Ob Hill Loop and LDB

December 23rd was to have been a rather eventful day out on the ice.  Hoping for rock-star seating, I went for a hike on the Ob Hill Loop trail. 

The trailhead begins near "The Chalet".  The National Science Foundation's McMurdo office.  The inside has a nostalgic smell of musty wood and coffee.

The Royal Society Range, 65 miles from McMurdo.  The tallest peak, Mt. Lister, is 13,630 feet tall.  It was named by Capt. Scott in 1902 after Dr. Joseph Lister, the former president of the British Royal Society who pioneered antiseptics and sterile surgery techniques.  It is from Dr. Lister that we have the product "Listerine".

The Ob Hill Loop Trail.

Ross Island consists almost entirely of black volcanic rock.  Ob Hill, however, is unusual in that much of the western face of the hill has a greenish hue from its olivine (peridot) minerals.  This yellow rock stood out by itself in the middle of a field of black.

Looking due south, between White Island and Black Island.  The black spots on the ice are Weddels.

Close-up on the black spots on the ice.

I liked the spotted one on the bottom-left.

The seals made their way onto the ice through these fissures.

Thought how this block had emerged was pretty interesting.

Pram Point and Scott Base up ahead, with Mt. Terror in the background.  Mt. Terror is on the far eastern side of Ross Island, about 40 miles away. 

Looking back at the Royal Society range.  The dark foothills at the base of the peaks are a specially protected area called the Dry Valleys, for being virtually snow-free - owing to strong katabatic wind activity off the high peaks.

An Antarctic skua.  Something akin to a very large seagull, these birds migrate thousands of miles each season between their summer breeding grounds here and their wintering sites in the Pacific islands.

Scott Base and some of its pressure ridges.

I liked the smooth pressure "waves".

Okay... here was my objective:  the Long Duration Balloon (LDB) site.  Operated by the NASA-managed Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility in Palestine, Texas, they launch 2 massive balloons here each season (as well as other balloons elsewhere around the world).  I had hoped to watch this particular launch first-hand from my vantage point on Cape Armitage, the southern-most tip of the island.  But, the winds were a little too strong and the launch was postponed. 

Looking back south again.  (Can never remember which one is White Island and which one is Black...)  Between the two, in the far distance, is Mina Bluff.  Most of McMurdo's storms from from this direction; when Mina Bluff disappears, the storm is approximately 90 minutes away.  When Black Island disappears, we have about 45 minutes before the storm hits.

Steep!  Sure don't want to slip here.  (But spend 3 hours of your afternoon shoveling snow off the trail?  AbsoLUTEly!!)

So...  the west side of Ob Hill is green.  The east side is red.

Evidence that brain coral comes from volcanos...

Noon on Christmas Eve, I came out of the galley to see people looking up.  Following their gaze, I saw it - this one, the CREST (Cosmic Ray Electron Synchrotron) balloon.

Slung below the ballloon is a $500,000 package of instruments designed to measure properties of the upper reaches of the atmosphere and its interaction with solar activity.

12 hours later, on my way to Midrats (midnight rations), I glanced up and happened to see the balloon again, above Bldg 155 (where the galley and my dorm room are located).

At this point, the balloon was over 107,000 feet above Antarctica.  Backlit by the sun, it had a brilliant glow.  With the lack of air pressure at that extreme altitude, the helium in the balloon expands exponentially.  At this point, the LDB was about 800 feet across - about the size of the Houston Astrodome.

Shortly after the two photos above were taken, I logged on to the LDB website where they post the track of the balloon.  It had drifted just slightly above (south...?!?) of us.

A week later, it had drifted with the stratospheric winds, nearly 120,000 feet above the continent.  Eventually, the balloon will collapse and the instruments will fall back to earth.  Part of the planning is to predict a wind pattern that will keep the balloon over "land", so as to enable the LDB team to recover their instruments.  Of course, the data is streamed down to receivers at the site anyway, in the eventuality that the package is lost.  By the way this thing is headed...

...they called it right!  It landed to the west of us on the backside of the Royal Society range - pretty slick!!

The location of the balloon as of this posting (shown in the last image above):

Payload position as of:


08:33:37Z 01/09/12



Latitude: 74°19.17 S


Longitude: 160°57.06 E


Altitude: 5216 Feet


0.00 Knots @ 0.00°