Story and photos by Shayne Clausson ('95)

 

MY ANTARCTIC ADVENTURE BEGAN TWO YEARS BEFORE I EVER SET FOOT ON THE ICE. Tom, a co-worker of mine, had just come home from living a year at the geographic South Pole. Working in Sydney, Australia, at the time for Lucent Technologies, we often headed out on the town where Tom spun stories about his experiences. His tales of extreme living fascinated me. Averaging 70 below zero in winter, the South Pole is not only the coldest-inhabited place on Earth; it is also the most isolated. Just a month before I arrived in Sydney, a rescue operation had taken place at the Pole to evacuate a doctor who had diagnosed her own breast cancer.

 

When I first heard my friend's stories, I thought that anyone who volunteered to live in such an environment must have serious mental deficiencies. This is a place where the sun dips below the horizon in March and doesn't come back up for six months. A place where a flight will take off in February, and another airplane will not be seen again until late October. A place where no more than 60 people will live for the duration of the long, dark, bitterly cold winter. Sixty people? That isn't a town; that's little more than a lecture hall in Burruss.

And, yet, I must admit, the prospect for travel and adventure has always been my top priority when I've had to make choices about my career. That's why, when I was a student at JMU, I wanted to work in the Foreign Service. To be honest, though, I don't think I had the language skills to pass the foreign language exam. I had only one semester of Russian, and my French was marginal.

So, after graduation, I interned on Capitol Hill for Rep. Joseph Kennedy,
D-Mass., and after about three months was hired by Rep. Maurice Hinchey,
D-N.Y. I did some legislative work, but my main focus was to bring the D.C. office and three New York offices online. The congressman didn't even have a
Web site back then, and e-mail was internal only. I was in way over my head, but I had time and a patient employer and was able to figure everything out. From there I left to run the IT systems for Podesta Associates (founded by Tony Podesta and John Podesta, former White House chief of staff for Bill Clinton). I learned tons that year and then moved to San Francisco to work for a small IT company. Later I signed on as a consultant for Lucent and was sent to Sydney.

Our project Down Under came to an end after a fantastic six months; I headed back home to San Francisco -- detouring first for two leisurely weeks through the paradise of the South Pacific -- with the South Pole hiring contacts Tom had given me completely forgotten.

But after six months in Sydney, my San Francisco workplace seemed dull, the client seemed dull, and the work itself required several units of caffeine per hour. I began a new project, one that was equally boring, with the added bonus of an hour and a half commute each way.

About the same time, my grandfather was diagnosed with cancer, and I
took a few weeks off to fly back east and spend time with him in the hospital.

My grandfather's illness showed no mercy, and, a few weeks after returning to San Francisco, my mom called to tell me he had passed away. There's something about watching someone close to you die that makes you question your own course in life. Here I was, driving three hours a day to a job that I couldn't stand, with no end in sight. People were getting laid off left and right, and everyone told me I was lucky just to have a job. I didn't see it that way, however. The South Pole was looking better and better.

I finally shot off an e-mail to Tom's contact at Raytheon Polar Services Co., which coordinates activities for the National Science Foundation at the three U.S. Antarctic stations. Soon I was flying to Denver for an interview. All must have gone well, because I was hired to spend the upcoming summer and winter seasons at the South Pole. Things happened of their own accord after that. I had my physical, blood work, dental examination and psychological evaluation. Due to the remoteness of the South Pole, U.S. Antarctica Program participants must be both mentally and physically fit. The final chore before deployment was a week of fire-fighting training in August.

The prospect of deployment consumed me. I read as many Antarctic exploration books as I could find. I read about Shackleton's heroic account of two years stranded on the Southern Atlantic, his ship crushed and sunk by sea ice. I read disbelievingly as he traveled 850 miles across the brutal South Atlantic's waters in nothing more than a dinghy. Amazingly, not one man died on that crew. I went on to read about Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott's famous race to be the first to reach the South Pole. Amundsen's crew reached the Pole and returned home to fame. Scott's crew reached the Pole second and faced unmerciful conditions on the way back. Underequipped and underexperienced, Scott's entire crew perished just a few miles short of a food depot in March 1912. As I read, I began to get a feel for just how harsh a place I was going. "Great god, this is an awful place," Scott had penned in the journal he kept during his ill-fated expedition.

In October 2002, strapped into the web seating of the cargo hold of an Air National Guard C-141, I left civilization behind for that "awful place." I flew from Christchurch, New Zealand, 2,000 miles south to McMurdo Station on the Antarctic coast, excited to finally be so far south. I had had second thoughts every minute of every day -- from the time I had been hired in April -- until this moment. Not only was I on a continent that very few people ever get to visit, I was actually going 800 miles farther to winter at the South Pole, something that fewer than 1,000 people have ever done. I was now way too excited to have any second thoughts at all.

When the weather was clear enough, we climbed aboard a ski-equipped LC-130 to make the first flight to the Pole in more than eight months. As we began our four-hour flight, we passed over the glaciers and Transantarctic Mountains near McMurdo. The day was clear, and I watched Mount Erebus, an active volcano on Ross Island, fade out of sight. More than 400 miles of white mountainous terrain rippled beneath me as we flew over. Then we began to emerge over the great Antarctic Plateau, which became flatter and flatter, until I could no longer make out any surface definition.

I realized, as I flew those 800 miles across the Antarctic continent to the South Pole, that those early explorers had it much harder than me. Their experiences were absolutely vicious by comparison. They traversed the distance on foot and sled and carried hundreds of pounds of equipment and rations to sustain them as they camped out in tents and wore wool, cotton and fur gear to guard against the elements. When I arrived at the South Pole, I would find heated accommodations with food stores to last years, along with clothing made of high-tech fabrics. The U.S. Antarctic Program Clothing Distribution Center in Christchurch had equipped me with three large duffel bags packed with large down parkas, insulated pants and overalls, several types of mittens and gloves, various hats, boots, loads of long underwear, and various other practical pieces of clothing to wear in temperatures that average 70 below zero during the winter season.

When arriving at the South Pole, you see an endless sea of frozen white that stretches in every direction. Fifty excited faces greeted us at the skiway; we were the first new people this veteran Pole crew had seen in nearly a year. Every winter-weary crew was known in Polie parlance as "toast" because after a year they were expected to be burned-out, grumpy and territorial. (Those I spoke to were quite friendly.) The same plane that brought in those of us who were to take their places also carried fresh vegetables and something else the Polies had been without for months -- beer.

That first day is one that I will never forget. The landscape at Pole is like no other place on Earth; set atop the Antarctic Plateau, it is completely flat in all directions. It was clear and sunny on that day, and I could see far out onto the horizon in every direction. I felt as though I was standing out in the middle of an ocean with no land in sight and that the water had suddenly frozen solid in all directions.

In spite of the many layers of clothing I was wearing, I was unprepared for the bitter cold of this place. I had never felt anything like it. The day we landed it was 50 below zero with a wind chill of 80 below zero. The cold surrounded me and frightened me at first. I thought there was no way I could endure this for a year and was panicked to think that it was going to get about 50 degrees colder in the winter. I heard the moisture from my breath crack as it froze in the air that streamed past my ears. A bit of my ears was exposed to the cold, and within a minute or two the pain became excruciating. It was a piercing pain; a sign I would come to know meant that I needed to get them covered or get inside ASAP.

It immediately got worse. I hopped on a sled behind a snowmobile to travel the half-mile from the skiway to our headquarters. The wind hit me in the face. I forgot to wear my goggles, so my eyes teared and instantly froze to my cheeks. We glided over the snow to the geodesic dome, which shields the buildings under it from wind and drifting snow. This was a place I had thought about for months. I had looked on the Internet at every Web site about the Pole, and now I was finally seeing in real life what I had only seen in pictures.

Thankfully, we soon reached the building that housed our galley, and I was able to warm up and relax. After a brief orientation, we were released to go explore our new home. In a section called upper berthing, I found my room, which measured 6 feet by 9 feet -- just enough for a single bed and a tiny closet. Claustrophobia set in immediately, and I worried that I would not be able to sleep in a space so confined. As time passed however, I began to really like that room. With up to 250 people all living, eating and working together during the summer, I began to appreciate any space that afforded some privacy.

The South Pole is a hectic working and living environment during the summer, which lasts from Sept. 21 through March 21. All of our efforts at the station were devoted to the support of science. I worked with a diverse mixture of professionals who traveled to Pole to support this mission. Most were in the construction trades -- plumbers, electricians, carpenters. There were also cooks, maintenance workers and other support personnel. They kept the entire station functioning. Most of the scientists (we called them "beakers"), who had made their way down specialized in astronomy, physics
and meteorology.

For my part, I was in charge of making sure that all of the station's information systems functioned properly -- the computer guy, if you will. I hate writing about geeky stuff, and my work was mostly technical. I did a lot of sitting on my butt and typing on my keyboard. On a few occasions, I did head out to various outlying buildings, which was an adventure in winter. My main function at Pole was to ensure that the station stayed online. The first priority was to get science data back to the home institutions, and the second was to keep the community in touch with loved ones back home and surfing the 'net. For some folks, understandably, that became a vital and hours-long pastime. Bulldozers and snow machines occasionally ran over cables, and we'd usually respond right away by laying new ones.

Technology has transformed life at the South Pole. Despite its remoteness, the South Pole has a modern IT infrastructure that is comparable to most organizations in the United States. I was in charge of our local and wide area networks, our e-mail system, our file servers, our voice over IP phone system, and our firewalls. I was also responsible for getting our Bio-med systems online. We assisted in conducting real-time medical consults and sent live ultrasounds across our video-conferencing unit to radiology experts. This is something that we relied on twice during the winter, and it was a major reason that one of our co-workers was diagnosed properly and a decision was made to medevac him. It took two weeks before the Twin Otter could arrive to rescue him, but just a decade ago none of this was even possible. Then, all off-station communications took place over high-frequency radio.

South Pole living facilities have also been upgraded over the years. Construction began in 1956 on the first station, which consisted of a series of interconnected underground dwellings. Conditions were claustrophobic and dark. In those early days, the station was a military facility housing a dozen or more men and usually a dog. In 1976, a geodesic dome was completed as a shield against the wind and drifting snow. Its purpose was to protect the several smaller buildings in its interior. The buildings under the dome are heated, but the dome itself is not. The dome itself is usually about the same temperature as it is outside -- but without the wind. It's quite common to see people walking from building to building wearing T-shirts and jeans.

In 2000, construction began on the third station to be built at the South Pole. The engineers decided to abandon the dome design and instead build the new station on pillars to allow the blowing snow to pass underneath, without accumulating. The station is also designed so that it can be raised in the event that accumulating snow does become an issue. On the inside, the new station is much bigger, brighter, cleaner and more comfortable than it was under the dome. Parts of the station are already open for business. My one grand contribution to the station was to install four switches so that folks could access the network from their rooms. The berthing rooms are much larger and equipped with modern wardrobes and desks. There is also a brand new galley and dining area that is twice as big as the old one, equipped with multiple microwaves and even a serve-yourself ice cream machine.

After dinner, the dining area converts to a movie theater with a large-screen projector and screen. Our only store, which is open a few times a week, stocks a large selection of DVDs and videocassettes, so finding a movie to watch is not a problem. Ninety years after Roald Amundsen became the first human to reach the South Pole, my cohorts and I were able to watch movies in comfort.

The new station will contain a large gymnasium with a track, a full basketball court and a climbing wall. This will be a great improvement to the existing gym, which contains one 8-foot basketball hoop. When complete in 2006, the new station will house all nonscience facilities under one roof.

Construction is nearly complete on a new Dark Sector Lab. This will be an ultra-modern facility for conducting experiments focused on studying the universe. Eventually DSL will house a large 8-meter telescope. Due to the clean air, extremely cold temperatures and six months of darkness, the South Pole is the perfect place to study the universe.

The science groups use the summer months to set up their experiments. If all goes as planned, they can relax somewhat during the winter, while their equipment goes about the task of collecting data.

I provided some support for these scientists, getting them onto the network, providing DNS and DHCP services, but they ran their own IT structure for their experiments. My own direct contribution to science was minimal, though bitter cold. I climbed a 40-foot tower in 40 below zero temperatures to change out a weather vane for our meteorology department. On a few occasions in the winter, I helped with the snow accumulation measurements. I ventured outside the dome for nearly 45 minutes in the dark. It's extremely difficult to write with mittens on, and I learned quickly to bring a pencil; pens freeze.

One of the largest projects at Pole is the Antarctic Muon and Neutrino Detector Array. AMANDA is a neutrino telescope buried in the South Polar icecap. Neutrinos are thought to be the smallest particles that exist. Because of their small size they pass through all forms of known matter. By detecting a passing neutrino and calculating its course, data can be gathered to determine the size and age of objects thousands of light years away. Another significant project is DASI (Degree Angular Scale Interferometer). DASI is a 13-element array designed to obtain highly detailed images of the cosmic microwave background. These observations help cosmologists understand and reveal the detailed composition, as well as the large-scale geometry, of the universe. The radiation that DASI measures dates back at least 10 billion years when the Earth was only 300,000 years old. Precise measurements of the subtle temperature variations in this afterglow enable scientists to test their theories for the origin of the universe and to contemplate whether the universe will expand forever, eventually collapse or remain forever balanced between the two. The U.S. National Oceanographic and Atmospheric and Administration Organi-zation runs many experiments at Pole that measure the effects of greenhouse gases and ozone depletion.

The bitter cold and constant darkness during the winter months were challenging and dangerous at times. Often I had to travel a mile or more from the station throughout the winter. Since most vehicles will not operate when temperatures are 80 below zero, I would always set out on foot. At those times, the Pole didn't feel so modern. On this particular day, I walked out to the building that houses most of our telecommunications equipment. The winds were high, and the snow was blowing, limiting visibility to the point that I could barely make out my outstretched hand. Before sundown, we had planted flag lines for just such weather. In the total darkness I became separated from the lines and began wandering around in an attempt to reorient myself. Before I could find the flag line again, I unknowingly climbed the backside of a large snow wall, and, the next thing I knew, I was in midair, as I had stepped off a 6-foot sheer drop. I was not injured; but I was lucky. Some serious injuries have occurred in similar accidents in the past.

Despite all of our gear, working for long periods outside means getting really cold. At times I needed to remove my gloves to work on the equipment. This led to bone-numbing, unresponsive fingers. My beard and eyelashes often froze, and I simply got used to the constant peeling of skin associated with frostnip (mild frostbite or superficial freezing). The cold became more of a nuisance to me than a real danger, a burden of living and working on the frozen continent. It was simply always present -- never a warm sunny day, never a day without two miles of snow and ice beneath my feet.

Sunset in March lasted a week. We had clear weather for most of the week, and I found myself watching the sun for hours at a time, as it worked its way slowly around the horizon. Great flashes of green appeared as the light refracted. This is something that happens quite frequently during sunset; but the flashes only last for fractions of a second, so they often go unnoticed. With our drawn-out sunset, the flashes were spectacu-lar and visible for minutes at a time.

As the sun set, I was both amazed and a little apprehensive about my decision to stay for the winter. After the weeklong show, the sun was below the horizon. The last plane had left a few weeks prior, and now I knew that there was truly no way out. I was having a great time on the ice, but there was something unsettling about being at the bottom of the Earth with little or no chance of leaving. Though our quarters were modern, the isolation was real, cut off by 2,800 miles from our closest point of civilization. It is said that a rescue mission could reach the international space station more quickly than it could reach us during the Antarctic winter.

Memory loss affected everyone eventually. It's a symptom of living above 10,000 feet. The lack of oxygen takes its toll by affecting the ability to recall simple words or phrases, people's names, for instance. All of a sudden I would forget the name of a colleague I had seen every day for the past eight months. It's what we call becoming "toasty," and it only got worse.

Some in the Antarctic program joked that Pole is a big frozen work camp. While it is true that we did work hard throughout the year, we also played hard. Days such as sunset and sunrise, birthdays and holidays were cause for celebration. The biggest party of the year took place on Midwinters Day; it marked our winter solstice and meant we had made it halfway through the long dark night. At Midwinters, we knew that the sun would be coming back our way, and that it would all be downhill from there. There was a large serve-yourself bar at Pole just for occasions like these. Typically we worked a six-day week, but on big occasions, we usually got a Saturday off. Since the sun never rises, there is no reason to call it a night, so parties continued on into the small hours.

Recreational options are also available at the station. There are cross-country skis available, although the snow was often too cold for the skis to glide across. Camping out is also an option. This sounds crazy, but quite a few of us have slept out in a tent at the geographic pole marker. The night I slept outside, it was 77 below zero and just a few days before sunrise. I cocooned myself into a sleeping bag and then zipped two more together to throw on top for extra insulation. I put down insulated foam pads between the tent floor and my sleeping bag. After being a little uncomfortable at first, I drifted off to sleep and woke up 10 hours later. I was warm all night, and only my hair had frozen during my slumber.

Sunrise was not as spectacular a show as sunset, but after five months of total darkness, it was amazing to see the sun coming back to our part of the planet. It sounds nuts, but during the winter, especially when the moon is full and giant in the sky and a blue hue is strewn across the landscape, I really felt as though I had been walking around on a different planet. It is difficult to fathom that I could possibly be on the same planet that I have known for my entire life. When the sun rose, it was as though we had reconnected with the planet and that trippy outer-space feeling vanished.

The same affinity for adventure and travel and extreme challenge that brought me to Pole began to tell me when it was time to leave. Being isolated in the same place for so long became a struggle -- day after day the same scenery, the same whiteness, the same faces, night after night the same
dining area, the same bar. As I became used to these things, I often found myself looking forward to the day that I could leave. I spent the summer days of October 2003 packing my gear, preparing for the replacement crew and looking forward to the arrival of the first flight in more than eight months.

When the plane landed later that month to bring in the new crew and the beer, I was one of the excited faces waiting at the skiway. Now that the time was almost near, I was impatient to leave Pole and excited to climb aboard the plane for the flight out. Thirty-nine of us flew out together. As I sat in the LC-130, I was thrilled by the prospect of arriving in New Zealand in less than 10 hours. Yet, at the same time, leaving was also bittersweet. After 13 months, the South Pole had truly become my home. Our crew had truly become a family, and for the first time in months we were heading out in separate directions.

The humidity at Pole never rises above 3 percent. In Christchurch I stepped off the plane into the warm humid air. The smell of trees and grass washed over everything. For the first time in 12 months, I walked around without the sound of snow crunching under my feet. I walked outside without gloves, hat, jacket and boots. The walk from the airport to the Clothing Distribution Center to return my used gear was by far the most enjoyable walk that I have had in my life. A group of about 20 of us walked together. We gasped at the birds that flew over us, and we stopped to roll in the freshly cut grass. We took turns climbing the first tree we saw. We crossed over a river and paused to marvel at the sight of water outdoors in its nonsolid state.

I decided to treat myself those first few nights back and rented a suite with a king-sized bed. After throwing down my bags, I went directly for a shower. At Pole, where I was limited to two two-minute showers per week, I had dreamed of the day when I could shower for as long as I wanted. For about half an hour, I did just that.

Even with all of the hardships that I faced living at the South Pole, it was nothing like the days of the early explorers. Those men faced unthinkable journeys through the most brutal of climates. They remained out of touch with the world for months at a time. Their gear and supplies were often inadequate, and, sadly, many people, sometimes entire crews, died. Today the South Pole remains a place of exploration, a perfect place for gazing at the universe that surrounds us in every direction. In 1911 Roald Amundsen did the impossible and reached the bottom of the world. Since that historic day, man has strived to go farther, to explore beyond our own planet. It is not ironic then that much of the work fostering that exploration is today conducted at the bottom of the Earth.

 

 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Shayne Clausson graduated from JMU in 1995 with a degree in political science. He has worked for two congressmen and a former White House chief of staff and made a career in information technology. Mostly, however, he seeks out travel and adventure. Immediately after his year at the Pole ended, he headed out for several weeks of hiking and camping on New Zealand's south island. Clausson will be traveling on an around-the-world ticket until August, at which time he plans on taking a six-month IT position at Palmer Station, Antarctica.