Journey to the South Pole

---

I am writing from a C-131 Hercules Ski-plane having just departed McMurdo Station at 1000. We are headed to South Pole Station with 13 souls on board.

I left San Francisco on Saturday Jan 27th headed for LAX on a 1650 flight. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to pack very lightly for this trip. I have a travel backpack, laptop case, 2 Pelican cases, one filled with 50lbs of tools, the other with a professional HDV camera setup. I arrived into Auckland on Jan 29th at around 0600 am. After clearing customs and receiving my 9 month New Zealand visitors permit, I collected my belongings at baggage carousel 5 and walked my way over to the domestic terminal for my flight to Christchurch on the South Island.

The flight from Auckland to Christchurch is really quick and we touched down at 0900. An RPSC (Raytheon Polar Services) representative met me at the airport and shuttled me over to the U.S.A.P. Clothing Distribution Center (CDC). The CDC is located right next to the Antarctic Experience which is an educational attraction that helps to show people what life is like in Antarctica (they even have some penguins and cold weather gear for visitors to try on).

Unlike my previous journeys to Antarctica, I had to get my ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear at 1300 the day I arrived, as we were scheduled to fly out the next morning at 0900. It took about 2 hours to go through Marlene’s Orientation, get the ECW gear fitted and get my laptop screened by the people in IT.

The program allocates 2 orange bags for travel to Antarctica. Everything you take to Antarctica must fit in the checked and carry-on orange bags unless there has been an approval for excess science cargo. Every year towards the end of January,

The entire station focuses on vessel offload and McMurdo Station gets a little busier than usual. The cargo vessel is responsible for shipping waste, equipment, science projects and large items back and forth between McMurdo and Port Hueneme. In order to move this massive amount of cargo and get it all prepped and ready to be lifted up and onto the ship when it arrives, the Navy Cargo Handling Battalion 1 (referred to as Navchaps) fly down to McMurdo and start driving trucks, cranes and forklifts in order to get everything prepared for the vessel. Well there were more than 100 people on the manifest for my flight to McMurdo and all except for about 10 of us were Navchaps. This made the ECW fitting process take a bit longer than usual.

I swapped out a fleece bodysuit for a slightly larger size and got rid of a couple pairs of gloves; neatly repacking my gear and zipping up the orange bags. I signed the clothing form and caught a shuttle to Armagh Street in Christchurch arriving at the Devon Bed and Breakfast. The inn keeper Sandy and her son Benjamin greeted me and I immediately felt at home.

I ran a few errands around Christchurch to get some last minute items, and a souvlaki at Dimitri’s greek food. Before returning to my hotel room, I stopped by the Dux de Lux, which is a really great bar and restaurant with a big outdoor patio and a lot of home brew, and bought a salad. Jay Fox and Donnie from the ice grabbed some beers and met me at my table.

When I returned to the Hotel, I met Robert Schwarz, a polie that works on various projects from Ice Cube to the 10 meter telescope. Robert has been taking some of the most breathtaking time lapse images of the Auroras in the dead of the Antarctic winter. The video he made of the auroras really is one of the most amazing things I have seen and is certainly something to check out: http://www.antarctic-adventures.de
I ended up turning in really early that night and got a really great sleep before my ice flight.

---

Photos

C-17 CHC->MCM
This is our lift down to the ice

C-17 Interior
Its a spacious plane - more legroom then any comair flight

C-17 Interior
Its a spacious plane - more legroom then any comair flight