Antarctica 2018: Chapter 6: Touchdown Antarctica
Link to Chapter 5: Flight Day!
Link to Chapter 4: ECWs
Link to Chapter 3: Christchurch!
Link to Chapter 2: Auckland
Link to Chapter 1: From Hawaii to Antarctica
We didn’t get turned around!
The C-17 continues to drone on, and about four hours into the five hour flight, this is the view from the window of the plane.
First views of Antarctica!
The isolation is immediately striking, both in its beauty and its starkness. There are no native inhabitants to this continent. You have to strive to get here. It’s inhospitable, but it’s also unimaginably beautiful. I find myself glued to the window for several minutes, entranced.
I also have a chance to chat with the C-17 pilot, who would be doing his first landing on ice in about an hour, when we arrived at McMurdo’s Phoenix Airfield. The snow is still hard, he sasaysid, not melty like it would be soon, and there’s over 10,000 feet of groomed surface to land on. It wouldn’t be hard, he says, no different than landing on a wet runway; but this is also an experienced C-17 instructor pilot talking. You have to be an IP to get this gig.
The navigation for this flight used to be extremely hard. This far south, the lines of longitude begin to converge on one another, which means that the magnetic deviation changes every few minutes, making compasses unreliable. They are almost completely useless on the Pole run. But the pilots use GPS, and “grid” coordinates, which create equidistant squares on the map, instead of narrowing triangles the further south you got on the globe.
About half an hour away, the crew begins to bring the temperature in the aircraft cabin down, just above freezing. We put on layer after layer of ECWs — then we wait. With no view of the runway, you just have to await the bump and reverse engine thrust that signifies — you have arrived.
For me, that bump means I have now been to all seven continents on God’s green Earth. I certainly have no complaints about that.
Left: The last thing my phone’s GPS and Maps application registered.
Top: Geared up in Big Red, just waiting to step off the plane and set foot on Antarctic “soil”!
Most of the flight is cargo, so they drop the bay doors at the rear of the plane. We get our first look at the continent. The sky is a blinding white, the snow is a blinding white. That, and a line of Sno-CATs, are all that registers…
Stepping off the plane - the first seconds on Antarctica! Most of us fyngies had big grins and trigger-happy camera fingers.
The cargo offloading has already begun. This is how “freshies”, or fresh fruits and vegetables, arrive on continent.
We are directed toward another famous Antarctic tradition: “Ivan”, the Terra Bus, most everyone’s welcome wagon to the ice. One of the old Ivan drivers, Randy, has an Antarctic blog, and has a post on Ivan’s history.
Folks in red are Americans; the orange and black penguin jackets are standard issue to New Zealand Antarctic folks headed to Scott Base, just down the road from McMurdo
Ivan the Terra Bus! Our ride around the sea ice shelf on Ross Island to McMurdo Station. There’s even a song dedicated to him. It’s oddly catchy… or maybe it’s just me.
The OAEs on the flight (Old Antarctic Explorers, slang for people who have been to the ice before — but not the types who talk loudly in bars about it) joke with us that if we’re lucky, there’ll be heat on the bus. Some years there isn’t.
As it turns out, this year, there is heat! This isn’t necessarily a good thing, though. I’ll say this many more times in the blog posts to come — but Big Red is freaking amazing. This jacket actually makes the cold feel… comfortable. No, really. Worn appropriately, you can be outside in -70 deg F and actually be quite cozy. Sitting inside Ivan, I start to overheat very quickly.
How long is the ride? I ask the person in front of me. I’m expecting to hear five, maybe ten minutes. Thirty to thirty five is the answer. I quickly start shedding layers.
Phoenix Airfield is located right next to the Ross Ice Shelf… so even though McMurdo is a straight line distance of maybe 5-10 minutes, we can’t drive over the sea ice, since it’s too unsafe. So we take the long way around: basically one long curving loop around the sea ice, which at this time of year, looks just as white and solid as anything we’re driving on. We stop by Scott Base to let the Kiwis off, then it’s on to McMurdo. The hill up to the station isn’t that steep, but you really get the impression that Ivan can’t make it. Of course, the Terra Bus can… but the outcome sometimes feels in doubt, I’ll just say that.
Top: Flags on the ice are a common sight. Some denote paths for walking, others denote crevasse dangers or fuel lines. Scott Base is in the shelter of the mountains, but behind the flags is a lot of sea ice.
Right: No big deal, just a seal taking a nap. He’s lying on pressure ridges, caused by the sea ice grinding up against the ice shelf.
Kiwi Crossing! The green buildings are all Scott Base, home to the New Zealand Antarctic Program (a la Brian Porter). They have an “American night” every Thursday, when you can go over and drink with them.
Partly sarcastic, partly practical, wholly collaborative: A place in MacTown where equipment from Scott Base, that uses New Zealand electric wall outlets (220V, with three prongs at angles to one another), can juice up