Welcome to reading about my upcoming trip to Antarctica. I am heading south for the second of three years for the Antarctic Precipitation System (APS) project. The goals for the APS project are centered around the installation of a suite of instruments designed to measure precipitation in Antarctica. A year ago we installed the instruments at four sites on the Ross Ice Shelf of Antarctica. This year's plan is to do maintenance and repairs on the APS sites and instruments. For the past 9 months we have been monitoring the operation and performance of the instruments through remote data collection in Boulder, Colorado. Overall, the instruments appear to be doing well with a few exceptions. I've done enough field work in Antarctica to know that the truth will be told when we are able visit the sites and see the condition of the instruments. Because this year is a maintenance and repair year, in theory we will be doing a fraction of the work that we had to do a year ago with the installation of the four sites. However, reality is that theory frequently does not play out in Antarctica and I am equally preparing myself for finding the sites in rough condition and having to do some significant re-engineering to have a successful second year of observations for the APS project. In fact, I just received photos from a colleague who visited two the sites. As I said, sometimes you can't predict what you are going to see. I will be posting some fun photos this year. We are scheduled to fly northbound, off of the continent, on December 7.
The plan for the next several days is similar to that of past trips. I leave Colorado Thursday afternoon for a commercial flight to Christchurch, New Zealand. I will have stops in Los Angelas (LAX) and Auckland, New Zealand. The total transit time will be about 24 hours with the LAX to Auckland flight lasting a little under 13 hours. I arrive into Christchurch around noon on Saturday (I'll be crossing the international dateline and losing a day). We travel through Christchurch, New Zealand because the main station for the USAP, McMurdo Station, is roughly directly south of Christchurch. The rest of Saturday is spent recovering from the travel and enjoying Christchurch. On Sunday, we go to the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) for training and to receive our issued cold weather gear. That will take a few hours and then I get to relax in Christchurch for the remainder of the day. The schedule has us on a flight southbound to Antarctica leaving early Monday morning. The details of that flight will be shared when we go to the CDC. Naturally, that is a lot happening and a lot of moving parts. This is my seventh trip to Antarctica, and fourth year in a row, so I feel reasonably prepared for all of the unknowns and surprises that frequently happen. If are currently not subscribed to receive the email/blog posts directly, you can do so by completing the form below. By subscribing the posts are pushed directly to your inbox and it is typically the most up to date way to receive the posts.
