Traveling to McMurdo, Antarctica

I made it to McMurdo, Antarctia, the 7th continent. I am alive, well, and only a little cold.

I woke up at 5:00 am in order to finish packing and check out of the Grange B&B to catch the shuttle to the Antarctic Center at Christchurch airport by 6:00. After arriving at the Clothing Distribution Center and changing into our extreme cold weather gear, we were debriefed on our deployment to Antarctica. If you have looked at the gallery already, clothes are designed for Antarctic temperatures, not New Zealand summer or indoor temperatures. It was rather warm waiting to board the plane.

The plane itself was a C-17 air force cargo plane. This is the “luxury” plane, taking only ~5 hours to reach McMurdo, and it actually has seats and even a bathroom, unlike the Hercules transport plane, which takes 8 hours and has neither of the mentioned creature comforts. This was actually a quite plesant (althougth loud) trip, as the passengers all sat sideways along the edge of the fusaleage, as the ceter was used for cargo transport. Also, the military does not bother with pretty things like carpet, sound deadening, or covering up exposed pipes, wires etc. That said, we were provided the best brown paper bag airline lunch I have had: Two sandwiches, drinks, fruit, snacks, chocolate, muffins, and no peanuts to speak of. Fantastic.

5 hours later and some 60 degrees colder, we landed on the ice fields in McMurdo.

When we unloaded from the plane after landing at the airstrip outside of McMurdo, I was suddenly very glad I was wearing my cold weather gear. Speaking of McMurdo airport, that’s a funny name for a big ice field with some flags to mark a runway and a couple of trucks. After snapping a few pictures we boarded “Ivan the Terra Bus”, which is a snow transport bus with wheels the size of a monster truck. It is also really, really slow. But it took us to McMurdo where we were given the introduction presentation and keys to our accommodations.

This would prove a bit of a challenge, as all the buildings here are marked by numbers only. For example, I live in building 209, eat at the cafeteria in building 155, which is a difference of 54, but they are almost next to each other. Fortunately, they gave us a pocket map. That said, they didn’t tell us which building we were in during the orientation, which made figuring out where you were, in order to plot your route home kind of a challenge.

I picked up my checked luggage and went to my dorm. Its pretty nice, kind of like college but in the middle of the worst winter ever. Obviously I made it to my dorm on once piece, didn’t get frostbite, or go snow-blind. Shortly thereafter I met up with Matt also of the SBI project who showed me around a bit, as he and Bliss had arrived 2 days prior. Tomorrow we go to work out on the ice shelf.

Here is the Picassa Gallery:

11.10.06 - Morning travel to Antarctica