Cargo is ready to go!

Hello All,

As of 10 minutes ago, we have finished processing all of our cargo. It is now being assembled on a cargo line by the tireless science cargo staff here in town. All told, we gathered and palleted two tons of cargo in the past week. The Mechanical Equipment Center and the Hazardous Cargo folks assembled another four tons worth of snowmobiles and fuel. We are set!

Seth palleted all of our Global Positioning System (GPS) gear. This system includes mobile units as well as a temporary bay station that we will keep in our camps. We'll use this for tracking ice-penetrating radar transects, for locating snow accumulation stakes, and for locating glacial geologic samples.

I'm in charge of equally important cargo; I packed a rock box full of holiday presents! Seth and Chris palleting our survival bags. Survival bags are required for travel in Antarctica. We will carry these on sleds any time we are traveling by snowmobile. Each survival bag contains a stove, 1-2 sleeping bags, extra warm clothing items, 3 days of food, a tent, a shovel, a snow saw, a small first aid kit, and typically a cheap romance novel to prevent boredom! They are designed to support groups for 3 days in the event of an emergency. We hope we never have to open these! Yesterday afternoon, we attended a two-hour training in field communications (Thanks, Kelly!):

Communications Coordinator Kelly Speelman explaining the difficulties of maintaining communications equipment in Antarctica. It's hard to see, but the projected slide is showing a radio communications installation that is covered in ice!

Kelly explaining how a high frequency (HF) radio antenna works. 

After the communications training, we had some free time to walk around. The station is an incredibly industrious place! If the weather is good, helicopter flights take off throughout the day. Many days a new group of scientists arrive in a C-17 and begin the process we started on the 29th of November. It's hard to believe we've been here over a week!

The helicopter landing pad, known as the Helo pad, is always busy in fair weather days. I just caught one of the helicopters after lift-off. Scientists studying locations relatively close to station (~ 50 miles) are transported and resupplied by helicopters. Even now as I am typing this caption, I can hear a helicopter taking off!

In many ways, this building is the center of operations of the station. It houses the NSF station manager and support staff. Known on station as "The Chalet," this building is where we had our first briefing after landing on the continent. See those orange bags piled up on the deck? New arrivals were in their first briefing as I took this picture! 

Among the new arrivals were colleagues of ours from the University of Maine. I went for a hike around Observation Hill with one of them, glacial geologist Gordon Bromley. The weather was perfect!

A C-130 (I think!) landing on the sea ice runway. The sea ice runway is currently supporting C-17, C-130, Basler DC-3s, and Twin Otter operations.

Scott Base, the New Zealand Station down the street from McMurdo

My friend Gordon posing on Observation Hill, overlooking McMurdo. McMurdo Station is larger and has a larger population than Scott Base. Currently, there are over 1000 people living at McMurdo; Scott Base accommodates less than 100.

Kat and Gordon catching up in Kat's and my room. Our roommate headed back home, so for now it is just Kat and me. I got to move down to the bottom bunk!


With our cargo preparations complete, our remaining tasks include printing maps, crevasse rescue training, and completing all work and personal to-do lists before heading out!


We expect to meet with Flight Operations tomorrow to confirm our flight plans. Some research groups have had their field put-ins delayed up to 10 days. We're hoping that this doesn't happen to us! Keep your fingers crossed for stable weather conditions for the next week. As of now, we are planning on flying out on the 14th, but that is certainly subject to change!


In the coming days, I will post maps of our field camp locations, our schedule once we're in the field, a description of our research goals, as well as more pictures of life in McMurdo!


Hope all is well with everyone!


Claire