There has been some very dramatic weather in the last few days. And being up in the "night," when the sun is in a totally opposite position in the sky from what I've become accustomed to, has produced a different landscape. It's like rediscovering the place anew.
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| Mt. Erebus with multiple lenticular clouds. High winds aloft! |
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| Open water and icebergs on the horizon. |
This was my first view of the open water to the north. I'm guessing it might be 15 miles off. The image is taken from the top of Arrival Heights, which is probably 300 or 400 feet in elevation, allowing for the distant view. The last few days have been balmy, yesterday reportedly in the low 40s, which deteriorated the ice roads enormously. This and the strong currents in McMurdo Sound should hasten the sea ice melting. In January the Swedish icebreaker Oden will arrive and finish up the job of opening the shipping channel to the Ice Pier. I'm told that when this happens, we'll be seeing whales breaching in front of town, visible from some peoples' dorm windows. The penguins should arrive in force, too.
This is the weekend that they are closing down Ice Town and moving all the huts, the galley, the tower, the navigation equipment, and so on over to Pegasus Field. Ice Town as you've seen it in earlier images will no longer exist until next year. The huts are all on skids and have been already sledded over. They reassemble it at Pegasus, install power lines, and resume operations on a limited basis by Sunday and fully by Monday. But at Pegasus there will be 2 landing venues, one a ski-way for the LC-130s and the other a runway for the C-17s. Instead of a 5 minute drive to the Ice Runway, it will at first be a 30 minute ride to Pegasus on the Pegasus Cut-Off. When that thins out, and we have to go via the Scott Base transition, the run will take an hour each way.
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| Twin Otter. |
Have you heard of the McMurdo Film Festival? Some of the entries were posted on You Tube. Here are a few you might find interesting.
Shuttle Bill is a 71 year old shuttle driver, originally from Boston. Walt is his 70+ year old buddy from Maine. This is how the road to Pegasus Field gets later in the year. They're in a Delta. Yee-haw!
These are two amusing shorts
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlKzXkd27Fs
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