My first trip to Antarctica was in 1961. We arrived at McMurdo in a C–119 flying boxcar. It snowed inside this huge plane when they popped the bay doors and the frigid outside air cooled the warm moist air inside.

McMurdo Station reminded me of a frontier–town movie set. It was a hodgepodge of prefabricated plywood buildings and canvas Jamesways (Fig. 5.1), which are half tubes with a doorway at each end. No one had regular hours of sleeping, nor did they spend much time doing so. The twenty four hours of light were responsible for the unscheduled sleeping patterns, and there was little incentive to remain in the bunkrooms any longer than necessary.

Our sleeping quarters were a long canvas Jamesway that was dark at all hours. It was heated with one fuel oil stove that had no fan so that severe temperature gradients existed. Those in the top bunks were roasting in dry, desertlike heat while those in the bottom bunks were bundled in down sleeping bags for comfort against the belowfreezing temperatures. The nearest washroom was 200 to 300 m away.