Images of

ANTARCTICA

Truncated Cones

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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On the way to Truncated Cones, we flew out where you could see the ice channel. Here's the Polar Sea doing its thing.

At the Truncated Cones site, we had a lot of work to do and so the helicopter left us here while it went off to pick up/drop off people and things elsewhere. Nice to have some time without helicopter 'close support'. With close support, you're trying to rush and get things done because they're waiting right next to you and have to keep on or ahead of schedule. Being dropped off, you might possibly finish your work and then have some time to hang out before they come back. And fortunately, that's exactly what happened here.
So the helo took off. Some streaks of the snow and ice particles showed up in this exposure. Cool.
The main Cones installations. There is an older short-period seismic system here, a newer broadband seismic system, and a separate GPS system. Nearby, there is a repeater station which has a good view of McMurdo. Many of the stations on the mountain have their line of sight to McMurdo blocked by the mountain. So their signals are repeated through other sites on their way back to town. At Cones, various signals come through the repeater site, including the LEH and Nausea Knob broadband seismic stations. This is why I was here...to see if the loss of our Nausea Knob signal was due to problems at Cones. In short, this was our most likely theory: that rime ice built up on the Cones repeater antennas from a recent storm had added too much attenuation to the signal. So George and I hiked over to the repeater site while Chuck stayed at this main site to do his GPS'ing.
Another picture of the main Cones site, with the Erebus crater in the background.
And another pic of the main Cones site, as seen from near the repeater site.
The wind generator, with a full compliment of rime ice. A while after this trip, the Cones site batteries were deprived of all wind charging following (another) storm. The wind generator was actually stopped in place by rime buildup, and it took many days for this ice to clear before the wind could turn the blades. Unbelieveable stuff.
So here's the antenna mast at the repeater site. Lots of rime ice here. Not so much on the antennas themselves, but all over the solar panels.
Another picture of the mast, as viewed from the direction where the LEH and Nausea Knob signals originate. This is the view of the repeater antennas that those two stations see....largely obscured by rime. The same antennas serve to both receive the signals from the seismic stations and transmit the signals to McMurdo. The view to McMurdo was unaffected, but the ice had built up significantly in the "rearward" direction pointing toward LEH and NKB...so the ice theory seemed to be the culprit. Removing this ice certainly helped, but we later found that the main problem was at McMurdo.
Here's me clearing rime from the antenna. George and I traded off, doing about half each. Couldn't really clear the solar panels, though. The stuff was practically welded on there and we ran the risk of breaking the panels if we chipped to hard.
Another thrilling SCIENCE TECH ACTION SHOT!
And of course, the required glamor shot.
Still more of me on the mast. This was just too cool for words.
We also checked the repeater radios inside this box at the foot of the mast. Radios were functioning fine, So we cleaned out the snow and plugged the holes a little better.
Rime ice on a coil of wire. This stuff, although a real nuisance, is really pretty.
A piece of the stuff broken off from the wire.
Still more rime, only growing on rocks this time.
The Royal Society Range as seen from Truncated Cones. Actually, I got an email a while back from Phil Kyle saying that although some of the names he had submitted to whatever-governing-body-controlls-this-sort-of-thing were officially accepted, there evidently was another place down here that was called Truncated Cones. So this place is now known in the Books as "Seismic Bluff". All of the systems still use Cones (or more particularly CON or CONZ) as the identifier (including the helo GPS settings), so around McMurdo I beleive the name Truncated Cones will stick.
The ice edge, where the sea ice sheet ends and open water begins, with the icebreaker 'tracks'. Cape Royds is the little bit of land on the right.
Looking back the other way, here's the Erebus crater. Erebus, the chain smoking volcano, puffing away as usual.
So we finished our work with about 45 minutes to spare before the helo came back (and so did Chuck), so it's boondoggle time. George and I wandered around in fumarole-land....like this one near the base of the hill on which the repeater site was built.
OK, 10 straight pictures of fumaroles coming up. Yep, I think they're friggin' excellent.








Me, with the fumaroles.
Here's Chuck and George. We all had a pretty good time here.
But alas, the drone of the helo beckoned in the distance. Crap. Time to go. So we took off and went to our last stop.....a place called Abbott Peak to work on one of Chuck's GPS sites. Truncated Cones and Peak 1882 (here) are the two most righteous places I have been while down here.