Gone South for the Winter

This is what it says on my office door in Columbus.

For many, winter means heading south. Anyone who knows me is aware that I prefer my winters snowy and cold, but I like to go south, too – just a little bit farther south than most. This winter, I’m back in Antarctica, having left Columbus about a week before Christmas to begin what has become the routine flight to the west coast and across the Pacific Ocean.

I only got a couple of days in Christchurch between arriving and flying to the Ice, and I packed them full. I checked into my hotel (the Rendezvous downtown, quite a bit cushier than the last one, and brand new – one of the first new high-rises in the city after the earthquakes) upon arrival and set about exploring the city with Gail, a fellow polar scientist I met on the plane. The changes since my last visit were astounding and heartening. New construction was taking place on every block and significantly fewer lots were completely vacant. The new buildings were colorful, unique, and architecturally interesting while beautifully and seamlessly adhering to Christchurch’s status as “the Garden City”.

The scene was one of rebirth. Of a city that has a chance to recover not only from its recent past and dramatic events beyond its control, but also from its reliance on concrete and small windows. The new structures rose gracefully and reflected the clouds and the sky. Pedestrians, local and otherwise, made their respective ways around the city at all hours.

We ate a tremendously satisfactory dinner with my local friend Cat at the hotel’s restaurant and called it a night. The following morning, having not yet adjusted to the 18 hour time difference, I woke up at about 5 and decided to go for a walk in the botanical gardens to catch the sunrise. I didn’t take my camera, but rest assured that it was beautiful, peaceful, and a perfect way to start the day. Around about 8:30, I wandered back out, grabbed a SIM card for my phone (I lost my old one), and ambled on over to a small breakfast establishment on the recently reopened New Regent Street near the hotel.

Then it was off to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) to get all of our Extreme Cold-Weather (ECW) gear and be informed that our Ice flight, originally scheduled for December 23^rd, had been delayed to December 24^th. After a quick meeting with a friend from Alaska who had just gotten back from Antarctica, and lunch with my advisor at the InternationalAntarctic Centre’s café, I took a bus back into town and spent the rest of the day working in my room – not fun, but necessary.

Since we had the next day free, a few of us—Gail, Rob (an engineer/hydrologist), Adie (a chef), and myself—opted to go for a hike on the Port Hills between Lyttelton and Christchurch. After a bus ride to the edge of the city and a relaxing and delicious lunch of nachos on a deck overlooking Lyttelton and the harbor, the bartender of our lunch venue (Wunderbar) was kind enough to suggest to us a route which I had never taken before called the Major Hornbrook Track. We found it without too much trouble at the top of a quiet residential street and were quickly on our way up to the ridge separating the port and the city. It was a beautiful day, and we spent some time relaxing at the summit before it began to cloud over and we decided to descend and catch a bus back into the city. It was late and we decided to eat dinner again at the hotel restaurant before heading to bed in preparation for our 6:00 am transport to the airport the next morning.

Rob and Gail stopping to investigate some of the local flora on the way up the Major Hornbrook Track from Lyttelton

We sat for a while in the shade and tried to figure out all of the port operations

Fog rolling in at the top of the Port Hills

We got off without a hitch (except a minor delay for maintenance). We flew on LC-130s—prop planes which move significantly more slowly than the jets used during the shoulder seasons when the ice runway is thick enough to accommodate them. We made it from Christchurch to McMurdo Station in just over 7 hours. We were greeted with a waiting shuttle, the usual welcome brief, and relative peace. Because we arrived on Christmas Eve, the night before a two-day weekend (generally weekends on the Ice are only one day), the station was quiet and it afforded us the opportunity to move in unhurried. We got our bearings and our linens and set about reacquainting ourselves with the station.

The next day was Christmas, and the kitchen prepared a spectacular meal of crab legs, steak tips, and an array of fresh fruits, vegetables, and baked goods for all 800+ people at McMurdo. Good cheer was rampant over the course of the day with food, friends, gift exchanges, and games. There was plenty of time to reconnect with coworkers and friends of seasons past and show some newcomers some of the ropes.

The dessert station in the galley for Christmas dinner - no extravagance was spared!

Holiday dinner in the galley

Decorations in the entrance hall of Crary (where most of the science operations are headquartered)

The days since Christmas have been busy and slow all at the same time. I arrived as part of the late-season installment of the POLENET crew (if you've forgotten what we do, here's a refresher), and quite a few of my coworkers had arrived long before me and had anticipated getting out to the deep field camp at WAIS Divide on December 15^th (I'm scheduled to go out at the beginning of January), but due to a perfect storm of complications regarding fuel, cargo, and weather, had not made it yet. They were scheduled every day, only to check the board every morning and see that their flight was canceled.

As I write this, they are still here, patiently (if not a little desperately) waiting for their flight to finally take off. They almost made it today, but were canceled at the last minute while they were sitting on the shuttle waiting to go to the runway. Due to the nature of intracontinental travel here, they are living out of one small ‘boomerang bag’, which is tagged specifically in the event of flight cancellation or postponement after baggage has been checked. The checked bags, which have been palletized and prepared for loading on to the LC-130, are from that point inaccessible, but passengers are allowed to retain one carry-on bag (less than 15 lbs) and their boomerang bag in the event of flight cancellation. Except for over Christmas, the POLENETers have been living out of their boomerang bags for two weeks.

In the meantime, I’ve been completing all of the various trainings necessary to live and work on the Ice (environmental awareness, field safety, snow mobiles, light vehicles, etc.), hiking a little bit, maintaining POLENET's wepage and setting up the online components of our upcoming Glacial Isostatic Adjustment workshop, and helping some of the senior project staff and engineers prepare for work out of McMurdo. 

Because of the fuel shortage at WAIS, we’ve attempted to reconfigure some of our logistics so that we can perform at least some of the necessary station maintenance by flying from McMurdo rather than from WAIS. The engineers and I requested a flight across the ice shelf to visit a difficult-to-access site. Because we requested it late, we were put on back-up (rather than first priority), which means that we get to go if the priority flight gets canceled, and if we don't go, we stay on back-up until we do or until we cancel the request. This means I wake up before 6 every day to make sure I'm in the office when the meteorologists check the weather, just in case we get called up. We haven't in the two days since we've put in the request, but we'll be on the list for the rest of the week. Hopefully we'll get to go out and do some work!

McMurdo Station from the top of nearby Observation Hill

More to come soon. Happy Holidays from the bottom of the world, and thanks for reading!