Spending a week in New Zealand was great. Christchurch really has a good variety of restaurants to choose from and it was nice to be able to take a shower every day instead of our 2 per week. You also tend to forget how nice humidity is! The South Pole is so cold and dry that it wreaks havoc on the sinuses and skin. Aside from enjoying some showers and food, I was able to meet up with a friend from high school and college in Queenstown. Queenstown is probably one of the most beautiful towns I’ve seen. It’s set right next to The Remarkables mountain range which provides a gorgeous backdrop. I was even able to get a round of golf in at the spectacular Jack’s Point golf course! The R&R definitely did its job and I came back to the Pole feeling refreshed and ready to endure the winter.

When I got back to the Pole, I’m sure my partner at ARO (Atmospheric Research Observatory) was happy. He did not arrive early enough in the summer to take advantage of R&R so he was left to take care of things on his own while I was soaking it up in New Zealand. He must have been busy while I was gone because things looked great when I got back!

A view of Akaroa Harbor.

A paraglider suspended over Queenstown.

A beautiful round of golf in Queenstown!

Another great view from the golf course.

About a week after I returned from R&R I was getting ready to head out to ARO when I sat down and my teeth kind of bumped together. It ended up knocking off a piece of tooth that was repaired last spring. Luckily I was able to grab a quick flight to McMurdo and see the dentist only days before she was leaving the ice! It really would have been annoying having to deal with a broken front tooth for 8 months through the winter. She did a great job on repairing it though and actually looks better than the previous repair job.

It turns out that this broken tooth was a blessing in disguise. On my flight back to McMurdo, I was able to capture some spectacular video of the Transantarctic Mountains. We also went over the Dry Valleys, out over the open water, and then ended with a great fly-by of McMurdo. Well worth the dental work!

A view out of the LC-130 window as we enter the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

A glacier spilling down through a valley.

Another glacier carving it’s way.

Beautiful blue sky over some peaks and valleys.

The Dry Valleys.

Some broken off sea ice in the Ross Sea.

Mt Erebus.

McMurdo Station Fly-by.

Now as we approach mid-February, people are leaving by the bundles. A little less than 2 weeks ago we had about 250 people on station. Now we are down to about 125. There are 2 more major passenger flights out of here in which we will lose about 80 more people leaving us with about 48 people for the winter. It’s strange having all the open space in the galley during meal times. And it’s only going increase the next several days. Tomorrow is the last day for any outgoing mail, and Monday, February 15th, we have our last flights! The sun is very noticeably lower in the sky and temperatures the past week have been much colder. Today is the coldest day since I arrived here last October at -40F. Hard to believe it’s just about here but it is. Winter!

Enjoy this photo show of our time in New Zealand!

Gareth Morgan and Kate Swanger passing time at LAX.

Twenty-four hours after leaving Boston we were eating breakfast in Sydney and we finally arrived in Christchurch; the total travel time from Boston to New Zealand lasted 29 hours 32 minutes. A full day to say the least!

Flying from Sydney to Christchurch over the southern alps, New Zealand.

Tonight we will rest up at the hotel, enjoy a good meal in this beautiful city, and begin reorganizing the gear for the trip to Antarctica. Tomorrow we will head to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) located just a few blocks from the Christchurch International Airport to collect (and test out) our Extreme Cold Weather Gear (ECW). It has been a hectic 36 hours but the team is getting along great and I am very excited to be headed south on Tuesday if the weather holds out.

C17 at Pegasus runway.

We landed in Christchurch at 9:30PM on Saturday night. Once we landed we needed to clear New Zealand customs and then return the cold weather gear we’d been given prior to going to Antarctica.

I flew home to Colorado on Sunday afternoon, but spent Sunday morning walking around Christchurch enjoying the warm weather and the sight of trees, grass, flowers, birds, and lots of other people. After 5.5 weeks in Antarctica it can be quite a shock to see all of the activity in Christchurch, and I’m sure it was an even bigger shock for some of my fellow travelers on the C17 flight, that had spent the past 7 or more months wintering over in McMurdo.

The locals I spoke with in Christchurch, while walking around town on Sunday morning, all complained about the cold, rainy weather. A southerly change (the local name for a cold front, which in the Southern hemisphere is accompanied by a change to a wind direction from the south) had moved through on Saturday, causing the temperature to drop from highs in the 70s on Friday to a high in the 40s F on Sunday. To me temperatures in the 40s F felt pretty mild after 37 days where the low temperature was never warmer than -6 F and the warmest temperature I’d experienced was +19 F. In fact, during my time in Antarctica the daily high temperature was above 0 deg F on only 13 of the 37 days I was on the ice.

As I walked through the Christchurch botanic gardens I enjoyed the feel of a breeze that didn’t threaten frostbite and hypothermia as the bitter cold winds of Antarctica did. The smell of spring flowers blooming was something that you never smell in Antarctica, and almost don’t realize missing until you get off of the ice.

Flowers in Christchurch botanic gardens.

Flowers in Christchurch botanic gardens.

My flight home on Sunday afternoon was a comfortable one. We flew from Christchurch to Auckland, New Zealand. From Auckland we flew across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco, and from there on to Denver. The long flight across the Pacific wasn’t very crowded, which always helps make spending 12 hours on the plane more tolerable. My flight landed in Denver at 6:30PM on Sunday night. The arrival time may seem a bit surprising, given that my flight left Christchurch at 4:30PM on Sunday afternoon, but of course we’d gained a day when we flew from west to east across the International Date Line. I was happy to see my wife and 7.5 month old daughter waiting for me when I arrived at Denver International Airport. The 6 weeks I’d been away was the longest time I’d been away from my daughter, Sabrina, and she didn’t quite know what to make of me at first, but after a minute of studying me remembered that I was Daddy and gave me a big smile.

My actual travel time, from when I left my hotel in Christchurch until I’d walked into my home in Colorado was 25 hours, and it had taken 49 hours total to get from Antarctica back to Colorado. Given that the early Antarctic explorers would spend years in transit to and from Antarctica this didn’t seem like a lot of time to travel home from the opposite side of the world.

I hope you have enjoyed reading about our research project and life in Antarctica on this blog. It was great to see all of your comments about my posts. I don’t have any Antarctic fieldwork planned for the rest of this year or for next field season, but hope to be back in Antarctica during the 2011-12 field season working on the Antarctic automatic weather station project. My collaborators and I will also likely seek additional funding to conduct more UAV observations in the Antarctic. I’ll be sure to start a new blog series when I return to the ice.

The weather in Christchurch was beautiful, with sunny skies and warm temperatures with highs in the lower 60s F. This was a bit of a surprise since August is still winter in New Zealand. The explanation for the nice weather is that Christchurch was experiencing a weather phenomenon known as a norwester, which is characterized by strong, warm northwesterly winds. This is similar to the warm Chinook winds we get in Colorado or the warm foehn winds of the European Alps. Regardless of the source of the nice weather I took advantage of it by strolling around Christchurch and walking through the city’s beautiful botanic gardens.

Trees in the Christchurch botanic gardens. Green plants are something I won’t see again until I return to New Zealand in early October.

I also went up to the Port Hills, the remnants of volcanic activity in this region, which provided a beautiful vantage point to watch the sunset over Christchurch, the Canterbury plains, and the Southern Alps.

Sunset over Christchurch, the Canterbury plains, and the Southern Alps from the Port Hills just outside of Christchurch.

Of course, my time in Christchurch wasn’t all play – I also went to the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) clothing distribution center (CDC) to get my extreme cold weather (ECW) gear for the trip south. USAP participants are given all of the cold weather gear they’ll need to stay warm and safe while in Antarctica. When trying this gear on in a more temperate location like Christchurch it is easy to think that it is overkill, but I certainly appreciated it when I stepped off of the plane in Antarctica to a temperature of -45 F (although I’m getting slightly ahead of myself).

The flight to Antarctica needs to be timed to coincide with the relatively short daylight hours at this time of year, and so needs to land around noon. This means leaving Christchurch around 7AM, which requires a middle of the night wake-up to get to the CDC, conveniently located next to the Christchurch airport, to get into our cold weather gear and check in for the flight. On the day that we flew to Antarctica (Wednesday 26 August) I got up at 2:30 AM to catch the shuttle to the airport. By 4:30AM I’d changed into my cold weather gear, which included insulated socks and giant white bunny boots, long underwear, pants, and an outer pair of windproof pants, a long underwear top, a fleece jacket, and a giant red parka, glove liners and gloves, a balaclava, fleece hat, and goggles. We boarded the plane, a US Air Force reserve C17 around 6AM and were in the air heading south just before 7AM.

Me on the C17 waiting for take-off from Christchurch. I’ve taken off some of my cold weather gear off for the flight.

There is no mistaking this plane for a commercial aircraft, as the inside looks like the inside of a giant warehouse. A pallet of airline seats is loaded in the cargo area, that provides seating for about half of the passengers, with the remaining passengers sitting on nylon webbing seats that fold down from the walls of the airplane. The airline seats have the advantage of being more comfortable, but with less legroom, while the seats along the walls of the plane are less comfortable, but provide lots of legroom. Given all of the padding from our clothes, I find the less comfortable seats with more legroom to be preferable.

Video 1. A view of the inside of the C17 during the flight down to Antarctica. The engine noise you hear on the video is loud enough that it makes talking with other passengers difficult and requires that you use ear plugs for most of the flight.

The flight from Christchurch to the Pegasus ice runway in Antarctica takes about 5 hours. On our final approach the pilot announced that the current weather at Pegasus was -45 F. I’m a bit of a cold weather junky, so hearing this got me excited, as this is the coldest temperature I’ve ever experienced. With temperatures like this it is nice to have all of the ECW gear that seemed like overkill when in Christchurch.

One of the passengers on the flight just before getting off of the plane in Antarctica.

C17 at Pegasus ice runway.

Newly arrived USAP participants waiting to be driven from the Pegasus ice runway to McMurdo Station.

Even though this is my 9th trip to Antarctica it was my first trip that wasn’t during the height of the Antarctic summer (December and January) and I was excited to experience late Antarctic winter, with cold temperatures, strong winds, and dark (during the summer the sun is up 24 hours, so despite having spent many months in the Antarctic previously this was the first time I’d see the sun set and have a dark night). The low sun angle when we got off of the plane cast the familiar landscape of Ross Island, Black and White Islands, and the Transantarctic Mountains in a new light for me.

Ross Island from Pegasus ice runway. This photo was taken near noon, yet the sun was low in the sky.

After arriving in McMurdo we went to the mandatory in-brief that gets all new arrivals up to speed on the basics of life in McMurdo. After that we were assigned dorm rooms and picked up our luggage from the flight. The rest of the afternoon was spent getting settled into our lab space in the Crary lab.

By dinnertime it was already dark out, with a glow of orange along the northwest horizon. By the time dinner ended it was completely dark out, and I saw the stars from Antarctica for the first time.

Our first full day in McMurdo (Thursday 27 August) was spent at more meetings and training sessions, as well as getting our lab space setup and all of our gear unpacked. This will continue for the next few days. While we are getting all of our gear setup the last flights to Antarctica, until the end of September, are scheduled to arrive. Once the last flight arrives we will begin setting up our unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) launch facilities at the Pegasus ice runway. We’re hoping to make our first UAV flight sometime early next week.

The Christchurch Botanic Gardens, New Zealand.

The Croquet Club, Christchurch.

On Dec 9 we were scheduled to take a South African Hercules to McMurdo but ended up flying on the massive C17 “Globemaster” instead. The C17 was going to make an aidrop to “AGAP” after it dropped us off in McMurdo. You can see that the air-drop cargo was all ready to go (there is a parachute on top of each piece of cargo).

The C-17 ready for Airdrop.

During the flight I saw a lot of pack ice, and also got a nice photograph of the Antarctic coastline. We landed at Willy field (a runway on the sea ice). It was a nice day and you could see Mount Erebus in the distance (an active volcano).

Pack ice from the air.

The Antarctic coastline.

The C-17 ‘Globemaster.’

After being debriefed and getting our room assignments I took the Terrabus over to Scott Base (the New Zealand station). From there I could see the pressure ridges, and also the Happy Camper (Antarctic survival training) folks in the distance.

Having landed at McMurdo Station with Mt. Erebus in the background.

Scott Base pressure ridges, Terrabus and Happy Camper at foot of Mt. Erebus.

I knew that Mary Miller and Lisa Strong from the Exploratorium were standing there next to the two Scott Tents. The Happy Camper school was taking place at the foot of Mount Erebus. In the photo above, you can see the Terrabus between the pressure ridges and the Happy Camper school.

Down at the Antarctic clothing issue office, we had the usual fun of getting our cold weather gear in order (Lisa was playing with her ninja alter ego) and got some good news: we’re leaving tomorrow morning on a C-17 USAF plane rather than the slower, smaller C-130 which means about a four-hour flight rather than almost eight. That makes a difference because these military planes are not built for comfort: they have little insulation on their skins so they are loud and cold close to the bulkhead.

Lisa trying on clothes in her best Ninja pose at the CDC (Clothing Distribution Center.)

The Clothing Distribution Center.

Lisa tests out her ‘bunny boots’.

After months of preparation filling out USAP (United States Antarctic Program) forms and travel requests, going to doctor and dentist appointments to become “physically qualified” for Antarctic travel, visiting Raytheon Polar Services in Denver to meet with support staff and plan our movements on the ice, and training Antarctic field correspondents, our time is finally at hand. In fact, I feel like we’ve already started our polar adventure; in addition to posting blogs from all of our Antarctic scientists, we’ve also been keeping up with Ice Stories correspondent Robin Bell’s Gambutserv Mountain (AGAP) project on her Twitter and the Xtreme South Facebook pages.

We’ve also met up on the plane to New Zealand and here in Christchurch a drilling engineer on his way down to the deep ice coring operation at WAIS-Divide. That’s one of those acronyms mysterious to an outsider but full of meaning for glaciologists and climate researchers. WAIS is the West Antarctic Ice Sheet. The ice divide, like a continental divide, refers to a region of the ice sheet where the snow falling on one side of the divide flows one way down to the ocean and snow on the other side flows in the opposite direction.

A map of the WAIS divide. Image courtesy of the WAIS Divide Ice Core Project.

The WAIS-Divide is an ideal place to drill ice cores because the movement of the ice there is downward rather than horizontal, leaving clear annual ice layers that can be counted to track the passage of time. Lots of snow falls in this region of the ice sheet, trapping gas bubbles between the snow grains that record the compositions of the atmosphere when the snow fell, preserving a climate record from 40,000 to 100,000 years ago. Lisa, Ron and I saw some ice cores when we visited the National Ice Core Laboratory in Denver last spring, some of them dating back to the original International Geophysical Year in 1957-8.

Bubbles in an ice core. Photo by John Weller.

Ron and Lisa filming in the ice core storage room of the National Ice Core Laboratory. Photo by John Weller.

We won’t have a chance to go out to the WAIS-Divide ice drilling camp as it’s an additional plane flight from McMurdo and we already have a pretty full work and travel schedule once we do get to McMurdo. We hope to travel out by helicopter to some fields camps to see penguins, the communications station at Black Island, McMurdo Dry Valleys, and, the biggest prize of all: the South Pole.

In the meantime, the Ice Stories crew enjoys green New Zealand.

Slawek and I have now been in McMurdo for just over 48 hours. Because of our weather-caused delay, we’re now quite busy making all the necessary preparations for our field work. Tomorrow Rickard and Doug, the other two members of our field team, will arrive from Christchurch. In the meantime, we’ve gone to collect the camping gear that has been set aside for us, met with the communications office to discuss our communication plans while in the field, selected all the dry food for our 4 weeks of camping on the ice, and scheduled a hopeful date for our first flight to Siple Dome, the field camp from which we’ll fly to our remote research site. In the short time we’ve been here, Slawek has also already given a talk for the McMurdo community (both scientists and non-scientists) about the type of work we do, and what the focus of our field work will be. The talk, titled “The Ebb and Flow of Ice Sheets,” discussed the role of ice sheets in our planet’s future, the factors that control ice sheet velocity, and the goals of our field work studying subglacial lakes on Whillans Ice Stream. I’ll post a link to the 45-minute talk as soon as it’s available.

Tomorrow I’ll begin my 1.5 day with Snow Craft training, also known around here as “Happy Camper School.” During this course, we’ll be taught the essentials of living and surviving in the outdoors in Antarctica, complete with a night of camping on the ice, cooking our dinner outside, and other Antarctic survival essentials. All personnel at McMurdo who leave the station at any time are required to take this training. Most people here only leave the station for short trips or to established camps and Happy Campers will be their only night camping on the ice. For those of us on deep field teams, this will be the first day and night of about four weeks spent living on the ice.

We’re currently “stuck” in New Zealand, waiting for the weather to clear at McMurdo Station in Antarctica so we can fly in to begin our preparations for field work. There’s been a storm hovering off the Ross Sea not far from McMurdo since Monday (Nov. 5th), and conditions there have been too risky for a plane to fly in. Our planned departure date from Christchurch to McMurdo was three days ago, and before the storm hit McMurdo, we were still scheduled to fly down at 10 am.

After arriving at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) at 7 am, putting on our Extreme Cold Weather (ECW) clothing, checking our bags, preparing a “boomerang” bag (a set of clothing and toiletries in case our flight couldn’t fly out), and going through the screening and briefing, we spent a while sitting in the C-17 military jet in the hopes that the next weather report from McMurdo would be good enough for us to fly. Unfortunately, the weather down south turned stormy, and we all piled off the plane again and headed back into Christchurch to wait for better weather.

For the past four days, the weather has not cleared so we’ve been grounded in lovely Christchurch. While we’re impatient to get to Antarctica to prepare our equipment for field work, the only real downside of being in Christchurch is being limited to one set of clothes, as the others are in our checked luggage. We’ve been splitting our time here between working on proposals for future scientific work and seeing some of the local sights, breathing in the beautiful surrounding countryside before hitting the ice, and enjoying some tasty meals of fresh vegetable and salads that will be in short supply once we get to McMurdo and our field camp on a glacier.