Hey bloggers just a quick note. I'm back on the ice safely but have been very busy. I will get my first blog out asap. Hang in there.

Well I'm headed back! I leave Los Angeles at 10:30 pm September 28th. I arrive in Christchurch September 30th and should leave for the ice around the 2nd of October.

It’s cold and blustery outside this morning. Snow is drifting and you bundle big red tightly around your body. It’s time to go home. Bag drag was yesterday. Two trips up the hill into the prevailing wind to building 140. Weigh yourself, weigh your bags show your passport. There were no x-ray machines in use. I guess they don’t think anyone will want to stay this plane from its intended course. The room looks very vacant now. Steven leaves in 2 days and for 2 nights has the room all to himself. We head up to transportation around 1100 am for the 45 minute ride to the airport then just wait for the plane and hope it’s able to land. Next get on the plane and 5 hours later we are in Christchurch turning in our ECW gear. There’s just enough time to go to the hotel for a couple of hours sleep before heading off to the airport for an early morning flight. After 13 hours and picking up a day crossing the international dateline you arrive in LAX several hours before and on the same day you left. It’s an interesting way to mark your return to the “real world”.

I can’t believe it’s over. The past week has just flown by. I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone again, especially Deni. Then March 1st we’re headed off to Tahiti for some fun in the sun. I don’t know if my body can take that!

Thank you for reading Bill’s Antarctic Adventure Blog.

When I went to breakfast this morning there was a snow drift in front of the door! Most of the faces at the tables are unknown to me. The last flights to the South Pole fly today after that, with the exception of an emergency, they will have no physical contact with the outside world until the end of September. I’m scheduled to leave the ice a week from today, February 24th, on the last flight out of McMurdo and that will be their last contact until August. When I came to work this morning I had to turn on a light in our work area for the first time since October. The sun sets, for a few minutes, February 20th. The end is so close now that I must accept it as reality. Even though I have great things to look forward to in coming weeks I’m feeling a little melancholy.

I saw a cool movie on Antarctica last night. It dealt with a phenomenon called katabatic winds. I know we almost always have wind here. Calm wind is an anomaly and now I know why. A katabatic wind is generated by the flow of air down a slope (like a glacier) in an area subject to radiational cooling (like the South Pole). It results in high velocity winds flowing out from the South Pole. The wind in many cases reaches hurricane force blowing snow grains so hard it feels like pins being pushed into any exposed skin. It causes erosion of rock and carves the snow and ice into amazing natural sculptures. It also makes for great movies of penguins hunkered down against its onslaught. The flow is so strong that it affects weather over the entire surface of the earth.
The temperature at the South Pole dipped to 42 below zero centigrade yesterday. When it gets to 50 below flight operations are suspended for the year so each day now there is an urgency to get the last supplies and personnel to the Pole. Then we begin to cleanup pack up and get ready to get the rest of us out of McMurdo. I think the winter over folks have a big celebration the day they see the last C17 leave for the year.