Antarctica, Austral Summer 2019 - 2020 (Part 9 - Party SZN)
Marking the halfway mark of the summer season, December at McMurdo means one thing: it’s party time. With the holidays drawing nearer, various different departments around station throw huge, elaborate parties for the entire station.
This picture was brought to you by Jack Daniel’s
The first of these celebrations was the “Helo Party” on December 14th. Hosted in the helicopter hanger next to the sea ice, the Helo Party is yearly regarded as one of the most anticipated parties of the Summer season at McMurdo. This party was absolute insanity with a makeshift stage hosting several live bands, a mosh pit, crowd surfing, and plenty of alcohol of course. Although I may have had too much to drink, the party was an incredible amount of fun. The amount of moshing I did left me really sore when I showed up for work the next day, completely hangover-free.
The company that I work for, GSC, hosted a holiday “gala” for its employees at the Southern Exposure bar on Saturday, December 16th. The party was significantly more low-key than the last one since it was hosted by our bosses, but it was definitely nice to get to spend some time with my coworkers outside of work. The free libations didn’t hurt either.
Since most of the town was going to have Christmas Eve and Christmas Day off, the “official” town-wide holiday party was held on the night of December 23. Hosted by the Vehicle Maintenance Facility (VMF), this party was held in one of the largest buildings in town. Although not as rambunctious as the Helo party, the holiday party still had pretty much everything one could want or expect from a party at McMurdo: dancing, drinking, live music, a DJ, food (provided by us in the galley), corn hole tossing for some reason, and of course pictures with Santa.
The galley is unfortunately not free from work on the holidays, especially not on the 24th when the town celebrates Christmas dinner.
McMurdo is currently in a time of year known as “the gap.” During the gap, the weather is too warm for the runway at Phoenix airfield, made entirely from ice, to remain solid enough to hold the weight of the massive C-17 cargo planes. This means that the only way to get people and supplies in to town is through the much smaller LC-130s. Whereas the C-17s have a payload capacity of 170,000 pounds, the LC-130s can only carry about a fourth as much, 40,000 pounds.
Although 40,000 pounds seems like a lot to your or me, when considering all the scientific equipment and people these plans have to bring in, things have to be prioritized. Unfortunately for us in the kitchen, the gap means no deliveries of “freshies” for a little over six weeks.
No freshies meant that, unlike Thanksgiving, our prep for Christmas dinner would be, for the most part, food that was frozen, canned, or dry goods. Despite the lack of freshies, we tried to pull out all the stops for Christmas dinner with a menu comprised of beef tenderloin, lobster tail, king crab legs. The culinary manager of the program, Tom, even surprised us by finessing a 2,800 pound shipment of freshies, a far cry from the the 10,000 pound shipment we received for Thanksgiving but beggars can’t be choosers. Most of the order was greens and other goodies for salads which meant that they would be the salad sous chef’s problem. Fortunately, the holiday season leads to a lot of people from the community volunteering to help us in the galley so they helped break down and process the new shipment.
Like Thanksgiving, Christmas dinner was very uneventful and at times downright boring. In order to be fair, everyone in the galley has to work on Christmas Eve meaning there are far too many cooks in the kitchen for the amount of work needed to be done. For the entire week leading up to the 24th, the kitchen slaved away cleaning tenderloins, splitting lobster tails and crab legs, and prepping out all the stuff that needed to be cooked the day of. When the day finally arrived, there was not much left to do but plug and play and try to look busy for 10 hours.
With Christmas Day falling on Wednesday, I was lucky enough to have it off which meant that I’d be able to participate in the annual softball tournament held here at McMurdo.
Each department that wishes to participate assembles a team and play in a single elimination style tournament until a champion is crowned. The galley team unfortunately did not make it past the first round as we were pretty soundly beaten by the helicopter team. Despite our loss, it was a lot of fun and I definitely got the chance to make a few plays, including a diving catch on first base that I then lobbed to the pitcher for an out.
Every New Year’s Eve, McMurdo hosts “Ice Stock,” the last live music concert and party of the year lasting for the better part of the day. With it being the last party of the year, upper management allowed us in the kitchen to skip our second break if we chose to and leave as soon as we finished shutting down the kitchen meaning we were out by 7:35 or so, leaving plenty of time to party with the rest of the town.
