Arrival at McMurdo!

Sorry! I meant to post this several days ago, but I got swept up in snow school, so here it is:

We arrived in McMurdo after a 5 hr plane ride on a C-17, which is a pretty large cargo plane. There was a lot of build-up in Christchurch before our departure. Apparently there was a real risk of “boomerang-ing” which happens when the weather is really bad when the plane gets to Antarctica. Apparently, when this happens they often have to just turn around and return back to New Zealand! The informational video we had to watch prior to our departure said that the record for boomerangs before landing was 7!! Thankfully, our travel went without a hitch. It was quite an experience to ride in the giant cavity of the plane. To be honest I liked it a lot more than the commercial travel – it was much less claustrophobic; we had plenty of leg room and they didn’t keep bothering everyone about their carry on baggage being properly stowed!

It was fun to walk around on the plane a bit during the ride and look out the few windows (there was one on each escape door).

At the airport ready to head to the ice!

When we landed it was -8 deg C (which is about 23 deg F) so it wasn’t horribly cold. It was actually quite a beautiful day. The sun was shining and there were only a few clouds in the sky! Perfect!

I was so excited to finally land in McMurdo. The station here is much larger than Toolik Station, where I worked while I was in Alaska. The population at McMurdo is slightly greater than 1,000 people, so it really is its own town. There are tons of labs and dormitories, which are basically fully equipped buildings. The lengths the staff and managers go to in an attempt to reduce the carbon footprint of this base is impressive. We separate all of our trash into different types of recycling (glass, aluminum, plastic, papers), food waste, paper products, etc. There are actually have wind turbines and some of the field camps have solar panels to supplement energy. Water is a premium here and they actually installed waterless urinals for the men, which they say save ~40 gallons of water annually!

We arrive at McMurdo!! (we are all required to travel in our extreme cold weather gear, so we all look the same in the giant red jackets).

loading into our ride to the base

McMurdo from Ivan the Terra bus! (the wind mills are on the top of hill to the right of the pic)

Tomorrow I start snow school, what is affectionately known here as “Happy Camper.” As far as I can tell, this is basically a crash course for extreme cold weather survival. We will be doing activities such as building a snow hut and learning how to navigate in a blizzard (simulated by placing buckets over your head).

We were in training sessions most of the day, so I am on a bit of information overload. This afternoon we unpacked tons of boxes and set up the lab. Although it was a lot of work, the lab is looking pretty good. When we first got here it was quite sad, with nothing on the shelves and nothing on the benches.

This evening was dishes. I washed more bottles than I wanted to think about …. Science is definitely not all glamorous ;-).

(I actually just got back from snow school yesterday, my entry on it is to follow!)