I am at the end of another journey to Antarctica, completing my fifth trip to the coldest, windiest, and driest continent. It is still hard to believe such trips have become sort of a regular occurrence as that is not what I set out to do, and I really don't ever want such experiences to be "regular". The travel off of Antarctica went exceptionally smooth, especially for Antarctic standards. We met at 1:00PM on Monday for transport to Pegasus Airfield on "Ivan the Terra Bus". You can think of Ivan as a monster-truck version of a school bus. It took about an hour to get to Pegasus as Ivan is much slower than a van. The C-17 arrived right on time at 2:20 PM. With 115+ people on the southbound flight, it took little effort to offload southbound and load northbound cargo. In fact, much of the C-17 was outfitted with seats that were now being filled with only 21 people. 30 minutes after the C-17 landed we walked to, and boarded, the plane. Another half hour later we were in the air going to Christchurch. It was a little over five hours to get to Christchurch and we were on the ground by 8:30 PM. Less than 8 hours from transport to Christchurch is really unheard of when it comes to northbound travel.
I spent about 36 hours in Christchurch before continuing my journey back to Colorado on commercial airlines. I requested a full day in Christchurch to provide an opportunity to rest, slow down, and acclimate back to non-Antarctic life. One of the post-ice trip highlights is a walk in the Christchurch Botanical Garden. It is always special to sense colors, sounds, and scents of nature that I've not experienced in over 5 weeks. I can't even imagine what that must be like for those who are in Antarctica for 8+ months. The time in Christchurch is also nice for getting some good food. After nearly seven weeks together, John and I finished off our journey with a great dinner. The travel back to Colorado was relatively smooth without any delays or drama and a total door to door travel time of about 24 hours.
It is still far too early for me to process and really put much of this past trip into perspective. That will happen in the coming weeks once I get a chance to slow down, as well as have conversations with family and friends. I have come up with a summary of some of the main storylines from the journey. These are not exhaustive, nor in any order, and I am probably missing some, but at this stage they present a good wrap-up to the season.
We were able to complete 33 flights over 10 days of flying the UAVs. This is a fraction of the number of flights that we had hoped to complete. However, the observations that we were able to capture represent a good range of atmospheric conditions and will provide a number of interesting cases to better understand the lowest part of the Antarctic atmosphere. The typical Antarctic field season is that you are fumbling around and facing setbacks and delays to start the season. Things come together for the last week or two and you come away feeling good about how the season ended. Our season was the reverse of that experience with the most productive and best field work at the onset. Yet in our case, this reverse operation was by far preferable because it was in those early weeks, when the transition from winter was the most pronounced, that provided the most interesting meteorological cases.
The entire trip turned on the night of the accident where the UAV hit John's hand and resulted in two deep cuts requiring stitches. In the days leading up to the accident, we were remarkably successful and completed nearly two-third of our flights in the initial week and a half. We had two days of five flights each. Things were never the same after the accident. We never flew more than three flights in a single day and we had some days where we sat at the passenger terminal for hours without getting in a single flight. The first UAV was totaled in two successive crashes on our first day out at Pegasus after the accident. In hindsight the UAV was likely damaged in the accident. After losing that plane, and the accident, we were more cautious and seemed to be continually fighting a lack of wind.
One of the events that sticks out to me is what I am calling "the 10 lost days" in the middle of the trip. These 10 days occurred between the accident and our presentation for the Sunday science lecture. (I talked about these days in more detail in a previous email/blog post.) Time seemed to stand still during those 10 days and yet after the 10 days were over it was a challenge to identify where all of that time went. It was also in those 10 days that I feel we transitioned from the "polar night" to the "polar day" as the sun was much higher in the sky, McMurdo was no longer in the shadow, and the temperatures were warmer. At the end of these 10 days I felt I got a better grasp of keeping track of the day to day activities. We still faced some setbacks after these 10 days but they did not feel like they were lost days.
Similar to previous trips, I had a fun time meeting many of the different friends and personalities in McMurdo. This was a different trip from the past in that we were two of only 10 scientists at the station during WinFly. That means nearly all of the 326 residents were contract workers with varying jobs from administrative to outdoor specialist to specific trades. There were some first years in the mix but most of the contract workers were people who have been doing it from two to 20 years. The last Saturday of my trip was highlightfed with the party held at the Carp (carpentry) Shop work center. The party is a tradition for the close of WinFly and it was a very fun night and a chance to spend time with new and old friends.
Those are some of the early storylines from this years trip. I will be sending out one more quick message in a week or two when I have posted all of the photos from the trip. Thanks again for following along on my journey to Antarctica. The next trip is scheduled for November 2017, although the details of that trip won't be determined until around March.
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