Everything from the bathrooms to off-color humor to alcohol-drenched social hours in the harsh environs of Earth's last frontier has had a decidedly male tint since the Navy established McMurdo Station--the main American base in Antarctica--as a military outpost in 1956.

But Wall, 55, a soil ecologist studying the life cycle of microscopic worms, has seen McMurdo evolve into a softer, gentler place where women are respected rather than leered at during annual research trips to Antarctica since 1989. Today, McMurdo is a research station of Quonset huts maintained by the National Science Foundation where scientists live with roommates in dorm rooms.

About one-third of the 1,000 scientists and support crew who flock to McMurdo during the Antarctic summer--December through February--are women. They study everything from penguin diets to geology and meteorology. They manage labs, operate heavy equipment and fly helicopters.

Indeed, McMurdo has all but lost its hardened male edge, Wall said. It's got a soothing nickname: Mactown. One of McMurdo's three bars was transformed into a gym, and the Officer's Club was converted into a coffeehouse serving after-work wine, cheese, cappuccino and conversation.

When women first arrived, the Navy Shore Patrol was routinely making sweeps to rescue men who had fallen down drunk in McMurdo's streets.

Women banned for decades

For decades, the nations that ran Antarctic programs officially banned women, supposedly because the rigors of the continent were too great for the women, but also because the rigors of providing separate bathrooms were too great for program administrators, said Cornelia Dean, a New York Times reporter who has visited and reported on Antarctica.

U.S. programs were all-male until 1969, and it wasn't until 1974 that two American women wintered at McMurdo. Today, men and women work cooperatively side by side, doing research in the field and in the lab.

"One thing that's changed is that there's definately more women than in 1989," Wall said. "There's women's bathrooms now. That's a big plus. Essentially we shared everything before. And it's not so much that we notice anymore who are women and who are men but we're doing science and it's a big team effort."

Wall said she's always been treated with respect in the isolated confines of the world's coldest and iciest region, which surrounds the South Pole.

"I think it has to do with life-and-death issues, going out to the field," Wall said. "We are all each other's walking blood donors, and we know that," she said.

Indeed, evacuation in case of serious illness or injury could take hours--or days--depending on the weather. Wall, associate dean of the college of natural resources, and postdoctoral students Andy Parsons and Dorota Porazinska have passed rigorous physical exams. Though there's a doctor at Mactown, there's no hospital, pharmacy or blood bank.

They will attend a required survival school, a waste-management course (all waste must be biodegradable) and a helicopter school so they know what to do if there's a crash.

"There's an emphasis on getting you out alive," Wall said.

The trio will fly to New Zealand, then don jumpsuits and ride a military cargo plane for eight hours to Antarctica.

"Meal service comes in a paper bag," Wall said.

Exploring ice-free valleys

From their Mactown headquarters, they will take 45-minute chopper flights to Antarctica's dry valleys to collect soil samples. The valleys--where glaciers have retreated and wind prevents snow from collecting--have one of the driest climates on Earth and are part of the 2 percent of the continent that is ice-free.

"I think the most exciting thing for us is to find out how life in soil is important in ecosystems," Wall said. "In order to maintain the planet sustainably, we need to know whether individual species in soils are critical to important things such as soil fertility, water quality, soil erosion, maintaining plant diversity and cleaning the atmosphere.

"How can we have a sustainable planet when soil species and their importance remain unknown?"

The simplicity of the soil in Antarctica eliminates variables and makes it a good laboratory, she said.

"It's such an extreme environment that anything living in the soil is miraculous," Wall said. "They have long winters with little warmth, and it doesn't have the organisms in the soil like we do in Colorado. While the soils in Colorado are complex and teeming with life, when we go to Antarctica, it's the simplest soil on Earth."

January's summer temperatures range from 5 to minus 31 inland and can reach 32 on the coast, near where the CSU team will be working.

'It's like being on Mars'

But in the midwinter of July, temperatures range from minus 40 to minus 94 inland and minus 5 to minus 22 on the coast.

"When we get out in the field, it's a whole different life," Wall said. "When that helicopter leaves, there's no sound in the valleys. It's like being on Mars. There's no birds, no insects, nothing flying around. The only life is in the soil."

The research is funded by the National Science Foundation, and one of the benefits for the CSU team is working alongside scientists from other disciplines.

"We could be working in the lab next door to the guys from the 'penguin ranch.' They call us the 'worm herders,' and we talk to them about what they're doing. There's a lot of interdisciplinary discussions we wouldn't usually have," Wall said. "At the galley, you sit down to eat with a geologist or an electrician."