Frosty Feet (guest blog by Ross)

Hi Everyone,

Annika has persuaded me to take over her blog for this week. She has gently nudged me into writing a post on Antarctica as she thought that people might be interested in hearing about what I was up to and life in the frozen south.

Red Castle Ridge camp after snow

As many of you know, I spent two months of 2016 in Antarctica (January and November). For those of you who don’t know me well or that this is a thing, 1) yes, it is possible to make it to Antarctica, 2) yes, it can be cold but it’s not as bad as you might think, 3) yes, you do poop in a 5-gallon bucket and haul it out of the field when you are finished with your fieldwork, and 4) yes, we did see penguins and you will too. For me though the most important thing was how these two experiences have transformed my view of human impact on our planet. I have been fortunate enough to be able to conduct this kind of fieldwork.

Something I need to emphasize before I get too far into the post is that work in Antarctica is extremely team oriented and group focused. Many of the logistical staff who are sent to Antarctica never get to go to the really remote and beautiful places. Most are stuck at a base, like McMurdo Station (one of the US bases) or Scott Base (NZ base). So, it is with the deepest sense of gratitude that I need to thank all of the logistical staff for what they do, and how hard they work. They are what make this type of work happen and often do it without so much as a “thank you”. If this finds its way to anyone who has ever been staff at a major Antarctic station, THANK YOU!

I realized after I tried writing this post once that I can say way more than I realized or thought I could. But in the interest of time and in the spirit of Annika’s Blog I will keep it short and sweet. I flew to Antarctica on a C-17 with one of the Helicopters (IBR) we were going to be using for this seasons field work. It was kind of the like flying in a Tur-duck-en (a turkey stuffed with a duck stuffed with a chicken) only a C-17 stuffed with a helicopter stuffed with gear.

We stayed at Scott Base while we did our Antarctic Field Training (AFT) and got our field gear together. For our AFT we did crevasse rescue, some rope work, as well as setting up our tents, and sleeping away from Scott Base for a night.

Scott Base from a Twin Otter

Learning how to prusik out of a crevasse with Cliff and Kevin

I was in the first group of people to go up to Red Castle Ridge this season. We needed to take the small plane up first to establish a “runway”. The Twin Otter pilots needed to find a spot for a larger plane to land. I was loaded into a Twin Otter with two other people and some gear and before I knew it we were going north.

Mount Erebus from a Twin Otter

D'Urville Wall and Cape Phillipi

Low-level clouds and sea ice next to David Glacier

Ice cliff, I don't know how tall this is but if I had to guess I would say about 200 m tall

Drygalski Ice Tongue surrounded by open water and sea ice

Looking up Aviator Glacier

The Mountaineers Range (close-up)

The Mountaineers Range

We were based out of Red Castle Ridge for the duration of the fieldwork and supported by helicopters the whole time. The helo pilots are some of the best on the planet and fantastic people! Thanks to the skill of the pilots (Heff and Mark) and our mountaineer (James) we were able to access some amazing areas. The peaks around where we were staying are all very large. The tallest is Mount Minto (13,665 ft/4,165 m), then Mount Herschel (10,942 ft/3,335 m), and Mount Humphrey Lloyd (9,760 ft/2,975 m). The amazing thing about all of the peaks is that they go from sea level to that elevation in a really short distance. They are also some of the most intimidating mountains I have ever seen, but simply majestic and awe-inspiring.

Quiet snowfall at Red Castle Ridge

Heff (helo pilot extraordinaire) and IDE (the helo)

James making a weather call to Red Castle Ridge (he's the tiny dot on the hill in the near ground). 

Mount Humphrey Lloyd

Mount Herschel

We were at Tucker Glacier collecting rock samples for me to process at Victoria University. I am trying to reconstruct the ice surface lowering of Tucker Glacier over the last few thousand years. We do this by measuring the amount of a specific cosmogenic nuclide (Beryllium 10). This nuclide can only start accumulating in rocks when they are exposed to open sky at the surface of the planet. As a glacier retreats it will deposit boulders and cobbles on valley walls next to the glacier. When that happens, the boulder starts accumulating cosmogenic nuclides.  If you collect samples from a high elevation down through lower elevations, you should be able to determine the ice surface lowering chronology.  Basically, this is a really cool tool to track the retreat history of a glacier.

Tucker Glacier from the C-17 on the flight down to Scott Base.

Football Saddle

Cliff face at Point 237. 

Our mountaineer, James, and I descended this cliff face fruitlessly in the name of science.

We flew out and back to Scott Base on a Basler (DC-3) that was totally full of gear. The small science team I was with was one of four based out of Red Castle Ridge over the same timeframe. We made it back to Scott Base by way of Mario Zucchelli Station, the Italian station located at Terra Nova Bay. Eventually we made it back to Scott Base and ultimately had a few delays in getting back to New Zealand.  

Basler full of gear and stinky people.

I've been to the hardest part of Italy to get to - MZS Station.

As I said, I tried to keep this short. If you would like more information let me know. If there is enough interest I might start my own blog on Antarctica and some of the things I am doing. Please let me know what you think by leaving comments here; Annika will make sure that I get them. 

And now, the reason that you've patiently read this whole blog...penguins! Please don't ever ask me for another penguin.

Penguin rookery - they are actually really loud and stinky.

Kiwi Slang

Sorry for the long time between posts.  With the earthquake(s), flooding, my mom visiting, tramping at Egmont National Park, and starting a new job, the last month has just flown by!

Having lived in New Zealand for 6 months at this point I can mostly understand the Kiwi accent and slang.  Kiwis tend to talk really quickly and mash all of their words together, so it can be challenging when you first get here.  They also really like to shorten words, so even the slang can be tricky at times. It has been an interesting experience to find myself in the role of the foreigner who is constantly asking what various Kiwi words/slang/phrases mean but also being asked to explain American slang/phrases to my coworkers.  It is not a role that I ever thought that I would find myself in but I have to admit that I am kind of enjoying it.  It's almost like learning a new language.

As a side note, in no way is the list below comprehensive.  It is just a sampling of some of the phrases and words that we have come across so far.  Enjoy!

General

Aotearoa - Maori for New Zealand, means the land of the long white cloud
Chur - Kiwi for thanks, sweet, etc.  Shortened from "Cheers bro"
Ta - also means thanks
Bro - short for brother, term of friendship/endearment, pronounced as "brew"
Cheers - another one that generally means thanks, or a friendly acknowledgement
Togs - swim trucks
Jandals - flip flops
Bach - small holiday home, shortened from bachelor pad, pronounced "batch"
As - used to modify the preceding adjective (e.g. sweet as, flat as, mad as, etc.)
Yeah nah - means no but can be an indecisive phrase that is often followed by an explanation.  I've had this phrase described to me as "I'd like to but I shouldn't."
Tiki Tour - means the long way round, kind of like taking the scenic route
Koha - donation, gift, or present
Tramping - hiking, backpacking, etc.
DOC - Department of Conservation, often referred to in conversations as "doc"
Domain - grassy reserve, open to the public
EFTPOS - debit (stands for electronic financial transaction point-of-sale)
Footie - Rugby, usually union rather than league (they have different rules)
Haere mai - welcome
Kia ora - hello or thank you
Kiwi vs. kiwi vs. kiwifruit - With a capital "K" means a New Zealander, with a lowercase "k" refers to the national bird, kiwifruit is the green or golden-fleshed fruit with hairy skin that we call kiwis in the US
Flash - cool, fancy
Kit - gear, stuff
OE - Overseas experience, usually a year spent abroad by Kiwis in their early twenties
Poms - folks from Britain
She'll be right - everything will work out fine
Torch - flashlight
Gumboots - rain boots, often called Wellies in the States or the UK
Suss - to investigate, sort something out
Arvo/avo - afternoon
Bush - forest, wilderness
Dummy - Pacifier, "Spit the dummy" means to throw a tantrum
Fortnight - two weeks
Good on ya - congratulations, good for you
Keen - interested, enthusiastic
Knackered - tired, beat
Plaster - bandaid
Wop-wops - somewhere really remote, in the middle of nowhere

Food and Drinks

Fizzy drink - think pop or soda
Dairy - what we'd call a convince store in the US, though these often specialize in milk products
Chilly Bin - cooler (this is possible my favorite Kiwi slang)
L&P - Lemon & Paeroa, a tasty fizzy drink that is "World Popular in New Zealand"
Pineapple lumps - chocolate covered lumps of pineapple flavored marshmallow-like confections
Lollies - general term for candy of any sort, often refers to assorted gummies
Kumara - sweet potato
Hangi - traditional Maori cooking method where meat and vegetables are steamed for hours in an earth oven
Takeaway - take out
Biscuits - cookies
Afghans - chocolate and cornflake dough cookies with cocoa icing
Anzac biscuit - oat and coconut cookies (delicious!), originally made for the ANZAC troops in WWI
Lamington - sponge cake with pink icing and desiccated coconut, often served as a cube
Pavlova - giant, soft meringue dessert that is covered in cream and fruit
Short black - Italian-style espresso
Long black - espresso diluted with hot water
Flat white - espresso topped with steamed milk
Hot dog vs. American hot dog - What we would call a corn dog in the US vs. self-explanatory
Tomato sauce - ketchup but with better spices
Hokey Pokey - vanilla ice cream with toffee bits
Jelly - jell-o
Banger - sausage
Cuppa - cup of tea or coffee
Bring a plate - potluck, bring a dish/item to share
Barbie - barbecue
Lemonade - lemon-lime soda (think 7Up or Sprite)
Scroggin - GORP, trail mix (this is a close second for my favorite Kiwi slang)

American phrases that I've had to explain

Pow-wow - comes from Native Americans so an uncommon phase here
Out of left field - baseball isn't a thing in NZ, so baseball analogies don't really work
Batting a thousand - same as above
Jumbotron - the person that I explained this one to referred to the Jumbotron as the "Big Screen."

Kaikoura Earthquake

At 12:02 a.m. on Monday morning there was a M7.5 earthquake outside of Hanmer Springs on the South Island.  Multiple faults ruptured at that time so there was almost two minutes of shaking.  My mom is visiting New Zealand while Ross is in Antarctica doing field work and we were both woken up by the earthquake.  Being the geologist that I am, I immediately got up and checked on GeoNet to see how big the earthquake was and where it was.  I could tell that it had been big but I wanted to see how big...  If you are interested, here are links to the USGS and GeoNet (latest info and earthquake report) regarding this earthquake.

Shake map from GeoNet

There have been over 1,200 aftershocks at this point (almost two days later), and there were an estimated 100,000 landslides around the country as a result of the earthquake and aftershocks.  A number of the aftershocks have been in the M4-5 range and there were even a couple that were M6.  Needless to say, there has been a lot of shaking going on around here over the last couple days.  I have been second guessing myself as to whether I felt an earthquake, a truck passing, or the gale force winds this evening...

A house at Bluff Station right on the Kekerengu fault line (photo by RNZ).
Line up the driveway to see the amount of motion along the fault.

My flat is on the third and top floor of an 1960's concrete building and we're located in the hills above Wellington.  Due to these factors, we didn't experience as much shaking as some of the high-rises and other buildings in downtown Wellington and along the waterfront, where there has been a lot of backfilling of the harbor over the years.  Nothing fell off of the shelves in my flat but the doors and cabinet doors were opening and closing and pictures were rattling on the walls. You could also hear a low rumbling for the duration of the shaking.

  

GeoNet Felt It Report

Monday morning I had to go down to the train station to pick up a bike that I had bought off of TradeMe (Kiwi equivalent to Craig's List, but less sketchy) and the central business district (CBD) of Wellington was like a ghost town.  Almost everything was closed and there were a number of broken windows, cracks in buildings, and broken or disarrayed items in shop windows.  Most of the buildings were checked for structural integrity on Monday, but building assessments continued into Tuesday.  The pictures below show some of the damage that we saw during our very limited time in the CBD.

There are at least two buildings in Wellington that sustained significant structural damage.  There is one building that is at risk of collapsing and another that is expected to be out of commission for several months to up to a year.  There was also damage along the waterfront causing commuter ferry services around Wellington Harbor to be cancelled.  The larger Interislander ferries that travel between the islands ended up spending the night anchored in Wellington Harbor due to damage at the ferry terminals both in Wellington and in Picton. 

To top it all off, there was a very large storm system that came through over the last couple days, bringing torrential rain fall and gale force winds.  Due to the rain, there has been massive flooding in the Wellington area and for a while today all of the roads out of Wellington were closed.  

Major flooding in Pauatahanui
Photo from Wellington - LIVE Facebook page

After all of the excitement, I finally pulled together an emergency preparedness kit (water, non-perishable food, flashlight, batteries, first aid kit, etc.) following the guidelines put forth by the NZ Civil Defense.  Ross and I had been talking about doing this since we got to New Zealand but just hadn't gotten around to it yet.  I'm not sure how thrilled my mom was about helping me carry canned goods and water back to my flat, but I'm now good to go should we get another earthquake or some other disaster.

If you want to help out with the relief effort, here is a list of ways that you can contribute.

Thoughts on Trump from New Zealand

Having been abroad since mid-June, we have been able to watch the party conventions, debates, and the run-up to the election through a very different perspective - that of an outsider looking in through a foreign lens.  It has been really interesting to see what issues the NZ Herald harps on and those that are mostly ignored.  There was a really interesting article recently about what a Trump victory would mean for the New Zealand stock markets, economy, property, and tourism (you can read it here).  While I have always known that US politics affect more than just the US, this is the first time that I ever saw an article spelling out exactly how American election results could affect a country located on the opposite side of the planet. 

Ross and I have had many conversations with Kiwis and other expats (not just Americans) in Wellington about the election.  I have been constantly surprised with how well Kiwis understand and follow American politics.  That being said, we have had to attempt to explain Trump to Kiwis.  I have had strangers come up to me on the street after hearing my American accent and ask my opinions on him and how so many people can support him.  I have been asked if I was voting for him.  I have apologized for the country.  Yes, the country.  To strangers.  For Donald J. Trump.  Because I didn't really know what else to do.  I have assured everyone that asks that I am not voting for him.  Ross and I both voted absentee from New Zealand and so when people ask if we are voting, we let them know that we already have.

On a slightly more entertaining note, Trump is, quite literally, a joke in New Zealand.  There is a company, Powershop, who is running a "Trump Trump" ad campaign right now.  They take real quotes from Trump and allow people to change them (click here to make your own).  These are displayed as giant posters around Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch.  They also have a couple great videos on YouTube (Kids trumping Trump and Kiwis trumping Trump are my favorites).

To get up on a soapbox for a minute, if you haven't already voted, please do so.  The entire world is watching and waiting to see what the outcome of this election will be.

Colonial Knob and Paekakariki Escarpment

This past Sunday the weather was fabulous so Ross and I ended up hiking/walking almost 21 miles, counting the walk from the train station back to our flat and walking around the Wellington Diwali Festival a bit.  There were a couple hikes out by Porirua and the Kapiti coast (northwest of Wellington) that we were both interested in so we got the Day Rover train ticket (allows you to get on and off of the train as much as you want for the day) and went out exploring. 

Mana and Kapiti Islands from the Colonial Knob

We started off doing Colonial Knob, just outside of Porirua.  We took the Raiha Path as a shortcut from the train station to the trailhead for the Colonial Knob track.  The Raiha Path winds between buildings and football fields before crossing a wetland via a boardwalk and then dumping you on Raiha Street.  

There are three routes up Colonial Knob; we went through the Porirua Scenic Reserve and I highly recommend it.  You follow a stream up a steep, forested valley, gaining most of the 400 meters in elevation going up stairs.  You suddenly pop out of the bush and find yourself at a high point with gorgeous views over Porirua, as well as Kapiti and Mana Islands.  From here you continue along a road through rolling pastures for a couple more kilometers until you reach the 468 m summit of Colonial Knob.  We had great weather so we were able to see the South Island very clearly and we could even make out Mt. Taranaki (~200 km to the northwest) in the distance across the water.

First view over Porirua

South Island and pastureland 

South Island, Mana Island, and Kapiti Island from Colonial Knob
(Click on picture to enlarge)

Makara Wind Farm outside of Wellington with South Island mountains in the background

After lunch on the top of Colonial Knob, we meandered back into Porirua, got a snack, and debated our next move.  The weather was so nice and we still had a number of hours before the sun went down, so we decided to do the 10 km long Paekakariki Escarpment track too because why not?  

Looking south from the Paekakariki Escarpment track

Looking north along the Paekakariki Escarpment track toward Kapiti Island

To get to the trailhead, we got back on the train and continued northwest until we got to the Paekakariki Station.  The Escarpment track goes from there back to Pukerua Bay, which is the previous train stop.  The track follows the coast so the rail line and the highway are either right next to you or down a very steep slope from you for the majority of the hike.  There are gorgeous views of the coastline, going both north and south, the South Island, and Kapiti Island from the track.  The views mostly make up for being so close to the road and rail lines but you can hear traffic for the majority of the hike.  The track is very narrow and exposed in places, so it might not be the best idea if you have vertigo or on a windy day.  I am not super comfortable with heights and there were a couple places where I found myself leaning into the slope and pointedly avoiding looking down.  It is about a 200 meter climb up steep stairs to the high point on the track and there are two swing bridges closer to the Pukerua Bay end of the track.  Since we didn't start this hike until after 4 pm, we didn't see anyone on the trail after about the halfway mark. 

Tui on New Zealand Flax

From the high point of the trail looking toward Pukerua Bay

Ross and Kapiti Island

Me on one of the swing bridges

I really enjoyed both hikes but if you only have time for one, I recommend doing Colonial Knob.  It has more elevation gain than the Paekakariki Escarpment track but you get 360° views from the top and you don't have to listen to passing cars and trains for the entire hike.

Lamb!

These adorable little guys made us almost miss our train...