We looked out the window, the rotors buzzed, clouds glided by. We felt a slight pressure in our ears as the aeroplane slowly descended. And then – mountains! Black and jagged peaks rose up from the white expanse. For the past year we’d been surrounded by snow in every direction, mountains of ice, and – as the only change of pace – open water far in the distance. The new landscape made our pulses race. We circled over a crescent-shaped collection of mountains and then prepared to land. The shadow cast by the plane on the snow grew larger and larger, and for a moment we floated just above the ground, where we could make out every last ripple and sastruga. Then the craft’s skids touched down, we rocked back and forth a bit, and came to a halt. We’d reached our destination, “Utpostane”.
Utpostane (Norwegian for “outpost”) is a collection of mountain peaks that look out over the glacier and is located roughly 450 km southwest of Neumayer. The smallest peak, which is actually just a rocky hill, is home to a seismic monitoring station, which is exactly what we’d come for. Over the next few days, we – Jölund, Benita and I (Alicia) – were to take a closer look at the station’s power supply, since the last check had revealed that its mast, containing a turbine and solar panels, had been blown down and damaged by a storm. Ever since, it had been running on a single solar panel and its batteries – just enough to send us a little “hi, still alive” signal and information on the batteries’ status once a day – but thankfully all of its data was stored locally, and we were eager to see what it had recorded. Our measuring instrument (a seismometer) records underground vibrations and is used to detect earthquakes. We expected the new data to contain signals from earthquakes around the globe, but also from (ice)quakes that had occurred nearby.
But the data would have to wait a bit … since our departure from Neumayer was delayed, we didn’t arrive until 10:30 pm. The pilot helped us unload our gear, we waved goodbye, and he took off again. And we were left standing with our gear bags and toolkits – and not another living soul around, far as the eye can see; only a few skuas and storm petrels circled above. Even though the nearest Antarctic station (the Finnish station Aboa) was “only” 100 km away, we felt even farther from the real world than we had elsewhere in the Antarctic.
We got down to setting up camp, and the next time we checked our watches it was just after midnight. Still, the sun was shining brightly – we were in the middle of the Polar Day. After a cup of hot tea in the lea of our tents, despite our excitement, we all felt incredibly tired, and our sleeping bags seemed like a very appealing place to spend the next few hours.
By the way – people often report how quiet it is in the Antarctic … hardly! Of course, there are no manmade sources of noise there, and there are moments when all you can hear is the sound of the blood pumping through your veins. But when it’s windy, it’s a different story. Especially in a tent, which anyone who’s ever gone camping would likely confirm. So we lay there in our warm sleeping bags, listening to our tents being buffeted by the wind, and longed for the much-vaunted Antarctic quiet.
With our neck gaiters pulled up over our eyes to block out the light, and gradually calming winds, the night was actually somewhat restful. After a quick but scrumptious bowl of porridge (with the last jar of cherries, which we’d plundered from the station’s stores before leaving … sorry, Werner :D), we began a new day.
After the first data check, we could breathe a sigh of relief: since the last visit, in 2018, our most important instrument had continuously recorded. The entire station had only gone into “hibernation” during the Polar Night, since it didn’t have enough energy without the sun. So, our first task was to clean up. We dismantled the broken parts of the mast and put them in storage, then removed some old mooring material. Thankfully we had a pulka (a plastic tub of sorts) with us, which is great for hauling tools and equipment up and down hills; this was especially helpful when it came to the heavy batteries.
We spent the next two days hauling, assembling, repairing and chiselling (some of the cables had frozen into the ice), and the time just flew by. We lost all sense of time, since the sun shone non-stop. It was only the hunger in our bellies that added a bit of structure to the day, and when we crawled into our tents at night, it was once again long past midnight.
Perhaps I should say a few words on the rockpile that we installed our seismometer on. The rock comes from deep underground; it’s referred to as plutonic rock and is slowly created by magma deep within the Earth. You can see various minerals in it with the naked eye; olivine in particular lends greenish glints to the somewhat crumbly rock. It’s fascinating to think that geologists have found ties between this and other types of basaltic rock on the one hand and finds made in South Africa on the other – an indication that, before the breakup of the continent Gondwana, these regions weren’t far apart. So back then, what would later become “Cape Town” would have been just a stone’s throw away …
Apart from the ore’s scientific value, the site had a very different meaning for Benita and me: it was the first time in nearly a year that we’d had solid ground beneath our feet! Before that, we were always on (mostly) floating ice. Sure, the ice also feels stable and solid, but now for the first time we could climb on boulders or hike on solid rock. Of course, we took plenty of opportunities to do both, and Benita inaugurated the first boulder route. We also checked out the small lichen that had adapted to these harsh conditions. As such, the site here was very different from “our” Antarctic.
After two days, our work was done and we contacted our pilot. Like at an airport, we sat on our packed bags, waiting for the plane, which made an extra pass over our heads before coming in for a landing.
When we got back to Neumayer, it definitely felt like a homecoming.
Alicia
