Coming to a Close

I am in what should be my final 18 hours in Antarctica. I say should because there is always an unknown when it comes to weather and Antarctic flights. I checked in my bags for transport this afternoon in a process referred to as "bag drag" and I am down to my carry-on bag. I have cleaned my dorm room and passed the housing inspection. The only remaining thing to do is to wait for the transport time when we are taken to Pegasus Airfield for our C-17 flight to Christchurch. I am estimating the transport time will be shortly after lunch.

In my last post, I shared about our long night of fighting the lack of winds and completing three flights in 15 hours. Those three flights ended up being our last flights of the field season. The following night we were both exhausted and the winds were once again light. On Friday, we went out to Pegasus for one last try. We arrived and the winds were marginal and the atmospheric conditions were less than ideal. After some thought, we agreed to not fight the light winds and end the flights for the season. We packed all of our gear and equipment from the passenger terminal and went back to McMurdo.

The remainder of Friday and Saturday were spent returning gear, packing cargo, and completing checkout procedures to finalize the field season. All of that didn't take too long and much of the time was spent either doing research for work back in Colorado, getting my things ready to go home, and spending time with friends in McMurdo. Saturday night was spent at a party held by one of the work centers. The party was a great sendoff for me, and more significantly many of the people who have been in McMurdo all winter and heading north for the first time in 6+ months.

McMurdo Station and the surrounding facilities are now looking more like main body season than the more dormant state that we saw a few weeks ago. It is clear the station is getting ready for the influx of people and science activities. The current population of 326 will double in the next week and it will reach a population of around 1000 for much of the season between mid-November to late January. Tomorrow's southbound C-17 flight is scheduled to have 114 people on the flight and there is another flight the following day with 99 more.

I am still working on, and struggling with, putting this field season into context. I am trying to sort through all of the experiences that I have been able to see and do. The early conversations that I have with friends and family, after returning to Colorado, will likely be a struggle in trying to explain the field season in a succinct and nicely organized story. I feel like I have not been able to capture so many of the dramatic changes and events that are associated with WinFly. Yet I also think we did a very good job in stopping and enjoying the moment whenever we saw something that interested us. My early conclusion is that you just can't see and capture it all. I'll be working on a better description.