I've Got That Sinking Feeling

Sad to say, it seems the only time I really get a chance to update this blog is while I'm at work. I'm typing again over in the Station Two Crash Shack, also again in condition two weather. I seem to be cursed with bad weather when I work here, though it actually was nice for most of the day.

Looking back a day, I'd like to mention that after my third attempt, I was finally able to make it out to the Ice Caves for an excursion. My first attempt was foiled by a schedule change, my second by weather. I was getting worried that I wouldn't get the opportunity to actually see them as the condition of the sea ice is deteriorating rapidly as the sun climbs higher and higher in the sky.

The Ice Caves are located roughly ten miles away on the road to Cape Evans and at the base of Mt. Erebus, our volcano where the glacier meets the sea ice. After our group gathered up, we boarded Delta 363 for our long, slow ride out to the caves. As with anything in Antarctica, a simple task like driving down a road at a decent speed is nearly impossible. A Delta is not a fast creature to start with, perhaps making fifteen miles an hour on a good day. With road conditions still poor after our last big storm, we rarely attained this speed. We bogged down in drifts and slid across the road on occasion, but luckily we never had to stop and dig ourselves out.

After the long and tedious trip out there, we finally reached our destination after about an hour. Once we disembarked the Delta, it was only a short walk over to the ice cave.

The ice cave is a rather unique natural occurrence. It forms on the glacier tongue as it meets the sea ice (or open water, depending on the time of year). Due to erosion of some kind (I'm not actually sure what), caves are formed in the tip of the glacier. These caves are large enough to crawl into and are amazing to see.

Once we slid down the mouth of the cave, I was first surprised and a little disappointed to see how small it was. It was perhaps about as long and deep as a large cargo container. Disappointed though I was with the diminutive nature of the cave (I had imagined something large and expansive such as the Lurray Caverns), the beautiful soft blue color of the ice and the formations of ice crystals more than made up for it. When someone would block the entrance with their body, the blue would glow through. It had the feeling of being in a chapel, and everyone remained quiet and whispered. Additionally, the formations of ice crystals were spectacular. Some of the shapes are difficult to describe, while others reminded me of giant snowflakes. I do have some pictures, though they are still on my camera.

After finishing up our tour of the cave, we made our way back to the big Antarctic city of McMurdo. I was lucky on the return trip to hop up front with the driver and another passenger instead of having to ride in the passenger box in the rear. The view was much better and the ride much more fun.

I would like to thank our driver, Skippy the fuelie, who took us out last night. On the way back we chatted about life down here and our lives back home. It's interesting to see that people down here are often quite intelligent. Skippy, for example, has an MBA but prefers to divide his time between Antarctica and Seward, Alaska.

After finally making our return to McMurdo (without having the Delta fall through the transition, something that often becomes a problem this time of year), I thanked Skippy and our other guides and made my way home.

Waking up today led to my eventual arrival out at the Crash Shack. It's my turn to do a tour out here, but I was finally surprised to actually have nice weather for most of the day.

This meant that we did have to do a lot of hardstands, that is, standing by in our crash trucks during all takeoffs and landings. Since previously I had only done one hardstand in total, I was happy to finally see aircraft taking off and landing. A pair of Baslers, most of the LC-130s, and the C-17 all made sorties today. They kept us busy coming in and out all day. I was glad, as I tend to need something useful to do every day or else I begin to lose my mind.

After the C-17 touched down, we were finally able to get an abbreviated tour of the aircraft. We were taken up to the flight deck and shown the fire handles and other switches for emergency shut offs. I was able to get a bunch of pictures of the inside which I will hopefully be able to share at some point.

Unfortunately, we were not able to get a good look at all of the exit doors on the aircraft. When we got on, they were busy trying to offload the last of their cargo (it being a large cryogenic helium cylinder). Even with the combined effort of the Air Force cargo guys and six firefighters, we were unable to get it past the middle rollers. Winching efforts were underway as another incoming LC-130 was called out and forced us to return to hardstands.

An interesting thing to note about the C-17 is the fact that as the season progresses, they are forced to carry less and less cargo down with them. The reason for this is the maximum permitted landing weight allowed on the sea ice.

When we started operations out here on the Ice Runway, we had roughly six feet of ice beneath us. As the temperature rapidly increased, the thickness of the ice has decreased. Less ice means less weight on top of it. Therefore, unless C-17 crews would like to find something in common with the Titanic, they must carry less.

This means that operations here at Ice Runway will be coming to a close shortly. We are expecting to move over to Pegasus Field within the next week or so. This is coming as a relief to some of us as we've been worrying slightly over some new developments in our local real estate.

After everything was finally dug out after our blizzard over the weekend, it was discovered that a seventeen foot long crack had formed in the ice right below our station. It was also discovered that seawater was seeping through this crack.

The surveyors were called to take a look at it and determined that we were still safe for operations. After the surveyors left, of course, more cracks began to form. We now have at least three or four decent size cracks running under and around the station and our trucks. We've been told we are fine (and with six feet of ice under us, I'm not too concerned), but when you start to think about the weight of our luxurious double wide station and the immense weights of our crash truck dinosaurs, it does make you wish that there were escape hatches in the roof of the station.

They say that this may be the first time in fifteen years that all of the sea ice will actually be gone from the sound. If this is true, it will be amazing to see. Our only hope is that it doesn't come too soon (particularly tonight or anytime in the next week or so when I'm working here) and we become the SS Crash Shack.

As a final note for the night, the weather quickly turned bad this evening. The airfield was evacuated again and has left us without a hot midrats meal, something many of us were looking forward to. On a good note, all of our late flights were canceled, leaving us free to sleep tonight uninterrupted. Something I will be doing very shortly.

With that, a good evening (or morning on east coast time) to you all.


Below follows a brief list of many of the different groups that work on station:

AGE
Beakers
Blasters
Cargo
Carps
DAs
Fleet Ops
Fuelies
GAs (Janos)
Helo Guys
Raven Ops
Shuttles
TelCos

...and many others. Perhaps I'll list more another day.