Willy Field and Wildland Applications

December is finally here. Today, the ice town out on the ice runway was moved some 5 to 10 miles away onto Williams (Willy) Field on some nearby glacier ice due to the thinning sea ice. It's actually quite an amazing feat to move 20 buildings including a fire station, as well as all of the equipment and vehicles that support runway operations. The entire operation took about 8 hours to complete. To my surprise, since I haven't been down at station 2 in almost a month, I was stuck at station 1 while everyone down on the ice runway had fun.

I woke up this morning around 0530 for some reason. Not being able to fall asleep, I got up, got dressed and walked down to the computer lab for a bit. Low and behold, when I logged onto USAJOBS.com, I found that everyone and there mother under the BLM, NPS, and USFS was hiring....including Zion National Park! Through out the day, I've been applying to almost 20 some positions in Utah, Wyoming, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska. I'm looking to apply to Yellowstone National Park and Grand Canyon National Parks when they open up but for now, I've applied to most of the positions and locations that I had been wishing to. I guess that's the most exciting thing in my life right now.

A 5 Day Hiatus and McMurdo Life

A lot has happened in the 8 days I haven't updated this journal. Where did I leave off...I was feeling like shit with the whole idea of thanksgiving regarding myself and my family. What I didn't know at the time (Thursday) was that Raytheon's Thanksgiving is different than the Thanksgiving Americans normally celebrate. For some reason, Raytheon's thanksgiving was celebrated on the following Saturday. So Thursday I came out of my room and ate with some friends in the Galley. Friday turned out to be a pretty good day at work. Near the end of the night, I was told that I didn't have to come in to work since they had more people than they need that day and I haven't been sent home early in a good couple weeks. What that all means is since I have a Tuesday Kelley day anyways, having Saturday off and not having to work Sunday just tacked 2 days to a 3 day break making today my first day back at work since last Friday. Saturday ended up being an ok day. I stuck by my decision not to eat in the galley so I got in the ridiculously long line that wrapped around half of the first floor, got my food, and headed back up to my room to sit in front of my TV only to be joined by a few other friends from the firehouse. Apparently, a couple hundred people eating around them didn't sound to appealing to them either. After the last block of Thanksgiving Dinner eaters poured out of the galley, Building 155 (where I live) became sort of a party building with random hordes of people going to and fro (at one point in time about 20 or 25 of us were hanging in the hallway outside of my room. The rest of the night was spent partying in random places around the base including the gym and the Crary Science Lab. Sunday I spent most of the morning and some of the afternoon recovering the night before. It truly dawned on me how much time I had before myself so in order to nurse my lack of energy from being sick earlier this month, I decided to not do anything too crazy. I played Ultimate Frisbee Sunday afternoon and I spent the rest of the time reading magazines, a book I got from the library, and studying a little bit. I went back out Sunday night but I didn't get as crazy as I did the night before.

Monday was spent again, reading, watching a movie here and there, and just trying to stay low. The evening, however, was a different story. My neighbor and good friend was celebrating her birthday by doing a "pub crawl" to different rooms on our floor and she asked me if I could make my room her first stop. More than happy to oblige, I ran down to the store to buy a bottle of Southern Comfort to bring a little flavor from back home to all of these west coasters. We ended up making mojitos in her room and made our way into my room where they brought the mojitos they made and I...drank the Southern Comfort I bought. When we felt we were pretty loose and tipsy we made our way to the next room. After about 4 rooms, my memory gets fuzzy. Apparently, we went to 2 more rooms only to leave 155 and stumble over to the Coffee house where myself and another neighbor/friend brought his guitar. We ended up jamming together for a small audience and I found out that I somehow play a lot better when I'm drunk and not really worried about being nervous playing and singing in front of people.

Tuesday was a rude awakening for me, literally, when the Fire Techs decided to test the fire alarms in our building at 0830. After waking up, I stayed up and hung out with Joe, one of my neighbors, friends, and fellow firefighters. After Laundry, a movie, lunch, and some computer time, I continued my daily routine of reading and studying. I had decided that three nights in a row of partying was plenty enough for a week or so so I instead went down to the Galley around 2000 for one of the many Travelogues the Galley hosts every week. This week, one of the Raytheon workers showed us a powerpoint of a backpacking trip he had taken to Puerto Williams, Tierra del Fuega, and Cabo de Hornos over the summer (Northern Hemisphere summer). The curiosity in me got me thinking about actually living in Puerto Williams considering the land around it, the fame of being the southern most city in the world, and the general seclusion of the place. Considering I just thought about this about 2 hours ago, I'm still researching the place as we speak.

Wednesday wasn't any different than the days before. I went to play dodgeball in the evening only to injure myself before the game even started (long story). Instead, refereed for the games and went to the bar with a few of my teammates.

Today, I'm back at work. Everyone's anticipating our annual Mass Casualty Incident drill which was suppose to have taken place last week. Because of that, our daily itineraries haven't been too full. I sit here now thinking about options for the future and next summer. I've added wildland firefighting in Northwestern Canada to one of the things I'm considering, as well as boondoggles to South America, Central Asia, or Greenland (Random, I know). December is around the corner and Summer is almost in full swing. The ice runways is getting thinner and thinner and on Saturday we're moving the ice town over to Willy Field some 5 miles away. Hopefully I'll get to be a part of that when I work on Saturday. Yep, I'm loving life down here. I think the days are going to go by a lot faster now.

Thanksgiving

Today is Thanksgiving...at least down here it is. Today everyone in town will be eating dinner in the galley within a 3 hour period surrounded by new and old friends as they think about their families. I can only think about mine and so far today has been turning out to be one of the worst days in my life within the past couple of years. For the second thanksgiving in a row, someone is missing out of my life. It was hard enough to get through last thanksgiving without my dad, now it's even more gutwrenching to get through this one without my Uncle James. What makes things even worse for both my mother and I, this is the first thanksgiving in my life that I haven't celebrated without my mother or the rest of my family. That has been fucking me up inside for the past 12 hours. I haven't slept and I really don't feel like eating. A [what I like to consider a close friend] friend and I had a pretty big argument and a falling out yesterday and that's been eating me up inside to the point where that and the accumulation of everything else has left me pretty depressed this morning. Right now, I really don't want to be around a single person. I don't even want to be on the continent right now. I gotta find someway to be alone today just to clear my head. I hear the chapel is pretty quiet usually which is good considering God and I have some conversing to do. I'm not going to eat dinner tonight because I don't want to be around a couple hundred people when there are 4 people back home that are missing 3 people from the dinner table for the first time in our family history. I'm going to call my mother and maybe go to the sauna. Other than that, I'm going to lay low. Happy Thanksgiving everyone and stay safe.

Happy Camper, Partying, My Future

Friday, shortly after our shift change, I attended a class called Snowcraft I or Happy Camper School which was taught by NSF/Raytheon instructors. The class was designed to teach and prepare you to be able to survive and fucntion while operating out in the field. After some introductions and a little classroom time, we embarked for the same area where our SAR try-outs were conducted to begin our training. Now, at first, I was dreading attending this class at that particular date and time considering I hadn't been sleeping well for 3 days, I'm still somewhat sick, and I had only found out that I was going less than 15 hours before I had to leave. By the time I had left my room, I was actually pretty excited to go on this trip. I've been backpacking for going on 10 years and I've always wanted to learn the winter skills that I haven't been able to learn on the east coast. What a better way to learn them then on top of a glacier in Antarctica! A lot of people complained non-stop throughout the entire ordeal and to be honest with you, there were a few people starting to get on my nerves but for the most part I had blast while I was out there and I definitely learned a thing or two about cold weather camping. I slept in what's called a quinzie. We piled all of our sleeping gear into a giant mound a couple feet thick, then dug out the middle and a 5 foot tunnel underneath one of the walls. To my surprise, the inside of the quinzie was actually about 5 or 10 degrees warmer than the outside temperature. With enough space to lay down flat and roll around, I slept for about 10 hours pretty comfortably. We did more training in the morning and afternoon including scenarios, risk management, radio operations, helicopter operations, and some environmental impact considerations. I'm really thankful for this class considering how much I learned that I use in Virginia and WV backpacking and climbing.

Antarctica is amazing in the fact that you can't go far without being reminded as to how far away you are from civilization. Away from town, out on the middle of the glacier where we were, the landscape is amazing. Asides from the flags marking safe travel routes and the distinct green buildings of New Zealand's Scott Base, The land is virtually untouched, virgin. Mt Erebus dominates the horizon topping off at 3700 m. Mt Terror, Mt Discovery, The Royal Society Mountain Range, all litter the horizon and add to the beauty of the land. One thing I noticed, in the middle of the night while I was outside peeing, when the wind wasn't blowing, when there were no planes, no vehicles, no wildlife, the world was silent. A silence I hadn't heard since Wyoming. A silence I long for and miss. It made me think about where I want to take my life next where I may want to try to live. Where I want to visit. I've been reading a book about a woman that spent 7 years living in Northwestern Greenland near the Baffin Bay. Something is pulling me to live in the wilds, away from society. I don't know. I have a lot of thinking to do on this new found feeling but I think it's something that will play a big role in my life here soon.

Low and behold, when I got back from Snowcraft I, my roommate was a sweetheart enough to pick up one of my packages from the firehouse and it turned out to be my Guitar! Between such an awesome time at Snowcraft I and having my guitar waiting for me when I got back, I couldn't have been any happier than I was at that moment. There were 3 of us from my shift that were in the class and when we called to check in after class was done, we were told to go home and not worry about coming in which led us all to Gallagher's Bar to party for the night. I ended up actually leaving the bar around 12 to go back to a friend's dorm room, only to meet someone in the hall, and go back to their building, building 210. In that building, I met even more people who dragged me to a party at the Antenna Rigger's Shack right across the street from the firehouse. Still drunk, at 3 AM, I walked out of 210, wearing a button up T-Shirt, flip-flops, and jeans, all the way (a 1/4 mile) to the Antenna Rigger's Shack in 20 degree weather. God bless Antarctica. I hung out there for a couple hours with my new found friends and finally walked back to my Dorm around 0445-0500 to go to sleep. Today, I woke up a little sicker than I had been over the past few days...something I attributed to being out in the cold for 48 hours. With that being said, I really didn't do much today.

So all in all, I had a pretty good weekend. Awesome training, night off from work, I got my guitar, met about 30 or 40 new people, life is good.

Packages

After almost 2 weeks of no flights or mail, the first flight with our packages finally made it down here. Mind you, they were just a small part of the payload of the plane that made the journey down here but some of us finally got packages. I still have god knows how many boxes waiting for me back in Christchurch but I at least got 3 of the boxes. I received, a few books, some extra clothes, my hiking boots which I've been waiting for for a while, and my new camera which I am soo thankful for getting. This week I had my Kelly day. I haven't done much. I'm still pretty sick so I've been waking up around 1200 everyday. The weather has for the most part stabilized. There's been a constant 10 knot wind in town but other than that, it's been pretty nice outside. Now that my hiking boots are here, it's time to start hitting the trails. My climbing shoes also made it down here so I'll be spending a lot of time in the bouldering cave in the weight room building. My options of things to do are definitely opening up for me.

The firehouse as been pretty busy. Yesterday (my Kelly day) they ran the season's first wildlife herding for an Adelie penguin that was hanging out on the ice runway. No one had managed to tell us that they were pretty feisty. Apparently there are pictures and videos of a few firefighters getting chased around by this thing as it hissed at them. Man, I wish I was there to see it. Today the opposite shift had a car fire way off on the ice shelf and everyone was running around like crazy. Myself and another firefighter were at Scott Base when it first got dispached. When we got back to our dorm, we checked our pager to find that they had called back all off-duty person ell (for a car fire no less). By the time we got to the firehouse (20 minutes later) we were told to go home since there wasn't anything for us to do. Thank God. So here I sit, another glorious McMurdo night waiting for our dodge ball tournament. Life is good down here...

Beautiful Weather But No Packages

The weather here has been incredible the past couple of days. Sunshine, warmth (20-30 degrees), and Skuas. Yes, they're finally here. A message that summer is here. I didn't make the SAR team. As a matter of fact, a few people that I thought would be shoe-ins didn't. I'm still waiting to have my interview for the lieutenant's position within the station. The snow is starting to blow away or melt within the base. Everything is turning shades of brown from white. We still haven't gotten our packages and no one has been able to give anyone a straight answer as to when they'd get here. The rumor mill has been spitting out all kinds of...well, rumors, about When our mail will get here, how much mail is waiting to come down, etc. 7 days of canceled flights didn't help much either. Haha, it's funny that I keep ordering things or having things shipped down here thinking that I'll have something in a couple weeks. Hopefully Raytheon or the NSF won't do anything stupid like put our mail at the low end of the priority scale. I can see a revolt being born because of that.

Condition 1

Today (tonight) I'm experiencing Condition 1 weather for the first time in the town. As a matter of fact, the weather we're seeing tonight is being considered some of the worse the base has seen in about 10 years. I finally found clarification on the weather rating system for McMurdo Station which is as follows:


Condition One
Weather conditions when visibility is less than 100 ft., or wind speed is greater than 55 knots (more than 60 mph), or wind chill is greater than -100°F (-38°C).

Condition Two
Weather conditions when visibility is less than ¼ mile, or wind speed is between 48 and 55 knots (about 55 mph to 65 mph), or wind chill factor is between -75°F and -100°F (or between -24°C and -38°C).

Condition Three
Weather conditions, from anything better than a Condition Two, up to a beautiful sunny day.


So yeah, the weather is pretty shitty right now. During condition 2 weather, all recreational travel is prohibited while everyone that has to drive as part of their job has to check in with the firehouse. Condition 1, no one is allowed outside period until the weather gets better which means some people may be spending the night where ever they're at...regardless if that's where they want to be. Also, during condition 1 weather, the SAR team is on stand-by to go "rescue" people stranded outside or in normally non-occupied buildings or set up rope systems down on the ice runway from certain buildings (i.e. the firehouse) to the bathrooms. Tonight they were pretty busy rescuing the stranded and getting them back to their dorms. All in all, it's been pretty interesting the past few hours. Tonight, I'm the sole person on Tanker 3 while everyone else is on the engine. Not to my suprise, they ended up getting a call for an odor of something burning in one of the bars on base. Pissed that I wasn't dispatched, I retreated back to my computer to waste time on facebook and ebay. Just another day here at the firehouse...

SAR Tryouts, Climbing, and Mail

6 days into the month and already November's starting to turn out pretty well. Yesterday, we had our Search & Rescue team tryouts. Tryouts consisted of knot and ropecraft, movement in snow and on glacier's, self-rescue, anchor systems, haul systems, and moving in roped teams. Unfornutately, our time outside got cut short because of a storm that dropped in on us all of a sudden. The cool thing was that the storm made the weather so bad that the base considered Condition 1 weather (3 being normal, 1 being the worse where no one's allowed to leave whatever building they're in) which not even most of the people who were there before us during winfly got to experience. As we were leaving, I noticed that I had lost feeling in my nose which was a bad thing but it slowly started coming back as we warmed up. We traveled several miles away from base to do our training. It was nice to truly see the continent on the ground for once without having any major buildings around. We had a jamesway which was nothing more than a canvas covered structure that was for the most part portable. Other than that, our classroom was in the snowfield and on the glacier ice. We came back to the Science Support Center where most of the SAR operations take place and we practiced what we would have been doing outside...inside. They have one more set of tryouts on Thursday. All in all, we heard that they're only selecting 4 main-body (which is me) persons for the secondary team since the secondary team is in fact, the primary winter team. I'm praying I get on the team. The good thing however is that for those of us main-body folks that are trying for those 4 spots, technical experise is actually compared so thankfully I have the upper hand over some of the other folks in our group.

My mother is sending down my climbing gear down and it should be in Christchurch sometime this week. I'm really looking forward to climbing somewhere on New Zealand when I get off the ice considering that I had to cancel my Morocco trip. I remember that the biggest nightmare I was having about coming down here was how was I going to get the gear I needed for Morocco in Christchurch when I got off the ice. Well, I didn't find out until after I got down here that I can have things delivered to Christchurch that can be held for me until I get off the ice. Now I know this for next year. For now, I'll have to have both my climbing gear and backpacking gear sent to me on the ice so I can go through it and see what I need or don't need for afterwards.

We're still waiting for our packaged mail. The total amount of weight of packaged mail waiting to come down has now topped 20,000 lbs and it's still no where in sight. So far, I have 3 or 4 boxes of stuff I sent from Christchurch so that I'd make the weight restrictions, 2 or 3 boxes of stuff I've bought from different online stores, and now 3 boxes of stuff that my mother has sent me. Not to mention my guitar I sent to myself from Great Falls in early September. All that I can hope for is that when it comes time to send this stuff either back to the states or back to Christchurch, I can score enough boxes to get it done.

Just Another Saturday

Station 2...yet again. This shift I get to spend 28 glorious hours sitting in a 15 by 30 foot trailer. The shitty part is it's not like it's been nice outside like it has been for the past 2 weeks. I woke up to -20 degree weather and a -30 wind chill. After showing up at station 1 to pick up our gear, we headed down to the runway to begin our shift in the ice town. We spent an hour checking out the apparatus, 20 minutes going over what needed to be done today, maybe 20 minutes doing training, and the rest of the day and evening gaffing off. Despite doing anything remotely close to being Antarctic Fire Department related, I did manage to get a lot done online that I had been meaning to do for a while. I spent a lot of my time looking at different schools and programs regarding fire science and EMS. I also had been looking at jobs in other parts of the world. My friend's wife from back home at one point in time helped with the hiring of firefighters who were stationed in Russia at an aerospace testing facility. Despite our current relationship with mother Russia, that still sparks an interest in me for a possible summer or winter job. I've also been looking at hazardous materials training, hazardous materials response jobs at chemical or industrial plants, paramedic training, ARFF training, etc. Needless to say, in all of my boredom, I managed to spend a lot of time online without falling asleep unlike half of my crew. We had a good group of people down here today which really helps pass the time. I can honestly say I don't have a problem with a single person in our department. I like all of the officers on my crew as well as the firefighters. Another thing that happened today that got me really excited is that I received an email in my USAP account telling me that I had been selected for the SAR team tryouts and my tryout date is this coming Monday. What's even better is that I found out that the fire department is willing to revolve my schedule around my SAR tryouts and, if I make the team, training and deployments should I get deployed with the primary team. For a pretty lackadaisical day, I managed to get what I consider a lot done.

Station 2

I woke up in damn-near a cold sweat to the sound of a C-130 powering up at about 0130 this morning. Considering that the parking "ramp" for the planes is 50 ft outside of our front door, 4 turbo-props can put off a lot of decibels. There were times where I was in a big enough half-asleep daze that I honestly thought our tiny little trailer for a firehouse was about to get over-taken by a 145,000 lb plane. Luckily it either took off or shut down because I fell back asleep and managed to live to wake up at around 0700. Fun times I tell ya…

November

Halloween has passed. We look forward to Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's down here on the ice. My Kelley day was this week so I got to enjoy 3 days off from work. I'm still waiting for the rest of my packages to get here and I just found out that one of the more important items I ordered (my station boots) where shipped to my house versus down here so I'm pretty upset about that. I applied for the lieutenant's position that opened up within our department after several people voiced their approval and I'm actually excited for the process. So far this month is looking pretty interesting. SAR tryouts will happen sometime in the next 2 weeks. The deadline for the applications was yesterday. The interviews for the lieutenant's position are suppose to take place shortly after the job announcement closes which is tomorrow. I'm scheduled to take Snowcraft I (aka Happy Camper School) which is a 2 day course on living and surviving out on the ice using stoves, tents, and a variety of snow structures. They teach us throughout the day and leave us to our wits and skills to survive an Antarctic "night" out on the continent. Considering that takes place on the 14^th, hopefully my camera will be here by then. On top of all that, I may get to go to a Sea Ice class that goes over the dynamics of Sea Ice and driving over it and what not. Like I said, November is looking pretty interesting right now.

I emailed the crew supervisor for Zion National Park Helitatck's module requesting information about the crew and whatnot. He was pretty friendly and more than helpful. He was also eager to hear from me by phone should I have any other questions. Even though I'm still in Antarctica, it's that time of year to apply for fire jobs for next summer. Zion is at my top pick right now. If I don't land a job with Zion, a Hotshot crew someone would be my next step. The supervisor I talked to told me that the job announcement opens up in mid December so that's one thing to tack to the list of what December may hold for me. For now, it's November and I have a lot to do as it is.s