Antarctica 2024/2025

 Hello everyone! As promised, I am following up on my previous post with some information and insight into the living arrangements and dad-to-day life here at McMurdo. You know,  all of that stuff that is the most mundane part of any of our lives, like sleeping, eating , and doing laundry. I will do my best to describe the locations and layout of all of these things in writing, however I will include some photos and maps of the station to hopefully help me fill in some of the blanks of my descriptions. My goal with this post is to do my best to give an ample written description, particularly because I know my grandfather has been reading these! So, first off I will start with a description of the station as a whole. McMurdo Research station is positioned on Ross Island just off the coast of the mainland of Antarctica at a latitude of 77°49' S, putting it well south of the Antarctic circle, and about 850 miles away from the geographic south pole. It is surrounded by the Ross Se...

 Well hello everyone and welcome back to my blog! It has been a little while since my last update, and while I typically have some kind of an outline for my posts beforehand, I have to admit I have not had this blog at the front of mind as of recent. It's not for any reason in particular, but I think my focus has been more centralized on adapting to the changing of season and normalizing a new schedule to maintain sound body and mind, and I forgot to carve out some time specifically for this blog! A problem that will be remedied throughout the coming months. With all of that being said, we have officially come into the "meat" of the winter season. On Saturday of this week the final flight of the season arrived to deliver some last minute supplies and carry away the few summer staff members that were hanging out to help with the season turnover. The next scheduled flight, excluding any emergencies, will be around the third week of August. So that's it, I'm official...

What do you know, I actually waited OVER a month between updates this time!  Well I'll start out by saying happy pi day to everyone reading this. It's March 14th, and winter has definitely started to show itself here at McMurdo. The transition period between summer and winter crews on station has began to subside and the fresh faces are beginning to settle into their schedules and routines. The annual cargo vessels have unloaded and disembarked, heading back north with a years worth of garbage and old decommissioned equipment. On their return journeys back to Port Hueneme, California, they will make a few stops to unload the garbage and start staging for next years voyage.  Life on station has been quieting down nicely. The vast majority of the summer employees have headed home, and we are down to a population of 348 as of writing this. There are a few more flights scheduled over the next few days to get the last of the summer folks off station before winter season officially ...

 Hello everyone! I apologize for the delay in updates. You know what they say, time flies when you're having fun!  In all honesty, It's hard for me to believe we are already more than a week into February. January seemed to happen in the blink of an eye.  So, what all has been going on in the last month since last I wrote you may be asking? Let's see, the weather for the most part has been wonderful up until about a week ago. January was sunny and warm with temps hovering around and above freezing most days. Occasionally we would get a bit of fog rolling in off of the ocean which would blow across the hills surrounding the station, giving a very surreal view. There were also the occasional snow flurries to blow in of course, but they typically only lasted a few short hours and then the sun would come out and melt away the dusting of snow they would leave behind. The snow also sublimates almost as fast as it melts, which doesn't even leave the ground wet after the snow d...

 Merry Christmas everyone! I am writting this on Christmas day here in Antarctica, and while it may be summer, there is still cold temps and a little snow on the ground. There have been a handful of Christmas parties around base the last few days, as everyone was given both 24th and 25th off to celebrate, and on Christmas day the base held it's annual softball tournament. Teams were generally made up from individual departments, and at the time of writting of this, they were down to the last two games of the day. I was on the utilities team and we were unfortunately beaten in the first round by the defending champs, the fire department. It was still a fun game even if we ended up losing. The rules are changed slightly to accommodate so many games in a single day, like games are only six innings and there is an hour time limit per game. Needless to say, with that short of a playing time, most games don't even make it to six innings.  Outside of the holidays, everything else is ...

Hello everyone. I'll start off by apologizing for the delay in any updates since I know there are a few of you out there who have been wondering what I've been up to over the last month. Time is flying by, and I didn't even realize how long it had been since my last post. While I've been down here, I have also been trying to keep a personal journal, and I keep getting surprised by how the time between entries is slowly increasing as well. I'm not sure why time seems to be moving by so fast, the day to day is nothing extraordinary. Work is the constant to my whole schedule, and when your working from 7:30am to 5:30pm, fitting in meals, and then making sure to get enough sleep to avoid burn out, it doesn't leave a lot of time for much else, but that doesn't mean it's all work and no play. No dull boys here.  I guess the first thing to cover is that Thanksgiving was celebrated, turkey and stuffing was eaten, and parties were had. Due to our light employment...