Life on the Ice, Literally

Last week was a nice busy week for me. I had 4 trips in one week out of town. All were north on the Cape Evans road. On Saturday we received a trouble call for a Pisten Bully with a hydraulic leak on Huttington Cliffs road. So the lead mechanic and I packed up all of our ECW gear and some tools jumped into a PB and headed north. Huttington Cliffs is about 13 miles north of MacTown just south of the Erebus Ice tongue. We were out for the entire afternoon and we were not able to solve the hyd. leak and so the PB got to spend the weekend out on the ice.

Then on Sunday I drove my first Cape Evans trip in a Delta. It was a very nice easy trip. We had a CAT Challenger (a large rubber tracked vehicle) leading the way and pulling a snow drag. So we had a nice smooth groomed trail to follow.

Then on Monday, Dave and I returned to the scene of the first PB mess. This hyd. leak was called in over the radio which quickly was escalating the whole thing into a major spill response from the Haz-Waste group. They did not want to take the entire crew out onto the ice that far. So, we acted as the repair crew and the Haz-Mat cleanup team. Aka we shoveled all of the contaminated snow into 3 plastic barrels and marked the GPS coordinates for the Haz-Waste crew. They were very grateful. When we find a leak on a vehicle and we have to call it in to the shop on the radio we have a code word. “We have a maintenance issue” is the proper term. This doesn’t get the attention of the firehouse and everyone else that listens for oil spills. And then we clean things up properly without allot of excitement.

Next was on Wed. There was a PB with two dead batteries out at Razorback Island seal camp. Notice the theme with dead PB’s? So my friend Josh and I packed up our ECW gear and tools and headed north again. Razorback Island is about 16 miles north of town just north of Erebus Ice Tongue. The island gets it’s name from the profile of the island. It is long and narrow and has a long sharp peak.

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As you look at this photo the camp would be on the right end of the island near the area without snow on it. The interesting thing about going out past the Erebus Ice Tongue is that the sea ice was gone in this area last year. So as you pass the end of the tongue you have to cross over some major ice heaves and a few cracks and then you are on very smooth blue ice.



The field camp consists of four fish huts, one outhouse, one solar array, one fuel depot, and a telephone transmission site. The scientists will usually spend a week out here at a time. One hut is the galley, one is the living quarters, one is storage, and one is the lab. This group is studying the food supplies that are available for the seals in the area. We were about ¼ mile from the shore of the island and there were many seals along the edge of the island.



As you can see they are already having pups.



Well we were not here to tour Seal Camps. We had to rescue another PB. So, Josh and I would take turns installing the new batteries into the beast. After a 45 minutes or so we had the PB up and running.



So we left the camp about 11:45 and we had about an hour trip back and lunch ends at 1PM. The plan was to make good time and be back in time for lunch, which was Pizza and so it was an important lunch to make. Along the road back to town we passed several snowmobiles and other PB’s. And then in the distance we could see something yellow headed towards us. Everything yellow here is a CAT piece of heavy equipment. As it got closer we saw that it was a D7 dozer and it was on the wrong side of the ice road. It was a New Zealand train headed out to setup a camp.



They were towing 5 cargo containers which are used as Fish Huts. And this was followed by a Haggland which is a very expensive Swedish tracked vehicle that floats!



If you look closely the Haggland has an outhouse and drums of fuel on the trailer. All of the important stuff. Gary, do you have a GPS like that on the truck yet???

Just after we passed the NZ crew we were starting to see the ice runway and we could smell the pizza. So we had the Pisten Bully running flat out when all of the sudden we came to a very fast stop. And the engine was still running, so I guessed what was happening and I was correct! We blew a hydraulic line on our PB.



As we say in the VMF, “We have a maintenance issue” on our hands. So I had to call the shop and let them know and we grabbed the tools and started to diagnose the leak. We blew the hose that runs from the emergency brake to the final drive motor. So we were going no were any time soon.



It is now 12:45 and we have no chance for lunch. After we got the line off we lowered the cab back down and sat inside to stay warm and ate all of the granola bars and candy that we could find in our ECW bags. We were rescued at about 2:30 by some co-workers. We had a new line made by 3:30 and we were driving the PB back into the shop by 5:30. Not a bad days work.

That is all of the excitement of last week. So far this week I have been in the shop all of the time and nothing to interesting to report.

Until next time.
R.J.