Trent's Great White South: "Great God! this is an awful place" - Robert Falcon Scott (upon reaching the South Pole)

Have you gazed on naked grandeur where there's nothing else to gaze on,

Set pieces and drop-curtain scenes galore,

Big mountains heaved to heaven, which the blinding sunsets blazon,

Black canyons where the rapids rip and roar?

Have you swept the visioned valley with the green stream streaking through it,

Searched the Vastness for a something you have lost?

Have you strung your soul to silence? Then for God's sake go and do it;

Hear the challenge, learn the lesson, pay the cost.

-Robert W. Service

It has taken me nearly two months to come to the bleak realization that if I am to wait for any sort of personal time in which to write this blog, it will get updated just about as often as it has. I feel that I should therefore be absolved of any claims of insufficient blogging, as I have heretoforth been too concerned about finding a ‘good time’ to write, to actually do it. Thus I have written all of these blogs over toasted bagels, grapenuts, and early morning statistical analyses debates.

Back to the Issue at hand

Seals: Surprisingly enough we continue tag, weigh, and survey hundreds of seals a day. The sixty-pound newborn pups of mid-October are now pushing three-hundred pounds and have a full complement of razor sharp teeth This makes wrestling them into a duffle bag (to weigh them) a tricky proposition. Further complicating the matter is the unheard of snow that we have been experiencing.

Excerpt.

Historically this part of Antarctica has been one of the most arid spots on the planet, making places like the Sahara, and the Namib Desert look like virtual rainforests. Because we are in what is known as a deposition zone, the snow that accumulates around Ross Island and McMurdo Sound is often tens, hundreds, if not thousands of years old, and blown off the Polar plateau to our south. This season we have experienced (first hand) the effects of global warming, albeit in the guise of dramatically increased snowfall that comes in the form of Blizzards. The largest blizzard of the season thus far dropped over sixteen inches of snow and piled it into drifts rising over twenty feet in some places. This blizzard struck with beautiful timing and the deep snow concealed the ever-widening cracks in the melting sea Ice wonderfully. In fact I have been fortunate enough to fall through three snow bridges into open water cracks, not to mention countless other minor (but dry) crevases. This snow has really slowed us down and makes nearly everything we do a bit more tiresome.

I must admit that I should apologize for my inaccuracy in the past. It turns out that I really have not been living in Antarctica, but on the Sea Ice immediately adjacent to it. Even Ross Island (where McMurdo is located) is only connected to “Antarctica” by a thousand foot thick sheet of ice. Even though I am surrounded by the Soaring peaks of the Royal Society Range and Mount Discovery, until a few days ago I had not stepped foot on the Antarctic mainland (or mainice). Luckily we had some seals to survey and tag along the coast, and finally got to the continent by way of Huey Helicopter. After getting picked up at camp we flew north along the western Coast of McMurdo Sound, counting seals hauled out near the snouts of the giant glaciers that pour off the Transantarctic Mountains and polar plateau beyond. These glaciers stretch hundreds of miles over the horizon to our west, and a few continue up to 60 miles out into the deep blue waters of the Ross Sea to the east, in massive Ice tongues. An army of stark white Icebergs each the size of a small town stretches out as far as I can see, floating northward toward New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Argentina, and points north.

After hours with my face pressed against the window (lightly however since the windows are made to just pop out with a firm push)I see what seems to be over a thousand of the black leechlike bodies that I know are seals, sprawling along jumbled and jagged sea ice between a maze of titanic bergs. This is our study site at Terra Nova bay and our pilot drops into a mighty Ice canyon to let us out for a few hours of work. We pick our way around towering bergs, along black gapping cracks, professionally tagging and surveying seals as we work our way through the Icy maze. I work in silence. Like so much of what I have seen and experienced down here, I cannot help but feel that there are no words that can do justice to the majesty and power of this place. It pains me to know that I cannot possibly remember everything, cannot feel this way forever.