Back from the WAIS lands

This post may get a little long so go ahead and grab your favorite beverage kick back and hopefully enjoy the travelogue.
The trip started out with a flight on an LC-130 Hercules New York Air National Guard. These are specially built hercs that have skis attached to the landing gear so they can get into some of the more remote area of the continent. It was a 3.5 hour flight from Mactown to WAIS divide. As we were getting ready to land the left main landing gear wouldn't deploy, it had frozen up or so the indicators were telling the pilot. He went into a series of sharp turns, climbs, and banks to break the landing gear free. After all the gyrations one of the flight crew checked the gear itself and assured us it was locked down. Personally I think a cargo pilot just wnaed an excuse to do something other than fly the airforce equivalent of a UPS truck. Nothing against the AF crew they were great, very professional and let people up to the cockpit for lookarounds etc.

Once on the ground the plane kept its engines running so they wouldn't freeze up. It dropped the cargo and took off again. We then took snowmobiles out to the tent site and set up our mountian tents. These would be home for the next 10 days. After everythign was set up we headed to the galley for a nice meal.

The next day we started camp construction. For the winter they put most of the permanent buildings up on snow berms in the hopes they won't accumulate too much snow. It's a bit of an exercise in futility but still made it easier for the tractors to haul the modules down to the summer camp site. Once there we built a RAC tent (it's kind of an improved version fo the old MASH style canvas tents) that connected to the galley module so we would have some place to sit down to eat, relax etc.

Day 3 we experienced some of the milder ANtarctic weather. Snows and 30 mph wind. It was too windy for us to do any construction so we ended up sitting in the newly constructed tent playing cribbage, reading and eating cookies...it's a harsh continent I tell you.

We had decent weather the rest of our time there and ended up building 2 multisection rac tents, 3 smaller rac tents, 3 jamesways (they're the older MASH style olive drab buildings) and 2 10-15 man tents.

Once again I had a new found appreciation for the hardships the 1st explores went through to try and reach the pole. Here we were with a nice tent set up and heaters and it was still a pretty grueling exercise, especially when you had to take your gloves off to do any sort of intricate work like tying a knot.

Now for some interesting yet disgusting facts

There are showers there but we had to build them, melt the snow to fill the water tanks and water heaters. They were up and operational the day we left. 10 days without a shower is icky

Taking care of any sort of bodily functions has to be planned in advance. it takes a bit of time to get out of all the cold weather clothing. The outhouses sit over a hole drilled in the ice and believe me there are few things less miserable than plopping your butt down on a frozen toilet seat.

On the plus side though the air is pristine. For example, when you exhale in cold weather you can see your breath right? wrong!! the reason that happens is there is some sort of particlate in the air that moisture can latch on to to create a cloud. Unless you were near a source of exhaust, say an oil stove or vehicle you never saw yoru breath.

Which brings up the next good thing no particlate in the air no boogers to generated inside the nose

The final bit if eww factor is what to do when you have to go to the bathroon and you're all nice and cozy inside your sleeping bag, 2 words...pee bottle that's right instead of losing all the trapped heat inside the bag, getting dressed and stomping to a pee flag or outhouse you just find an old nalgene bottle to use as a chamber pot. Yeah it's kind of high on the eww factor but it beats freezing.

All in all it was a great experience and I wouldn't trade the memories for anything. I was on one of the most remote ares of the continent in -30 degree weather sleeping in a tent. How many other people can say they've had that kind of opportunity?

Photos are up at the photobucket site.
Cheers
Rewarmed Clay