The Beautiful Views

I try and keep my camera in my coat at all times around here just in case I see something exciting, beautiful, weird, etc. Here are a couple random photos that I took as I was walking from building to building, the scenery is the same every day, but depending on where you are standing, it looks a little different and always beautiful. We are basically located on a frozen island ocean front facing the actual land that is Antarctica. We are on Ross Island, located 20 miles across the frozen water from the main land. A lot of the mountains that you see are islands between us and the main land or are actual mountains on the main land. Once the weather warms up, the ice will mostly melt  and I can take pictures of the same mountains so you can see the difference.
Enjoy!



One of the first sunsets I witnessed here on the ice.

Observation Hill

The Ice Runway in it's first week of operation

This is Mount Discovery

These are nacreous clouds. They form when the temperature drops below -80 degrees in they sky. They look like a rainbow of water colors smeared across the sky.

Birthday and a New Look

Ok Everyone, its time to play catch up. Since the start of the summer season here, things have been pretty busy and I am having trouble finding time to blog as much as I'd like. For the time being, I am going to combine 2 different events that happened to me in the last few weeks.
As everyone knows, I celebrated my 28th Birthday here on the ice this year. It was a really good day. My boss Dan had the kitchen make a cake for 2 other girls and myself who all shared the same birthday and we each got a little goodie bag of fun nick nacs.

Later in the evening I held a little get together for some friends at a place called Hut 10. Its this 3 bedroom house used for the VIP's when they come to visit, but when it is not in use, we are allowed to rent it out for the evening and throw parties.
The party went well and everyone had a good time.

On to the fun pictures!
After a month and a half on the ice, I decided it was time for my hair to go. The harsh, dry weather had turned my hair into a rats nest filled with split ends and never ending static. I asked Erin if she wanted to cut the pony tail off and agreed to do it. We cut it out by the Station sign so that I can send pictures to Locks of love when I donate my hair.

The day we cut it was really windy and pretty cold.

You can see by the completely horizontal direction  my ponytail is 

flying through the air that it was super cold and windy.

Once the hair was cut, we went back to the barber shop and Ildi trimmed it a 

little more and styled it the way that I wanted.

And the final product.........ta da!

I am really enjoying it short and could not be happier with my choice. It takes about 5 minutes with my hair dryer and when I am ready to go outside, I just put a hat on and I am done......it just became that easy.

Yeah Short Hair!!!

Autumn :)

Pressure Ridge Tour

As We started to get settled in, one of the first things we did was head out of town to the Pressure Ridges. A pressure ridge is when the the sea ice freezes and starts pushing up against the permanent ice shelf. The ice shelf runs into the land and has nowhere to go. The pressure starts to build and the ice starts to move upward having no other option. These sharp ridges are created and slowly grow over the course of a month or 2. Erin and I went about half way through the first month, and were told that there were kind of tiny right now but if we come back in a few weeks they will look completely different.

I got a little cold in the end because I didn't wear enough layers on my bottom half, but other than that I had a lot of fun. I hope to go back and visit again in a couple weeks to see the difference.

Til next time!

Autumn :)