First Day For the Ice Runway

As an Air Services Rep, one of my jobs is to give
tours to the crews of the C-17s that land on the
Ice Runway. Today was the opening of the Annual
Sea Ice Runway so, a crew tour was set up and I
was to lead it. However, when I arrived at the
Ice Runway, I was told that the crew had cancelled
their tour. I'm not sure why, but the store was
closed today so that wasn't an option for them to
visit it. This left me with a few minutes of extra
time before I had to head back to McMurdo so I was
able to snap a few photos. There is a small "town"
set up at the Ice Runway to service the runway.
This includes a terminal, control tower, service
buildings etc. It's kind of a neat place and early
in the season, very orderly and tidy.


It only takes about ten minutes to drive to the
Ice Runway from McMurdo versus the minimum 30
minutes to Pegasus Runway via the shortcut road.
As a result, it's basically in McMurdo's front
yard. Even a big plane like the C-17 looks small
in comparison to it's surroundings.


Speaking of big though, the C-17 is just a monster
of a plane. My boss's boss, Pete is on the right
and my friend Neel is on the left. Neel is something
like 6'8" tall and he looks miniature next to the
plane.


Parked right on the edge of the Ice Town is the
Basler. The Basler is run by Ken Borek Air out
of Canada and is specially fitted to operate in
very cold temperatures. The first flight to the
South Pole is scheduled for tomorrow and it will
be a Basler that takes 16 people there. As I
type this, the flight is looking iffy because of
weather, so we'll see if it leaves or not.


From the runway, you get a fantastic view of
Mount Erebus, our active volcano. It's kind of
disconcerting to know that it is active, but
kind of fascinating at the same time. Maybe
that's morbid fascination...


This is my favorite view of McMurdo. From out
on the Sea Ice. It looks very clean and
orderly from here. It also gives you a
good idea of how big and spread out it is.

ACH003

I had "training" this morning on how to
drive vehicles. Of course I've driven
vehicles many times down here before, but
for some reason, we have to be re-trained
each year. So I drove an Airporter (kind of
a rental car-type van over to Scott Base and
was now "trained". Later in the afternoon,
Flight ACH003 was headed down from Christchurch
and because Ivan (the big Terra Bus that holds
the most people) was broken, I was asked to
drive a passenger van out to Pegasus Runway to
pick folks up. On this flight were my friends,
Carrie, Nathan, Tad and many others. The winds
were really whipping and the roads were
drifting heavily on the way out and we got there
just as the plane was ready to land.


I love watching the C-17 come in to park after
landing. It's huge! Plus, it was fun to be
out at the runway with the other ATO folks
(my department) including Shuttles and Cargo.


Bob...one of the shuttle drivers who was driving
one of the large passenger vehicles called a
Delta, saw me taking photos of the plane coming
in and asked if I wanted a photo of myself with
the plane. Sure...it would be good to send to
Lynn I thought...so here it is!


Driving back to town was just as windy and
mushy (road wise) due to the blowing snow,
but was fun because I now had 10 passengers
in the back of the van. That smoking mountain
in the back of the photo is Mount Erebus, the
very active volcano. There's a good chance
I'll be driving out to Pegasus later this week
so I'll hopefully take some more photos then.

A Really Big Rock

Distance and Light (or lack of sometimes) can really play
tricks on your mind of how big something is or how far away
things are down here. Our friend Brody took this photo of
Castle Rock the other day and the photo's depth and scale
do a good justice of how big it really is. Surprisingly,
I had never been to Castle Rock until this winter and I was
pretty amazed by its size...especially since it practically
springs from the glacier it's located on and is the only non
snow or ice object for quite a distance. It was formed about
1.2 million years ago as a volcanic vent (plug) and is one of
a dozen or so of these vents that extend all the way down the
Hut Point Peninsula from Mt. Erebus to Observation Hill. At
1355 feet tall, it is theorized that it actually formed under
the Ross Ice Shelf when the shelf was 1350 feet higher than
it is today. So at one time, I would have been taller above
the surrounding terrain than Castle Rock was. However, time
changes, Ice Shelves erode and Volcanic Plugs tend to remain.
In many ways, it's similar to one of my favorite places,
Shiprock, in New Mexico. I'm looking forward to visiting both
again in the near future.

Pale Blue Dot

I've posted here before that we have a very large,
active volcano as our neighbor. Mt. Erebus is the
reason Ross Island is here and by it's sheer size
reminds us who's boss. My boss put this photo on
the common computer drive today that might make the
folks back home shudder. In the foreground is the
smoldering caldera of Erebus. In the distance, marked
by the blue dot is roughly the location of McMurdo.
The dot is roughly the shape of McMurdo as well.
Granted, there is some adjusting that needs to be done
to compensate for size and distance in a photo, but
considering that each person here is only a tiny tiny
fraction of that square, it gives you an idea of just
how big this volcano is compared to each one of us
that calls McMurdo home.