Travels in Antarctica: Stupid is punished severely down here

By Frosty Wooldridge

          “We decided to get out of our bags and make a search for the tent.  We did so, bitterly cold and utterly miserable.  We returned against the wind, nursing our faces and hands and settled that we must cook a meal somehow…in time we ate pemmican and tea full of hairs from our bags, penguin feathers, dirt and debris, but it was delicious.”

                                    Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey In The World, 1922

           “I need a couple of personal stories that will give the Internet readers a

perspective on two average people who came down here,” Sandy told me one

morning.  “I need a regular ASA employee and a scientist.”

          “You got it,” I said.  “I’ll have the story by the end of the week.  Give me

800 words each.”

          “Count on it,” he said.

          The following are two accounts from ordinary people who ventured to Antarctica.  In interviewing them, I found they were no different than the average American.  Here are their stories:

          The Tasmanian Devil didn’t sweep her off her feet nor did the Jungles of Borneo make her homesick, but for Laurie—the South Pole kept her two miles high! The altitude is nearly 10,000 feet.

          After graduating from college, Laurie decided on a year’s travel. She bought a one way ticket to Tasmania via Fiji and New Zealand. 

          “While talking about my trip in a restaurant back in Colorado, a stranger overhead my conversation and suggested I go to work for a company in Antarctica,” she said.  “She gave me the name of the company and altered my destiny.”

          Laurie, with brown hair, a beautiful smile and statuesque at 5’10”, was a rock climber, skier, bicyclist and backpacker.  She wasn’t the normal 9 to 5 woman who marries, has kids and waits for her golden years.  She comes from the bumper sticker crowd: “EAT DESSERT FIRST, LIFE IS UNCERTAIN.”  At the bottom of the world, she enjoyed the rare distinction to be among less than a thousand women to ever step foot on the South Pole.

          On her way through Nepal, Laurie kept hearing about Antarctica. Other travelers kept her spellbound with their stories about being on the ice.  She met a lady who was traveling near Kathmandu who had been to McMurdo.

          “It’s hard to explain what inspired me to come down to the Pole other than it was an adventure,” she said.  “As a kid I read a lot and enjoyed ‘Mr. Popper’s Penguins’.  I wanted to not just see the seventh continent, but walk where Scott, Amundsen, Hillary and Byrd had walked.”

          She became a General Assistant at McMurdo Station.  Laurie worked in

a blinding blizzard her first day at the base. After checking into her dorm room, they gave her a shovel and sent her out into the snow.  She shoveled until blisters popped up on her hands and her body hurt from long days in the frigid temperatures.  After one month at the station, she was ready for redeployment to the South Pole.

          “The most moving moment for me was landing at the Pole,” she said. “The winter-overs had not seen new faces for eight months and stood outside to greet us. As I exited, -40 degree temperatures filled my lungs. I gasped for air.  Everyone headed for the dome, but I ran toward the Pole. I ran around the world within minutes of landing.  It was exhilarating.”

          While at the Pole, Laurie worked at shoveling snow, moving equipment and materials.  Hers was hard physical labor six days a week.  There were some surprises.

          “My worst experience was the death of the skydivers,” she said.  “They landed and we took pictures. Later, three of their smiling faces fell like hammers into the ice. Death was sudden. It made me reconsider my own desire for adventure. The people who responded were affected deeply by the deaths, and even today, have flashbacks about digging broken bodies from four-foot graves of snow and placing them in body bags.  I have a deeper feeling of how others, including me, can be affected.”

While working hard for little money, she traveled for unique experiences

that entered her orbit along the way.  In Fiji, she volunteered for Sister cities International in coordination with the Peace Corps.  She taught self-defense classes to children and ‘the economics of staying in school’. She ‘tramped’ in New Zealand.  These previous travels led her to Antarctica where she met fascinating people of all ages on similar quests.

          “On Christmas day, half the base turned out for the ‘Race-Around-The-World’,” she said.  “The course was a portion of the runway that makes a loop around both the geographic and ceremonial Pole.  It’s a total of 2.5 miles. The contestants mostly ran, but some drove snowmobiles towing skiers. There was a tractor pulling a cargo sled with people in lounge chairs drinking beer.  It was a parade.”

          “All events pale in comparison to the arrival of polar explorers,” she said. “Three groups arrived from January 1 through the 4^th. The first two, Australians and Icelanders, were the first from their respective countries to cross the ice to the pole unassisted.  The final group included two Belgiums who were skiing the longest unassisted traverse of the continent.  They were using high-tech sails to assist them.”

          “More than anything, I learned about myself,” she said.  “Antarctica is a vast, desolate and frigid continent.  I’m lucky to have lived this adventure.  I’ve got a lot of stories to tell my children.”

           My other neighbor was a polar explorer:

          Rolling out of a bed at three in the  morning may seem a bit zealous, but for Rudy, a scientist working in Antarctica, his four o’clock starting time at the office suited his needs. 

          “It gives me time to think,” he said.  “Besides, I can match my work hours to my colleagues in Denver.”

          Still lean and tall at 58 and married, Rudy was in his fifth summer at the station.  He managed the science technological services and headed the team for the Auto Geophysical Observatory in Antarctica.  He trained crews for installation and maintenance of AGO outposts scattered around the ice continent.  AGOs as they are called (16’X8’X8’), are huts powered by propane and house instruments for studying ‘auroral displays’ in the heavens.  Whenever the sun ‘hiccups’ into space, these monitors track the disturbances.  When the sun flares, it creates a ‘solar wind’ made up of energetic particles ejected by solar surface explosions.

          “We’re studying the possibility for space flight by creating mechanical ‘sails’ to catch these deep space winds,” he said.  “They could be used for powering our spacecraft.”

          The same solar winds affect earth. Rudy’s instruments, such as magnetometers, register those winds.  They measure the variations in the earth’s magnetic field caused by variations in the solar wind. Each recording gives scientists more information as to what particles get trapped. When trapped, they render a chorus of “chirps, clicks, and whistles.”

          “Almost like a train passing,” Rudy said.  “Those particles bounce back and forth from South Pole to North Pole. It’s possible we might be able to use them for communications. We have a base in Greenland and in Antarctica for measuring and recording them.”

          Adding to that research, Rudy pointed out a special camera that was aimed toward the heavens to take pictures of nitrogen and oxygen and the colors that were given off in the atmosphere over the Antarctic.  Some of his pictures of the nacreous clouds looked like ‘mother of pearl’ with flavors.  One of the great sights around the South Pole is the Magellanic clouds during the polar winter when darkness prevails.

          “Megellanic clouds can be seen from many places on the earth and are actually small galaxies near the Milky Way,” Rudy said.

          His science projects range in several areas that challenge his M.S. degree in physics.   As a deeply religious man, he said, “God gave us all these questions to answer.”

          “One of the problems with solar winds is that they kill our satellites,” he said.  “We’re trying to understand that problem in order to reduce the damage. It’ll give us better communication potential and possible new communication paths in space.”

          On his time off, Rudy volunteered at the Chapel of the Snows.  He worked with both chaplains.  He also hiked out to Castle Rock for the views and the exercise.

          While at McMurdo, Rudy had shaken hands with Sir Edmund Hillary, one of the two first men to climb Mount Everest.  To top that off, he met the first man to cross Antarctica on foot, unassisted, Borg Osland.  He also met the first woman to walk from the coast to the South Pole, Liv Aronsen. 

          While setting up his research stations, he has suffered severe frostbite while unloading gear during treacherous storms.  It happened so fast he didn’t

feel it until one of his crewmembers noticed his white flesh.  He was rushed

into protective cover and his flesh warmed up.

Some of his fondest memories of Antarctica were when he ventured out into the Plateau area of the crystal desert continent and landed in the middle of nowhere. 

          “I couldn’t see a living soul for 360 degrees,” he said.  “Nothing but wind and extreme cold. There was only the visibility of a blue line where the sky met the white of the earth. It’s there where I was in total isolation—totally alone.”

          In such places he and his crews set up their AGOs huts and stake them into the snow. The huts must stay four feet off the ground by standing on metal poles so they won’t get drifted over by snow. If they don’t do it properly, everything could be blown away in the 200 mile per hour Katabatic winds.

          “Stupid is punished severely down here,” he said.