This week I was blessed to have the opportunity to go on a "sleigh ride" to the South Pole. This came as a total surprise. It felt like a great honor to get such a great boondoggle my first year. A boondoggle is a project “that wastes time and money”. In this case it was letting 10 people get on the C130 plane that was carrying fuel to Pole and then taking cargo back to McMurdo. We had 25 minutes at the Pole to walk to the ceremonial south pole which is surrounded by the flags of the countries in the Antarctic treaty and then walk hurriedly to the geographical south pole which moves on the ice yearly, and then through the South Pole station and get right back on the plane and take off for McMurdo! I got to sit in the cockpit for landing back at McMurdo. We could see McMurdo approaching, Mt. Erebus looming behind, half covered by clouds, and the channel broken out to the open sea water 50 miles beyond the base.
It was a three hour flight and we wore full ECW gear as it can be 60 degrees colder at pole than McMurdo. The South Pole station sits atop a featureless, windswept, icy plateau at an altitude of 9,306 ft about 800 miles from the nearest sea at McMurdo Sound. The ice is estimated to be about 9,000 ft thick at the Pole. The day we flew there it was around 20 below, sunny and calm. It was noticeably colder than McMurdo, the sharp crisp cold biting my face and hands as I took photos. The whole trip was totally awesome and it was really cool to run around the South Pole station, but I would say the most incredible part of the trip was the plane ride over the continent. Below is a little vignette from my journal that I wrote out during flight and photos that hardly do the natural beauty justice...
Pegasus Airfield
Sally waiting on the bus to the plane
Boarding the C130
Inside the plane
View of the Transantarctic mountians from the plane
Beardmore Glacier that Scott took to the Pole
Stepping out at the Pole
Buildings around the landscape
The South Pole!
The Geographic South Pole
The back entrance to the Station, called the "Beer Can"
Back on the plane!
View of McMurdo and Erebus beyondJanuary 26, 2010
This moment is surreal and dare I say Sublime. We are flying over the polar plateau, over mountains, glaciers, crevasses and ice, endless ice, flat and white as far as the eye can see. I went up into the cockpit when we were flying over the Beardmore Glacier. The glacier winds and curves down through the mountains, ice and millions of tons of pressure carving its way taken by gravity to the sea. I think of Scott, Amundsen and Shakelton and the members of their teams, the ponies and the dogs that travelled with them below me a hundred years ago. Walking, skiing, and sledding from the sea across this vast land of ice and perils of nature. Craziness or courage? The way has been lead for us by others, others willing to die to explore the unknown lands of the world. Here I am one hundred years later, flying in the sky to the South Pole, a flight of 3 hours compared to weeks of brutal cold, hardship and for some death. This continent brings me to my knees with its powerful, uninhabited emptiness. A land without people or plants only ice, rock and a few evolved species that dwell in it. There is a peace here that I have never experienced before. It is the peace of stillness. Silence, clean pure snow and ice, empty of all, the past buried under thousands of miles of ice. Is this the future of all land? The slate wiped clean, the mistakes buried along with the triumphs? Antarctica is evidence in my mind that all is indeed impermanent, that as full and phenomenal, as wretched and horrifying as human life can be, ultimately there is peace, and there is stillness. There is nothing. A land without people.
