Images of

ANTARCTICA

NZARP Hut

Photos © 2002 Seth White

Home

The US hut at Arrival Heights was built in 1987. The Kiwis have had facilities here since at least 1970. I know this because I had to research some survey information for a new instrument that will be installed in the US hut during the upcoming 2003-2004 season. I happened upon a large map of the McMurdo area dated 1970 which had the information I was after. This map shows McMurdo, Scott Base, the old nuclear power plant (which was built at the base of Ob Hill), and various laboratories in the surrounding areas. The US had two labs near the Arrival Heights area, only closer to town than our present building. These were the Riometer Lab and the Poglow Lab. The Poglow Lab looked to be close to where the McMurdo Ground Station (Radarsat) is now located. On this map it shows not one but two Kiwi labs at Arrival Heights - one at the base of First Crater (where the NZ Telecom dome is now located) and one at the base of Second Crater. Neither of these labs exist anymore, having been replaced by a single building which is about 1/3 of the way between First and Second Craters. However, remnants of one building can be seen at the foot of Second Crater. This explains the smoothed out area and the little wooden boxes I found here one day (see here near the bottom of the page). So anyway, the present Kiwi hut looks like this. There was also a gorgeous sunset this day.

Here is another picture of the Kiwi hut and the NZ Telecom dome on First Crater. The NZ hut is getting up in years, and has not aged gracefully. There are leaks all over, which is not necessarily friendly to the sensitive electronic equipment inside. It is not elevated off the ground like the US hut, so the drifts around the hut are pretty high. Antarctica New Zealand has decided to build a new hut, starting in the 2003-2004 season. (Warning: ranting is iminent!) A member of the NZARP contacted me to ask what measures they could take during the construction of their new hut so as not to disturb the experiments operating in our nearby hut. This was quite neighborly, since there is an off chance that someone could inadvertently affect one of our experiments. Also, several of the optical experiments located on the roof of our hut would be sensitive to visual obstructions if their new hut was sufficiently taller than ours. So I did some measurements of our hut's roofline elevation, corresponded with the US scientists to get their recommendations, and sent the NZARP a note outlining some suggestions that would keep everyone on the US side happy. Somehow our NSF bureaucrats got wind of this, and I was summarily instructed not to send the Kiwis any information unless it had been filtered up (down?) through the chain of RPSC/NSF/etc. Because of this I have ceased to participate in the exchange or even to follow this issue, however I am told that the information flow has again slowed to the trickle it was before. Small technical issues have a tendency to get absorbed in politics here - arguments, posturing, and endless delays. As a further example, another item has arisen within the USAP regarding the Radarsat building. One of the groups I support mentioned that they will want a new bench built this coming season to better house their equipment. I suggested they could use an empty equipment rack that I have sitting at Arrival Heights...and they thought this was a good idea. It can fit all their equipment, will take less floor space, and will save the science construction crew from building a brand new bench. However, I was then told by one of our corporate movers and shakers that there are very sensitive politics and thin ice here, since there is a complicated agreement between NASA, NSF, and RPSC with this building. All told, the science group has requested a new rack/bench, larger conduit to be installed (so they can actually fit their cables through to the antennas outside!), and to move their small antennas to a better location. In reality, these are all very minor issues, but our people are fretting that these modest requests (all in the interests of bettering a scientific experiement) might require the entire agreement to be renegotiated....which would take months. This may be true, but the question is: how did it get this way in the first place? Why do three little requests activate a bunch of middle managers and bureaucrats to start running around and flooding each other with emails? More importantly to me, I have been instructed to exercise great caution in making suggestions to certain scientists about how to best meet their needs. The mere idea of using an existing rack that I have at Arrival Heights for their equipment instead of having the carpenters build a brand new bench was evidently a faux pas for me, since our RPSC managers are "concerned" about certain "issues". Sometimes it becomes difficult to tell if I'm working at a remote research station or a government complex (or worse yet, a suburban corporate office!). This is especially true in the middle of winter when there's no sun to light up the scenery :-). I am not implying that Scott Base and the NZARP don't have their fair share of insanity, because they certainly do. And I am not generalizing about the McMurdo community. We have a great many top-notch people working here....people that a) have the intelligence to know how to do things and b) have the work ethic to actually do them. It's simply that the workings of certain organizations, and more importantly the people therein, often baffle me - in particular the Denver office. I often think that things on the ice get accomplished in spite of management, when the key job of management ought to be supporting and facilitating the work being done.
OK....so moving right along....this is the NZ science tech truck, complete with Wyoming license plate. Of course the last thing you need in Antarctica is a license plate, but there are a lot of them floating around that people bring. During one summer storm, they had to get up to the NZ hut. However, Scott Base management personnel would not let them use their Pisten Bully or Hagglunds (both of which were sitting idle that day). So they had to pile into this little truck and fight for over an hour to get through the snow drifts on the way up. But they finally made it. Since I was able to get a Pisten Bully for the day to bring one science group up to our hut, we all decided to drive together on the way back in case they got stuck. One drift was particularly steep and deep, and they couldn't get through. So we hooked up a tow rope to the Pisten Bully and pulled their truck out of the drift. Which was actually quite fun. This summer was especially bad for drifting on this road, and our guys did not always have the manpower to keep this road open. They also did not want to spend the effort to make a more permanent fix to prevent drifting (there are ways to do this), so I ended up calling them frequently to send up a loader to clear the road. Pisten Bullies were great to use now and then when we really needed to, but this road was built so we can use trucks to commute back and forth. After the station closed for the summer, the winter fleet ops crew listened to reason and decided to fix the problem. They plowed up some snow to make a slightly elevated berm on the road in the worst drifting area. They then flattened it out with a dozer and brought the fire truck up. The fire truck sprayed water on it (water = Antarctic cement) and voila! we had a nice ice-packed surface to drive on. Since that time there have been numerous raging storms....but not an inch of drifting on this road and not one minute of maintenance required by fleet ops. Thanks, guys.
I had been over to the Kiwi hut off and on during the season, but I had never really gotten the full tour. I had been meaning to do this for a while, and finally in mid-June I happened to be up there when Margaret the science tech was there. She invited me over for a cup of coffee, and I had my camera...so she showed me what some of the experiments were. But first, the building itself. This is pretty interesting - there are actually two halves to the building. One side of it houses all of the scientific equipment while the other half has small living quarters. The living side was actually part of NZARP's old Vanda Station. This was a station built in the Dry Valleys near Lake Vanda, and operated from the 60's to the 90's. When it was decomissioned, this building was moved up here and attached to their Arrival Heights hut. Yes, they skua'd an entire building! So you walk in the building through the freezer door at the end of this hall, which divides the two halves of the building. The living quarters are on the right in this picture (on the left as you walk in the main door), and the science areas are on the other side.
This is the living area. On the wall to the left is a map of the Dry Valleys. If you're part of the UK, these are the Victoria Dry Valleys. If you're US, they're the McMurdo Dry Valleys. I particularly like the windows, with the inside shutters and old-tyme latches to open and close them. This isn't altogether different from the living area at the US hut: basic accomodations, no running water. Except that they have....
....a microwave!
At the other end of the living area is a small bedroom with two beds.
This nice little mobile hangs from the ceiling in the living room.
Back into the hallway - at the end opposite the main door is the bathroom. Or loo, if you're from NZ. The window above the toilet is not exactly discreet.....but then again, we're in the middle of absolutely nowhere.
Entering the science half of the building, there is short, nicely colored corridor.
In one room is this thing: the Bruker. It is evidently a spectrometer of some sort, and can be used for several different purposes. This winter, it is being used to study Nitric acid formation in the stratosphere, which is a primary player in the series of reactions which lead to the ozone hole. This measurement is made by observing the character of the moonlight that reaches ground level....so when there is a full moon and the weather is clear, Rebecca from Scott Base is up here almost non-stop trying to get as many measurements as possible.
Another picture of the Bruker setup.
Entering the other half of the building, I saw this arrangement. A girl from McMurdo and a guy from Scott Base had recently gotten engaged, and Margaret explained to me that this is where he proposed. He brought her here for a candlelight dinner and popped the question. She said yes, and now they're trying to figure out if there's any legit way they can get married while still on the ice this year. Antarctica is a giant grey area where laws are concerned, but they're shooting for August! The compressor on the floor, in case you're wondering, was just used by Margaret as she took an air sample. Clean air sampling is one reason Arrival Heights is designated a Site of Special Scientific Interest, or SSSI. When the winds are right (from the North at more than 10 knots), it is desirable to take an air sample. So that's the main reason she was up here today.
This is the main instrument room. All told, I think there are about 10 experiments running in this hut.
Another look at the instrument room. From what I hear it's an interesting mix of systems - some new, some old, some archaic, some that work well, and some that are achy-breaky pieces of ****. Oh, wait, that sounds pretty much like the batch of systems I handle!
More techno-geek equipment.
This is an interesting device. It's an original Dobson instrument. This measures the total column ozone in the atmosphere by optical means, and there are even Dobson units in which you express the results of the measurement (which are commonly used in the field). This is a very old system, and there are four more of them operating in the Antarctic. There is a small map on the wall nearby showing each instrument's location and the installation dates. They read 1956, 1964, etc etc. This one was installed in 1988, but it is much much older than that. And it evidently still works pretty well! No computers to crash on you, that's for sure....