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My Gigs | Antarctica

Antarctic Landscapes | In Town | Vehicles | Sunsets | Misc | Maps

The coldest, windiest, driest place on earth. Yes, i went down there... not just once.... but twice. The first was in 1994-95; I stayed for an entire year. The second time (1999-2000) was for 6 months only.

Antarctica is a place that is so pristine, it is used for scientific research only. Thirteen countries have signed a treaty to never explore antarctica to take/use its resources (oil, etc). This has set a fairly strict precedence of what can and cannot be taken into antarctica.

Temperatures: I saw temperatures drop to -120 degrees. COLD. And I can tell you. mothing but sea life could survive out in the elements.

Life in antarctica. There are no plants, some algea, and a few lichen. Life in the elements is simply too harsh. The only life native to the continent exists solely in the sea. Penguins and seals were the wildlife I saw. They usually stayed far from our station. But on rare occasions, we would be graced with the presence of a curious penguin or two. . . checking out what we humans are about. Seals surfaced in the ocean and between large cracks in the ice. Whales are also under the ice, but rarely surface close enough to the station for us to see.

You can see photos below, or also check out NSF Photo Library.

People standing on 500 feet of frozen ice, walking up to an iceberg, frozen in the sea.

The edge of the iceberg, with a piece of it slowly cracking off. This process will take many years.

The land of Antarctica from the air. These were taking from a plane flying from McMurdo to the South Pole Station (8 hour flight)

Mountains surrounding a frozen bay. It's tough to tell the difference between the frozen land and the frozen sea.

NACREOUS clouds, caused by the sun's reflection off the ice crystals in the air. These polar stratospheric clouds at 80,000 feet are the highest of all clouds. They only occur in the polar regions when the stratospheric temperature dips below 100 degrees below zero Ferhenheit.

Aurora Austrialis, or the Southern Lights (not pictured), was one of the most memorable times for me. They happen all of a sudden, in the depth of the cold winter. Lights flash across the sky, right to left, as if it is simply playing with the darkness with joy, wonder and awe. Sheets of lights wave in the evening, as if they were giant-sized sheets on a laundry line.... waving with the cool winter's breeze. Then as fast as they came, they simply disappeared from the sky. But never from my mind. =)

Our existance in Antarctica is for scientific research only. This is one of the scientists, standing over permanent sea ice, drilling into thousands of years of ice.

A man, shoveling snow in the moonlight.
Transportation is .... a little different. We have special vehicles to drive in the snow and on the ice. On the more traveled routes across the ice, roads are created for the season. The cold winters destroy all the roads, and after each winter, there is a push to recreate the routes for the year.

View of permanent sea ice, with Mout Erebus in the background.