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).

Arthur's Pass back to Christchurch

After the glacier hike, I took Arthur's Pass back to Christchurch. The pass has some great views and I could imagine some good skiing in the region during the winter.

Below is a picture of the bridge up Arthur's Pass. The little car was not very happy during this portion of the drive.

And that brings me to the conclusion of my trip. I hope that you enjoyed the pictures and stories.

Fox Glacier Hike

In Fox Glacier I signed up for a guided glacier hike. The Fox Glacier is rare because the glacier actually flows down through a rain forest. We hiked through the rain forest before reaching the glacier. The water there is so clean that we were able to drink from the water flowing over these rocks. It was so cold and fresh. Wonderful!

Once we cleared the rain forest, we had a spectacular view of the glacier. The Fox Glacier is among the 1% of the world's glacier that are growing in size. The Fox Glacier was shrinking from the 1930's until about the 1980's. During the 1980's, Australia started to experience a drought. This caused extremely dry air masses to move over the ocean between the two continents and pick up a lot of moisture before reaching New Zealand. Due to the mountains on the western portion of the island, this moist air causes additional precipitation to fall at the top of the glacier. This additional precipitation has caused the glacier to change from shrinking in size to growing in size. Our guide showed us the low point of the glacier back in the 1980's and the glacier has actually grown a significant amount since that time.

If you click on the picture below, you can see the guides working on cutting steps into the glacier for us to walk on. This gives a scale to show how large the glacier is.

Alright, alright...I'll admit that this was a mock picture. I didn't actually need the ice pick.


Here is a picture of my group hiking along the glacier.

Drive to Fox Glacier

I was very lucky with my time on the west coast. The west coast is known for being very rainy, but I had some beautiful weather. The drive to Fox Glacier was long, but the scenery made up for it.

Along the drive, I stopped at a beach to read for a bit. The view was gorgeous, the sand flies were not. I made it about a half an hour before I couldn't take the itching anymore.

I saw these piles of rocks all over the island. Someone must have taken quite a bit of time to pile them all up.

Otago Peninsula

From TeAnau I drove down around the south coast to the Otago Peninsula.
http://www.gmap-pedometer.com/?r=2598816

This was an interesting little area of water. The sign next to it said, "No swimming. Crocodiles." I looked, but I did not see any crocodiles. I didn't go swimming either.

Along the drive I stopped at a petrified forest. The stumps and logs from the forest have been preserved by the salt water. Some of the stumps can been seen in the picture below.

This is an entire log that was preserved.

When I got to the Otago Peninsula, I went straight to "Penguin Place". This place is wonderful. I quickly made a reservation for the 7:15 tour and reserved a room in the cottage for about $10 US. To top it all off, the place had two springer spaniels that hung around outside. I couldn't have been happier.

The Penguin Place is located on the tip of the Peninsula. As the Peninsula became more populated by humans, the Penguin Place fenced off an area of the Peninsula to preserve it as a natural habitat for the yellow-eyed penguins. During the day, the penguins go out into the ocean to fish and then return at night to feed their young. Unlike the emperor penguins, the yellow-eyed penguins prefer their privacy. Therefore, each family has claimed its own portion of the land for its home. The Penguin Place provides a safe habitat for the penguins, but do not interfere with the penguins unless one is severely injured. The Place has a penguin hospital where the injured penguins are nursed back to health. The Place has dug numerous trenches throughout the landscape so that humans can walk through and observe the penguins without disturbing them.

This is a young penguin. This penguin has lost most of its baby feathers, but has not yet grown the yellow whiskers next to its eyes.

This is a baby penguin with all of its baby feathers.


The penguins have a pretty nice landscape.

You can see the trenches in this picture. The trenches allow the humans to get close to the penguins without impacting their behaviors.

This is a fur seal down on the beach.

We got to see a rare moment while a mother fed a baby penguin. It was quite amazing.

Penguins waddling around on the beach.


A perfect sunset to end the night.