We made it! After an extra afternoon in Christchurch, we made our flight to the ice this morning. First, a little information from the last day in New Zealand before hitting the ice. We’re not really much for doing the tourist thing, but today, we wanted to get out of the city. We were so busy taking pictures of the scenery; we forgot to ask the other folks traveling with us to get a photo of us. Anyway, the trip was a little over 3 hours, taking us east outside of town to see the Lyttelton Harbor. It was absolutely gorgeous! Make sure you check out our photo gallery for more pictures.
Summit Road
The evening was spent making sure we had all of our supplies for the early morning wakeup. We were up and ready for the bus to the CDC at 4:30am local time. I will add, especially for some special folks from SEEC, this totally reminded us of a shuttle launch; the waiting, the bus ride, the getting strapped into the seats of the aircraft, and the fact that McMurdo Station, MacTown, is simply referred to as ‘Station.’ It’s just like you see on CNN or NASA TV when the astronauts are getting ready to head to the pad. They get in the little Astro Van that takes them to the pad and gets them ready to fly. It was quite an eerie feeling to be inside an aircraft with no windows. You couldn’t really tell when you were moving and when you were stopped. Anyway, we got off the ground at about 6:40am local time on a US Air Force C-17. We made the trip in about 5 hours.
Sea Ice
During the flight we got a step up into the cockpit of the C-17. Ms. Baker and I have been getting a lot of the photo time on this trip so we thought we'd share the wealth, but just this once.
From the Cockpit
The first steps off the plane were breath taking! There aren’t really any words that can describe our initial reaction. We were put on another shuttle to take us to the Chalet where we received our In-Briefing. This briefing helped to introduce us to life on the ice, where to throw trash, safety policies, etc. And then it was time to move in to the dorms. (You will be receiving GPS coordinates in the next day or so if you are interested in where we are staying)
First Steps!
The next few days should be very entertaining as we take field prep courses to get ready for the next leg of our flight that will take us nearly 1,000 miles from McMurdo Station to the WAIS Divide field camp where the real science will begin.
COMING SOON! Team Introductions and more specifics of the research we will be conducting at WAIS Divide.