Antarctica

I’m back early from AGAP. We got all the work done that we needed out there.

The Twin Otter flight from Pole to AGAP was pretty cool. There were five of us on the plane, and our gear was just piled up in the cabin in front of us. The original plan was to dig out the drift snow from around camp, break down the tents and rebuild the camp up on the surface of the snow. But when we got out there, the camp manager decided that we didn’t have to move the camp. We just had to dig it out.

Life at AGAP was a unique experience. I only got about 4 hours of sleep a night due to the high altitude, shoveled snow for 9 hours a day, ate very well, and had great people to hang out with. Read mountain man stories every night before bed so I could dream of mountains and wild places. Then wake up to blinding sunlight and the flat white of what could be the most desolate place on the planet. The temperature in the Jamesway fluctuated a lot with the coming and going of the wind. Those little diesel stoves can only do so much. The temp outside held pretty steady at -35 and the wind was fairly light. We had two movie nights where we projected onto a bed sheet. Besides that, our entertainment consisted of music and board games. Not much to do outside at all besides move snow.

We shoveled out all the tents and waited for the Piston Bully that was to arrive on Thanksgiving. Because we relied so heavily on this little machine we began to call it baby Jesus. It was going to save us a lot of shoveling. It arrived and moved tons of snow. It only broke down once. It was cold enough that the 0W-30 oil had almost solidified in it. But our handy mechanics got it going again.

We also had another tractor-like machine called the Tucker. Its main job was to pull the groomer down the 3 mile long runway. It was made in the 80’s and lived its whole life in Antarctica….so it broke down a lot. Of the ten days I was there, I think it wasn’t broken for a day and a half. When it came to time to leave AGAP, the runway hadn’t been groomed for 4 days because of a break down. The LC-130 that came in had a pretty rough landing on the ungroomed runway and broke a hydraulic line in the front ski. We weren’t sure if we were going to be stuck at AGAP or not. But after three hours of poking around in the nose of the plane, we were good to go. The plane off-loaded a bunch of fuel for the AGAP fuel bladders; we boarded, and headed out.

We flew over the flat white for quite a while, but we eventually reached the Trans-Antarctic Mountains. A very welcome sight for my eyes. I was glued to the plane window as rock, snow and ice slowly passed by. Amazing. We landed in McMurdo, and stayed out at the runway for about an hour. The weather was amazing!!! It was about +30 degrees and higher than 10% humidity…tropical paradise! It was nice to see the mountains, a few familiar faces from earlier in the season, and even a skua…some type of life other than human! But the vacation was short lived. We were soon on the next Herc headed back to Pole. The plane was pretty much empty, maybe 2 cargo palettes and us five passengers. It must have been hauling fuel. I slept most of the flight and arrived back at Pole at about 1 o’clock AM the next morning.

So now I’m back at Pole and getting settled back into the industrial scene here. The temps are up into the negative teens or warmer, and the wind has dropped off a bit. Getting into the peak of summer here soon. As all you Montanan’s enjoy your -15 cold spell, I’ll be enjoying my -10 heat wave. Have a good week everyone!