Antarctic landing

[Written regarding Friday, Jan 9]

Here is a photo taken from the airplane window of mountains in Antarctica on the way to McMurdo.

After three days of delays in NZ, we finally made it to Antarctica on Friday. As I mentioned in the previous post, I was out partying with kiwis and only got 3 hours of sleep, so the plan ride went fast because I was spacing out staring at the back of my eye-lids. As we got close, you could see vast expanses of snowy mountains poking above the all-encompasing ice. Just amazing!

We landed on the Ross Ice-shelf, and stepped out into Antarctica. Cold? No, not really; it was actually only -5 deg C and relatively calm. All of us were then loaded up into these bus things that are jacked way up to accommodate massive snow tires. It is called "Ivan."

McMurdo Station is what I imagine a mining town looking like. There are no plants growing at all and all of the buildings are mostly colorless. McMurdo is on the flank of an active volcano called Mt Erebus (~12448 ft), and the ground is all black or dark-brown volcanic rock. I hiked up Observation Point, a 500 ft hill on the edge of the town, and got a great view of McMurdo and the surrounding bay. The most noticeable thing the vast-ness; open expanses of white in all directions with some mountains.

Our flight to the South Pole was supposed to take off Saturday morning, however it was cancelled because a plane on the Wais Divide had run into mechanical issues and our plane was needed to fly in mechanics to fix that plane. I hiked Observation Point again with three other guys, and spent the afternoon catching up on email, creating this blog, and reading an SPT paper. I ate dinner with John Carlstrom (my adviser), went out to Scott's hut with him, then had a few glasses of wine before going to bed. Tom Crawford, a senior scientist on SPT back in Chicago had told me that the best way to get time to talk to John was to be in Antarctica with him. So true! I spent over 5 hours with him yesterday, and in Chicago I have to fight tooth-and-nail to get 15 minutes!

And the moment you have all been waiting for - PENGUINES! At Scott's hut there was a group of 7 or 8 penguins pretty close out on the ice. They were mostly just laying on their stomachs not moving much, but still very cool. I got a few pictures, but I need a zoom lens to get good photos. There was a seal swimming around there too, but apparently not the kind of seal that eats penguins. I'll post some photos when I can download them to my computer.