The SPOT Diaries, SPOT 3 part 2:  a day in the life

The following is the personal account of a single, long-winded individual’s experiences living and working in Antarctica.  No part of it has been reviewed or in any way endorsed by the United States Antarctic Program or the National Science Foundation, or any other public or private organization, institution, contractor, or company associated therewith.  The views expressed herein are the author’s alone, for good or for ill.

Day 06:  19 January, 60 miles today, 742 miles remaining to Pole, elevation sea level, ambient temperature -2°C, the Ross Ice Shelf

A typical day (for me) on the South Pole (overland) Traverse:

0430HRS  Wake up.  Spend 5 minutes staring into the surrounding blackness as my sleep-addled brain claws desperately for the motivation to get out of bed before I fall back to sleep with no backup alarm set.

0435HRS  Turn on the small desk lamp clipped above my bed so I can get dressed without disturbing my bunk mate with the harsh overhead fluorescent light.  Step onto the cold floor, which is covered for reasons I have yet to fathom with the sort of rough, textured paint often used for traction on exterior surfaces, and make the early morning’s contribution to my pee jug.  Get dressed in the gloom of the small room, and then step quietly into the hallway, dazzling with the light of the ever-circling sun pouring in through the windows.  Add boots, coat, hat, sunglasses, and mittens.   Go outside, careful not to let the door of the living mod slam shut as every sound telegraphs throughout the entire building, and walk gingerly down the stairs.  Head to the back end of camp to empty the pee jug into the pee barrel via the oversized, yellow pee funnel, then up to the front of camp and into the kitchen mod.  Start a pot of coffee—if one hasn’t been already been started by the one person ridiculous enough to get up before I do—fill up water bottles, grab tractor snacks from the pantry,* brush teeth, wash face, visit the incinolet.

0500HRS  Diary.  Drink first pint of black coffee.

0615HRS  Head outside to inspect the tractor.  If the coolant temp is below 70°F, start the diesel-fueled espar heater.  Check all fluid levels, refilling engine oil if down 1 gallon or more.  Look for leaks and cracks, inspect oil level on each of the 16 bogie wheels, inside and outside of track assembly.  Fill out daily log sheet.  Fire up the engine and start running warm-up loop if transmission is below 45°F.  Unplug battery and coolant heaters, coiling and tying up cables to ride securely on the side of the living mod.

0630HRS  Back into the bunkroom for 5 minutes of HIIT cardio.

0640HRS  Breakfast.  This is usually a bowl of plain quick oats, though I might have a bowl of plain cheerios if I’m feeling particularly youthful and carefree.  Drink a second pint of black coffee.  Download podcasts and perform any other quick internetting that needs doing.  Wash/dry dishes and put away in the cupboard.

0700HRS  Morning meeting.  Listen to the increasingly brief SPOT 2 daily sitrep.  This is followed by the SPOT 3 sitrep—which is to say, a summary of whatever we did the day before.  Discuss outstanding issues, cook duty and house mouse, generator fuel tank filling, and any other specifics for the day ahead.

0730HRS  File out of the kitchen in a mass of coats, backpacks, and pee jugs.  Put up stairs to kitchen mod, gen mod, living mod.  Drive tractors out to waiting fuel loads, a sort of daily commute with all the Challangers zippering into a line alongside the trail like cars merging on the freeway.  Back the tractor onto the tongue of the CRREL tool, which, since 308 has a big red fucking crane on the ass end blocking the view of anything happening back there, involves a fair bit of educated guess work.**  Load check.

0745HRS  Start rolling.  This is a more complicated process than it sounds, requiring an unconscionable amount of traffic over the radio.  Each tractor must first report its status, in the order in which they are parked—“308 is ready.”  “312 is ready.”  Etc.—and then signal again when, one by one, each starts to move.  “308 is rolling.”  “312 is rolling.”  Etc..  Once all the Challengers are in motion, the formation fans out so the plastic sheets, weighted by 160,000lbs of fuel, can flatten out (kinda) the morass of churned-up snow left behind at the camp site.  Only after all that is done, and all eleven tractors are rolling in formation on the firm(ish) surface of the trail do we really start to make miles.  As the cab is typically chilly in the morning, I’ll keep my pants on until I have to pee, after which point it’s running shorts or leggings until we stop, as that just makes life with a jug easier.  Drink the day’s third and final pint of black coffee and start on the day’s first liter of water, with or without added flavoring.  If feeling peckish, open up the pouch of apple sauce.

0950HRS  Get dressed for load check, careful not to bump the transmission into higher gear while pulling my pants back on.***

1000HRS  Load check.  Bring the tractor to a nice, easy stop.  Check the vehicle for leaks and/or missing bogie wheels.  Check paulstra pads on the CRREL tool for damage and makes sure the shackles holding the HMW in place are secure.  Check that all tail nets are seated properly and tied down.  Check every endless strap to make sure it is neither too tight nor too loose, and that each of the two ring straps holding the endless straps to the plastic is intact.  Replace any that are worn through—otherwise, if everything looks good, do a quick plank and a few pushups, assuming the weather is not so shitty that continuing to be outside is an unbearable ordeal.

1015HRS  Start rolling again.  Strip down immediately to shorts.  Driving a fleet of farm tractors across Antarctica is basically a powerfully ungraceful ballet, where all the individuals need to move together as a single unit.  The choreography is simple but maintaining it is a balancing act that requires just enough attention that you can’t zone out completely—though inevitable I will do exactly that at some point during this part of the day and find myself having to really goose the machine to catch back up to the cluster of tractors ahead.  Start the second liter of water, with or without added flavoring.  As lunch draws near, begin low key panicking at how quickly the pee jug is nearing capacity.  Somehow this always comes as a surprise, even though I am painfully well aware that I have already ingested nearly a gallon of beverages by midday.****

1200HRS  Lunch.  Since I am usually toward the back of the column, the first 10 minutes of lunch are spent catching up to the tractors in front.  On gen fill days, lunch is delayed by however long it takes to set up the pump, fuel the generator, and then break everything back down, but on every other day the break begins when the first tractor stops.  This kinda screws the people at the back of the line, but, like, what can you do?  Most people do their midday load check at the end of lunch, but I prefer to get it out of the way while the engine is idling so the turbocharger can cool.  This is followed by a stop at the u-barrel to empty my now mightily heavy jug.

1225HRS  Take down the stairs to the living mod and head back into the bunkroom for 5 more minutes of HIIT cardio.

1235HRS  Into the kitchen for a quick sandwich and a truly embarrassing amount of salty sesame crackers.  Refill water bottles.  On the way out the door, forget the now empty pee jug in the containment berm next to the bathroom sink, but remember halfway to the tractor and run back to the kitchen mod just before the stairs are pulled up.

1300HRS  Back in the tractor with the engine idling.  Strip down to shorts, etc.  “Ready” call out, etc.

1310HRS  Start rolling.  The early afternoon is the hardest part of the day to stay awake, so on alternating days this is usually when I do the seated, tractor-oriented, resistance-band workout routine I made up one day by trying a bunch of different movements with the band or parts of the tractor and seeing if they felt like exercise.  I’m not sure that the routine actually accomplishes anything besides keeping me awake—lord knows it doesn’t stop me from veering wildly all over the trail.  If anything, it makes that particular situation worse.  The thing about the Challengers is that even though they are extraordinarily sturdy and stable, they all tend to pull to one side or another, so they do require the continual involvement of the operator, even when driving in a dead straight line for hundreds of miles on flat ground.  If you drift off to sleep, the machine will creep off the trail.  If you take both hands off the wheel to do some weird shoulder press thing you made up where you push up against the ceiling of the cab, the machine will also creep off the trail.  In this way, it’s kind of a lose/lose scenario, but hopefully one that ends with me being utterly shredded by the time we get to Pole.  Start the third liter of water, usually with some variety of caffeinated flavoring.

1520HRS  Get dressed for load check.  Again.

1530HRS  Load check.  Another plank and series of pushups, assuming the weather is not so shitty that continuing to be outside is an unbearable ordeal.

1545HRS  Start rolling again.  Strip down to shorts.  Start the fourth liter of water, with or without added flavoring.  Start worrying about having to pee during fuel circle, which is typically the coldest and most active part of the day.  Maybe space out for an hour and then race to catch up to the rest of the group before everyone stops for the night.

1750HRS  Get dressed.  Pee one last time before fuel circle.

1800HRS  Fuel circle.  Bring the tractor to a slow stop about 50’-100’ behind the fuel load ahead (unless that load is the one being used to fuel from, in which case double that distance).  Unhook the load from the tractor, climb back into the cab, and pee one more last time before fuel circle.  Drive up to the appointed load, and park in a rough semicircle around the back.  One person runs the pump from their cab, while another stands over the tank of the tractor being fueled and signals when to stop and start the pump—using a cloudy, hard to read sight tube for reference.  Somebody reads out the number of gallons put into each tractor, and somebody moves the hose from machine to machine, while several people whack at the track assemblies with shovels, ice axes, and hammers.  It doesn’t exactly matter what job you do during this time, so long as every tractor gets fueled and chipped clean of the day’s accumulation of ice and snow.  

1900HRS  Back into the bunkroom to pee once more and for 5 more minutes of HIIT cardio.

1910HRS  Dinner/free time.  While theoretically served at 1900hrs, the 45 minutes or so that the cook usually winds up with to prepare dinner for 11 people is not a whole lot of time.  Sometimes it’s ready at 1900hrs, sometimes at 1930hrs, so often as not there’s a bit of waiting around the table before we eat.  If I’m going to take a shower that day, I will almost always do it before dinner so I won’t have to go out and shovel snow into the melter with a full belly.  This part of the day passes with unbelievable speed.  A plateful of hot food, some casual conversation, a little bit of internetting, and suddenly it’s already time for bed.

2030HRS  Brush teeth, wash face, head over to the living mod.  Turn right around and return to kitchen mod for forgotten pee jug.  Get dressed for bed.  Make one last addition to the jug before setting it down far from the water bottle I keep within reach.  Lie down in the bunk, close the curtain, turn off the dim little light, and let sleep crash over me with the sudden violence of a mountain lion on the hunt or a wave on a rocky shore.  Sleep the dead and gone sleep of the professionally exhausted, waking up at the crack of darkness the next day to do it all over again.

*usually a 500g squeeze bottle of apple sauce from NZ, which is actually much better than it sounds, and is a favorite among this year’s SPOT 1 & 3 crew since most other snacks are heavily processed and this stuff is literally nothing but apples and a little bit of ascorbic acid.

**I did this once in only two tries and was exceptionally proud of myself the remainder of the day.

***Don’t ask.

****Which, like, having to pee all the damn time is huge pain in the ass, but I learned early on that if I don’t make an effort to stay well hydrated I just feel gross pretty much all the time.