From Christmas at Paradise back to reality

Merry Christmas to you all!
Rotanui Lodge in Pohara Beach it is.... That's the place where to guys made their dream come true. They build a unique Lodge Hotel where everybody feels home from the first second but with a luxury room for privacy as well. And that's just the beginning. They serve unforgettable dinner: perfect cooked heart of lamb rump...mhmh. The right thing for Christmas! So Maria and I spend 2 nights in this beautiful Golden bay region near the Abel Tasman National park where we also found the most stunning beach in our live so far!

Anapai Beach and Albatross

Only accessible by boat these days because of the flood, we were lucky because it was the first day the ship was operating. Since nobody else knew about that we were the only passenger with Keith the Captain who told us a lot about the life and work at the New Zealand cost.

We past by a seal colony and green mussel farm. Great and even more unbelievable: on the way back they gave us 2 fish : Abel Tasman takahiri fish as a present for Christmas. And Steve and Pete from the Hotel made them for us in a delicious Christmas eve dinner.

Takahiri on vegetables

Thanks to y'all who made this a beautiful first Xmas in the sun for Maria and me!
Now we arrived at the West coast in an average hostel which is quite a different after that great experience in the paradise!

Christmas at the beach

New Zealand is a really amazing country!we are hitting the road in our rented Nissan sunny for four days now and Maria and I are still shocked by the beauty we are fronting here! Today we spend a couple of hours on the beach from where you can spot snow capped mountains in the background! Unbelievable! We just checked in our lodge where we stay fir Christmas. A lovely place, the ratanui lodge in takaka, where steve and Pete have built a hidden paradise.
Merry Christmas to y'all!

Back at ELMS in ChC

Due to the earthquake that hit Christchurch earlier this year, the housing situation here is quite limited. Out of 5 possible hotels for USAP (United States Antarctic Program) participants I chose the same hotel I was in before my trip to Pole because I heard that the others aren't better either especially concerning Internet accessibility and costs. Since I am staying here for five days before my Love arrives for our honeymoon trip next Monday, I asked at the reception for several 24h internet-tickets which cost 20 kiwi$ each. But here comes the surprise: they offered me a weekly pass for only 30 NZD! Since I am here with USAP and staying more than two days they offered me what normally costs 70 NZD. They offered it just by accident since I asked for more than one 25h access pass. So for all others who are on their way to Elms Hotel for this season: ask for it! I heard that other hotels charge for each 50 MB here which sounds like charging for tab water by cup as John J pointed out in his blog!

McMurdo = gravel-pit

I am finally back in New Zealand but want to give you an impression of my last few hours in Antarctica from yesterday.
First of all, we had a joyful and relaxed flight in our LC-130 from Pole to McMurdo. We ere only two passengers on the flight. Nobody was interested in leaving the Pole on 13th Dec because the big centennial party is on the 14th ! So we missed that one, too bad. On the other hand, this party was mostly for the Norwegian visitors. So never mind.

The Pegasus airfield with the Antarctic coast in the back

Signs are covering the road from the airfield to Mc Murdo. This one here is too avoid to many accidents with crossing kiwis... :)

In McMurdo, the air field which is accesible in this time of the year is the Pegasus air field. This is a one hour ride distant to Mc Murdo. The airfield on where we arrived from Christchurch three weeks  ago was a different one only about 15 min to McMurdo but at this time of the year is too dangerous to land because the ice is getting thinner during the Antarctic summer. The Pegasus field instead is not so much affected by the summer since the ice cap is about 100 ft thick covered by several ft of white ice - dusty ice that piles up on the road and makes the journey to McMurdo a quite bumpy ride on-board Ivan the Terra-bus. 
After arrival in MacTown I discovered a totally new picture of that gold-diggers wild west village.   Now it is more like a gravel-pit. Dusty roads and melt water flows where snow and ice was covering the streets three weeks ago.

Gravel-pit McMurdo

A seal lying behind the coast line on the ice. Due to the pressure of the moving ice against the main land big chunks of ice are sticking like knife points.

My stay at MacTown was really short - 6 hours. Around midnight we were called to building 140 to be picked up by Ivan  for returning to the airfield and jump on the C-17 for the 5 hour flight to Christchurch. We hadn't much cargo on board so that people used the extra space to lay down an get their well-deserved sleep...I was falling asleep immediately after take off in my seat and when I woke up and took this picture every single spot on the floor was already taken!

On-board the C-17.

Good bye Pole!

Good bye Amundsen-Scott-Station, Good bye speed limit! Picture by Sven Lidstrom

Thanks for 3 fantastic weeks! I am just wondering if Sven and Carlos won't get bored because the detector will run so smoothly without my presence...

Uncle Dennis, me and Gary

Last day at Pole

So this is it! this is the last day at Pole (given the case that there is no weather caused delay of the flight tomorrow). I packed my stuff and handed it in to the pick up station, copied all important emails to my computer since I wont be able to access this cool USAP address any longer. I had a look at the shared pictures at the local network and copied some of them.
I had a incredible nice time down here. This is because the people down here are nice, special, funny, crazy and open-minded. I like that. I had three exciting week down here. Thanks to IceCube, the NSF and the ULB! I know that this is a great honour!
Now I am looking forward to meet my beautiful wife Maria in New Zealand where we will have two wonderful weeks of honeymoon!! Live is great!

Riding the drill

James Roth riding the drill. Picture by Laurel Bacque

Ready for Centennial

Prime Minister of Norway Jens Stoltenberg arriving at the South Pole

Kacey and David are ironing the Norwegian
flags for the big reception on Wednesday

100 years ago, at the 14th December 1911, Amundsen from Norway came as the first man to South Pole. This is going to be celebrated during this week. Therefore, the Norwegian Prime Minister Jens Stoltenberg arrive today with a bunch of media and others. Thanks to all helpers the Station is in perfect shape to host such a big event!

A thrilling drilling experience
Today is Saturday and since my projects down here are more or less finished I had the freedom to choose myself what do to. So i decided to do nothing - at the beginning. But then I looked out the window and saw this beautiful weather outside. With having in mind that there are only three days left for me at Pole I decided to have a nice walk to the ICL and the ARA drill camp which is right next to it. So i went over there and help Thomas a little bit with his tasks. The drillers are experienced. Dennis and Dave were already drilling for IceCube during the last seven (!) summer seasons. As two out of 30 drillers for IceCube they have the most experience one can have in snow/ice drilling. The drill station is now quite different, though.



David Pernic aka D. Panic with 7 years of drilling experience
with IceCueb he is now responsible for the ARA drill.




The same goes for Dennis Duling - also 7
seasons for IceCube drilling, now it's ARA.




Dennis explaining what should be checked before starting the hot water drill.

The so-badly-wanted Driller's jacket backside...You only
get it if you drill for at least two seasons



Thomas riding the snow horse back to the station.

Uncle Dennis

A short story at the store:

Waiting in line just behind Dennis the Driller. When it is his turn to pay for his booze I tried to sneak and maybe he would pay also mine!? So i go ahaed and try: "Thanks Uncle Dennis for paying mine, too!" He didn't say anything - so I thought "Cool, it worked. He is a really nice guy!"
A few seconds later he looked at me with his laughing eyes, took my Sixpack and shacked it for a couple of seconds.
Uncle Dennis then says: "Nice try son! Never call me Uncle again! Now enjoy your beer!"

Dennis Duling

But the best part is that he likes this story even more than I do because I made such a surprised face he won't forget, he says. Well, it's nice to remember somebody connected to a good short story! I aggree!

If you want to see Dennis Dulling in action:
http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=7390504n&tag=contentMain;contentBody
is a nice clip about science at Pole starring Dennis "We are the best of the best because we are the only ones!"

More people arriving at Pole

Nowadays it is quite common to use the air ways to travel comfortably to your destinations. At South Pole a lot of things are different. Sure, the main way to get here is by plain but you could see the the station population rising without any air-crafts arriving. This is because some people like it the hard way. These 9 guys on the picture look like being of this kind. Well, not completely. These group of tourists guided by an Norwegian was rolling only for a few miles. They took a van up to the 89° south and decided to feel the spirit of adventure by being on their on for the last one degree. Still, quite impressive!

The visitors camp is growing as you can see on the picture. I hope I have the opportunity to visit it before I leave next week!

Open door @ Traverse

How does hygiene works when being on route for 31 days with 9 other men and your not allowed to throw your stuff just out the window?Well, you shouldn't throw it out the window anyway but in Antarctica it's even more strict. The hygiene/ garbage question is the best question you can ask to this guys because they have a really smart solution and they are proud of it! So I tell you how they do it: instead of carrying 100s of gallons excrement with them they burn everything to ash on board! Ok enough about that...
Their trucks are really cool, too!

CAT trucks of the traverse

 Terry Billings was really nice in showing us around!

Traverse captain Terry Billings explaining the luxury on board of the traverse "camper"

The main reason for the traverse: delivering fuel to South Pole. Altogether they brought more than 51 000 gallons fuel to the Pole, about 190 000 litre!

 The main reason why they did what they did is not only because they love the adventure but mostly because they transport fuel and get paid for this. It is twice as efficient as bringing fuel in via air planes. The traverse convoy has a ratio of 1:1 (1 gallon spent for 1 gallon bringing to Pole) whereas the air route is worse with 2:1 . That's why they do it!

Two trucks and the living and bath rooms in the back.

They will live Pole next week to drive out to AGAP to dig out tons of stuff that researchers left there some decades ago.

Nice walk nice weather

Just had a nice walk from the ICL back to the station ( ~1 km). It's not far but ip to now I either went by shuttle or ski-doo. Beautiful blue sky with small clouds. Just great! Live is good :)
 Happy Friday!

Strange weather today

A Basler aircarft with russian and british tourist departing from South Pole

We got really bad weather conditions today. It's completely cloudy and foggy but the good thing is that we have at least some humidity. But planes are still arriving and departing! And Martin is schedule for today to departure back to McMurdo. So I am sitting in the B2 science lab, preparing my stuff for tomorrows test runs. Tonight we'll have the opportunity to visit the traverse caravan that landed here last Friday. And the I gonna voluntere to take part in a movie that is shooting down here. Something about Zombies... aahahaha!

Tunnel vision

-58° F or -50° C. I don't know any place where it is colder than here, on earth (not counting any cryogenic physics experiments)

 Let's go down under! We had the chance to visit the catacombs underneath the South Pole Station as deep as 30 to 50 feet (10 to 15 metes) underground. Julie, she is responsible for the science coordination at Pole, picked us up at 6pm in the lab. I was already sweating like hell because we were informed to dress properly for this adventure. So I took on everything I could find...but I was grateful for that later on!

The walls down here ain't straight any more because of the snow movement (~10cm per week, I heard)

 At some parts on the track it was quite hard to squeeze trough because the walls of ice are moving. The whole ice shelf about 10 cm per week - so they have to reshape the walls every now and then to make sure that the doors down here don't splash.

That's the brand new South-Pole-Mascara

 It is so cold down here that ice crystals stick to the eyelashes, which is pretty cool!

Cold, dark end narrow: catacombs down under the station

Gary is reading the myth about the caviar shrine. The fish was smuggled all around the world to find his place at this memorial shrine (I forgot about the details).

LC-130 comes in...

ARA = A Real Adventure

ARA = A Real Adventure

That's how it looks like at the moment: Gary and  Thomas are preparing the Hot Water Drill to be ready for drilling next week. ARA is the experiment that Thomas is working on for his PhD thesis. As we in IceCube they are Neurtino-hunters, too. But they use radiowaves send out by highenergetic neutrinos and we are looking for light send out by neutrinos that are travelling faster than the speed of light in ice. Thomas doesn't have to drill as for IceCube (2500m) but still simple digging with the bucket isn't enough!

What's THAT?! Look at the silver base plate ...

So Thomas looks quite busy out there! He and Gary and about 7 other members of the ARA Collaboration are  working outside the whole day, 6 days a week, 8 hours a day at -40°C. Respect!Keep going folks! We'll cheer you from the warm insides of the Station. I am looking forward to the actual start of the drilling!

Thomas taping something

Gary at the hot water drill for ARA

White coats and sallow faces...

After lunch we went over to the ICL to replace batteries in the computer shelfs ("racks").

Ralf, Carlos and me investigating the rack while Martin 
is taking the picture and Sven ran away (joke!). 

But at the very first try to plug the new 170 pound heavy thing in to the Power supply we heard a scary "buff" and the rack went down. It took us some time and sweat in our nice white or blue coats but we finally fixed it and could go on with the others. Hope we wont see this again. Detector works fine again.

Connection to the world

The protecting plastic bowl of the antenna dish for GOES

We're just back from a short tour on the satellite system that connects SouthPOle to the rest of the world. Here at Pole we have to different systems, one being pretty old but robust and another high-precision younger type. GOES and TDRS they are called. So, James who is a maintenance guy for the dishes was happy to show us around. Since these antennas are about a 10 min walk away from the station, we called the shuttle service. Jumped into the shuttle without giving direction, Stevan the driver took us in direction of the South Pole Telescope which is not even close the ones we wanted to go to! How should he now with all these plates around!

So we finally got there and I was quite fascinated by the simple technique that is used to communicate and to focus the satellite.
We learned how the information is transmitted, via optic fibres and the in a serial data stream to the antenna. Actually, you can not see the dish here itself because it is covered by this white plastic bowl to protect it from wind and snow.

The protecting plastic bowl of the antenna dish for GOES and Stevan in his shuttle van

James who is responsible for maintenance gave us a tour

That's the antenna dish for TDRS satellites and Martin

Easy Sunday

We had a pretty good party in the summer camp yesterday which makes the Sunday brunch even more needed. After having a perfect Omelette, created by Jase who is one of the 6 cooks on station, and two or three mind blowing espressi, by Baristo Dave Pernik, drill manager for IceCube and now Ara, one can say that this was a almost perfect Sunday morning. Later today we'll have American culture studies meaning that we'll watch "Braekfast Club" suggested be Chelsea in order to get a deeper inside in American college live...

First traverse adventures arrived

31 days ago, a group of 10 crazy men started in McMurdo http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/McMurdo_Station on big tractors equipped with chains instead of wheels.

Today, after about 1500 km they arrived at the Pole. They are listed as working in heavy equipment and others, which is equal to be a tough guy, I respectfully admit.
I hope I'll get a chance to talk to them about their trip on the ice highway (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Pole_Traverse). Here you see a shot of the arriving caravan at the south pole. Another group traversing is expected in January. Regarding the "tourists" they are expected to come in during the next weeks because of the 100th anniversary, a presentation area is on the way to be build up in the "backyard" of the station, right next to the ceremonial pole marker.

Swedish vs Spanish Summer feelings

Sven who is Swedish and Carlos, Spanish, have completely different ideas of how summer looks like!

Today, we won't go out for work since no cargo came in to be unpacked or carried from A to B. Today is meeting day: we'll have our weekly meeting and in the afternoon the whole stations's population comes together for the "all hands" meeting. So I will spend my day on the computer, preparing slides for an upcoming talk back in Brussels, and planning our vacation trip in New Zealand!

The Roof, the roof, the roof is on Ice!!

After lunch, Martin and me were heading out to the ICL to put down the last 6 of 86 flags.
Since you always have to calculate at least ten minutes to dress up your ECW and another 2 minutes because I always forget to bring a helmet to the Ski-Doo and have to go back...
This time we brought a map with us and this made it definately easier to find the right spots for our flags. Well done. Finishing right in time we went on the roof of the ICL to watch a HErcules air-craft landing. In this way we also were able to have a good view on our work (the flagging) and we decided that we did a good job.

Arriving herc and summer camp in the background. In the foreground our flags, yeah!

Sven, the cable guy, fixing things in the ICL

Winterovers Sven and Carlos on the Banana Sled hooked up to the Ski-Doo

Me on the ICL's roof