Greetings from Superman's Fortress of Solitude

Sorry for the radio silence from down south lately.  It's been about a week since my last entry.  This is not due to a holiday, it's really due to NOTHING happening here.  Since last Monday midday, we have not flown once. The weather has been awful.  Pretty much snow, blowing snow, ice crystals, snow pellets, freezing fog the works which all adds up to no flying around these parts.

It is also the week of Thanksgiving here, however since we typically have a six day work week and the holiday falls on a weekday--we observed it last night, Saturday night (as well as a rare two day weekend).  The irony of yesterday is that the aviators have all sat around weathered out this week and the planned day off  for the holiday was absolutely beautiful for flying.  Typical Murphy's Law!

I opted to start off the holiday right with a run and did the 5K Turkey Trot Race here. The good news was it was sunny and looked beautiful out.  Beyond that it was c-c-c-c-c-c-c-c-old and windy!

Ready...set...gooble...

Nearing the turnaround with Mount Discovery in the background

Uphill with Ob Hill in the background

The rest is downhill from here!

I think it was around 14 F with around a 30 knot breeze straight uphill on ice.  The good news was I finished, however I won't be using this time for any future race resume or qualification purposes!  Around 200 folks ran and I did finish in the middle of the pack for the under 40 men's group.  The winner ran around a 20:45 time.  I think I would have trouble doing that on pavement downhill let alone here. Next year I get to change groups to the over 40.  Look out!

The rest of the pre-gorging day was spent out on the sea ice.  The recreation folks put together the first organized tours of the pressure ridges with a mountaineer.  These monoliths are amazing.  The forces of nature are amazing and beautiful.  Its like getting to watch plate tectonics in high speed (i.e. over weeks versus 100 million years).

My immediate takeaway walking among the troughs and peaks of these frozen 25' waves was I know where the writers for Superman came up with the idea for his "Fortress of Solitude"! 

From the comic...

...to reality!

Fire and Ice! Pressure Ridges with Mount Erebus in the background

 The beauty here is amazing.  Pictures are pretty, however hardly do justice to the reality walking through this ice field.

The ice is truly blue.  Nothing touched up on these at all.

A wall 20' of lifted blue ice

A crevasse runs through this ridge

 These ridges are in constant motion.  Tidal forces act upon them daily.  As the cracks form, seawater floods into the voids, freeze and cause uplift.  This in combination with the Ross Ice Shelf flowing into this transition zone causes a mangled mass of blue and white beauty.

Erebus frames by two ridges

Flags mark the safe route.  Wander off and you may slip into a hidden crevasse 

The other beauty of these ridges is that they attract marine wildlife.  These crack do the work for the seals so they do not have to grind their way through the ice to find a breathing hole.  Weddell Seals were the mammal of choice today as we walked through the lazily snorted and rolled over, caring less that we were interrupting their sun bathing.

Life among the ridges.

Huh? Wha? Oh, back to sleep now.

A skua joining in the fun, looking for a spare scrap of fish

Zzzzzzzzz.

A look back through the ice field at Mount Terror as we walk back to Mcmurdo.

I couldn't have imagined a better Thanksgiving down here than what I did.  Lots of fun.  While I wish I was home to spend it with family and friends, this will suffice for now!  Back to the work week.  Hoping for some better weather!   Some neat projects are about to start so I can't wait to check them out and share what I can.

Talk to everyone soon!  Happy Thanksgiving!

Off to the Polar Plateau...

Another cool flying day yesterday on the fixed wing side of the house.  Plenty of room on board one of our medium lift, DC-3T Basler aircraft so I opted to tag along to mooch a little flight time and help the crew offload about 6,000 pounds of fuel in support of a survey going on up on the polar plateau.

A view of one of our Twin Otters at the fuel pits (Mt Erebus and Ob Hill in the background)

I headed down to the Sea Ice Runway with the crew and had a little time during preflight to walk around the line and see what's happening down there and grab a coffee from the flight line galley.

One of the survey projects on the Basler (note the radar array under-wing and tail boom as well)

We have a variety of aircraft and missions for each type of aircraft.  Some are flying strictly cargo missions, others are configured for unique survey flying where specialized hardware is installed internally and externally under the wings, through ports and even on the empenage or tail section.

Two ski equipped Baslers ready for business

Basler looking out across the ramp at a ANG LC-130 taxiing our of the ramp for takeoff

A Twin Otter inbound for a fuel stop

A closer look at the survey equipped Basler

Today was a fairly routine day of stockpiling fuel in the field at a remote cache a few hundred miles from McMurdo that enables flights to drop in for fuel to save time and the fuel to return to McMurdo or another prepared field.  The drums are loaded up internally each in a  standard 55 gallon drum or about 400 lbs apiece. We flew direct to the center of the map below labeled BYG.

 En route the flying is always gorgeous.  Across the Trans-Antarctic Mountains we went, where as you can see, was a beautiful day, just a bit bumpy as you cross the mountains up onto the Polar Plateau where the cold air spills down through the mountain passes to lower elevations, speeds up, causing what are known as katabatic winds and a nice mountain wave.

A glance at the upper Watson Glacier and Prebble Ice Falls

Prebble Ice Falls

So after the beauty of the mountains, comes the white endless abyss that is the polar plateau.  White as far as you can see, and then some.  We picked our way through the ice field and landed on a nice section of crevasse free ice.  The elevation where we were was about 7,500'--over 4,000' of which is glacial ice.

High atop the polar plateau--not a runway in sight

We offloaded the fuel in the thin air, marked the cache flags so it could be found after being buried and departed in about 15 minutes after landing--the -10 below and 30 mph wind helps motivate you along in your work.

We returned back to Mcmurdo for another load and flew most of the return leg.  Back over the mountains and in we went for a successful round trip.  Flying here is great--better than any office day by far!  

Well back to my Saturday at work now.  Weather has rolled in today and put a damper on flight ops for a bit.  We can't complain though as its been fantastic weather for 2 straight weeks here. A little delay for now, hopefully the whole day isn't a wash.  Take care all! Stay tuned for more.

The view from above

When it's not too windy here, one of the most fantastic views of the surrounding area is from atop Observation Hill, or "Ob Hill" here at McMurdo.  It's about an 800' promontory next to town, which is an old volcanic cone off of neighboring Mount Erebus.

A view to the northeast of Mounts Erebus, Terra Nova and Terror

It's a good place to help clear the mind a bit, too.  Views for a hundred miles on these clear days are great. The sea ice runway is at the base of the hill as well so when flight ops are going on its nice place to take in the big picture of the logistics of how we work here.

Annual Sea Ice Runway (NZIR) at Mcmurdo (C-17, LC-130's in photo) 

"Green" Antarctica.  We've got wind, and lot's of it.  

A Bell 212 transiting through the tower airspace at the Sea Ice Runway

C-17 departing for Christchurch, New Zealand.

Atop Ob Hill is one of many memorial crosses spread across the continent.  This is "Scott's Cross" memorializing Sir Robert Falcon Scott's party that perished on their return from South Pole in March of 1912.  The parties names are inscribed in addition to a short quote from the Alfred Tennyson poem "Ulysses", which reads "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield." Concisely summarizing the tragedy.

What's a Pressure Ridge?

Shockingly there isn't much shopping down here.  That's a good thing.  However, there still are a couple places on the continent albeit limited.  Nearby is one of the locations outside of town here at Mcmurdo.  Our Kiwi neighbors at Scott Base are a short 3 mile hike away so up and down an icy hill we went in search of Christmas presents and a diet coke. 

Fortunately we walked because we didn't have any New Zealand dimes.

As you approach Scott Base one of the most amazing features right at their location is the sea ice / shelf ice confluence.  Where the two meet is a dramatic scene of the forces of Mother Nature at work with the formation of mangled ice and pressure ridges for miles. So just what is a pressure ridge?

Scott Base and the pressure ridges from a shot I took last season flying.  Mt Erebus in the background.

It's an ice formation typically found on large expanses of sea ice during the winter. In the most basic sense, a pressure ridge is a long crack in the ice that occurs because of repeated heating and cooling on the surface of the ice in addition to the tidal forces and flow of the ice shelf towards the sea.

Mangled Ice

Looking Back at Erebus

A handful of Weddell seals coming up for some sun through breathing holes created by the ridges

In cases of extreme cold, ice will shrink in volume like any other solid, opening up cracks in the surface that are completely frozen over. The cracks quickly fill with water and freeze again, but when the temperature rises later, the ice expands and forces itself upward along the lines of the crack, in much the same fashion that plate tectonics creates mountain ranges, albeit on a much smaller scale. 


That's today's lesson folks.  It was a success in it was a great 5-6 mile hike, I found a diet coke, got a great little Christmas ornament and saw some beautiful and twisted ice.  


Happy Veteran's Day to all my fellow brethren past and present.  Thank you for yours and your family's sacrifices.  Now back to my Saturday.  Cheers!