Ice Fog

Today, officially, began our first day of working regular shifts. As chance would have it, today was a "B" shift day, leaving myself and my fellow "A" shifters, on a day off.

As expected, this is a welcome break from being on the 0730-1700 town schedule. I spent yesterday looking forward to having a day off to go explore and accomplish some other tasks that I had remaining.

However, the Antarctic weather deities being fickle, I arose to and was greeted this morning with the town covered in ice fog.

Ice fog has long been a bane to pilots and adventurers alike. For those of us who like to defeat gravity, we fear the effects of the moisture in the air instantly freezing to the skin of our flying machines and forming rime ice. Rime ice is a particularly nasty form of ice that creates long, jagged protrusions from whatever it happens to attach itself to and quickly eats away at the aerodynamic properties of an airfoil, leading to the rather vertically accelerated demise of more than one aviator.

While its effect on aircraft has proven itself to be something to be feared and avoided, the effect on your average adventurer means that most activities that require extended periods of time exposed to it are limited.

As I have proven time and time again, I am not average in any category. There are certainly areas that I excel in and also areas that I lack in. As I decided to venture out in this today, I will let you decide as to which side of average this decision belongs.

Originally, I thought that my plans for a day would be a wash. I went about my day doing laundry, tidying up, and getting a few errands done. It wasn't until I opened my door to peek out into the usually quiet morning hallway that I was inspired (or rather, encouraged) to go out on a hike by Larry, a "B" shifter on his Kelly day. His ambitious intention was to round up as many people as possible and hike the Observation Hill Loop, climb to the top of Ob Hill, and then take on Hut Point Ridge.

Being a little bit bored and wanting to still do something outside with my day, I gladly joined in.

After grabbing all of the requisite ECW gear that would be needed (balaclava, long underwear, big red, knit cap, gloves, water and snacks) I trundled down to meet up with Larry and two additional fellow firefighters who had also been wrangled into this trip.

Even walking up the road towards Ob Hill, we could feel the chill in the air. Not only was the ice fog thick, but it also came with a brisk wind. By the time we reached the foot of the trail, ice was already starting to build on our big reds and balaclavas. This did not prove enough of a deterrent, though, as we pressed on.

The trail going around Ob Hill starts tamely enough, not being particularly steep or slippery. Unfortunately, as its name implies, it is a hill and this does change.

As we progressed, the trail steepened (though never quite to the extent that Hut Point Ridge does) and became considerably more treacherous. While much of the snow has already been blown off of the hill, the remainder had accumulated on the trail itself. Now, on your average trail, simply stepping to the side of it would have been sufficient to bypass the slippery ground. Antarctica being what it is, this is not the case.

The trail itself is never really more than two feet wide and its edges are bordered by steep inclines, one going up and one going down. A slip on the low side could easily mean sliding several hundred feet through loose gravel to the bottom, something obviously not preferred. As such, it was with careful steps and missteps that we made our way along. That is, all except Larry.

Larry certainly isn't the youngest firefighter among us. His hair is white and has certainly seen far more of life than any of us. However, he belies his age by being amazingly quick and spry.

As we progressed around the trail, Larry would constantly being flying ahead of us, maintaining a pace that we other three found impossible due to our lack of traction. He flew along the slick patches without ever slowing down, and climbed the grades with no change in pace.

To me, he is now Mountain Goat Larry.

Continuing on, we managed to keep on the trail and came over to the south side of the hill. The wind had not relented the entire way to date, and seemed to have picked up even more.

The trail on the south side was considerably more snow covered and maintained it's theme of steep drops offs. As we progressed along, I found it necessary to remove the craze of ice that had formed on my sunglasses. Seeing as this was a task that required more dexterity than a gloved hand could provide, I removed one of my gloves to complete the task.

Since we were still on the move, I didn't want to slow the pace by having the group stop while I reinstated my clarity of vision. While I was stepping and scraping, however, my foot found itself a spot that it shouldn't have. While I was quickly able to recover my footing and avert a long, long, slide to the sea ice pressure ridges far below, my glove (given to me lovingly by Uncle Ray) decided to free itself and try to make its escape.

I stood and watched as my glove began to slide its way down. At first it tumbled slowly, then picked up some speed. Incensed, I yelled some less than loving words at it, and it apparently listened. It became entangled on some white, snowy protrusion less than fifteen feet away.

Wanting my glove back so I could have use of my hand later in life, I went down after it. Though likely not my best decision ever, I was able to do it without skidding to the sea ice. I buried my heels into the snow (luckily it was much softer and somewhat less slippery than what is found on the trail) and half skidded, half stepped down to it. Retrieving it and returning it to its grateful hand, I made it back up with little fuss.

Though the trail remained steep in parts and slippery in most, we continued on our way with little more incident other than the occasional slip.

As we progressed towards the last leg of the loop, the ice fog closed in fairly well. It was far from zero visibility, but it could not have been more than 150-200 at most. This coupled with the white ground at our feet made for quite a sight, as we became enveloped in white, broken only by ourselves and the patches of gravel at our feet.

Like many other things on this continent, it made itself ideal for reflecting. As I watched the leader of our column fade in and out of the ice fog, it brought to mind some thoughts of home.

For a long time before I finally left, I wanted to leave home. I wanted to escape everything I had known. I wanted to leave family, work, school, and even my friends behind and start something new.

Finally achieving that goal, I find that I have not been able to cut off my old life completely. Some of that is out of necessity as there are always financial obligations that need to be met (as those often require the assistance of someone back home to complete), but some of that is of a more personal nature. In some ways, I miss home. I miss friends and times had with them. I long for someone to tell my stories to, someone who can't share the experience because they are far away. I need that connection to my old life, much like a baby is connected to its mother by an umbilical cord.

Into and out of the fog, though. I see my old life going into and out of the fog. The cord can't stay connected forever. Back home, they're having a blast getting stumped on questions at trivia night. They're busy at work intimidating the freshmen. They don't need my stories.

The trail finally comes back up to the road. The wind still blows and the ice continues to encrust our big reds, balaclavas, hats, pants, noses, eyelashes, and mustaches. The water in my bottle has formed a coating of ice, the candy bars in my pocket frozen as hard as rock, and my camera's battery frozen to the point of being unable to produce current (and the reason why I can provide no photos of this trip).

We decide to call it a day, leaving the other trails to be explored another time. The walk back to the dorm is easy and cold. The wind at our backs finally, it is no longer a battle to take a step forward. Through the fog we go, adding to our frosty crust, until finally we reach home.

Home.

The fog is finally lifting. You can begin to see things in the distance, though they lack definition. Hopefully when the sun circles the sky again and I wake up, I can finally see what's there.


That is all for tonight. More errata to accomplish and probably a movie with the guys before bed. My first real shift is tomorrow and it sounds like more trucks are broken. Hopefully they let me pick up a wrench and put me to use.