Antarctica
By Elizabeth Johnston Hubbard ’03
A college education can take you anywhere.” I’ve been hearing these
words from my parents and teachers since elementary school, and now that I’m
a college graduate I couldn’t agree more. Every year, St. Lawrence grads
can be found doing all kinds of things in countries around the world. In the
case of four St. Lawrence alumni, their college education has taken them all
the way to Antarctica.
Dean Eppler ’74, Bevin Gumm ’91, Paul Kolachov ’91
and Ann Lowery ’82 all have spent a significant portion of their
post-graduation years living and working in McMurdo Station, Antarctica. “McMurdo
Station is a town with about 1000 people who call it home for some
or all of the year,” says Eppler, who majored in geology. “It
is the largest logistics base on the continent, and, as such, serves
not only the U.S. operation but many other countries’ as well.
The population is about half permanent and half transient; the permanent
folks are the ones who do all the support work to get the transients
in the field to accomplish the science they traveled there for.”
Eppler, who traveled to Antarctica for the first time in the 1980s,
worked most recently in McMurdo Station from late 2002 to the end of
January 2003 (the austral summer) as a part of a reconnaissance team
for the Antarctic Search for Meteorites (ANSMET). The four-person team
was deployed to five different blue-ice fields on the Antarctic polar
plateau about 200 miles north of the South Pole. Eppler says that the
team “conducted reconnaissance to determine if there was had
a sufficient population of meteorites to warrant a larger team being
placed there in subsequent collection years.”
Gumm, who majored in government, lived in McMurdo from August 19,
2002, to February 20, 2003. As a housing coordinator, she “juggled
dorm beds for scientists and staff as they passed through McMurdo on
their way to field camps and listened to the complaints of unhappy
roommates,” she told a reporter from the continent’s sole
newspaper, The Antarctica Sun.
With Gumm during her stay in McMurdo Station was her classmate and
fellow government major Paul Kolachov. “Paul and I have been
good friends since the first day of freshman year, and have remained
in touch as we have continued our quest to travel the world,” Gumm
says. Kolachov’s recent stay was also his first at McMurdo; he
spent his time working with the United States Antarctic Program.
Ann Lowery, who majored in sociology, has spent so much time in Antarctica
that she has acquired the nickname “Ann-arctica.” Lowery
has spent the past eight years in McMurdo Station, first arriving in
October 1995 after numerous seasons working for the National Park Service
at Denali National Park in Alaska. She has been a fuels operator, communications
operator, field coordinator, radio dispatcher for the Antarctic Fire
Department, and, most recently, materials person in the supply division,
which she describes as “McMurdo’s version of Home Depot.” Lowery
says she will return to McMurdo Station in October 2003 for her sixth
summer season, to work in a warehouse called “Central Supply.” She
anticipates that it will be “a very active job, snow or shine.”
“One thing you learn quickly about the Antarctic environment,
particularly on the polar plateau, is its harshness,” Eppler
says. “Perhaps more than anywhere else on the surface of the
Earth, human beings are routinely working in an environment that can
become lethal, in a short period of time, to anyone who isn’t
wearing the proper clothing and equipment, who isn’t properly
trained in the techniques of polar survival, or who is careless or
unlucky. While our time up on the plateau was enjoyable and rewarding,
we never lost sight of the fact that if we screwed up, we could get
hurt all the way to dead before anyone could help us.”
There are, in fact, only a limited number of months during which people
can safely travel to McMurdo. According to Lowery, the winter season
begins in late February, at which point the population drops from the
1000-plus summer contingent to approximately 200. “Once the last
flight goes north to Christchurch, New Zealand, barring a medical emergency,
there are no flights—no fresh food, mail supplies—until
late in August when the first crews arrive to help open the station
for summer, which begins in early October,” Lowery says. She
says that the first sunset since late October occurs just about the
time the station closes, and by the middle of April the sun disappears
completely and doesn’t rise above the horizon again until September.
During the months of darkness, a temperature of –20°F “seems
pretty balmy,” Lowery says, after experiencing a low of –100°F.
If there’s one thing that being students at St. Lawrence prepared
all four alumni for the most, it may have been the weather.
Liz Johnston was an intern in University communications in fall 2002.
In July 2003, she acquired a new last name by marrying Jason Hubbard ’02
in Gunnison Chapel, and in August she became a development researcher
at her alma mater.
Bevin Gumm ’91, left, and Ann Lowery ’82 at Scott’s
Hut, Cape Evans, Ross Island, Antarctica, austral summer 2002-03. The
location is about 12 miles by sea ice from McMurdo Station, where several
alumni have worked.
In an ice field “approximately 9,000 miles south of Boston,” according
to Dean Eppler ’74, Eppler prepares to place in a crevasse a
miniature “planet” created by Josh Simpson, glass blower
from Massachusetts. “The planet was left to await discovery by
future visitors to the polar plateau,” Eppler says. “It
was a nice early summer day,” Eppler adds: “Around
-10°F, wind chill to -28°F.”