On May 6, a flight from Australia touched down on the frozen runway at Phoenix Airfield, a solitary airstrip near Antarctica’s McMurdo Station. The collection of agingĚýdorms, admin buildings, and warehouses on Ross Island that make up McMurdoĚýserves as the logistical hub of the United States Antarctic Program (USAP).ĚýOn the horizon, islands trapped in iceĚýrose out of the snowy tundra.ĚýIn the dim half-light, workers bundled in heavy-duty winter gear set about loading and unloading cargo and refueling the plane, their faces snugly fitted with N95 masks. Radios crackled as the ground and flight crews communicated back and forth.Ěý

After everything was squared away, the plane left on its seven-hour return flightĚýto Australia. The growl of the jet engines was slowly replaced by the low, eerie whirl of katabatic winds sweeping over the ice. It wasĚýthe last flight and outside human contact thatĚýanyone on the ice wouldĚýhave until August.Ěý

As of mid-July, Antarctica is the only continentĚýwith no cases of the novel coronavirus. The White Continent’s extreme geographic isolation, regulated contact with the outside world, and access to modern amenities like the internet make it seem like the perfect place to weather a global pandemic. (There’s even a joke about it: Why does no one in Antarctica have the coronavirus? Because they’re so ice-o-lated.) But the 41 different research bases across the continent areĚýalso extremely vulnerable to the consequences of COVID-19 elsewhere, like the disruption of vital shipments and transport that connects the continent to the rest of the world.Ěý

The first rumblings of COVID-19 didn’t inspire much fear for people “on the ice.”Ěý“When the outbreak started, we would all joke that the Antarctic people would repopulate the world,” says Dr. Julie Parsonnet, an expert in infectious diseases and epidemiology who spent September to February working as a health care provider at McMurdo. (Parsonnet is now at Stanford University inĚýCalifornia, where she is studyingĚýthe virus.)

Antarctica is currently in the depths of winter, which lasts from late FebruaryĚýto October. Starting in late April, the continent enters a long, dark night, when the sun setsĚýbelow the horizon, not to be seen again until August. No ships can come in, and planes would only attempt a flight for an emergency medical evacuation. The roughly 1,020 “winter-overs” currently stationed on the ice find themselves in the unusual position of being extremely safe while watching an unprecedented event completely alter the world they left just monthsĚýearlier.

“It’s a little bit unreal,”Ěýsays Karin Jansdotter,Ěýa chef with the Norwegian Polar Institute stationed at the ultra-remote Troll Station in East Antarctica,Ěý“to be in this bubble that we’re in here and all this other stuff is happening outside in the big world.”

Since Antartica isĚýa continent that’s used solelyĚýin the pursuit of science, with no native human population, the countries that have territorial claims or operate bases there—which include the United States, Norway, Australia, and New Zealand—have a unique advantage in controlling the spread of the virus by being able to restrict outside access and having a limited populationĚýto monitor. While nations around the world have responded to COVID-19 with varying degrees of urgency, the , which represents the Antarctic programs of different countries, collectively jumped into action in January.Ěý“Protecting our people remains a top USAP priority during this global crisis,” saysĚýKelly Falkner, director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs, which oversees USAP.Ěý

So far, everything is working as planned. As the primary carriers, humans present the biggest threat, making step number one keeping infected persons off the continent by either not deploying them or requiring testing and quarantine measures. USAP halted new southbound personnel starting in March. Troll Station receivedĚýits last inbound flight in February.Ěý

But the winter-overs still need supplies, which have to be stocked up ahead of winter. McMurdo’s annual resupply happensĚýin late January or early February. This year, that was early enough in the pandemic that the ships delivering the roughly 7Ěýmillion pounds of food and fuel were able to drop off their goods without incident. If the pandemic rages on for much longer,ĚýtheĚý2021 season could look completely different.

Keeping COVID-19 off Antarctica is one thing; what to do if it gets there is another matter. A pandemic running wild on a small base in the middle of nowhere with no hope of rescue is the stuff of horror films.Ěý

In normal times, all potential staff must meet physical qualification requirements and pass stringent medical exams to make sure they are physically and psychologically equipped to handle months of isolation in such an extreme environment. In the wake of COVID-19, programs like USAP have upped their physical qualificationĚýrequirements to meet CDC and world health guidelines.ĚýThey’ve alsoĚýadopted measures including the use of masks and social distancing from fly-in crews, “testing as it becomes available,”Ěýand “,” according to Falkner.

Larger stations like McMurdo have medical resources similar to that of a small hospital or urgent care—there are a fewĚýventilators at McMurdo, and Troll Station has respiratory equipment as well—but smaller bases may only have first-aid capabilities. More serious, life-threatening diagnoses need to be handled off the ice.Ěý

“It’s very expensive to medevac people,”ĚýParsonnetĚýsays. “So they have a lot of focus on keeping people from getting really sick in the first place.”Ěý

Many aspects of overwintering life in Antarctica also set the perfect stage for a viral outbreak: freezing temperatures, dry conditions, suppressed immune systems, and living and working in close quarters. Because these conditions allow even normal colds to flourish and spread quickly, stations alreadyĚýhave a strong focus on good hygiene, including frequent hand-washing, covering mouths when sneezing or coughing, and keeping spaces clean and sanitized.Ěý

“We did have influenza down there this year, and I have to say we had very few cases, because we’re pretty good at quarantining people and getting them what they need and getting them off work,”ĚýParsonnet says of McMurdo. “It’s a very tight community, and if people are sick, they stay in their rooms, their roommates move out, and somebody from their workforce will deliver food to their room.”Ěý

Stations also benefit from reduced winter populations. Antarctic stations are at their busiest during summer, with between several hundredĚýto more than 1,000 people at most sites. In winter, the numbers dwindle.ĚýAt McMurdo this year, there are around 160 people. At Troll, there are six.ĚýDuring the winter, Antarctic stations are like small towns: everyone knows everybody’s business. This makes contact tracing a breeze.Ěý“It might be easier to containĚýthan in other places just because we know where people worked, we know where they live, we can isolate people better,”ĚýParsonnetĚýsays.Ěý

The mental health of winter-overs is another story. The lack of sun, freezing temperatures, bad weather, close living quarters, and spending the majority of your time indoors with the same group of people for months on end can result in so-calledĚýwinter-over syndrome,Ěýwhich includes depression, insomnia, irritability, and even aggression. (In 2018, after a winter on ice, a Russian engineer stabbed a man in the chest multiple times for allegedly giving away the endings of books.)

Stuck indoors, isolated with a small group of people, with few outlets for entertainment and fun: sounds pretty familiar, huh? But compared to the rest of the world, which wasĚýsuddenly forced into quarantine measures with little advance notice, Antarctic personnel have months to mentally steel themselves for these challenges.Ěý

Many winter-overs cope in much the same ways as the rest of us have: staying digitally connected to loved ones, leaning on their on-base companions for support, keeping a routine, exercising, spending time outdoors, and finding hobbies, especially creative ones.ĚýParsonnet took part in a Stitch ’n Bitch knitting club. Jansdotter is experimenting with fermentation and making a lot of bread.

“There’s a lot of creativity that comes from that sort of isolation or deprivation from things that you might normally just go out and buy or do,”ĚýParsonnetĚýsays. “They’re very used to having to make do with less. You don’t need very much to be happy.”

Antarctica starts reopening at the end of August with winter flights to McMurdo. Known as winfly, it marks the time when the sun returns to the continent and nonemergency planes can arrive, bringing fresh supplies and personnel. After months of no contact with the outside world, winfly presents the next opportunity for COVID-19 to slip onto the continent.Ěý

“Opening each station from its winter-over period will have to be managed very carefully to avoid exposing existing crews to the virus and to ensure new crews do not carry the virus to the stations,” from the National Science Foundation announced on April 27. Another statement released in mid-June added that “the highest priority for the upcoming season is to ensure the safe and continuous operation of all three USAP stations and to resupply them for the winter period that begins in February of 2021…Keeping the stations operational is essential, or future research would be impacted for several years.”

As a place well-versed in using facts and science, few want to speculate exactly how COVID-19 could affect Antarctic programs, especially if second waves start happening. Looking beyond reopening, the upcoming 2020–2021 summer season will likely face staffing shortages;Ěýincreased screening, testing, and physical qualification standards;Ěýpossible delays or disruptions to shipping;Ěýand reduced movements or contact between bases.Ěý

But for now, it appears the continent has dodged the bullet. Its 1,020 temporary residents wake up safe each day;Ěýlook outside to stark but breathtaking landscapes of volcanic soil, snow, and endless ice;Ěýand go about their work.

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Not even a mile into our run,ĚýWhitney’s shorts are already sopping from a sudden slip into the mud. In the tall grass, it’s impossible to see what our feet will actually land on—maybe a spongy hummock, a bowl of mud pudding, or a black puddle of unknown depth.

“Sorry!” she shouts back to me, her pace quick despite the horrible footing, the baking sun, and the hot breath of humidity rising from the soggy sheep pasture we’re cutting through. “I forgot how long this section was.”

Typical, I think. We’re so forgetful about the parts that suck.

I can tell my little sister is thrilled to show off her local trailsĚýafter moving to Wanaka, New Zealand. It’s December 2018, and my husband and I have flown down to visit as part of our honeymoon. But to get to the more scenic, craggy ridgelines of the 18-mileĚý, we have to slog through this bog first. At least we’re doing it together this time, I think.

Living on opposite sides of the globe makes it difficult to stay in touch, and I often worry about Whitney. Since she moved abroad nearly six years ago, phone calls are sporadic, and we see each other in person only twice a year at best. But running has come to serve as a kind of litmus test for the condition of our inner lives, whether we’re on the trail together or awarding each other kudos on Strava from thousands of miles away.

Since the district track meet my senior year of high school, when she was a freshman, I’ve felt the push-pull of wanting Whitney to slow down so I can keep up, whileĚýalso wanting her to break through her own limits.

At 15 and 18, Whitney and I were look-alikes: two heads of white-blonde hair, two purple and gold uniforms, four legs blinding white from a winter spent indoors. Our shoes struck the track in sync as we turned the corner into the final stretch of the 800-meter district championship. We grew up best friends, and moving to a tiny new town in western Nebraska the previous year had cemented that bond. We could hear the small-town crowd’s crescendo as itĚýwatched us pull away from the rest of the pack together, shoulder to shoulder, matching strides for the final stretch. At the finish, my body crossed the line a fraction of a body width ahead of hers for first place. I’m quite sure that was intentional on Whitney’s part, because she’s been ahead of me ever since.

That fall I left for college, butĚýwe both kept running—Whitney even faster in her final years of high school track, and me clocking laps around the Colorado State University campus or jogging in the foothills. After high school, we quit competing, except for the occasional 10K or half marathon. We occasionally caught up on the phone or by e-mail, but we grew in different directions, eventually keeping our heaviest burdens and darkest secrets to ourselves. It would be five years before we lived under the same roof again for a summer, when it all finally came out.

Sitting next to me on a park bench one summer evening in 2004, Whitney told me that through high school and college she’d been wrestling with an eating disorder that took root during high school track.

She’d come to live with me and my roommates after my senior year of college in Fort Collins, Colorado, and we’d been sharing a room for a few weeks. We sat in City Park, staring across the lake, though neither of us wasĚýactually seeing it. At first I felt like punching someone—like I could punish whoever was responsible for ripping away my little sister’s innocence. But as Whitney talked, I saw that she’d been blaming herself all along. It felt like a betrayal—that running, this thing that should feel like freedom, could be part of something so insidious.

I had no idea how to help. I was getting ready to leave for a six-month stint working in Antarctica, part ofĚýa vague plan to restart my adult life after severing ties with nearly all of my college friends. Trudging through my own mire of confusion and heartbreak, I felt empty-handed.

Each of the five years since my freshman year of college, I had dived deeper into a campus religious organization that eventually threatened to swallow my life entirely. Whitney and I grew up in a devout Evangelical home, and I’d looked for a church group to join right away in college, excited to make new friends and grow spiritually. At first the group felt accepting and supportive. I appreciated how informal it seemed, meeting in small groups at people’s homes during the week and having casual services together on Saturday nights. ItĚýeven had a rock band—not something you saw in western Nebraska.

I moved up in leadership within the group, and gradually it asked more of me, and willingly I gave. More time. More commitment. More loyalty. I quit attending other campus groups andĚýdoing recreational triathlons, and I cut way back on my own outdoor adventures. I eventually stopped hanging out with other students at all, unless I was trying to recruit them into the church group. The time commitment ate at my study hours, and my grades slipped. I took the church leaders’ messages to heart, to “trust God for my schoolwork,” not fully understanding what that meantĚýother than giving my time to the ministry instead of studying. My stress levels skyrocketed. Meanwhile, questions about the group’s dogma—and my own faith—started to simmer.

Finally, I broke down. I’d been struggling with depressionĚýand felt like a fraud leading others while my own faith was crumbling. Tearfully, I explained to the other church leaders why I wouldn’t just be taking a break for a couple weeks—I was leaving. For good. At 22 years old, recently graduated from college, this meant jettisoning nearly all my friends and everything else familiar in my life. Taking a janitor job at an Antarctic research base sounded like the perfect way to move on.

Boarding the military cargo plane to Antarctica, I welcomed the sensation of leaving everything behind. Except Whitney. Only a few weeks before, sitting on that park bench, I’d seen I wasn’t the only one who was fractured. Whitney and I had cried and held each other. She sounded like she was recovering, but I worried about whether she would have the support she needed in California during her final year of college. In my rush to escape my own problems, was I abandoning Whitney in her time of need?

In the dark, low-ceilinged gym at McMurdo Station in 2005, I beep-beep-beeped the button for the treadmill’s incline—up, up, up—my breath and my heart rate spiking with it until I couldn’t bear it anymore, and then down, down, down again. Desperate to stave off boredom, I jacked the pace up and down, and then the incline up and down, and then both. I’m sure I was driving anyone else in the gym nuts.

I ran because I could barely button my jeans, thanks toĚýthe fatty cafeteria food and beer—and I ran because running was the one place I felt like myself anymore.

Staying in contact with Whitney, or anyone, from Antarctica was more difficult than I’d anticipated. Six harried days a week I scrubbed showers, scoured toilets, and vacuumed floors. My roommate worked nights washing dishes, so on my days off, when I hoped to call Whitney or my parents, she was asleep in our tiny dorm room. I can count on one hand the number of times Whitney and I spoke on the phone during the five and a half months I was at McMurdo. A small computer lab in the hallway outside the galley offered infernally slow internet access, and lines of cooks, mechanics, and heavy-machine operators stacked up there on weekends and after shift changes. On the rare occasions I waited in the line, I usually found myself filling e-mails with mundane observations about station life:ĚýI saw a penguin. I came down with a cold.

I began preparing my workout clothes before I left for work each morning, so I could quickly and quietly change from my bleach-splashed Carhartts into my fleece running pants. If the weather was mild, I trotted along the volcanic dirt roads and trails around the station. I skittered down along the harbor, where the icebreaker and cargo ship would arrive, circledĚýthe hut built by Robert Falcon Scott, or scrambled up to the top of Observation Hill—the cone-shapedĚývolcanic mound on the edge of town that was topped with a memorial to Scott and his men, who perished on their return trip from the South Pole.

I entered a 9K race organized by the rec departmentĚýand surprised myself by sprinting to the finish for first place in the women’s division. Hammering as hard as I could gave me a precious feeling of autonomy that I’d missed. At the bottom of the planet, running quietly whispered to me, “You are still you.” I wondered about Whitney, back in California, and hoped that she, too, felt like herself. Our scattershot e-mails were typically vague and, I knew, probably more upbeat than true—because typing out the words to express dark thoughts is like confirming their truth. Neither of us wasĚýprobably ready for that.

“Slow down, sister!” I whispered urgently, refreshing the Los AngelesĚýMarathon website on my laptop. Back in Denver in 2007, I was starting a fresh life after Antarctica. I was also slowly rebuilding a sense of closeness to Whitney, who was transitioning from the frying pan of college to the fire of a Hollywood job and dating in L.A. She signed up for the L.A. Marathon, and when race day rolled around, I tracked her progress online.

Since my return from Antarctica, I’d taken every chance I could to visit Whitney. We ran along the creek from her Culver City apartment out to the beach, slowly catching up on months’ worth of news. I worried she was too nice to stick up for herself against manipulative film-industry figures and the selfish, grabby men she met online. I wondered if the toughness I saw in her disciplined running strides carried over to the rest of her life.

Just the way I’d poured myself into running in Antarctica, I knew that Whitney had been passionate about her marathon training. But as I paced around my 300-square-foot apartment, munching on toast and refreshing the race tracking, I worried that maybe she hadn’t taken good enough care of herself to push so hard. Had she been eating enough? Had she been training too hard? Was she drinking enough water? Her splits had been so fast.

I knew it was a hot day, and her miles had ticked by so quickly. One by one, I saw her pass through the checkpoints, astonished at her speed and willing that she could keep it up. I felt painfully far away.

At mile 23, the minutes started to stack up. Maybe she stopped to walk, I told myself. That’s probably a good thing. But I knew in the cells of my body, which share her DNA, that Whitney wouldn’t just quit.

My heart sank as several more minutes passed and no mile-23Ěýcheck mark appeared by her name. Helpless with worry, I finally received the crushing news from my parents over the phone: Whitney had collapsed on the racecourse. Still jogging as she approached an aid station, she’d apparently wobbled, swayed, and then crumpled onto the adjacent grass, blacking out. My eyes filled with tears thinking of the medic who’d been there instead of me to scoop up her chilled, sweaty body.

Over the course of the next couple of months, she saw a doctor and got checked out for a possible stress fracture. Our parents feared she suffered from a heart problem. But to this day, she says that the collapse was a combination of not eating enough while pushing herself well beyond her body’s capacity; she didn’t accept it until she was lying in the grass alongside the racecourse, unable to recite her own address to the strangers huddled over her.

Ten years have passed since that painful marathon, but Whitney and I both still turn to running for its soul-soothing properties. Treading in her footsteps as we tour her favorite trails around her New Zealand home, I’m happy to see that Whitney’s learned a lot about taking care of herself in the previous decade. Each of her strong, confident strides on the Skyline Traverse reassures me.

Whitney left her job in Hollywood to travel and work abroad, eventually marrying an Australian man and settling in New Zealand. I lived in a van, traveling the American West for a year and a half with my now husband, eventually settling back in Denver. We each learned to fight for our own identities, and running has been a constant touchstone. Before each of our weddings, we planned ambitious trail runs to spend quality sister time together.

Aside from my husband, I only follow one person on Strava: Whitney. Even with our regular Skype chats and e-mails, Strava gives me the most visceral understanding of how my sister’s doing. When I can see where she’s been running, how far, how fast, how often, I feel connected to her. I’mĚýcomforted simply knowing she’s out there being her true self, strong and sweet.

As we finally pop up to the ridgeline above Wanaka, she points out different peaks across the saw-toothed horizonĚýand apologizes again for forgetting how tough the 5,000 feet of elevation gain would be. I’m surprised—but then, not at all surprised—at how tough she is. And at how we always seem to forget enough of the hard parts to keep moving forward. Maybe, over all these years, running has simply been there to remind us of how strong we actually are.

The post Running Kept These Sisters Close Through Tough Times appeared first on ąú˛úłÔąĎşÚÁĎ Online.

Every morning at 5:30 a pocket-size alarm clock rings next to Borge Ousland's stocking-capped head. In what must be the most difficult of his daily rituals, Ousland, a 32-year-old Norwegian who is trying to become the first person to cross Antarctica alone and unaided, fumbles his way out of a toasty sleeping bag and onto a mile-thick ice cap. He stops to fill his gullet with 3,000 calories' worth of steaming, lard-spiked oatmeal and then slides a Jimi Hendrix cassette into his Walkman, clips into a harness not unlike those worn by sled dogs, and shuffles his skis forward, pulling a 375-pound sledge.

If all goes well, this routine, which Ousland began last November 8 on Berkner Island, south of Punta Arenas, Chile, will render him sometime this month on the far side of the continent, due south of New Zealand, at the U.S. research base at McMurdo Station. Dodging crevasses and beating back minus-30-degree temperatures, Ousland will pass directly over the South Pole. But the 1,700-mile walk won't guarantee him a spot in the record books. As Ousland is all too aware, somewhere in the foggy distance another adventurer, 46-year-old Roger Mear of Great Britain, is also slogging across the ice, having set out on a similar course at nearly the same time. And while both men claim the timing was purely coincidental—Ousland says he learned of Mear's expedition when he booked his flight on the only airline that serves Antarctica–they are now going head-to-head in what's being called one of the greatest expeditionary duels of all time, on par with the fabled Norway-versus-Britain polar feuds of the early part of the century. Only this time, millions of armchair adventurers in their home countries are following the explorers' tracks in newspapers, on television, and over the Internet, thanks to portable transmitters that beam their coordinates back to civilization via satellite. As the Associated Press stated succinctly last November, “A race is on.”

Mear and Ousland, who are acquaintances in the relatively small circle of polar expeditioners, have shied away from using the word “race,” in part, they say, because of the haunting precedent set in 1911 by another Norwegian-British duo, Roald Amundsen and Robert Falcon Scott. Although Amundsen and Scott didn't know each other personally, jingoistic fury in both nations raised the stakes. Hoping to lull Scott into believing that he could take his time in getting to Antarctica, Amundsen went so far as to announce that he was planning an expedition to the North Pole. At the last minute, however, the Norwegian sent his rival this terse message: “Am going south. AMUNDSEN.” He then boarded a ship and headed for Antarctica.

In the end Scott and his team reached the Pole—four weeks after Amundsen—but on the return trip things took a nightmarish turn. Traveling on foot, the team met up with horrendous weather, eventually succumbing to exhaustion and starvation just 11 miles from a food cache. The Norwegians, using dogsleds, made it off Antarctica alive, but only because their plan involved slaughtering and eating their dogs along the way. Such a grisly outcome isn't very likely this time. If either adventurer were to fall into a crevasse or run out of food, a rescue plane could arrive in less than 12 hours.

So who has the best shot this time around? Mear started with a five-day jump on Ousland, but he became bogged down in a whiteout and had to halt for a few days. At press time his lead had all but disappeared. Otherwise, things seem pretty even. Both men are pulling approximately the same weight, and each is making use of a high-tech parachute sail, which in stiff winds will drag the men like water-skiers behind a motorboat.

Certainly both men have good pedigrees. Mear, along with two teammates, made a ski trek to the South Pole in 1986. He's also a first-rate alpinist, having put up ascents of 26,660-foot Nanga Parbat and 26,749-foot Cho Oyu in the Himalayas. In 1994 Ousland, a former commercial diver, became the first person to make an unsupported solo trek to the North Pole, skiing the 609 miles from Siberia in 52 days.

In temperament, however, the two explorers couldn't be more different. Ousland is a methodical, pragmatic sort, going so far as to gulp a daily glass of pure olive oil. For inspiration, he's carrying a collection of essays by Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen–loose-leaf, to save weight. “As he reads through the book,” says his press agent, “the read pages can be used in the toilet.”

Mear, conversely, is a romantic prone to mystical melancholy. In his own account of the 1986 trek to the South Pole, he says one of his teammates found him “arrogant, unbearably moody, rude, ill-mannered, selfish, inconsiderate, and totally unsympathetic.” Not surprisingly, Homer's Odyssey and a collection of poems by Tennyson are in his sledge.

Of course, no matter which mental bent wins out, the long-standing Norwegian-British rivalry will undoubtedly live on. Should both men complete one of the finest, purest, and most difficult overland expeditions ever attempted and then hop aboard the same Russian icebreaker home, as is currently planned, will it really matter who arrived at McMurdo first? Perhaps not, though despite their declared mutual respect and forceful protests to the notion of a race, it's clear that neither wants to finish second. As Ousland's press agent recently said, sounding like a trash-talking NBA point guard with a Scandinavian lilt, “If Ousland succeeds, the British press will be saying once again, 'Why do you always beat us?'”

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