At Pole

So here we are, sitting in an empty cargo plane, packed like sardines, waiting to step out onto the bottom of the earth. I pretty much bundle up in everything I possibly can and unfortunately, did not have my balaclava on me, it had been in my checked bag which I never unchecked in Mcmurdo. So I step out and am immediately greeted by some friendly faces from work and they walk me about 50 yards to the new station. I step inside and there is a lady handing out room assignments. She takes one look at me and says, do this (as she holds her palm on her nose and rubs it back and forth). I put my palm on my nose and say why? She says, your nose has turned white. So I'm at the pole for no less than five minutes and I have already gotten frost nip on the nose. Kind of painful when it warms up, but as I understand it, not nearly as bad as frost bite can be. I really need to find that balaclava.



Fortunately, I arrived at South Pole just in time for lunch, which was really pretty good. It turns out that due to shipping costs, a meal at the South Pole is probably the most expensive meal a person will ever eat. What you don't eat, food scraps, etc, gets shipped all the way back to the states for disposal. Needless to say, you take what you can eat and eat what you take. After lunch. Another orientation. However, this time the atmosphere is remarkably different. In short, the pace here is slower and much more congenial. There are a lot less people at the South Pole, which makes for a much cozier environment compared to the feel of McMurdo, which some describe as a cross between a mining town and a fraternity house. Kind of the Deadwood of the Antarctic. After the orientation, I went on a little sightseeing trip of the station and was fortunate to visit the old station under the dome before it gets dismantled later this year. I am staying in the new station, in a berthing just outside of the dining facility (they don't call it a galley anymore). The new station is remarkably clean, efficient, comfortable, warm, sterile. After nearly 30 years, the old station had grown quite a bit of character. It will be a long time, if ever, before the new station will get that "Lived in" feeling. I'm actually very lucky as most transitional people (such as myself since I'm only here for three weeks) stay out in what is called Summer Camp. You betcha, summer camp is, well, a camp with tents and everything. Okay, the tents are heated but not very efficiently and you have to go outside to use the facilities. If you live in summer camp and you have to pee at 3AM, you must don all your ECW gear or freeze, walk out into mid day sun (The sun doesn't actually go down in the summer) and then crawl back into bed to get warm again while listening to the 24/7 shifts of snow bulldozers making snow birms outside your tent. Large coffee cans are a hot commodity for a commode, no stench as they freeze as soon as you set them on the floor. Needless to say, not much sleep going on in summer camp. Anyway, I was able to get some "Hero Shots" outside the old dome, at the ceremonial South Pole and at the geographic south pole. Now it is time for me to get back to work and focus on the reasons why I'm down here.

Onward to Pole

Well, the flight did not get cancelled and we PAX were loaded onto a C-130, shoulder to shoulder, knee to knee, boot to boot. We shared the cargo plane with three rather large pallets loaded in the back of the plane. Kind of a human cattle kind of thing going on, now this is the "hurt flight" I remember. Fortunately, it was only a three hour flight to the South Pole. However, this flight could also circle for a couple hours and then head all the way back due to weather and we had a pretty measly sack lunch this time. Fortunately, we did not end up circling and landed with a half a degree (Farenheit that is) to spare or it would have been too cold to land, -51F vs -50.5 F. We landed on the skiway, and as we taxied toward the station, the "Loadmaster" opens the parachute door in the back of the plane (big ramp looking door that drops down) and he releases all the cargo into a cloud of white. The cargo literally falls out the back of the plane onto the skyway as clouds of blowing snow billow into the cargo area of the plane.

Arrival in McMurdo

We arrived at the CDC at about 0615, got suited up in our ECW gear, checked our bags and headed over to the International Antarctic Center for some breakfast. At 7:30, we watched an orientation video and headed out to the runway to board the C-17 Globelifter. On the way out, we were each handed a bag lunch unlike I have ever seen before. This was a grocery bag full of goodies. The reason for this is that we could literally fly the 5+ hours to McMurdo, circle around for a few hours while waiting for the weather to clear and possibly fly all the way back to Christchurch just do try again the next day. After 12 hours on an extremely loud flight, the grocery bag would seem a miniscule comfort.


After arriving in Mcmurdo and sitting through what seemed like endless hours of orientation in the Chalet (The Chalet is the nicest structure in McMurdo and looks like an old ski hut), I was finally able to drop my stuff off at my room and get out of the ECW gear and into jeans. I then found that my checked bags would not be available for pickup until 5PM AND I had to do what is called “Bag Drag” at 7PM in preparation for an early morning flight. Bag drag is the USAP term for checking your luggage for an upcoming flight, they take your bags, weigh them and load them onto pallets. They also weigh your carry on and yourself wearing all your ECW gear. Think of it like checking in at the airport and then they ask you to step up onto the scale holding all your carry on bags. If you are ever in Mcmurdo and you see a bunch of people walking towards building 140, all decked out in their ECW gear and hauling all their orange ECW and personal bags, well… it is pretty obvious what they are doing.

The funny thing is that “bag drag” is one of those terms that is so instilled into USAP lingo, people forget that new folks have no clue what they are talking about. For example, we all just arrive in Mcmurdo and sitting in orientation, the lady giving the orientation says, “who is on their way to pole”? About half the group’s hands go up. So she says, “your flight leaves at 0800 tomorrow and you have Bag Drag at 1900”. Needless to say, there were quite few blank stares.

Oh, here is another good one... We are all on board the airporter on our way to board the C-130 for our flight to South Pole from Mcmurdo. An airporter, by the way, is a bus used in Mcmurdo to taxi people around, it looks like buses used at airports to take you to the rental car company, you know, the ones with the seats in two long rows lengthwise down the bus. Anyway, a guy jumps on board and says, “good morning I’m going to be the Loadmaster on your flight this morning”. I’m thinking, Huh? Is that some kind of stewardess? He goes on to show us how to pull an oxygen mask over our head and says it will provide about 5 minutes of air, you will know when it is out of oxygen when you take a breath and the plastic sticks to your mouth but not to worry because 5 minutes is plenty of time to get the plane down below 10,000 feet. Then he says, there are no “comfort facilities” on the C-130 but there is a U-Bucket up front. The funny thing is that I know exactly what he is talking about. U stands for Urine. I’m thinking he is wrong; there are comfort facilities on board because after 3 hours of holding it, that U-Bucket is going to be a huge comfort.




So anyway, I couldn’t pickup my bags immediately after arriving in Mcmurdo, and even if I could, I would just have to haul them right back to check them back in for Bag Drag. So I decided to stop by the new Network Operations Center and say hi to all the folks I work with on a daily basis but only via email and phone. Its nice to be able to put a name to a face. I finally went to Bag Drag, labeled all my bags and decided to ask the woman weighing our luggage, what are the chances of this flight getting cancelled? Pretty good she said, they have been cancelled nearly every time this past week. So I asked for my bags back and retrieved a couple pairs of underwear and socks, just in case and then she had to weigh them again.