This morning I got to answer questions from Mrs.Higdon’s Preschool class. Mrs. Higdon and I went to college together and now she teaches in northern Indiana. The kids always have great questions and are so curious. These kids, because they live in a cold climate could understand some of the cold concepts better than the kids I’ve done this sort of stuff with in California. While I was in Antarctica I corresponded with[...]
Antarctic Questions from Mrs.Higdon’s Preschool class
United States
24 February 2010
Castle Rock
McMurdo Station, Ross Island, Antarctica
24 January 2006
Stepping off of the ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules aircraft at Williams Field on the Antarctic coast after the three hour flight from the Pole, the first thing I noticed was how the warmer snow felt under my feet. It was nearly 40 degrees below zero (conveniently that is where the Fahrenheit and Centigrade scales are equal) [...]
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Pole Out
McMurdo Station, Antarctica
23 January 2006
Returning to the vibrant land of color was a re-awaking process like I’ve never experienced before. It all started when I deplaned in Christchurch, New Zealand. I had stepped onto a massive C-17 Globemaster III military transport aircraft in the stillness of McMurdo Sound on the Antarctic coast and off it into a foreign world [...]
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Pole Position
South Pole Station, Antarctica
31 December 2005
Life at the pole has become routine. From the outside, it might seem that being at the South Pole could be anything but routine. But when you live and work here… much less work nine hours a day and six days a week, it does eventually just become where you live and work. Granted, it [...]
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Buried Aircraft Found
South Pole Station, Antarctica
24 December 2005
The wreckage of Skier 917 has been found. It took the effort of many, but we’ve reached the goal of crawling down through the escape hatch into the buried plane. Every one who visited the wreck site took at least three hours of their free time per visit skiing or walking out to the site, [...]
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Happy Camper School
South Pole Station, Antarctica
17 December 2005
It was our weekend of Antarctic car camping. An instructor came up from McMurdo to take a group of us “Polies” out into the Great White Nothing to go camping for a night.
We started off with a classroom session on Friday night to get the basics on keeping warm, avoiding hypothermia and other ‘winter’ camping [...]
Buried Antarctic Aircraft
South Pole Station, Antarctica
27 November 2005
Here at the Pole, we celebrated Thanksgiving on Saturday. And by celebrate, I mean we got the day off from work and consequently, our first two-day weekend of the season. To celebrate, we had a big turkey dinner on Saturday night.
But I’m not writing to tell you how amazing the food was, how interesting it [...]
Pole Happenings
South Pole Station, Antarctica
20 November 2005
Things are really swinging here at the Pole now. I’ve joined the South Pole Station Fire Brigade and we’ve had a few fire alarms, but no fires thank goodness. I’m working in the station greenhouse. And oh yes, there’s still plenty of snow shoveling. But the shoveling has declined as other projects start to demand [...]
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Working at the South Pole
South Pole Station, Antarctica
7 November 2005
I was told when I applied for the job that there would be a lot of snow shoveling, especially for the first month. There was really no way for me to totally understand what that meant.
For the past week I have shoveled snow at least five hours a day. Most days it’s been eight [...]
Getting to the South Pole
Ross Island, McMurdo Station, Antarctica
27 October 2005
Mine may well have been one of the fastest trips to the South Pole. Amundsen, who led the first party to reach the South Pole ever in 1911, took 15 months and 9 days from Norway via ship and dog sled. Byrd got to the South Pole by ship and by plane in 15 months [...]
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