Team Member Profile: Chris Simmons!

Hi Friends,

This blog post was scheduled before we left McMurdo. We do not have internet access in our field camp!

Our last week in McMurdo, I asked my teammates to respond to a few questions about their fieldwork and camp life. Here are Chris' responses! Check out our archives and future posts for entries from our other team members!

What will your focus be while you're out in the field?

My focus is, as the Antarctic Field Mountaineer and resident Mountain Guide, to get all of you wherever you want to go.  Safely.  Safely being the route that is least likely to get you hurt getting there.  For me, the most significant way to accomplish this is good route-finding.  Around the crevasses on the glaciers, across the rocky ridges, and between our camps as we traverse.  And I want this to be timely - I don't want you guys losing days while I try to figure out the best way to get from point A to point B.

What's great is that all of you get this, and respect it.  There are horror stories of beakers [Editor's note: "beakers" is McMurdo slang for scientists!] who want to get their science done and go home, and are willing to put themselves and others at great risk to do it.  But all five of you are really good to work with, and I feel that you listen to my advice the first time and we work with it.  I couldn't ask for more.

And I get to do this in a cool spot.  We're traveling in one of the least visited, and least understood, pieces left in the Transantarctic Mountains.  I'm excited to be here, traversing the Pensacola Mountains with such a cool bunch of people.  Along the way we're going to get to see, and travel across, some really wickedly impressive terrain that most people will only see from our photos, or from National Geographic!

What is your favorite part about being in the field?


Well, the mountain terrain is a big part of the attraction for me.  I wouldn't be as excited being in the middle of the big expansive empty plains that defines a lot of East Antarctica.  But we'll be traveling through several wide valleys, with an escarpment to one side, and a ridge of hills to the other.  Or we'll drop down below the hills and then have the huge Foundation Ice Stream traveling along side us.  Its really "end of the world" terrain, and we get to be part of it.

Photo courtesy of Chris Simmons! 

Photo courtesy of Chris Simmons!

The remoteness - with such a small team - is part of the appeal as well.   Six people, 340 miles away from the nearest population (the South Pole itself).  Living out of a few tents and migrating from work-site to work-site.  We get to be feral Antarcticans - perhaps the closest thing to being a "local" possible here.  Intimately working and living with the land.  How cool is that?

What is your favorite camp meal?

I hate doing dishes, and I'm used to not carrying a lot of pots, so I've gotten very good over the years at making "one-pot" meals.  My all-time favorite is still pasta with a tomato sauce and with chunks of cheese, olives, and salami added.  I'm not sure if we got salami in our food issue this year.

What do you miss the most while you're out there?

My wife, Patsy, for certain.  I'm torn between wanting to be here - and wanting to be with her.  We've been together for almost a decade, but only got married this last October.

I've spent almost four full years - 46 months - in Antarctica since my first trip in 1996.  This place has shaped me in ways that can only be shown and experienced in person, not talked about and photographed.  So of course I want her to experience this continent too.  Even if its for a selfish reason like getting to know me better!  But I hope that she will find it as inspiring as I do - and that it will leave a mark on her soul too. 




Many thanks to Chris for providing today's guest blog post! Hope all is well with everyone back home!


Claire