Christmas Morning
Day after Christmas!
Middle of nowhere... Literally
They work, I play
Storm on New Years Day! White out!
Running at 4000m plus is frickin hard
Last night we made it back to McMurdo after a 3 hour flight on a
LC-130 Hercules... it sucked. It has been quite warm here in McMurdo
lately so the sea ice is starting to break up quite a bit. The ride
back from the air field was quite interesting... as we drove in the
Terra Bus through ponds. I guess its a good thing this bus with its
huge wheels can float :)
For now all I will be doing is sitting around until Friday when we hop
on another flight to head back to Christchurch, New Zealand.
**There is a possibility that I will be able to join in on another
project here and go up onto Mt Erebus :) I wont go to the top but I
think they said we'd go more than 9,000ft up --> which is more than
3,000ft lower than AGAP camp
AGAP: We finished it all! In the end we did a total of 26 missions --
10 services and 16 brand new installs. We worked double shifts for the
most part which meant we installed 4 stations per day sometimes. We
started one week late and were going to finish ahead of schedule but
then we got weathered in for 4 days. On the last and final day to fly
we were somehow able to finish all the stations. The final mission I
was on took 13 hours since we had to fly so far.
The camp location was quite interesting. There wasnt much to do other
than fly, eat and sleep. This is the most remote camp on the planet
and Im glad to finally be warm again. I would say the average
temperature was between -25 to -30 C the entire time. Winds were
usually calm but when they did pick up from bad weather I had no
desire to go outside. For most of the stations I worked on thankfully
the wind was almost non existent making it easy to work. At one place
it was so cold and very little wind so there were ice crystals forming
on top of the snow.
A couple of notes about the pictures:
The picture with the flag in it. Thats the Galley, where we eat. Last
year it was installed on the surface of the snow. After the winter it
got drifted in and had to be dug out. After this winter it will likely
be completely buried.
Doing anything about 12,000 feet is quite difficult. It gets a bit
harder when it is so damn cold.
Thats it for now. If I head up to Mt Erebus Ill be sure to post some
pictures. I still havent finalized my travels for after I leave the
ice but I will figure it out soon enough
Adios
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"You dont have to be crazy to work here... but it does help"
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