Delayed

We have been delayed again. Rumor has it that it has been pretty warm in McMurdo. This has caused the Pegasus runway to deteriorate, making it difficult to land. Therefore, we are scheduled to leave Christchurch on Sunday at 20:30. I think that the night flight will give the runway a bit of time to set up as the sun gets lower in the sky.

I have been making the best of my extra time in New Zealand. Yesterday, I went for a nice long run in the parks around Christchurch. I also got to see a human-sized chess game on the Cathedral Square (see picture below). This man seems to be very deep in thought.

Today we rented mountain bikes and went over to the Christchurch Gondola, Godley Head and Sumner. This area is right on the ocean and is quite beautiful. We had lunch at a cafe on the beach in Sumner and I had a plateful of very tasty mussels.

View from bike ride.

Christchurch

The flights into Christchurch went pretty smoothly. We just had a slight delay out of Auckland, into Christchurch due to some rain. The weather has cleared up nicely and today is a beautiful day.

We had our Antarctic clothing issue at 1:00 today. I was issued my big red parka and white bunny boots, so I am ready to head to the Ice. We are scheduled to fly to the Ice tomorrow with an early check-in time of 4:30 am. If all goes well, we should depart at 7:00 am. From what I hear, we are scheduled to fly on a C-17. If I remember correctly, that should mean about a 4-5 hour flight to the Ice (since starting to write this entry, I have been informed that we will be delayed for 24 hours).

I had some time after our clothing issue to wander around Christchurch. I decided to take a walk to the Botanical Gardens and take some photos. I stumbled across the Canterbury Museum which had an exhibit of photographs from the early Scott and Shackleton exhibitions to Antarctica (from approximately 1910-1916). The photos were quite stunning and I was amazed that the photographers were able to achieve such clarity on glass negatives. Not to mention, the effort it took to transport the negatives back to Europe. The photographs are a part of the Royal Photograph Collection and will only be in New Zealand for a short time. I felt fortunate to stumble across it today.

The Ice 2010-2011

Merry Christmas!

I hope that everyone has had a chance to enjoy the holidays with their loved ones. I was fortunate enough to have a wonderful Christmas with my family and friends. Now I am back in Boulder and ready to pack for another trip to Antarctica.

As you can see, the posts from my last trip can found below (after the New Zealand posts). This trip will include similar work on the automatic weather stations (AWS). I am very excited for our planned itinerary for this season. If all goes as planned, we should be spending a couple of weeks at a field camp located at the base of the Transantarctic Mountains and about a week on the icebreaker. Additionally, we are planning to install two new weather stations in the vicinity of the Sabrina AWS that Shelley and I installed in 2009.

This is a picture of the field camp with the Transantarctic Mountains in the background (Photo courtesy of a camp status report).