Brett's Southern Crossing

After visiting Arthur’s Pass I came back to Christchurch to meet up with a few more people coming off the ice.  We were planning to do a little road trip, but those plans went out the window once the earthquake hit.

Dust rising above the CBD moments after the quake

A group of us were planning to meet in Cathedral Square around noon to go find some Thai food, and I spent the late morning in a nice café called Java Coffee House.  I’d been taking advantage of the wifi there to make some reservations, and was packing up my things when the shaking began.  At first I assumed it was just an aftershock – which were still common after the September 2010 earthquake and in fact scientists consider this to officially be “just” an aftershock.  It was a strange feeling, I didn’t notice any up and down movement.  It was all lateral movement underneath me and my table seemed to be zooming all over the room with me in my chair riding right along with it.  I gripped the sides of the table and hung on to try to keep from falling.  Some glass began to break as bottles fell off the shelves.

The building across the street from me, before the quake

This café is located at the intersections of Manchester, Lichfield and High streets.  High Street cuts diagonally through the block, so I was on the ground floor of one of those wedge shaped buildings, and was in the pointy end of the triangle where all the streets come together.  I had picked a table near the window facing (I think) High Street.  Anyway, after the quake had been going for a few seconds, suddenly a huge amount of concrete and stone crashed onto the sidewalk just outside the window I was sitting at.  At that point I realized this was definitely not a little aftershock and I ran (more quickly than I knew I could move) out of the opposite side of the building and into the center of the street.  It wasn’t very far, since I was in the pointy end of the building the doors on either side were only about 15 or 20 feet from each other.

It was hard to see because the whole area was filled with white dust.  There were a lot of people milling around, a few of them screaming or crying.  The shops on the opposite side of the street were severely damaged, and a road construction crew that had been just up the block ran up to start digging in the rubble.  A few of them found a clear path to a side door, which they kicked in but found no one inside.  I was a bit stunned and couldn’t think of anything in particular that made sense to do, so after a moment I climbed up on the pile of debris and helped them move wood and concrete for a few minutes.  A plume of dust was blowing out of the debris about 10 feet into the air from what I suspected was a gas leak (although I couldn’t smell anything, so maybe not…but I’m not sure what else would cause that). I could see down in the pile a black car, crushed down to roughly knee height.  I thought these were parked cars at the time, though I later learned that the debris had fallen pretty far into the street and at least two occupied cars were crushed in this spot.

After the quake. This photo was taken from about 90 degrees to the left of the before shot. You can see the building I was in to the right in the background...if you look near the top, you can see the exposed area where part of the two upper stories collapsed onto the sidewalk near my table

Cantabrians have been through earthquakes before, most recently the 7.1 magnitude quake last September, so the response from the government was immediate and orderly.  Just a few minutes after the shaking stopped a police officer arrived at our intersection, and asked us to move several blocks down Colombo Street to a park where there would be no risk from further debris during an aftershock.  It sounded like a good idea to me, so I left the debris pile and ran back into the café to get my things.  This was pretty stupid, but I really wanted my phone so I could send some texts.  The road crew now had a few digging machines they were using helping to lift larger beams and blocks of stone off the pile.

After reaching the park I began to watch the crowd streaming down the road from the CBD.  I hoped I would see a familiar face, since I knew dozens of people in Christchurch.  A number of people were caked in dust, and these people generally seemed to have minor cuts and head injuries.  They were completely stoic, shell-shocked, and it reminded me a bit of the ghostly white people in the streets after the World Trade Center collapsed.  The worst actual injury I saw was a girl who seemed like she probably had a broken ankle.  Her friends were helping her, one under each arm.  Lots of cars were also leaving town, often stopping to pick up anyone who needed to get to a hospital.

At this point I was realizing how likely it was that someone I knew from the ice could have been injured or killed, and I was very worried.  I didn’t know exactly what to do or where to go.  My hostel I was going to check into that night was on Cathedral Square so that was out, and it seemed like going in a building again anytime soon would be a terrible idea anyway.  After a while I thought the best thing would be to try to find some friends, and the most likely spot for that would be Hagley Park.  Hagley Park is a huge park area on the west side of the city.  It’s only a few minutes walk from the Cathedral, and many hostels and hotels are nearby.  So it made a lot of sense that the people I knew would have gone there.  First I had to walk down Colombo street south to get far from the downtown area.  The police, fire, and Civil Defense workers had already taped and cordoned off a lot of streets.  They were also taping off areas of the sidewalk close to damaged buildings.

South down Colombo street the damage was a lot less severe.  The facades of a few buildings had collapsed, but many buildings looked undamaged (I could hear a cacophony of burglar alarms ringing though).  Several buildings that were entirely made of glass didn’t have so much as a pane broken.  The CBD is mostly historic buildings, whereas elsewhere in the city the buildings are modern and built to stringent standards.  The streets themselves were cracked and grey mud from liquefaction was rising into the road.  Shopping malls were intact but some of the parking structures weren’t so lucky.  Construction workers with scissor lifts were peering into the gaps between levels of pancaked parking structures and yelling to see if anyone was trapped.

A pancaked parking structure south of the CBD

I worked my way around the outskirts of downtown, passing the Christchurch hospital which had been temporarily evacuated.  A helicopter landed in an amazingly tight area between streetlights in an intersection to pick up a patient.  I finally came to the Windsor Bed and Breakfast, and was very relieved to find my friends Ed, Celeen, and Kira standing outside.  We headed up to the park to search for others, and found a number of other ice people plus plenty of reports of friends who had been seen since the earthquake.  By now I was feeling much better, with only a few people unaccounted for.

We came to a fenced in area of the park and set up a tent, assuming that we would need to spend the night in the park.  The staff of the Crowne Plaza (severely damaged, probably a total loss) soon arrived with water and heavy duty trash bags to be used as makeshift ponchos since it was threatening to rain.  The area was fenced off to prepare for a festival and there were palettes of thick plywood, which were passed out to insulate people from the cool ground.  Another person from the ice borrowed my phone to call the US Antarctic Program office to check in, and we learned that they were offering free shuttle service to the offices at the airport and a place to sleep.  The airport still had power and internet, so it was a tempting offer.

We left for the edge of the park to see who was near the YMCA (where my luggage was being stored; the building was undamaged but without power).  The YMCA set up an outdoor kitchen and made a huge dinner for all the displaced people hanging around.  Eventually I decided to head the Antarctic Center for the night along with several others, and we walked through the park to the western part of the city were roads were moving normally and shuttles could pick us up.  As we waited at a bus stop, a local stopped and crammed 7 of us with our packs into their SUV and gave us a ride.

To my surprise, the Antarctic Center was packed with people!  Probably 50+ people were there, swapping stories and waiting in line to use the computer training room to post updates on facebook or send emails.  The rest of the people I hadn’t heard from were there, and I finally felt confident that everyone I knew was safe.  There were a lot of different experiences, from those that were at the airport and thought it was just a little shake to people in Cathedral square that watched the steeple collapse while running to dodge falling bricks.

The USAP staff were checking names off a list of recently redeployed people and collecting information on others who had been seen since the earthquake or were known to be elsewhere in the country.  Soon, someone showed up with tons of food…snacks, fruit, soda, water, beer, and hot dogs which were grilled on the sidewalk outside.  Going from the initial destruction of the day to a cookout and reunion with so many friends was totally surreal.  The USAP staff also got lots of sleeping bags and offered to let us spend the night in the Antarctic passenger terminal.

But things were going to even a little bit weirder for me.  On this day there happened to be a meeting of the US/New Zealand Development Council in Christchurch, which on the US side consisted of a lot of State Department diplomats, plus various high level members of the business community (for example, a board member from Boeing).  They were at the Antarctic center as well, wearing very nice suits, munching hot dogs next to us.  The New Zealand government arranged for their air force to fly them back to Auckland that evening, and a number of people from the USAP were interesting in going as well.  It seemed that we were being discouraged from going, since so soon after the disaster the program wasn’t sure how they would be able to support us in Auckland.  However myself and two marine techs from the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer had all of our luggage and our passports and were planning to go to Auckland anyway.  We asked the Air Force if we could get on the flight and it was no problem.

Three grubby backpackers flew out around 11pm in the company of about 60 diplomats, and we ended up at an Air Force base near Auckland.  We were met by an official from the US Embassy who offered to help us replace passports or provide emergency funds if we didn’t have anything available.  We were all actually fine and didn’t need assistance, but we did get a ride in a shuttle they had arranged for some of the State Department staff to a motel for the night.  By then it was around 2am, and with all the adrenaline and stress and walking throughout the day I immediately fell asleep.

Despite the tragic events of that day it was great to see how the people in New Zealand reacted to it.  The government responded immediately to secure the area, move people to safety, and search for survivors.  Ordinary citizens pitched in to help transport people home or to get medical treatment.  Hotels, shopkeepers, and civil defense quickly provided food, water, and shelter to anyone displaced.  And close to home, the USAP cared for us very well in the hours after the earthquake.  In the following days they tracked down every person that had left the ice recently, arranged a couple of special air force flights to move people to Auckland, and offered to try to retrieve and mail back all the luggage and personal belongings abandoned in the cordoned off area of the city later this year.  Air New Zealand offered very cheap standby fares to fly back to Christchurch, which I needed to do to continue on to Australia.  I feel fortunate to have been surrounded by so many great people and organizations.

After a few days enjoying Christchurch (pre-quake), I set out with Dane and Graham from the ice and a German backpacker named Nele that Graham met in town.  We wanted to do some trekking, and just an hour and a half northwest of Christchurch is one of New Zealand’s great national parks, Arthur’s Pass.

I was not well prepared – I didn’t know what we’d be doing, and so I didn’t arrange to have any camping gear.  Dane loaned me a hammock and I decided I could treat it like happy camper.  Wear lots of layers and deal with the chilliness at night.  We headed off with the plan of hiking down the Otehake gorge, completely traversing the mountains and the park.  The park ranger we spoke with (also the SAR lead) told us he thought this was the hardest trek in New Zealand and that there was an impassable landslide and that the river at the end of the trek might be impassable depending on the water level.  We weren’t discouraged.

We camped near the trailhead (a cold night with my gear, but manageable), and headed off the following morning.  We would be spending 3 night in the park, the first two at locations with backcountry huts and the final night would be camping.  There was usually no trail.  We spent the first day following the river, frequently crossing it to get to passable land or bushwhacking through the steep sides of the valley.  Unfortunately I hadn’t charged my camera, so this is where the photos end!  We arrived at the Edward’s Hut after 5 hours, and had a quick dip in the near-freezing water of the mountain stream that came nearby.  The hut was rustic but sturdy, and had a nice wood burning stove to dry our wet shoes and a radio for contacting the Department of Conservation.  Surprisingly, my friends Kevin and Katie from the ice were in the same park and joined us in the hut for the night on a different route.  We saw no one else hiking that day, nor was anyone else staying in the hut so it was a nice coincidence.

In the morning, we radioed in for a weather update and learned that rain was predicted for that evening, progressing to heavy rain the following day.  This would make it very likely that the river would be impassable, meaning our trip could almost double in length to get backtrack out of the park.  I decided that it wasn’t a good idea for me to try to continue on the original route, given the likelihood of rain and my dependence on all my clothes being dry for warmth at night so I joined Kevin and Katie on the alternate route while the others pressed on.

The following day was a challenge.  We started by crossing a massive boulder field from an old landslide, climbed a saddle over the mountains that was dangerously steep (almost like climbing a ladder of grass clumps, a few hundred meters above the valley), and then clambered down a steep ravine to the next hut.  We spent over 8 hours hiking that day with only a 30 minute lunch and covered maybe 7kms!  It was tough terrain.  The hut we ended up in is an easy hike from outside the park though, and was newly constructed after the old hut had burned.  It was very modern for a “backcountry” hut.

Finally, we did an easy 4 hour hike out of the park the next day, and hitchhiked back into town for a great dinner at the café.  In the end the rain never came and my friends were able to make it through the original route the following day, though they were bruised and bitten by sand flies while crossing some very rough ground.  The Department of Conservation told us that only 3 parties had tried that route this summer…two had turned back and the third made it to the river but had to be helicoptered back because it was impassable!  So this was a big achievement for them.

Arthur’s Pass has tons of short hikes and day hikes as well, and the scenery is beautiful.  So I would definitely recommend this park to anyone that visits New Zealand.

Antarctica isn’t just a continent of glaciers and mountains, it’s also packed with history.  Ross Island, where McMurdo Station is located, was also where many of the expeditions of the Heroic Age of Antarctica exploration were based.  One of the most famous was Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, in which he fatally raced Roald Amundsen to the South Pole.

Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans is located about 12 miles up the coast from McMurdo, and for several weeks at the beginning of the season we’re allowed to take a Sunday tour to visit it.  Due to the dry, cold weather the hut is in amazing condition, still full of the everyday items (including food!) as when it was used 100 years ago.  It’s almost as though the last person walked out the door 10 minutes before I arrived.  The only indications of how much time has passed are the old style brands on supplies and the skeleton of the dog in the stables, still on his chain.

Inside the hut are a well-stocked kitchen, bunk quarters for the crew, a science lab full of chemicals and charred test-tubes, plus Scott’s bed.  Next to Scott’s bed is a table where the crew was doing a scientific exam of a dead penguin.  The rear of the hut has stables, which were used to house dogs and ponies, as well as supplies.

Check out my full gallery for more pictures of this!

My boss at McMurdo is the Operations Manager and he likes to say that Airlift is the lifeblood of our program.  There’s a lot of truth in that statement, most science cargo and personnel come to McMurdo and South Pole Stations via the 65+ C-17 and 10+ A319 flights that come from Christchurch.  The 6-7 million pounds of cargo and personnel that could be transported on those flights still wouldn’t be enough to support a program as large as ours, however.

Our pier, built with ice roughly 16 feet thick. The thing next t0 it is the old ice pier, which broke in half last year and will be towed to sea if the channel opens enough

A temporary bridge allows our trucks to access the pier. The pier itself is floating and is tied to the island by thick steel cables

The rest of our supplies come via 2 vessels that should be arriving over the next couple of weeks.  We have a tanker vessel that will be delivering 5 million gallons of fuel (mostly AN8 aviation fuel, plus some unleaded gasoline), then a cargo vessel will bring huge quantities of food and equipment for the following year and haul away a year’s worth of trash and a bit of cargo that people are willing to wait a few months to receive.

Another angle of "Winter Quarters Bay." Behind it is a bit of McMurdo and Observation Hill.

I took these photos next to "Roll Cage Mary," which is officially called "Our Lady of the Snows" and memorializes Richard T. Williams, a Navy equipment operator whose bulldozer fell through the sea ice in 1956

Yesterday was the first hint of what’s to come.  The Swedish icebreaker Oden had nearly reached McMurdo, and I spotted the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel about 15 miles behind it.   The Oden docked early this morning, with the Palmer following later in the day.

The Oden

I’m looking forward to seeing the vessel offload process.  The station will go to 24 hour shifts until they’re finished due to the amount of work it will take, and I’m sure due to the fees they pay to keep a vessel docked.  The actual removal of the cargo containers will be done by NAVCHAPs, the Navy’s cargo handlers.  There will be 113 of them this year!

The RV Nathaniel B. Palmer, one of the US Antarctic Program's polar research vessels

LDB Camp Office

LDB Galley

A few miles from McMurdo on the ice shelf is the Long Duration Balloon facility, known as LDB.  Funded by NASA, 2-3 balloon launches per year are done from Antarctica.  The balloons this year are carrying payloads of around 5000 pounds and rise past 99% of our atmosphere.  Compared to launching a satellite this is a huge cost savings, but it’s still a complex enough task that I’m told it has it’s own line on the national budget!

Payload Building

CREAM

The facility consists mainly of 2 large payload buildings for assembly of the large scientific instruments attached to the balloons, a rigging building where the launch technicians prepare, and a communications and tracking building for monitoring the position and status of the balloons after they launch.

BLAST

BLAST computers and liquid helium

The balloons are inflated with helium, and as they rise through the atmosphere they continue to expand as the pressure in the air decreases.  What’s amazing is that in the end the balloon will expand to the same approximate volume as the Houston Astrodome!  The balloon itself is only 0.02 millimeters thick.  Think about how strong a balloon that large would need to be to inflate and launch without tearing to pieces.

BLAST shielding

The Boss

The launch procedure itself is interesting.  The payload is hung from a customized vehicle called The Boss.  The balloon is inflated on the opposite side of the launch pad, which is a huge circular area of snow that our Fleet Operations crew spends thousands of hours building for months in advance of the launch (compacting and grooming the snow so it is strong enough).  The Boss is well over 100,000 pounds, so you can imagine that the snow surface needs to be very strong for it to drive around without any rutting or sinking on the pad.

The Boss doing a hang test with the BLAST payload

Balloon inflated, with The Boss on the opposite end of the pad

The Boss has the most critical job on the launch:  As soon as the balloon is released, it will rise into the air and take up all the slack between it and the payload.  Any winds can change the position the balloon goes to.  The boss has to react immediately and perfectly to drive itself so that once all the slack is taken up the payload is directly beneath the balloon when it is released.  If not, you can imagine it like a pendulum – the payload will drag across the pad, causing a lot of damage.  Something like this actually happened in Australia last year.

But it’s important to know that only 4 percent of launches fail and usually in much less spectacular ways.  A few days ago I was lucky enough to be in an ideal place to see the first balloon launch of the year, carrying the CREAM payload.  Spectators have to be 3km away, but I still got a pretty good look and it seemed like a flawless launch by the Columbia Scientific Balloon Facility staff.

Payload released

In the background, Castle Rock on the left and Mt Erebus on the right

Just over the hill from McMurdo, near Scott Base, is a long line of pressure ridges in the ice.  Some of the sea ice remains trapped near the permanent ice shelf rather than breaking up and floating out to sea.  When it’s cold the ice shrinks a bit, causing cracks which fill with water.  Then when it warms up and the ice expands it forces ridges of ice formations to appear.

In the background, Mt Discovery

I volunteered to be trained as a guide for recreation trips to the ridges so I’ve been able to go 3 times.  My last two trips were cancelled but I’m hoping to go at least once more to see how they’ve changed over the year.

Notice the two blue tags on his flippers

Another great thing about the pressure ridges is that Weddell Seals like to come up through the cracks and lie on the ice.  Seal mothers have been giving birth, so I’ve seen some baby seals up close.  The seals are completely passive and it’s not clear if they even notice we’re standing there!  It’s easy to notice the tags on their flippers that science groups are using to track them, but despite the experience of being tagged they don’t pay any attention to passing humans.

Awwww....

"I'm bored mom..."

Camping under our volcano, Mt Erebus

Last month I spent a night camping for a 2-day class by our mountaineers which teaches skills for building field camps, emergency survival, and general skills for working and surviving in extreme conditions.  Formally called Snow Craft I, in practice it is universally known as Happy Camper.  Anyone who may go outside of town attends Happy Camper, and lots of people that have no specific need go just for the experience.  It’s amazing how many people have stories about going to Happy Camper in “Condition 1” (which signifies either wind chill below –70F or sustained wind above 70 knots)

Mountaineer Brian diagrams how to lay out a camp

The class starts with half a day in the classroom learning about layering techniques, cold weather injuries, and planning approaches in survival situations.  Then we headed a few miles out onto the Ross Ice Shelf for the meat of the course, about 24 hours outside.  Our weather conditions were good, with a temperature of 5 degrees (F) and mostly calm winds, although we did have a little 3 hour storm with 30mph winds.  We learned about our tents and camp stoves, and then began some practical work to build our camp.

Mountaineer Julian shows us how to cut blocks of snow from a quarry

With high winds a common situation in Antarctica we started by learning how to anchor a tent and set it up in high winds.  Next they showed us the best way to organize a tight cluster of tents, storage, and cooking area so the camp is most protected and functional. Then we learned how to build a wind wall using snow.  The weather here doesn’t lead to the fluffy snow you’re probably used to.  Instead it’s hard packed and strong.  You can walk on it and barely mark the surface, much less sink.  So the way to protect your camp from the wind here is to build a wall out of snow.  This is done by digging a channel in the snow a couple feet deep, and then using wood or ice hand saws to cut blocks of snow.  It’s called a snow quarry and these blocks are also useful for building a cooking area and constructing igloos and snow trenches.

Our finished camp

As an emergency technique we also learned how to build a snow trench.  Imagine you’re stranded without a tent, or in conditions too severe for a tent.  One option is to basically dig a hole in the snow and bury yourself.  The snow is a good insulator, and if it’s built right it will be warm and protected from the wind on the surface.  Of course, there’s always the unpleasant thought that if you were taking shelter in a trench and a search party didn’t find you, you might die in a grave you dug yourself!

Standing in my half-finished trench. Digging it helped keep me warm

Just fill it in and add a tombstone...

Since the wind was calm, I decided to build a trench and spend the night there rather than in the tent.  Digging that hole is more work than you’d think – in the end I spent about 5 hours on it.  A good trench needs to be about 8 feet long and deep enough that you can sit up without your head touching the ceiling.  A foot or two below the surface it’s good to dig out the sides, to create some elbow room both for maneuverability and to avoid losing heat by conduction.  The trench needs to be capped as air-tight as possible.  The simplest way is to use blocks of snow cut from the quarry.  I covered most of mine with a sledge turned upside down and covered in a layer of snow, then added a few blocks near the head that I could slide on and off for my “door.”

The start of my roof...a spare sled, covered in snow for insulation

The second day of the course is a detailed look through the field survival bags kept in vehicles and helicopters in case of an emergency.  They include everything needed to build a camp like we did in the class.  The day ended with 2 emergency scenarios, the first being a helicopter crash with limited resources to build a camp and wounded people to deal with to add confusion.  This was kind of awful in a way because it meant digging another snow quarry, building another wall, etc.  On the other hand, we also set up an HF radio and called South Pole Station, so that was pretty cool!  The second scenario involves a missing person during a whiteout and is meant to teach us how to plan in an emergency.  They’d like us to think through the situation carefully to find a way to look for the missing person without risking the safety of those who are already in a warm building.  To simulate the whiteout anyone that goes outside wears a bucket on their head, and watching people try to search the surrounding area is hilarious!

How to simulate a whiteout

Have you ever watched someone try to walk around blindfolded?

At McMurdo we work a minimum of 6 days and 54 hours per week, so holidays are eagerly anticipated as a time to rest and unwind.  Since we only have Sunday off we observe our holidays (which during the austral summer are Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Years Day) on Saturdays so we have a 2-day weekend.  The festivities started early, with a bunch of Friday-night parties in various work centers, complete with live bands.

The start of our Thanksgiving Day was the annual Turkey Trot 5k.  The route was from the Chapel of the Snows (on one edge of town) through McMurdo and up the hill to the Scott Base sign.  Scott Base is the kiwi base located 3 miles from us on the other side of a ridge.  Almost any event is a good excuse for the community to dress in ridiculous costumes, and the turkey Trot was no exception.  We ran to the sounds of Take on Me blaring from a boombox carried by one of the runners.  My time was glacially slow 31 minutes.

Thanksgiving dinner is an elaborate meal our awesome galley staff puts together.  In addition to turkey, stuffing, relishes and other traditional foods, they served king crab legs, massive amounts of freshies (fruit, salad, etc), and a full vegetarian and vegan menu.  Our bakers are always amazing but the desserts were a step up from what I expected.  My favorite were the chocolate mousse stuffed pastries shaped like Antarctic Skuas.

At home we always take a walk after dinner, so I went with a few people to walk the Hut Point Ridge trail.  This is a three mile loop from town that passes over a ridge and by one of the huts used by Captain Scott during his exploration of Antarctica.

The night was capped off with a party and jam session in the band room.  I have no musical talent but it’s always fun to hang out with some beers.  For whatever reason there is a lot of musical talent among the community here.  It’s hard to find anyone here who doesn’t play an instrument (Ukuleles are really popular!).

One of the bigger annual events at McMurdo is the Halloween party, which showcases the amazing creativity and eccentricity of the people on our station.  Most of the costumes are hand made on station from whatever we have lying around, which makes them all the more impressive to me.

I was short on time to make mine due to a trip out of town, so I quickly put together a South American Revolutionary costume.

My Costume

There are plenty of “normal” costumes, but I noticed a ton of costumes that were specific to our station.

Antarctic Skuas - a scavenger bird known for attacking residents carrying food

There were also a lot group costumes.  My favorite were the Tetris pieces.  The most involved was probably the Beer Garden…maybe a dozen people all connected by orange fencing, complete with tables.  Every so often you’d find that they had enclosed you and about 50 other people inside of them, and you pretty much just had to hang out until a gap appeared!

More great photos here!

Our group stopped in Christchurch for 2 nights to rest up, but mainly to spend a day at the Antarctic program’s Clothing Distribution Center picking up our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) gear.  Almost everyone gets “Big Red,” our big Canada Goose parkas.  Then beyond that there’s a huge array of gear available based on job.  I ended up with wind pants, Carhartt overalls, a massive pair of cold weather boots, a light windbreaker, several types of hats/gloves/socks, polar fleece top and bottom, 2 types of thermal underwear, dark snow goggles, and probably a bunch of stuff that doesn’t come to mind.

My Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) Gear

My Parka Patch

Gear issue only took a morning, so I had the afternoon to have a look around Christchurch.  Of course the big news there lately was the earthquake that struck a couple of months ago.  The damage isn’t too obvious, but a lot of streets are closed due to unstable building facades so frequent detours kept it front and center in my mind.  There have been over a thousand aftershocks since the quake, including a 5.1 the night before we arrived.  I’ve never felt and earthquake so I was thinking this was my chance, but there weren’t any that I noticed during my short stay.

Gondolas in the Botanical Gardens

In Christchurch I mainly walked around town and spent some time in the botanical gardens.  I also stopped by the Canterbury Museum which had a special exhibition of photographs from the Scott and Shackleton Polar expeditions (both had photographers as part of their parties).  Shackleton was attempting to make a complete crossing of the continent but barely got started, his ship becoming stuck in the ice before reaching land.  He and his men were stranded on the ice shelf for over a year before some were able to sail in a makeshift raft to a nearby island and return to mount a rescue.

An old snowcat in the Canterbury Museum

Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition was an attempt to be the first to reach the South Pole.  He was beaten to the pole by Roald Amundsen of Norway, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a photo more amazing than their portrait at the pole – 5 men, exhausted and dejected, faces absolutely black with frostbite, completely defeated.  The party died of exhaustion, starvation, and cold on the return journey from the pole, just 11 miles from a supply depot, but their efforts have made them heroes of the UK and among all Antarctic programs.

Scott's party arrives at the pole, too late

The Scott Party's Burial Cairn

The next morning I got up at 4am to head to the Antarctic Terminal at the Christchurch Airport.  We checked our luggage, had our bags weighed, and went through security.  (We each even had to step on a scale with our carry on bag).  We watched a short orientation video, and after a short wait it was time to board our flight.  Most passengers and cargo are taken by C-17.  We were allowed to take liquids and gels, but still no sharp objects.  The crew did a pretty typical safety briefing, although the military plane had some differences – in case of a loss of cabin pressure you don’t use a mask, you put your head in a plastic bag that either hastens your death or maybe has a little oxygen bottle attached.

The C-17 was surprisingly comfortable.  I sat in a jumpseat that folded from the side of the plane, while most people sat in regular airline seats that slide into a track in the floor in groups of 20.  Although it was physically comfortable the flight is very noisy and earplugs are a must.  The flight was 5-hours long, and we were allowed to visit the cockpit and chat with the Air Force crew.  I was a bit surprised to find we were at an altitude and speed typical of any other big jet I’ve been on (450mph and 31,000 feet).

Cockpit Tour

Landing was a bit strange because I could tell we were descending but with no windows I had this strange sense of anticipation, as though every bump was touchdown.  Eventually we landed, and I emerged into a shockingly white world outside.  We were brought to McMurdo Station in Ivan the Terra Bus, a 56-passenger extreme weather bus with balloon tires about 5 feet high.

My First Steps on "the Ice"