By Ginny Figlar ('98 MA)

Pens are useless in Antarctica. The ink, along with just about everything else in a liquid state, quickly freezes up on the icy continent. I learned this early on while spending the night in a tent on the Ross Ice Shelf at minus-20 F for survival training.

In the morning, my toothpaste resembled a hard, dried up tube of paint, and my contact-lens solution and water bottle were solid blocks of ice. My pen had stopped working long before.

As editor of The Antarctic Sun, a biweekly newspaper serving the National Science Foundation's U.S. Antarctic Program, I learned to carry a pencil. I covered everything from human-interest features to hard-science articles on ozone research, plate tectonics and penguin populations. My beat was the entire continent -- the highest, driest, windiest and coldest on Earth.

From October 1998 to February 1999, McMurdo Station, Antarctica, was my home. Mount Erebus, the southernmost active volcano, stood majestically in my back yard. The frozen McMurdo Sound and the distant Transantarctic Mountains were stunning views that I could have only imagined seeing from a piece of high-priced real estate.

It was a surreal adventure that began in a dentist's office back in the States as my wisdom teeth were violently ripped out of my mouth. To be able to live and work on "the Ice" I was required to pass strict medical and dental tests to keep the risk of medical emergencies to a minimum. McMurdo has a medical staff but a limited facility, and the nearest hospital in New Zealand is at least a five-hour flight away, providing the weather cooperates.

This bit of information panicked my mother, who didn't want the doctors to stop with my wisdom teeth. Maybe they should take out my appendix, too, she said, just in case.

I arrived in Christchurch, New Zealand, the point of departure to McMurdo, with all organs intact. But the thrill of reaching the bottom of the Earth was put on hold for two weeks. Flights to the Ice were backed up because of bad weather. It seemed that the window of opportunity to land a plane on Antarctica required at least three planets to be in alignment.

Although I was eager to reach my final destination, part of me appreciated the conservative nature of the Air National Guard pilots. Landing on a runway in the middle of McMurdo Sound made me a little uncomfortable. After all, how do you brake a plane on ice?

In the meantime, I became quite familiar with my fellow Antarctic explorers and the inside of a C-141 military plane. The uninsulated, windowless cargo plane was far from comfortable, as I sat for several hours on webbed seating, face-to-face, knee-to-knee and shoulder-to-shoulder with the other 100 or so passengers. Twice we took off, only to turn around at the last possible moment and head back to New Zealand. On my third flight, the wheels touched down on ice rather than pavement, and a sardine-packed plane of people in big red parkas erupted in dance and cheers.

In my first step off the plane I encountered a strange, flat Styrofoam land that crunched beneath my boots, and my lungs were blasted with biting cold air. As I peered out my goggles and took in a quick 360-degree view of my new home, I felt that it could have easily been the moon. There was nothing but white in all directions, except for Ross Island, the slab of dirt on which McMurdo sat.

Home to about 900 souls in the Austral summer, McMurdo resembles a tiny Alaskan industrial town and is locally referred to as "Mactown." It has three bars, a bowling alley, an indoor gym and climbing wall, a post office, dorm facilities, a convenience store, an ATM machine and, of course, a newspaper.

Most people who work at McMurdo scrub toilets and serve food just to be able to experience being in Antarctica. Unfortunately, very few get to leave the base and see the rest of the continent.

As a journalist covering science and news across the continent, I was one of the lucky ones. Among the highlights of my journeys was spending 48 hours at the South Pole, where the infinitely flat, white landscape made the brilliant blue sky seem like a giant dome. I interviewed astrophysicists who were searching for black holes and undiscovered planets at the far reaches of the galaxy with infrared and submillimeter telescopes.

And I could hardly contain my excitement when I took my first helicopter ride on an overnight trip to the Dry Valleys, where glaciologists, ecologists and biologists were searching for microscopic forms of life in an arid land that scientists say closely resembles the climate of Mars.

On the way there, our helicopter pilot flew over the ice edge, which was absolutely teeming with life. After seeing nothing but solid ice and snow for two months, I watched pods of orcas swim along the edge of the ice and Emperor penguins waddle toward open water, and it literally brought tears to my eyes.

It was my own private IMAX movie.

I returned to Colorado in April -- after defrosting in New Zealand and Fiji -- with four zip disks full of digital pictures documenting both fun and work on the Ice. The stories that accompany them could fill a book. For now, however, they remain floating in my head. And if it weren't for the view of the Royal Society Range of the Transantarctics forever ingrained in my memory, I'd almost believe it was all just a dream.

Even my notes, scribbled in pencil, can't convince me.

Working on a newspaper in Antarctica was Ginny Figlar's first full-time editorial position since

graduating with a master's degree from the SJMC in August 1998. She found out about the opportunity at a job fair hosted by Antarctic Support Associates based in Englewood.

However, ASA recently lost its contract to run the U.S. Antarctic
Program to Raytheon, a Massachusetts corporation (www.raytheon.com).

Figlar has traded in her red Antarctic parka for a job with Big Blue, working as a communications specialist at IBM. For more about her Antarctic adventure, visit her Web site at: members.xoom.com/figlar/antarctica.html