In the 1970’s, an international effort to fly ice-penetrating radar over Antarctica resulted in the first rough maps of the sub-ice world.  A ski-equipped Navy LC-130 Hercules was outfitted with radar and flown for long distances.  This reconnaissance was invaluable, but the program went by the wayside after the specially modified airplane crashed doing other work.  The concept was largely put aside until the early 1990’s when glaciologists and geologists got together and tried again.  By this point, it was clear to some that critical additional information could be obtained by including other measurements, namely gravity and magnetics to help understand the geology beneath.  Incredibly, the scientists stuffed all these instruments and a laser altimeter (we didn’t have satellite laser altimeters then) into a much smaller aircraft, a deHavilland Twin Otter.  The Otter is much cheaper to operate and supportable at temporary field camps, so it was perfect for high-resolution studies of specific problems.  

A ski-equipped LC-130 Hercules with jet assisted takeoff (JATO).

Field camps were built each season and LC-130’s delivered fuel for the Twin Otter to use.  This went on until 2001 and then again in the 2004-05 season, and many discoveries were made; however, the Twin Otter just can’t reach the deep interior without heavy support, and this has become very expensive.  Such resources are also very limited.  LC-130’s are very costly to operate, are much larger than needed for this type of work, and require a huge ground crew to support.

The Twin Otter.

The Twin Otter flying over Thwaites Glacier Remote Field Camp.

Having outstripped the capacity of Twin Otters, what next? In my next dispatch, I’ll tell you about what might seem an unlikely platform for Antarctica research: a twin engine aircraft that first saw action during World War II.

The Ferrar Glacier in the Transantarctic Mountains.

This is going to be a completely new Antarctic experience for me. My previous work in the Dry Valleys was remote in the sense that we were not at the research station, but we were always less than a 45-minute helicopter flight from resources. Tango 1 is truly going to be a deep field experience. I am very much looking forward to being there, and excited to be on the advance team…I mean isn’t this one of the reasons I got into geology in the first place?

From our camp we will have two Twin Otter aircraft, a 20-passenger STOL (Short Takeoff and Landing) utility aircraft developed by de Havilland Canada, operating to facilitate the installations of three high precision GPS systems and seismometers.

Location of POLENET’s Tango 1 deep field camp.

Tango 1 camp, located at 86° 21′ S, 136° 57′ W, is approximately 220 miles from the South Pole. However, not only is this deep field experience different from the field sites I am used to in Antarctica, so is the altitude. Tango camp sits around 8500 feet in elevation. The elevation and latitude will make it cold and harder to work. This will be the highest elevation I have ever worked at and with that come its own set of unique considerations.

The Transantarctic Mountains.

Physio altitude is a term that describes what altitude your body feels like it is at. The barometric pressure does not affect the saturation of oxygen in the air (oxygen is consistently about 20% of the atmosphere around you) and neither does altitude for the matter, but altitude does change the density of that oxygen. As you go higher in elevation the same amount of space contains less oxygen. The lower the barometric pressure that oxygen gets less is that same space making it harder to breathe in the needed amount of oxygen. Antarctica is notoriously known for it’s low-pressure weather systems. As these low-pressure systems pass over you it will quickly change the altitude in which body thinks it at. Tango 1 camp at 8500 feet the physio altitude can change to make your body feel thousands of feet higher.

I will not have an Internet connection from Tango 1 camp but I will have a satellite phone in which I plan to keep you updated.

SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA– So far in this trip, the main goal of the team has been to sort and pack our cargo. We have 21,000 lbs going out to Camp Winter alone, not including the food and supplies for the trip from South Pole to Troll which we will start mid-December. I personally, have dreams about stacks of wooden boxes on pallets and TCN numbers (the cargo tracking numbers assigned to all our boxes in the US Antarctic Program).

Our science cargo. The white boxes are used to ship the ice cores that we take in one meter sections.

This box is going to Camp Winter (CW).

I’d like to think that we have one of the most well-organized, well-sorted, 10 ton piles of cargo ever produced. Every box has been inventoried to the item–all the bolts, wrenches, rolls of toilet paper, peanuts, candy bars, rolls of duct tape–weighed, measured, and sorted several times in terms of priority, in terms of tasks needed to be accomplished, and in terms of the flights, which continuously change on us. If we get 5 flights into camp instead of 6, it means something has to be left behind. And that something must not be important. Flights are pretty flexible here due to weather, which can be bad here or at McMurdo, where most of the planes are coming from, or because of conditions, such as the fairly rough ones out at the vehicles. This means that we have to be flexible—we’re talking contortionist-flexible.

Just how rough was it? The team consults with the Twin Otter pilot before the first flight to Camp Winter about how bad the surface was for his recon flight.

We were supposed to have two Twin Otter flights into Camp Winter, but due to the rough surface and possible damage that could be inflicted on the plane, the pilot only wanted to do one more flight to bring in passengers. The pilot told Einar that the surface wasn’t the worst he’s ever experienced, but that it was pretty bad. This is understandable, but meant that we had to scramble this morning to reprioritize what cargo should go on the plane, once again. And hopefully, the flight we are losing now in the Twin Otter won’t mean we have too much cargo for the remaining three Basler flights.

SOUTH POLE STATION, ANTARCTICA– Phase One of our traverse from South Pole Station to the Norwegian Antarctic base, Troll, is to recover the four tracked vehicles we are using, which are currently stranded 350 km from the South Pole. Svein, Kjetil and Rune are the cracker-jack mechanics who will fix two of the vehicles, which are currently non-operational, and replace the differentials (this being the part that broke several time last season) in all of the vehicles. Lou and I are going to drill an ice core while the mechanics do the repairs. The spot where we will be working is called Camp Winter, since that is where everything spent the last season.

Last week, a reconnaissance flight over the vehicles determined that the surface out there is too rough to land for the Basler aircraft we were scheduled to take on Saturday. This is because there has been more than one main wind direction, which results in sastrugi (wavelike ridges on the surface of hard snow) oriented in different directions, and a rough landing for any plane.

Sastrugi at the South Pole.

The Basler has two skis and is heavier compared to the Twin Otter’s three skis, lighter weight, and beefier suspension. The pilot on the recon flight had done a “ski drag,” touching the surface, but not landing, to determine how bad the surface really was there. He didn’t even want to land the Twin Otter near Camp Winter, but saw a smoother area a bit further away where he planned to land, and then taxi everyone over to the vehicles. The crew on the recon flight took pictures of the vehicles, so we think that, at least from the air, things look ok, and nothing major is missing or completely buried. As Einar happily pointed out there are no “little black spots scattered all over the snow.”

The Twin Otter plane.

The plans were changed so that John, Kjetil, and Svein will fly out in a Twin Otter to set up Camp Winter with minimal gear on the first flight. Glen, Einar, and Rune will follow. The Twin Otter cannot carry as much cargo as the Basler, and so there will be 3 more Basler flights as soon as they can make a skiway (a snow runway) for the Basler. The South Pole has a clean air zone, which happens to lie directly in the path between the South Pole and our vehicles, and so the Twin Otter, an unpressurized plane, had to fly “over” the clean air zone, at an altitude of 30,000 ft. This means that the passengers have to fly with oxygen masks.

At Camp Winter, the plan is to open up the workshop module (all the doors have been screwed shut to prevent them from blowing off and to keep snow from blowing in) and start heating it right away using a generator for power. The next task is to get one of the vehicles running so that they can groom a skiway for the Basler aircraft to land on, bringing the rest of our cargo out to Camp Winter. Making the skiway flat enough for a plane to land on means that the group out at Camp Winter will have to knock down the same large sastrugi (snow dunes that form into the wind) that the pilot had a hard time landing on. Sastrugi tend to be very hard, as they are made from windpacked snow. The plan for now is to use the blade on Jack to knock over the tops of the sastrugi, then improvise some sort of grater using materials out at Camp Winter…2 x 4’s, the decking for the modules, or chain. In a few minutes, Lou, John, Rune, and Kjetil, who all have experience grooming skiways, were able to come up with several options using materials out at camp.

Just to set the scene for what these guys are doing…they are flying from the South Pole, already in the middle of nowhere, but at least the middle of nowhere with 240 other people, and a galley staff dishing out warm, hot meals, an extremely large, warm station, wireless internet access in our tents (our tents!) in Summer Camp, running water, telephones, a game room, a gymnasium and weight room, lounges and big screen TVs, a pool table, and 3 to 4 daily flights coming in to diminish the sense of isolation. They are leaving to go 350 km from here, to four vehicles that have been left on the ice sheet for the entire winter. We have the recon flight pictures showing that nothing has blown away, and that nothing is completely buried. But we don’t know if the seals on the doors have held, or if the windscreens on the vehicles have broken and everything is filled with snow. We don’t know if the vehicles will start or if the heaters on the modules will fire up.

The Jamesway tents in Summer Camp where I’m staying while at the South Pole.

John has considered all these scenarios, and we have multiple plans for the multitude of things that can happen. We are sending the first group in with medical supplies (including a Gomow bag, oxygen tank, and meds to deal with altitude sickness, the most likely major thing that would go wrong), several generators, fuel, emergency shelters, clothing, some water, and a minimal set of tools. That’s it!

The mood leading up to the flight is one of relaxed confidence that everything is going to work out just fine. I think this is part of the Norwegian character. All of our meetings and discussion have an element of humor (except the safety meeting we had in McMurdo…that was all business). Today, handing out the emergency communication devices to use in case of a plane crash–an Iridium phone, a PLB (personal location beacon) and radio–Kjetil jokingly gave Svein the PLB since it “only has one button to push.”

Glen, Einar and Rune wait for the second Twin Otter flight to load while Tom offers his support, and a few jokes to ease the tension.

My first look at Antarctica from the window of a USAF C-17 jet.

This season a small contingent of researchers from multiple universities will be working to install and maintain very high precision global positioning systems and seismometers. It is our goal within POLENET to cover a large portion of the continent with these sensors to begin to understand the science of interaction between the great ice sheets and the earth below. This understanding is vital to understand the historical relationship of the ice and the rock in the past as a window of what to expect in the future.

GPS and a seismometer installed by POLENET in Antarctica.

This season we will be working mainly out of McMurdo Station using helicopters and Twin Otters, a propeller driven fixed wing aircraft, to go install new equipment, as well as service and upgrade equipment that we installed last year. One very exciting portion of this season will be working out remote tent camp far south in the Trans-Antarctic Mountains.

Just arrived after landing at Pegasus Field on the ice shelf.

The USAF C-17.

The title of this story is “It takes a lot to get here.” In a sense, that can be said about the many commercial flights from Ohio to Christchurch, New Zealand (the ingress point for all personnel going to Antarctica), to the US Air Force C-17 jet that flew me down to the ice, and all of the support running the facilities here at McMurdo Station. But I guess I meant the title to reflect a much larger statement.

The amount of planning for a project this size has taken years to get us even to this point in the story. Of course, it first began with the idea that Antarctica has so many unknowns that it would take observations on a massive scale to begin to break the secret of the earth that lies beneath miles of ice. This project from concept, to funding, to implementation of each field season has taken the dedication and ingenuity of many scientist and engineers all across the world.

I will look forward to bringing you this.

Pilot Andrew Wojcicki with the monitor he or the copilot uses to follow the grid lines while flying.

We saw one of the grid maps. The flight crew must have been spinning aerial half brodies at the end of each line to stay flat and achieve their results.

One of the grid maps.

Mary was pretty excited, specifically, about the Kenn Borek Twin Otter as they also serve the US Antarctic Program. She saw a number of the distinctively painted planes during her 2001 Antarctic trip. Find out why the Twin Otter is such a good platform for research as Mary talks to the pilot, Andrew Wojcicki.