LETTER FROM ANTARCTICA LEE ANN PIPKIN
Yesterday it snowed here. It was a beautiful light powder that blanketed the town and made everybody happy. It seems a little strange to be happy about snow in Antarctica but it doesn't actually snow much here.
Antarctica is an ice desert - it gets about the same amount of precipitation as the Sahara, or so I've heard. It's the highest, coldest, driest place on earth. McMurdo Station is an American Station on Ross Island in the Ross Sea - West Antarctica. Ross Island is where Scott and his men came to set out on their expeditions to the Pole. I think it's about the closest you can get to the South Pole in a boat.
The "town" of McMurdo looks like an oil town in Alaska - it's very industrial - lots of above ground pipes and power lines, lots of big orange tracked vehicles and Caterpillars. The buildings are rectangular metal boxes, brown and yellow and green - very ugly. And everything is covered with volcanic dirt.
Mt. Erebus is an active volcano on the island. It's the one in the picture behind me. The whole island, as far as I can tell, is composed of black volcanic rubble and ice. It makes for a bleak landscape, but if you stand with your back to McMurdo facing South, the Royal Society Range, Mount Discovery, and some pretty impressive glaciers are very beautiful.
Last week Peter Hillary, the son of Sir Edmund Hillary, and two other guys headed out for the South Pole on skis - purely for adventure. They left from Scott Base, also on Ross Island, about a mile from here. It's a New Zealand base and, like the countries themselves, it's much smaller and cleaner than McMurdo.
Hillary is a Kiwi. His dad, Sir Edmund, lives in Auckland and if you mail him a Kiwi $5 bill with his picture on it, he'll sign it and send it back to you. They expect the trip to take about 90 days. They are dragging sleds and using sails to pull themselves along when the wind is right.
They've got satellite communications, so you can check up on them at their web site - www.icetrek.com.
 ASA, the company I work for, is contracted by the National Science Foundation to support science in Antarctica. Scientists apply for and receive grants to come down here and study stuff - geology, seals, the ozone hole, global warming. ASA provides logistics, cooking, cleaning, computers. I do pc support. I sit in an office all day answering questions over the phone about computer problems. Most of the questions come from ASA people, so I guess I'm supporting the people who support the science. Well, I'm off for the evening. My choices for evening entertainment are to go back to my dorm room and read, to the lounge to watch Armed Forces TV, or to one of three "bars" - one with ping pong, cribbage and wine, one with loud music and beer, and one with smoke. They also have two bowling lanes in a Quonset hut, with what I've heard are the only non automatic pinsetting machines left in the world. A little hard to believe, but who knows. Or I could go to the gym and exercise (not likely), or sit in the "galley," drink really bad coffee and play cards. Think I'll probably read. Let me know if there is anything in particular you folks would like to know about -- history, science, weather or just day-to-day life. Lee Ann Pipkin supports computers in McMurdo Station, Antarctica, where it will soon be summer.
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