On Track

[Flying kites out on the sea ice in front of Scott Base. Photo by Gary]

After a weekend of high winds and blowing snow cocooning us into our warm little base, the weather has calmed. The winds are just a whisper now (by Antarctic standards, which means perfect kite flying weather) and the clouds have parted letting in the sun. The C-17 that was scheduled to leave last Friday took off today and all going well. Our plane will take off tomorrow - with us on board.

It has been an amazing 3 weeks, with lots of interviews, lots of skiing and not a lot of sleep. Some of the things that I noticed in my time here include:


- the snow feels like talc, very dry, fine and powdery
- even with a high, high wind it can still be quite warm outside if you're wearing the right clothes
- some sea ice tastes salty and some doesn't
- most of the rocks here are volcanic, so black or brown and rough
- penguins have longer tails than I thought
- you can tell if the scheduled plane hasn't come in by the amount of fresh produce for dinner that night (or lack thereof)
- despite having light all day, time still seems to whiz by
- Antarctica is a really cool place, but it is also a home to the people who work here


I've really enjoyed my experience here. We've worked super hard to collect as many interviews as possible and I am really looking forward to getting home and sleeping (and eating lots of fresh fruit like cherries, strawberries, apricots and nectarines).

Cape Royds

In 1907 Shackelton arrived in Antarctica and searched for suitable place to start his attempt on the pole from. He found Cape Royds. Rich with penguin life at the rookery perched on the tip of the peninsula and with easy sea access he built himself a small hut nestled in the volcanic stone and readied himself for the trek ahead.

[The Barnes Glacier Crack]

On Sunday, we headed out from Scott Base in our Hagglund filled with people and lunches and ECW gear. We rumbled along in the Hagglund, a Swedish tracked vehicle built for warfare in desert environments. It is not a smooth or quiet ride, but rather unique to the whole experience of being here in this place. Padded with jackets and foam mats, and fitted with ear plugs and headphones, you can actually make yourself quite comfortable. Which is good as the drive to Cape Royds takes about 3 hours. We stopped every so often to drop things off at various field camps on the way and to do sea ice profiles at the cracks we encountered to make sure they were safe to cross. But mostly it was the deep rumble on the machine under our bums that kept us going.

[Driving on the sea ice]

[Barnes Glacier]

[A seal hole chewed in the crack]

[Weddell Seal]

[Drilling a sea ice profile]

Finally we arrived at Royds. We stumbled out of the Hagglund, grabbed our bags and headed for the peninsula. We started by hiking up a slope to find two frozen water lakes. Their surfaces frozen to a smooth glassy sheen that rippled like liquid water. Parts of the surface were pocketed with holes made by dust and stone blown onto the surface and causing differential melting. It was great fun to carefully slide across the surface. At one point I bent down to lick the ice to see if it was fresh or salty, I discovered much to my companions delight that it was quite salty and didn’t taste all that great.

[Frozen lake at Cape Royds]

We then moved on to the coast. What a view. Seeing open water was much more exciting than I had expected. Just the amount of life that seemed to teem there surprised me. We watched penguins fly through the water and up onto the sea ice below us. Seals lazing on the coast and watching as penguins waddled by in long lines. It was phenomenal. We hiked down to the waters edge and just took in the total difference that it offered from our experience on the Ice Shelf (which doesn’t melt each year). Even the presence of fluffy cumulous clouds was different, as there are none out by Scott Base because there is very little moisture to produce them.

[The Ross Sea]

We wandered along the coast and took pictures of penguins and seals. We found a really neat pressure dome to climb inside and explore. And we eventually made our way over to Shackleton’s hut nestled beside the penguin rookery and out of the prevailing wind by the surrounding volcanic hills. The raucous sounds of the penguins filled the air almost as much as their fishy smell. To think that these are the same smells and sounds and sights that Shackleton and his men shared is a neat feeling. It was a neat feeling. The inside of the hut was pretty amazing as well. The musty light filtering through the old glass windows playing with the dust moats in the air. It was very still and quiet there, filled with the tedious memories of cooking dinner on a wood stove, eating dehydrated eggs from a can and fiddling in the dark room with cold fingers to produce the images we can see today in books and museums. Very cool indeed.

[Penguin prints]

[Adelie penguins]

[Adelie penguin]

[A pressure dome in the sea ice]

[Walking along the sea ice]

[ASPAs - or Antarctic Specially Protected Areas - are meant to protect things like penguin rookeries, important ecological sites and scientifically significant areas]

[Shackleton's Hut in the shadow of Mount Erebus]

[The inside of Shackelton's Hut]

[Mmmmmm - preserved cabbage]

Soon our times was running short and we still had a 3 hour trip home. So we climbed back into the Hagglund and rumbled across the sea ice to our own little oasis on the other side of Ross Island.

Travelling South

[Most of the scientific equipment used in Antarctica travels down on the planes with the people]

I woke up early Thursday morning, well, early for me. At 6am the alarm went off and I crawled out of bed and into the shower. After some delicious cinnamon buns courtesy of my lovely husband Stephen, we packed my bags into the car and drove out to Antarctica New Zealand at the airport.

The flights to Antarctica for Scott Base and McMurdo are a joint operation between the Kiwis and the Americans. The Kiwis provide the space and support and the Americans provide the plane and the pilots. By 7:30, we were checked into the flight and let loose until 8:20 when the briefing video would begin. So I wandered around in the courtyard between the Antarctic research buildings and tried to take in as much of the cool spring morning that I could; a little sparrow singing, the smell of the wet grass and the cool spring air on my cheeks. Antarctica would be much different and I would certainly miss a lot of my new home.

At 8:20 we all filed into the viewing room and sat down to watch the movie on “Going to the Ice”. A friendly voice told us how lucky we were to be going down to Antarctica and that we should follow the rules as it was still a dangerous place to live. We saw pictures of waddling penguins and massive icebergs, frolicking seals and scientists hard at work. We were reminded that we were to take care of ourselves, our friends and the environment we were visiting and that we should save a snack from our lunch bag in case the flight had to boomerang back at the last minute due to bad weather. The lights came up and we were taken through the security screening with our full extreme cold weather gear (ECW) on and led onto a bus. Once everyone was loaded up, we drove across the road onto the tarmac and up to the biggest, greyest plane I have ever seen – the C-17 Globemaster.

After grabbing a bagged lunch, I climbed up the stairs into the belly of the plane. It was like stepping into a warehouse. Cables, pipes and wires wound their way around the interior walls of the plane, creating labyrinth-like designs to follow with the eye. The floor of the plane was packed with wooden crates and metal barrels all the way up to the front with a row of webbed seats along either side for us passengers. I found an empty seat and dropped my gear in front of it, sat down and took off my coat. Then it was all about the wait.

The plane was two things, noisy and windowless. The noise was somewhat easy to deal with as we were provided with ear plugs to wear. They cut out most of the noise and somewhat difficult to talk, so reading and sleeping seemed to be the activity of choice among the 34 other people going down with me. The lack of windows on the other hand was not so easy to deal with. You might think it would be of little consequence to not have windows, but it can be quite unnerving to be jerked around and tumbled about without knowing exactly what is causing it. I couldn’t even tell when we had left the ground on take-off. But take-off we did and for 5 hours we sat, slept, read and ate, waiting for the little door to open at the front of the cabin.

Eventually, they announced our descent and we buckled into our seats for the landing. Despite the -8oC temperature announced over the plane, we had to pull on all our ECW gear before we stepped out of the plane and into the wild space beyond. So on came the mitts and touques (beanie or hat), the boots and the coats and when the door was opened for us to emerge from, the sunshine hit us with its radiant beams welcoming us to the land of snow and ice. We had arrived.

The three of us destined for Scott Base were whisked away before even the last American had descended the stairs and were driven over the 3km road from McMurdo and unloaded at base. We were taken into the briefing room and introduced to life on base. How the base worked, our responsibilities while there and what we were to do in the case of an emergency. We were told which rooms we were in and since we had all been to Scott Base previously, we were then let loose to unpack and settle in before dinner.

[Mount Terror seen from the road between Scott Base and McMurdo]