South Pole

Here's a photo of the cockpit of the LC-130. There are four crew members up top and two people to handle the cargo in the back.














The flight only had 3 people going to the South Pole on it my coworker, myself, and a scientist who was just a day-tripper meaning he was catching a flight out later in the afternoon. There was also a technician onboard to help monitor the liquid helium dewars on the flight.















The mail bag. Even though it isn't the actual postal service delivering the mail, I'm still amazed you can mail something from Alaska and get it down to the South Pole for less than the cost of a candy bar.















Even though you can't tell from this photo, they leave the engines running while at the South Pole which means the propellers are spinning. An interesting thing about the C-130 is that the propellers spins at the same speed even when it's parked like this, they change the angle on the blades to adjust the thrust.















Another shot of the LC-130. It was a balmy -46 degrees F with windchill at a physiological altitude of 10,700 feet. I believe it was about 15 degrees warmer and a couple hundred feet lower in effective altitude when I arrived last year, but it seemed warmer and easier to breath this year.














I got lucky again and got a room inside the station. They have a summer camp outside, which isn't too bad except you have to suit up and walk a couple hundred yards to get to the station for your meals which means taking off your gear again. This year my room is on the outside of the hallway, so I have a window, but it is about 1/3 narrower than the rooms in the middle of the building.















Here's the view outside my window, which will be much the same 24 hours a day.

Leaving Christchurch and McMurdo

On Sunday in New Zealand I got my gear for Antarctica. This photo shows most of the gear, I don't quite have all of it but I was issued most of what's pictured.















Here you can see a cut away of the Bunny boots. I've always managed to avoid them, and this year I have the blue FDX boots like I had last year. The bunny boots don't provide the best traction it seems and aren't the most comfortable. The FDX boots are a bit more bulky but seem to be quite warm with fairly good traction. The first year I had Baffin boots, but they were slightly small for me and they don't stock the correct size. Boots are also important because they help you identify people outside when there aren't many other distinguishing features.















Another plaque from an appreciative astronaut at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) in Christchurch.


















The gate for the flight at the Antarctic center. We have to go through metal detectors and what not, but thankfully we are not required to remove our shoes as we are required to wear our Extreme Cold Weather gear or ECW which includes the boots. I think about 75% of the people set off the metal detector just because of the number of zippers and rivets on our gear.















The C-17 at Pegasus ice runway near McMurdo. If you look closely in this shot you can see some Norwegians with yellow duffel bags in the middle of the photo talking to a person in fatigues. The Norwegian Prime Minister was on this flight as he was going down to mark the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen arriving at the South Pole. He was lucky in that his connecting flight to Pole was immediately after we arrived in McMurdo while I had to wait a day in McMurdo to head south.















Here is a photo of the touch tank in Crary Lab which houses facilities for most of the scientific research being done on the continent. One thing that I will never get to do here, but always have wanted to is dive under the ice as the photos I've seen of it are absolutely stunning. The only interesting factoid I'll give is that the sea stars here can take about 9 years to reach an ounce in weight and can live to be over 100 years old.















One of the shrimp. I don't believe these were in the touch tank in years past when I've visited.














The LC-130 that took me to the South Pole in about 3 hours.

Christchurch

I was in Christchurch, New Zealand from midday of the 10th until the evening of the 11th. Usually we have another day in Christchurch, but the temperatures at McMurdo have been so warm that the ice runway is melting and they need to land the planes around 6am when temperatures are coolest. This means we leave Christchurch at midnight for the six hour flight down.

While in Christchurch, I walked around the city for a bit and visited the Canterbury Museum as well as the gardens. As many of you know, Christchurch suffered a devastating earthquake this past February and the entire downtown area is blocked off. The city seems like a ghost town in a lot of ways, but there are signs that things will be picking up.


This is a photo I took last year.


















And here is how it looks now.















Another photo from last year.















I was surprised to see this church still standing.















This is a photo from last year.















You can see that this church wasn't so lucky.















I thought this was an interesting way to support the roof, but shipping containers are a common site in Christchurch these days.


















You can see they've labeled many of the debris from the church.














This sign always cracks me up, and it's even funnier because I recently did this and didn't have the tracks to blame.















This is a photo from last year. At this point Christchurch had already suffered some serious earthquakes, but not as bad as the one in February.



















Here it is now.















I assume the carpenter was getting paid by the cut.



















A trash can full of debris that I doubt has been emptied since February.















A photo of one of the colleges here last year.




















And you can see what it looks like now.














The Croydon House Bed and Breakfast that I've stayed at my past two trips to Antarctica.



















What it looks like now.















This is a photo I took last year of the garden behind the main building at the Croydon House.















You can see all that remains are the trees on the right side of the previous photo.















The downtown area must have hundreds of businesses that had to be searched and are now boarded up.















The building that in the middle of this photo that looks like it is under construction is actually being deconstructed. It is the Hotel Grand Chancellor, which I happened to stay at during one of my trip to New Zealand. You can also get a bit of a feel for how much of an area has been closed down.















Here you can see what remains of the Bog, an Irish pub that we always made sure to visit before going down to Antarctica. There are a lot of parking lots now in the downtown area where buildings used to stand.














I saw tags from New Zealand, Taiwan, the UK, and US from the search and rescue efforts.

































Here's a photo I took of the Cathedral last year.














And here is what it looks like now.































I do appreciate that the Canterbury Museum still gets in the spirit of the holidays.















You should be able to read the text in this photo of you zoom in on it, but basically a lady from New Zealand made a heart for the people of Christchurch following the earthquake. As word got out about it, over 4,000 hearts were made all over the world and sent to Christchurch. The Canterbury Museum has a really neat display of many of the hearts.

































Some of the hearts that were sent from all over the world






























































Here you can see part of the effort to keep Christchurch going. There are a collection of these buildings made out of sea containers in the downtown area. I would say it represents a very small fraction of the businesses that used to be in the Christchurch, but it is still a popular area.














They even have ATMs in sea containers.

South Pole Round 2

I made it to the South Pole earlier today after spending two days in Christchurch and a day in McMurdo. I will try to get some other posts up soon with pictures and whatnot, but it's been an exciting past few days. The Prime Minister of Norway is here as are about 100 tourists. They are here to mark the 100th anniversary of Roald Amundsen and his crew reaching the South Pole. There will be a number of ceremonies over the next few days to mark the occasion.

I will try to include some new material in the blog, but for those faithful followers of the last few years, a lot of it will be quite familiar.