Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
15
THE TRIP DOWN
Having taken seventy-eight days from the time he departed Hobart, Tasmania,
until reaching Ross Island, James Clark Ross could not have imagined the ease
with which scientists of the modern era come to Antarctica. In October 1970
I boarded an air force C-141 Starlifter in Christchurch, New Zealand, and six hours
later was standing on the ice runway at McMurdo Station, the doorstep to the
interior of Antarctica. The Starlifter was a big jet transport plane with swept
wings that drooped from the top of its fuselage. From October to mid-December,
these wheeled aircraft can land on the smooth, hard sea ice out from McMurdo
Station. By January, this seasonal ice typically is breaking out into open water,
and air operations move several miles south onto the Ross Ice Shelf, where only
ski-fitted planes like the C-130 Hercules can land on the softer, snow runway.
McMurdo Station is the hub of U.S. operations on the continent, built around
the bowl of Winter Quarters Bay, where Robert Falcon Scott was based in 1902-
1904. It receives and sends out a fleet of ships, planes, and helicopters, all in
support of projects funded by the National Science Foundation. Hercules aircraft
routinely fly to the South Pole, and, during some seasons, supply remote helicop-
ter camps more than five hundred miles from McMurdo (Fig. S.1).
The day I took off for Antarctica, the center of the Starlifter was filled with a
series of pallets laid full of high-priority cargo. The passengers, a mix of scientists
and navy personnel, were seated on two rows of sling seats facing the cargo,
with barely enough room for one's knees. We crammed into our seats, dressed
Figure S.1. The remote,
helicopter-supported
camp deployed in northern
Victoria Land during the
1981-1982 field season.
The six structures on the
left side of the camp are
Jamesways, or portable
canvas Quonset-like huts
used as berthing facili-
ties, a mess hall, a science
laboratory, and a genera-
tor shack. The cargo yard
extends to the right from
these. The disrupted snow
at the extreme right is a
snow pit dug to supply the
snow melter for the camp's
water supply. An LC-130
Hercules aircraft sits next
to the camp runway. The
two shiny objects imme-
diately above the Herc are
fuel bladders, giant “water
beds” filled with jet fuel for
the helicopters. Two of the
three HU-1D helos assigned
to the camp sit on the pad.
I am aboard the third as it
approaches camp.
