48 Hours of Daylight at McMurdo

After arriving  at the airfield, we rode on a giant red bus across the sea ice to McMurdo base (often called MacTown).  Our final flight to the pole was scheduled for first thing the next morning and we spent the night at McMurdo.

McMurdo is a research station in addition to a transit point, and currently houses a population of about 1000 people.  It's basically its own little town.  It has dorms, a galley, a coffee house, a building with research labs, operations buildings,  a helicopter pad and several more buildings that I haven't been to yet.  People live and work at McMurdo year-round, just like at the South Pole.  

The weather at McMurdo is warmer than at the pole.  Today, for example, the temperature was around -10 C.   McMurdo also has two important amenities that the South Pole doesn't:  24 hr internet access and hot showers four times a week.   McMurdo is at a low enough lattitude (71 degrees S) that it is still able to access many of the geosynchronous satellites in orbit.  The South Pole on the other hand, only sees a couple of satellites above the horizon and therefore the internet is available for a few short hours a day.  Water and energy conservation are extremely important, as everything from food to fuel to beds has to be brought in from somewhere else.  It is easier to get these items to McMurdo than the pole, so the use of the shower is less restricted.  Showers at the pole are restricted to two minutes each, two times a week.

Unfortunately, our flight to the pole was delayed (initially by several hours).    The delay did allow me to go visit the historic Discovery Hut, only a 15 minute walk away from the dorm.    Discovery Hut was constructed by Robert Falcon Scott (along with the rest of his expedition) during an early Antarctic expedition in 1902.   The hut is still there, along with the frozen carcass of a dead seal in front of the door.  I didn't get to go inside (which requires a special permit), but did get some scenic pictures  of the outside as well as the (frozen) ocean.   We also saw two live seals laying right at the bottom of the small cliff the hut sits on top of.    They were just lying there in the sun, occasionally moving a flipper or lifting a head.  The total walk took about 30 minutes, a nice pre-flight stretch.  After that it was off to the transport building to get a ride to the airfield.    Two more hours of waiting at the airfield  our flight was cancelled due to mechanical problems with the Hercules LC-130.    The next day we were on the plane three times, one taxi, one take-off, and once a flight for about twenty minutes before coming back (officially a boomerang).  We're still in McMurdo, and trying again in the morning.