Coon Rapids, Talahi, Friends School, SCSU and NHCC Banners

The drilling has finished now, the drill rig and drill camp is being disassembled, and brought back in, and most of the teachers and scientists associated with ANDRILL have 'left the ice'. The sea ice runway has been closed, and the C-17s are now flying from Pegasus Runway, the 'white ice' runway on the ice shelf. I could see all the runway-related buildings being moved across the ice from the Lab window last weekend. I have stayed a bit longer because I am working to finish off a geologic trail guide to Observation Hill.

As reports are being organized and equipment packed for shipment off the ice, I am finally taking care of a few things that I need to do. The McMurdo sign is probably one of the easiest places to get to in ‘town’, but every time I had all the school banners together in one place, it was way too windy. Besides, it was easy to procrastinate, because it seemed like I had plenty of time. Finally, when it was a nice day last week (December 1st? – all the days seem to meld into one here, and I never remember what day it is), with the assistance of Bob and Louise, I took all my school and university banners for a photographic session. I also went for a walk with Robin and wore the North Hennepin Community College sweatshirt - It was COLD when I took my Big Red off for that picture!

Talahi Community School
I could hold this banner by myself!

Coon Rapids Middle School
It took two of us to hold this Banner up! You were all here - or your signatures were!

Friends School of Minnesota
It is a small world. When we were taking the pictures we discovered that Bob's father had taught summer school at the secondary school I went to in England.

Earth & Atmospheric Sciences Department, St. Cloud State University
They don't use the husky dogs for sledwork here any more, but the huskies are represented!

North Hennepin Community College, Brooklyn Park, Minnesota
It was cold taking these pictures! I put my Big Red back on straight away

Last Dispatch from Antarctica

Nine weeks have passed on this remarkable journey. Tonight at 8:00 pm I have “Bag Drag” which is when I need to report to the check-in location and deliver all of my bags for transport out of Antarctica, get my passport checked, and get weighed. My check-in bags are weighed, my carry-on is weighed, and, yes, I too am weighed – with all of my Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear on. (It’s very depressing to step on the scale with ECW and full backpack to have your weight announced and recorded!)

Today was my third and final attempt to go on a helicopter field trip to the Dry Valleys. I have been so very excited to do this trip, led by Peter Webb, an Antarctic Old-Timer and a man who has been pivotal in Antarctic geology. Unfortunately, as I write, we are on hold due to snowy weather, and it is not looking very promising.

Because I expected to be out in the field today, my bags are completely packed. I rather relish this state of unexpected calm as I wait to hear on the status of helicopters. There is much to reflect on and I have had precious little time to be alone with my thoughts. In my office here in the Crary Lab, fingers are pounding away on keyboards as people are posting last-minute blogs, or uploading photographs to shared drives. I find myself glued to the window, looking at the snow and remembering the horizons that surround McMurdo. I can’t see them now, but last night at midnight I took a walk to look across McMurdo Sound at the volcanic peaks protruding through ice. The ice was brightly reflecting the intense midnight sun. This truly is a magical place. And a threatening place. From the heart of Mt. Erebus where a lava lake is bubbling and gasping, to the South Pole where the temperature has not risen above -27 degrees F since I have been here. From the highest peak, the Vinson Massif towering at 16,067 feet, to the expansive and ephemeral frozen sea on which we daringly land airplanes. From pressure ridges that reveal the colliding powers of the tides, sea ice, and incoming glaciers, to the maternal watchings of the Weddell Seals over their newborn pups. From the historical journey into Scott’s hut where I touched the very table where meals and conversations were shared, to the launching of a weather balloon to go 80,000 feet into the atmosphere, with a message to my school and my family written on the side – and rushing into the lab to see how it is transmitting data back. And from the excitement of seeing the first ANDRILL cores arrive in the lab full of layers of recent volcanic rocks,
to the joy of hearing my students’ excited voices when I called from Antarctica to share my experiences. These are images I will not soon forget.

If my photographs were somehow lost tomorrow, I would be greatly saddened – mostly because I would not be able to share them with all of you. But having seen these sights, and experienced these images, they will forever be a part of me, captured in my mind’s eye. One changes after experiencing the elements and sights here. I think you are never quite the same person when you go home, than when you arrive.

It has been quite a ride. I am constantly reminded of how very small and insignificant I am in the greater scheme of things. People will come and go, but Antarctica’s natural processes will carry on with little regard for our presence. Nature rules on this continent – and we are merely passing visitors. But those of us who have the privilege of being here are lucky, indeed. We are lucky not just to experience what Antarctica has to offer us, but also to be probing into the natural history and finding out about the secrets hidden within the ice and rocks, and, for some, the atmosphere and animals. It is a position of great responsibility to investigate these mysteries to share them with the world. I feel honored to be sharing this responsibility with the ANDRILL team.


Tomorrow at this time I will be in New Zealand. This will be my last dispatch from “the ice” – but certainly not my last blog. Thank you all for sharing the experience with me – and please continue to visit the www.andrill.org website as we share our findings and images, and continue our blogs.

Cloudy with a Chance of Salad

McMurdo station is a busy place by all measures. But when a plane arrives with food and mail, a certain frenzy breaks out all over the base. It is quite exciting to watch certain operations jump into action as soon as the wheels of the cargo planes touch down.

A few days ago, a C-17 arrived. The list of passengers was short, which was good news for those of us awaiting mail, and great joy for those of us missing "freshies" (fresh produce). Freshies and mail only arrive when there is room on the aircraft after their weight and the weight of their luggage is calculated. As soon as a cargo plane arrives on the ice, the trucks and forklifts sprung into action. The food and mail, loaded onto pallets, is plucked from the back of the aircraft, and carried up to the appropriate building on the base. Eager teams open their doors to greet the forklifts and offload the cargo.

A few days ago I was an innocent passerby who saw crates of bananas and lettuce arrive. JOY! I ran back to the lab to tell my friends that we would be having bananas and salad with dinner! We all cheered!


Meanwhile, the mail room busily sorted through the mail that was delivered. Mail for field teams with helicopter support is sent down to the helicopter hangar. Mail for McMurdo residents is sorted by name, and those lucky souls who receive packages get their names posted on the McMurdo Operations website, summoning them to come to the post office to pick it up.

It is, indeed, a happy day in McMurdo when an aircraft arrives with cargo!

Smear slides galore!

My main job with the sedimentology team for the last several weeks has been taking photographs in regular light and cross polar light (see the pictures at the bottom of this blog) of magnified smear slides from the core. Brad Field on the night logging crew makes at least one smear slide from each meter of core (we have drilled 1138.54 meters of core = at least 1139 smear slides) and more from some intervals of sediment. A smear slide is made by taking a little scrape of the sediment with a tool (toothpicks and dental tools are both used) and then spreading that sediment sample thinly on a glass microscope slide. A clear fixative is added to the slide to hold the sediment in place and then a cover slip is attached. Each smear slide is labled with the depth in the core from which it was taken.

These smear slides are used initially by the night logging crew to help with the description of the core and to give the initial compositional name to the sediments. The sediment might be mostly terriginous (sediment from the land), or perhaps have more volcanic or biologic origins. The smear slides also give the team some information about grain sizes. This may make the difference in the name given to the sediment in the formation. For example, diamictite vs sand with pebbles. To be true diamictite, the sediment must have all three grain sizes, gravel, sand and mud, without any one of those size classes, that section of rock will have another name. This information is part of Chris Fielding's core summary shared with the whole group every morning.

The photos I'm taking are primarily for archival purposes. There are scientists working with this information all around the world and most will never travel to Florida to view the actual core itself. The images taken by the teams here are placed on a shared computer drive that everyone in the project has access to. This makes sharing the samples much easier than having to physically send the one set of smear slides to different countries....it also means that we only need one set, because everyone can use it, we don't need one set for each scientist. With 1200 smear slides, you don't want to make lots of sets! It is also part of our data set, the information that core description and characterization is based upon needs to be accessible to everyone in the team.


Compare the two pictures of the same microscope view of smear slide (at 10x). What observations can you make about the various grains with the two kinds of different lighting?

Field Trips, Field Trips and More Field Trips...

Sorry to have been away from my computer for so long. I've been busy seeing more of Antarctica, specifically the ANDRILL drill site, Robert Scott's hut at Cape Evans, and the Wright Valley. In this blog I'll start with the most recent trip and work backwards because I really want to share this photograph with you.

On Wednesday (11/28) a group of us from ANDRILL went on a field excursion to one of the valleys. We flew in aboard a helicopter that dropped us on the flat area near where I'm standing. Here is a quote from the introduction section of the Wright Valley Field Excursion guide given out to us:
"The Dry Valleys have long been a feature of great interest on the Antarctic continent. Not only because of their unique absence of ice and snow but as a result of this, their accessibility to geologic features that are ice covered in a majority of the continent. Little was known of the region until 1955 when the New Zealand party of the Commonwealth Trans-Antarctic Expedition, 1955-1958, resulted in the first thorough geologic assessment of Victoria Land." (Peter Webb, whom I photographed at our Open House, was one of the students on that expedition.) "...On this trip a variety of erosional and depositional features will be observed that reflect the complex Cenozoic history of the region."

In the photograph above, the distant peaks behind where I'm standing you can see the deposited layers that are lighter in color. Those layers are part of the Beacon Supergroup composed of sedimentary rocks like siltstones, limestones and sandstones and also have fossils of fresh water fish and plants from the Mesozioc Triassic time. The valley that is directly behind me clearly shows erosion from giant glaciers during the Cenozoic era. The other thing you should note is the glacier way off in the distance. That is the Wright Upper Glacier. Beyond that is the East Antarctic ice sheet that covers the largest portion of the continent.

One of the other cool things about this are is that the ground responds to the temperature fluctuations, freezing and thawing causing cracks that form the land into pattern ground- connected polygons. If you look closely at this photograph you will see some rocks laying flat and some sitting on edge. If you look at the lines created by the rocks sitting on their edges you will see lines that meet where the snow is. This is where three polygons of the pattern ground join together. As the helicopter took us to the bottom of the valley I took this next photograph of the valley floor where you can see some of these polygons, pattern ground.

The helicopter dropped us off at a New Zealand hut next to Vanda Lake. We left our gear and hiked around until lunch, came back to the hut and feasted. (I'm glad there was a port-o-potty next to the hut!) We picked up our gear and hiked a few more miles through what will be a very broad, shallow stream bed later in the season. For now, it was dry sand and pebbles.








We dropped our stuff off again at a US hut where some guys were working on the upkeep of a seismic array. They had a very cozy hut and had coffee waiting for us! That's one thing I really, really like about being here- everyone is a friendly neighbor. Too bad we can't all live that way off ice. After coffee and more hiking, the helicopter picked us up right on time and delivered us back to McMurdo just in time for dinner.

This photo shows the lower portion of the Wright Valley. Imagine where I was standing in the first photo as the top of the valley, this would be near the middle and the Ross Sea is still beyond.

Don't High-Fire Andrill Penguins!

Penguin made in mold from ordinary slip clay (?)
that has been glazed and is awaiting firing

The title of this blog requires some explanation. Do you recall that several weeks ago I mentioned going to the ceramics room sometimes? What I did was I took the fine material that accumulated in the boxes beneath the rock saws that we were using to cut samples from the core for various research purposes.

Rock Trimsaw used for cutting
samples for research from Andrill Core

Bucket of 'cuttings' collected
from box beneath rock trimsaw

I had the vision of making a world-class piece of art from Andrill clay. Note that the last time I touched clay was in Middle School or High School. Luckily I was able to turn to some of the regulars in the ceramics room for help, which include John, Denise, Jena, and Dave, as well as Brie and Meredith.

John working on an intricate pattern on a vase.
John is a master of patience and a ceramics room guru.

First of all, the material I had from the saw included lots of silt and coarser particles, so I had to wet it, make it really goopy, and put it through a sieve. John suggested that I try a mold.

The goopy mud mixture I used in my efforts to make a penguin mold

Penguin #1
They have a neat penguin mold. Basically one just pours the goopy clay in, then pours it out again, and repeats several times, then leave it for 24 to 48 hours to dry somewhat, then take it out, let it dry a bit more, then sand any irregularities off, and it is ready for ‘bisque-firing’ or ‘low firing’ in the kiln. This was all really exciting, and I got lots of help from people – they were all quite curious to see whether it would work.

Denise works on trimming one of her works of art
So far so good. It came out of the kiln after bisque firing a deep reddish-brown color. I did not think to take any pictures of my prized Andrill penguin. I then decided I would just clear glaze it – I thought that the natural purity of 13 million-year-old McMurdo Sound clay and silt in my artwork should be allowed to shine through.

Gena working on adding handles to some cups. She is a cup-making demon.
She works as a Helo-Tech (the person who helps people buckle themselves safely
into a helicopter, and makes sure the cargo is loaded safely,
and rides with the pilot and helps in landings and take-offs).

Several days later I went in to the ceramics room and Gena looked at me with downcast eyes “I have some sad news for you.” My penguin had collapsed and turned in to a glazed mass of pottery –but it was a beautiful deep green color.

Remains of penguin #1

Moral of the story: One cannot ‘high fire’ Andrill penguins because the material does not have enough clay in it to bind it –it is too silty, and it just 'flows'. The experts in the ceramics room all reckon that I will be able to low-fire Andrill creations without them collapsing, because the low fire is the same temperature as the bisque-firing, which we know worked. We have yet to see …

Penguin # 2

I tried pouring the goopy mixture into the mold again, but I didn’t trim it properly at the top, so it cracked as it dried. I then needed to ‘rehydrate’ the clay and add some ordinary clay to help bind the siltier material together.

Penguin # 3
I poured the goopy mixture into the mold again, and left it to dry – carefully making sure that I trimmed the material at the top. That was Sunday. Monday I went to Cape Evans (and saw REAL penguins), then I was working Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday evenings. Whoops. I went in tonight, and the penguin was cracked – I had left it in the mold too long.

Ceramic penguin rookery - the creations of Dave - who helped me save Trivet # 2
Dave hand sculpts marine mammals. He is currently working on a fish for one of the biologists.

Penguin # 4
I poured it into the mold tonight (Friday 30th), and I am hoping that everything works. I will have to make sure that I get back to the ceramics room sometime before Sunday night.

Trivet # 1
I have also tried making several trivets. Basically I added ordinary clay to the Andrill clay and I let it dry out a bit, then I rolled it out, and let it dry a bit more until I could carve the texture for my picture into the clay. The first one is a map of Antarctica showing the winter and summer sea-ice extent. It has just been bisque-fired, but is not out of the kiln yet. It definitely won’t make it into a museum – it was quite buckled and upturned at the edges before going in to the kiln – but I am hoping it stays in one piece, so I can glaze it.

Trivet # 2
I used the same process as for Trivet # 1, except I scored it more (too) deeply to prevent it from curling or buckling. I carved a scence from Beacon Valley into it. Then I lifted it up, and it broke along the score lines. Luckily Dave and John were there, and Dave helped me patch it with paper clay. Today I tried to tidy up the carved surface, and put it on the shelf for bisque firing.

I’ll miss the ceramics room – playing around and being creative is something I do not normally get the time to do, and I have really enjoyed going there when I have the time. I have also gotten to meet and talk with people at McMurdo that are not part of Andrill, which is good.

Brie (she is a baker in the kitchen) and
Meredith (works in the kitchen) work on their creations

So, even if Penguin #4 bites the dust, I’ll still be happy about all the time I spent over there – thanks y’all. I've accepted the reality that I will not create a museum centerpiece - I just hope that something I make stays together so I can take it home!

Launching a Met Balloon

November 17, 2007


Meteorological (met) balloons are launched from McMurdo twice daily to gather atmospheric data that helps predict the weather. A weatherman’s job in Antarctica is especially difficult for several reasons. First, there is no radar data for the meteorologists to use for this area. Think about how our weathermen at home use radar images as a matter of course! Second, weather here can change dramatically and dangerously in just a matter of hours. But the greatest challenge for the weather predictors here is that they are acutely aware that people’s lives depend on the accuracy of their predictions. Helicopter flights and fixed wing flights are governed by the decisions made at the Met Center, as are field teams’ travel plans. If a plane takes off, it must be able to fly to its destination. There are precious few other places for them to land if the weather deteriorates.

So, imagine my excitement when Patricia Ballou invited me to launch one of the met balloons. Patricia has quite an amazing story. She is on a leave from the army where she has deployed to the Mideast twice, once to Iraq and once to Afghanistan. She worked as a combat weatherperson in the army and is now gathering data and helping predict the weather in Antarctica this year. She is also writing climate interviews for Celsias. Check out her interview with David Harwood, the co-chief of ANDRILL and keep watching for an interview she is working on with me! (www.celsias.com then scroll down the right side to Patricia’s name.)


Patricia is adding in weather data to the computer that came in from one of the Met field stations while I was there.

I met her at the Met Center and when I arrived she had begun hydrating the Sonde. The Sonde is a complicated device that records many different types of data including temperature, barometric pressure, and relative humidity, while also carrying an antenna that allows satellites to track it as well as to send data back to the McMurdo weather computers. This morning, ten satellites were tracking this one balloon! I found it interesting that the same data is received in South Carolina where besides helping predict the weather here, it is being used in world climate models.

Patricia and I took the fully hydrated Sonde down to the “balloon shack,” a two story structure built on prime McMurdo real estate. When the door is opened, what a view there is of the Ross Sea and the Trans-Antarctic Mountains!


Balloon shack—notice the two story section—very large Met balloons can be inflated here.



Patrica’s pointing out the view of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains and Hut Point.



Patricia turns on the helium pumps in the huge outside tanks.


Blowing up the balloon with helium.

Patricia deftly ties the Sonde onto the inflated balloon.
The Sonde has a small wire that records all of the measurements--and an antenna on the other end that sends the info to the McM computers.

Guess who I am missing!



Walking out of the balloon shack was tricky. It was very windy and felt like I could take wing and fly at any moment. The wind kept whipping the balloon around over my head, so I hung on to it and the Sonde, worried I would mess this up and ruin an expensive piece of equipment!


It felt like the wind was winning at this point. I was concentrating on the directions Patricia had given me—let go of the balloon and wait until you feel it tug on the Sonde, then let it go too.
Mentally rehearsing— concentrate! Don’t mess up!

And there she goes! If you look carefully, you can see the Sonde unraveling its string to dangle quite some distance from the balloon.

Walking back to the Met building I took this picture—it’s the building with the large white golf ball on top. Notice the “catwalk” because in the next picture I am ON that walk. Patricia and I went up on the roof where she takes precipitation samples. I liked the view! But I didn’t like the one flight climb down the metal rung ladder to get back inside!

Following the tracks

In the roads around town, there are many interesting tracks made by the wide variety of heavy equipment and all-terrain vehicles used here. The picture above shows the tracks and some of the vehicles they were made by.

It isn't always easy to match them up. I still haven't seen the vehicle that made these:
Based on the marks it has left in the snow and dirt, I can guess what the tire or tread surface that made it might have looked like and I can get an idea about the path it followed as well as how large/wide a vehicle it might be.

Similarly, we can use the tracks and paths left behind in the marine sediments of the core by small animals to figure out what type of animal (often worms) might have left them, their size, how they were moving or behaving, and perhaps how many were active in an area (population). These sections of sediment that were disturbed by biological organisms post-deposition but pre-consolidation (after the sediment settled but before it turned into rock) are described as being bioturbated - mixed by living organisms. The most important information that the ANDRILL project gains from these trace fossils are from those that can be used as index fossils - giving a date or date range for the rock in which they appear. Many of these characteristic trace fossil types have specific names even though we don't know the exact species or genus that created it. One type, called escape traces or Fugichnia, are created when a shallow burrowing, near surface, or surface marine animal gets burried suddenly under a quantity of sediment and has to dig furiously for the surface to survive. (Look up "trace fossils" or "trace fossil classification" for more information about these fascinating fossils!)

In the photo of bioturbated sediment in the core above and to the left, see if you can find burrows and other evidence of the movement of organisms through the sediment. What might you be able to tell about the organism involved?

Notice what the movement of organisms has done to the layering of the fine sediments. Compare it to the picture on the right of soft sediment deformation caused by physical or mechanical stresses experienced by the sediment over time. What similarities and differences can you find?