Finally, the sun is back …
Hello, everyone!
Today I was rudely awakened as usual by my alarm clock, raised the blinds in my window and saw a strip of red on the horizon. Now you’re probably asking yourself what was so special about that. Well, for the past nine days we’d had snowstorms with wind speeds up to 60 knots, when at best you could guess where the horizon might be, and on several days we had total whiteout conditions. One afternoon there was a 45-minute break in the cloud cover, and the sun came out just in time to set … at least, that’s what the others told me, and showed me in a photo. I missed it, because I was in my ‘doctor’s bag’ (a small wooden shed beneath my office, with no windows and used as a storeroom), busy running an inventory on our reserve clothing … counting socks and overalls instead of enjoying the sunset … sometimes life can be cruel.
And then came this morning with a red strip that slowly grew larger, above me a pink cloud framed by an azure sky, below me drifting snow whipping across the ‘prairie’. When the sun finally rose above the horizon at 9:26 am, I got the impression that it was in a hurry to finish its course before setting at 3:33 pm. What a fantastic feeling it was to see it all … we only have 21 days left before the Polar Night falls. Until now, I always assumed the Polar Night wouldn’t have much effect on me, and figured: during winters in Bavaria, I went to work in the dark, spent all day in an OR with no windows, and then went back home in the dark. Now I’m not so sure. I’ll miss the sun just as much as all the overwinterers before me, that much is certain. On my monitor, every day I check the webcam from the Seiser Alm in South Tyrol: they’ve had brilliant sunshine for the last several days, roughly two-thirds of the snow has melted away, and the alpine meadows are still a little brown, but every day they’re released a bit more from their snowy prison. And today … dense clouds, you can’t even make out the Schlern, and the meadows are covered with a blanket of fresh snow. It’s a rare thing when the weather in Antarctica seems more inviting than back home …
In the second half of the month I usually have most of my routine work behind me, so as a rule, I turn my attention to the tasks that don’t need to be done so often. On the last two days with decent weather I managed to re-set the metal rods for the hand line that marks the path to the observatories, before they could sink into the ice. A little manual labour outdoors can be a real pleasure …
Weather conditions even allowed me to run a recon on the trail to the penguin observatory, 8 km from the station, using our Hilux pickup. Though visibility was poor when I left, ca. 1 km away from my goal at the ice shelf edge, the clouds parted and Atka Bay was bathed in beautiful sunlight. I made a quick stop at SPOT, our penguin observatory, and could hardly believe my eyes … there were roughly 1,000 emperor penguins on the sea ice, all of them very plump, who had already begun finding mates. And looking out to sea, I could spy several small caravans of penguins making their way toward the ‘Atka Bay Dating Service’. The boys and girls alike were good and chunky, a far cry from the scrawny ones we’d seen two months ago in their pin feathers, trying to hide from the wind among our containers. When it comes to waddling, it seemed to me the added weight made them even clumsier, but when it was time to slide on their bellies, they’d lost none of their elegance. They were making quite a din; apparently, they had plenty to talk about. And off to the sides you could see a fair number of penguins without a mate, who looked like they’d prefer to be left alone. Running into the penguins came as a complete surprise, which made it all the nicer … Antarctica can be so beautiful.
And then Antarctica decided to show its other side: ruthless, cold and stormy. The station is creaking and groaning in the storm, vibrating and shuddering. You get used to it, but I’m still amazed by the natural forces that the station can withstand. At night, earplugs help …
And when the weather’s bad, you can always do inventory work … you wouldn’t believe how many things there are to count here, so that we can be sure to reorder them in time. After all, the nearest supermarket and hardware store are a bit too far for a quick shopping trip. I can tell you this much … we’ve got plenty of linens, bed sheets and towels. The same goes for socks, work gloves, irons, laundry drying racks and blow dryers … on the other hand, ski visors with clear lenses are hot items, and hard to come by. Visors are important for protecting your face, but tinted ones aren’t exactly ideal for the Polar Night. We’ve got just enough of these visors to go around, but we’d better be sure not to break or scratch too many; we only have four clear replacement lenses …
Also ran a sweep of the station and thought about what interesting parts I could show you … and stumbled across a group of photos on the wall, the ‘ancestral gallery’. You can find it on Deck 1, which is where our living quarters are. I always enjoy looking at the photos. At the very beginning, you’ll find two portraits: one of Alfred Wegener and one of Georg von Neumayer. Don’t worry; I’m not going to start telling you their life stories, but they really are worth reading up on, I was truly impressed. For instance, Georg von Neumayer studied at the LMU in Munich …
Then there are photos of all the overwintering teams to date, from the very first team back in 1981/1982 to the one we relieved, the 39th team, who were here in 2019/2020. On the other side of the wall, there’s a photo of the overwintering team at the former GDR’s Georg Forster Station from 1976. What really caught my eye was the picture of the overwintering team from 1990/1991 … the first and last team made entirely of women, who had to overcome a great deal of resistance before they were finally given the chance to prove themselves in the Antarctic; until then, German polar research had been strictly reserved for men. Since 1996 all the overwintering teams have been mixed, which is definitely a positive trend, when I think back on my time in the Bundeswehr, surrounded by nothing but other men …
Especially when I look at the photos of the older overwintering teams from the original Georg von Neumayer Station, which has since disappeared in the ice, and the Neumayer II Station, I’m grateful for the ‘luxurious’ conditions we have at the Neumayer III Station. In the past, they had to manually shovel fresh snow into the snowmelt; today, we use the snowcat. And today, we can lift the garage ramp using hydraulic power; back then, it took a lot more manual labour and digging. Okay, you might be thinking “it’s just shovelling snow” … but we’re not talking about light powder snow like you find on the best days for skiing; it’s hard-packed snow that you have to first break up using a spade. I’ve never seen a garden-variety snow shovel here, and you wouldn’t stand a chance of penetrating the pack snow with one. But our true luxury is the size of the station, and especially all the windows. I once stayed in a youth hostel in New Zealand that had a panorama window with a ‘million dollar view’ of a beautiful lake with mountains behind it … you could sit there for hours, reading, gazing out the window, reading, gazing out the window some more … and here we have at least a ‘two million dollar view’.
The stations that came before ours were both essentially tubular constructions and embedded in the ice, in the second station down to 15 m, and you entered and left them by a stair tower. When the weather turns rough, we can sit here warm and cosy and look out the windows to watch the drifting snow and its eddies, how depending on the speed it blows lazily over the ‘prairie’ or is whipped across it. And back then … a feeling like being trapped in a submarine. That being said, our ‘luxury’ comes at the price of more work in terms of upkeep for the technical equipment and all the vehicles. I don’t think we have more free time than the past teams, since our scientific agendas have also expanded. But it’s definitely more comfortable living at Neumayer III …
And there are other photos that I walk past every day. In our dining hall, there are three printed out photos of polar expeditions from the turn of the 20th century taped onto the refrigerator. Truly impressive images from an era when each expedition was an adventure, and the outcome was anything but certain … as can be seen in the want ad posted by Shackleton on 1 January 1914: “Men wanted for a dangerous journey. Poor wages. Bitter cold. Several months of complete darkness. Constant danger. No guarantee of returning safely. If successful, fame and admiration are the reward.” They say there were over 5,000 applicants for the 25 slots … and all of these photos of our ‘Neumayer ancestors’ and the pioneers of polar research give me a sense of humility and a great deal of respect for their achievements.
Last but not least I’d like to share a few photos of the signposts that the overwintering teams always cobble together and place on the ground in front of the station, or inside the station in the gallery; as a ‘rookie’ overwinterer, they always put a smile on my face.
Thanks for reading, ois Guade (= all the best!), and until next time …
