These words come from Stephen Pyne in The Ice: A Journey to Antarctica and they came to mind when I first saw the icy continent.
We woke up before 5 a.m. to catch our shuttle from the Windsor Bed & Breakfast back to the CDC. Do you remember what that stood for? The answer is at the bottom if you forgot! There are many abbreviations here and I am only just beginning to learn a few of them.
We changed into our ECW (at the bottom again!) and checked our bags for our flight on the C-17 (a heavy-lift cargo plane with four jet engines) to McMurdo. We had a short briefing and then loaded the plane.
Stacy took this picture of me boarding the C-17 in Christchurch.
The plane was packed with lots and lots of cargo in the back. It was also packed with over 100 scientists and personnel for McMurdo Station. The station needs all sorts of people to help the scientists do their jobs. So for every 1 scientist, there are 10 other people that cook, clean, provide radios, help with computers, etc. The C-17 carried 135,000 pounds of people and gear to McMurdo!
The crowded C-17
There aren’t regular windows in a C-13 but I took this picture through a peephole window. It was so exciting to see the sea ice – notice the cracks in it. This is one of the reasons traveling on sea ice can be very dangerous!
My first look at the sea ice through the porthole of the C-17.
We landed after 5 and a half hours on the sea ice runway at McMurdo and went straight into vans and into town. They didn’t want us taking pictures so this was snapped on the fly!
The vans at the runway pick us up and transport us to MacTown!
Answers to abbreviations: CDC stands for Clothing Distribution Center where you get your ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear.