Antarctica 2018: Chapter 8: Onward, Southward!

Link to Chapter 7: Exploring McMurdo Station
Link to Chapter 6: Touchdown Antarctica
Link to Chapter 5: Flight Day!
Link to Chapter 4: ECWs
Link to Chapter 3: Christchurch!
Link to Chapter 2: Auckland
Link to Chapter 1: From Hawaii to Antarctica

Since I was twelve, I wanted to visit Antarctica. When I heard the story of Amundsen and Scott (I think I might have been fourteen), I wanted to visit the South Pole myself and experience what they did. I’ll let pictures do the talking, but today… that dream came true.

Tips for future Antarctic travelers:

• Watch the scrolling information monitors around Station! Flight times change often and rapidly and no one notifies you. You are expected to monitor the scrolls. The TVs in MacTown transient dorm rooms have a channel dedicated to flight information. You will see your name on the manifest.

• They say don’t drink the day before your flight to Pole, because the altitude is high and the climate extremely dry. I won’t tell you whether I followed that advice or not, and you’ll be tired as all hell, but go to the bars in McMurdo regardless. Just to soak in what the locals say and do.

• There is no boomerang bag for the Pole flight! I crammed everything that was in my boomerang bag into my carry-on, and would recommend the same. The orange USAP bags are very roomy. Bag drag up the Mac hill does not become fun, however.

All the future “Polies” at the Chalet [management building at Mac] for the briefing for the Pole flight! Flights change often, with no notice, depending on weather - not just at Pole, but other destinations on the continent. Sometimes one flight gets canceled, but the airplane will still fly, just to a new destination.

I went to sleep (again) not knowing if I would be on a plane to the South Pole the next day. My name had appeared on the scrolling manifest boards, saying I was assigned to a flight the next day, but the time was “TBD”. Right before I went to bed, I turned on the TV in the dorm room, which was on the travel channel. The flight still said TBD, but now it said, report to the passenger terminal at 0545.

At the time, this was very confusing, but I’ve since come to realize this as fairly standard operation. Our aircraft was actually headed to a remote field Camp (Camp 20), but the weather was questionable. Our mission (to Pole) was therefore a backup mission. Just like in Christchurch, the pilots would make a go/no-go decision four hours out. If they made a no-go decision, then the Pole flight would be activated, and we would need to be there ready to go, since the clock would be ticking on good weather to the backup destination. But if the primary mission was a go, then we’d just trudge back and sleep some more.

I woke up in the morning and went to the dining hall. The dining hall is huge at Mac, and I sat in a corner and confirmed what my former PhD cohort-mate Sarah (an Antarctic veteran) had told me: “The coffee at McMurdo sucks”. It really, truly does. It’s tough to find the heart to complain about coffee — everything is flown in, after all — but they are flying some coffee in. Maybe try a different brand?

By the time breakfast was done, the scrolls had changed. Our mission was now a go, and we had a departure time of 0800. It was time to go. Just that quickly, I was going to Pole that day.

The Pole flights almost never boomerang. And that’s because they just cancel it. For Mac, they’ll try to get in if possible. There is an instrument approach procedure, and a lot more people on the ground. For Pole, it’s just not worth the risk. It’s a visual approach with no navigation aids, and folks that aren’t depending on a plane coming in. If it looks bad, they’ll scrub. So when the van showed up to the Mac pax terminal to pick us up, I was exhilarated.

It’s not every day you get to go to the South Pole for the first time!

The drive wasn’t as long as on Ivan the Terra Bus, but we were also going to a different location. The C-17s land at Phoenix airfield — 10,000 feet of compacted ice in the middle of nowhere. Just as far in the middle of nowhere, but with mushier snow, is Williams Airfield. Or as everyone calls it, “Willy”. This is where the Twin Otters, Baslers and LC-130s land and takeoff from — they are all ski-equipped, so Willy is also referred to as the Mac “skiway”.

On the way to the airfield! It’s quite a nicely maintained road, actually.

Williams Airfield! This has got to be the loneliest Air Traffic Control tower in the world, period.

We waited by the Air Traffic Control tower for a few minutes while the crew finished loading all the cargo going to the Pole… then it was time to meet our ride!

The ride to the South Pole! A ski-equipped US Air Force LC-130. The ground crew has just gotten done with de-icing the plane.

We got onto the plane and took… any seat. The plane was pretty empty: a very pleasant change from the C-17, where every seat had been taken. It was a visual reminder that Pole is rare, hard, something special. Something not everyone gets to experience. There were just five passengers on the plane, and just as many crew members. Of course, the real purpose of the flight (of any Antarctic flight, really) isn’t passengers, it’s cargo.

But if you look below, you might be tempted to ask: what cargo? It’s true, the plane looks pretty sparsely packed. Certainly nothing compared to the towering masses before us in the C-17. But our LC-130 was carrying cargo nonetheless, and one just as valuable: fuel. It had extended fuel tanks: more gas than it needed for the journey to Pole and back. It would offload some of this fuel at the destination.

This is not the way Stations are normally equipped with gas: most fuel to Pole comes from the infamous “South Pole Traverse”. SPT, as it’s called, is a long, lonely, over-ground voyage; a caravan of fuel trucks, snowplows and cargo that travels along a 1,000-mile route from McMurdo, through the passes in the Trans-Antarctic mountains, to the South Pole (the world’s most southerly road!). It’s quite a journey, and really worth reading more about. But it’s early in the season yet, and the weather has been bad for a while. As I write this, it’s whiteout conditions outside, and four flights today have been canceled. So the extra fuel the LC-130s carry are certainly needed, depending on the season.

In my ECWs, on the plane, excited to go!

Don’t have to worry about in-flight damage here: all my cargo, which has now come from Hawaii to California to New Zealand to Mac, is sitting right in front of me.

The empty LC-130! All the room to gallop on the three-hour flight down to the South Pole. Five passengers, five crew members and the cargo.

As a pilot who learned to fly in the mountain west, and did cross-country flights to places like Wyoming, western Nebraska and eastern New Mexico, I’ve seen my fair share of empty terrain. Still, I’ve always been fixated by the desolate nature of Antarctica, every time I’ve seen pictures or film of it. But on this flight. I got to see it for myself. And because the plane was empty, you could just stand at a window and stare — and I did.

My camera can’t do the views justice. But the flight, particularly the parts over the Trans-Antarctic mountains, were so different and empty than anything I’d seen before.

The bleak nothingness of it all is both beautiful and humbling at the same time. For all we’ve done and conquered, this continent is still wholly untamed.

And, of course, I had to chat with the pilots who landed this lucky gig. The Commander was a Lieutenant Colonel who got out of the “majors”, as he called Active duty, as a Major with a selection number to Lt-Col, so he could join the Reserves and keep flying. The LC-130s are an AGR (Active Guard Reserve) Operation run by the New York Air National Guard.

And here’s a little something for my fellow aviation nerds… the published approach procedure to the uncontrolled field of the South Pole Station Skiway (NZSP SWY 02).