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South Pole Flight

I made it to the South Pole today. 

Flight was almost 5 hours long.  We had to have oxygen supplemented during the flight because the plane is not pressurized.  There was plenty of leg room.  That part I enjoyed.   I’m currently dealing with the fun of being at high altitudes.  The actual altitude is 9,000 ft but the pressure altitude is about 11,000 ft.

The first building I saw as we approach was the large radio telescope (South Pole Telescope). 

It was a great trip and I’ll try to get updates as I can now that I am here.

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Black Island Opening Trip

I got to go to Black Island this week.  It is the main off continent satellite link location.  It is run all summer by two people, Tony and Karen.  They get visitors throughout summer but for the majority of the time it is just the two of them out there.   Black Island can get hurricane force winds very regularly.  It has no wind protection and is an extremely harsh place to live.
We went out to help setup all their computer equipment and fix McMurdo’s TV service.  We had to move the dish to a new satellite and  setup the receiver.
Here are some photos from around the Island.

Here are some photos from the flight back to McMurdo featuring Mount Erebus and the Pegasus crash site.

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Mainbody Flight Day 2018

So after a 15 day delay, a new record for the longest delay to Mainbody (Summer) starting in McMurdo in recent history,  we finally got our first flight of Mainbody.  Over the next few weeks we will go from 272 people on station to almost 500 people.  The population will continue to increase until they reach a max of 700-800 people. 

The C-17 was carrying 126 new people to Antarctica.  We have an Airbus A-319 inbound to McMurdo carrying another 50 people arriving today.   I’ll try to get pictures of it also when it flies over McMurdo.

The helicopter was doing test flights to get ready to ferry people out to field camps and other places around Ross Island.

 

Here is the C-17 leaving with most of the remaining Winter Overs.

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15,000 Year Old Ice

We found an old ice core in the kitchen freezers that were no longer needed for science.    So we ate it.  It tasted like extremely clean water.   The small bubbles in the ice contain air from thousands of years ago.

 

You can see more about the ice cores below.

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Crater Hill Trip

We had to go install some hardware in a few buildings up at Crater Hill.  We brought along our wonderful Retail Coordinator Lindsey in the yellow jacket.

We also got to see a sundog that forms when the ice crystals in the atmosphere create a rainbow halo around the sun.

It was extremely windy up there.  As you can barely hear in the video.  The pictures of Lindsey leaning back are her leaning into the wind and not falling over.

 

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Purple Auroras

I led a rec trip out around Ross Island and went Aurora Hunting.  We saw a few Purple Auroras which are very rare.   A couple people in the group were in Antarctica for the first time and had never seen auroras before.