Life in Patriot Hills Camp

19 December 2007
By definition, it's a nice day whenever the plane arrives here. That's because the plane can only fly on nice days.

It was warm in the sunshine after we arrived yesterday, so Brent went out to the runway and marked off a half-mile course so William Tan could do his marathon in his wheelchair. Most of the group went out and supported him, walking the one-mile loop, starting somewhere just after 5:00 p.m. He continued to roll, back and forth, until at around 3:00 this morning he became the first man ever to complete marathons on all seven continents in a wheelchair. Twice he has tried to do Antarctica on King George Island, but the course and the time restrictions have stopped him. But now, he's a world record holder, doing all seven in less than 29 days.

Patriot Hills Camp. Getting off the plane was almost like coming home. I lived here for most of January in 2002, along with Brent. It's been updated a bit since then. The "ice toilets" are much nicer, two of them in a small arched tent with a wall down the middle. All of our waste is sent back to Chile for disposal, so we relieve ourselves in numerical order--#1 in the urinal which goes into a small drum, and #2 into another toilet. There's a sit-down toilet for women and then they can dump their pee-bucket into the urinal. The solid wastes go into black plastic bags to be bundled up and sent back on the planes. At night, we keep pee bottles in our tents to avoid having to get bundled up and going out.

"Night" is relative here. It's really light twenty-four hours a day here, and we run our clocks on Chilean time, since that's where the HQ is for our tour company.

All the water here comes from melted snow. There's a big pile of it outside that they shovel it into bins and bring it in to melt in a big metal bin near the stove.

We always have lots to drink, hot water, cold water and "juice" in big coolers. The kitchen staff are all amazing--every meal here has lots of variety, and is very well prepared. We also have snacks available all the time. Meals at 8:00, 13:00, and 19:00.

9:30, the morning briefing. Weather at the South Pole isn't too promising for today. At 11:00 we'll get a camp tour. As to running the marathon, they have to groom and mark the trail, so we won't be running today. The two feet of new snow has totally wiped out the trail that they had for us last week. After driving over the trail, it needs to freeze over and solidify so we're not sinking in as far. MAYBE we'll run tomorrow.

11:00 Tour. The runways for the Twin Otter airplanes that they use to take the smaller planes to the Pole, to Mt. Vinson, and for other expeditions are the first stop. Then on to the ice cave. It's a dugout area, about then feet below the surface, where they store food for the season. It's a constant negative 20 degrees Celsius (-4 F). Strings of 12V Christmas lights powered a car battery light up the chambers. Solar panels are used to recharge the battery. There are many of them around the camp, as everything here runs on battery power. No lights are needed other than in the cave, of course.

12:45 Weather briefing. Looks like some winds coming in tomorrow afternoon, so we'll try and start the marathon first thing in the morning.