Have I told you that it is warming up here? The last two days the high has been +32F with very little wind. It is interesting to see people walking around in short sleeve shirts. We even leave the door to the gym open when we work out. I’ve been watching your weather there in the States and it looks like yours is way worse than ours right now. Of course we are in the middle of summer. Get that Christmas shopping finished, you’re running out of time.

Can you feel me smiling from ear to ear? At 1:15 PM New Zealand Standard Time on the 8th of December, 2007 I stood where Antarctic explorers Amundsen and Scott first stood almost one hundred years ago, the South Pole. The exact location can only be speculated at and the polar ice shelf has continued its slow relentless move since the first visit by humans. Now a ceremonial barber pole about four feet tall, topped by a twelve inch chrome ball, stands at the calculated geographic South Pole. Oddly enough the magnetic South Pole is over one thousand miles away in the Southern Ocean. The ceremonial pole itself is surrounded, in a circle, by the national flags of each of the signatory nations to the Antarctic Treaty. In the background several hundred feet away is the new South Pole research station. It has replaced the old dome enclosure that served researchers and support crews for many decades. The temperature outside was a brisk -32C with a ten knot wind that made the experience even more appropriate to the location. The sun was out and shining as bright as I’ve ever seen.

My adventure began the day before when I was pulled aside after work by one of the pilots of the LC-130’s that make the daily trips to the pole. I had earlier in the season told him that this would be by last trip to Antarctica and if at all possible wanted to make a trip to the South Pole before I left the continent. It’s very difficult to catch a ride to the Pole, especially for a civilian contactor so I didn’t hold high hopes that I would ever set foot there. My friend told me he had cleared the trip with his commander if I could get off work Saturday morning I could fly with the first flight of the day. I was able to find someone to work my shift and after clearing the flight with my chain of command I was off to my room to pack my bag for the trip. I can tell you I didn’t sleep much Friday night as I anticipated a phone call any time telling me the trip had been cancelled or that I couldn’t go for some bureaucratic reason.

I was up early Saturday morning and off to work. I met the flight crew and everything was still a go! I rode over to the airport with the flight crew. I had a good time introducing myself to my new friends. We checked in at their ready room and I was issued the flight bag of another pilot who was not flying that day. The crew headed out to the plane to preflight the aircraft. I headed over to the maintenance control tower to meet the guys who control the ramp at the airport. After pre-flight I rejoined the crew at the dining facility to wait for our passengers for the day. At about 9:20 AM we headed out to the plane for the trip.

As I boarded the plane I fully expected to sit with the other passengers in the cargo area of the plane but as I stepped aboard I was directed up the stairs to the cockpit. When I arrived in the cockpit I was given a briefing on where to sit, how to use the seatbelt (I guess there are still some people who fly who don’t know how to click the buckle together) and most importantly how to dawn the emergency air supply mask and the headset that would give me complete audio access to all the crews communications as well as all air traffic messages.

The crew was extremely professional as they went through all of their checklists and procedures which led to our 9:30 take-off. There were a few clouds in the area but the visibility was good. As we climbed out I got a whole new perspective of the mountains, ice and snow that surround McMurdo.

Our climb to altitude was uneventful and as we leveled out at our cruising altitude the pilot put the plane on autopilot and began to show me all the instrumentation they had to work with. The view from up front was magnificent and I’m sure they wondered if I didn’t have some kind of facial paralysis since my mouth was in a constant smile mode. On the trip out they showed me many of the geographic locations I had read about last year that the early explorers viewed from a much different vantage point.

As we approached the pole we were given a weather report that indicated we might encounter some low clouds over the South Pole so the navigator showed me how he would set up to give the pilot an onboard radar approach to the airport. The approach is very similar to radar approaches that I have given many times before to aircraft from a ground station. It was interesting to see the whole procedure done from within the aircraft. At about 6 miles from the airport we broke out of the clouds on final for the runway.

The landing was uneventful and after landing the copilot and I put on our extreme cold weather gear and headed off for the ½ mile trek to the ceremonial South Pole. We walked slowly as we were over 10,000 feet above sea level and the air was very thin and cold.

After a few minutes we arrived at the Pole and after the picture taking headed into the Station to warm up for a couple of minutes and to look around at the new facility. The people we ran into welcomed us warmly and showed us around. We were on a limited time schedule as the plane, which was still running outside, would be leaving in less than forty minutes the time it took to unload fuel, cargo and passengers and reload the outbound cargo and passengers.

As we left the building we were greeted by a “Polie” with a snowmobile to give us a ride back to the plane. The preflight and take-off were as smooth as silk and soon we were on our “three hour tour” back to McMurdo.

Our return trip took us on a little different route so I got to do a little more sightseeing on the way back. The flight engineer had a computer with a bunch of videos of crashing airplanes he had downloaded earlier in the week. It was really cool (although most people don’t want to look at pictures of crashing airplanes while flying).

When we arrived back in the McMurdo area the pilots gave me a little side tour, at low altitude, of some of the sites around McMurdo including the penguin ranch, the ice edge, Castle Rock and even the town itself. Funny how much different things look from the cockpit.

We made another greased landing on the skis and taxied into the ramp. We had loaded three large pallets of garbage from the Pole and so they asked if I would like to see a combat offload of the cargo (What was I gonna say but sure I was like a kid with unlimited funds in a combined candy/toy store). We made a box pattern onto the ramp and went through the pre-drop checklist. I was invited down into the cargo area to watch as the back ramp of the airplane opened and with the ease of blowing on a feather the entire load of three pallets weighing over nine thousand pounds slid out the back of the airplane onto the snow ramp.

We finished the shut down checklist unloaded our gear and headed back to the ready room. I made several new friends on the trip and had a life experience I rank right up there with my only hole in one in golf.

Did I mention I’m still smiling? I told Deni that now she and I will have to take a trip to the North Pole together so I can say I’ve stood at both the top and bottom of the world.

By the way check the gallery for some pictures of the event.

Yesterday we had our annual Mass Causality Incident (MCI) exercise. The medical clinic here, because of its size, considers any accident in which more than three people are injured to be a MCI. The exercise this year involved a large van rolling over. Early in the season people assigned here are asked to volunteer for this team providing medical expertise, a walking blood bank, stretcher bearers, security etc. I volunteered to head the medical communications team. Last year in the middle of the exercise we had an actual accident with a snow mobile roll over and injury and an accident at the South Pole that required Air Evacuation. Not to be outdone this year during the exercise a guy working at a deep field camp was injured. For those of us in communications it adds a little spice since we handle both the exercise and the real events at the same time. People here take these events very seriously because a large hospital emergency room is an eight hour flight away. All went well and hopefully we are never called out for the real thing.

One other quick note, in the morning I went out to help launch a weather balloon. The folks in weather launch them twice a day with a small electronic weather package about twice the size of an Ipod attached. It was kind of fun and you can see a picture of me getting ready to launch the balloon in the photo gallery.

One of the guys I worked with last year, Bob Zook, came back this year as a National Science Foundation grantee. He, his wife Dr. Stacy Kim and their team are here testing a remotely operated vehicle called Scini (It’s an acronym that I can never remember for self contained underwater rover or something to that affect). It is constructed from parts such as, six inch PVC drain pipe, model helicopter motor, model car remote controller, a glass jar and many other off the shelf parts. What makes it unique among the many ROV’s is that it can be launched through an eight inch hole bored in the ice. This is a huge advantage over even the smallest ROV’s that require a much larger hole which require lots of equipment and man hours to create. You will notice in the pictures the hole in the ice they are using is much larger than 8 inches. They are using the larger hole so they can scuba dive when necessary to recover or untangle Scini during testing.

Anyway, I was talking to Bob at dinner last night and he invited me to come down to their “ice house” to watch them launch Scini and spend some time seeing what they are seeing on the floor of McMurdo sound.

Scini was diving in 70-90 feet of water while I was watching. We saw a few fish some incredible colored worms, sponges, anemones and even some junk left behind by man. We were there for two hours that seemed to fly by in minutes. I have included a few pictures in the gallery so check those out.

Bob calls himself a gizmologist. He designed the Scini and brought the team together to build it and launch it. With the data they have gathered this year they will go back to Santa Cruz, Ca where they will modify and improve Scini. They will be back in Antarctica for the next several years helping scientists map McMurdo Sound, study under sea life and even record penguins and seals under the ice. It is all very fascinating.

After dinner last night we had the opportunity to watch the movie “In the Shadows of the Moon” presented by the director of the movie David Sington. The movie is a documentary on the Apollo mission to the moon through the eyes of some of the astronauts involved. Included in the movie was some NASA archived footage of the moon walks which had never been aired before. The movie was the Grand Prize Winner at the Boulder International Film Festival and was the World Cinema Audience Award winner at Sundance. It was feature length and had limited release in the US and Australia and was truly entertaining. The movie is set for release on DVD in February 2008. If you ever get a chance check it out. By the way, David is here filming a documentary on global climate change.

On an unrelated issue “yes we have no barber” (you fill in the tune). Last year same issue, they send one barber (Hair Stylist) for 1200 people and after a couple of months she develops carpal tunnel syndrome and can’t work anymore so we all start looking like Grizzly Adams (I hope you’re old enough to remember who he is). That’s not so bad for the guys but very unflattering for the women! People have started volunteering to cut one another’s hair. The results, sometimes good sometimes Grizzly Adams would be better. Since we only have ten weeks left in the season I’m not sure we will get a replacement. You’ll be happy to know that I sent my own clippers down this year so every couple of weeks I hang my head over a garbage can and cut away. (The can catches the hair so I don’t have to vacuum). It looks kind of funny when I’m doing that so I try to do it when no one is around to see.