In November 2002, UTIG researchers Fred Taylor, Cliff Frohlich, and graduate student Kris Gudipati, embarked on a NSF-funded project to study microplate motions in Antarctica using global positioning system (GPS) instruments. Neither Frohlich nor Gudipati had been to Antarctica previously. During the five-week field program aboard the research vessel Laurence M. Gould, Frohlich sent a series of letters and photographs to his friends and family describing what it was like to participate in this project. Published here, the letters and their belong to UTIG Senior Research Scientist Emeritus Cliff Frohlich.

From Cliff Frohlich, 11 December, 2002

Dear family & friends –

Once again, work has slowed to a crawl because of the wind. Yesterday winds were in the mid-20 knot range when we deployed our zodiak at Prat Base on Greenwich Island. Then, it turned foggy and the sea was almost like glass when we returned to the ship, six hours later. (It took six hours because we had to stop and have a pisco sour and lunch with the base Comandante.) Today, the wind is steady at 40 knots with gusts above 50, and we are steaming back in forth, back and forth outside the mouth of the harbor. Everywhere I have lived the locals tell you proudly that ‘If you don’t like the weather here-just wait-it’ll change’; here in the South Shetland Islands it is really true, even if there are no locals. The day off doesn’t affect our GPS work much but Brenda had hoped to go ashore to look at some moraines. But not today. Thus I have time to be somewhat philosophical and to think about each of you.

Almost as soon as I got to Punta Arenas one of you who shall go unnamed [shall we start a pool?] emailed me and said: ‘Be sure to tell us what you had for Thanksgiving Dinner … we are always interested in food.’ Well, on Thanksgiving for dinner the cook served macaroni and cheese, pork fritters, and steak pinwheels. There was also asparagus, salad, bread, and dessert. The truth is that it was just an ordinary dinner meal-nothing was any different from a regular, non-Thanksgiving meal. Probably this is because the head cook, Rudy, is a Filipino, and his prime assistant, Luciano, is Chilean. What is so special about the fourth Thursday in November, anyhow? On the Gould and everywhere except the US, it’s just another regular work day.

The food here, however, may be a problem for me. The difficulty is that for all three meals there is a choice, which nearly always includes several items that would be a crime to pass up. Each morning for breakfast, for example, there are fried potatoes, porridge, pancakes, bacon, sausages, cereal, yogurt, fruit, and scrambled eggs. Lunch and dinner always have a vegetarian entre, two non-vegetarian entrees, two kinds of starch, two or three cooked vegetables, salad, and two desserts. And of course, between meals they leave food out because, after all, what if we got hungry? I am used to living in an environment where I don’t get to eat anything unless (1) Jackie or I go to the store and buy it; and (2) one of us prepares it. Thus living on the ship could kill me. At the very least, if I sent you a picture of me on the beach with an elephant seal it might have to be titled: ‘Which one is the elephant seal?’ Ah-h-h, the hazards of Antarctic field work.

Our science is going well, although we are entering that dangerous cruise period where much is done, but much is left to do. One is tired and a little bored and tempted to stop pushing hard to finish the work. At weak moments one secretly hopes that the wind will remain too high, or that the snow will be too deep, or the glacier too dangerous to deploy the last GPS site on Elephant Island. But then reality checks in, and you realize that if you just keep pushing, and thinking of imaginative safe ways to get where we have to go and to solve the little problems that come up, we could finish up a truly successful field campaign. In some ways it is a lot like being 2/3 the way through a semester in college: even if you have kept up you realize you could still get an ‘A’ or a ‘D’, depending on whether you keep the hammer down until the bitter end.

So, only two more GPS sites; tomorrow evening we pull out Prat, and move on to Elephant Island. After that, nothing left but helping Brenda, picking up a load of people at Palmer, and staying awake to do water sampling. And, keeping up my workouts to achieve that trendy Elephant Seal look.

Cliff