Pole serenity rivals McMurdo bashes

By ERNIE MASTROIANNI Journal Sentinel staff
©Milwaukee Journal Sentinal
originally published January 8, 2001

McMurdo Station, Antarctica -- You won't find any drunken drivers around here on New Year's Eve, and the hour of midnight strikes in broad daylight.
So in general, the holiday celebration at the bottom of the world tends to be civil.

But there are a couple of major exceptions.

One of them is two miles down a dusty black road from the U.S. base in McMurdo: New Zealand's Scott Base, a cluster of lime green buildings on featureless black volcanic soil. This is party central, and shuttle buses full of revelers run back and forth all night from McMurdo.


The crowd at the party, in a vehicle maintenance garage, is a mix of the tattooed and pierced support workers, slightly more staid scientists and even a few in formal wear. Canned beer is one dollar, U.S.

I take a shuttle bus back to McMurdo a little before midnight -- in time to see dozens of people lined up along the icy shores of McMurdo Sound.



One is a dishwasher from Chicago named Salvatore Consalvi, who says he just wanted to be outdoors to celebrate. "If you're inside at New Year's, you could be anywhere," he reasons. "If you're outside, you're in Antarctica."

Out in the sound, the U.S. Coast Guard icebreaker Polar Sea is smashing a channel through harbor ice. At the stroke of midnight, its horn sounds a long blast.

-- -- --

The other big party down here is on New Year's Day at McMurdo, and Sturgeon Bay, Wis., native Bill Meyer is in charge.

"Traditionally," says Meyer, referring to the New Zealanders, "they do the New Year's Eve party, and we do New Year's Day."

Meyer's in his second season as director of recreation here. His party is called Icestock, and it features live music, plenty to drink and a chili cook-off.



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Antarctica is a vast unspoiled wilderness, but McMurdo Station is as gritty as a mining town.

If you wish to escape, the road goes through Ted Dettmar, lead instructor for the field safety training program, also known as Happy Camper School.

The course involves an overnight stay on the snow-covered Ross Ice Shelf, and is a requirement for the hundreds of scientists and workers bound for remote field camps.

Over two days, we learn to assemble camp stoves, operate high-frequency radios, build walls out of snow blocks and even make an igloo-like shelter called a quincy. At one point, 15 people crawl into our quincy at once.

We also hang from ropes into deep blue ice crevasses and hike six miles in the long, crisp shadows of the midnight sun.

The camp is hard work. There is a lot of shoveling and lifting. "The nurses at the medical center complain to us that no one comes back with frostbite," says Dettmar. "But there are a lot of pulled muscles and thrown backs."

University of Wisconsin-Madison atmospheric scientist Jonathan Thom is one of the campers; he will soon be traveling to remote locations to service and install weather stations.

He helps build the quincy, constructed by tamping down a 2-foot layer of snow on top of everyone's piled-up bags -- and then extracting the bags.

Thom sleeps in the shelter, which he says is warm and very humid. I'm among those who sleep in sturdy Scott tents.

No one gets very cold. The clothes issued to us by the U.S. Antarctic Program are extremely warm, and while we're there, the temperature never dips below zero.

The Pole, at last

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, Antarctica -- If McMurdo Station is a mining camp, South Pole Station is an oil rig in the middle of a white ocean. Or perhaps an outpost on another planet.

And the cold is not the first thing that hits you (that comes later). It's the simplicity of the place. No growing plants, no animals, no dirt or rocks underfoot. No lakes, no running water -- and not much wind. Stepping on snow makes a creaky sound that is quite different from the sound of Wisconsin snow.

Odd-shaped blue buildings, domes and antennas dot the flat landscape. Upon arrival, a van with monster truck tires brings you to the geodesic dome of the South Pole Station, around which a bunch of decrepit buildings are arranged haphazardly.

Inside the station, the furniture is worn and in need of replacement, but no one seems to mind. There's a warmth to this place, and it is not measured in degrees on the thermometer.

The University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists I talk to relish being here. Grad student Katherine Rawlins tells of taking a walk outside on Christmas Eve and savoring the utter silence.

"I could only hear my heart beating," she says. Part of the appeal, Rawlins says, is that this is "the ultimate way to simplify your life."

Yes, it is cold. But the dryness seems to blunt the chill the same way it makes a hot day more bearable. Twenty below felt like about zero to me. But when I kneel on the steel framework of the new South Pole Station building, the cold surface is painful, even through a few layers of insulated clothing.

To actually stand at the geographic South Pole is like being at the end of an incredibly long road. It is an absolute destination, a final point. You can go no farther than this.

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