5 Settling in at ‘Ninety South’
It is one thing to reach the South Pole: to spend a day or two locating the spot, planting a flag and celebrating your arrival, before returning home again. But what does it mean to live there, when the excitement of conquest flattens out into the mundanity of occupation? ‘Living at the South Pole would have been the highpoint of my life’, mused the sick and aging Richard Byrd in 1956 about the place he had flown over almost three decades earlier.1 But could day-to-day existence really rival the glamour of first arrival?
Kim Stanley Robinson’s near-future science-fiction novel Antarctica (1997) includes a telling episode set at the Pole. It centres on the character of Wade Norton, a political adviser to a Washington senator. Arriving at 90 degrees south in a Hercules, Wade concludes – once the initial shock and excitement have worn off – that ‘The South Pole was not a place where there was much to do.’ Wandering around the buildings, he considers it
all very interesting; but not. Only the idea that all these rooms were at the South Pole made them other than a weird cross of military base, airport lounge, lab lounge, and motel. It was, to his surprise, extremely boring; boring in a way that contrasted very strongly to his experience in Antarctica so far.2
Robinson’s character does not, however, live at the South Pole – he is on a brief visit, fact-gathering for his employer, and as he discovers, the locals’ experiences of the place are quite different from his.
‘The funny thing about the Pole’, writes Jerri Nielsen in her account of a winter spent as a doctor at the station, ‘was how quickly you came to accept it as your home.’3 Those who live there for months or years know the South Pole as the site of a community with its own subcultures, vocabulary, points of etiquette, social hierarchies, pleasures and frustrations. ‘Polies’ drop the article that outsiders use and refer more familiarly to being ‘at Pole’, or going ‘to Pole’. As one writer observes, ‘Pole is a specific place, a territory where people live and work; the South Pole, although it’s only a few hundred yards away and can be fixed by GPS, is more an idea, a geophysical ideal.’4 The isolation of the community – and perhaps also the cachet of living at the end of the Earth – creates an intense bond among its residents. ‘When visiting Pole from McMurdo’, suggests Nicholas Johnson in his irreverent insider’s account of the U.S. Antarctic Program, ‘it is good to have a reference. If one is introduced by a Polie, Pole is generally a friendlier, less cliquish, and more inclusive community than McMurdo. Otherwise, who knows.’5
The South Pole could claim locals for the first time in 1957, when eighteen men (scientists and naval personnel) and a young dog spent most of the year there. During the International Geophysical Year – a coordinated scientific effort running for eighteen months from mid-1957 – twelve nations established more than 50 stations in the Antarctic, including a United States base on the Geographic Pole itself. Unsurprisingly, its construction presented considerable logistical and physical challenges. Late in 1956 airforce planes dropped supplies, equipment, fuel, timber and prefabricated buildings by parachute to a small but hardy group of naval construction workers below. The men initially lived in tents and then in Jamesway huts – canvas-covered structures originally designed for use in the Korean War. Things did not always go to plan: parachutes failed, oil leaked, tomato juice splattered all over the snow and a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica plummeted deep into it, never to be seen again.6 But in late January 1957 the station was ready for the eighteen winterovers, who would finish off the job when they moved in. At the larger American station on Ross Island, McMurdo, an official opening ceremony was held – unbeknown to the personnel at the Pole – complete with speeches, marines in full dress and messages from President Eisenhower and various other dignitaries. The station was officially named ‘Amundsen-Scott IGY South Pole Station’ (when settlement continued beyond 1958, the ‘IGY’ was dropped).7
The infrastructure was comparatively basic: the buildings were constructed from modular panels of aluminium and plywood. There were no windows except triple-glazed skylights – snow would cover the buildings ‘up to the eaves’ over winter.8 The complex included a garage, powerhouse and water supply building; a building for inflating and launching weather balloons; a radio and meteorological shack topped by a dome designed for the radar tracking of the balloons; a tower for auroral observations; a science building; an astronomical observatory; a photo lab; a toilet; sleeping quarters (in the Jamesways); a recreation room; and a mess hall. Field telephones linked the various areas, and the buildings were physically connected by tunnels, which were also used to store fuel and supplies, but were not heated. The scientific leader, Paul Siple, predicting temperatures down to −50°C (−60°F) in the tunnels during the winter, worried about their utility: ‘Every time we leave our quarters to eat, work, wash, see a movie, or get a midnight snack, we shall have to dress to the teeth.’9 A separate building some distance away would provide emergency shelter and supplies in the case of fire.
For Siple, who had wintered in Antarctica several times before – initially as a nineteen-year-old Boy Scout with Byrd’s first expedition – conditions were comparatively luxurious: ‘Antarctic living is changing … It seems a bit strange to have hot water, warm latrines, shower baths, clothes-washing machines, and even electric sunlamps … It is wonderful, too, to be able to talk [by radio-phone] occasionally with our families back in the States.’10 They also used the radio occasionally to talk to celebrities (such as Dean Martin). Domestic issues took on a larger than usual significance in the isolated and extreme environment: a shortage of tobacco had the men ransacking bins for butts; a problem with cakes not rising was referred to the cake-mix company in Minneapolis, which advised on adjustments to be made at high altitude; and the temperature of the toilet seats, 4°C (40°F), was a source of considerable stress until the physician found a way to produce the ‘warm latrines’ of Siple’s description (he simply added a hinged plywood lid beneath the seat to insulate it from the sewage pit formed in the ice).11 The men worked long hours but rested on Sundays; a church service would be held after supper. Entertainment over the dark winter consisted of music, films several times a week, conversations, ham-radio sessions, regular lectures and occasional bingo.12
Living at the Pole presented the men with unusual difficulties when it came to orienting themselves in space and time. Since the lines of longitude, which are conventionally used to define time differences, come together at the Pole, any time zone can effectively be selected. The station personnel enjoyed the joke that by walking in a small circle around the Pole, they could technically move ahead a day. Siple originally opted to set South Pole time at Greenwich Mean Time, but for ease of radio communication eventually decided on adopting the same time used at McMurdo – which in turn adopted the time zone used by New Zealand, the base for the navy flights to the Ross Sea. Direction posed another problem. At the Geographic Pole itself, whichever way you face is obviously north. They prevented confusion by ‘arbitrarily superimposing a standard Mercator projection over the top of the polar map’, with Greenwich ‘North’ and the Ross Sea area ‘South’.13
The Pole itself was originally represented symbolically by a striped bamboo pole, topped by a mirrored glass ball and supporting an American flag, which stood on the roof of the garage. Later, when the winterovers had more accurately located the Pole, the point was marked by both the American and United Nations flags, and surrounded by a circle of empty oil drums. After the sun returned, some of the men, restless now that their stay was drawing to a close, made an unsuccessful search for another polar marker: Amundsen’s buried tent.14
Entrance to the Dome Station in 1981.
The first winterovers departed towards the end of the year as another group moved in. The station, which was not intended as a permanent structure, housed its small, constantly refreshed community for almost another twenty years. Numerous additions and changes were made to meet new needs and deal with the inevitably deteriorating buildings, but by the late 1960s the station was covered by 10 m (33 ft) of snow and badly in need of replacement.15 The National Science Foundation, working with the U.S. Navy, decided on a geodesic dome as the best achievable design. Naval crews constructed the new station over three consecutive summers. Around 50 m (165 ft) wide at its base on the ice, 16 m (50 ft) high, and accessed via a tunnel, the aluminium dome contained three double-storey prefabricated buildings. Itself unheated, and mostly covered with snow during the winter, the dome functioned as an ‘elaborate windbreak that protected the heated buildings inside’.16 The new facility accommodated only a handful more people than its predecessor had, but offered more spacious living conditions and far more amenities. Later, huts and tents outside became an additional ‘summer camp’, and there were also separate buildings for medical, scientific and other equipment, some connected by tunnels to the dome.17
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Opening in early 1975, and operating under the auspices of the National Science Foundation rather than the Navy, the dome functioned for more than 30 years, increasingly encroached by the surrounding snow. Over the years new buildings and equipment were added as scientific and personnel requirements changed. Nielsen describes the dome as it was in 1999:
The galley, to the right of the entrance, was the first building. It was just like a Navy ship’s galley, no surprise, since the Seabees had built it in the 1970s. The kitchen and dining room were on the lower level, with a smaller dining area upstairs, and the 90 South Bar. Unlike American oil rigs and aircraft carriers, this ship was not dry. Smoking and drinking were permitted at the bar, on a bring-your-own basis. Predictably, the galley and the bar were the focus of social life at the Pole.
Separate from the galley but accessible from a second-floor walkway, was the ‘freshie shack,’ a building heated to the temperature of a household refrigerator and used for storing vegetables and other DNF (do not freeze) items, such as beer and soda pop. The next building housed the communication center on the ground floor, and the library, pool room, offices, and South Pole store on the top level. The third and largest prefab structure held the computer lab, the science office, and on the top floor, dormitory rooms and the sauna. A berthing annex had been attached to this building to house still more people. A hydroponic greenhouse (with artificial lighting) rested on its roof.18
Power was produced from generators turned by diesel engines burning aviation fuel. To keep the buildings within the dome (comparatively) warm, coolant heated by the engines was piped in and returned, cooled, to the engines.19 By this stage, a device known as a ‘Rodriguez well’ or ‘rodwell’ was (and still is) used to create caverns of melted water deep under the ice, which was pumped to the station. Because of the energy needed to melt the ice (it never rains at the Pole), water usage is severely limited: Polies are allowed a two-minute shower twice a week, and a load of laundry once a week. All waste is removed to McMurdo and thence out of Antarctica, except human excrement, which runs through metal corridors to form a frozen sewage bulb beneath the ice, in the space created by an old rodwell.
Like its predecessor, the Dome Station eventually outlived its usefulness: the snow that accumulated around it caused structural problems, and it could not deal with the increasing demand for accommodation. Construction of a third station – with all materials brought in by Hercules aircraft – was approved in 1997 and completed more than ten years later. Around the same time, a controversial ‘road’ – a smoothed-out snow surface, with crevasses filled in with ice – was constructed and maintained between McMurdo and the South Pole, meaning fuel and supplies could be brought in overland by tractor-train.
Waste containers at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station, a couple of days before sunset, 2013.
The new station design needed to deal better with the problems that plagued the site, particularly the pile-up of snow against buildings due to wind. The solution was an elevated building sitting on pylons: the shape of the building – like the wing of a plane – directs strong wind through the pylons to scour away piled snow as much as possible. In the future, the whole building can be ‘jacked up’ above the accumulated snow if necessary. This new, elevated station can house 150 people during summer, and enables personnel to reach accommodation, recreation and work spaces without having to brave the cold. Unlike the previous two stations, this one has windows, allowing its occupants natural light and views of the plateau on which they live. Following the completion of the new station, its two earlier incarnations were destroyed: the Dome was removed, with its top section preserved in a museum in California, and the buried Navy station, now potentially dangerous to vehicles on the surface of the ice, was demolished.
U.S. Antarctic Program personnel pose in front of the final panels of the dismantled geodesic dome, January 2010.
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The new Pole station has attracted the moniker ‘The South Pole Hotel’, which captures the combination of increasing luxury with what for some of its occupants is a clinical, impersonal feel. The visual artist Connie Samaras, who visited the continent with the U.S. Antarctic Artists and Writers Program in 2004, observes that
The interior itself feels like a cross between interchangeable non-places like LAX and Southern California shopping malls, mixed with a set design for a Star Trek episode. Both the design and the construction materials, particularly in the sleeping areas, are engineered to repel personal touches. In contrast to the Dome, the design of the Amundsen-Scott berths resolutely conveys that all traces of a given occupant will automatically be disappeared once she or he leaves the quarters with only the timeless presence of the building remaining.20
That the station seems to be like a combination of ‘stealth bomber’ and hotel seems ‘hardly ironic’ to Samaras, who notes the running of the station by Raytheon, a multi-billion-dollar American defence contractor, and the outsourcing of catering (while Samaras was there) to the Marriott corporation. Kim Stanley Robinson’s vision of a station that looks like a ‘spaceliner’ and feels like ‘a weird cross of military base, airport lounge, lab lounge, and motel’ appears to have come to fruition.21
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While the infrastructure at the Pole was evolving over its 50 years of human settlement, so was its human community. The first group of eighteen winterovers were remarkably homogeneous. Siple recounts that the men ‘were an average cross section of Americans descended from a wide variety of European stock’. None of the crew was Hispanic or African American, and – having been tested for ‘manly interests and qualities’ – they were all ‘he-men’, a term that for Siple suggests unquestionable heterosexuality as well as physical hardihood. The men maintained an unforgiving culture of toughness by ‘riding’ any of their fellows who were seen to be shirking their work or showing weakness, paying no attention to mitigating circumstances, such as injury and sickness.22 While the Russian IGY effort included women researchers on Antarctic vessels, none wintered on the continent. U.S. policy excluded women at both McMurdo and South Pole stations for over a decade: the first women arrived at the South Pole in 1969, a group of six famously stepping arm-in-arm from the plane ramp together, meaning that none had precedence. They were all researchers working elsewhere on the continent; their very brief visit was ‘something of a public relations exercise’, but symbolically significant nonetheless.23 The first time women worked at the South Pole was in 1973, with the first winterover occurring in 1979.
By the turn of the twenty-first century, the South Pole community had become more diverse. Veteran Polie Bill Spindler’s unofficial website devoted to the history of the place provides a detailed account of the changing make-up of wintering personnel, who as of 2015 totalled nearly 1,500 during the whole period of human inhabitation of the Pole – more than 200 of them women. These days there are normally about 50 residents in any one winter, and it is not unusual for one-quarter of them to be women. National and racial diversity have also expanded over the half-century of human occupation of the Pole: to Spindler’s best knowledge, the first time a Hispanic man wintered was in 1961, and an African American in 1969. The first non-American citizen to winter was a Japanese scientist in 1960, and over the following decades citizens of over twenty different nations have made up the wintering community. The age range of winterovers has also expanded to include people in their sixties and seventies.24 This diversification is relative, however. Newcomers to the station can still be struck by its homogeneity: ‘Coming from Southern California, it was shocking to be in a population, scientists and personnel, where there were hardly any people of color and where, like the ’50s in the U.S., it was somehow acceptable.’25
While the station community has grown in numbers and (to some extent) diversity over the last 50 years, there are inevitably home-grown processes of inclusivity and exclusivity that operate. The formation of cliques and the inevitable forces of peer pressure can make life intense in such a small and isolated community, and for those who do not fit in the only place to escape is into themselves. Especially during the period after midwinter, when the novelty is wearing off but the long, dark winter continues, expeditioners can become withdrawn and behave eccentrically – they are, to use U.S. Antarctic jargon, ‘toast’.26 Individual projects, such as craft, become important ways of maintaining equilibrium. The personality of the station manager can have a significant impact on the experience for all involved. As at many other Antarctic stations, there is a social divide between scientists (‘beakers’) and support personnel. (In the winter, the ratio of these groups changes: scientific personnel drop to a skeleton staff and the majority of staff are technicians and tradespeople involved in the running of the station and its equipment.)
Similar to other Antarctic stations, a hierarchy of ‘ice time’ prevails, in which a stay during winter is more impressive than a summer, and returning for multiple seasons is more impressive still. The South Pole trumps other locations on this scale:
If you’ve done multiple winters, you haven’t been to Pole. If you’ve done a summer at Pole, you haven’t done a winter at Pole. If you’ve done a winter at Pole, you haven’t done multiple winters at Pole. And, finally, once you’ve done multiple winters at Pole, you are afraid to leave Antarctica because you’ll have to pay for food and look both ways before crossing the street.27
There are a surprising number of people in the last category: in 2015 nine of the 45 winterovers had wintered before once or more, and two were in their eleventh winter.28
Wintering staff are systematically vetted for suitability. Even if you have the necessary qualifications or experience, ongoing health problems can easily rule you out. Statistically speaking the South Pole is not a particularly dangerous place – there have been six deaths in the 50 years of settlement, three of which were extreme tourists: skydivers whose parachutes did not deploy. These figures, however, belie the challenging nature of the environment. Apart from the unthinkable cold, the elevation above sea level creates problems, with many newcomers suffering symptoms of altitude sickness and residents experiencing ongoing issues due to the lower levels of atmospheric oxygen. The long periods of daylight and darkness also have a physiological impact, and the dry air causes skin problems.29 Since planes cannot land during the winter months, any illnesses or accidents can only be treated by the one doctor present. All winterovers are given medical screenings, but emergencies nonetheless occur, most famously Nielsen’s self-diagnosis of breast cancer, which required her to take her own tissue samples and treat herself with chemotherapy drugs airdropped to the base, before being evacuated on an earlier (and hence riskier) than usual flight.
The small, isolated, claustrophobic community and the dark, freezing winter also represent psychological challenges. The first group of winterovers were subject to ‘extensive psychological testing’ prior to selection, to exclude those with ‘claustrophobia or mental disorders’ and to gauge their ‘manly interests and qualities’. Siple asserts that Antarctic conditions reveal a person’s core characteristics: ‘Whatever a man was inherently would be intensified during the close-quarters winter night. A mean man would grow meaner; a kind man would grow kinder.’ While this is not self-evident – why should a person’s behaviour under extreme and highly artificial circumstances be considered their ‘true self’? – it voices a common maxim of Antarctic expeditioners. Having passed prior screening, the first eighteen wintering men were required to take repeated psychological questionnaires while at the Pole to supply data on isolated living. One divisive exercise, which asked them to list those in their community they disliked, giving reasons for their antipathy, created so much resistance that it was abandoned.30 More recent winterovers are also required to take psychological tests in advance. Nielsen writes that recruiters ‘were looking for people who were stable, easy to get along with, and intuitive … They wanted to weed out people with personality disorders, chronic complainers, the chronically depressed, substance abusers, and who knows what else.’31
Antarctica’s dry, cold environment can make ordinary tasks more difficult. |
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For psychologists, the small wintering community at the Pole provides a unique opportunity to study group dynamics. From the early years of the first station, researchers have examined the challenges ‘encountered by a collection of heterogeneous strangers in developing a distinct microculture adapted to this unusual human situation’.32 One study, conducted over three years in the 1990s, looked at the formation of different social patterns in successive wintering crews, noting that the least functional group had the strongest clique structure.33 Research on both group and individual psychology provides data that can be fed back into the selection processes for wintering personnel and also informs organizations such as NASA that are interested in the similarly confined and extreme conditions of space exploration.
One significant change to the isolation of the South Polar community in recent years is the increase in communication with the world ‘back home’. Polies today have fairly regular access to email, Internet and phone – subject, admittedly, to the availability of communication satellites, which are far less accessible near the poles. Many maintain blogs outlining their Antarctic experiences and displaying their photographic efforts. Siple’s companions, relying on the occasional use of radio, had far fewer chances to unload frustrations and share problems with family and friends. Worrying about the men’s lack of ‘an emotional outlet’, Siple thought it wise to have a dog – Bravo, a young Alaskan Malamute born in Antarctica – stay with them over winter as a non-judgemental and discreet listener, although in the end the puppy bonded closely to a single man.34 Contemporary technology makes confidants far more readily available to Polies, although it also means that the demands and stresses of life at home can impinge on the supposedly isolated South Pole experience; for Nielsen, emails and Internet phones were a ‘mixed blessing’.35
One aspect of wintering that has remained steady since the Pole was settled is the need for ritual and periodic celebration in order to punctuate otherwise depressingly homogenous periods of time and to provide events around which the community can cohere. Antarctic expeditioners have long recognized the wisdom of this: Douglas Mawson, leader of a group of men living on the coast of Antarctica in the winters of 1912 and 1913, recalled that ‘the mania for celebration became so great that reference was frequently made to the almanac. During one featureless interval, the anniversary of the First Lighting of London by Gas was observed with extraordinary éclat.’36 At the South Pole, where extremes of temperature and darkness are much more pronounced than at the continent’s edge, the need to incorporate ritualized festivity is even greater. Siple’s men celebrated the winter solstice – the midpoint of the long polar night – with a ‘gala celebration’ involving a candelabra constructed from pipe fittings, home-made firecrackers and champagne toasts.37 Other ‘holidays’ were declared for the monthly full moon, lunar eclipses and birthdays.
The absence of trees does not stop South Pole personnel from celebrating Christmas.
Over the following half-century the importance of rituals and celebrations to mark important points in the South Polar year has not abated. Midwinter continues to be a significant event in the polar calendar, marked by a series of established elements, such as (for a number of years) a special airdrop, with gifts from the previous winterovers; a lavish meal and new supplies; formal dress or costumes; elaborate menus and decorations; theatricals, concerts or dancing; greetings from other Antarctic bases and government dignitaries; and an ironic screening of the horror film The Shining (in which the caretaker of an isolated, snowed-in hotel runs amok with an axe). Another significant time is the farewelling of the summer personnel. John Carpenter’s Antarctic horror film The Thing is a favourite for marking the departure of the last plane, which leaves the winterovers, like the film’s doomed expeditioners, completely isolated. Far from horror, their response to abandonment is often euphoria, with space and resources now freed up, and the much-anticipated adventure of wintering finally begun. (Conversely, at the other end of the season, the arrival of incoming expeditioners – intruders into the insular community – can create tensions among ‘toasty’ winterovers.) More familiar significant dates are marked in specific ways at the Pole: on New Year’s Day, the placing of the new Geographic Pole marker; and at Christmas the annual ‘Race Around the World’, which takes competitors (most running or walking, some in vehicles) around a course – varying from year to year but usually around 3.2 km (2 miles) long – that passes through every time zone. Another well-known tradition is the ‘300 Club’: when the temperature drops below –73°C (–100°F), initiates clad in boots and little else sit in a +90°C (+200°F) sauna for as long as possible before dashing outside, ideally to the Ceremonial Pole and back again. And in addition to these regularly repeated rituals, there are occasionally more official ceremonies: the first of several weddings at the South Pole took place in 1985.38
Traditions, rituals and ceremonies provide the ever-changing South Polar community with a sense of stability and permanence. But despite the presence of veterans of numerous winters, is it ever really possible to put down ‘roots’ in the shifting icescape? With no one ever born or buried in the place, no families or children, no retired people, no planting of trees or gardens (with the exception of hydroponics) and all resources flown in from outside, has humanity really settled the South Pole? While humans have done their best to settle in – to establish an ongoing presence, construct sophisticated ways of making life tolerable and develop a relationship with place through tradition and ritual – they are, and for the foreseeable future will remain, sojourners at 90 degrees south.