Story by Ben Stone
Design by Emily Fraysse

In 1999 Dr. Jerri Nielsen’s story broke worldwide. Just one year earlier she had moved to Antarctica to clear her mind after a divorce. She became the only doctor stationed at the Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station—one of the few places for humans at the bottom of the world. That winter, she found a lump in her breast. The tumor required sophisticated medical attention, but the winter weather was too wickedly cold for a rescue plane to land. She would not leave the base for another five months.
Throughout the winter months of 24-hour darkness, Nielsen enlisted the help of a welder to excise a piece of her tumor for a biopsy and an Air Force pilot, who airdropped chemotherapy drugs onto a pad illuminated by fire. When it finally warmed to 60 degrees below zero, the New York Air National Guard flew Nielsen back to the US, where she endured many more procedures. Her cancer went into remission for several years until she died in 2009.
National Public Radio aired Neilson’s story in 2001. Deven Stross, a professional photographer in Portland, Oregon, heard it and for the next decade, thoughts of Antarctica burned in the back of his mind. In 2010, Stross applied for a supply manager position with a company contracted by the United States Antarctic Program at McMurdo Station, Antarctica. By the winter of 2011, Stross found himself flying south to McMurdo, though the thought of going to Antarctica still mystified him: “You’re in this massive cargo plane—you feel tiny anyway—you’re strapped into a belt on the wall of the plane and you’re looking around and seeing cargo in there. Everyone’s wearing a gigantic big red jacket, and you just don’t know what’s going to be waiting for you at the other end.”
What was waiting for Stross at the end of the flight was Pegasus Ice Runway—a long, frozen airstrip at McMurdo Station, an American base on a peninsula jutting off Ross Island. The original McMurdo Station was built in 1902 by British explorer Robert Falcon Scott, and its remains still stand on the edge of Winter Quarters Bay, a small outlet of McMurdo Bay. Since the early twentieth century, McMurdo has evolved just like any northern city, witnessing the construction of a nuclear power plant and the turnover of hundreds of scientists and workers, of which Stross is one of the most recent.
Of the 71 research stations supporting cutting-edge science labs in fields ranging from geophysics to medicine in Antarctica, McMurdo is the largest, and its 85 buildings make up the hub of the US Antarctic Program. Antarctica’s polar region is an unparalleled environment for scientific research: The National Science Foundation has termed the atmosphere above Antarctica as “Earth’s window to outer space” because of the unique way solar wind and Earth’s magnetosphere interact in this region.
Amid the hustle of science research at McMurdo, Stross and his supply management crew keep the station’s facilities humming along through the cold days and even colder nights. When the scientists are on site during summer months and the average temperature hovers around 20 degrees, Stross is often on the grind in the workshop, spending entire days changing tractor tires as big as he is with a crane and a crowbar. In winter, Stross and his co-workers hike around the rocky banks of McMurdo Bay, unloading and storing supplies brought in by Operation Deep Freeze, the massive once-a-year supply shipment the station receives.
But as much as Stross enjoys maintaining the station, the importance of his duties fades when he steps onto the deserted snow-packed streets of McMurdo. Vehicles rarely roll down McMurdo’s roads. There are no sirens, no screeching tires, and no pedestrians. Steam doesn’t even rise from the short rows of brown, yellow, and mint green barracks and workshops lining the streets.
Antarctica’s intense weather and geographic isolation has forced a policy limiting the time someone can stay at McMurdo to 14 months. After that, each person must spend at least six months on another continent to re-acclimate to the noise, bugs, and the warmth of the sun before returning to the ice. Oddly, the cold at McMurdo does not toughen its residents to all types of climates. Antarctica is the driest continent, which means when Stross takes holidays in Christchurch, New Zealand, the humidity is bitingly cold. Researchers and station workers on holidays in the north are encouraged to get briefly involved in their past lives while they are away—even with a steady satellite beam of Internet to the base, McMurdo residents choose how connected they wish to remain to their American lives.
Despite his required breaks, the simplicity of life at McMurdo has deeply resonated with Stross—even on nights of unmatched “Category 1” storms, when prying open a door to the outside is to witness a stark, violent hell of snow gusts. But despite the harsh environment surrounding him, Stross says he has never been anxious. “I’ve never felt anything that’s any different from what I’ve felt back home, as far as isolation or depression goes,” Stross says.
He has watched with sadness as fellow station members break down when their family or friends die back home. He has also seen fond relationships evolve into romance over time, and into marriage back in America—but nobody raises a family at McMurdo. Stross believes this is wise. Under no circumstances, he says, should anyone forget that Antarctica is the “harshest, coldest, driest, windiest continent on the planet.” Stross has no plans of returning to Oregon longer for than the mandatory breaks. The one regret he mentions is that he didn’t find Antarctica sooner, that he couldn’t see it earlier in his life.
This year Stross and some friends drove to the runway to watch the final setting of the sun. The weather was flawless, with a mix of clouds that set off the sunset’s colors spectacularly as the temperature dropped to around minus 40 degrees. Despite the ice clinging to his eyebrows and lashes, Stross snapped photographs until the sun made its final pass over the horizon. “I just couldn’t walk away from the imagery that was all around me,” Stross says. “It really is magical.”
And so winter in Antarctica began. No more scientists at the base—just Stross and his fellow supply managers. During winter, Stross has learned to live like he’s never seen the light. “Me and my camera seem to be best friends. As long as my camera is with me, I’m fine anywhere I go,” he says. “During midwinter, when you’re in 24-hour darkness, if you happen to be fortunate enough to have a clear day on a new moon night when there’s no moon in the sky, the Milky Way … You feel like you could touch it. The depth of it is phenomenal.”
 

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90º South