How cold is the extreme cold?

Prior to coming to the Pole, I had no idea what -75F would feel like.  In fact, it was an unimaginable amount of cold.  Growing up in Boston, I have experienced the wet and cold winters there.  Usually the coldest days of winter in New England involve numb thighs and red noses, but you don't ever feel like you're at risk of losing some body parts.  Denver winters have been a complete joke in comparison what with their sun and snow-that-melts-immediately.  But the South Pole?  Again, completely unimaginable.

As it turns out, yes, -75F is cold, but it's not nearly as bad as I thought that it would be.  You have enough layers on you outside that you're protected from the environment - at least for a short period of time.  The best that I can compare such cold temperatures on bare skin to is when you put an ice cube directly against your face and don't remove it until it truly burns.  For the science types, it's like standing in front of an open -80C freezer for an extended period of time or touching sample vials directly coming out of an LN2 dewar with bare skin.  The cold just bites.  Honestly, the wind is much worse than the cold;  at least you can dress for the cold, but the wind finds a way to get through all of your layers anyway.

One of the more interesting things about the extreme cold is what it does to just about any material.  Jason had told me that he once snapped an electrical cord during the winter here because it was sitting outside for too long, and before coming here I didn't believe him.  Turns out he's right (go figure).  I have experienced what it is like to finagle an electrical cord that has been sitting outside for a few hours;  it is frozen solid and inflexible, like a piece of plastic.

Similarly, the rubber soles of our boots will freeze.  Obviously the colder the temperature the quicker it will freeze.  You don't feel it happening, but as soon as you walk inside to the warmth your shoes sound like they are high heels on a hardwood floor.  The slipperiness is also noticeable almost immediately as the frozen rubber soles become slick like the ice.

When buying work boots before coming to the ice, I selected a pair of composite toe Carolina boots that I wanted to get.  We need composite toe rather than steel toe due to the cold once again, although there are individuals here who have gotten away with steel.  Jason suggested against the boots that I had selected because the soles were a harder rubber.  He kept saying how they will freeze so quickly, and with a harder rubber I'll slip almost immediately.  Again, I didn't believe him, but he's done two winters at the Pole and a summer so I figured I'd be best to give him the benefit of doubt.  Yup, he was right.  My soft rubber soles freeze within ten to fifteen minutes outside.  Hell, sometimes when just climbing the beer can stairs in -80F temps they freeze!  Imagine what it'd be like if I had went with the harder rubber.

Another issue to be aware of is metal.  Don't touch metal with unprotected hands if it has been outside.  You can easily take off a layer of skin from your fingers by doing so.  Even just a thin glove liner (aka the cotton/polyester gloves that I would wear alone back in a world with warmth) is enough to protect your hands when dealing with frozen 55 gallon drums and freezer doors.

You should also remove metal from your body if it is going to be exposed to the cold.  When I first arrived here, I would wear my watch (metal face) on my wrist like any normal and decent human being.  Well, on day one of work I cold-burned a bit of my skin on the wrist because of the cold steel.  It has since healed just fine, but now I know to keep the watch hooked to the hammer loop of my Carhartt bibs.  I've heard stories of girls in the past freezing parts of their ears from their earrings so I've made it a point to either not wear earrings at all or make sure that they are totally and completely covered by my balaclava and/or hat.

So yeah, the extreme cold really is extreme.  You learn quickly to take precautions that otherwise would be silly in the real world.  Such is life at the end of the world.  It's difficult to truly describe what we have to experience on a day-to-day basis, but I hope that this entry has provided some insight into the reality of the temperatures.  Only one other place on this planet can get as cold as the South Pole during the winter, and it is Vostok Station - the Russian Antarctic base just east of us (well, north I guess since everything is north from here!).

Here I am doing inventory at the UT Roof

EDIT:  Other things that freeze - eyelashes to neck gaiters;  beards to balaclavas and sweatshirt zippers;  nostril hairs;  frosted head hair;  etc.