Camp Life in the Dry Valleys

Alia Khan, a graduate student at the University of Colorado, Boulder, writes from the McMurdo Dry Valleys in Antarctica, where she is studying ephemeral glacier fed streams.

Wednesday, Dec. 14

Along with the science fieldwork, the day-to-day life in the Dry Valleys differs dramatically from my life in the United States. One of the first things I noticed was the silence — not just the audible stillness, but also the lack of hustle and bustle from urban life. Although there is plenty of work to keep us busy, our lives are simplified by the focused objectives of monitoring the streams and taking care of our camp chores.

Daily schedules fluctuate based on the streams visited each day. On a cold early morning in Antarctica I often find it challenging to get out of my warm, cozy sleeping bag. Also, bringing an alarm clock that displays the temperature was probably a mistake, as I find my motivation to get up can be further diminished when I see just how cold it is. However, on clear, sunny days the tent creates a localized greenhouse effect, waking me up as it becomes too hot for comfort. On those days I welcome the walk from my tent to the hut in the chilly wind.

Our morning commute consists of hiking, driving by ATV or getting picked up by a helicopter. It is preferable to visit the streams at high flow. This varies by the stream but can be as early as 10 a.m. and as late as 11 p.m. Helo rides are dependent on fair weather and usually take place between 8 and 9 a.m. Last week, on the morning of a helo flight, I woke up to a cold tent, a sign that clouds were looming over. Luckily I had my radio in the tent, so I could listen for weather delays. Sure enough, there was a two-hour delay (which turned into a four-hour delay, which turned into a completely canceled day trip) and the radio had saved me from getting up unnecessarily early.

In the evenings, after we return home from the streams, there are a number of camp chores that must be taken care of. These include cooking dinner, washing dishes, taking out trash (which is separated into six categories), pouring graywater collected from the sink into a 50-gallon drum (while trying to avoid splashes because it is the same drum that urine goes in), and everyone’s least favorite task, changing the solid waste bag from the outhouse toilet.

To preserve the pristine environment, all waste from the Dry Valleys is transported off the continent, and nothing, including drinking water taken from the lake to the shore, can be deposited into the soil. Urine is collected in large barrels; fecal matter is collected separately. Needless to say, when you are out in the field, you must use a “pee bottle” and not contaminate the soil. In the outhouse there are two separate buckets, and one quickly learns how to separate the two for disposal. At the end of our season, all the waste is flown from our camp to Marble Point, a fuel base between the Dry Valleys and McMurdo Station. The waste is then pulled on a snow tractor traverse back to the base and shipped to the United States for disposal.

Drinking water is an interesting component of camp life. Ice is plentiful in the dry valleys, but running water is hard to come by until the streams begin to flow. At the beginning of the season we collect glacier berries, large chunks of ice from recent calves of the faces of the glacier. We wear gloves labeled “ice” to make sure we don’t accidentally use the same gloves that we handle the outhouse bag with. As the lake ice in front of the glaciers begins to melt, it becomes unsafe for us to approach on the ATV, and we switch to chipping lake ice.

Once dinner and camp chores are over, it is generally 9 or 10 p.m. We usually unwind with a board game or movie. This season we have become addicted to playing Settlers of Catan and have found it’s also a great way to pass time during weather-related flight delays. We were supplied with the game by the recreation department at the McMurdo base, along with a guitar and “The Thing,” a classic movie to watch while in Antarctica.