A large meteorite found in the sweeps of the Far North Ice Fields. Several meteorites of similar size were found today.
The sheer amounts of snow—and how much it drifts and buries everything in its path. The dynamism and massive scale of the landscape. How quickly we developed familiar routines. The joys and comforts of a tent-home cooked meal. The way anything adhesive predictably fails to stick in the driest, coldest desert on the planet.
Davis Ward has gifted us these—and many other—surprises in the short time we’ve been here.
On Friday morning, when I was on a call with a friend on our satellite phone (it was surprise to me that we’d have one to begin with), he asked me, “What’s the most surprising thing about your life there?”
It took me a minute to answer, but the first thing that came to mind was the unconditional camaraderie. I’d heard about it from other ANSMET vets and from John Schutt—but it’s one thing to hear about it and another to experience it. A little over a month ago, we were essentially perfect strangers. But Antarctica has a way of bringing people together in unexpected ways.
Inspired by my conversation with my friend, I posed the question to each pair of tent mates after we all had had a chance to make and eat dinner after a long and productive day recovering meteorites. Each exchange gave me a beautiful (and sometimes funny) glimpse into how they were experiencing their time here.
Below are snippets of our conversations. I hope you’ll enjoy them as much as I did.
A wind scoop that we viewed several days ago. This forms when the airflow causes a circulation that prevents snow buildup in the scoop.
Erin Gibbons: Mine has mostly to do with the snow. Those first couple of days with the wind! [It was gusting at roughly 30mph at times.] The amount we had to dig out the tent stakes knowing that you guys had not been here that long. [It was a couple of feet accumulated over just two weeks]…It’s mad. The other thing that surprised me was when we’ve had those really dull, monotonous, pallid days where the sky is the same color as the snow and you just cannot walk. It’s fun for me to read the stories of the early explorers while you’re here…and they’re talking about how on these diffuse-light days, they’re just falling over like drunkards. If I’d read that at home, I wouldn’t have gotten it. [But] you just can’t see the difference between a snow drift and background, and I was just so surprised at how the definition of the world disappears.
Lauren Edgar (Erin’s tent mate): Related to that, I was surprised by the scale of the topography here…Distances are greater and mountains are taller, and this is just a much bigger world than I anticipated.
Erin: I agree! When you think of an ice sheet, in my head it’s flat and then we get up there, and it’s these big undulations.
Lauren: An amusing surprise in daily life is that no adhesive sticks. Duct tape doesn’t work! Plastic bags are bursting at the seams and brittle. The food that I thought I’d want in the field is not what I want because it’s frozen solid. [laughs]
Erin: What is your surprise?
Daniela: Partly the undulations in the ice. Yesterday, when we were driving home, the little ripples in the ice reminded me of the brain’s grooves.
Erin and Lauren: Oh yeah!
Daniela: We all see what we know. [I’m a neuroscientist by training, and a science reporter by trade.] And then how much interdependence and support there is among the group.
A few days ago the team saw a shimmering cloud while searching a wind row. The iridescent cloud was quite a sight. Does anyone know what type of cloud this is or what causes the effect? Is it unique to polar regions? [From left to right: unknown foot, Erin, Jim, unknown, Daniela, Jon] Editor’s note- you got it right- Iridescent Cloud is a formal name for these, also known at times as “Nacreous” clouds. When the ice crystals in a cloud are particularly tiny, so small that forward scattering and transmission are almost the same thing, and too small to have any preferred orientation in the wind, you get clouds that shine like pearls. They can form anywhere rising humid air cools really, really fast. This one’s clearly an orogenic cloud forming as wind from the left hits one of the Davis Nunataks and rises just enough that the tiny bit of humidity it had at the surface crystallizes out. It’ll be a lenticular if the wind picks up…..
Daniela: Why were you surprised by that?
Jim: We have been cleaning up the last remaining meteorites at Davis Ward for a couple of years. There isn’t a lot of ground that hasn’t been covered…We were in a new place, and obviously there were big meteorites out there. That shows you the power of the systematic sweeps. You find a lot more meteorites than if you’re just randomly driving places. It’s much more efficient. That was a real cool thing that I was surprised by. Brian, you have to give a different one.
Brian Rougeux [Jim’s tent mate]: That was mine [laughs]…I was a little surprised by how much ACL [allowed cargo/cabin load] they’re giving us on the flight out…We have a good chunk on the way out.
Daniela: So what does that allow us to do?
Brian: In theory, we might be able to get out of here with fewer flights. It’s more efficient.
Jim: It also surprises me that you don’t put your boots up. [Some ANSMET folks hang their boots at the top of their tents to dry and warm them.]
Brian: I would say just try it once, and see if you like putting on warm boots or if you prefer cold boots in the morning.
Daniela: The answer to that is clear.
Brian: I think so.
Daniela: But you also forget that we’re short. We can’t reach up there!
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Jon Friedrich: The most surprising thing for me how fast the camp settled into a routine. That was good. And now it just feels normal to come here and cook dinner the best you can [with the stove next to your sleeping bag]. It’s been about a week?
Daniela: We hit two weeks today actually.
Jon: You’ve been here a bit longer, but I’ve only been here one week yesterday. [Our team flew out to our field site on different flights, over the course of multiple weeks.] I expected it to take forever to get into a routine and figure things out. But we’ve got it figured out for the most part.
Robert Citron (Jon’s tent mate): I would agree with that.
Jon: Your hamburger yesterday—he made this beautiful burger and he was like, “This is the best burger I’ve ever had”. Tonight, he had the best steak he ever had.
Robert: That steak was good! And the scenery! I knew I was going to be impressed by the scenery.
Jon: That’s a good one. You talk about that a lot.
Robert: Driving on the snowmobiles through this amazing scenery, I just feel elation.
Like Robert, Jon, Erin, Lauren and I, Minako (my tent mate) was also mesmerized by the topography of our field site: “Wherever you go, it’s really beautiful.”
Today, we ended the day with 30 more recovered meteorites—including several chunky ones like the ones Jim mentioned—which scientists all over the world will be able to use to hopefully uncover new surprising details about the origins of our solar system.
-Daniela, from the village of Davis-Ward.