Winter is Here!

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On Saturday, February 26th the last plane took off from Pegasus runway, heading North to warmer climates, with the last vestiges of the summer season in its belly. The whole station met at the chalet, which is the summer headquarters for station management, to toast the last flight and the coming of the Antarctic winter. We watched the plane, eight miles in the distance across the ice, as it sat idly on the runway making its final preparations for the journey to New Zealand. Finally, there was movement and everyone stood ready, cameras in hand, as the plane left the ice runway and slowly spiraled into the air and headed our way. From our vantage point on the porch of the chalet, the plane appeared to be flying directly toward Ob Hill, but, as it approached, it went into a sharp bank and passed us, flying as low and as close to town as permitted by the Air Force, amid cheers and a last, shouted reminder, “Don’t forget where we are!” This was a big moment, because once the plane left the ice we became stranded here until the next planes arrive in late August. It is a strange feeling watching your only lifeline to the outside world leave you in its wake, not to return for six months - I know we have plenty of supplies to last us through the winter and, if the situation requires it, the planes will still be able to get to us, though with great effort and cost. The winter season has begun!

On the following Sunday several of my friends and I hiked the Castle Rock loop, which is a seven mile loop mostly on glaciers. We ate breakfast, donned our ECW gear and met at the firehouse to check out. Due to a comment made when I got one of the radios from the firehouse, I had the song “A Mexican Radio” stuck in my head for most of the hike, so naturally, I had to start singing the song to make sure everyone else had the same song stuck in their head - I don’t know if it worked, but I had to try! We passed the explosive storage area and came to the sign denoting the start of the glacier/snow portion of the hike. The hike to Castle rock is long and mostly uphill, but not too strenuous. The imposing mass of Mt Erebus rose in the background and that day the cauldron was sending a large plume of smoke towards the heavens, the cerulean sky was clear and the sun was in our faces - It was a beautiful day! At mile marker one, there is an emergency shelter called an apple hut, because it is red and round. This shelter and two others are spaced along the loop for use as warm-up shacks during the hike and as emergency shelters if a storm were to roll in. These shelters have food and fuel and all of the other things you would need for a short, emergency stay. We stayed in that shelter for a few minutes talking and we all signed the register with things like “Keith Was Here” or “Which way to Philadelphia?” We made a short stop at the second hut, which was right at the base of Castle Rock, and we ate a few of the snacks we had brought with us and then we began our climb to the summit. Castle Rock is a large, reddish, volcanic rock formation with shear cliffs on all sides and steep snow slopes leading from the trail to its base. On one side of the rock, the plateau-like summit can be reached via a slightly exposed scramble, across loose rock and snow, up to a fixed rope and to the summit. We couldn’t find the proper route at first, so two of us that had climbing experience went up what appeared to be the best path, which ended up being an easy class 5 scramble, made slightly more difficult due to the gloves and boots we were wearing, to a ledge where we spotted the fixed rope below us. The rest of the group was not too keen about going up the way we went, so they were happy when we guided them to the rope via a much more sensible path - All but one of us was able to reach the top, the person that didn’t make it made a good choice since he was wearing bunny boots, which are very warm rubber boots with poor traction, and he was slipping on all of the snow. From the top, we could see the ice edge and open ocean just a few miles away, which means the ice is breaking up and may flow out to sea soon - This would allow us to see a lot more wildlife in town, which would be great! The panorama from the top was amazing, affording us great views of Ross Island including Mt Erebus & Mt Terror, the Ross Ice Shelf, White Island, Black Island, Mt Discovery, The Royal Society Range and, of course, the open ocean. We took our victory pictures on the summit and made our retreat from the cold wind, down to where our friend was waiting for us. At the base, we sat behind a rock, out of the wind, for a while and talked. One of my friends, who was branded with the nickname “Ping” due to his sonar work in the Navy, recited the poem, “The Cremation of Sam McGee” by Robert W. Service, while I sat in awe and listened to the story based in the arctic realm - I wish I was able to remember things like that. We decided it was time to go, since we all wanted to be back by dinnertime. I decided to try my luck at glissading, which is a fancy word for sliding, down the hill back to the trail, but it didn’t work too well - It was fun though! Two of us continued on the loop while the others, who wanted to get back sooner, went back the way we came. From the base of Castle Rock, the trail begins a long downhill section that crosses a few active crevasses before reaching the Ice shelf. This hill is a popular place for the skiers and snowboarders on station and I can see why - it is long and downhill. Near the base of the hill is where the crevasses are located. A crevasse is a feature that is common on glaciers and, in some instances, can be very dangerous. Glaciers are constantly in motion - They flow like water, but a lot slower. When the glaciers flow over abnormal surfaces like hills or cliffs, or are forced to change directions, cracks will form on their surface, like rapids in water, and these are called crevasses. Sometimes these cracks can be hundreds of feet deep and very wide and in places that get a lot of snow or, like here, get a lot of wind, the crevasse can be hidden, or bridged, by the snow. The bridged crevasses are very dangerous, because you can’t always see where they are - You could be walking along on what appears to be a nice smooth snowfield and all of the sudden, BOOM, you break through the roof of a bridged crevasse and fall deep into the dark ice cavern below. Here, people who are trained in glacier travel layout flagged routes that we are allowed to hike on. The crevasses are marked with black flags, so they can easily be found and watched and they are bridged where they cross the trail. The rest of us are not allowed off of the flagged routes, because the crevasses are not marked everywhere and not everyone here has the training necessary to safely cross crevasse zones. At the bottom of the hill, after we had crossed over two marked crevasses, we came to another, unmarked crevasse. This crevasse crossed the trail in front of us and, looking in both directions, I didn’t see any way around it - We would have to cross over it! Normally to cross over a crevasse, we would need to be roped up and if we were lucky we would be able to find a sturdy snow bridge to walk across - No such luck, we didn’t have anything. How did we cross this gapping crack in the ice that blocked our path to dinner? Well, luckily the crevasse was only about ¼ inch wide, so we just stepped across and continued our walk. The rest of the walk was pretty uneventful. We walked past Silver City and the place I went to Happy Camper School. We passed two icefalls, which are like water falls, but big blocks of ice are falling instead of water and we finally joined up with the road to Willy field and caught a ride back to McMurdo. The two of us who decided to finish the loop actually got back to town before the people who wanted to go straight back to town - We, of course, told them that we ran all the way back and that was why we beat them, but they didn’t believe us and I told them about the ride in the end.

The following week was spent moving into my winter housing, which is very nice, and getting unpacked, which went very quickly. The week was a short week, because it was a two-day weekend. We get one two-day weekend per month and this one was going to be action packed. Friday night was the annual station close party where everyone gets together for dinner, dancing and a raffle drawing. There are several parties like this through the winter and they are great for getting to know your fellow co-workers away from the job. On Saturday, I went with several people on an organized trip out to Pegasus Ice Runway to see the wrecked Lockheed Constellation airplane named Pegasus, which is the namesake of the runway. The plane crashed in a storm in the late ‘70’s when the planes landing gear got caught in a snowdrift, during a low visibility landing, and was ripped off. By the time the plane had stopped, one of the wings had been torn off and several of the props were gone, but, amazingly, nobody was seriously injured. The base commander at the time had the plane towed off of the runway to its current location, because he apparently didn’t think it was appropriate to have a wrecked plane at the end of the active runway. Now what is left of the fuselage is mostly buried in the ice with just the top of the plane and the tail section sticking out. Every year people come out to dig a portion of the plane out and take pictures of themselves standing on the tail of this once magnificent airplane. Several of my co-workers and I had been jokingly talking about rebuilding the plane and flying it home like in the movie, “Flight of the Phoenix”, but not enough of the plane was intact - Oh well. Ironically, Pegasus was one of two Constellations being flown in on the day it crashed - The other plane, which landed safely, was named Phoenix. Saturday evening the coffee house was hosting a horror double header in the movie room, with “The Shining” and “The Thing”. The place was packed for “The Thing”, which has become a cult classic here, because it takes place in Antarctica during the winter and it mentions McMurdo Station. Sunday was spent relaxing in preparation for work the following day.

The sun has been spending more time below the horizon every day and it is starting to get dark at night, soon the sun will disappear altogether, not to return again until the end of August. The weather has been mostly good, but it is definitely getting colder. With the occasional forecasted temperature of -20 F highs with -80 F wind chills, it is easy to see that winter is approaching rapidly. We are all working as hard as we can, so we can have most, if not all, of the outside work done by the time the sun goes away and the long, cold, dark night sets in.

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Photos

The Last Flight!
This is a picture of the plane banking away from Ob Hill as it leaves us in its wake. The statue is of Admiral Bird, who was the first to fly over the pole.

Castle Rock and the Sun
This is a picture of Castle Rock from the trail.

Climbing Castle Rock
No, this isn't where I climbed up it, but I needed a fake climbing picture - I have one of these from the redwoods too.

The Summit of Castle Rock
The summit is flat and very windy, but I had to have the picture. In the background going from the left to right is Mt. Discovery and the Royal Society Range.

The Fixed Rope
This rope was put in place to assist climbers of Castle Rock in a few steep, exposed areas.

Slopes, Sun & Smoke
This is the snow slope I slid down. Mt Erebus is in the background.

An Ice Fall
This is a place where the glacier is colliding with the shelf ice, thrusting the ice upward and creating an icefall.

My Frozen Water Bottle.
I froze my water bottle on this trip and it wasn't even that cold.

Route 66
Route 66 is the road between Pegasus runway and McMurdo. I like this shot because it shows how desolate the place is.

The Tail Section of Pegasus
This is the tail section of the Constellation plane that crashed here is the 70's and is now buried in the ice.

Navy
I helped dig out the "NAVY" sign that is still visible on the fuselage of the plane.

Me on the Tail Wing
Another Summit image?

Snot Sickles
My beard froze on the hike from the van to the crashed plane - It will get more frozen later I have been told.

Pegasus
This is a view of the plane showing the "UNITED STATES NAVY" on the side. You can also see one of the engine cowls on the buried wing.

A Fata Morgana
The bluff like object at the base of the mountains in the distance is known as a Fata Morgana. It is a mirage that sometimes looks like a castle. These are common this time of year.