We finally made it to the Ice. We left Christchurch at 11:15 pm Monday and arrived at the Pegasus runway at 4:15 am Tuesday. It is about an hour ride on Ivan the Terrabus into McMurdo. Once we arrived we had our welcome training, breakfast and our science briefing. Then we had some time to check into our rooms, shower and do laundry. I met my roommate, who seems very nice. She studies something to do with worms that are found beneath the snow. I didn't get to talk to her about it for very long, so that is the best description that I can give. That afternoon we were able to locate all of our cargo and get it unpacked in the lab.
This morning we had environmental training (Antarctica has very strict environmental regulations for waste, haz mat spills, etc.), the snow school refresher course (unfortunately, I did not get to go through the full snow school class again - no sleeping in a snow trench this time around) and light vehicle training. The rest of the day was spent unpacking our orange shed of tools, parts and supplies, locating our sleep kits (or lack there of - the BFC said that they should have them pulled for us by tomorrow), working out a schedule for flying, getting batteries charged and looking at satellite imagery to view crevasse safety in the location of new AWS installs. It looks like we'll be leaving for field camps by Tuesday or Wednesday. This means that we have quite a bit of work to do to test our stations and get our cargo into the system by Saturday.
McMurdo itself is pretty good. I haven't had much time to do exploring, but I'm hoping to get out on one of the hiking trails tomorrow evening. Maybe I'll have some updated photos by then.
This morning we had environmental training (Antarctica has very strict environmental regulations for waste, haz mat spills, etc.), the snow school refresher course (unfortunately, I did not get to go through the full snow school class again - no sleeping in a snow trench this time around) and light vehicle training. The rest of the day was spent unpacking our orange shed of tools, parts and supplies, locating our sleep kits (or lack there of - the BFC said that they should have them pulled for us by tomorrow), working out a schedule for flying, getting batteries charged and looking at satellite imagery to view crevasse safety in the location of new AWS installs. It looks like we'll be leaving for field camps by Tuesday or Wednesday. This means that we have quite a bit of work to do to test our stations and get our cargo into the system by Saturday.
McMurdo itself is pretty good. I haven't had much time to do exploring, but I'm hoping to get out on one of the hiking trails tomorrow evening. Maybe I'll have some updated photos by then.
View from the C-17
Glad you made it and thanks for posting! Christchurch looks spectacular.
ReplyDeleteBe safe!