Byrd was originally constructed by the US Antarctic Program in 1957. It went through a couple of minor relocations before landing at its current location at 80 degrees South 119 degrees West, at an extremely isolated spot on the Antarctic Ice Shelf. The station was huge at one point, consisting of permanent buildings and underground tunnels. It dwindled in use in the early 2000s and in 2005 it was basically abandoned, until the National Science Foundation decided to re-instate it this year.
The old camp is pretty much buried under several feet of snow, so this year we put a temporary-style summer field camp right on top of its grave.
I flew from McMurdo on a Tuesday morning:
Byrd camp was incredible! Very isolated. More so than any other place I've ever been or can expect to go. It's flat and white for hundreds of miles, and is at an elevation of just under 5000 ft. There is a line of powered and heated jamesway tents that go up in November and come down in January, a couple of lines of cargo, an ice runway, and that's about it. Here is "tent city," the neighborhood I was in for my stay:
Here are some varied pictures of the camp and surrounding area:
We worked quite hard adding buildings to the small camp. When not working, there is as much time and space as it is possible for a body to have. After about a week, I noticed that time and space affecting my mind. The landscape's resemblance to a blank white canvas serves as a good metaphor for the mental state that results from it. Such a vast emptiness around, you notice thoughts much more vividly, memories are like huge splashes of color, quiet moments of reflection become the rule rather than the exception, no noise no distraction. Sometimes it felt quite boring, but more often it just felt appropriate to watch the sky and my mind drift. The paucity of people (No less than 10 and no more than 30 the entire time I was there) makes everyone valuable and interesting. All in all I think I got a lot more out of the field camp experience than I have out of life in McMurdo.
The two big projects I worked on were the construction of a freezer cave for storing food, and the putting up of a 26-section Jamesway tent to serve as the galley for cooking and eating. The freezer cave was cut fourteen feet into the ground, by chainsawing 1 ft cubic blocks of ice straight into the ground and then moving them out of the way. Lots of lifting, lots of ice, lots of diesel fumes, and a healthy amount of belly flopping down the ramp. Pictures:
Throw a staircase onto the ramp, and a vestibule at the top of the stairs, and Voila...you got yerself a place to store five years worth of frozen goods with no refrigator bill:
