On Friday, Dec 7th, I boarded an 8 hour long flight to McMurdo station, on the coast of Antarctica. There were 40 people on the plane (a C-130, a military cargo plane flown by the Air Force) and it looked like this:
This is the inside of the airplane. It's crazy-full of people.
After a few hours, we began to see ice:
Ice! The first sign that we're getting close to someplace really cold.
and then more ice:
Bigger ice! We're getting closer!
And then we were in Antarctica!
I'm in Antarctica! It finally feels real.
We arrived at the airstrip around 8pm and then rode in a van for an hour to get to the actual station. (Guess how far away the airstrip is from McMurdo - 14 miles! And it took an hour to travel!) I slept the whole time. :) ("Hey, Mrs Ratliff - what was the first thing you did in Antarctica?" "I took a nap.")
Ivan the Terra-bus, our official transport from the airstrip to McMurdo Station.
When we got to McMurdo, we were ushered into a building called the Chalet. There, we had an orientation to help us get used to the station. Then, the four of us who were traveling to the Pole were told we needed to get ready because our flight was leaving in a few hours!
A view of McMurdo. There are no people because it's about 11pm.
So, we had to go to medical for our altitude sickness medicine and information. The elevation at the South Pole is about 9,500 ft but, because it's cold and windy, it feels more like 10,500 ft. To avoid getting altitude sickness, which can cause serious problems, we were told to take it easy for a few days and to drink lots of water. We were also given a preventative medicine to help us.
The medical building in McMurdo.
Then, we had to go bag drag, which just means we had to drag all of our bags up to the loading area so that they could be put on a pallet and packed into the airplane. Of course, the building is up a hill and there are about 30 billion steps you have to climb to get up to it. Luckily, most of our bags were already there but we did have to bring our carry-on bags and we also had to change the luggage tags on our bags so that they would go to the South Pole with us, not to some remote field location.
Bags, having been dragged.
Then, we had to go get our linens so we could have sheets and blankets for the 4 hours of sleep we'd be able to get before the flight. So, we went to another building and dragged another bag off stuff across the station.
More bags to drag. Linens and sheets for our brief stay in McMurdo.
Then, if we wanted food, we could go to the galley in building 155. We could also use the internet (which was too good to pass up, having not been online for a long time and knowing that the connection wasn't always available at the South Pole). So, over to 155 I went.
Building 155, the best building in McMurdo. It has the galley (cafeteria) and a computer lab.
And then, I went back to my room and slept for a few hours.
My cozy little room in McMurdo. And, yay! No roommate!
The next morning went pretty quickly. We were up and ready to go by 6:45. Then, we had an hour long shuttle ride back to the airstrip and a 3 hour flight to the Pole. More on that part of the trip in my next journal.