For many, traveling south during the winter is a way to get warm. For Penn State researcher Don Voigt, traveling south this winter meant getting much colder -- and surviving a plane crash.

From the beginning of December until mid-February, the senior research assistant worked in Antarctica, setting up seismic and GPS stations to measure sea levels.

Voigt's work in Antarctica was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of the International Polar Year (IPY) initiative. The IPY is a two-year period in which scientists around the world coordinate research of the polar ice caps. The last IPY was from 1957 to 1958, according to the NSF.

Now safely back in State College, Voigt remembers the experience that put not only his research, but also his life, in danger.

The plane crash occurred, Voigt said, when he and other members of the research team were about to take off in a Basler airplane, the team's largest aircraft.

The team was prepared to have to camp away from their base, but one important thing was missing from the survival bags -- food.

"It's a mistake I'll never make again," Voigt said.

A Twin Otter aircraft came to begin the team's rescue about 20 hours later; another plane arrived three hours later and returned them to their base camp, McMurdo station, Voigt said. The base houses more than a thousand researchers and support staff.

While no one was seriously injured, the crash did put a crimp on the logistics of Voigt's research. Without the crashed Basler airplane, Voigt's team was forced to rely on the smaller and less powerful Twin Otter airplanes to travel to their research sites, which meant more trips with less gear, Voigt said.

While Voigt was the only Penn State faculty member on the plane during the crash, he was one of seven Penn State researchers who worked on the IPY in Antarctica this winter.

The seismic and Global Positioning System sensors Voigt's team installed are used to collect data that will be used, among other things, to calculate the depth of the Antarctic polar ice cap.

"You have to measure both the top and the bottom of the surface to know what's happening to the mass of the ice," Voigt said. "It has implications for sea level change in particular."

While Voigt's main job was to collect the data, fellow Penn State researcher Sridhar Anandakrishnan's role was to analyze and interpret the data.

"Sea level is just a very, very important topic," Anandakrishnan said. "From our point of view, nothing's really changed. The world is just starting to catch up."

Voigt, who returned to State College Feb. 16, recalled what life is like in Antarctica.

"We miss a lot of things you take for granted, like pizza ... I'm used to it by now," he said.

Voigt also said the constant daylight during Antarctic summers, which are the Northern Hemisphere's winters, will take some adjusting.

"It takes a full season to get used to it," Voigt said.

A typical workweek for Voigt and other researchers in Antarctica was six days.

"For science, there isn't a lot of time off," Voigt said. "As long as the weather is good, you work."

This was Voigt's 12th season in Antarctica since his first trip in 1996, and it won't be his last. "We'll be down again next season," he said.