Happy Campers

So a quick update and a bit of yarn spinning about snow school.

We are still in McMurdo and not in the field because we are waiting on some equipment to get in on planes. If the trip from Canada to the Antarctic was indicative of nothing else, its that the weather is nothing trivial to deal with, and that is the primary reason the equipment wasn't here before our arrival. 

*fingers crossed* we should see it today. 

Either way, half the team is going out to University Valley tomorrow (the main study site, the coldest and driest), while some of us will stay behind to test the prototype Mars permafrost drill, and some of us will sample from some "warmer and wetter" (relatively) sites. Later we will all move to University Valley.  This is again of course, all up to the weather gods. 

HAPPY CAMPER SCHOOL

Before you are allowed to go out into the field here, you have to take a short, two day intensive, survival training course. There are some serious aspects to it, hypothermia and frostbite are no joke, and we spent a while looking at photos of frostbite and hearing tales of lost limbs from careless mistakes. Once we went over the protocols for various operations and scenarios here at McMurdo, we drove out onto the McMurdo iceshelf on a Delta, where we would be spending the "night" (24 hour sunlight!)  on our own (the instructors wouldn't be far away).

We learned how to use all the gear in the survival kits (these come complete with dehydrated food to last 2 people 3 days, 2 sleeping bags, a mountain tent, stakes, an ice saw, and a small foldable shovel). We learned how to use HF radios to call for help, including all the lingo.  These radios are pretty neat (Ham radio is a hobby of Brian Glass on our team), and you can talk (or listen) to someone with a HF radio just about anywhere in the world. They work by bouncing signals from the earth, against the ionosphere, and then back down, and then back up, and then back down etc etc around the sphere of our little pale blue dot. 

We learned how to make a few different types of shelters from the cold: a mountain tent, a Scott tent (essentially the exact same design that Robert Falcon Scotts team used during their expeditions 100 years ago in the Antarctic), and, a snow trench (NOT the same as quincy to my Canadian winter camping friends). Even though I decided to dig my own grave (I mean trench) to sleep in that night, the camp had to be set up first.

Scott tent

snow wall

our kitchen, the heart of the home

snow grave

The Scott tents are pretty great and can stand up to heavy winds on their own, but the mountain tents needed a bit more protection from winds coming from the south. We built a protective snow wall by sawing out cubes of snow and setting up the tents on the lee side of the wall.  Similarly, we built a wall around a trench we had dug, and set up a pretty decent kitchen with camp stoves (like every house party, this where most of the happy campers getting trained hung out and talked during the night). Dinner that night...was dehydrated food, the taste tempered out with plentiful hot chocolate, made from water melted from snow near by.

Bolek Mellerowicz making fresh steps under the gaze of Mount Erebus

Me making my snow trench, while Brian Glass and another PI gaze on, I could make a joke about the PIs standing around giving advice while the grad students are digging themselves deeper into their own holes.....

The snow trench was not too hard to make, though I was up until midnight digging it out. Pretty much you just dig a narrow pit a bit bigger than the length of your body (mine was about 5 ft deep, and 7 ft wide), widen the bottom out so you can wiggle about in it, throw a sleeping bag in, and cover up the top with some ice blocks. Its actually pretty warm in there once you get a body in it, but I didnt make mine wide enough and every time I tried to sit up or try and find something close to my feet a rain of snow from the walls would fall on me  and I would get wet (wet and cold= not a good survival technique). Would have been fine all night, if it wasn't for the fact that I had been sleeping ON my pee bottle rather than having it within arms reach, so getting up in the middle of the night just got me a snow shower. I had to get out of the grave to dry off in the polar desert air, and found I had the entire camp to myself while everyone slept. Serenity, majestic Mount Erebus smoking at the top, and not a sound except the wind against our flags. Pretty great as far as training goes!

No rest for the wicked

Just going to shoot a quick update because I am wiped.

We left sunny New Zealand, sat in the C130 ( I thought it was a sweet ride, but definitely not luxury flying), and when the doors opened up 8ish hours later we were in pretty soft snow, with a lot of white around us (not unlike the conditions I left in Canada, but with more amounts of nothingness). Arrived in Antarctica! Finally! Or so I thought.. it took about 2 hours to get from the airfield to McMurdo because of the bad road conditions. Our normal ride (IVAN, see below picture) couldn't handle the soft roads so well, so it was actually towed while on the ice (where the airfield is) with us all inside of it on a magic carpet (yes, more or less like the magic carpet we go sledding with, except much, much bigger) until we reached land.  On the way back to camp we saw a lone, decapitated penguin (just kidding, it was hiding its head) which was really unexpected and really really fantastic to see. Seals too! Even though I was super exhausted, I couldnt close my eyes during the ride because those first glimpses of the Antarctic were just too exhilarating.

IVAN

Headless penguin

We arrived to McMurdo station, got briefed, and were assigned dorm rooms. 6 hours sleep later I was on my way to happy camper training: a survival training program where we camp out on the McMurdo ice shelf overnight, learn about how to recognize, treat, and PREVENT things like hypothermia and frostbite, and general field camp practices to keep you (and the people around you safe). I got back from this two day course a few hours ago, and I am wiped.

Will tell you a bit more about the course in a later post, its worth talking about in a bit more detail.

There is a lot of really cool science going on at McMurdo right now, and I am having a blast talking to the other scientists that are around and hearing about their projects.

Happy campers on their way to snow school 

Its about the journey, not the destination, right?

Well, we got on the plane (a C-130 I'm told by my aviation savvy teammate Margarita Marinova, who flies helicopters as a hobby...) flew for about an hour out, and then boomeranged back due to mechanical issues. Back in Christchurch, NZ now, and the current plan is to hopefully take off tomorrow at 9 am.

In the wait though, I bought a stuffed penguin for my niece, it makes (penguiny?) noises when you squeeze it, which I am pretty sure will drive my teammates crazy after about a week of camping with me. Either I will disappear  or the penguin will, stay tuned.

crew examining our plane after we boomeranged back to Christchurch, NZ

Hitting the ice tomorrow!

Came back from a hike at Arthurs pass today to a note slipped under the door: Someones picking you up at 7:30 am, you are going to the Antarctic tomorrow.

Huzzah!

Hopefully the flight doesnt "boomerang" back from McMurdo station if the weather isn't favourable, its going to take us about 8 hours to get there.

Time to repack my stuff, and get ready to leave the suite life.

Welcome to Polar Research

Currently am sitting in a rather comfortable hotel room in Christchurch, New Zealand, waiting for word for when I will get to fly to McMurdo station, Antarctica. While the T-shirt weather is nice for a Canadian who is used to sweaters in January, I am more than anxious to get out onto the ice in the Antarctic. We were supposed to leave 2 days ago, and the current plan is to not leave for another 2 days. The runway in McMurdo was too slushy and soft for planes to land (lets wish for some cold weather!),  and there is a backlog of people that are waiting to get to the ice.

Upon letting Lyle (my PI)  know that I was still in New Zealand, and not the Antarctic as planned, I got a simple email: Welcome to polar research and travel, expect more of the same as the weather essentially dictates everything you will attempt to do. 

I am making the most of more delays as any naturalist would: checking out the calderas, hot springs, and hiking trails that New Zealand has to offer (this beats getting delayed at the airport!).

While I'm off exploring, check out this video from my lab about polar research and astrobiology in the Canadian High Arctic.  Searching for Life on Mars

Akaroa caldera

Out of the Fridge and into Freezer

Spent many hours in an airport in Toronto, Canada, since my flight (and then second re-booked flight) was delayed due to the snowy conditions. There is no use being frustrated at the cold climate, since I am on my way to a much harsher environment, but airports are not my favourite place to be delayed. I was lucky enough to be on the airplane while it was being de-iced to make it flight worthy before we continued our journey, it was like being in a car wash for planes!

Plane being de-iced at Pearson Airport

                                     

 After many airports and many more delayed/cancelled flights (New York, Los Angeles) I arrived in Sydney, Australia, to (unsurprisingly) find out that I had missed my connection to New Zealand, and I was going to be spending the night. New Years Eve, stranded in Sydney by my lonesome?

This is where social media kicks in, found a friend in no time thanks to facebook, and had another stroke of luck: she had been camped out all day next to the water at Sydney Harbour bridge, in anticipation for the show at midnight. Sydney is known for their spectacular New Years Eve fireworks displays, and she had scored prime blanket space on the grass.  Great way to ring in 2013, and I leave for Christchurch (and the Antarctic!) shortly.

Sydney Harbour fireworks

Permafrost Drills, Microbes and Me

This will be my first time keeping a (research) blog, and the aim is to keep it both informative and personal. In a couple of days I will be going to McMurdo station, Antarctica to start a month long field season that will start in McMurdo station, and ultimately end in University Valley, one of the coldest and driest places on earth. What brings me there is an ASTEP funded project, which will be testing the IceBreaker drill, a prototype drill which is designed to pierce into the frozen soils of Mars. University Valley is one of the most Mars-like places on Earth, and so that's where the drill is going to be tested! Lucky for me (a microbiologist) its also a really great spot to look for extremophiles which are pushing the limits of life. 

What I'm interested in are the psychrophillic (also called cryophillic) microorganisms that are found in this harsh environment. Psychrophiles are organisms that not only survive, but thrive in really cold environments. 

Life needs water to survive, and one result of freezing temperatures is a lack of liquid water (since water turns to ice). Cold adapted bacteria need to cope with a lack of water as well as cold (high salt concentrations too...but more on that another time). 

How cold can they go? 

The lowest temperature at which microbial growth has been recorded is -15 C, found in a microbe called  Planococcus halocryophilus OR1, which was isolated from permafrost (ground which doesn't go above freezing)  in the Canadian High Arctic. Active, respiring microbial cells have been measured in samples down to -20 C in Siberian permafrost samples. These are examples of extremophiles which are making a living in the cold. 

University Valley, Antarctica will be a harsh place to be, year round temperatures that never go above 0 C, and next to no precipitation in the form of snow. Whats more, in University Valley, sublimation processes dominate, so water either exists as ice, or directly sublimates into vapour, there is no liquid water in the surface soils! Not a nice place to live, even if you are a tough bacterium.  What this results in, is an area with dry, desert sand on the surface, and frozen ice-cemented ground underneath. Because temperatures don't go above freezing, these are two types of permafrost! This is really neat, because this is only observed in one area on earth, and is similar to what was observed at the Pheonix landing site on Mars. If we can find life thriving in this environment on Earth, it may mean its possible for similar life to occur on Mars.

I am a microbiologist looking for life in University Valley, but the science team who will be going to University Valley is a diverse group of scientists who will be trying to answer different science questions (in addition to testing the IceBreaker drill), like, where did the ice-cemented ground come from? why is the ice still there since sublimation processes dominate? how old is the ice?

Very excited to work with these people, and very excited to look for microbes in this Mars-like environment!