How to Survive Winter in Antarctica

The final flight out of the South Pole was Friday, February 13—the last chance to leave until mid-November. Those 40 or so people staying the winter will have no way out of Antarctica for around nine months. They won’t even be able to venture more than a mile or two off the base, because all the facilities are in a condensed area, and there's no point in sightseeing during the four months of darkness and two more of twilight.

The Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is the southern-most of the three U.S. research stations down in Earth’s basement. It is located about a hundred meters from the pole itself. It houses around 150 people during the summer and 50 during the winter. The other stations are McMurdo Station, located on Ross Island, and Palmer Station, on Anvers Island. McMurdo is the most populous of the bunch, with 800 to 900 people residing there in the summer and nearly 150 during the winter. Winter on Antarctica’s Ross Island is slightly shorter than at the South Pole. This winter, planes will fly intermittently out of McMurdo, where winter begins on February 28, and the station’s summer crowd arrives on October 1.

The U.S. Antarctic Program doesn't fly over Antarctica during the winter, even between bases, because temperatures get below -50 degrees Fahrenheit, the point at which gasoline freezes. In the depths of winter, around the beginning of July, temperatures can drop below -100 degrees Farenheit.

My son, the documentary film maker (Wayne Derrick), several years ago, filmed the recreation of the Amundsen-Scott race to the South Pole. They could not do the recreation at the South Pole since sledge dogs (or any dogs) are not allowed there anymore. Therefore, the recreation was done on the ice cap heading to the North Pole. Wayne spent three months on the ice cap filming this recreation.

A modern day Swedish explorer was Amundsen and an English explorer was Scott. They wore the same type clothes and ate the same type food as the original men.

Men have a critical task when they urinate in that cold. The penis can only be bare in the extreme cold for a very brief time before frost bite will damage that appendage. Invariably, even they were told to immediately place and zip the penis in the first layer of clothes and then zip again after the next layer of clothes, they tend to want to be out of the cold so fast, they don't zip that final layer.

One man stayed out too long and didn't zip that last layer and his penis turned black and he had to be flown out of the ice pack to a hospital for surgery. Lucky for him, he wasn't circumcised so that extra skin had died but the penis under that skin was saved.

Wayne said he, and the others, had only seen white for that three months and when they came back, their eyes/brain were bombarded with color and it took some time to adjust to seeing color again.

I am using rice socks and pillows and drinking lots hot liquids. Heat the rice socks in the micro wave, and wrap around the neck, arm, whatever.

Put one in the bottom of the pillow case and stick my feet in when I am sitting at the computer. The computer is in a drafty location in our basement family room, and even the rug isn’t stopping the cold from the concrete floor.

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