Antarctica 2018: Chapter 3: Christchurch!

Link to Chapter 2: Auckland
Link to Chapter 1: From Hawaii to Antarctica

Christchurch!

Welcome to Christchurch, NZ: Jump-off point for McMurdo and (most) Pole expeditions.

Summary of Takeaways for future Antarctic travelers:

• Don’t fly Jetstar! (It’s really worth saying again)

• ASC Travel will meet you at the airport and arrange onward transportation, so it’s important to keep them updated if your incoming flight arrival time changes.

• The cargo guys at the USAP yard can and will work with you if you have issues!

• Don’t travel with your USAP bag tags unless you want to be “adopted” by some guy who has been to the ice just enough to want to talk about it very, very loudly.
  

I have been, and continue to be, impressed with the sheer professionalism of the NSF and ASC staff, both at HQ in Denver and here in Christchurch. These guys understand that they have a mission to get done, and they are can-do types. They figure it out. The USAF would be a hell of an organization if they could figure out how to lose everyone that doesn’t have this attitude.

I walk out of the Christchurch airport area and come down the escalator to baggage claim, and there’s a lady there with a bright red vest on. It’s hard to miss the Antarctic symbol on her jacket, and if you did, there’s the large clipboard with it as well. She already has a cart. I walk up to her and she says “Michael? Right this way.”

After the incompetence in Auckland, this is like manna from heaven.

Her name is Diane, and she works for ASC Travel in Christchurch. She’s the one who put me on with the travel supervisor. “You’ve had quite a journey, haven’t you?” she says. She tells me Jetstar used to be the contract carrier for USAP from Auckland, codeshare with American. Apparently one year they had over 300 lost cases of equipment. When they switched to United / Air NZ, it dropped to 30. I can’t even imagine how a scientist would feel if after all their work to make the gear Antarctic ready, it went missing on the way down. I’d be furious.

We claim the backpack and Pelican case from the conveyor belt. The wires coming out of the case into the target bag look stretched but intact. She has a car waiting, and a welcome folder. “We’re going to take you right to our cargo folks,” she says. “They’re expecting you.”

I’m really starting to like these people. 

Diane drives me around the airport, and you can immediately see the large footprint that the US Antarctic program has here. Whenever I travel abroad, I’m used to a negative perception of Americans, and particularly the military. But here, the local economy benefits greatly from the US presence (both NSF and USAF), and they like supporting the Antarctic mission. Every year, when it’s time for the first flight of the Antarctic summer (about two weeks ago), the Air Force “Herc” (my first glimpse of it below) does a low flight over the town, letting people know it’s back, and people cheer as it flies overhead. They also do an open house for a day, where local Kiwis can come in and climb around the C-5 and C-130s that do the big Antarctic cargo lifts, and that’s a big hit. Diane says this year almost 20,000 people came out.

“The U.S Air Force’s officers there explained how the researchers can spend just a few days or up to half a year in Antarctica. The US and New Zealand has a shared agreement to cooperate on scientific research, climate studies and ecological preservation in Antarctica. The US Air Force provides monthly air transportation and pilots to send New Zealand and international scientists, food and other supplies to the New Zealand Scott Base in Antarctica.”

It’s terrific to see the support that the US and its scientific program has here, and makes me proud to be part of it.

US Air Force C-130 Hercules, assigned to the US Antarctic Program from the New York Air National Guard, at the Christchurch USAP ramp. As of this writing [Nov 12], the first LC-130 (ski-equipped C-130) has yet to make it to the South Pole. The first LC-130 of the 2018 season only made it to McMurdo on Nov 10. Weather delays have plagued the start of the season.

Over to the cargo yard to meet my favorite Kiwi yet, Dave J. He is cargo supervisor, and runs Bay 1, which is all the USAP cargo. It’s right next to the Royal NZ Air Force yard. He’s already heard about my woes, and has a plan.

When the cargo comes in, Dave says, it’ll be at the Air NZ yard. I can’t go get it, but he can. He says he can just hold onto it, and directly load it onto whatever flight takes me to McMurdo. If I get bumped, or boomeranged (fly all the way there but turn around and return due to bad weather at the destination), the bags will follow me “like a bad cold”. This is great news, because of two dreaded words: “bag drag”.

When you get to McMurdo, you take all your hand carried luggage off the flight and take it to the dormitories, where you’re staying while you await your flight to the Pole. Again, for most people, not a big deal. Maybe two bags. I’ve got five, and they’re heavy. “Bag drag” is where you bring all your shit to the McMurdo terminal the night before you fly out. They weigh it, load it on the plane, and all you bring to the flight the next morning is a “boomerang bag”, with a change of toiletries and stuff to do on the plane. If the plane gets turned around, that’s all you can leave with — everything else stays on the plane. Bag drag is at the top of a very large hill. Dragging five bags and 250 lbs in the cold was not something I was looking forward to.

What Dave is offering is to tag it all as cargo, NOT hand carry. This means it goes on a pallet in the cargo bay in Christchurch, stays there at McMurdo, and goes with me to Pole. If it needs to be offloaded, the pallet is offloaded by forklift. No bag drag. All I drag is my backpack and pelican case, 85 lbs. A breeze. Dave has done me a real solid here, and he didn’t have to. Technically the baggage is designated hand carry. I don’t know if he just felt sorry for me (“bag drag is gonna be a real drag without that wheel, ya know”), or because it’s early in the season he has enough flexibility with cargo weight, but I take him up on the offer to palletize the telescope bag and black bag, and try not to sound too eager.

Just awesome.

So now I’m waiting in Christchurch for my two bags to arrive. In the meantime, I check in at the CDC, or the Clothing Distribution Center, right down the street, walking distance from the airport. This is ground zero for an upcoming Antarctica deployment. If you have a sane amount of baggage, you can absolutely walk here instead of paying for a SuperShuttle (what normally happens if you’re part of a big group — Diane can’t take you all where you need to go).

Reporting to the CDC for the first time!

I also have a chance to walk around the Antarctic complex. The Italian Antarctic program is here too, though it is much smaller than the US program. LANDIT is hoping to work with the Italians at their Dome C base in future years, so I chat with some of the Italian scientists waiting for their transport as well. They are a friendly lot. Everyone seems very welcoming once they know that you, too, have that elusive ticket to freeze. The Italians are headed to Mario Zucchelli station, on the coast like McMurdo. They are also very curious about the South Pole, and tell me they really want to visit the US station there.

The International Antarctic Centre. Directly behind the sign, down the walkway, is the United States Antarctic Passenger Terminal: the gateway to the ice continent! CDC is to the far right.

Interestingly, there’s also a tourist attraction co-located on the site! They “simulate” Antarctic weather, have huskies and penguins, and showcase some of the vehicles scientists use to get around on Antarctica. It looks fascinating, but costs $59 NZD. Call me cheap, but I prefer not to pay that when I can do the real thing! I realize I’m really lucky to have this option, and now that the awfulness of the “Auckland bag drag” is behind me, I’m starting to get *extremely* excited about what’s to come.

The tourist version of the International Antarctic Centre. The vehicles in front are Swedish-made “Hagglunds”, used on the ice for towing upto 2 tons and transporting upto 4 people.

In between meetings, I also have a little time to explore downtown Christchurch. The city had an earthquake in 2011 that devastated the area. They’ve done a great job cleaning up downtown — most buildings downtown look ultra-modern and new — but you can still see a few buildings, especially the historical heritage buildings, that are still being worked on seven years later.

Downtown Ch-Ch: ongoing repair in places.

Reconstruction of a destroyed garden walkway

Left, and above: Street art murals that depict scenes from the Christchurch earthquake.

Even downtown, you can see the support for the Antarctic program. It’s a true privilege to be in this city and part of one its central enterprises.

Support for the Antarctic program is all over Christchurch: poster above the bar reads:
“…welcomes the Guardians of Antarctica and wishes you well for the Antarctic season”

In preparing for this trip, I talked to several experienced Antarctic travelers who told me that the worst part of Christchurch can be letting people know you’re a “fyngie”, slang for f—ing new guy to the ice. Watch out, I was told, for the loudmouths who have been to the ice just once or twice, and so want to “take you under their wing”. They’ll loudly talk about Antarctica, technically to you, but really so everyone else can hear that they’re headed to Antarctica. The real old hands, of course, just bury themselves in a corner and try not to make eye contact with anyone, because they’ve been through all this before. They’re saving their energy for when they’ll need it.

Apparently it starts at LAX, but continues in Christchurch, even McMurdo. If you have USAP tags on your bag from this year (each year has a different color), you’re declaring yourself a first timer, since the old hands have previous year tags on their gear.

Bag tags: a surprising bullshit magnet.

I’ve escaped once because I’m at the very early edge of the season, so most travelers have yet to get started on their voyage. I escaped twice (though I wouldn’t call it an escape) by flying American, which isn’t the contract carrier for USAP. And I escaped a third time because Dave J. was a boss and took my bags away from me. I’m a first timer, and on my own here, so I know exactly no one. Which means I get to fly under the radar until the ice flight.

So I sit at various bars in Christchurch and just listen, often with a smile on my face. There’s all kinds here. There’s scientists talking among themselves, worried about the weather and the delays. This year Pole has opened a month later than expected, and the backup is expected to be large. There’s grad students excited about the trip and frustrated at the slow WiFi to post updates to Facebook. There’s even a couple of Chinese tourists who are paying an absolute fortune to spend a few days on the ice. They are talking to their guide trying to plan every second of every day, while the guide tries (in vain) to explain to them that Antarctica doesn’t really work like that, you have to go with the flow and adapt.

And finally, of course, I do hear them. They are all over town, really: the “once and twice ice travelers”. They loudly proclaim at the bar, to anyone within earshot, that they have been to Antarctica before, and are heading there again. I watch one of the first time grad students get “adopted”, and sure enough, the next day the “twice ice” guy is there with him, talking loudly at him, and the grad student looks pained. The local Kiwis are certainly an interested audience; most of the bartenders want to hear ice stories, and have ice stories from others to share as well. It’s a very positive atmosphere, but maybe I have the luxury of thinking that, because I’m just another patron at the bar, listening to ice stories, free to walk away when I want to without having to worry about being rude to someone I’ll see again on the ice. Antarctica is a small town, after all.