Boomerang .... shuttle style

Greetings from Christchurch! I'm in transit to the ice for our last field season for this project and I thought I'd send a quick update before we head south. Our departure date to the ice was scheduled for November 4th. That meant November 3rd was our initial reporting date for clothing issue, flu shots and other initial training. This year, some of the training that is normally done on the ice (fire safety, light vehicle and environmental) was done during the first day. While this made for a longer first day, it meant less delays in getting to our sites once we got to the ice so we were happy to do it. Nearly 90 people were scheduled for our flight, partially due to a cancelled flight the Friday prior, and a good portion of them were headed on to the South Pole. Approximately a third of the people going had never been to Antarctica before (which is pretty typical).

After the morning training sessions, we had lunch and then it was time to try on our ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) clothing in the clothing distribution center (CDC). As usual, two orange bags were waiting with my names on them.

All my cold weather gear, neatly packed, waiting for me to try on.

Unsurprisingly, most everything fit as they still had my sizes from last year. I only needed to swap out my overalls because the Velcro on the front pocket was failing and that is one of the pockets I use to hold my tools when I'm on the towers. Once I had checked all my clothing, it was time to tag everything. Anything that is not physically attached to you needs to have a tag in case it gets lost. There are multiple tags though and it's important to make sure you use the correct ones. Anything you are checking in needs a "check-in bag" tag. Anything you are carrying on needs a "carry-on bag" tag. You are allowed one "boomerang" bag (which gets an orange tag), which you get back if your flight boomerangs (more on that in a minute). Usually if your flight boomerangs, you only get back what was in your boomerang back and not your luggage so people typically pack their toiletries and a couple spare changes of clothes in their boomerang bag. There are weight restrictions and your checked baggage (including your boomerang bag) cannot exceed a total of 85 lbs. Your carry-on can weigh as much as you want as long as it fits a standard carry-on size (and you can pick it up).

My bags all tagged and ready to go.

After we were done with the clothing issue, we were free for the remainder of the afternoon. This allowed for some time to look around Christchurch before an early bedtime for the 4:30am wake-up call the next day. As many of you remember, Christchurch was struck by a couple of large earthquakes nearly ten years ago, the second of which did major damage to many of the buildings in the city. They are still slowly recovering from those quakes. Some buildings have been reinforced but are still awaiting repair, like the cathedral.

The entrance to the cathedral that was damaged in the last major earthquake. Pigeons have made the interior support beams their home.

The spire that used to stand to the left of the entrance was completely destroyed in the quake.

The following morning, we were off to the CDC to start the check-in process and to board our flight south. This meant changing into most of the ECW gear (minus the big red coat) and checking in for the flight. 

Obligatory photo entering the Antarctic Passenger Terminal in my ECW gear.

Waiting in line to check our bags.

My boarding pass.

Waiting in the Antarctic terminal after checking in.

At 8:30, we had to go through security and board the buses to our flight, which had been delayed an hour. The weather looked good in McMurdo and everything indicated our chances of boomeranging should be minimal. Unfortunately, we still boomeranged (kinda). Boomerang ... the very word causes anyone who has flown to Antarctica to immediately flinch and/or wince. In Antarctic terms, if someone says they boomeranged, it means their flight had to turn around and land back at their point of origin because of a degradation of weather at the landing location or because of some mechanical issue with the plane. Typically people leave Christchurch and boomerang back there, though occasionally people have left the ice boomeranged back to the ice. Ours was a different sort of boomerang. As we pulled up to the plane in our bus, we waited for five minutes before someone came out and talked to our bus driver. Just like a game of telephone, their conversation was quickly relayed from person to person all the way to the back of the bus. There was an issue with fueling the plane and we were going to be delayed. The bus pulled away and parked for another five minutes as people began to pack up the lunches they were prepared to hand out to us as we boarded the plane. Then we were off back to the passenger terminal where we waited another 10 minutes to find out a critical part to fuel the plane had broken and we would be on at least a two day delay before they could get it. That meant not only would we get our boomerang bag back, we'd also get all of our luggage. Rats!

The USAP staff were obviously accustomed to dealing with this and within 30 minutes, we had all been re-booked into our hotels (for which we were all quite thankful! The airlines could learn a thing or two from them ....). We grabbed our bags, changed back out of our gear and were headed back to the hotels by 10:30am. The last update we received was that we are grounded until at least this Thursday. Hopefully there are no further issues and we won't be delayed any longer as people and cargo are now starting to pile up in Christchurch again.

Since I have no interesting Antarctica photos to share, I'll post a few pictures from a glacier hike I did last week. I flew down to New Zealand a week early to enjoy some vacation time before heading to the ice and one of the highlights was flying by helicopter to the Tasman Glacier and hiking to an ice cave in the glacier. The ice cave is actually a giant moulin (pronounced like moulin in Moulin Rouge), which typically are vertical to nearly vertical. Moulins are giant holes that form in a glacier as a result of summer melt water that streams on the surface of the glacier. The water will find a crevasse or other weak spot in the ice and begin to erode the ice, eventually pouring down through it. Moulins can be up to 30 feet wide and several hundred feet deep, often carrying water all the way to the bottom of the glacier. This particular moulin was nearly horizontal and allowed easy access for about 100 feet into the cave.

The entrance to the ice cave, or moulin, on top of the glacier. There is still roughly 600 feet of ice beneath us even though it is covered in rocks.

The entrance to the moulin, with people shown for perspective. The person in the back was our guide.

Looking up towards the roof of the cave, the dark line shows the crack that initially allowed water to seep down and start forming the moulin.

Standing at the entrance looking towards a room at the back.

Once at the back, the blue coloring of the ice was breathtaking. Rocks can be seen frozen in the ice that had melted their way down from the top. No one had explored much further beyond this point.

The blue coloring looked as if you were deep under the water in the ocean.

Looking back towards the entrance with me halfway down the tunnel. Water was still flowing underneath me and you could hear it rushing further into the glacier.

Unless I am delayed further, I don't expect I'll have anymore updates until I finally make it to the ice. Here's hoping Antarctica will allow us to get there on Thursday!