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When I hear McMurdo Station, I think of a single solitary building with maybe a dozen people. I had no idea McMurdo was so large with so many buildings! I spent

When I hear McMurdo Station, I think of a single solitary building with maybe a dozen people. I had no idea McMurdo was so large with so many buildings! I spent a few minutes trying to find a decent map of the entire station, but came up short.

milliams 4y ago
OSM seems to have it quite well mapped: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.668235&zoom=12#map=15/-77.8462/166.6745 https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.6682...
- c0nsumer 4y ago
  Of course, I wanted to know what "FSTP Snow School" was, but garbage blogspam gives first-search-results like this: https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406 https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406 <sigh>
  - foobarbecue 4y ago
    I can help! I went through it 7 times. FSTP, prounounced "F-stop" like the camera setting, was the "field safety training program" and basically it refers to the group of mountaineers that the US Antarctic Program's contractor hires to live in Antarctica and help out with fieldwork. It also refers to the classes that they teach in McMurdo. Basic FSTP "snow school" used to be required for everyone at McMurdo, and for many, it was the most fun thing you would get to do the whole season. You would learn to set up camp, cook, use radios, sleep out on the sea ice for one night (in a tent, igloo, snow trench, depending on the year and instructors). I did a bunch of other FSTP-organized courses too, including how to travel on sea ice, and some mountaineering. We had FSTP mountaineers with us up on Erebus and the joke was "the F stops here." I think it got renamed to something else in 2017 or so... around when the BFC stopped referring to themselves as the building fulla chicks...
    - rexarex 4y ago
      I think this is called ‘happy camper’ and there is a light version where you just learn basics so you can go travel off station.
      - foobarbecue 4y ago
        Right. So when I first went (2010-11), everybody going to mcmurdo had to sleep out on sea ice one night (and it was called "happy camper" or "snow school"). They gradually scaled back the program; added lesser versions and made it so your group had to request it. Maybe meanings of "snow school" and "happy camper" diverged at some point.
        foobarbecue 4y ago
        Correction: I just checked and my first trip was actually 2009-10
    - c0nsumer 4y ago
      Huh, thanks! That sounds really fun.
- jcranmer 4y ago
  It feels strange watching the roads cross onto what looks at first glance to be water. The other weird thing is seeing the map as a Mercator projection, since Antarctica is usually displayed in a polar projection.
vikingerik 4y ago
You're thinking of South Pole Station. That's mostly one large building for a few dozen people, and very photogenic for snowbound isolation, so it's usually the picture used for Antarctica articles. (McMurdo is not at the south pole, it's on the coast near New Zealand.) (Edit since I keep getting nitpicked - near in relative terms, it's at NZ's longitude and closer to NZ than to anywhere else.)
- rufus_foreman 4y ago
  Near? It's 99 miles! https://distcalculator.com/distance-between/106093/New-Zealand-and-McMurdo-Antarctica https://distcalculator.com/distance-between/106093/New-Zeala... "If average speed of your car will be standard for this route between New Zealand and McMurdo, Antarctica and road conditions will be as usual, time that you will need to arrive to McMurdo, Antarctica will be 1 hour."
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    That site is getting confused by New Zealand's Antarctic Scott base. NZ proper is about least 1,500 miles from Antarctica.
    - bacon_waffle 4y ago
      Scott Base is easy walking distance from McMurdo, not 99 miles (or 100 kilometers and 100 miles and 100 nautical miles - that site is quite confused!). Both are actually in New Zealand depending on the purpose, due to the Ross Dependency[1]. For instance, most of those folks in McMurdo station have longer NZ visas than typical US tourists visiting NZ would get (3 months), because when they fly down to The Ice they're not technically leaving the country. An interesting corner case is when something happens at one of the US stations in the Ross Dependency, which New Zealand wants to investigate. The Rodney Marks death[2] is a particularly well-known example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Dependency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Dependency [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Marks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Marks
  - jkonline 4y ago
kioleanu 4y ago
It’s big enough that they have a bus to go around. It’s called Ivan the Terrabus.
Sharlin 4y ago
Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, a twenty-minutes-into-the-future ecothriller, is much recommended reading for anyone who'd like to know more about McMurdo, the South Pole Station, and about the history of Antarctica's exploration and its geography and ecology. As is usually the case, KSR has definitely done his homework. (Disclaimer: you might fall in love with Antarctica, or at least develop a serious crush, as a result of reading this novel.)

milliams 4y ago

OSM seems to have it quite well mapped: https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.668235&zoom=12#map=15/-77.8462/166.6745 https://www.openstreetmap.org/?mlat=-77.846323&mlon=166.6682...

c0nsumer 4y ago
Of course, I wanted to know what "FSTP Snow School" was, but garbage blogspam gives first-search-results like this: https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406 https://mapcarta.com/N8759058406 <sigh>
- foobarbecue 4y ago
  I can help! I went through it 7 times. FSTP, prounounced "F-stop" like the camera setting, was the "field safety training program" and basically it refers to the group of mountaineers that the US Antarctic Program's contractor hires to live in Antarctica and help out with fieldwork. It also refers to the classes that they teach in McMurdo. Basic FSTP "snow school" used to be required for everyone at McMurdo, and for many, it was the most fun thing you would get to do the whole season. You would learn to set up camp, cook, use radios, sleep out on the sea ice for one night (in a tent, igloo, snow trench, depending on the year and instructors). I did a bunch of other FSTP-organized courses too, including how to travel on sea ice, and some mountaineering. We had FSTP mountaineers with us up on Erebus and the joke was "the F stops here." I think it got renamed to something else in 2017 or so... around when the BFC stopped referring to themselves as the building fulla chicks...
  - rexarex 4y ago
    I think this is called ‘happy camper’ and there is a light version where you just learn basics so you can go travel off station.
    - foobarbecue 4y ago
      Right. So when I first went (2010-11), everybody going to mcmurdo had to sleep out on sea ice one night (and it was called "happy camper" or "snow school"). They gradually scaled back the program; added lesser versions and made it so your group had to request it. Maybe meanings of "snow school" and "happy camper" diverged at some point.
      - foobarbecue 4y ago
        Correction: I just checked and my first trip was actually 2009-10
  - c0nsumer 4y ago
    Huh, thanks! That sounds really fun.
jcranmer 4y ago
It feels strange watching the roads cross onto what looks at first glance to be water. The other weird thing is seeing the map as a Mercator projection, since Antarctica is usually displayed in a polar projection.

vikingerik 4y ago

You're thinking of South Pole Station. That's mostly one large building for a few dozen people, and very photogenic for snowbound isolation, so it's usually the picture used for Antarctica articles. (McMurdo is not at the south pole, it's on the coast near New Zealand.) (Edit since I keep getting nitpicked - near in relative terms, it's at NZ's longitude and closer to NZ than to anywhere else.)

rufus_foreman 4y ago
Near? It's 99 miles! https://distcalculator.com/distance-between/106093/New-Zealand-and-McMurdo-Antarctica https://distcalculator.com/distance-between/106093/New-Zeala... "If average speed of your car will be standard for this route between New Zealand and McMurdo, Antarctica and road conditions will be as usual, time that you will need to arrive to McMurdo, Antarctica will be 1 hour."
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  That site is getting confused by New Zealand's Antarctic Scott base. NZ proper is about least 1,500 miles from Antarctica.
  - bacon_waffle 4y ago
    Scott Base is easy walking distance from McMurdo, not 99 miles (or 100 kilometers and 100 miles and 100 nautical miles - that site is quite confused!). Both are actually in New Zealand depending on the purpose, due to the Ross Dependency[1]. For instance, most of those folks in McMurdo station have longer NZ visas than typical US tourists visiting NZ would get (3 months), because when they fly down to The Ice they're not technically leaving the country. An interesting corner case is when something happens at one of the US stations in the Ross Dependency, which New Zealand wants to investigate. The Rodney Marks death[2] is a particularly well-known example. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Dependency https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ross_Dependency [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Marks https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodney_Marks
- jkonline 4y ago

kioleanu 4y ago

It’s big enough that they have a bus to go around. It’s called Ivan the Terrabus.

Sharlin 4y ago

Kim Stanley Robinson's Antarctica, a twenty-minutes-into-the-future ecothriller, is much recommended reading for anyone who'd like to know more about McMurdo, the South Pole Station, and about the history of Antarctica's exploration and its geography and ecology. As is usually the case, KSR has definitely done his homework. (Disclaimer: you might fall in love with Antarctica, or at least develop a serious crush, as a result of reading this novel.)