The Adventures of Ryan
We had a break in the storms today so I decided to hike down to Hut Point to try to view the Sun. I didn’t get to see the sun but I shot some pictures of Discovery Hut, Vince’s Cross, and across the bay. Also there were a couple of seals lounging on the ice. They are loud.
I had to go work on a machine in the Power Plant today. While I was there they graciously gave me a tour of the place. Each generator is a 1.4MW generator. They have 3 in this room and a second set of 3 in another building right next to this one. They also have 3 wind turbines.
The generators are quad turbocharged. They consume about 50 gallons of fuel an hour. The exhaust from them is almost 1000°F. They then use the exhaust to heat most of the town by heating glycol and pumping it to the buildings.
The computer station is where they monitor all the generators and the electricity output 24 hours a day.
Just a bunch of snow pictures to send to my friends in places where it is still in the upper 90°F range. We had a Category 1 storm blow in and move a bunch of snow into town. The fleet operations crews are working around the clock to clean it out. Unfortunately right about the time they started making good progress, another Category 1 storm rolled in.
We had to replace a couple of failing parts at Crater Hill. The vehicle we got there in is called a PistenBully. They can go up extremely steep hills and in almost any weather conditions. They also have no suspension. It’s an extremely bumpy ride.
Got to go into the craft room for a few minutes where one of our wonderful artist Sonya was making a few things. The craft room is open for people to make anything they want. We have a lot of scrap cloth for use from various projects so you get some amazing things made here. It’s also where a lot of people make costumes. A note, we don’t just wear costumes on Halloween. It doesn’t take much for people to dress up around here.
We had a storm blow in late tonight so I decided to shoot some video. The video was shot from the lounge of my dorm (Dorm 209). I was looking at the power plant which is about 100 ft away from where I was shooting. I can barely make out the building due to the amount of snow being blown around. The video is a bit dark so I shot a couple of pictures which better represent the actual visibility. Hopefully I’m not bothering you to much with the same things. It’s just cool every time it happens down here.
I just don’t know what all the fuss is about the cold.
It was really bright out so I decided to shoot some video.
Scott Base is the New Zealand base in Antarctica. They are our wonderful neighbor on Ross Island. They have America Night on Thursday nights. They let us go to the store and to the bar. I decided to go over there this week to see the base. They let 10 people go over for dinner each week. I’m going to try to do that soon.
Our nice peaceful weather came to an end today. We had Condition 2 weather today.