Pigs and Fish

southpole .....

Later: End of the Second Act
Earlier: Last Arrivals

There is a short list of adventures one can have in the US Antarctic program. You can experience landing in the cockpit of a C-130 (done it). You can fly over the crater of Mt. Erebus (done it). You can go to 'Happy Camper’ school and learn how to sleep in your own snow- or ice-shelter (never done it). Here at Pole you can ski out to the 'Love Shack’ a few miles from the Station (never done it). You can do an outdoor hot tub in -30F and feel your hair freeze solid (done it). One thing I’d never done until tonight was go down into the utility tunnels underneath the station. I’ll let the pictures tell most of the story, including the temperature (-60F). It was really cool! (And cold.) Afterwards we had a sauna, followed by the Midrats Season Finale with Filet Mignon, seafood skewers, stuffed portabella mushrooms, sushi, chocalate chip cookie chocolate sandwiches, and upside down peach cherry pie.

Life isn’t all bad at the South Pole.

Suiting up to hit the tunnels
Tunnel crew
I wish I owned this sign
A half-mile long tunnel 60 feet below the snow surface
Dead end
Stephanie &co.
Timo Griesel
Deep Enough
Jan Luneman
Pig shrine (yes, it’s a real pig’s head)
-60 F
17-year-old sturgeon with caviar: gift of the Russian base (I seem to have lost the hi-res version of this picture :-( )

Yesterday I headed out to the IceCube Laboratory (ICL) with Thorsten from LBNL to debug a nasty little low-level problem. We made some progress and I took some more pictures in and around the ICL:

Back of 'DOM Hubs’ where strings are plugged into the computers, for which I had the privilege of writing a device driver
Winterized 'Seasonal Equipment Site’ (Drill Camp)
Cable conduits into IceCube Laboratory
Our neighbor: the South Pole Telescope (whose principle investigator lives near me in Hyde Park)

Later: End of the Second Act
Earlier: Last Arrivals