Japan's 45th expedition weathers extreme conditions to unlock secrets of the Earth's ancient past. `It's (Dome Fuji Station) like a dark empty ice cave.' FUMIO KIUCHI Expedition team member

SYOWA STATION, Antarctica--There is vast frontier far more formidable than even this remote outpost.

Perched 3,810 meters above sea level, and 1,000 kilometers inland from Syowa Station where the average temperature is 40 degrees ``warmer,'' is Dome Fuji Station.

It is the highest facility operating in Antarctica and one of the Earth's last great frontiers.

The atmospheric pressure is only about two-thirds of Japan's flat-plane areas. Temperatures have plummeted to a record minus 79.7 degrees. The inhospitable environment ensures not a single living creature will be found in hundreds of kilometers of this icy mountaintop.

The only exception is the 45th expedition party-16 researchers holed up to assess ancient climate changes. The team plans to drill 3,030 meters deep to extract ice formed a million years ago.

Life at the Fuji base, where the average temperature is minus 54 degrees and the blue sky is filled with dancing ``diamond dust,'' requires skill and finesse.

Team members taking a dip in the steaming outdoor bath know they have to gulp down their hot sake fast before it starts freezing. At the southernmost tip of the Earth where the summer sun never sets, the temperature is now about minus 30 degrees.

It took the 45th expedition about a month by snowmobile from Syowa Station to reach the Fuji outpost last November. Until then, the dome had been empty for 10 months. Fumio Kiuchi, 42, remembers thinking upon arrival: ``It's like a dark empty ice cave.''

He said the ceiling and walls were completely blanketed in a sheet of frost.

Kiuchi and fellow member Tomoyasu Iizumi, 33, had to thaw the generators and instruments with warm air for four days nonstop before they could be used.

Members must collect snow twice a day to maintain their water supply. Even more taxing than the freezing temperature is the rarefied mountain air.

Due to the high altitude, the barometric pressure is only about 600 hectopascals-correlating roughly to the atmospheric pressure at 4,300 meters above sea level in a mid-latitude region.

Even light movement causes shortness of breath; if you dare run, you get chest pains. Pulse rates are elevated even while you lie down. Many suffer headaches until their bodies adjust to the environment.

The atmospheric pressure is so low that water boils at a mere 86 degrees.

The water heater displays ``now heating'' indefinitely because the temperature never hits 100 degrees.

Rice must be cooked in a pressure cooker.

Noodle preparation requires much concentration. Once done, the pressure cooker is smothered in fresh snow to flash-cool the contents; the noodles must be taken out immediately to prevent them from turning to mush.

The Antarctic sun does not set from late October to mid-February. Over a third of the days are sunny, year round.

Strangely enough, you do not feel the cold that much because the golden rays of the sun fill the air; there is not much wind, and the air is dry.

If you shield your eyes from the glare and cast your gaze upward, you find the sky is filled with minute ice particles, or ``diamond dust,'' twirling in the light.

Daylight refracted through crystals in the upper atmosphere often creates a bright circle of light around the sun with two mock suns on either side, tinged with colors of the rainbow.

On the ground, team members have found clusters of perfect snowballs-nestled in little dents on the blanket of snow. They are actually frost balls.

Step inside an ice cave and the air suddenly turns milky white. The minus 40- to minus 50-degree temperature turns exhaled air into instant icy slush, forming a crystal fog.

Why build an outpost in such an extreme environment?

It is the perfect spot for ice-core drilling. The ancient ice contains information that enables researchers to reconstruct climate changes.

Due to global atmospheric movement, various material, including volcanic ashes and radioactive particles, get carried to the Antarctic, falling onto its surface with the snow.

The snow gets embedded into deep ice sheets. As this happens, accompanying air gets trapped inside in the form of ice bubbles as the snow turns to ice.

If the process takes place at the peak of an icy mountain, the layers of ice will not slide off, but accumulate into dense layers.

Thus, core drilling becomes a dig into the past. The deeper you drill, the more you travel back.

Preparations for the construction of the Dome Fuji base began in 1989. The first team wintered there in 1995.

The current Fuji project that began in 2003 will excavate ice-core samples by 2006. The drill will turn 24 hours nonstop until it hits bedrock.

Daily efforts are being made to maintain the last pristine environment on Earth.

The interior of the toilets are covered in vinyl sheets. Instead of a flush, a push on the pedal sucks away the contents into a bag. Members take turns being ``bathroom monitors,'' stowing away the packs into drums.

Trash is separated carefully into burnables, non-burnables, glass and tins. Everything must be taken home.

In order to protect the environment, the Antarctic Treaty prohibits open incineration or burying waste. Still, in reality, it is impossible to haul all waste back to Syowa Station on a sled. The waste bins, labeled ``to be returned eventually,'' will have to wait their turn.

Yoshiyuki Fujii, professor of glaciology at the National Institute of Polar Research, said, ``We need to look into ways to use energy sources that do not burden our natural resources-such as wind and solar energy, or fuel batteries.''(IHT/Asahi: January 26,2005)