Anna'z Travels: Lake Vida

"The wind shakes the walls of the Polar Haven tent violently as the five of us lay around, waiting out the wind storm, waiting for supper. It's 7:00 pm and the wind has been blowing, gale force winds have been blowing now for hours. The winds started just as we finished the final tasks of setting up the Lake Vida camp for the summer 2010 season. We arrived on Friday morning by helocopter on a beautiful calm and sunny day..." -my journal, October 31rst 2010

The crew crammed into the helo

After a 45 minute helo ride across the Ross Sea Ice, stopping to refuel at Marble Point and then flying into the Dry Valley's we landed and exited the helo at Lake Vida. When the helo left a few more flew into the valley dropping off more cargo boxes and finally flying away, leaving us in the middle of the frozen lake surrounded by mountians, sand dunes, glaciers and boxes of cargo containing our tools, our shelter, food and scientific equioptment. We proceeded to unload our tools and set up the first and smaller of two Polar Haven tents in which we would cook out of for the next few days and a group of scientist will work out of for the next 6 weeks.

Lake Vida lies in Victoria Valley, the northernmost of the large McMurdo Dry Valleys, on the continent of Antarctica. It is isolated under year-round ice cover, and considerably more saline than seawater. It came to public attention in 2002 when microbes frozen in its ice cover for more than 2,800 years were successfully thawed and reanimated.

The Dry Valleys are so named because of their extremely low humidity and their lack of snow or ice cover. They are also dry because, in this location, the mountains are sufficiently high so that they block seaward flowing ice from the East Antarctic ice sheet from reaching the Ross Sea. At 4800 square kilometers, the valleys constitute around 0.03% of the continent, and form the largest ice-free region in Antarctica. The valley floors are covered with loose gravel, in which ice wedge polygonal patterned ground may be observed.
The unique conditions in the Dry Valleys are caused, in part, by katabatic winds: these occur when cold, dense air is pulled downhill by the force of gravity. The winds can reach speeds of 200 mph, evaporating all water, ice and snow.

Spending Halloween in the Dry Valley's had to include a little costume :)

Around 4 pm winds started to blow and sped up to at least 90 mph!
The storm started just as we finished our last tasks for the day and blew for the next 14 hours! They shook the polar haven tents and blew my mountain tent into the ice! We slept in the Polar Haven's that night to the sound of the tent poles shaking and the walls being whipped around by the winds. In the morning all was finally calm.