Many groups, like ours, utilize McMurdo as a place to organize field gear for camping trips to distant sites on the continent to collect samples. Others groups stay in McMurdo to conduct experiments on samples collected nearby. All the science groups have small offices and some work on high tech equipment here in the Crary Lab. This is an amazing resource, particularly in terms of support staff who really work hard to help us out.
An exciting new addition to the local scenery is the small group of windmills erected to generate power for this energy hungry place. My understanding is that this effort was led by the New Zealanders, whose base (Scott Base) in only about a mile away. Luckily, the international cooperation between the NZ and US Antarctic programs means that McMurdo is benefitting from this great ‘green’ experiment in power generation.