Heading Home

Well, we did about as much as we could. It is time to get home. Flat Stanley went first - Flat Stanley get into the envelope before the nice post office lady gets mad. Hopefully he will get back to Milk River Elementary school in one piece. Look for a special stamp on his envelope. I hope I can get a picture of all of you with Flat Stanley comes back so we can put it on this blog too.

I then had to get busy. I had to finish my 'On Ice' report before I packed. Once I packed I had to do the 'Bag Drag' where I took my bags, except for one carry-on, to be put on a pallet that would go on the plane.


Our plane kept getting delayed as they needed to bring something in and were waiting for it. Finally, we were told to be ready to go at 6:00 am. We made it and all our friends who had to still stay came to say good bye to us - it was sad time a bit as everyone had worked very hard together and made it a very good project. 'Shuttle Bob' drove us out in the big 'Ivan the Terra Bus' (these are actually made in Alberta and you can ride one on the Athabasca glacier in Banff-Jasper parks).



We got to the 'Pegasus' runway which they had to move onto the Ice Shelf (which is a floating glacier 80 m thick). Here I am just before getting on the plane and here is one last view of White Island. It was cold and windy when we were leaving. There were some of Flat Stanley's friends leaving with Stacy too. Oddly enough the one on the right is also called Flat Stanley!















We flew again on the C-17 but this time everyone had 'jump' seats. I was very tired and slept most of the way to Christchurch. The C-17 was late to Christchurch so I rushed to return my ECW clothes then hurried back to make my flight to Aukland.


In Aukland I actually got to see something green - and I know this picture does not look like much but when you have not seen anything growing at all it is good to see. Poor Flat Stanley - he will not get to see anything growing until the spring in Canada as he is going all the way home closed up in an envelope! There was not much more to tell - I was just in airports and on airplanes for neary 40 hours till I got home. I finally got to see sunset from my plane between Los Angeles and San Francisco! One thing I was sad about is that I never even got a chance to see the Southern Cross (some stars you can only see from the Southern Hemisphere) or the moon upside down!

With some friends on the last night

I made a lot of new friends and colleagues here but I also ran into some old ones.
Here is a picture of another Professor Doug - he is a seismologist from Washington University in St. Louis. We actually shared an office together in 2005 at ANU in Canberra. He just came down and will be going to the South Pole station from where he will put out seismic stations to help to try to find out more about a whole new mountain range that was discovered a few years ago but does not come out of the ice at all. We were having some good South Australian grape juice.

Here is another old friend - Professor Mark from Montana State Univ. in Bozeman. He is a glaciologist who is interested in 'bugs' in glaciers. He came home the same time I did. He and his friends cut a tunnel into one of the glaciers in the dry valley to see what kinds of things they could find buried in the ice. He has a blog too - you can see it at http://taylorglacier.blogspot.com/

One Last Great Trip by Heli - The Little Dry Valley

Hi Grade 1's. This is what happened on Thursday - I got to go on my field excursion to check out the geology and the rocks that would have made up the sedimentary rocks that we were drilling. We were very lucky as the weather was not that good but we managed to find a break when the sun came out and it did not look like the weather would get bad. Flat Stanley and I got up at five so we could be ready to call you on the telephone, and then we waited around for the word 'GO' and we raced down to the helicopter pad. Eight of us squished into the back of the big helicopter, it is a good thing that Flat Stanley was so flat already! Here is Thomas G. showing off in his crash helmet.

There were a lot of interesting things to see - the next two pictures are some patterns on the sea ice and on the ground that were very strange.

The first stop on our excursion (Note to my 4th year undergrads in geophysics - No this is not geological boondoggle just so you have it straight :)) was the Miers Valley -also called the 'Little Dry Valley' because, well, it is not as big as the other dry valleys! These are incredible places. There were two glacier tongues coming down from the mountains and one could see that a little bit of water had flowed from them down to a frozen lake below. But otherwise it was just wind blown sandy material and rocks. There was no wind and when the helicopter stopped it was incredibly still. The group of us went for a hike up the mountainside to see what we could see.















It is hard to see how big everything is - can you see the group having lunch on the hill by the glacier? Here are some more rocks - this is a big piece of granite about 2 m long that has been carved by the wind. How long do you think that would take? Such wind carved rocks are called ventefacts.








We then got back into the helicopter to go visit a small volcano that makes up one of the Daly Islands. We could see it as we approached. Flat Stanley - why do you get to sit up with the pilot - that is not fair!! Where is your helmet too!













Here are some other neat rocks - these are volcanic rocks and you can see all the little holes in them that are caused by hot gases that escape when the magma gets close enough to the surface. This really black rock is called a 'basalt'.
We then visited a glacial moraine that sticks out of the sea ice but the weather started to get bad again so we had to head home. It was a great day all in all.

On the Phone from Antarctica

Hi Grade 1's - I am going to put your questions up because some of the people would like
to know what you knew and what you wanted to know.

What we know:

• It is cold there
• There are lots of rocks
• There are lots of penguins
• There is a volcano
• There is lots of ice.
• Ther are only 2 legged animals and swimming animals.
• It can be -89c
• They can have snowstorms and blizzards.
• There is lots of snow
• There are lots of seal holes
• There is an ocean
• There are lots of seals
• It is light there right now

What we would like to learn about Antarctica:

• Where is the zone of never-melting ice?
• Where is the volcano?
• How do you make the rocks into a rock sample?
• What does the volcano shoot out? Is it ice or lava?
• How is there a volcano made out of ice?
• How did Antarctica get its name?
• Why is it so icey?
• Where do the snowstorms come from?
• How did you build the inukshuk? Did it take a long time?
• Did people go to Antarctica before it froze?
• Why is it so snowy?
• Why are there so many rocks?

We talked a little bit about how the continents were connected. One of the students knew about this already. Could you talk about what type of life used to exist?

Flat Stanley and I put together a slide show that tried to answer these questions, I will make a link to it when I am back in Edmonton. The people from the CTV Lethbridge station and the Lethbridge Herald also came down to be there when we had our discussion. I heard 'Come Back Soon' to Flat Stanley. He is going to have one more adventure, however, before he gets mailed.

Here are some links from our talk
- The presentation (in pdf format)
- The CTV video clip
- The Lethbridge Herald Article (in pdf)

Last Night at the Rig - To the Ross Sea

Hi Grade ones - it is my last night at the rig - our work is all done - so we made some time to go out to the edge of the ice right up to the Ross Sea! And guess what we saw: Penguins, lots of penguins. We saw mostly Adelies but also a couple of big Emperors! We rode the snow mobiles out from the rig over the thick old ice and then right onto the new ice which was only about 20 cm thick. It is strange ice because it is salty. Can you see the Ross Sea just beyond the ice. This picture is nearly at midnight




Guess what else we saw - big fat seals too. They are not at the ice edge but they stay by big fractures in the ice where they can make holes that they can slip into the water. I think that this may have been a mother seal because I could hear something from the hole first, then the mother jumped into the hole and they were gone. She was very big - more than 2 metres long!




Flat Stanley - get out of the hole!!! That is not for people but for seals! That water is also -1.8 degrees Centigrade - you will get hypothermia! Come out quick and get some hot chocolate and chocolate bars! Did you bring your dry socks too! Grade ones - it is very good that you put a plastic wrap on him otherwise he would really freeze on the snow mobile trip back to the rig!

The First Hydrofracture in Antarctica!!!!!!

Here it is - a picture of a hydraulic fracture - we did the very first one on a whole continent!!! I will update this soon with more information. Here is the team that helped - they put me in the front. We also may have a world record for the number of fractures carried out in one borehole for stress measurement (20 fracs!). Three important people could not be in the picture - Rich Jarrad from U of Utah, Terry Wilson from Ohio State both of whom made this all happen (and wanted to be here but could not be) and also Hedley the sparky who was in bed at the camp. This team had Kiwis, Germans, an Italian, Americans, and of course Flat Stanley and I from Canada. This was about midnight and we were pretty tired after working for maybe 48 hours or so. Flat Stanley was a great help - he did our sleeping for us!

Logging of the Borehole

Hi - I am catching up on my blog. We have been pretty busy for the last while. The drillers hit just over 1000 m deep early last week so they shipped us back out to the rig for the geophysical logging. Flat Stanley thought we were crazy as there were no trees to cut - but this is a different kind of logging in which different kinds of instruments are put all the way into the borehole to tell us different things about the rock - such as how magenetic the different rocks are, how much they weigh, and how fast sound goes through them. The instruments are called tools and they are lowered into the borehole using a big long wire rope using the winch in the picture. It was brought by the Thomas's all the way from Germany. The neatest tool is called the borehole televiewer and it makes an image of the borehole using ultrasound just like is done in the hospital. Here is a picture of some of the borehole inside - Flat Stanley - get out of the borehole - the pressure is too high there! You can see a lot of cracks that we can use to help us know about the rock.

This time was very busy - it was about 78 hours (more than 3 days) straight. We would take turns sleeping and working at the bunk house by the rig. Here are the four of us at the end of the 78 hour period - everyone is very happy - the logging was very successful and lots of good data was acquired.

Now they begin some more coring with a smaller core size called 'NQ' - this is basically for the experiment that I have to do in a few days. I hope they get a couple of hundred metres more of the borehole for the 'fracing' experiments - will keep you up to date.

Sad thing - I have not seen any penguins again - they joke out here that it is because Flat Stanley and I are out here now.

Monster Issue Solved!

Look what turned up today! An Adelie Penguin! So, that is what the monster was . This one was checking us out - they are very curious and they are also not afraid at all. They likely do not have any real enemies out here on the ice (but they probably have to watch for seals and orcas when they go swimming - one website says that they push one of their unlucky friends in first to see what happens before they jump in themselves!)

Flat Stanley - get away from the penguin - you are not supposed to bother them and you could get in trouble! Of course, they can bother us as much as they want!








The penguins here are likely on their way (maybe a bit lost too) to the big 'rookeries' which are not too far away. Right now the females should be laying eggs and then the mother and the father will take turns watching the eggs while the other parent goes for food in the ocean. They have to walk all that way. Right now the rig is about 8 km to the ice edge.

The shipped me back to McMurdo. I caught a ride with Hedley (the 'sparky' or electrician on the rig team) in a Haglund. This cost me nothing - but if you go to the Antarctic centre in Christchurch they will charge you a lot to go on a short ride!

Monsters???

Hello Grade 1's - Look what I found today. This a picture of the snow with strange tracks in it - what could have made the tracks?? It must be a strange creature as it looks like it was walking as shown in the picture above. Then in the picture below it looks like it went sliding on its belly (Flat Stanley is pointing out the belly track between the two arrows - can you see if if you look very closely?) and pushing with its claws. Could it be a monster or some kind?? I hope I get to see it - let me know what you think could make those tracks. They are right by the rig.

Out at the rig - some sights (but no penguins yet)

First day at the rig - I actually got the computers to work (thanks Len and Luke back at the U of A). I figured out the hydraulics and checked out the rest of the equipment. We are waiting for a new container to arrive from Scott Base so we can set up a lot of the equipment. But, some other things happened. The ice divers came out to try to fix the balloons that lie under the ice along the drill rig riser. This helps to support the rig. The ice is a bit more than 7 metres thick here. So think about that - the diver has to jump in the hole in the ice and drop through that much ice into what is called the platelet ice at the base. Then they have to swim through that in the dark (the light does not make it through) in the extreme cold of the water (-1.8 C).




Another interesting sight in the sky - some very unusual ice crystal halos. The one on the left was opposite from the sun - it is likely what is called a Parhelic cirle. The rainbow like one was nearly straight up - and it may be a Circumzenethal. Apparently these are not seen very often.
Check out the website http://www.atoptics.co.uk/halo/spanti.htm for more information.

Out to the rig again - but this time in the heli!

Hi All - Finally, I am out to the rig to get going on setting up the equipment for a few days. But, I got very lucky - I ended up taking the helicopter out (Bell 212) for the short (~15 minute) ride for the daily core run.

Here again is yet another picure of Erebus on the way - at least it is a bit clearer. The wind blown ice shows some interesting patterns too.










Most of the day shift was already asleep by the time I got there - but Jono found me a bunk at the camp and off to bed. The camp mostly consists of a number of containers that have been set up. The containers and tents on the left have the kitchen, the dinner room, the lounge, and the shower and the laundry. As well the water comes from a reverse-osmosis process of the sea water. The containers on the right are the sleeping accomodations - they are basically bunks (there are 5 in my container). It is about 500 metres from rig.

Good news - there have been penguins around!!! They told me that an Emperor penquin was checking out the camp - so hopefully I will get to see them. Apparently we are only 8 km from the ice edge.

Back in McMurdo for a Few Days

Things have been rather slow - we are just waiting to go - and I will likely head out to the rig tommorrow or Tuesday. But here are a few sites around McMurdo from the bit of hiking we did. Flat Stanley came along too - he needed some exercise after eating all those cookies last week. Here he is jumping up and dow with the two Thomas's when we reached the top of Ob Hill (about 230 m high).

Observation Hill - this is a hill right next to McMurdo that we are allowed to climb to see the view. At the top of Ob Hill is a cross that was erected in 1912 by the party who found Scott's team. Scott and his men tried to be the first to make it to the South Pole but they were beaten by Amundsen. They then perished on the return journey. They walked all the way to the South Pole from here but they apparently became trapped in a blizzard before they could get back to their large cache. Their records and pictures actually survived. There are lots of good websites that talk about this story - and of other early explorers such as Shackleton and Amundsen.



Here are a couple of views from Obs Hill. The one of the left is back towards Erebus again (I cannot take enough pictures of it) - but unfortunately it is covered at the top by clouds.The next one shows the direction towards the ANDRILL rigsite - but it is too far away to be able to see the camp unless you have some binoculars!





If you look very closely you can see the temporary sea ice runway with four large propeller planes down there. If I am lucky I will get to go to those mountains one day for a field trip to check out the source of the different rocks.





Finally, here is a picture of what some of the ground around Obs Hill looks like - you might think you were on Mars!

So, this is likely the last post till I go to the rig - maybe tommorrow! Then things will be very busy.

Out to the ANDRILL rig - finally!!

Hi - Big day. After the morning meeting we looked at the weather and decided to go out to the rig. Eight of us got our ECW gear on and hopped in two of the Mattracks for the long (~ 2 hour) drive out (about 38 km from McMurdo) on the sea ice. It was cloudy still and a bit windy so Mount Erebus (the volcano) was looking ominous. When we leave we have to call in on the radio to say 'MacOps, MacOps, this is vehicle 157 driver Blank (Leslie Blank was our driver) loaded with 4 souls, enroute to ANDRILL site, ETA of 13:30, contact Laura at extension 1234 beeper 4567'. Then they tell us it is okay to go. If we do not call back to say we arrived they will immediately begin the SAR (Search and Rescue) operations - so it is very important to call so you do not get into trouble!





Finally, the drill rig appeared. It is difficult to see as it has a white shroud which does not stand out from the snow until your are close. We pulled up and finally got out to stretch after our long trip.


Everyone was pretty busy. A core was just being retrieved from the earth (about 550 m below the sea floor which is about 400 m from the ice surface). The core is a cylinder of the rock that has been cut - it is about 3 m long.

Here is an interesting piece of core - it may not look like much but it is a certain kind of rock that tells us that at the time it was put down the earth had to be cold and that ice covered the sea here. The name of the rock is called 'diamict'. But it is also interesting to my colleagues and me because of the long fracture in it - I know you may think I am crazy but that fracture tells us a lot about the forces (stresses) in the earth (for the academics see Li and Schmitt, 1998 :)).
Up inside the rig to see. Oh Oh - Andrew - get that pipe wrench out of your ear - you should never stick anything in your ear!! (Actually, Andrew is trying to listen for two small clicks made when the core barrel locks into place after falling nearly 1 km down through the drilling pipe! If he does not hear the clicks then that can be a problem as the core may not be cut properly and lost. These guys are scientific drillers - they are not paid by the foot as most drillers in the oil or mining industry would be - they are paid to get complete sets of core or else the project would be a waste).

We then had a big discussion of how to proceed. In such projects one can never know for sure what will happen and so one has to keep in mind how to best proceed. It looks like I will be here till the end now as I do not think that I can carry out the hydraulic fracture in some of the rocks which are too soft that they recently went through (Cheryl will be sad but my grad students are happy I expect). This picture shows Alex Pyne (the rig engineer) discussing the various options and using the kitchen steel wall as a blackboard! We made plans for me to go out to begin setup early next week assuming more of the equipment arrives (it should at 2:00 am tonight on the scheduled C-17 flight from ChristChurch).


Finally, just before we returned to McMurdo, the helicopter came out to pick up the core. They had not been able to for awhile due to the bad weather. Flat Stanley - get away from the rear blades - that is the most dangerous place you can stand!!! and the pilot will soon tell you to get away.







One final note - all you tech types born in the later part of the baby boom will very likely be familiar with our hero - Tom Swift Jr (well, actually the new Tom Swift Jr.) Remember old Tom - he was a gadzillionaire youth who made lots of great inventions as he basically had most of the military/industrial complex at his disposal - well, this is what it seems like being at McMurdo! Eat your heart out!



Li, Y.Y., and D.R. Schmitt, Drilling induced core fractures and in situ stress, J. Geophys. Res., 103, 5225-5239, 1998