Part 2 The Noise, the Silence, and the Music It is flat here. Really flat. The horizon is identical in every direction. There is no geographic feature to use as a frame of reference. To complicate matters, there are two different systems of navigation that make “true north” the opposite physical direction from “grid north.”…
Part 3 “Second to the right and straight on ‘til morning” We loaded up the gear on our small fleet of snowmobiles and headed out into the open ice today. We drove about 15 miles to one of 30 seismic stations that need to be removed and returned to the researchers at UC San Diego….
November 15, 2016 I spent a day with the penguins yesterday. After a short helicopter ride with Elaine and the science fiction author Kim Stanley Robinson, we arrived at Cape Royds. This is home to another early 20th century hut used by the explorer Ernest Shackleton. It is also home to a penguin rookery of about…
Monday Nov 7, 2016 Elaine Hood, a former History professor gave me an excellent guided tour of the Discovery Hut today. The hut was originally built by Robert Falcon Scott’s team during his 1902 expedition. Shackleton was on that voyage too. Scott sent Shackleton home before they arrived at the South Pole because of sickness….
Nov 4, 2016 As the temperature rises in the Antarctic Spring, the Weddell Seals chew holes through the sea ice to sun themselves and their pups. On a clear day like today, their tear drop-shaped bodies standout like giant slugs lying on miles and miles of sea ice. They like to recline on their backs,…