Travel to the South Pole, October 2008

This is my first report, about the trip I made from France to the geographic South Pole. As I mentioned in the Home page, I left France end of October 2008. I spent a couple of days in Christchurch, New Zealand, to get my ECW (Extra Cold Weather) gear [picture of my green ECW jacket], and to make sure all my luggage is adequately labeled (and security checked) to be transfered to Antarctica. This continent is still a dream. It is completely forbidden to import weapons, radioactive substances, animals, GMO's and even plants.

So, on Monday, October 27th at 4.30am, a left-driving shuttle brought me from my hotel in Christcurch to the airport, the military terminal. Here is what it looks like : Note, that this plane also boards passengers to the Scott Station (New Zealand base). These passengers are easily recognizable by their lovely accent. They are commonly called "Kiwi's", and wear those fancy orange/black coats you can see on the pictures.

After all kind of (double)check-in formalities, I finally was able to board the US Air Force owned C-17 "Globemaster", for a 6 hours flight straight to the South.

This is how is looks like inside a military cargo flight with 77 other passengers. It is quite comfortable, but it is really noisy. Completely impossible to take a little nap, and of course, no on-flight service other than the little pic-nic bag thrown at you when boarding the plane. In addition there is no windows, so it was really a long flight.

So here is how Antarctica works:
All the fuel needed for the USAP bases (generators, vehicles) is airplane fuel. So every C-17 "Globemaster" (or C-130 "Hercules") flying from New Zealand has its fuel tanks completely full. Once on the ice, before heading back, it unloads just enough fuel to be able to make the return flight. Because those planes are designed to travel huge distances in one flight, it represents several tons of stocked fuel at each landing in Antarctica (1 or 2 per day during the 4-months summer season). This is just to explain that a fully loaded plan takes minutes and a surprisingly long distance to take off and to land.
But we finally made it, and broke the plane on landing, which implied no flights back for several days. There is goods and bads in this situation. The good is that no other people could come in (making sleeping, and finding its bunk-bed easier), the bad being the lack of supplies. This is what I saw when I first step out of the plane:

Take note that the plane lands directly on the ice shelf, meaning the shelf is thick enough to withstand the weight of C-17, its fuel and the unloading dozer, which I found quite remarkable. It was a very bright day, and the runway was facing the Mount Erebus, which gave us a breathtaking first experience of Antarctica. Unfortunately my camera (and my fingers) froze just after this picture (-25°C with wind), so I wasn't able to shoot it on that day. Go to "landscapes" in the left menu to see the volcano.

About McMurdo...

A little bus ride brought us to the McMurdo base, USAP biggest base on Antarctica. It is built to host more the 1000 people in the summer, and the winter crew is usually a total of 200 members. It is at the Southern top of an island, in the Ross Sea. This island is essentially made out of an active volcano (Mount Erebus, 3795 meters). I suppose this gives a good reference point from the Southern Pacific Ocean, and this is probably why Scott chose it as starting point for his race to the South Pole. To add a little historical touch to this website, let's just add that Scott (New Zealand) reached the Pole in early 1912, discovered that Amundsen (Norway) reached the pole 3 weeks earlier, and froze to death on his way back. Misfortune...

This is a view of the McMurdo base, from the observation hill. As you can see, there are lots of oil storing tanks, to supply fuel to itself and the South Pole station. The brown buildings in the far back are the dorms. McMurdo is just on the cost of the Ross Sea ice shelf, and in this little bay you can see, a Swedish icebreaker usually frees up the harbor in January, to let the cargo ships come in, bringing supplies for the next winter.

In fact, McMurdo is nothing more than a little town, in another world.

Like every little town it has its fire department. The trucks are only scaled differently
	There are personal vehicles (on tracks) parked in front of the bakery on Sunday morning
and there is even public transportation.

I guess the average temperature during the time I spend in McMurdo was -15°C. But I've seen -25°C the first day though, and -9°C was the warmest on November 2nd.

Here is a little anecdote for you all. The pole is at an altitude of 2835 meters, and because the atmosphere is much thinner at the poles than everywhere else, the physiological altitude your body experiences is about 3600 meters above sea level. According to the US workers regulation, this is considered as high altitude working conditions. So you are strongly advised to take the Acetazolamide (Diamox©) pills provided in Mcmurdo, starting the day before your flight to Pole and for the time needed for your body to acclimatize. As I spent more than a week in McMurdo due to bad weather conditions, I took those pills for more than a week, because I kept being scheduled on the next day's flight. The most interesting side effect of Diamox© is its tendency to mess up completely your taste, especially for carbonated drinks. So believe it or not, it kept me away from drinking beer for more than 2 weeks, which (as most of you know) would have been a kind of a challenge in my every day's life.

As I mentioned earlier, Sir Robert Falcon Scott came to Antarctica at the begin of the 20st century. He came twice, and used the little McMurdo Sound as his start base, essentially for stocking supplies. His hut is still completely intact and can be visited. The first amazing thing you see is a dead seal beside his hut. This thing has been around for almost hundred years and is still intact, nothing more, perhaps, than a little bit shrunk. Nothing disintegrates here, because of the cold and the dryness. And once you enter the hut, everything is still as Scott left it before he went to the pole and died on March 29th, 1912. Below are pictures of this hut, both outside and inside. I didn't post the dead seal on this site... According to what I saw in this hut, Scott loved cognac and biscuits, as well a seal meat. I still wonder were he gathered the wood for his stove from...
Another thing to see in the McMurdo area is the Scott base, property of New Zealand. I went there twice (little hike across the hills). It is much smaller than the McMurdo station. Their winter crew is about 20 people, but they have much better cold-weather fleeces in their store, and their beer is ways tastier.

This sign is what you see when you enter Scott's station. Since Europe is completely at the opposite side of the earth (12 hours later) I wonder if the distance to Paris is calculated by crossing the Pole, or going East (or West).

And eventually...

On the 6th of November, the weather was nice both in McMurdo (McM) and at the South Pole (NPX) side. As I am in the summer and winter crew, I was allowed to take 140 pounds of luggage with me, but the plane I was about to board did not allow that much weight for one single individual. So I left most of my bags at McMurdo for a cargo flight scheduled the next week and I step in "Ivan the Terra" bus again to the runway.
Here is the deal: we were all scheduled to fly end of October, when the low temperatures do not allow C-130 "Hercules" planes to fly, due to military ratings. So I was scheduled on a DC-3 from 1934, retrofitted with turboprops, and rated to flight in temperatures as low as -55°C. Here is the plane :

Note that at this time there are no wheels anymore on planes, but skies, and that this plane is not pressurized. This means flying relatively low, 16000 feet, just to avoid the tallest mountains, and wearing oxygen masks during the flight. This plane can board up to 18 passengers with little hand-carry luggage, and feels like if you are in a toy plane.

The flight was about 4 and a half hours long. I took several pictures [like this one] out of the window, but unfortunately these do not give the same impression as out of a little plane above the most gorgeous place I have ever seen... Anyway, I landed on NPX air field (commonly called ski-way), and there I was, on the most remote place you can imagine to find a job, the geographic South Pole. A tradition here for the residents is to welcome the new-comers, so I got a warm hug from the next year's station manager, the doctor and the emergency rescuer I already met at Denver during the firefighter training.

Erik, right on the 90° South point, where every direction you look at is to the North. As the ice slides a few meters every year, this marker has to be moved periodically. That's usually a job of the winter-overs, in an official ceremony, were the names are put on an official list. The interesting thing is that I will be the first Dutch person wintering at the Geographic South Pole ever.

And this is my new house for the coming year. It is the USAP Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. USAP started their activities at the pole in 1957, and built 3 polar bases. This one is the third one. It is elevated and can be lifted even more (complex hydrolic system) because the two previous bases happened to be buried under the snow after a few years. The marker with all the flags around is called the ceremonial South Pole. It is just there for taking pictures in front of the station, it's huge USAP banner, and of course like everywhere in the US, an American flag...

The 12 flags surrounding this marker however are flags of the countries who signed the Antarctic Treaty, and owning a claim on the continent.
And finally my luggage arrived as well, a few days later on a cargo flight because of the excellent weather conditions. These are the planes bringing supplies/people and discarding waste during the 3 and a half summer months at Pole.

It is a C-130 "Hercules" rated to fly in temperatures above -50°C, which is usually the case from begin of November till mid-February. There are three of them rotating, and as you can see, it is on skies as well, which makes the landing very long (no breaks).

NB: Antarctica is supposed to have the cleanest air on the planet. Look at the brown exhaust behind the plane. And usually, these planes stay for more than half an hour at pole, all engines on (too cold to start up again if switched off).