camp is a permanent installation that is used every season. It is larger than our camp, with several large tents in addition to personal sleeping tents and a 15′ x 40′ jamesway building which is the kitchen and community space for the group there. Also they have WiFi. It was field camp nirvana. After thoroughly enjoying the good food and good company provided by the Bonney Camp researchers we took ATVs back to Blood Falls for the night.

Everyone relaxes after Thanksgiving dinner in the Lake Bonney jamesway.

Reporting by Vickie Siegel

West Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley, Antarctica
Reporting from Blood Falls Basecamp

Things have been going very well with our fieldwork for the last two days—the weather has been pleasant, we made good progress on the Bot House platform and we’ve even had some tasty camp dinners in our mess tent. One could almost forget we’re in Antarctica… Well, today we got a little reminder. Late last night several of us woke up to find the walls of our tents whipping and popping in our faces, straining against the tent poles. The mild wind from yesterday has built up into violent gusts and from what we hear on the VHF radio, the weather in McMurdo is deteriorating, too. As a result, no helos are flying today and the official operations in McMurdo, helo and otherwise, will be shut down Saturday and Sunday for the Thanksgiving holiday. After all our rush, the bot won’t be delivered until Monday.

Of course in the field there is always work that needs to be done so we used our new-found free time to work on mission planning and choose the spot for our second melt hole. Lake Bonney lies in the bottom of the Taylor Valley and the lake’s shape is dictated by the valley walls. It is narrow and long, too long for us to drive the vehicle to all points in the west lobe of the lake from a single point, so we will work from two different ice holes – one close to the Taylor Glacier face and the second further east. About halfway through our fieldwork schedule we will move the bot house to the second hole but first we need to make the hole.

To initiate us as true scientists in the Dry Valleys, Peter decided that we needed to drill the pilot hole in the ice. Annika was our designated “drill sergeant” and showed us how to operate the Jiffy drill, a machine that requires two people and a drill bit 10 inches in diameter. After we drilled the hole, Peter, Maciek and John Priscu returned and helped us place a melter in our pilot hole. Someone has to return to refuel the generator here every 4 or 5 hours and in two days we should have another 8′ hole in the ice.

The trombone melter in the pilot hole we drilled.

Peter, Bill and Maciej mark the perimeter of the 8′ diameter hole we will melt out.

Reporting by Vickie Siegel

West Lake Bonney, Taylor Valley, Antarctica
Reporting from Blood Falls Basecamp

We returned to the floor supports we placed yesterday. To ensure that our finished floor sits level, Bill and Peter took some time to measure the height of each floor support as the others placed the 8″x8″ timbers that hold the floor panels. With their measurements, we shimmed some of the timbers with plywood to bring them to the proper height. The 8×8’s are held in place end to end by steel moment plates. We attached these and then added 2×4 spacers that keep the four rows of 8×8’s parallel.

Peter and Bill level the timbers.

The 8×8 timbers are in place and ready for the floor panels.

With the 8×8 timbers in place, our next move was to start placing floor panels. During our test-build of the Bot House in McMurdo, we learned that the floor panels are heavy (~500 lbs), but manageable when many people work together to lift them. The difference between our test build and the real thing, however, is that here we are working on the uneven and slick surface of the lake ice instead of the flat gravel yard at McMurdo. Slowly and cautiously, we inched the first few platform sections across the ice until Maciej brought our attention to another tool we have at our disposal here: the ATV. The new procedure became to have several lifters carefully place a platform section onto the bed of the ATV and then walk alongside the vehicle to make sure it didn’t slide off the bed as someone drove the ATV to the platform-in-construction. From there it was easy to transfer the section from the ATV to the 8×8’s.

Moving the floor panels with the ATV was much easier than lifting them.

As one crew moved the floor sections into place, other folks worked to line the panels up and bolt them to each other. Then the floor sections needed to be anchored to the ice. For this Peter drilled two holes into the ice at the end of each panel. The holes intersected under the surface in a V-configuration. We threaded rope through the ice holes and tied off to eye bolts in the sides of the panels. The finishing touch for the day was to secure the base frame of the tent to the edge of the floor.

Peter drills holes in the ice to anchor the platform.

A completed floor at the end of the day.

We are ready to build the tent after the bot arrives tomorrow!

Reporting by Vickie Siegel