Pawnee Buttes

This is a long delayed post because with work and such I forgot that it was partially written here. Oops, sorry. I'm back now in the US where the spring has been unseasonably warm (like in most the country), but this leads to lots of evening time to go on bike rides, runs (yes, I'm training for a 10k - more on this soon), and walks with my dog. Because it's been so warm, we've had lots of flowers and trees blooming this year and they haven't even been killed by a big snowstorm. Riding around town and catching a whiff of lilac or apple blossoms is really nice and I will miss it this summer when it will inevitably be too hot for words and I want to lie around the house eating frozen fruit or swimming in the pool. Most likely I will be freezing in my office a good chunk of the hottest days since our building thermostat seems set to ice-cube most the time. I should emphasize that my tolerance for cold is much better than my tolerance for heat. When I get hot I generally get cranky and not so much fun to be around.

Eastern Colorado

Anyway, the point of this ramble about spring is that Mr.Wonderland and I were able to go on a three day bike camping trip in March (yes, it is June now) that was lovely. I haven't done much bike touring, though Mr.Wonderland has done quite a bit, so I'm slowly breaking into it. We decided to go up to the Pawnee Grasslands in Northeastern Colorado to see the Pawnee Buttes. Several pluses to this trip include that the terrain was relatively flat, so we wouldn't have too many climbs, and that we wouldn't be in the mountains where we were likely to encounter snow or strong winds. We also convinced some of our friends that they should come out for a night and camp at the grasslands with us. This was a big plus because, 1, we got to hang out with our friends after working our butts off on a long ride, and 2. they could bring our dog. We brought all our own gear, food, water, etc. with us, but we didn't want to take our dog as well.  It turned out to be a good thing that we didn't bring her because the route we took included roads without any shoulders (we rode on the white line) and her bike trailer would have been impeding the semis filled with milk or natural gas that were passing us at 65mph. Awesome, I know. We also had a headwind the entire first day, and many farmers were putting fertilizer (aka manure) on their fields, so the smell was blown into our faces with vigor! I saw so much of Colorado that I hadn't seen before. We had one friendly car that honked and waved, but most the plains dwellers were wondering, what the F* are these crazy kids doing?  However, when we arrived in Pawnee we were happy to be done with the headwind, the fast cars, and the 85 miles of riding that we quickly set up camp and cooked dinner. It was mostly clear so we did some star gazing before I crashed for the night. We were in the campground, which is closed, but we just couldn't go any further that day.

Mountains! Before too long we couldn't see the mountains at all anymore.

Setting up camp with friends. The white dog is ours.

The next morning we woke up to fog, which for Colorado is quite odd. We ate, packed up, and locked our bikes near the campground gate. Then we all piled in our friends' car to go to the Buttes. We had planned to ride all the way to the buttes, but the additional 20ish miles on dirt road were going to take a long time and we hoped that we could beat a wind shift and at least get some tail wind. In that we were lucky and on the way west we got some easterly winds that helped us on our way. We saw the buttes and a wind farm nearby. It was pretty and I enjoyed the flash flood ditches in the area.

Fog?

Grasslands with faint wind farm in background.

Flash flood drainage.

Me in the flash flood drainage.

At the Buttes with the whole crew.

We parted ways (them with our dog) back at the campground and we rode back west toward Leadville. This ride was pretty nice, but man can Colorado be flat! Plus, it was a Sunday so there were lots of horse trailers in rural CO and people who let their dogs run around. A few of these dogs were nice. You know what's not nice? Seeing in your peripheral vision 3 rottweilers growling, leaping a ditch and chasing you. Yeah, I've never been scared of dogs before and I've worked with lots over many years at humane societies, but I was terrified. Fortunately the owners were outdoors and called them off quickly, but I was still almost crying by the time that happened. We'd slowed down to avoid encouraging them to chase us (we've learned from our dog and squirrels - the chase is the main goal!). They were probably curious, but please folks, if you have dogs that you let wander outdoors off leash, get an invisible fence or keep them in a yard. This was not fun for us and the dogs could have been killed if we were cars.

What it felt like. Sound effects not included.

Colorado is really flat out East.

We arrived in Loveland and stayed at Boyd Lake SP, which is one of the few SP that has a campground open year round. We got there and set up and could see the highway from the site. It's weird to think that driving it would take an hour to drive what we knew would take 4-5 hours to ride. It's just amazing how much longer it takes a person when you use your own muscles and calories to get somewhere. We tried to pay but they only had listed powered sites, which to us implied there was a different fee for unpowered sites. Nope, as we learned the next morning when a park cop came over to tell us we were rascals. We paid, we're happy to support parks, but it seems wrong that an RV that has full power and dumps waste cost the same as two bikes with a tent, self sufficient camp stove, and no waste. Anyway... whatever. We rode out early to avoid what the friendly camp host informed us would be very strong winds. The ride south was nice and started entering familiar territory. I think we flew that day just because we were excited to get home and relax. And we arrived home just at noon, and that's when the strong winds of the day started. We got really lucky and had a great time. I'm not sure I'd ride that route again, but I'm definitely up for more bike touring! :)

Weather observations from the day that show the winds picking up at Noon.

New Zealand

I am back from Antarctica now and settling into life at home. I was super happy to see my family and friends again, but I was fortunate to spend a few days in New Zealand before coming home. A few years ago I went on a month long trip to New Zealand and was able to see a good portion of the country. One area I didn't get to was Mt. Cook, the highest mountain in New Zealand and origin to several large glaciers. Now you're probably thinking, didn't she have enough of glaciers, mountains, ice, and cold in Antarctica? The answer to that is definitely not. I never get tired of mountains and I would always prefer the cold to heat and humidity.

However, New Zealand was in the midst of summer, so I was able to get some heat and humidity in the forests there. When we arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand it was raining, so when we got off the plane it was warm and humid with the smells of plants. My first fresh meal was a very exciting prospect, and I was thrilled for the night to be dark. The first night there I even felt a small earthquake in the hotel, which was new to me.

The next morning I got a rental car and was on my way south to Mt. Cook National Park. Getting out of Christchurch was an interesting adventure because I kept telling myself "left, left, left," I was not used to driving so fast (the Antarctic speed limit is 25mph),  and I didn't have anyone to navigate the streets that either curve, change name, or are closed from the Earthquake. It was a relief to finally be out in the country and I took some small country roads to Mt. Cook. Driving through the countryside of Canterbury was lovely and it got clearer and warmer as I got nearer the mountains. Eventually I had to change into shorts and a t-shirt it was so warm. I arrived at Mt. Cook and set up my tent, drove into town to find out about hiking, and then got a tasty dinner at a cafe in town before heading back to camp.  I really enjoyed seeing the stars from Mt. Cook the first night, and at dusk a pretty green rockwren was visiting my tent and looking at me curiously to see what I was doing (reading).

Sunset on Mt. Cook the first evening.

The next morning I woke to cloud cover, but I decided to hike up towards the Mueller Hut anyway since I like hiking. It didn't take too long of vertical climbing before I was hiking in the cloud, and then I could hear Keas calling as they flew below and rockfalls or avalanches above. The hike felt a bit like climbing a stair stepper, as the hike followed a bunch of stairs up the hillside. I was getting a bit cold in the cloud and going to turn back, but then some hikers came down who had stayed at the hut the night before. They said that if I kept going just a bit further then I would climb out of the cloud and it was beautiful up above. I needed no other urging and then kept going. Not long after I did climb out of the cloud and then up a scree slope to the pass. From the pass I could see Mt. Sefton, the Footstool, and Mt. Cook, as well as down the glacial valleys. The view was breathtaking and I enjoyed the walk up to the hut. I had lunch on the hut balcony before heading back down the mountain in full sunlight. By the bottom I was really wishing I'd thought to bring my hiking poles, but alas I didn't have them. I went to my tent to relax and cool off, then drove to the Tasman Valley to look at that glacier. I only went for a short walk here, but from the lookout I could see the terminus of the Tasman Glacier, which is enormous and covered in rock debris. I was very happy to get dinner and go to bed when the sun went down.

Hillside as I hiked into the cloud. Look at that vegetation!

Hiking out of the cloud and the first peek of the mountains above.

Me with Mt. Sefton (L) and the Footstool (R) at the pass.

Mueller Hut with Mt. Cook directly behind and the Footstool to the left.

View into the valley after the clouds burned off. I camped at the base of the green moraine to the right of the glacial lake.

The next morning I woke to another day of cloud cover, but I got up early to explore the Hooker Glacier Valley. I was the first one up that morning, so I had a nice, quiet hike up to the glacier terminus. In the glacial lake at the end there were ice bergs that had calved off the glacier face. I wanted to swim out and look at some, but it was cool, I was alone, and the water was milky so I couldn't see the depth, so I decided that wasn't such a good idea. Instead I walked out and continued north on my way back to Christchurch.

Bridge at start of Hooker Valley hike.

Ice in the Hooker Glacial Lake.

Instead of driving the whole distance, I'd decided to stop at Lake Tekapo, a pretty blue glacial lake that I'd stopped briefly at en-route to Mt. Cook. I stopped at the monument to the Collies who helped start sheep farming in the Canterbury region and thought of Sprite! Then I went into town to find the holiday park, where I got a tent site. From the holiday park I could walk to the base of Mt. John, which borders the lake and has a few telescopes at the summit. I hiked to the top of Mt. John and then down and back along the lake shore. Instead of going straight back to the tent I headed into town, where I got a tasty dinner. Then I went back to the car and read until I fell asleep.

Collie monument with Lake Tekapo in the background

View from Mt. John over the plains of Canterbury.

Lake Tekapo from Mt. John. The clouds kept spilling over the mountains into the valley.

Playground near holiday park with elephant jungle gym!

The next morning I woke early and it started raining shortly after. I drove into Christchurch with rain the entire way. I dropped off my stuff at the hotel I was staying at, then returned the rental car downtown. From downtown I walked back to the hotel, but stopped to look more at the central business district (which is still cordoned off) and to see an exhibit about wearable art at the museum downtown. Christchurch felt much more alive this time I was there, probably because it was a Tuesday and not near the holidays, but the damage to the city is humbling. I spent the evening packing and getting ready to fly out the next morning back to the States.

Final Antarctic Thoughts

I'm now in the process of getting ready to leave the continent. I've bag dragged (brought my checked luggage to be pallatized), the lab is empty, our cargo has all be retro'd, the shed is packed, the stations done. We were supposed to leave today (Feb. 9), but our plane got delayed for mechanical reasons. We're now slated to leave tomorrow sometime, though that hasn't been set in stone yet. I've had a wonderful time here, but I'm definitely ready to start the journey north to family and regular life without regular roommate changes. I'll be spending a few days in New Zealand on the way home, hopefully seeing more mountains and glaciers (I just like them, what can I say), but also trees, birds, and animals. Plus, eating fresh food! I've really been very fortunate to experience a wide range of what Antarctica has to offer, so I'll go ahead and share some of my favorite pictures that remind me of what a good 6 weeks it has been.

Hiking up Ob Hill or the circuit around the base and seeing White Island, Black Island, and Minna Bluff.

The Transantarctic Mountains and the various clouds and colors they took on.

Hut Point walk. I did this almost nightly and watched as the sea ice gradually melted away and was broken up by the icebreaker.

Adelie Penguin near Hut Point!

Helicopter flights! (That's Lars next to me)

Flying the SUMOs with John on Sundays when no one else was around.

Experiencing the deep field and storms that could entail.

Emperor Penguin!

Seeing the sea ice edge and the various patterns it forms.

Hiking up to Castle Rock for views of McMurdo and Mt. Erebus

Flying north to Terra Nova Bay and seeing the immense Drygalski Ice tongue.

When we couldn't reach Inexpressible Island, we were able to stop and get lunch at the Italian Base!

A surprise visit to the CTAM fuel cache and the flight up the Lennox-King Glacial valley.

Climbing around on towers attaching various AWS parts. That's me sitting on the box and the two pilots helping me with the solar panel. John is digging in the tool bag. (Photo courtesy of Kathryn)

Experiencing some mild katabatic flow while servicing Manuela and seeing the damage stronger flow does to a weather station. Also, crossing the last station off our season's list!

Manuela

Three days ago I wrote a post about our attempt to reach Inexpressible Island to replace Manuela, weather station there. Today was our last possible flight day before we fly north to Christchurch on Thursday. Tomorrow we have to clean up our rooms, our lab, and bag drag our luggage to be palatalized for the flight north. So, doing a flight and work day wasn't possible. So, today was the last shot to finish our final station of the season, but it didn't look to be promising. I woke up to a dusting of snow that had fallen and stayed through the night, which is unusual here, and we were backups on the helo schedule. However, we got the call that our flight was going, and by 8:35 we were off.

Ross Island (top left) and Inexpressible Island with Manuela. The flights are not direct because we don't fly over open water, so we skirted the coast north to Manuela.

The flight to Inexpressible Island is a long one, so we stopped on the way at Marble Point to get fuel before continuing the final 1.5 hours to Manuela. The winds were again pretty strong today, but the turbulence was not as intense, so we were able to land near the old weather station. The pictures below show the weather station before and after we were done with our work. As I mentioned before, this station is particularly important for work my research group is doing, but the strong katabatic winds we study also mean the station takes a lot of abuse almost all year. Today the winds were continuously 35-40 mph, but the 17 F temperature and sun made it warm, so it was a pretty pleasant day on Inexpressible Island.

We got down to business of taking out the old station completely, and many of the bolts and instruments had been broken. In the picture below you can see the aerovane has been impaled; many cords were also severed, so it goes without saying that the station has not been transmitting for quite some time. We set about replacing the tower, the batteries, and all the instrumentation. The new wind sensors are designed for high wind locations so hopefully they hold up a bit longer. With the help of our Rigger Dan, we anchored the tower securely by bolting it to the rock surface and then with guy wires and rocks (I did the rock moving!). In the end we had a transmitting station that looks pretty darn good, so hopefully it stays on the air at least through September when John will be using it for other research down here.

Manuela before: Notice the impaled aerovane and loose rope.

Manuela after: me with Dan and (nearly) completed station. You can see Reeves Glacier in the background, which channels a large portion of the katabatic flow here. The wind direction sensor (left black sensor on boom) will stay pointed that direction most the year, and the wind speed sensor (right black sensor on boom) will continue spinning like mad. You may also notice that this is one of the few pictures of me in the field actually wearing Big Red zipped up, with my hands in my pockets, and goggles. It was windy enough I needed the warmth and protection.

In addition, while we were working, our helo tech had gone walking around the island. He found a couple of molting Adelie Penguins that were sheltering in some nearby rocks. After we finished putting up the station, we walked down to see them. We didn't get close and they looked embarrassed that we saw them basically with their clothes off.

Adelie penguins molting. They're also smart and sheltering from the wind. You can see open water near the island in the background.

The geology on the island was also interesting to me, and actually visible unlike the majority of the continent. Because it is so windy, snow doesn't accumulate and the rock surface is visible. This is why our station is installed on hard ground instead of snow. We don't have to raise it, but it also gets pretty abused by the winds on a regular basis. The strong winds also work to shape rocks in really interesting ways. These rocks are called ventifacts, and there were plenty of wind shaped rocks on the island to googgle at as well. I put some of my favorites on the base of the tower so future science groups can see them too! I took a fair amount of pictures of the rocks on Inexpressible Island, but I won't post them all. I clearly didn't mind the paving stones of hell, at least for a day (see previous post on Inexpressible Island for context).

Interesting rock.

Another interesting rock carved out by wind.

After somewhere between 3-4 hours on the ground we were done, packed up, and started the 2 hour flight home. I'd forgotten to eat lunch because I was working so much, so I ate some food and drank some water. We stopped at a fuel cache along the way and put a barrel of fuel into the helo, and then fueled up again at Marble Point. We arrived back at McMurdo shortly after 5 pm, and we unpacked our stuff then headed to a welcome dinner after a long day of work and flying.

Both the trips were gorgeous, like our first failed attempt to reach Manuela, and on the way back I could see Cape Bird on the northern tip of Ross Island, somewhere I hadn't been able to see before today. I really enjoyed seeing the crevasses, mountains, sea ice, etc. again today, but for the flight back I had a hard time staying awake to see it all. One neat thing I did see in the morning was grease ice, probably due to the recent storm, which forms on the surface before pack ice forms. Since it is becoming fall here, the open ocean will slowly freeze over and become pack sea ice during the winter. For now, it just looks like someone spilled oil on the water, but it's just the sea freezing over.

Grease ice on the Ross Sea.

Lettau, Carolyn, and a CTAM surprise!

Lettau is fairly far south, while Carolyn is just north of 80S. CTAM is a bit southwest of Elaine.

We had a super long but productive and great day Saturday. The weather finally looked up over the ice shelf (see description below, next to the satellite image), so we were able to fly to our southernmost site for the season - Lettau - and another on the way back that was closer - Carolyn (both marked on the map above). We got to the airfield and took off at 9:10am and didn't get touch back at Pegasus until 8:30pm, and we still had to get to town to have dinner that had been held for us. However, by the end of the day we could cross both Lettau and Carolyn off our list, and we also surprise visited one of the most beautiful places I've been on the continent and probably the world.

Description of the weather - I think the forecasters get bored with cloudy bad weather many days in a row. This is also the page that gives the weather in McMurdo and South Pole, as well as the conditions around McMurdo.

The day started with really nice Fata Morgana from a surface inversion. I'd seen this before (see Arrival Heights blog post), but it was very clear the whole drive from McMurdo to Pegasus. It's clear why people say mirages make it look like there are huge cities or cities in the sky; the LDB camp where we've flown our RC airplanes looked enormous.

Fata Morgana distorting the air right near ground level. It's a pretty clear band across the entire horizon. I'm not sure what the black thing is in the distance.

We flew to Lettau first; it has been off the air and we needed to see if we could figure out what was wrong. The flight is about 400 miles from McMurdo, so the flight was a bit over 2 hours to get there. When we did it was cold and windy, but we got out and started testing the station. The instruments and antenna were fine, and the station was getting power, though the battery voltage was lower than we'd like. So, this suggests there is something wrong with the electronics in the enclosure. We can't fix that in the field so we took the box off and will ship it to Wisconsin for repairs. And we were off en-route to Carolyn.

Lettau sans AWS enclosure but with instruments still attached.

Because Lettau is so far south from Ross Island we had to get fuel before we could get to Carolyn and then home. We were scheduled to go to a fuel cache on the ice shelf, but when we got to the coordinates there was ground fog, which is very difficult to forecast. It wasn't super thick, and you could see the ground peaking through every so often, but that's not good enough for landing a twin otter safely. So we had to find a different fuel cache, if for no other reason than we needed to get home. The nearest cache was CTAM, Central TransAntarctic Mountains.

My friend and fellow group member was able to go to CTAM last year, and it looked amazing. But I knew almost all our sites this year were on the ice shelf, so I hadn't even let myself think I might get to the mountains. Nearly everyone who's reading this must know that I love mountains. When I'm near mountains I feel so much happier, lighter, relaxed, and just calm. In places with trees or complete flat I never get the same elation as when I'm in open mountains with visible peaks and open skies. I don't know how to explain it, it just is how it is. So when we started toward the mountains and could see them in the distance I was super excited. I ended up sitting awkwardly on a tower section near the front of the plane just so I could see the mountains more clearly, and I was not disappointed. We flew up the Lennox-King Glacier, just to the north of the enormous Beardmore Glacier that Scott used to ascend to the Plateau on his South Pole attempt.

I don't think I can entirely describe how wonderful the trip was, but I just loved the whole flight, and it was even better since it was a surprise. We could see the rugged peaks, neat crevasses and icefalls, and even sedimentary layers in the mountains. The fuel cache was located in this huge valley that was just relatively flat ice surrounded by mountains. We stopped and walked around a bit while the pilots refueled; as we walked around the snow crunched and shifted in a semi unsettling way (falling in a crevasse was not - is not - on my list of things to do). It was not windy and about 5F up there at 6000ft. This year there wasn't a large camp, only a few groups stayed briefly, so there was almost nothing up there. We were the only people in this huge valley filled with ice and beautiful mountains. It was just magical and I don't really know how to explain it, so I'll just add some of the pictures I took though they still aren't able to capture the elation I felt up at CTAM.

Me at CTAM with some of the mountains in the background.

The Beardmore Glacier

Peak in the central Transantarctic Mountains. You can see a neat band of sedimentary rock near the summit.

Crevasse field in the Lennox-King Glacier near the base of the mountains.

We filled the plane to the brim, and then we loaded up the fuselage with the 8 fuel barrels we used. That meant that the flight smelled a bit like fuel, which we soon got used to. It also created a good area for a footrest, though later when the barrels shifted and the cargo strap came loose I was more nervous about being crushed under a pile of fuel barrels. Fortunately this didn't happen.

Me with fuel barrels and footrest on AWS enclosure.

We flew for another 1.5-2 hours and then arrived at the site for Carolyn. We had one bad attempt because the pilots had the wrong coordinates, but we finally got there and landed. At this point it was getting really late and we had about an hour on the ground. Carolyn also wasn't transmitting, and when we arrived it became clear we needed to raise it as well or it wouldn't be found next year. This is a big job because usually it takes 2-4 hours to raise a functioning tower, and this one wasn't functioning either. Well, we decided if nothing else we'd just raise the main boom and then people could at least find it next year. It was beautiful weather and calm, so John and I, the two pilots, and two town folk we'd brought along started working on the tower. And we were off!

Carolyn before. Notice that the enclosure is buried and the whole station is less than 4ft. tall. It is also blue and beautiful out.

While John did the testing and working with the AWS enclosure, the pilots and I ended up taking off the instruments and getting the new tower section on and then reinstalling the instruments. John figured out there was something wrong with the electronics in this AWS as well, but we brought a functioning extra AWS we had taken from a station removed this year. We installed it and with the newly placed instruments attached it to the tower, and then it transmitted! All this happened in less than an hour ground time since the 6 of us worked well together. And we finished just in time as a very cold ground fog rolled in and decreased visibility. We were so thankful to the pilots for making it a long day to finish up our last stations for the season that required twin otter time. They were so friendly and helpful, and it was great to get everything done and see a beautiful part of the continent. We got back to Pegasus near 8:30pm and then had dinner in McMurdo around 9:30pm in a very quiet and calm galley. Then it was time for a shower and sleep since Sunday is the first time in weeks I could sleep in.  

Carolyn after. Now it is much taller and actually works, though we took some less important instruments off. Also notice the fog that has come in while we worked.

P.S. Our friends and colleagues stuck out at Lorne made it back late Friday night from their 2 day, unplanned camping trip.