July 2008

Geographical South Pole: At 45 degrees Celsius below zero (here temperature reaches 89 degrees below zero during winter), your uncovered skin hurts, your tongue gets numb, your lips become purple and your glasses are covered by a layer of ice as a result of condensation from breathing. Consequently, you have to decide whether to stop breathing, admire the beauty of the landscape as if through cataract us eyes, or taking your glasses off and clean them. Then, you get paranoid because everyone has told you about the high risk of going blind if you don’t wear your glasses with the snow solar reflection and in top of all that, keeping in mind the high rate of ultraviolet radiation present there, thanks to the ozone hole over Antarctica. The simple idea of this terrifying hole makes you shiver remembering you applied the last dose of sun block factor 80 two hours ago: an eternity, for Antarctica standards. You may have smeared yourself until you looked like a cream cake, but the cover is already gone and your skin feels like a dry leaf.

“Be prepared for the worst”, said to us an amiable National Geographic producer who was on the Hércules with us heading to the pole. He told us that his venerable filming equipment had failed him more than once, precisely here, at the end of the world. “Batteries wear out in a matter of minutes. The key is to keep all equipment warm, inside your clothing. And even so, cameras still get frozen.”

Mauricio looks at me triumphantly: foreseeing the situation, he had “special pijamas” made for the Sony HVR-Z1N. And inside this garment, my clever partner, decided to put “hot” bags, like the ones they give you when you go snow skiing. We couldn’t return to Miami telling the Discovery Channel producers that Momentos Discovery had failed due to frozen mechanisms in our equipment. Mr. National Geographic looks at us dearly: he has also used the trick of the hot bag. And no, it doesn’t always work.

And as it turned out, the camera worked wonderfully. It worked when we got off the ramp of the Hércules (which does not stop its engines because the cold would make it impossible to start again, and remains on land just enough time to pick up and deliver passengers and cargo).
It worked when we interviewed the scientists of the Icecube Neutrino Observatory, a telescope buried deep below kilometers of ice. It worked when we toured around Amundsen Scott Station, which seems a moon base in the 26th Century.

And it worked when I stood making faces in front of the geographical marker indicating 90 degrees south latitude.

Nothing unexpected happened to the Sony HVR-Z1N. It did not stop working, condensated nor freezed. The tripod, on the other hand, had its legs paralyzed until we protected it from the elements. And poor Mauricio, he dared to take off one of the three pairs of gloves to adjust a button and immortalize the moment beside the geographical marker (ironically, not with the video camera, but the photo camera) and almost loses a finger. As it happens, taking your gloves off at 90 degrees south latitude and 45 degrees below zero is equivalent to putting your fingers inside the jaws of a white shark: you will lose them in almost no time. After three minutes, Mauricio felt a strong pain in his appendix; after five, the situation -and his fingers- were worse. Later, comfortably drinking a cup of hot chocolate in the modern research station, Mauricio was confirmed that he had suffered a mild case of what has affected polar explorers for two centuries: frostbite, skin freezing which left its traces for several days.

DETAILS I WOULD HAVE LIKED

In contrast, the HVR-Z1N, sleeved inside Channel style checkered pijamas, was laying on the table, intact. As if it had never faced the wheather conditions of the most hostile spot in the planet.

We are glad this camera was our fellow traveler for this trip!

Angela Posada-Swafford writes and produces about science and exploration topics.

Regards,

Angela Posada-Swafford