The continent of Antarctica is literally a world away from tiny Greybull, Wyoming — but a peculiarly high percentage of the workforce at McMurdo Station in the 1980s and '90s hailed from the small Big Horn County town.
Two Greybull couples who spent years working “on the ice” told Cowboy State Daily that the friendships that were formed there continue, even though they’ve been back in Wyoming for 20 years or more.
It’s not that hard to stay in touch, either. Gerald Crist says that at one time, around 10% of the workforce at McMurdo hailed from Greybull.
“It probably produced more people working in Antarctica than any other town,” he said. “So they called it the Greybull Mafia.”
Crist spent 19 winters in Antarctica (or summers, depending on the perspective), and looked back on those seasons of hard work, isolation, and adventure as a formative period in his family’s life.
Bobby Werner hooking up heaters to an LC 130. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner) 
Gerald Crist doing snow removal in Antarctica. (Courtesy Gerald Crist) 
Gerald Crist fueling a U.S. Air Force aircraft in Antarctica. (Courtesy Gerald Crist) 
Deanna Werner cleaning windows in an underwater observation tube in Antarctica. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner)
Alternative To Local Labor Force
Crist said he found out about the opportunity to work on the southern end of the planet from, of all people, his hairdresser, Shirley Kersner.
“I was a foreman at the bentonite plant, and the rotating shifts were eating me up,” he said. “So I just thought this would be a way to make a lot of money. But I didn't know till later, you didn't make much money there.”
However, Crist said the schedule was, in an odd way, better than if he tried to work construction in the summers in Wyoming.
“If I would have gotten into heavy road construction here, I would have been gone a couple hundred miles from town most of the time, trying to come home for one-day weekends,” he said. “So we thought it was better being gone all at once, and then coming back and having six months off where I didn't have work on my mind.”
But that schedule had its downsides, as well, said Crist.
“It was a very intense way of living, because you're doing all your work in six months, so you're working really hard, long hours, and then you come home, and you're playing catch up, because you've been gone,” he said. “You're trying to do every kind of maintenance you can think of on vehicles and homes so that (my wife) wouldn't have a problem.”
Crist said he was hired on the spur of the moment in 1989, as one of the other Greybull workers had to bow out of his shift at the last minute.
“I only had a couple of weeks to do my physical and get down there. So I kind of went in there, kind of blind.”
'Greybull Mafia'
Crist was one of many Wyomingites who spent northern hemisphere winters at the bottom of the world. With a crew of 50 support personnel, Crist said that at any given time there would be 5 or 6 workers from Big Horn County.
“When the oil field crashed here in Greybull, that was a motivating factor, because people were needing jobs,” said Crist. “But Greybull’s always had people that worked in the oil fields and commuted long distances for work and stayed in mancamps. So it's kind of in our culture.”
One of those Greybull residents was just 13 years old when seals and penguins began dancing in her dreams.
“When I was about 13, I had a lot of friends from Greybull that had gone down there, and I was just enthralled and just excited about Antarctica,” said Deanna Werner, then Deanna Miller. “And I did school reports on it. I researched it. I loved it.
"I wrote my friends letters, I sent gifts down there to Antarctica because I was so excited. And they, in turn, sent me T-shirts, calendars, and a stuffed seal that I still have.”
A decade later, a conversation with Gerald Crist started the process of making her dreams a reality.
“Deanna Werner was just a young gal,” said Crist. “Her mom worked at the local co-op, and they knew I worked in Antarctica, and she wanted to go to Antarctica. So I got her the contact she needed to get on.”
Orca sighting near McMurdo Station. (Courtesy Photo) 
Penguins doing what penguins do in the sun in Antarctica. (Debbie and Gerald Crist) 
Tanker providing fuel to the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. (Courtesy Photo) 
Deanna Werner with a stuffed seal. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner)
Connections At the South Pole
It was his experience in the Air Force that enticed Bobby Werner to try a year on the ice.
“For two years, I interacted with several different people that had been to the ice, and then when I retired, I stayed in touch with a couple, and out of the blue, one day, he offered me a job,” said Werner, who didn’t say yes to the opportunity right away.
But when circumstances in his personal life changed, he decided to do one season.
“Five years later, I exited the Antarctic Program," he said.
When Werner first went to Antarctica in 2000, he worked in the heavy equipment repair shop as a preventative maintenance mechanic, servicing the aircraft for the Air National Guard. By then, Deanna Miller was in her second year at McMurdo.
“The first job I applied for was kitchen duty in the galley,” said Deanna. “And then the next year, I was moved up to janitorial service. And then the last few years, I ended up being in administrative positions.”
It was in Bobby’s second year, Deanna’s third, that something sparked between them.
“We were friends before we started dating,” said Deanna. “And then when we were off the ice, we worked in the Denver headquarters with hiring, purchasing, supplies, logistics and things of that nature.
"And something just clicked. And on our first date, it was a hike over to Hut Point. Because, you know, there's really not much to do, because you work 12 hour days, six days a week, so it's just a lot of work, not a lot of play.”
Scientific Support Crew
Werner explained that all of the Antarctica crew is hired under government contracts, through the National Science Foundation (NSF).
For many of the Greybull workers in Antarctica, their purpose was to support military and scientific operations at McMurdo Station.
That meant heavy equipment operations, administrative staff and janitorial work.
Crist said that in his first year, he was assigned to work on an experimental project that had never been attempted before.
“I got tapped to work on a brand new project, and that was to land heavy wheeled aircraft, like C-130s and C-141s on the glacier,” he said. “So we started what was called a blue ice runway, because the glacier, if the ice is exposed, looks blue.”
Crist said the first attempts at creating the ice runway were unsuccessful.
“But we kept working, and we finally figured it out,” he said. “And five years later, we were landing C-141's on a glacier. That's the first time in the world that had happened.”
Crist said that in later years he did the same sort of work on the far North Slope on the edge of the Beaufort Sea, close to Point Barrow, Alaska, building ice roads and drilling pads.
“We would spend December and most of January, so that the rigs could get out there as soon as possible,” he said of his 11 years in Alaska. “Then we'd go into a maintenance season where a few of us would stay and keep the roads clear of snow. It's always drifting up there, that's a big problem. And we'd repave the roads all the time to keep them strong, otherwise they would start cracking.”
Bobby Werner on a boondoggle inside one of the ice caves near McMurdo Station. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner) 
Bobby Werner checking the generator at an ice runway in Antarctica. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner) 
A D8 dozer used to clear snow overburden in Antarctica. (Courtesy Gerald Crist) 
C-17 landing with the Trans Antarctic Mountains in the background. (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner)
Conditions On the Ice
Crist said that from 1989-1995 he worked in an outcamp called Williams Field, which no longer exists. Upon arrival each year, he and his crew mates would have to dig to find the door to their barracks.
“It would get buried every winter, the snow would drift it in,” said Crist. “So we'd get off the first flights and drag our bags across the snow till we found the roof hatch, throw it down, and then I'd go on out to where I had an old D8 dozer out there on the hill and get it fired up so we could start opening up the main door so we can get stuff into the hut and the shop.”
He said the dorm was one long barracks, with a corridor connecting the rooms.
“It was a side by side joined together with a center hallway, a bedroom on each side of that, two men to a room,” said Crist. “And at that time, there were about 20 people there, three or four women, but mostly men.”
The hut had a kitchen on one end and a lounge on the other, and just one shower.
“We could take one or two showers a week because we had to melt our snow for water,” Crist said.
Life At McMurdo
At McMurdo, where the majority of business took place, life was similar, but with slightly more comfortable accommodations, according to Deanna Werner.
“There was dormitory style living. Everybody had a roommate, some people had more than one,” she said. “Everything is paid for, your food, your dorm, your cold-weather clothing that you were issued in Christchurch, New Zealand. If you wanted to purchase anything from the store or the bar, of course, that's out of pocket.”
Despite the public perception of Antarctica, ice and snow doesn’t dominate the landscape year-round. Deanna said when they weren’t having coffee with friends, watching movies, or playing card games, much of their free time was spent outdoors cross-country skiing or hiking.
“When we go down there, it's during their summer season, so everything melts,” she said. “It turns to mud, and then it dries up and then turns to dust. And we're also right on the Weddell Sea, and we could go whale watching, we could look for penguins, we could look for seals. I went cross country skiing a lot. We went hiking.”
Harsh Conditions
While South Pole conditions could be harsh, Crist experienced some of the coldest weather imaginable, even setting a record for extended exposure to extreme cold.
“I'd seen some minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit there when I was there, but in McMurdo, we're down at sea level. So I think minus 71 or minus 72 is as cold as I think it's ever been there,” he said. “But I was one of the guys that set the record for cold weather, snow survival training.
"It was minus 61 degrees, and we had to dig out a hut to get some tents out, take them to another area, set the tents up and then survive that night.”
Crist explained that even with the right equipment, spending hours in the extreme cold could still be deadly.
“The most tasking part of working in that weather is mental,” he said. “You’ve got to constantly be aware of your fingers, your feet, your ears, your nose, because if you quit feeling something and it gets comfortable, you're in trouble.”
Gerald Crist at the South Pole. (Courtesy Gerald Crist) 
Bobby and Deanna Werner on "date day." (Courtesy Bobby and Deanna Werner)
Role Reversal At Home
Crist said that in spending summers at home in Wyoming, he and his wife Debbie would, in a way, reverse roles.
She would concentrate on work and school (attending night classes to eventually become a speech language pathologist) and he would cook and take care of their three kids.
“We had been pretty traditional up till then, because she was taking care of the kids,” said Crist. “Then she had to pay the bills when I was gone and get into the finances, and she liked that. When I came home, I'd take over the cooking until Debbie was tired of my cooking, then she'd start cooking.”
But there came a point, in 2004, when Debbie was able to be a part of Gerald’s Antarctic life. Having completed her degree, and in a season of transition, Debbie - and all three of the Crist children - spent one season on the ice.
“I was a one-time wonder,” said Debbie. “I went down for one season, October through a little bit of March. You have to get a job to be there, you have to be working. So I took a janitor job,
and Deanna Werner, she hired me.”
The work wasn’t easy, nor was it very fun, but Debbie said it was worth it for the experience.
“It was physical work, and I got assigned to what we called ‘Hotel California,’ but it was just a dorm, mostly the bathrooms and the lounge, where they hang out,” she said. “I did some other cleaning, like for the medical building. And I cleaned the bars some, but Gerald had to help me with that.”
Time To Leave
Crist’s 19-year tenure in Antarctica was unusual, as most people only spent a couple of years on the ice due to the intense schedule.
For Bobby Werner, one five-year stint wasn’t enough. He and Deanna exited life on the ice in 2005, but Bobby returned in a different role six years later.
“In 2011 I went back as the McMurdo Station Operations Manager, and did that for three seasons,” he said.
But the friendships that were forged in the southern hemisphere didn’t end there. Each year, between 25 to 30 former Antarctica staff gather in the Bighorn Mountains for “Ice Camp.”
“Gerald Crist and his wife Debbie pretty much organize that every year,” said Bobby. “They keep tabs with several people that we all worked with. And there's people there at Ice Camp that we didn't know were there during other periods of time than us. But of course, we all have McMurdo and the South Pole in common.”
For Deanna, her years in Antarctica were the culmination of the dream she had at 13 — a dream fulfilled that truly changed the course of her life.
“When I got that stuffed seal when I was 13, that's what started the dream,” she said. “I had no fear at all when I first went down, and when I got off that airplane, and I knew that my family and friends had stepped on the same ground that I did, it was so emotional, I started to cry.
"And then the tears froze to my face.”
Wendy Corr can be reached at wendy@cowboystatedaily.com.
