Palmer Station 50K

Elizabeth has been doing most of the posting to SoCivilized for the past few months, but I figured I should give a first hand account for this one. In short, the monkey is finally off of my back. The weather and our schedule coincided to allow me to run an ultramarathon in Antarctica. In November, Elizabeth and I used a GPS to map out a 1 mile course from the station up to the top of the glacier. On top of the glacier, we also mapped out a quarter mile loop on relatively flat ground. The idea was that I could get 2 miles out and back from station while also having the option of running “easy” miles on top of the glacier.

Running down the glacier with Paul.

The Palmer Station 50K was supposed to happen on the morning of the Winter Solstice – our longest day of the year. Unfortunately, it was canceled because we woke up to about a foot snow. Ever since then, I have been waiting for a decent weather window to coincide with a lull in our work schedule.

With a bunch of samples being processed by HPLC, we had Saturday off from any significant work. Friday’s weather was decent with a ridge of high pressure forecast to remain in the area for the next day. At 6:45 on Saturday I opened my eyes to a bright blue sky. I gathered extra clothing and went to the galley for some breakfast. Alden, our carpenter, was awake. He and I exchanged a few words as we ate breakfast. At 7:30 I was starting my run from the pier under blue skies and zero wind with air temps at about 28 F.

Coming up from the pier at mile 26.

With bagpipes playing on my iPod, I started jogging up the hill from the pier. After about 30 seconds, I had passed through the station and entered the backyard. In general my favorite trails are rough and rocky. Indeed the backyard at Palmer does not disappoint. The gravel road ends about 100 feet past the last significant structure at station. Beyond there, my path was a scramble over boulders to the ridgeline. My path stayed just below the ridgeline on a runable stretch of bedrock before hitting the last 100 yards of scree (glacial moraine) to the foot of the glacier. From the scree laden moraine, I ran to the VLF antenna cable and followed it to the top of the glacier and the antenna itself. The view from the top of the glacier is spectacular, so it is pretty easy to run quarter mile loops on a clear and sunny day. The only downside to the quarter mile loop was that we had several inches of snow a days earlier. That plus the previous day’s sunshine resulted in a very soft upper layer of snow. It took about six miles on the quarter mile loop to pat down the trail into something that was flat and firm.

Running towards station.

Elizabeth came out and joined my for miles 8 to 12. Then one of our IT guys, Paul Queior came out at about mile 17 and ran with until the end. Paul was great to have along and will be a perfect pacer in a future 100 mile run. He told an excellent story about the Palmer Station winter solstice and then fell into a wonderful history of cryptography.

Navigating the rock field - our "backyard".

Running the 50K at Palmer wasn’t too different from other ultras. I kept a pile of food and drinks in the lab which is next to the turn around point on the pier. Otherwise, my goal was maintain 5 miles per hour including the walk up the glacier – which was necessary because it would have been a waste of energy to try to run up the steep ice slope. Aside from hiking from the moraine to the crest of the glacier, I ran the rest of the race. Of course, “running” is relative. Large boulders, scree, and snow/ice make a 12 minute per mile pace seem fast. Overall, this was something I needed to do and am glad to have finished. Now I can go back to focusing on science.

Heading into station from the backyard