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By Peter Rejcek
“Snow melter shoveling is one of the exciting experiences
you get at only small inland stations, so consider yourself
one of a select group.”— Your Stay at Byrd Station
1970-71
That little excerpt from the 10-page New Byrd Station
guide from more than 35 years ago is a light-hearted reminder
that life in Antarctica’s vast backyard is far from
the comforts of home — or even the relative luxury
of McMurdo Station .
At 80° south latitude and 119° west longitude,
it’s not a spot on the world map suitable for a family
vacation. The Navy personnel charged with establishing
the first Byrd Station during 1956-57 for the International
Geophysical Year (IGY) at first balked at the idea of
heading some 1,000 kilometers by tractor train across
the unknown, crevasse-ridden ice of West Antarctica. But
they drove the distance — twice in one summer —
and built one of the first research stations deep into
the interior of the continent.
Named after the famed polar explorer Rear Adm. Richard
E. Byrd Jr., the new station was something of a hurried,
ad hoc effort that first season when the military officially
commissioned it on Jan. 1, 1957.
A tunnel system connected the station’s five main
buildings, but most of the supplies for the underground
corridors never arrived. So the men improvised, welding
together empty oil drums to serve as vertical columns
for the tunnel framework. The first winter-over crew of
scientists and Navy personnel had enough food, if the
variety was limited, but a short supply of libations,
including a ration of only 10 cans of beer per person
for the entire season of darkness.
Not all was deprivation. Charles Bentley, a scientist
who spent the first two winters at Byrd Station, had his
collection of chamber music with him. On his way north
after 25 months on the Ice, he lent the records to an
incoming seismologist, who promised to return them.
“He never brought them back,” said Bentley,
who at 78 returned to Antarctica in 2008 for the WAIS
Divide ice-drilling project. “My records are still
out there. I always had the idea that I could go back
and get them.” [See related story: Practically home.]
No one is likely to see them ever again. The first station
was only used for four years because the weight of snow
threatened to collapse it. Construction of a second research
station began in 1960, about six miles from the original
location. Prefabricated buildings with steel “wonder
arches” were lowered into man-made trenches and manually
covered with snow, a concept first developed and tested
in Greenland by the U.S. Army.
Commissioned on Feb. 13, 1961, New Byrd Station was located
underground except for some scientific structures. Tunnels
connected the stations’ various facilities, which
served to support the largest inland scientific program
at the time.
New Byrd Station outlived its predecessor, lasting for
about a decade. However, equipment vapors, human breathing
and various other sources caused rime to form on the inside,
and over a period of several years, the structures buckled
from within. In 1972, the station was redesigned and moved
to the surface. It was then used as a summer-only field
camp.
Memories
Patrick Haggerty is the Research Support and Logistics
Manager in the Arctic Sciences Division of the Office
of Polar Programs at the National Science Foundation .
But in 1970-71, he worked as the assistant station science
leader for one of the first civilian contractor companies
in Antarctica, Holmes and Narver, during the station’s
final season. By that time, Haggerty recalled, most of
the steel arch material had been crushed and removed.
Part of the house mouse duties — common housekeeping
tasks shared by all at the station — included roof
maintenance, he said. “[We spent] a day per week
with an electric chain saw cutting snow blocks from over
the buildings (standing on the roofs), and dropping them
over the side into a snow melter. Hot water from the electric
snow melter would then be drained into a hole in the bottom
of the tunnel.”
Recreation at New Byrd Station was “self-made.”
There was a library and club, which contained a pool table
and BYOB bar.
Byrd Surface Camp carried on support for science in West
Antarctica in succeeding summers, albeit scaled down from
the heyday of the 1950s and 1960s. In the 1970s and 1980s,
the camp primarily supported the new Siple Station at
the base of the Antarctic Peninsula as a waypoint for
flights, according to Dave Bresnahan, a long-time U.S.
Antarctic Program (USAP) participant and former NSF official.
“Flight time, round trip, to Siple was 11 hours
via LC-130 from McMurdo,” Bresnahan said. Byrd Station
essentially served as a gas station to increase the amount
of cargo each plane could carry between McMurdo and Siple.
The standard routine, he said, was to fly direct to Siple
from McMurdo, offload the cargo, and then stop at Byrd
for additional fuel before returning to McMurdo.
“For every three flights to Siple Station we needed
two flights to Byrd to position fuel at the camp,”
Bresnahan explained. “So, if we had 75 flights planned
for Siple, we had to make 50 to Byrd just for fuel for
the return flights.”
Moves
During the 1981-82 summer season, a crew built a new modular,
sled-mounted camp to get away from the Korean War-era
Jamesways, or tent-like buildings. The six-unit, interconnected
camp included a self-contained water production unit.
The camp design allowed a crew to quickly disconnect it
and store it on snow berms at the end of each season to
offset the effects of drifting snow accumulation.
“This incarnation of the camp is a significant improvement
over the Jamesway camp used in past seasons,” according
to an NSF memo dated May 7, 1990.
The camp continued to move around through the 1980s.
Crews pushed it near the skiway, or landing strip, in
1983 — a job that took a little more than 24 hours
beginning on Dec. 1. Byrd slightly shifted locations again
in 1986, though the new site offered an uneven surface.
Snapshot in time: Byrd in 1970-71
-Latitude: 80°S
-Longitude: 119°W
-Elevation: 1,553 meters (5,095 feet)
-Annual mean temperature: -28.2C (-18.8F)
-Lowest recorded temperature: -63.2 (-81.8F) in July 1958
-Highest recorded temperature: -0.8C (31F) in January
1961
-Maximum gust: 76 knots in June 1965
-Air distance from McMurdo: 1,400 kilometers (885 miles)
-Air distance from South Pole: 1,100 kilometers (675 miles)
Differential settling of the sled-mounted berthing module,
caused by heat radiating from the galley (and probably
the proximity of the camp’s wastewater outfall to
the sleds), had caused minor structural damage to the
galley and bathroom unit. By the 1988-89 season, however,
differential settling was causing a host of problems —
doors didn’t fit correctly in frames and floors buckled
between the units.
The camp began the 1990s with yet another move to stave
off further damage. By that time, Byrd mostly functioned
as an emergency diversion landing and support station
for intra-continental flights, and as a weather observation
site.
An end and a new beginning
Byrd Surface Camp continued its deep-field work into the
21st century. It served as the starting point of the U.S.
International Trans-Antarctic Scientific Expedition (ITASE)
traverse earlier this decade. The USAP last used the camp
in 2004-05 with a staff of three. [See related story:
High-resolution record.]
Apparently destined to be swept into the dustbin of history,
with work already under way to remove the remnants of
the last structures and equipment, Byrd Surface Camp is
scheduled to return this coming season with a new mission
and a population of up to 50 people.
“That’s the nature of our business. Things
change all the time,” noted Chad Naughton, a science
planner for the USAP who helped plan the latest incarnation
of Byrd.
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