Three alumni support NSF work at Pole

John (Kris) Light ´00, Clare Dreyer ´04 and Mark Hanson ´04 support NSF research in Antarctica through their work.

With temperatures as low as minus 55 Fahrenheit and wind chills near minus 100, working at the South Pole Station, Antarctica is not for the faint of heart.

But this winter, three CC alumni — John (Kris) Light ’00, Clare Dreyer ’04 and Mark Hanson ’04 — all spent time at the National Science Foundation-supported base offloading fuel from the National Air Guard Skier LC 130 planes. This work supports the base during the winter months when it is too cold and dark for flights to land.

Though Dreyer and Hanson knew each other at CC and have been dating since their junior year, neither knew Light until they met him at McMurdo Station on Ross Island Sound last year. (This is Hanson, Dreyer and Light’s second winter on the South Pole.)

The weather is daunting. Even the exhaust from the planes freezes, creating a thick haze. But, according to Hanson, the travel opportunities are amazing. “We deploy every year from Christchurch, New Zealand. Last year Clare and I spent time in New Zealand and then almost a month in Thailand.”

Light has traveled to Thailand and the Fiji Islands. This year Dreyer and Hanson will spend time in Australia before heading home.

Though their work is not scientific, the three alumni say they took the jobs to support the research that the National Science Foundation does in Antarctica. “There are almost too many experiments going on down here to describe,” says Hanson.