You’ll never believe where we are going next…

 

         

       

 

Well, it took us two years, but we are finally on our way!  After missing out last season, we made sure to get our applications in earlier this year.  We were crossing our fingers for the last couple of months, and finally got job offer emails on Friday.  You can’t imagine how excited we are, this is something both Kacey and I have been dreaming of doing since before we even knew each other.  

 

To preempt your questions: Our deployment will be from October 15, 2011 to February 15, 2012- about 4 months in the coldest place on Earth! (the average summer temperature is about -20°F, but it could get as low as -65°F). Our jobs are not glamorous- our official title is ‘steward’, and we will basically be working in the kitchen/dining hall, serving the small population of scientists and other support staff.  All in all, there are about 200 people in residence at the camp during the summer (the population decreases to a skeleton crew of about 50 during the winter- but that won’t be us).  There are three US bases in Antarctica: Palmer Station and McMurdo Station (the main base) which are both on the coast, and the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, which is in the middle of the continent at the geographic South Pole of the Earth.  The base sits atop 2 miles of solid ice, so the elevation is quite high: 9,301ft, but our Colorado lungs should have no problem.  To get to the South Pole we will first fly to a staging base in Christchurch, New Zealand, where we will take a military transport/cargo plane to the McMurdo Station.  From there, we will board a smaller transport plane to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station.  We will definitely have email access every day for at least a few hours (depending on satellite positions), and we will be able to make phone calls (they will be treated as long distance from Denver), but unfortunately Skype is not allowed. Our stay at the base will essentially be one long day.  The sun will never set, but will continually circle the horizon.  

 

You might be thinking, why in the world would anyone want to go to the South Pole, to only be able to go outside some of the time, to work in the kitchen most of the time, and to freeze their nay-nays off all of the time?  Well, pure and simply, its going to be an adventure.  In my mind, I’d almost equate it with traveling to the moon.  The South Pole is one of the most remote, least accessible places on Earth.  I don’t have hard facts, but you could easily count the number of people to have reached the South Pole in the lower thousands, certainly much less than ten thousand, which, for comparison sake, puts it somewhere between equal to double the number of people who have climbed Mt. Everest!  

 

The cherry on top for this whole endeavor will be the remarkable coincidence that we will be present to mark the 100th anniversary of the first successful expedition to the South Pole by Roald Amundsen, who reached the pole on December 14, 1911.  

 

So, wish us luck, and we hope to see you all before we go!

Take care, Dave and Kacey