Monday, October 23, 2000

A New Continent

On Saturday morning, I once again arose at 4 a.m. and caught the shuttle to the United States Antarctic Program Passenger Terminal at the Christchurch airport. Everyone got suited up in their ECW gear, weighed and checked their baggage, and was briefed by Air National Guard crewmembers on what to expect for the six-hour flight aboard the C-141 military cargo jet.

We crammed into the orange net webbing seats, packed in like sardines on the dimly lit plane. I felt like cargo. The flight to New Zealand was more than twice as long, but this flight seemed longer. This time, when the wheels touched down, they would be skidding across the annual sea ice, just off the coast of Antarctica. There was also the uneasiness of knowing that this flight could last half a day and end up going nowhere. With the rapidly changing Antarctic weather, planes occasionally must turn back to New Zealand with their Antarctic destination in plain view. No one wants to spend the whole day on one of these infamous "boomerang flights." Fortunately, our flight would not be one of these. The plane descended onto the ice runway and landed with a thud. We had made it.

The temperature was twenty degrees below zero. I pulled my goggles over my eyes, zipped up my parka and stepped off the plane into a bright world of frozen white. The snow-covered ice extended to the horizon in every direction except where the mountains towered above the U.S.A.’s McMurdo station.

Waiting outside the plane was a red bus with tractor wheels. On the side was painted "Ivan the Terra Bus." Ivan took us from the runway across the ice toward the base.

McMurdo station, or "Mac Town," is the largest U.S. base in Antarctica. It is situated on Ross Island, which straddles the edge of the gargantuan Ross Ice Shelf. All U.S. flights to Antarctica go to McMurdo. Other flights leave the station bound for remote field camps and the South Pole.

I only had one day in McMurdo before my scheduled departure to the South Pole on Monday. A group of us climbed to the top of Observation Hill, just above the station, which offers a spectacular view of the area. There is a memorial to Robert Falcon Scott, the British polar explorer and leader of the second-ever expedition to the South Pole who died on the way back from his treacherous journey in 1912.

As I hiked back down the hill, I looked across the landscape with the sun low on the horizon. I checked my watch. 10:30 PM! It is easy to lose sense of the time of day during the Antarctic summer, when the sun never sets.

The next morning, I boarded a C-130 Hercules with thirty-five others headed for the South Pole. Not any more comfortable than the jet from New Zealand, this prop plane is smaller and equipped with skis to land on the soft snow of the Polar Plateau.

Three and a half hours later, the Herc landed on the skiway of Amundsen-Scott South Pole station. The temperature on the ground was sixty-eight degrees below zero, so cold that vapor contrails would blind forklift drivers who would normally offload the pallets of cargo. So the Air National Guard crew performed a "combat offload," untying the pallets while the plane lurched forward, which caused the freight to drop out the rear cargo door.

This was the first flight of the season to the South Pole. The last time the inhabitants of the base saw a plane or even other people was in February.

I barely felt a chill as I hopped off the plane into the coldest temperature I had ever experienced. This was indeed extreme cold weather, and my gear stood up to the test.

I was lead past the South Pole marker and into the geodesic dome that is the heart of the station. The sign above the dome entrance reads: "The United States of America Welcomes You to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station."