Images of

ANTARCTICA

Flight to Pole

Photos © 2004 Seth White

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Originally, my flight to Pole was scheduled for Saturday 1/17. But that morning a low lying fog had developed over the sea ice, and it looked pretty doubtful. Still, we dutifully piled into the airporter van and drove out to Williams Field...where we sat for two hours until they cancelled all the day's flights. Although the industrious shuttle driver kept insisting that I absolutely HAD to wait inside the passenger terminal, I did mosey out and take a few pics. Here are the LC-130 Hercules, sitting in the fog.

The 17th was a Saturday, so cancellation of those flights meant that I wouldn't actually fly until Monday. The ANG wing that flies the Hercs to and from Pole will rarely fly on Sunday...so I had another 1.5 days to hang out in McMurdo. It wasn't so bad actually - that day I was able to see a flock (herd?) of penguins up close, down near the sea ice transition. The N.B. Palmer, one of the two research icebreakers dedicated to the USAP, pulled into port that day as well. They had signup sheets for tours of the ship on Sunday, so I got on one of those. Before I leave the ice I should have pages for the penguins and the Palmer posted. Anyhow, 7:15 Monday morning rolled around and we got back on the airporter van for another trip to Williams Field. This time, the weather was terrific and we drove right up and boarded the plane.

This particular Herc was designated the City of Cohoes.

A view of the side of the plane, showing the wheels and skis. I asked a crewman whether the skis or wheels retracted, and he told me that these planes have pretty much the same wheeled landing gear as other Hercules. Thus, the wheels move up and down while the skis are stationary.

We took off in short order, and this was the view from the starboard side: Mount Discovery, with Brown Peninsula jutting out to the right. I think that's the back side of Black Island on the bottom right, but I'm not sure. Things always look so much different from the air.

Another one of Mount Discovery.

The first part of the flight is across the Ross Ice Shelf, more or less paralleling the Transantarctic Mountains. Here are five pictures of the mountains as we flew by.

There were about 15 of us on the flight. It's three hours by Hercules from McMurdo to Pole.

Shortly after takeoff the captain came on the loudspeaker and invited us up to the cockpit, one by one. I had tried to get a view from the cockpit of the C17 on my flight off the ice in October, but only got a stern "no" in reply from the Air Force loadmaster. In comparison, the ANG guys (or at least this air crew) were pretty relaxed. It seemed like they were actually having a good time doing their jobs - the chaplain was even up in the cockpit with headphones on, joking with them. I learned later that he wasn't going to be staying at Pole, just visiting for two days. Yep, a mega-boondoggle (his visit didn't even include a Sunday). Without disrespecting the chaplains, they don't really work THAT hard down here, and they rotate out every few months during the summer. How about sending one of the janitors who spends all day cleaning up after the messy children at McMurdo? How about one of the Fleet Ops guys who are out there working on the runways? Our management keeps telling us (with bullhorns) about how every ounce counts, about the high dollar amounts involved in flying people and cargo to Pole, about how expensive helicopter hours are, yada yada yada...but I keep running across people who are not regular members of the station staffs on these short trips to Pole (and elsewhere, like the Dry Valleys) which really serve no other purpose than to have them say "wow, this is so cool!"...i.e., a boondoggle. Another example - today I was at the South Pole Station Store (Polemart) and the cashier got called by someone asking if there was anyone in line buying alcohol. Three times this person called, and after one wine-toting customer left, the cashier finally answered that there was nobody there buying booze. I wondered what the reason for these calls was, and soon enough I found out. A few minutes later two of the top station honchos came walking in with a woman. They seemed to be trying very hard to impress her, so putting two and two together I gathered that whoever she was, her impressions of Pole couldn't be tainted by the horrible sight of somebody buying liquor! What, people drink here? Yes, another boondoggler in our midst. I have no problems whatsoever with the idea of boondoggles, and in fact I think it's unfortunate that RPSC/NSF have cut back on these so much in recent years. It's the double standards and capricious applications of "rules" that I don't agree with. But I guess it's like anywhere else, right? Who you know, who your boss is, what your connections are, etc...that's what counts.

2/7/04 (two weeks later) - I met a girl today at McMurdo who said she'd just been to Pole yesterday on a boondoggle flight (aka sleigh ride). What? Really? It has been many years since they did these flights, which were much more common in days of yore. As it turns out, yes, there have been a few of these during the season. A 130 will fly up with a group of people from McMurdo on board (solicitations go out to managers of all the departments for names of employees to come along), it will sit for a half-hour while people run out and get their hero shots at the Pole, then fly back. That is most excellent, and I take back (part of) what I wrote above. Never thought I'd see the day. I wonder if this will continue in coming seasons? I hope so, even if it's just on a limited scale. There is usually room on most flights to Pole for a couple extra people, the ANG flight crews don't seem to mind, and one or two dedicated flights per season to get people to Pole is not asking too much. The girl I talked to was absolutely jazzed about the whole thing, and I would have been too.

So about 15 minutes after I visited the cockpit, we started to cross the Transantarctics on our way up to the Polar Plateau. The usual flight path takes you right along the massive Beardmore Glacier. When it was discovered in the early 1900's, it was the largest glacier in the world - and I think it still is. This is the route Shackleton selected to make his way from the Ross Ice Shelf to the Plateau, and Scott used it during his later (final) expedition. Here it is...quite the sight from the air.

I say this is the Beardmore, but actually I'm only 95% sure of this. The captain had announced a few minutes before that the Beardmore would be out our port side, and this was by far the largest glacier around. I didn't confirm it, but this has to be it. What else could this huge glacier possibly be? It's one impressive sight. A massive river of ice, with many other smaller tributary glaciers flowing into it. It amazes me that solid ice can appear this fluid.

More of the mighty Beardmore.

And one more.

Another picturesque glacier I saw along the way.

So after a short while we left the mountains behind and started across the vast Polar Plateau - the most empty place on earth. The only things that live here are man, and they do it with much difficulty. The plateau is a giant sheet of ice, more or less 2 miles thick on average, which covers a majority of the Antarctic continent. There are shirts available at the station stores which say "Ski South Pole - 1 inch of powder and 2 miles of base".

Only one more picture of the plateau. Why? Because it all looks the same. Blue sky, white snow. That's it. But it's not completely flat, though. You can see some of the hard, wind-blown snow waves (aka sastrugi) in this picture.

A short while later we landed at the South Pole Skiway. The cold blast of air you get when you walk out the door after landing at McMurdo is nothing compared to what you get at Pole. It was -20 F when we landed, with about a 10 knot wind. The height of summer has passed, but it's still summer here. And these temperatures are not too far off the usual *winter* temperatures at McMurdo. And the air is much, much thinner (and drier). The actual elevation is about 9300', but because the air is thinner around the poles, the "physiological" elevation is closer to 10,000' or 10,500' (it changes with the atmospheric conditions). I had the flu during my trip down to the ice, but while I was at McMurdo it wasn't too bad. It stayed pretty much under control and I was able to function alright. But literally, about an hour or two after I got off the plane at Pole it had gotten much worse. Without exaggerating, I would say that it has gotten twice as bad here as it was at McMurdo. South Pole is NOT the place to be sick. I have heard all sorts of stories about people getting cuts here which don't heal until they leave, and I believe them. As I write this I have been here for about a day and a half, and with the help of some drugs from the physician's assistant I'm feeling a little bit better. But still pretty bad. And yesterday was absolutely miserable. My nose was bleeding every time I blew it, my head felt like a swollen pumpkin, and I was getting winded just walking up a few stairs. Actually, I still have trouble walking up stairs. The physician's assistant measured my blood pressure, the O2 concentration in my blood, and my pulse, and he says that except for the flu being exacerbated by the conditions, I'm doing alright for someone who just got here. Good to know...but it sure don't feel like it. But I ought to be able to get started on my work after I eat dinner and take a nap.