South Pole Station
Ashley Shelby
For Hudson and Josephine, always.
For Manny, without whom this book would not exist—and who once advised me to relax my shoulders.
And for Mom: this one’s for you.
AMUNDSEN-SCOTT SOUTH POLE STATION GUIDE
2003–2004
FY04
The National Science Foundation welcomes you to the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. This handbook describes facilities, procedures, and safety reminders that will help you during your stay at South Pole.
This year’s science, construction, and airlift schedules are the most ambitious in our history, and we have a talented group of people to make it all happen. Our success will depend on our commitment to safety and community involvement.
Located at 90 degrees South latitude, Amundsen-Scott Station has an average annual temperature of -56.7 degrees F, with a record low temperature of -117 degrees F. It rarely snows at South Pole; however, a relatively constant wind speed of 5–15 knots compounds the accumulation.
Most station buildings are located beneath an aluminum geodesic dome, which provides a windbreak for the living, dining, communications, recreation, and laboratory facilities. The main station can accommodate twenty-seven people under the Dome. Additional personnel are housed in modular hypertats and in Summer Camp—a collection of canvas Jamesways, a short walk from the main station.
A series of steel arches houses the power plant, biomed facility, garages, artists’ & writers’ studios, and main fuel storage. The Dark Sector is located grid west of the station and houses facilities for astronomy and astrophysics research. The Atmospheric Research Observatory lies 300 feet upwind of the station, but the majority of climate change research takes place at the West Antarctic Ice Shelf (WAIS), also known as The Divide.
Please read this handbook thoroughly and don’t forget to visit the Geographic South Pole during your stay!
Welcome Aboard,
Tucker Bollinger
South Pole Area Director
polie
Do you ever have pain in your chest unrelated to indigestion?
Are you often sad?
Do you have digestion problems due to stress?
Do you have problems with authority?
How many alcoholic drinks do you consume a week? A day?
Would you rather be a florist or a truck driver?
True or false: I like to read about science.
True or false: Sometimes I just feel like killing myself.
True or false: I prefer flowers to trucks.
True or false: Voices tell me to hurt people.
True or false: I am an important person.
Five months before this pelvic exam of the mind, Cooper Gosling had received a letter on embossed government stationery assessing her application to the National Science Foundation’s Antarctic Artists & Writers Program. From it, Cooper learned that her portfolio of paintings featured “interesting juxtapositions that suggest an eye particularly attuned to the complexities of human habitation in Antarctica” and “superior technical skill that still leaves room for interpretation,” as well as “a frenetic color palette within mainly controlled compositions.” There was, the letter had noted tartly, “potential for improvement over the course of the fellowship.”
She had been accepted, pending successful completion of physical and dental exams, fire training, and a psychological assessment at the Denver headquarters of Veritas Integrated Defense Systems, the contractor currently running the show in Afghanistan, and also in charge of basic operations at South Pole. The acceptance letter had come with an airline voucher—they expected her in Denver in three weeks. She was advised to travel light and to pay special attention to hygiene.
The night she received the letter, Cooper had driven directly to her father’s house to apprise him of these developments. She imagined him falling to pieces, his joy resplendent. Bill Gosling was into this stuff: polar exploration was his deal. Sure, he preferred the heroics of the North Pole explorers, the drama of the Northwest Passage, the cannibalism of Franklin’s lost expedition. But his “polar library” included memoirs from the South Pole boys, too: Shackleton, Amundsen, Scott, all first editions. Now that he’d retired from 3M, where he’d been part of the second-string Post-it team, he’d begun work on a memoir of being a polar enthusiast. It would, Cooper could only assume, include many scenes set in armchairs. They’d connect on this South Pole thing, Cooper was sure. He’d offer more than the smile her older sister, Billie, had always described as “faint.” He’d confess that she now possessed the skeleton key to his soul.
Instead, he offered her another book: Apsley Cherry-Garrard’s The Worst Journey in the World.
“The definitive account of the Scott expedition, written by a survivor,” Bill said as he placed the book in Cooper’s hands. “Make this a priority.” (It was in this manner, incidentally, that Cooper had managed to slog her way through Everyman’s Library of the World’s Most Boring Books.) Cooper searched her father’s face, but his expression remained as mild as always. Was it possible he’d forgotten? Or was he trying to tell her not to forget why she was going? Cooper had, of course, already read The Worst Journey in the World, had long ago committed entire paragraphs to memory. In fact, the book had been, throughout 1981, Cooper and her twin brother David’s deranged bedtime reading. They were eight when Bill shelved Nancy Drew and opened Worst Journey. Night after night, he sat on the edge of the bed Cooper still shared with David, and narrated the adventures of what sounded like a rejected Marvel superhero team—Cherry, Birdie, Titus, Uncle Bill, and Captain Scott—as they slogged their way across Antarctica. The saga was the kind of monomyth Cooper would later read about in her comparative mythology electives but would never encounter in real life—Trials! Atonement! Apotheosis! Birdie, Cherry, and Uncle Bill (the fine doctor Edward Wilson), who had set out on the Winter Journey to retrieve an emperor penguin egg, became a holy triumvirate.