Winter is finally here in Antarctica! The sun set at Pole at the austral autumnal equinox (20-March) and won't rise again until Spring. The last sunset at McMurdo is in late April. Mainbody is months away.
Both medevacs last winter were successful.

While you're here, check out my journals or the new and improved picture gallery. Use the site search to find things quickly.

The answer to the number one question, "how many continents are there?" is seven: Asia, Africa, North America, South America, Antarctica, Europe and Australia (in decreasing order of size).

Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station
Perched on over two miles of solid ice, the South Pole station is home to 160 people in the summer but only 28 in the winter. This year, the winter-over population will be much larger, over 50, because of the labor requirements to construct the new South Pole station. The Dome, built in 1975, is getting buried too deeply in the snow to dig out every year and needs to be replaced. The new station should be online in a few years. Parts of it are already operational.

McMurdo Station
Sitting on the southern tip of Ross Island, 2,200 miles (3.500 km) due-south of New Zealand, McMurdo serves as the logistics hub for half the continent. In addition to the primary focus of the work here, science, a good part of the 1,000 summer residents (180 in the winter), process the thousands of tons of cargo brought in each year by air and by sea. Without this effort, there would be no Field Camps; there would be no station at the South Pole.

Lake Hoare in the McMurdo Dry Valleys
Out in the field, the science's the thing. The Field Camp at Lake Hoare is one of several in the region, and is the one that I had the pleasure to work at for a few days in 1995. The Dry Valleys are so called because it doesn't snow there. The terrain prevents the right conditions from occuring that permit precipitation. Lake Hoare, for example, along with Lake Bonney and Lake Fryxell, is nestled between the high walls of the Taylor valley, tucked between tall glaciers. Moist air can't clear the terrain to bring in the snow. Protected, the frozen lake systems provide an excellent opportunity to study simple life forms surviving in amazingly harsh conditions.