Submitted by Anonymous on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 10:56

Hello to you from Jake, Westin,Shelby, Amber, and the rest of the Mount Valley Class.Okay well we have some questions for you!!! We were looking at pictures of McMurdo Sataion and we saw that there was tractors there.... So we were just wondering what do you use the tractors for?? In the little town that we live in we use tractors for farming, but I'm sure you guys use tractors for completely different reasons. Could you tell us what you use them for. Thanks!

Lindsay Knippenberg

Hi Jake, Westin, Shelby, and Amber!
Thanks for sending me a question while I am here in Antarctica. Yes they have tractors here, but they aren't used for farming. These tractors are the biggest tractors that I have ever seen and a lot of them are used for traversing. Traversing is when they use the tractors to pull gear across the ice over long distances.The ones that I saw at the heavy machine shop were used to pull gear from McMurdo all the way to the South Pole. It is about 1000 miles and takes about 3 weeks to complete. They don't have wheels either. They have treads like a snowmobile to help them move across the ice more easily. 
Thanks for the question!
Lindsay