Sarah Krall

Seag:

This is Morgan Seag, and today is March 5, 2018. It’s my pleasure to be interviewing Sarah Krall. Sarah has a long history in Antarctic science support. Thank you for speaking with me, Sarah. So, let’s start at the beginning. When and where were you born?

Krall:

Burlington, Iowa.

Seag:

What was your upbringing like? What did your parents do?

Krall:

My father ran a wholesale hardware business. He was the third or fourth Jones to do that. (Jones is my maiden name.) I made him wear a halo when he mowed the lawn. I adored my father. [Laughs] Classic daddy’s girl. He was just calm and gentle and wonderful. Mom was born in Nebraska. Daddy was born in Burlington, Iowa as well. Mom was born in Nebraska. They met during the war. She was a homemaker, four kids. Volunteered at things. Willful and opinionated. I loved her very much as well. [Laughs]

I had a very fairytale—not fairytale. I had a really good childhood. I was the baby, so some people would say I got away with more, but I just couldn’t figure out why they made life so hard for them[selves], you know, because there were four or five rules. They were like, be home before dark or call. Make your bed every morning. Clean your room every Saturday, and do not put things under the bed. [Laughs] You know? Simple.

They would drop me off…There was this…I think there were like seven lakes in Illinois right across the river. (Burlington is on the Mississippi.) After a certain age, they’d just drop me off with my dog and let me spend the day there, and they trusted that I wouldn’t get lost. They kind of taught me how to not get lost. I tell people, “Oh yeah, I rode my first pony when I was three. I learned how to swim when I was three, and oh, I ice skated when I was three.” Then I realized, “Sarah, you didn’t learn how to swim when you were three. You learned how to bob,” you know? If you flopped off the dock, you’d be fine till someone came and grabbed you by the scruff of the neck and pulled you out.

Seag:

What was your relationship like with your siblings?

Krall:

Actually pretty good. I did…I went away to school, and I was so pleased because I was no longer “Oh, you’re Harriet’s granddaughter. You’re Norm and Mary’s daughter. You’re Norman, Jessica, or Betsy’s little sister.” It was like, “Sarah.” You know? I could be whomever, however, why-ever I wanted. And of course, I married a man who is the eldest in his family, so he’s used to telling people what to do and I’m so used to being told what to do, when to do it, and how to do it, being the baby, but anyway.

Seag:

When you say you went off to school, was that for college or beforehand?

Krall:

Yes. I did get to go to a private high school my senior year about five miles from Steamboat. I actually ended up teaching there after school, after college. Then I decided Idaho State had a good forestry department, so I went there. I had never…and people would say, “Why Idaho?” I’d say, “Because I’ve never been there. I don’t know anybody there and it’s going to work. It’s supposed to be a good department.” Well, I was not that happy there.

Seag:

This was for your undergrad?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes]. I heard about Evergreen, and I was in their first graduating class.

Seag:

Oh, wow!

Krall:

That’s not quite true: they had people who graduated before me, but I was part of the first four-year class. It really worked for me.

Seag:

Yeah. What did you study there?

Krall:

Environmental science, mostly. They didn’t have departments, different degrees. Everybody got a Bachelor of Arts. It’s a very different setup.

Seag:

Yeah. That is very different. Did you end up staying in touch with your siblings or were you quite independent once you left?

Krall:

Oh. Very much in touch. My two sisters got married quite young, so when I was finally out of the nest and wanted a buddy to do stuff with, it couldn’t have been them because they had babies pretty early. That was too bad, but I’d visit with them and I was always welcome, you know.

Seag:

And they were in Iowa?

Krall:

One was in Iowa, but also in Canada. Now she lives in Louisiana. The other one traveled. She went to school in Iowa City for a while and then stayed around that area for a little while. But her husband…Yeah, they were married. Her husband started working for NOLS, came to NOLS. So that was her first husband, actually. So, she kind of lived where he wanted to be. They’re the ones that got me my NOLS scholarship.

Seag:

I was going to ask. When did that happen?

Krall:

‘72.

Seag:

Was that during college or after?

Krall:

During college. It was right after my freshman year at college. I was a punk. I was a youngster, and it was really exciting because I did my student course and was staying where my sister and her husband lived in town. I got this phone call saying, “We’re shorthanded. Do you want to go out as an aide?” and I was like, “Well, I had a peach. I had a shower. Sure!” [Laughs] So I got to work my first course before I did the instructor’s course. I did the instructor’s course the next year.

Seag:

Where was that?

Krall:

Here, in the Wind Rivers.

Seag:

Oh my gosh! So, you’ve been here for a long time.

Krall:

Yeah. I didn’t actually move here until spring of ‘81 because I was still teaching down in Steamboat.

Seag:

So, did you start teaching right out of college?

Krall:

Two years. Two years later. Yeah, two years later.

Seag:

And you were teaching biology?

Krall:

Yeah, and algebra. [Laughs]

Seag:

And algebra. Wow.

Krall:

And cooking breakfast. It was one of those kind of private schools. [Laughs]

Seag:

Did you like it?

Krall:

I loved it. Yep. Every spring they’d take a foreign trip for six weeks when mud season hit Steamboat, so I got to do some really fun traveling. For a lot of that time I was the only full-time…I didn’t teach there that long, I made it sound like I taught long. I was the only full-time woman on the faculty. So even after I quit teaching, they called and asked me to…I did three more foreign trips with them. [Laughs] That was really lucky because I spent six weeks in Greece. I’ve been to Galapagos three times, you know. It was like little girl from Iowa gets to take her biology class to Galapagos?!

Seag:

Yeah. That’s amazing that you were the only woman on the faculty and you were teaching science and algebra. How did you get interested in science? Do you remember?

Krall:

Well, and there was a woman who was the secretary/receptionist, you know, kind of held the office together. Taught German…Spanish…no. She picked up a class in one of the languages, and I can’t remember which one. The bookkeeper taught a class in German. You know, it was…The French teacher was the maintenance guy. It was…

Seag:

Were you living on campus?

Krall:

Yeah. Funky little cabin.

Seag:

Were you doing NOLS in the summers?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

What was that like?

Krall:

Let’s see. I may have taken my summers off right then because when I came here in ‘81, I asked NOLS if I could kind of audit an IC (an instructor’s course) again because I wanted to be current. I hadn’t worked in several years. That’s what it was.

Seag:

And so, then you quit your job as a bio teacher and became a full-time NOLS instructor?

Krall:

Didn’t have enough time off. It’s like, “I can’t go to the desert in April! I’m teaching school! Can’t go to the desert in November.” No. I was a spoiled brat.

Seag:

And you were teaching NOLS here in Wyoming.

Krall:

Well, I’d spent five years in the Cascades. My first…’73, 4, 5…3, 4, and 5 I was in the Cascades and 5, 6 or 7…I can’t remember. And I was playing music. I played in an Irish band for a while.

Seag:

Oh, wow. For fun or were you giving shows?

Krall:

Yeah. We played in Portland and we played in Vancouver, BC.

Seag:

Oh, that’s wonderful! What do you play?

Krall:

Whatever I can get my hands on. No. For them mostly I played mandolin.

Seag:

Do you know Colin Stackhouse? He’s a fiddle player who lives on the—He’s been on the ice quite a few seasons, I think.

Krall:

Yes. I’m really bad at some of the last names down there. Yep. Yeah, he’s very good.

Seag:

Yeah. He’s one of my best friends. He came to my wedding in September, actually.

Krall:

Oh, yay! Yeah, I don’t think he’d know me.

Seag:

No?

Krall:

But I remember meeting him and then hearing him play at the coffeehouse.

Seag:

Yeah, and he played at our wedding, actually.

Krall:

Oh, good!

Seag:

Yeah. Anyway, so we’re talking about NOLS. So how did you hear about the Antarctic program for the first time?

Krall:

I don’t remember if it was my first or second year in the Cascades. I think it could have been my first. No, my second. Anyway, there was a man coming out to join the staff for at least one course. Maybe he was there all summer; I don’t know. Oh, it would have been my second because he hadn’t been there…I hadn’t met him yet. And I heard he was from Iowa. When he showed up, somebody else picked him up at the airport and I heard, “Oh, Jim’s down in the barn,” automatically put to work putting handles on ice axes. I went out there and asked him, “Where are you from?” and he looked at me. “You never would have heard of it.” “Where are you from?” “Look. It’s just this funky little community. I’m a farm boy. La, la, la. You never would have heard of it.” [Exasperated] “Where are you from?” “Lone Tree, Iowa,” and I went, “Oh! If you’re traveling through Nichols and you want to get to Iowa City, you take a right-hand turn”—or a left-hand turn; I don’t even remember anymore—“at Lone Tree and then da, da, da, da, da and then you’re in Iowa City.” He looked at me and he said, “Where are you from?” [Laughs]

So then I found out that he’d worked at that point I think at least a couple years. He’d been to South Pole. You know, he worked at South Pole one of those seasons and I was just like, “There’s work?! A person can get a job?!” He says, “Well, there aren’t very many women down there.”

Seag:

This is in the mid ‘70s?

Krall:

Yeah. I just thought, “I think I need to do that,” but I was…You know, I went off and I taught and did this and that—

Seag:

What appealed to you so much about it? Do you remember?

Krall:

It’s kind of the why not? I mean how…Antarctica?? [Laughs] And I won’t necessarily like, die?! Yeah, it was just…It wouldn’t even have occurred to me not to try to go. I had some friends, NOLS friends, two women, and I had heard they had gotten an application. I asked them, “Are you going to do that?” and they both said, “Nah, don’t think so.” I said, “Can I have the application?” [Laughing] So I started applying in ‘80. I think in ‘80. Basically ‘80…I taught till spring of ‘81, so in ‘81.

Seag:

Why did you wait a few years before you started applying?

Krall:

I don’t know. I guess I was just busy doing other things—you know, trying to be responsible. “I can be a teacher.” I definitely needed to make some money, and teaching at that school, at least at that time, nobody made any money. So, I wasn’t getting any better, you know, advancing myself, except I was well entertained. Came up here and I thought, “What are you going to do with this degree? What are you going to…You know, you don’t want to be absolutely broke your whole life.” So, I started applying. I applied and applied and applied, and Wally, who really was not interested in going to Antarctica, said, “You know, you’re going to get the job one of these days,” because I’d occasionally send the person who did all the hiring-- you know, it was a very small business back then, it was ITT [ITT Antarctic Services]--I’d send them a postcard once in a while. “Don’t forget about me! I’m still here!”

Seag:

What jobs were you applying for?

Krall:

The BFC [Berg Field Center], because I could actually write a resume for it. But I pretty much said I’d do anything. The Kiwis were the galley slaves then and the janitors, you know, so that wasn’t even available.

Seag:

Right.

Krall:

And actually, by the time I got hired…I have friends from the American program who were janitors, but we still had galley slaves, the native Kiwis. But what was I in the middle of?

Seag:

Wally.

Krall:

Oh! So, he applied. It took him two weeks to get a job.

Seag:

You’re kidding.

Krall:

No, and that was in ‘83.

Seag:

Doing what?

Krall:

And it was Jim Buline who hired him!

Seag:

Jim who you had met at NOLS.

Krall:

[Laughs] Yep. Hired him to drive truck.

Seag:

Oh my gosh.

Krall:

And got him on a piece of heavy equipment—you know, loading a dump truck. So, it wasn’t…I’m sure he could have hit the truck, but it was fairly basic. Jim just said, “Play with your pile every time you’re waiting on a truck. Fuss with your pile. Figure out what these things can do.” So, Wally went two years without me. It took two more years for me to get a job.

Seag:

Oh my gosh! Did he apply because you were applying?

Krall:

Yeah, and so he thought, “Well, I guess I’d better go.” He so didn’t want to go, and I’m sitting at home going [breathing hard], right? [Laughs] Chomping at the bit.

Seag:

Still working for NOLS.

Krall:

Still working for NOLS. In the winter, I waitressed one winter and I worked for H&R Block checking every single tax thing, form that went through the office.

Seag:

Ouch. And you finally got hired in 1985--to be a mountaineer?

Krall:

No. BFC proper, you know, in the main building of that.

Seag:

Do you remember who hired you?

Krall:

Yeah. His name was Marc Levesque.

Seag:

Oh, yeah. Okay.

Krall:

And I worked for Annie [Ann Peoples] the second year. And I got…I don’t know if I’m going to be out of order. I got a fair bit of grief from it in the beginning because people would say, “So who did you know that you got a job at the BFC?” and I’d be like, “Nobody.” “Yeah, right. Nobody gets a job at the BFC without knowing somebody,” and I said, “I wrote the resume.” They said, “What do you mean? Who has a resume for working at the BFC?” and I said, “Well, I have made 400 pairs of booties on an industrial sewing machine. I have fixed tents on an industrial sewing machine. You know that little square Optimus 111B stove that everybody takes camping with them?” “Yeah.” I said, “I can take one of those things apart behind my back and put it back together blindfolded. I have fixed stoves my whole life.” You know, not my whole life--for years! 14 years at that point. [Interruption]

Seag:

So, who was giving you grief? Was it other people at the BFC or people who wished they were working at the BFC?

Krall:

The one man that I can think of—because I’m exaggerating. It wasn’t that everybody gave me grief for it, but people were curious. But I can still see this one man, and I shouldn’t mention his name. But he also said at dinner one night that they shouldn’t allow coupled women to come down to the ice. [Laughs] He said, “It’s just not fair.” I mean there are only 28 civilian women in McMurdo.

Seag:

Out of what, 1,000 people?

Krall:

So, I got it, but it was just like, “Come on!” [Laughs]

Seag:

Yeah! That’s so absurd!

Krall:

He says, “I just don’t think it’s fair. You start off at a disadvantage.” [Laughs]

Seag:

God.

Krall:

Sorry. Just have them hire more women. And it just went up from there.

Seag:

Yeah. So, rewinding a little bit, do you remember what it was like arriving the first time?

Krall:

Oh, yeah. I should show you a picture of the way I was greeted.

Seag:

Yeah!

Krall:

Okay. I just found it. [Goes to get picture] It was amazing. Drove in on a beautiful day. Get out of the Herc and do this. “Wow!” You know, just turning in circles. “Oh my goodness!” And yeah, I’m sure it was cold because it was clear, but it was just a gorgeous day. We were very early on. I’m sure it wasn’t first flight, but it was probably second or third.

Seag:

Of Mainbody or Winfly?

Krall:

Mainbody. [Pause] I was just amazed. Absolutely amazed. [Showing photograph] (Come on. I think it [the photo] will show if I do this). But the Seabees had made this great big sign out of plywood and posted it right next to the road coming in from the ice runway. They had to take it down the next day.

Seag:

[Laughs]

Krall:

[Laughs] Isn’t that wonderful?

Seag:

That’s very true, too! [Laughter]

Krall:

It was just like…

Seag:

“Welcome to the Twilight Zone.”

Krall:

It was perfect. And it was nicely done, you know? It wasn’t just [noise indicates “badly done”].

Seag:

Yeah! I remember my deployment. Some of us joked that for all we knew, they had put us in a C-17 with no windows and just brought us to a sound stage somewhere nearby because it was so foreign and surreal.

Krall:

Yeah. It’s just like, I guess it could be anywhere. They put you in this aluminum thing and then you get out and there’s ice. [Laughs]

Seag:

Yeah. You’re in The Truman Show bubble.

Krall:

Yeah. You could have been in Russia, you know? [Laughter]

Seag:

Yeah! Yeah. So, what was your first season like? Do you remember what an average day was like, for example?

Krall:

Because the helicopters were Navy, we had a…What do they call them? It was a flat bed but it had…Stake bed—that’s what it is—truck and we would haul everybody down to the hangar in the morning and then pick them up later. So that was one of the main chores, to be efficient on that. Then it was pulling gear for groups that wouldn’t come in for another two or three weeks and put them in the cages, and fixing and mending. At that time, again, the civilian crew was not that large. They’d bust a zipper in something and it was a chore of ours to help do some of the seamstress stuff for town.

Seag:

Would you do that for the Navy as well?

Krall:

No. They had their own sewers. I think most of them were—I was going to say seamstresses, but I think most of them were not women. And… oh…checking out stoves, fixing the stoves. A lot of that stuff had been done during the winter, you know, slowly mend things, but they didn’t have the help that they do now and so they couldn’t necessarily get through all the stoves and all the tents and all the…everything. Put handles on geology hammers. You know, put new wooden handles on axes—or sledges, actually, not axes. Sledges. It sounds silly, but I was comfortable with hand tools because of my dad, I think.

Seag:

So, this wasn’t stuff you’d necessarily done with NOLS.

Krall:

No. The fixing the gear, I had done with NOLS, but the tool stuff—because we had a whole tool room for everything that the scientists would want in the field. You know, they’d get pretty beat up sometimes.

Seag:

What did your parents think about you being down there?

Krall:

I think my father was very, very proud. Mom didn’t know what to think. I think Daddy influenced her so that she truly did become proud. I remember…There was a poem Daddy wrote one time. “Bless the winds and Antarctic gales. Our girl is home from the Bay of Whales.” [Laughs] I mean it’s just silly.

Seag:

Oh, that’s wonderful, though!

Krall:

It was…you know. And yeah, I wasn’t at the Bay of Whales, but he at least had heard of the Bay of Whales before. But the other thing was, is he remembers when he was a kid, that…Oh, no. I forgot his name. Siple was the first explorer scout, I think, that got to come down.

Seag:

Yeah. Yeah.

Krall:

And he really remembers that. But it was a…You know, what an outrageous experience that would have been.

Seag:

Did you grow up knowing anything about the Antarctic from your dad?

Krall:

No. Not a thing.

Seag:

Wow. Do you have that poem written down anywhere?

Krall:

I could write it down easily. I do have it; I’m just not quite sure which box it’s in right now. [Laughs] But yeah, he sent it to me.

Seag:

What was life like outside of work that first year?

Krall:

It was a lot of fun. There were 16 of us. I told somebody that I spent my first year in a Jamesway and I didn’t. It was a T-5. 23 was its number. Had a couple of rude names. [Laughter] But 16 of us, so 8 bunk beds. One potty. One shower.

Seag:

Were you in one room?

Krall:

Yes. [Laughs]

Seag:

Well, it’s gotten better since then.

Krall:

We would hang up—We’d get extra of those gray wool army blankets, hang them in between so if somebody wanted to read, they could. The fire crew would come through and they’d haul them down. We’d put them back up and you know, a couple weeks later they’d do their fire thing. Nobody got angry, like, “How dare they!” or anything. It was just, we knew they’d take them down and they knew we’d put them back up! It was just the way it was. I’m sure it was a horrid fire hazard, you know. But it was fun.

Seag:

Was it all women in that dorm?

Krall:

Yes.

Seag:

Did you feel like you had a community of women?

Krall:

Absolutely. Absolutely. I still know a good number of the women. There were just two buildings. We called it--not me myself--it was called Vietnam Village. It was down below where the big dorms are, the kind of flat space on that road. The foremen were in one. The women who had been there longer were in one, and they had little rooms that were about a bed long by a bed wide—you know, just these teeny things with sliding doors. So, they had walls. I mean, you could hear everything that was going on, but…And a nice lounge. Then we were next door to that and we didn’t have any walls. [Laughs] No real lounge. Just bunk beds and a bathroom. But we had this deck that was out front, and so for much of the summer weather, it would be in the lee of a breeze. So, we’d have barbecues and dances. It was such a wonderful gathering place.

Seag:

Was that just your portion of this building, where you and the 14 women were, or was that all the way across the foremen and the cubbies for—?

Krall:

They were each…Do you know what a T-5 is?

Seag:

I don’t.

Krall:

Okay. The old NSF housing that was above Hotel Cal, those buildings, between the BFC there were two of them and Hotel Cal. There were two, just long, thin buildings.

Seag:

Okay. Okay.

Krall:

Those are T-5s. So, there were those three T-5s. There was a sauna that had gotten discontinued, and Dane and his girlfriend (then wife) lived in that. It was lovely. Oh, it was probably about the size of this right here, and it was really cool. In fact, Dane and Val left early my second year and Dane said, “You ought to move into that sauna.” I’m just like, “Are you sure?” and he goes, “Yeah! Nobody else is.” So, we did, so we were in there for a couple weeks anyway.

Seag:

Is “we” you and Wally?

Krall:

Me and Wally, yes.

Seag:

So initially they had you living apart from one another.

Krall:

Oh, yeah. I didn’t have enough…Well, none…There were two women, Annie Peoples and Patty Manuel, and they got to live in 125, which was one of the T-5s—the first T-5 next to the BFC.

Seag:

Because they were more senior?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes]. They were managers, and I think they were the only two. I can’t think of another woman manager. There may have been one, but…But that’s how I came up with a number of 28 because there were 10 women in one and 16 of us in the other and Annie and Patty over across town.

Seag:

And then you and Wally got to move in together into the sauna.

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

That’s nice!

Krall:

Yeah. Short and sweet. I didn’t play as much as some of the other women did, and I mean that in a complimentary way for them. You know, there’s nothing weird. It’s not like they were going out and getting toasted every night or anything. It’s just that I need a fair bit of private time, and there would be…On a Saturday night, Wally and I would do something for a little while and then I’d just go read. I’d be the only one in the dorm, and that was wonderful, just getting a little private time.

Seag:

So, you’d play a little bit and then go back and read and enjoy the peace and quiet.

Krall:

Yep. We got to know one of the helicopter crewmen pretty well, and I just remember him coming in the back door of 23 that first year. “Sarah!” “What?” I’m lying there, you know, in my bed naked reading, you know, blanky pulled up to here. He goes, “Oh. Oh! Come on! Come out. You can’t just…You can’t…It’s Saturday night!” and it’s like, “I’m having a lovely Saturday night!” “Come out!” “Okay. Give me a little bit.” [Laughing] So I felt I had a good, fun time. I know I didn’t have quite as much fun as some others did. Maybe I didn’t develop the friendships that they did because almost everyone came on their own, you know. Most of those women didn’t come with another good buddy. They developed them down there. But I sure enjoyed them. That’s for sure.

Seag:

Do you think the women felt welcomed on station by the mid ‘80s?

Krall:

It never occurred to me we weren’t, and it may be that other people did not feel that way. I don’t even remember talking about it.

Seag:

That’s great.

Krall:

There would be somebody who was a jerk, someone who obviously didn’t want us down there, but—

Seag:

These are the guys with the illusions of heroism that you were talking about. [Laughs]

Krall:

[Laughs] Yeah, or…yeah. But I would say in general, I think they like having a little female company, you know? Not even as a relationship, but friendship and somebody to laugh with. But I really…I don’t know how general it was. I don’t know how the Navy felt. I never felt anything but light, friendly flirting, say, down at the hangar, you know? If I had to have help every time I took a big toolbox out of the back of the truck, it might have been different, you know? People tend to lend help when you’re just busting your fanny for them. I remember my friend Juan. He watched women to make sure they could do the job they were hired for, and it didn’t offend me. He wasn’t like squinty-eyed and hard on them, but he wanted to make sure they could do the work, because so many of the jobs weren’t secretary. They were in the trades or being a GA where you were going to be cold and miserable some of the time. [Laughs]

Seag:

So what I’ve heard from interviewing people is that the ‘80s were really a decade of change in every respect, but also for women on station, and that in the early part of the decade, there was still a lot of…or some degree of skepticism about women’s capabilities, and women felt like they really had to prove themselves. Was that still going on in your experience in the mid ‘80s or had it waned by then?

Krall:

I didn’t feel like I had to prove anything to anybody but myself, but I don’t…There are some women in the trades who I am sure had a hard time and really, really worked hard to prove themselves. There were a couple excellent women carpenters, fuelies. Julie was a tin knocker. I don’t know how easy they had it. They were all such likable women that I think you just slowly can beat down barriers without even meaning to, you know? It’s just like, “So-and-so and so-and-so are over there having a nice time with this woman that I want to be cranky to,” you know, and it just doesn’t pay. [Laughs]

Seag:

Yeah. I think it was Ann Peoples who remarked to me that at some point in the ‘80s, maybe around the time you arrived, there were just enough women who filled enough kinds of roles that it became normalized—that you would be skeptical, but once you saw it in a different light, then you saw it in a different light.

Krall:

Yep. When the carpenters went into the crevasse on Erebus, it was a Sunday afternoon and we were having a get-together in the lounge where I lived. I got called up to go out as the second crew. They had already called the main SAR team.

Seag:

When is this?

Krall:

There were some carpenters that fell in a…They took a shortcut from Castle Rock.

Seag:

Oh, I heard about that.

Krall:

I didn’t feel like anyone looked at me askance. We were waiting and waiting and waiting down below the crevasses so that we could spell the other team. They were very dedicated and they just kept working. At the end of the day, I just remember one of the bigwigs from town asked me to drive this vehicle back. I’d never driven a Sprite before, and he just showed me how. He didn’t make me feel like, “God, I’ve got to go find some guy to do this.” So, I helped put the crew in the Sprite and drove them back. So yeah, there would have to have been some sort of acceptance of “She can do it.”

Seag:

Yeah. Do you remember at what point in the season you knew you wanted to go back?

Krall:

Uh, first day? [Laughs]

Seag:

Wow!

Krall:

I have never left the ice thinking I wasn’t going to come back…that I recall. But I changed jobs a lot, and usually it was not to leave a job as much as “Oh, I could try that!”

Seag:

What did you do next after working at BFC?

Krall:

Mountaineer.

Seag:

How did you get that position? What was the process like?

Krall:

The woman PI called me up and said she wanted to hire me as her mountaineer! And I just remember saying, “Peg, I don’t know anything about things that are that big.”

Seag:

It wasn’t Peg Rees, was it?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

I’m going to interview her next week! I’m going to Las Vegas.

Krall:

Oh, good. Good. Peg…She said, “Sarah, Peter will be there” (her normal mountaineer). She says, “Burt and I are going. We want a mountaineer for each of us in case we want to split up and la, la, la. Peter will be the main. He’s not going to let us all die, but I want another mountaineer and I want it to be you.”

Seag:

How did she encounter you? How did she know you?

Krall:

BFC. So, I took a deep, deep breath and said [gasping], “Okay.” [Laughs] And Wally didn’t go that year. He was done. Never going back. I went, “Okay. Well, I’m going in the field.” [Laughs] He knew that I had to go because that year I got trained to do the hovercraft.

Seag:

Oh, because you were trained in ‘87 and this is the ‘87-’88 season.

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

[Laughs] Wow.

Krall:

So, I mean I was high as a kite. There was no way I wasn’t going back.

Seag:

So ‘85-’86 you’re in the BFC. ‘86-’87 you were also in the BFC?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

And ‘87-’88 you were a mountaineer. Does that mean that you were NSF instead of USAP or USARP, whichever it was at the time?

Krall:

Yes. I was paid by UNLV.

Seag:

Okay. Okay. Wow. What was that like in the field? Where were you?

Krall:

We were between the Byrd and the Nimrod Glaciers kind of basically, that come out onto the shelf. The Churchill Mountains. It was an extraordinary year. It was warm. I know it was warm in McMurdo. There would be days…I mean we had storms. We had to bundle up sometimes, but we’d be out there with hat, gloves, and bibs, you know.

Seag:

That’s amazing.

Krall:

I’d never snow-machined before, and I ended up with a good machine. So, I was pulling two sledges because we had one that was a little old or just had a harder time, had been abused or whatever. I mean it seems like everything I did was new, you know. I never had had scotch before. We’d play cards and drink scotch at night, you know? [Laughing] And living in a Scott tent.

Seag:

Was it the four of you in a Scott tent?

Krall:

No. Two Scott tents. Two per.

Seag:

Out of curiosity, did you rotate who was in which Scott tent?

Krall:

Yes. And we rotated cooking dinner. That was the meal we had together, all four of us.

Seag:

Did you have anything good?

Krall:

Well, lobster, steak, lamb, shrimp, you know? You just…We didn’t have necessarily gourmet meals, but the food was fine. Not eating dehy.

Seag:

Did you do any direct work with the science? Were you acting as a technician or research assistant or anything?

Krall:

To hold a tape measure, maybe, but you know. One of the things I teased Peg about is…because I had spent some time with geologists previous to that.

Seag:

At McMurdo?

Krall:

In McMurdo and here in Wyoming and actually in the Cascades. But I said, “You go somewhere with one geologist, you think you’ve heard the word of God. You go with two geologists, and it’s just like…” and Peg says, “Sarah, don’t forget we don’t know anything. We’ve got to surmise. We have to have these discussions, and we’re going to end up with different ideas.” But I thought it was so funny because I just assumed that they believed the same thing and they wouldn’t sometimes.

Seag:

Do you remember what research question they were looking at, what they were trying to figure out?

Krall:

Sedimentary rock. I don’t remember. I’m sorry, Peg! [Laughs] I don’t remember the exact main question of the year. But one of the things I remember is that much of the Trans-Antarctics—I think that’s legal to say—at least regionally, the Churchills, where they’re sedimentary, they’re very unbroken. They don’t have lots of folds, and we would find occasionally a big fold and be like, “Whoa! Look at that!” just because it was so different. Getting a lot of rock samples, carrying a lot of rock boxes. I didn’t learn that much geology that season, but I would say it’s my fault. They would have happily…You know, if I had been smart enough to come up with a question, they would happily have shared it.

Seag:

How long were you in the field?

Krall:

Three months.

Seag:

Was there anything that you did not like about it?

Krall:

[Pauses] No. Not that I can think of. I remember a warm afternoon. It was probably evening—we’d probably been working that day—and Peg said, “Do you want me to wash your hair?” You’re like, “Yeah!” [Laughter] “Yes, please!” Because we’re dirty and we’re greasy. And we don’t really smell that much, it was more in the day of Polypro, so they could get stinky but not—you know, we weren’t dirty, dirty. And just lying back and having her…Oh! [Laughs] Like holy smokes! So that was really fun.

Mmm. What didn’t I like? The end! Yeah. I was just learning and absorbing and unable to believe the opportunity. You know, to go 400k on a snow machine and basically see two planes. It was really…I didn’t know how I’d feel when the plane went away, but I just remember that my smile muscles hurt so bad I was just hunkered down. It was really cool when they came back. [Laughs] And we did get moved once partway through. I’m not quite sure…I guess what they did is they linked our pickup…We went to Pole, and all they had to drop off was a Bobcat and, you know, the loadmaster is going I'll give you 20 minutes. So we’re running around trying to get our hero shots at 10,000 feet or whatever. So at least I got to go to the Pole—

Seag:

You did!

Krall:

which was pretty neat. Then they dropped us off and they aren’t allowed to leave until a tent is up and a stove is going and you’ve made comms. There might be something else, but those are the three I remember. We’d…“Everything’s done!” you know? We went back in because it was pretty late at night by then. I mean the sun was up, but it was getting on. So, we made dinner and we started playing cards and there are still these engines going out there. Well, they had busted a nose ski when we landed, and it was a rough landing. In fact, that’s a pretty good story. [Laughs] There are just the four of us as passengers in this Herc and a pallet of our stuff, snow machines.

Seag:

That’s a huge plane for four of you.

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes]. Peter had done a…

Seag:

What’s Peter’s last name?

Krall:

Braddock. He’s a New Zealander. He had gone off on a recce and he knew that I didn’t really like flying very well. I like flying because it gets me to exciting places, but I would never do it for fun. We’re coming in for this landing and he goes like this [hand motion]. He grabs my hand and he goes, “Hang on.” I went [gasping], “Oh, lovely,” and I grabbed the luggage—not a luggage rack, but anyway, some piping behind my seat and it was a rough landing. Lot of sastrugi. So, they busted a nose ski. They were trying to get approval from the skipper to just chain it up. Because it wasn’t broken, it just would dangle, you know. It wasn’t supported, and he wouldn’t let them do it. He said, “No, it’s going to be fixed properly.”

Seag:

Is the skipper over comms, he’s in McMurdo?

Krall:

Yeah, the main…the head Navy captain. We waited and waited. We finally got word that they were working on their plane, and then another plane came in and loaded everybody and we went away. And of course, the weather was going to poo and they didn’t know if they’d be able to leave. The skipper said, “I am not having two aircraft left on--we’re not sending another plane, so you figure it out. When you can safely take off, you take off.” They were rotating their engines so that they were burning less fuel, but things wouldn’t get too cold. So, they’d turn one on, turn one off…And finally they just took off—and it was safe. You know, they weren’t being stupid. We worked out of that camp just a couple days, as I recall, and then we just got on the snow machines to move camp. We put a parking ticket on the plane and we took our Christmas decorations and put Christmas decorations on the aircraft. It was really fun. I have some pictures of that that were…And this one guy, the pilot, the aircraft commander, he showed us how he had that framed. It was really fun! [Laughs]

Seag:

The parking ticket?

Krall:

The ticket. Took the ticket back. Oh, and I think it was like Christmas Eve, or a couple days before, because when the crew came in, they shared their Christmas goodies from home with us. I mean it was really sweet. Back then they had dedicated crews, so when you spoke with them before you went in the field, we knew that that’s who was going to come pick us up—at least part of that crew. You know, maybe not everybody on the plane, but…So it was really nice because you got this little mini friendship acquaintance.

Seag:

Yeah. Did you have good relationships with the Navy folks that you interacted with?

Krall:

I really did. The folks down at the hangar, almost all of them were always great. I didn’t have that much Herc experience, just some, but I got to meet more of them at the air ops meeting every morning when I was scheduling the helicopters. That was really nice. Yeah, I admired them a lot. I didn’t get the grief that…Some of the people in certain jobs had a hard time coordinating with their comparable people from the Navy, but I never had it. I felt friendliness and approval, I guess.

Seag:

Did you have a sense of whether there were women in the Navy involved in the kinds of things you were doing? Where were they at that time, or were there so few that…?

Krall:

I remember a woman, and I can’t remember where I’d run into her. It might have been at the…Oh, dear. I forgot the name of it. Sears South, where you go get a flashlight if you need a flashlight or order toilet paper or…Oh, gosh. I’m getting senile. But it was a place where everybody in town, they could go get pens and paper or pencils. [Laughs] I remember someone near me had asked her something about, “So you joined the Navy and you end up down here. How do you like it? La, la, la?” She said, “I joined the Navy to see the world…be on a ship and see the world and look where I am!” [Laughs] She was not all that impressed.

Seag:

Was her name Kim by any chance? Do you remember?

Krall:

I don’t have any idea. Small woman with dark hair is all I can see.

Seag:

By now I’m sure their hair color has changed. I spoke with a woman named Kim who said that when she got her orders to Deep Freeze she burst into tears because she had requested three Mediterranean places as first, second, and third choice, but then Antarctica! [Laughs] She loved it in the end.

Krall:

Yeah, because one of the things I heard at some points is that it was kind of competitive for some of the positions.

Seag:

Yeah. What I’ve heard—I’ve talked to a couple of the guys and a couple of the women, and for the guys, someone told me it was a little bit of, like, a misfits kind of job. But for the women, it was the only way that they could at that time get the points they needed for serving in an isolated environment to get promoted, so it was actually quite good for their careers.

Krall:

Oh, I got it.

Seag:

Yeah. So, I think we’ve just finished ‘87-’88 and maybe we can loop back and then jump forward and tell me the story about the hovercraft. That’s amazing. How did that come to be?

Krall:

I have no idea how. Mickey Finn was the head engineer. Worked full-time for ITT. He had this idea about the hovercraft, and I honestly don’t know where it started. But at the end of my second season—and it was the end of Lou’s [Albershardt] first season—they came up to both of us separately and said, “We’re going to get a hovercraft, and it’s going to be an experimental thing, and we were wondering if you would be interested in learning how to operate it.” Because they had to send us to school and so plans needed to get made. This was basically a year and a half before it would ever happen.

Seag:

What had Lou been doing?

Krall:

She was night janitor.

Seag:

Oh, how interesting that they…Huh! And no idea where they got in their heads to…

Krall:

All I can think of, what I’ve told other people is, I think some of it may have come from the fact that neither of us had made waves (yet) [laughs], and we both had a fair bit of outdoor experience.

Seag:

Mmm, and were they expecting that you might end up far from station in a hovercraft disaster?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes], and taking care of other people, you know, being kind of responsible. They said, “We were wondering if you’d be interested,” and I just remember saying, “I don’t even know what a hovercraft is, but I am.” [Laughs]

Seag:

With a name like “hovercraft,” sign me up!

Krall:

If I don’t need to go to flight school, I’m on! So that’s why the timing was so weird, is that it was the summer before I was a mountaineer that they sent us to school. I actually got a call from ITT’s head of the Antarctic program and he told me that they weren’t going to let me—they weren’t going to send me to school because they had heard that I was not going to be working for them that year. And I said, “Listen. I was offered this opportunity. It’s a one-year shot. I’m going to keep coming back to the program. You are not training me and I’m going to leave you high and dry. This is vital to me. I’ve given up summer work to free my schedule so that I can go to this training, and I really don’t like it if you’re going to do this.” He thought about it. I mean, he was stewing. He was mad. He was mad at me, like I was trying to get away with something, and I just did my best to convince him I was not. I desperately wanted to do both.

Seag:

But you weren’t going to delay him at all.

Krall:

Oh, no! I said, “I don’t know who I’m going to have to talk to if you’ve screwed me out of this money now, because I have made myself available to you. I promise you I will be there to run the hovercraft.” So, he said, “I don’t ever want to hear or talk about this again.” “Okay. Bye!”

Seag:

Wow.

Krall:

So, there was about a half an hour there where I was like, “No, no, no, no!” [Laughs] But it worked.

Seag:

So, you went to training and then the following year, 12 months or so later, you landed on the ice again to pilot the hovercraft. What were you doing with it?

Krall:

A lot of sea ice. When we didn’t have anybody to take anywhere, we just left. We went out and—because we trained on the Delaware River, and the mud flats was the closest thing that they could think of to find that might be as slick as the ice. So, the techniques we learned on water would have been really not good on ice, and vice versa. You know, the things that we had to do to slow down on the ice, like people thought we were out there cutting cookies, and they’d tease us because we didn’t have a variable pitch prop. So, there was no way to slow it down by reversing the prop. So, we’d do 180s, and power out of it to stop. You know, like if we saw something in the ice, like, “Oh god, there’s a pressure ridge and that’s too tall,” you know, before you get there and rip your skirt off, you do 180s, slow down, straighten up, and approach slowly. So, we were learning, you know? The way I figure is, we came down as drivers and went home as operators. And no one ever said we shouldn’t. We would—we’d just go out in the morning, because we didn’t people ‘til the afternoon; we’d go out in the afternoon, if we only had people for the morning. And it was scandalous. I mean for me, it just made me laugh that no one was saying we couldn’t. We had some amazing trips, just because we went a long-ways. The ice edge was actually quite close that year, and so we didn’t go way, way out on the sea ice north.

Seag:

You would have floated if you’d ended up…

Krall:

Yes. Yeah, it had a real aluminum hull. But we were disallowed to because if we broke down, they weren’t sure how they’d get us back. [Laughter] So we weren’t allowed on the water. In the second year, we weren’t allowed to operate the second year, and the guys that did, got to go on the open water when the Coast Guard cutter was in. They had a boat and all that, so just out in the bay one Sunday.

Seag:

Why were you not allowed to operate it the second year?

Krall:

Because we ticked off the head of operations. He wanted us to go as far up the Aurora Glacier as we could, and we said no. He said, “Don’t go any farther than you should,” and I said, “If we lose our loft down a crevasse—not even ourselves, but lose our loft, you’re going to have to get a crane out there and we’re going to have to walk back.” It was really not good. We had a big kerfuffle with him. We took divers to New Harbor. There had been diver deaths in New Harbor, and they wouldn’t give us a handheld radio so that we could reach McMurdo if there were any problems. We said, “Well, we can’t take them over there. We’re not taking divers over to New Harbor without a radio.”

Seag:

Yeah! Why on earth would they not let you take a radio?

Krall:

There were hardly any handhelds at that time, and he wouldn’t give us his.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Krall:

So, the Kiwis did. They heard what we were going through. But somebody—you know, I didn’t tell them. I don’t believe Lou told them, but through, you know, moccasin telegraph…and so they gave us one, and extra battery and all that. Our equipment availability versus the New Zealand program’s—we had a lot more money and a lot more stuff available. So, we wrote—as kind of one of these gestures, we wrote a thank you letter to the New Zealand program, and it sat on this man’s desk for—I don’t want to exaggerate, but it was way more than a few days. We’d just say, “Oh, did you get a chance to read that letter and approve it?” Because it was wrong. We did push a few safety things like that—not being dangerous but being safe. So, he wrote the job description so that you had to be a diesel mechanic.

Seag:

Oh, wow—to cut you out of it.

Krall:

[Wally walks in] Wally, this is Morgan.

Seag:

Hi, I’m Morgan. Nice to meet you Wally.

Wally:

Nice to meet you.

Seag:

So, you would have had to have experience as a diesel mechanic? Or was it a certification?

Krall:

I don’t know.

Seag:

Whatever it was, you didn’t have it.

Krall:

In any case we didn’t have it.

Seag:

It ran on diesel, I guess?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

So, what did you do instead the next year?

Krall:

Scheduled the helicopters.

Seag:

Oh, yeah. Did you ever go back to the hovercraft?

Krall:

The only time I did, it was actually kind of…It was nice. It was sweet. It was kind of…What do they say? Not sour sweet, but…

Seag:

Bittersweet.

Krall:

Bittersweet. Duh! Bittersweet. But when Cole Mather…This would have been maybe the third or fourth year of the hovercraft. He said—because he’d gotten to go to school, he and this other young man—he said, “Would you go out with us, and give us some pointers?

Seag:

Oh, that’s nice.

Krall:

It was. It was really nice. Lou wasn’t there. I don’t know if she had wintered, or whether she was…She might have been at Pole that year, but she wasn’t available to go with them. It was fun. Because it was soon enough after I had operated it, that some of the little tricks just came back so easily. I showed him about dragging the skirt and he goes, “Huh?” and I said, “Well, if you just need to slow down a little bit, yaw a little bit, and kind of just drag your skirt a little. You don’t want to be clunking down,” because it’s really rude if you hit the hull of the thing on like a piece of ice that sticks up too high or something.

Seag:

Is it bad for the hovercraft…

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

…or just rough on the people in it?

Krall:

It’s not good for it, especially if you want it at some point to be waterproof. So that was just one time I got to do that, and it was sweet.

Seag:

Yeah. Did you ever work at any other station besides McMurdo?

Krall:

I was…well, no, that’s a fuel camp. But I didn’t work at Pole or Palmer.

Seag:

Did you ever winter?

Krall:

No. See, I thought I’d winter as my swan song, that he would leave in February and I’d wave and then I’d finish up…because I knew it would be the end. I’d finish up by spending a winter there. By the time my swan song came around, it…I’m sure I would have enjoyed it, but it wouldn’t have been the right thing to do. But I did maybe ten Winflys, which to me is a really cheap way to winter. [Laughter]

Seag:

It adds up cumulatively to a winter…[laughing]…just minus midwinter.

Krall:

But it’s so gorgeous in all the light.

Seag:

Yeah. It’s spectacular.

Krall:

So, I feel very lucky I got to do that at least. And I never…They had just started staying in March and April. They’d had a couple times when it was a fuel thing, the first one that I was around for, and there wasn’t really any need. I joked about trying to put out feelers for anybody who thought they might need somebody to stay, but that’s fine. I never stayed after, oh I don’t know, maybe the 20-something of February.

Seag:

So, after the hovercraft, you said helo tech.

Krall:

No, actually scheduler.

Seag:

Helo scheduling. And then I think, if I understand from the Internet correctly, that the next big event is Lower Hut on Erebus.

Krall:

[Pause] I want to find this...

Seag:

I have ‘92-’93, which I pulled out of some article in The Antarctic Sun.

Krall:

That is the next big event, and I was in the food room.

Seag:

Okay. How did you end up working there?

Krall:

In the food room?

Seag:

Yeah.

Krall:

I knew I didn’t want to come back as the helicopter scheduler, and again, I got…I mean Erick Chiang came up to the food room early on and he said, “What do we need to do to get you to come back and do the helos?” I said, “Get me more money.” Because the number of hours it took, it just…It took a lot of work to please everybody, because I was scheduling for the Navy and the New Zealanders.

Seag:

That’s a huge amount of work!

Krall:

Well, I thought it was! [Laughter]

Seag:

Wow. And it must be an unusual schedule, too.

Krall:

Well, it is, and dealing with maps and learning…Okay, if it takes 30 minutes to get to Marble Point, it must take another 15 to get to Lake Bonney—you know, that kind of thing—so that the schedule actually makes sense for people (the pilots and the crew and the scientists and all that). There are parts of it I really enjoyed because again, putting all those pieces together, but I knew I was working way harder than the money was, and I knew that the food room was coming open. So, I asked if I could have it.

Seag:

What appealed to you about the food room?

Krall:

It’s something I was kind of familiar with. I was familiar with rations, both from the ice and NOLS, and so I thought that I could do a good, proud job. You know, I had plenty to learn. And being with the BFC family because we got to spend time outside, whether it was flagging routes or…I took some scientists on a shakedown more than once just so they had somebody to go with them to help check their gear and show them stuff about the stove if they weren’t familiar with the stove, that kind of thing. So yeah, being in the BFC family was always a really good thing.

Seag:

Between that and helo scheduling, you must have really learned to speak the languages of both the scientific and the Navy communities, in addition to the USAP community.

Krall:

[Pause] I never thought of it that way, but I guess. Well, and I got to know a wide variety of people who supported science. There were a lot of people I didn’t…you know, especially over at the Navy. The Navy actually printed the helicopter schedule, so I would have to have it down at their place by 4:00 every day. He would go through it, and he hardly ever monkeyed with something unless they had a training thing that they needed to fit in. I think they appreciated my efforts.

Seag:

So how did you end up on Erebus?

Krall:

Phil [Kyle] apparently when the whole robot thing—

Seag:

Is this the spider robot?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

Oh, cool.

Krall:

When that came down, he had people show up and he just said, “I…” He called Jill. Jill Vereyken was running the BFC then, and he just said, “I need help!” [Laughter] I was lucky that she chose me.

Seag:

Oh, wow. How long were you up there?

Krall:

I think it was three to four weeks. It wasn’t really long, but it was more than a little bit.

Seag:

Yeah, and I think I read maybe on Bill Spindler’s website—who sends his regards, by the way, he said, “I’ve never met her, but I’ve talked to her plenty. Tell her hello.” He was really excited that I was coming over here. I think you told somebody a story about walking up around the hole edge, the hole rim. That’s amazing!

Krall:

Oh, I cried. You know? [Laughter]

Seag:

How could you not?

Krall:

That was because of Nelia [Dunbar]. It was towards the end. It could be that everybody was still there. I think everybody was still there, but it was the cleanup, not the actual part of the project. She said, “Sarah, you have today off,” and I went, “Phht. Right. Don’t worry about it.” She goes, “No, I’m actually serious. You need to cook dinner tonight. So, think about it, but go up the mountain. Take a machine and go up the mountain.”

Seag:

How far were you from the top?

Krall:

I think camp is around 11,500.

Seag:

The summit is 12-something.

Krall:

11,000? 10,500? No. Because Fang [the Fang Glacier] is too high to really acclimatize well, and that’s way below. I think camp is about 10,500. I can’t remember. You could be at the parking area in, I’m guessing 15 minutes.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Krall:

And then hike from there up to the top.

Seag:

Alone?

Krall:

And just walked around the rim. But I did. I just started crying. When I looked down, and I could see the ice tongue and I could see the cape with Hut Point at the end. It was like, “Oh my god.” White Island, Mount Discovery. Actually, I couldn’t see White. It was Black, and Brown Peninsula and Mount Discovery. Oh my god. It was wonderful.

Seag:

Did you look the other way?

Krall:

Oh, yeah.

Seag:

What was that like?

Krall:

Oh, the crater’s really neat, because that’s what I was doing. I was just walking around the top of the crater and the lava lake. It’s really neat to see these little bubbles, or just cracks. It’s only once that I’ve been up there when she went off, you know, threw some bombs out and just made a heck of a racket, a big boom. I had a National Geographic photographer with me and I was just like, “Well, we can’t run anywhere. It won’t…May as well enjoy it!” [Laughter] But yeah, there’s nothing that came near us or anything, but the boom was…It went systemic, you know. It was just something.

Seag:

I think I heard maybe my second year, ‘12 to ‘13, that they had shown up at the hut at the start of the season and there were just lava bombs. So, they had to move the hut. Is that right?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

Pretty wild. That would have been quite the scene to wake up to! [Laughs]

Krall:

Yeah, pulling…Hearing [Bill?] and Nelia talk about putting an ice axe head in a bomb that had come out and was still hot—you know, like a taffy pull.

Seag:

Oh my god! So, after the three to four weeks at the camp, is that the same season that you would bring artists and writers up later in the season, or is this…?

Krall:

That was later. That [the season we’re discussing] was my first time on Erebus.

Seag:

Okay. Wow. And then did you complete the season at McMurdo after that?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

Okay, and then the next year is the year that you were begged and pleaded to return to Erebus. No. Not yet.

Krall:

Nm-mmm [no]. No. That was just food room and writers and artists. I can’t remember what year it was. Oh! It was Wally’s last year, so it would have been 2003. And then 2007. Those are the two years I’m pretty sure that I did the…

Seag:

The camp managing again?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

So ‘92-’93 and then after that it was DVs and artists and writers, and then skip ahead ten years. Okay. What were you doing for the rest of the ‘90s?

Krall:

Food room ‘til ‘96, and then I did the food room Winfly of ‘96 to get it set up because the woman they hired couldn’t come until Mainbody. That’s when I just went straight down to the hangar. I was hired to help the scheduler, you know, and one of the reasons is, with the mechanics and the pilots all new, they thought it would be really good if there was somebody in the hangar who had been there before. [Laughs]

Seag:

Good idea!

Krall:

What happened is they hired two helo techs and discovered it was not enough, and so they let me go out and get trained so I could at least help. Then I got grandfathered in.

Seag:

Were you trained off the ice or on the ice?

Krall:

On the ice.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Krall:

We did go through a class, all of us that were going to…I mean like the BFC staff, SAR staff, and the helo techs, and Robin and I, the two people who were going to be working on the schedule.

Seag:

Is that Robin Abbott?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

Yeah. I just emailed her. I hope to hear back.

Krall:

Oh, good! We were sent to Lafayette, Louisiana where PHI headquarters is, and they ran us through. I don’t think it was a week. It was several days, probably three days—I don’t remember—training of building sling loads. We each hooked up a sling load. [Laughs] Again, even just that was exciting. It was like, “Wow! Brand new, brand new, brand new, brand new.”

Seag:

And so then in the 2000s you ended up at the Chalet? Were there other jobs in between?

Krall:

No. From ‘96…Oh yeah, there was. I was cook at Marble Point.

Seag:

Oooh. [Laughs] What was that like?

Krall:

So that was fun because I kept getting to do helicopter stuff.

Seag:

Yeah. How many people are out there? It’s just a couple, isn’t it?

Krall:

There were three of us—a fuelie that would rotate through, and Crunch and me.

Seag:

Crunch?

Krall:

He was the manager.

Seag:

Oh, the name of the person.

Krall:

Sorry. Randy Noring. That was fun because it was…I got to see the pilots and the other helo techs that would come through. It was a nice place to take a Sunday walk.

Seag:

What’s the landscape out there? I never got out there.

Krall:

A little lunar.

Seag:

Is it dry?

Krall:

Yes. There’s a glacier that kind of ends in the backyard, right past the pad, and there’s a pond there where you could get some water. It was just another thing that was kind of different. Then…I think eight seasons with MacOps.

Seag:

Okay. I think I read—and I’m forgetting her name—that you were “the voice of Antarctica” is how she described you in her book. [Laughter]

Krall:

Oh god!

Seag:

Do you know which book I’m talking about? I can’t believe I’m blanking on the author’s name. I know it’s a woman. She said she went to see you in MacOps. She was just chatting with you for a little bit and you were describing your job. She said—and she has this really flowery language—something like “And hers is the voice that rang throughout the continent.” “She was the voice of Antarctica.” She clearly admires you a lot.

Krall:

I wish I had read…Please send…[Laughter]

Seag:

I’ll send you a link to the book, yeah!

Krall:

It would be fun!

Seag:

Yeah. It was a very nice little profile on you. Yeah. And she does a profile on—right after you there was another person who I know, and also Jules! Right after you, yeah. It was nice. It was nice. So MacOps, “the voice of Antarctica.”

Wally:

So when did you do the hovercraft?

Krall:

‘88-’89. Is that right?

Seag:

That’s what the Internet says.

Krall:

She knows better than I do. [Laughs]

Seag:

It’s my job. [Laughs]

Wally:

I don’t remember any of it.

Seag:

No? Did you ever get a ride on the hovercraft?

Wally:

No. No.

Krall:

It’s one thing I regret.

Wally:

You had to be in the right place at the right time and be the right person, to boot.

Krall:

Because it had gotten…You know, it was one of those things where if you’d gotten caught, somebody who wanted to could cause a lot of trouble.

Seag:

Oh, yeah. So how did you find working in the Chalet after having had all these far-flung and physical positions?

Krall:

I liked the people I worked with, and that was probably the best part of it. I have always enjoyed…like when Polly comes through or Brian comes through, that they’ll sit and chat. They have different memories than some of the other people, and they’re ones that would include me. It was nice to chat with them. It was difficult with the change in contractor, and I was kind of getting the feel of “mmm, I don’t know.” I asked for the job the next year and that’s when I got…Yeah, that’s when they canceled my job. We were working on the house. Wally was up on a ladder. The phone rang. I said, “Just a sec!” Answered the phone. It was really nice that they bothered to call me, and I said so. I mean I even had my luggage tags. [Laughs] She told me that my job had been canxed, so I just said, “Well, thank you so much for calling instead of just sending me a form letter” (which I did receive). I hung up the phone and I just burst out laughing. Wally said, “What?” and I said, “I just lost my job!” [Laughs] So it was the first time in 27 years that I’d spent Christmas here.

Seag:

Wow!

Krall:

It was interesting. I mean I spent my first 30 Christmases with my mom and dad. It didn’t matter where I was. I spent it with them, you know, and then I never did again. So it was pretty interesting.

Seag:

Did you spend it here in Lander with Wally?

Krall:

Yeah. We go to the neighbors.

Seag:

Oh, how nice.

Krall:

Eat and talk and do jigsaw puzzles all day long. Take a walk.

Seag:

You know, I’m wondering. If you were in the Chalet in ‘11-’12 and ‘12-’13 I wonder if you were the person who stamped my passport with the stamp that had the letters mixed around. Do you remember this? Antarctica is misspelled on the passport stamp! [Laughter] I don’t remember which letter is wrong.

Krall:

I hope it wasn’t I! Oh my god. It could have been.

Seag:

I mean somebody had ordered it however long before. I don’t know, but I was so delighted. I just love it. It’s such a wonderful, wacky place, and I’m so happy that I have this misspelled passport stamp. You know?

Krall:

Oh, yeah. Oh my god. Because I know I did help people. We had a box of fun. Like there would be a map of Antarctica, and other little stamps like that. But I don’t remember that

Seag:

[Laughing] Yeah! I’ll send you a picture of it. I’ll find it.

Krall:

I probably stamped all kinds of people’s passports with that and never knew. Oh god.

Seag:

And I bet they all love it as much as I do. Yeah. It’s not a regular experience. It deserves an irregular stamp.

Krall:

That’s for sure.

Seag:

How many seasons have you done total?

Krall:

I say 30, and it’s only 29.

Seag:

Okay. That’s pretty close to 30. [Laughs]

Krall:

I got medevacked my last season down there.

Seag:

Oh, wow. Was it an out and back or was it—?

Krall:

Well, it was an out and back to get a tooth pulled, because the dentist in Christchurch kept looking. She said, “I’m going to just try to do a small root canal.” She drilled and drilled and drilled and drilled. She finally stopped, and she said, “I can’t find your root.” I said, “Just pull it.” She said, “Oh, but I wouldn’t have to. I just have to…” I said, “Just pull it. They won’t let me go back.”

Seag:

Oh, yeah…

Krall:

So, she pulled my tooth and so I went back.

Seag:

Oh geez!

Krall:

And the next week I got food poisoning and had it coming out both ends and went into AFib.

Seag:

What’s AFib?

Krall:

Atrial fibrillation. My heart got disrhythmic, arrhythmic. By the time they sent me out, I was back in fine rhythm again, but they wouldn’t let me come back.

Seag:

Oh, wow.

Krall:

I was supposed to go to Siple Station and be the camp manager there, which would have been a totally new experience, because I didn’t have very much Herc experience, and it’s all Herc. Well, Twin Otters as well, and Basler. Fixed wing—that’s what I didn’t have much experience in.

Seag:

Would that have been later that same season or that was the following season?

Krall:

That was the…In fact, the day I got the food poisoning was the day I was supposed to fly to camp, and we had a storm.

Seag:

Wow.

Krall:

Yeah, it was kind of odd. At the runway, I knew I wasn’t going to come back. So, I had my little weep looking at Erebus, got on the plane, and just knew, “Okay. This sure didn’t turn out how you thought.”

Seag:

No!

Krall:

But, oh well.

Seag:

That was 2014?

Krall:

I think it must have been. ‘16, ‘17…I think this was my fourth Christmas. It might have been my fourth Christmas. I don’t think it was ‘15. I really should know this. I’m sure it was ‘14.

Seag:

Yeah. It was the summer of ‘14 that they sequestered.

Krall:

Oh, it was?

Seag:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Krall:

Oh. Then it was ’15, because if I…It wasn’t…

Seag:

I’m sorry. It was the northern…It was like June or July of 2014 that sequestration happened, or May or something.

Krall:

Okay. Right. So, it was ‘15 that I was down there.

Seag:

Okay, okay. Wow.

Krall:

Missed ‘14. Oh, which is why that was my 30th…You know, it would have been.

Seag:

That would have been your 30th, yeah.

Krall:

And I count it. I was there. [Laughs] [Pause] Oh, dear.

Seag:

Do you mind if I ask you some sort of broad perspective questions about how the program has changed?

Krall:

Nm-mmm [no].

Seag:

How’s this for a broad question? How has the program changed? [Laughs]

Krall:

The main thing is what I mentioned, I guess before we started recording. So, one thing I know I said to Polly [Penhale], I said to Brian…

Seag:

Shoemaker?

Krall:

No. Stone.

Seag:

Stone. Of course.

Krall:

I am getting old. I said to Brian, probably Julie Palais—I may have said it to Kelly—that they’re absolutely ignoring the fact that they’re running a town, and morale is going down because of it. One thing Brian said to me that I do understand is, “Sarah, you don’t understand about the effect that social media has had. Anytime something shows up that somebody’s done here on the ice, I have a congressman call me and want me…You know, they want to know, ‘How come our government money is being spent for this and that and the other thing?’” I said, “Brian, I think I actually do understand. I wouldn’t want to have to feel responsible for everything everybody does down here. But just once, would you consider saying—when you know they haven’t done anything illegal, immoral—they just had a fun party—would you say, ‘Isn’t it wonderful? They work so hard. Isn’t it wonderful they still can play? They still have a good time with each other. They actually love each other,’” because to me, that’s what’s going away. “No, you can’t. No, you can’t. No, you can’t. No, you can’t.” The other part was being managed by a company who sent few of the decision makers down.

Seag:

Is this the contract company?

Krall:

Yeah. For the majority of my years on ice, Erick Chiang would come for three months. Dave Bresnahan would come for three months, every year. Then sometimes—You know, and they’d take turns as to who got to home for Christmas. There was a continuity that was lent, and now people come down for two and three weeks and go home and make decisions. “My wife won’t let me come for more than a month.” Well, okay. Fine. You know, having…having NSF call, an NSF rep at the time, call a meeting because…To be honest, I can’t even remember what people were disgruntled about, but I was asked to take notes. Having him laugh…and I heard him say this more than once. “We’re not going to let the inmates rule the jail!” and thought it was funny. For me, I don’t think this is what they’re asking, except that they’re starting to feel like inmates.

Seag:

Were you aware at all a few years ago—You know the show Orange Is the New Black?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes]. I haven’t seen it, but I’m aware of it.

Seag:

You haven’t seen it, then? In the first season I think, so you know the blonde lady goes to jail. That’s how the show begins. She’s got a fiancé back home and he’s trying to figure out how to get her out of jail, even though she’s guilty of what they…So he’s talking to some of their friends in an early scene and he says, “Oh, she’s in jail and it’s like this and that,” and the couple that he’s talking to, one of the guys says, “Oh, yeah. I have a brother who’s down at McMurdo right now, which I think is pretty much the same thing.”

Krall:

Oh!

Seag:

They make a joke about McMurdo being similar to this prison in Orange Is the New Black! [Laughter]

Krall:

[Laughter] No, I’ve never heard that. That’s great.

Seag:

Yeah!

Krall:

Oh God.

Seag:

Did you think that the program changed between the ‘80s and the ‘90s as well, or was it really when the…And was it Raytheon or Lockheed that was the big changes more recently?

Krall:

Well, everybody made a change, and one of the famous lines is “Same circus, different clowns.” But there were people who would come in and be more, as I was saying…I mentioned earlier of “I’m counting on you to help me learn this job.” You know, “I know how to manage, but I don’t even know what a cargo line is,” you know? That kind of thing. I have not felt that way about Lockheed Martin. I’m probably doing a serious disservice to some of those people, but some of the big decision makers don’t come to the ice, or they come for a couple weeks. Brian and I were talking in the Chalet one day, and the head of HR from Lockheed was there. Brian was laughing because he knew that I knew him as a punk when he came down as a GA—

Seag:

[Laughs] No way!

Krall:

—And then he ran science cargo under me because I was in the food room. So, we got to know each other a little bit, and we have some of the same stories to tell—or at least we might tell very different stories about the same thing. [Laughs] He was kind of including me in this conversation he was having, and he said, “I’m just curious right now. Who’s going to be the next Brian Stone? Who’s going to be the next Sarah Krall, you know, that comes and stays with the program?” and this guy goes, “Well, it’s just going to be people who have come up through Lockheed Martin.” Neither Brian nor I ever really said a thing to that, it was just sort of we looked at each other and kind of went [sadly], “Oh…I don’t know…Maybe.” [pause]

Seag:

I’ll change the subject to happier subject. What did you do in the off-seasons all this time? (I hope it’s a happier subject).

Krall:

Oh, yeah. Work on the house. Horse pack. Work for NOLS. I got to do a bunch of Grand Canyon river trips.

Seag:

Oh, wonderful.

Krall:

Worked for Moki Mac. Work on the house. [Laughs]

Seag:

That’s great.

Krall:

Oh, and I work at greenhouses.

Seag:

Oh, yeah! Right. Thank you for taking time out to do this interview today!

Krall:

Yeah. I don’t start till next Saturday, so that worked.

Seag:

Oh, okay. Good. Let’s see. You have a land feature named after you.

Krall:

I do.

Seag:

The Krall Crags. How did that happen?

Krall:

Phil. Phil Kyle. Yep. He put in the recommendation for it.

Seag:

Wow. When was that?

Krall:

I was floored. Hmm. I don’t know. I would guess…I’m trying to think when I found out. I would guess it was between ‘96 and ‘98, somewhere in there, ‘99. I don’t know if it’s written on the site or not, you know, the day that he wrote it.

Seag:

Have you been there?

Krall:

Mm-hmm [yes].

Seag:

Really!

Krall:

Yeah. It was really neat. I wasn’t working on Erebus; I was flying stuff to Erebus, and one of the pilots, a very dear man, wasn’t going the normal way. I thought, “What are we doing?” He says, “I’m landing at Krall Crags.”

Seag:

Oh, that’s wonderful!

Krall:

I went, “What?” He says, “You’ve got to have a rock from Krall Crags!” [Laughs] So, that was really neat, and in fact, Dave Ainley’s group…We were taking a sling load over there, so we were headed there on purpose. But after he dropped the load, he landed.

Seag:

Oh, wow. Did you get a picture?

Krall:

Yeah.

Seag:

That’s so nice!

Krall:

Yeah. It was really…It floors me. I said, “I didn’t even have to die!” [Laughter] You know? But that was…I forget about it, and once in a while I’ll go, “That’s really true!”

Seag:

It’s really cool! Yeah. Do you have anything left on your bucket list now that you’ve seen so many corners of the world?

Krall:

I don’t think…I think my goals are getting smaller. I’m not sure. I know there’s so much of the Southwest I haven’t seen. I took my mom on a small boat cruise—there were like 60 passengers—in Alaska. It’s the only time I’ve been to Alaska, and so I think, “Oh, maybe I ought to drive the Alcan before I get too old.” [Laughs]

Other places…I’ve always wanted to go to Turkey, and now I don’t know that I ever will, you know. I don’t…because I like prowling on my own and I don’t want to be stupid and I don’t want to be unwelcome. So, I don’t know. But I’ve always thought it must be a wonderful mix of Europe and the Middle East, you know, just being right there. I don’t know.

I had a bad wreck with my hand, 20…Oh, it was the year I got sequestered. So, it must have been 2014. Had a couple surgeries on it, and two different surgeons said they didn’t think I’d ever play music again. I found a really good OT that tortured me for a while, but…You know, I’ll never be smooth the way I was, but I can play again.

Seag:

Oh, that’s great.

Krall:

It’s a huge deal. I would like to get off my duff more like in the evening when I listen to a book and bead and be like, “No, why don’t you go play music for an hour?” So, there are a few things…I don’t like the idea of being lazy. There are a few things I want to keep doing, and you know, nobody would call playing music on their bucket list unless you wanted to perform somewhere. But it’s just given me so much pleasure my entire life, you know, that I want to keep doing that.

Oh, this new horse that I’ve been given…My old boy, I think he kind of went nuts. He started bucking, and I got piled pretty hard a couple times. I’m not a buckaroo. It’s just really fun for me because all I have to do is go through two gates and I’ve got the BLM and the forest, and whether I want to go for an hour or five hours, you know? So, I like prowling the Red Desert. So, they’re getting…I got to do a lot of foreign travel, and I don’t know how much more I’ll do. I should go to a beach somewhere. I’m sure I should before I stop. I love to snorkel, and you know, you grow up in Iowa and you live in Wyoming—you don’t see the ocean very much. [Laughs]

Seag:

Well, I always end the interview the same way and I ask, is there anything I should have asked you that I didn’t think to ask?

Krall:

[Pauses] No, except for what I would like to say…[Pause; voice catches] It’s the people it’s given me. I mean I think about playing the Christmas party, the acoustic party down there, and I loved it! Mostly a bunch of young kids—and they aren’t kids. They’re in their thirties. I hate that phrase “kids.” Younger…people much younger than I. I always had the feeling that when I walked up on the stage they were going, “Who’s this old lady?” because like I say, I always hid out, you know. I would have so much fun playing and they were so kind! [Laughs] It was the music that caused me to just remember a lot of people I won’t see again. Some I will. The people you know are pulling their weight. [Pauses; voice catches] That wastie crew was phenomenal. I don’t know how he kept them going, but they always had fun, even when they were miserable!

Seag:

Were you ever a wastie?

Krall:

Nm-mmm [no]. Nope. I had thought--oh, the year I got sequestered--no, it was the year after. I don’t remember when. I know that I put in an inquiry in case he needed a materials type. I knew he had an office person sometimes, but…How you can be so upbeat dealing with everybody’s trash. And the knives and the garbage and the…

Seag:

I know! And I know the crew you’re talking about, too. Really awesome people.

Krall:

Wonderful people. Wonderful people. [Pause] Yeah. The last time I played, I sang a song for them, and it just makes me laugh when I think of it now, you know? It does nothing but fill my heart. Yeah. [Voice catches] I’ve been pretty lucky.

Seag:

Yeah. It sounds like it.

[End]