At some point, in the year you stay wintering over, you have to pass the time. The station has a lot of things you can do, and I wanted to highlight a few of them. We’ll start with the room.

The summer rooms are somewhat smaller than the winter rooms – the wing of the station they are in (known as A4) is typically closed for the winter. The station can have upwards of ~170 residents in the summer, so a lot more room is needed than the 42 beds required for the winter. In the event that it gets truly overful (delyed flights, the traverse, etc), there are some small heated buildings in the back yard, but that requires the residents to come to the station for showers and running water – not ideal.

The gym is a popular room on station, as everyone wants to keep moving and you tend to have more time than average to stay in shape. When you get to the pole, the pressure is equivalent to approximately 10k feet above sea level, which means that you will need some time to acclimate. Accordingly, probably the most common major medical problem at the pole is healthy 20 or 30 somethings getting off the plane and ignoring the warning to wait a week or two to use the gym. If you start your normal cardio routine without acclimating, there is an excellent chance you will pass out.

Even so, there is a set of challenges that we set ourselves over the winter. One is to walk/run enough miles to get to McMurdo, another is to lift enough pounds (times reps) to equal the weight carried by the planes, and the last is to climb enough beer cans to equal the elevation of everest – about 560. Our station manager would consider it important that I mention here that fewer people have wintered at the south pole than have climbed Mt. Everest. I did all 3, though I did them slower – 2 showers a week meant I was cautious about working up a sweat.

If you want a break from all the exercise, then there is also the quiet reading room. It is a nice room that is kind of out of the way with a good number of books. There is a focus on antarctic history, but plenty of fiction and other non fiction if you’re interested. I spent some time here reading – it was a nice retreat.

There are plenty of other things to do (Craft room, music room, big gym, etc), but I’m going to end it there for now. Suffice it to say that you will never get bored over the winter. At least, that is not usually a complaint.