Week 41 at the Pole

Monday, October 26, 2020 - 10:30am

In distance, person in red parka sunbathing on a snow bank.
Yuya Makino, IceCube/NSF

Sunbathing at the South Pole?  Well, why not!  The sun is out (in fact it’s not going away…for months), and for reclining there’s a nice smooth snowbank, compared to the choppy snow surface all around, corrugated with sastrugi, seen here and in a more close-up view in the image below. It was a relatively quiet week at the Pole.  But quiet or not, they usually have some sort of celebration going on, and last week it was Alaska Day, a legal holiday in the US state of Alaska, where 8 of the 42 winterovers hail from.  Reason enough to bear the cold for a nice group photo.

Shadowy ridges of sastrugi covering snow surface
Yuya Makino, IceCube/NSF

Group photo of eight, at the geographic South Pole sign
Yuya Makino, IceCube/NSF