To Antarctica and Back

From Broadmoor Friends and Neighbors Magazine, March 2015

To Antarctica and Back

By Reecy Pontiff

If you're having trouble with the cold and dark of Colorado, imagine living in Antarctica, where summer temperatures may reach a balmy 30 degrees and winter nights last for almost six months.

Ice tunnels at Byrd Station. Photo by Sam Gerrish

In 1966 Broadmoor resident Sam Gerrish spent a year on that icy continent working as a geophysicist for the National Science Foundation. 

While his 25 colleagues were hidden together underground in nearby Byrd Station, one of the most remote outposts in the world, Gerrish had his own tiny house, bright yellow for visibility and set on stilts atop 7,000 feet of hard-packed snow and ice. He lived three miles away from the nearest human – closer to the base was “too noisy” for the racks of ionospheric monitoring equipment that kept him company. The house also had a bunk, desk and small kitchen. 

Not surprisingly, most of the rations at Byrd were frozen and preparing a meal meant planning ahead. Want eggs for breakfast from the big frozen can?

“Step one: get a hammer and chisel,” Gerrish said. “You'd chip out the appropriate chunks of frozen egg the night before.”

“I would normally do a case of beer with my laundry to thaw it out,” Gerrish said.

The water Gerrish used for drinking, showering and laundry was from snow he shoveled into a melting device. 

“One of the very, very important things you pass on to the person who's going to replace you is which side of the house you use for water and which side you use for burying waste.” 

Gerrish's house was attached to the station three miles away by two things: an extension cord for power and a handline made from parachute cord and bamboo sticks to guide him should a “whiteout” kick up on his journey to or fro. It's very easy to simply disappear in a place without landmarks, where the snowy topography shifts constantly.

“The guy that I replaced... he's still there,” Gerrish said. “[He] had too much to drink one time and walking back to the house let go of the handline. They looked and looked and looked, but he was gone.”

Though he would follow the handline back to base every Thursday for a “home-cooked meal,” Gerrish only had three visitors during his 13-month stay.

“One day someone knocked on my door – nobody ever knocked on my door.” Gerrish opened it to find one of the bulldozer operators from base. 

“He'd been pushing [snow] out the garage tunnel and decided to go out to Sam's to get a drink,” Gerrish said. “We were told, buy as much booze as you're going to drink for a year. Everyone underestimated. At the end of the season I was the last one who had any booze... I let him in and gave him a drink and he went clunking back in the bulldozer.”

Another visitor was the station's cook, whom Gerrish invited over dinner for as a special treat.

The third visitor was a mystery pilot of the only transportation one could take in or out of Byrd.

“One morning after a summer whiteout I got up and there was a Hurcules [cargo plane] parked right next to my house. I went on board and... jammed a note between the throttles saying, 'This is a notice that your vehicle is illegally parked and if not removed within 24 hours it will be towed,'” Gerrish chuckled. 

“The day after, when the Herc took off it went right over my house and uncalibrated all my instruments.”

To combat loneliness and boredom Gerrish read a lot of books and noodled around on his HAM radio station, King Charlie Four Uncle Sugar Mike. Gerrish brought a guitar along to learn on but “retired” it when he found he could not sing.

Entertainment back at the station was creative – and often soaked in alcohol.

During Gerrish's time at Byrd Station the famed Dr. Clair Patterson conducted research that persuaded Congress to ban leaded gasoline by drilling deep into the Antarctic ice to see if lead levels had risen in the atmosphere.

“Some of the cores [of ice] that Doc Patterson didn't want we would use in drinks,” Gerrish said. “They were fun because they had pressurized air in them and as the ice walls would melt through they would jump around in your glass.” 

As well as living in an alien environment inaccessible to civilization for nine months of the year, Gerrish had to adjust to six months of daylight and six months of night.

“Your body develops its natural rhythm. My sleeping and waking schedule depended on how I felt,” and unless Gerrish had something specific to do with his instruments at a particular time, “you'd sleep when you're sleepy and eat when you're hungry.”

When Gerrish's 13 months were up he made the long haul back from Byrd to Antarctica's port of entry, the “cosmopolitan” McMurdo Station. When he finally reached Christchurch, NZ, Gerrish “got in the bathtub, turned on the overhead shower, plugged up the tub and let the shower run in till the water got up to my chin.” He then drained the tub and started all over again. 

For his efforts Gerrish received a Congressional Medal and had a mountain range in Antarctica named for him. 

Gerrish's physics work took him to other far-flung places like Australia and Taiwan over the course of his career. When it came closer to retirement time he decided to get himself transferred out to Colorado and settled in the Broadmoor neighborhood with his French wife Gabrielle – their two children had already graduated by that time. Gabrielle, a former ballerina, passed in 2001 but Gerrish still regularly spends time with his daughter Chanda and two-year-old granddaughter Sedona, who live in the Colorado Springs area.