The Lucky Seven

(From the A-Frame log book, May 2004)

Once a month, we ragged souls get a two day weekend. Not last week though. Last week was just another "get-your-laundry-done-and-sleep", one day kind of affair. For seven lucky people though, last weekend went longer than planned. . .

THE TALE OF THE LUCKY SEVEN:

Seven people are enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame. As they walk from place to place, questions get tossed at them, requests for pictures. These seven samurai got lucky. They went out to shake hands with Antarctica. . . and she shook back.

She shook back like only Antarctica can, and marooned seven souls in a tiny A-frame hut, far from McMurdo. Their overnight trip became an adventure, a once-in-a-lifetime chance to face this place on their own. They melted snow for drinking water. They jammed shovels against the door to keep it closed. They watched through the window with flashlights as driving winds snapped bamboo flag poles. They radioed in every hour to let the station know the A-frame hadn't blown apart.

But what is an "A-Frame"? Why is it isolated far from the safety of McMurdo? And why go there? Long ago, when the U.S. Navy built this place, they needed a building to act as a command and control center. It was dubbed the chalet; a large, wooden A-frame (like the ones in Aspen). Eventually, the chalet was replaced.

PRESENT-DAY CHALET:

Back in those early navy days, things got thrown away, not returned to the States for disposal. The old wooden A-Frame was thrown out with the trash, an entire building simply "thrown away". Luckily, our nearby neighbors at Scott Base, being crazy New Zealanders, snuck over here and trash-picked the A-Frame! They couldn't sneak off with the whole two-story building, so they settled for the top floor.

This they towed out onto the "Transition", an area over the Ross Sea where the permanent ice shelf begins to thin out before becoming open water. The ice there is only about a hundred feet thick. Those crazy Kiwis stuck a porta-potty out there, and now use the A-Frame as a vacation hideaway, a place to escape the last vestiges of civilization.

Last week, the Kiwis graciously offered use of their A-Frame to McMurdo Station. We had a raffle, and seven lucky people were chosen at random to spend a single night by lantern light. The A-Frame has no electricity (beyond an emergency battery), no running water, no bathroom, and no wind or temperature sensors. It's a single room with a loft, a furnace, and a few windows.

But to us, it is as close to Antarctica as you can get. McMurdo gets a little more comfortable each year. Like America's Old West, the days of true isolation are coming to a close. . .

The piston bully dropped the group off at 7:00 PM Saturday night under starry skies. There was so little wind, Kendall couldn't fly his kite. What nobody knew was that the proverbial "calm before the storm" had already begun. The red marker flags leading towards the outhouse pointed south. This should have tipped them off that something was wrong. Usually, winds blow FROM the south, and only reverse direction when a storm front is building. But things were exciting and fun for them, and the direction of the little flags went unnoticed.

The next few hours went by without incident. It was a camping trip at the bottom of the world; a little homestead on a frozen sea, lit by hazy moonlight:



Hazy? What about the starry skies? They didn't last long. Back at MacTown, the station went to Condition Two. (McMurdo never did hit Condition One, but came darn close. The scaffolding I'd been working on ripped free and fell over onto the generators.) The weather deteriorated quickly, driving our happy campers inside for the night. By Sunday morning, it was impossible to send a piston bully. Throughout the day, winds only got worse, and at some point slipped the A-Frame into Condition One.

Condition One means one of three things: The wind-chill is below negative 100 degrees, winds have hit a constant 55 knots, or visibility is less than 100 feet. No one knows how cold or windy it got out there that night, but the outhouse sixty feet away disappeared in the blizzard. Then the flags, one by one, winked out until the little hut was swallowed whole by a white curtain. A maelstrom of howling wind rushed passed the windows, hour after hour. The way they describe it, each time the winds dropped off, another blast of air would slam into the hut and make it strain under the blow. It creaked and groaned like a wooden ship in a storm, and filled with the sounds of a hurricane. Snow worked its way under the edges of the walls where they met the floor. More snow entered the A-Frame from inside the cabinets, as if it were trying to sneak in.

As exciting as it was for them, and as nice as it might have been to spend a second night away from the station, Condition One storms can last ten days if they want, and there was no real food in the A-Frame, just chips and M&Ms. No showers either. No dry clothes. And no bathroom. That last part was tricky. The first person to make a run for the outhouse came back with his pants full of snow, and his ears embedded in a layer of ice. Luckily, his frostbite was minor. The outhouse had filled with snow, and was unusable. Some used it anyway.

By Monday, the lucky seven were ready to come home. It wasn't easy to sleep with the constant roar, but they were warm enough as long as they kept their feet up. The temperature dropped at least thirty degrees between the chair seats and the floor. The lower shelves of the cabinets were encrusted with glistening ice, and if the furnace gave out (possible should snow clog the stovepipe) things would go "down hill" very, very quickly.

But it didn't give out, and seven new friends sang and danced, drank and told stories by lantern light, waiting out their first Condition One. In a little hut at the bottom of the world, seven people shook hands with Antarctica:

Kendall, Peach, Tom, Lynn, Kitty, Karl. . . and me.


RUNNING THROUGH THE SHOT WITH MY FLASHLIGHT!
(15 second exposure)

ME - COMING BACK FROM THE OUTHOUSE WITH FROZEN EARS:


THE LUCKY SEVEN
UNITED STATES ANTARCTIC PROGRAM

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