ice

November 8th.
I got up early again to keep an eye on the passenger manifest. Looked as though I needed to load up at 07:00 and that the flight was departing at 08:30. No problem! Time for breakfast. I had some ham and eggs and sausage and toast and mango juice! I hooked up with a couple of my fellow travelers and shared notes, before heading up to the arrival/departure building 140. I had weighed in and checked almost all my baggage at the “bag drag” the night before, so all the was left at this point was to turn in the keys to my room, pick up a box lunch, and catch “Ivan” to our flight.

We traveled out a different way than we’d arrived, heading over the mountain on the back side of McMurdo station and down through the Kiwi owned Scott Base. We then proceeded out through the pressure ridges on the ice sheet to Pegasus Field beneath Mt. Erebus - the southernmost active volcano on the planet.

We arrived and after a break, we boarded the C-130 Hercules aircraft. Now, C-130s are personally one of my favourite planes of all time. They’re sturdy, they’re hearty and they just plain look cool. This was my first time riding in one, so I have to admit, I was kind of excited about the prospect. This particular model - the LC-130 - is equipped with skis in addition to its landing gear to facilitate landing on the ice. It makes for an interesting landing, not unlike a water landing in an amphibious aircraft.

Also in use by the NSF are a number of DC-3 aircraft, outfitted with skis. DC-3s have to be close to my all time favourite aircraft, just for the decades and decades they’ve been in service, and the aura of adventure and exploration around them. (Think Indiana Jones and Casa Blanca).

The flight was utterly gorgeous. On the advice of a friend who’s been down before, I finagled my way onto the C-130’s flight deck for a good portion of the flight, specifically the crossing of the glacial areas and trans-antarctic mountain range. Some of the starkest and most beautiful scenery I’ve ever seen and imagine will ever see.

The accomodations were much as they had been for the C-17, military style jump-seating.

Heh heh. Jump seat.

The pilots, of course, have been flying this route for over a decade and seen it all before. They set the autopilot and went to work on a novel and PSP game respectively.

After a 3 hour (or was it 5 hour) flight (it seemed so short), we began our descent to the South Pole landing field, outside temperature on the ground being about -46°F when we arrived. I stepped out of the aircraft and onto the ice and my goggles immediately frosted up (as did my camera lens, I discovered later).

I found my way to my contacts and made my way inside the new station building. The new building has only been around a few years, and parts of it are still under construction. It’s all high-tech and custom designed, with colour coded sectors and networking and motion sensors to save energy, and a full gym and basketball court!

The next few days were spent acclimating to the altitude (close to 11,000 ft equivalent air pressure) meeting people and familiarizing myself with the equipment here. The satellite communications system, which I am responsible for, has been cobbled together over the better part of the last decade from NASA reject parts and half completed systems upgrades. The 9 meter transmit antenna uses an ancient weather satellite system called GOES to give low-data tranfer rate networking (S Band) for things like the internet for the station and email. There are two fixed antennas without tracking ability that connect to NASA’s TDRS system (as previously mention) and provide high rate connections for VOIP calls and scientific data dumps. Currently, that gives us connectivity between about 4:40 am to 2:00 pm locally, or about 10:30am to 8:00pm Eastern. Every day the acquisition times move about 4 minutes earlier, due to the earth’s orbit. In any event, the antennas and transmitters for satellite communications are located a full kilometer from the main station. This may not seem like much, but when you’re walking at forty below zero and getting stuck in snow drifts - it helps to not have to go out there every morning. To than end there’s a remote control (M&C) terminal that operates from within the station and conceivably will relieve me of the need to go out there too often. Unless something breaks. >.>

Anyway, I’ve been given my room. The biggest concern I had was that I was going to have to have a room-mate or stay in one of the several large dormitory style quanset huts that exist around the main station. However, being IT has its perks it seems. It’s a small room, but I have a desk and a closet and connection to the network and a phone, which is all I ask. Oh, and no room mate.

I had my first shower since arriving at the pole today. A total of 2 minutes max of my two shower per week allotment. As I’ve gotten quite a bad head cold, the humidity really helped me out. That brings me to my next point - I never realized that Antarctica was the DRIEST place on earth. It’s so, so, so devoid of humidity… Every time I sneeze, my nose bleeds. I am parched all the time and people are required to carry water bottles with them and drink regularly. At the same time, this is a blessing, as it keeps the extreme cold from feeling all that terribly cold.

We’re receiving 3 square meals a day! The food is… passable at worst and not terribly bad once in a while. I had a delicous crab and artichoke bisque for dinner last night. There’s usually several courses to choose from (including vegetarian) and an assortment of juices and even a frosty ice cream machine. It’s all served cafeteria style, and the lines aren’t long. Basically eat and go.

I will have more pictures coming. Unfortunately, my busy times are when the internet is at its best, and atmospheric distortion as the satellite moves over the horizon keeps me from uploading photos or videos en masse. More will follow, especially as I get into the swing of things down here and work out my own schedule.

Oh, and I actually did make it out to the polar marker! There are two of them, a gaudy barber pole style affair with a shiny ball on top and various national flags surrounding it. Then there’s the real marker, a steel pole driven into the ice with a brass engraved marker on the top. This marks the position of the real pole - different every year due to the movement of the 9,000 foot thick ice sheet on which we sit.

November 7th, I got up early and went to breakfast to check the passenger manifest for the day. I found my name listed on the “bag-drag” list, which means that I need to have my kit packed up for placement on a C-130 by 7:00pm tonight. I’ll be flying out tomorrow for the South Pole. I was going to go over to the COMMS shop to help out today, but since I need to pack and reorganize I may not get to it. Besides, before my manager left he instructed me that if we were only going to be here a few days I could “take my time and explore the place”. The room was cold last night, and I slept in my thermal underwear, which I guess is to be expected. I watched a movie on my laptop and listened to some music before taking a sleeping pill to nod off. The sun doesn’t do a whole lot but wobble around in the sky and get kind of dusky here, so operations are going well into the night. My cabin is next to a few helipads, so trying to sleep is reminiscent of M*A*S*H*.
I found, to my disappointment, that all of the video I’d shot of the C-17 and deployment both in Christchurch and here has gotten corrupted. I’ve tried to recover it from the SD card, but have had no luck so far. This is disappointing, as I had some good stuff on there. In any event, I still have a few still photos and I’ll be more diligent to save what I’ve got already.

November 5, we were bussed to the Christchurch airport and the Antarctic Departure Terminal. There we were made to suit up in all of our cold weather gear (including boots, parka, goggles, hats, gloves and everything) and greeted by Kiwi military and customs officers and dogs who thoroughly checked our kit. We were then shuttled onboard a C-17 military cargo aircraft operated by the New York National Guard. Seating consisted of fold down webbing seats along the inner sides of the aircraft and rows of traditional airline seating mounted in the cargo area. Behind the seats were large pallets of cargo netted and secured in place. I took one of the seats along the side because I’d been briefed by an insider that - though they looked less comfortable - the netting seats offered a lot more room to stretch out. Indeed, all the newbies rushed into the airline seats and soon found themselves overheated and packed in like red parka’d marshmallows in their ECW gear.

Loading up the cargo area on the C-17 Globemaster III.

The flight was a bumpy 5 hours, and after a short diversion on final approach (that I later learned was a NSF helicopter flying where it wasn’t supposed to be) we slid to a stop on the ice at Pegasus Field near McMurdo Station, Antarctica. Weather outside was about 8 degrees below zero, and a bright an sunny day by all accounts.

Unloading cargo, scientists and personnel at Pegasus Field.

We were ushered onto a large transport labelled in bright letters near the door as “Ivan the terror bus” and driven about a half hour to McMurdo Station proper. We were briefed on a number of things in the main dining hall and given our room assignments. I was bunking in a lodge near the edge of the camp called “Mammoth Mountain Inn” along with another person who was waiting for a flight out to the pole.

Me, with the Ross Ice Shelf in the background.

In town, McMurdo station. It houses up to 1200 people during the summer months.

Looking down across the helipads and other support building towards the Ross Ice Shelf.

MMI, on the right, my lodging while here on Station.

I also met my manager who promised to meet me in the morning after breakfast in order to find something to do in the mean time. At about midnight the phone in our room received a phone call for my roommate, instructing him to have his bags ready in 20 minutes. The next morning, I’d found that both he and my manager had actually gotten a flight out on a C-130, and so I was left alone to wait for the next flight. I took the opportunity to use my off time to launder my clothes and take what would probably be the longest and most complete shower I’d have for the next four months. McMurdo rations water and energy pretty closely, but nearly so much as the Pole. I also made my way down to the COMMS shop to speak to the satellite and High Frequency radio guys. They gave me a little walk around of their shop and in passing mentioned being nearly creamed by the C-17 I was in the day before while they were flying back from a remote site in their UH1 (Huey) helicopter. Most of their guys were out working on equipment and they had nothing for me to do, so I returned to the internet connection in the dorm to finish some business I had - signing up for benefits, paying off some bills, etc.