Antarctica

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antarctica033 Later that night I took in a little ping-pong at the coffee house with some friends from the Firehouse. Here Steve

antarctica034 Marvin Weaver was there as well.

antarctica035 We had a really great day on October 23, 1993. As you can see the skies were clear, and the wind was behaving itself. After work, I took this photo of McMurdo from Hut Point. One can see Scott's Hut and the ship dock (looks like an ice skating rink) in the foreground.

antarctica036 This is the descriptive sign for

antarctica037 The next descriptive sign was on Hut Point for

antarctica038 Vince's Cross on Hut Point with the 755 foot high Observation Hill in the distance next to McMurdo.

antarctica039 Another display near the Hut Point area. This is the

antarctica040 Two days later, on October 26, 1993, I was out on the Ross Ice Shelf attending Snow Survival School - what we called Happy Campers School. For any personnel that had to go to a base on the continent they had to go through this survival school. It was primarily a two day class on learning snow survival skills from building snow shelters (seen here from previous classes), finding people in a blizzard that are not far from shelter, and experiencing camping out on the ice. My buddy, DC2 Brian Connell, and I were among this group. We had two glorious weather days as you can see in the photo.

antarctica041 Here I am (left) assisting in the building of an igloo with one of the VXE-6 pilots and some other guy.

antarctica042 Brian Connell and I posed in front of the igloo that was built by everyone during the shelter building time.

antarctica043 One more with Brian and I.

antarctica044 We were buzzed by one of the helicopters, while we were out there building shelters.

antarctica045 Some people in the group also took on the task of building a snow wall to block the wind. We didn't have much wind during the day, but later that night you could hear it pick up, but then die out before we got up the next morning. The mountaineering tent (foreground) that Brian and I stayed in that first night was nicely sheltered by that snow wall.

antarctica046 A couple of the VXE-6 pilots that were with our group also took time to make sure we could get mail delivery while we were out on the ice by building a mailbox. If you could read what they wrote on it, it would say

antarctica047 That first night (but 24 hours of daylight during the summer) Connell and I went to do a little bit of cross-country skiing - the first skiing I had ever done, and have not done since. I fell a lot that night, but I made it look like I didn't by posing in this shot.

antarctica048 Later in November 1993, I was out at the Ice Runway when I saw some Skuas fly in and hang out by the tower. These are the sneakiest birds in the world. They are like the dirty cousin to the sea gull. One day at the firehouse, Brain Connell and the crew were cooking some hot dogs on the grill. One of the skuas actually flew in and took a hot dog right off the hot grill. Some nerve these birds have.

antarctica049con2quartermilecon1zerotower On November 10, 1993, I was in McMurdo during some bad weather. Here in town, as can be seen looking from our roof on the Operations Building toward the Crary Labs across the road, the visiblity was at a quarter of a mile which is a condition II setting for weather. At the same time out at the Ice Runway, they were at condition I and zero visibility. One reason for the low visibility was the wind blowing the snow around.

antarctica049con2quartermilecon1zerotower

antarctica050 The view from the roof toward the Ice Road transition area and the VXE-6 helicopter pads on the left of the photo.

antarctica051 Two days later, here I am getting ready to launch another 300 gram weather balloon.

antarctica052 The next day, the view from town toward Mt. Erebus was filled with very turbulent altocumulus standing lenticular clouds that hid the volcano.

antarctica053 On November 14, 1993, I was out at the tower at Williams Field - a permanent runway on the Ross Ice Shelf. There was a partial solar eclipse that was visible in the McMurdo region on this day. I tried to take a photo of it, but too much light. I then took a photo of the eclipse's reflection off of the shades within the tower. If you look just to the lower-left of center in the photo you will see what looks like a cressant moon. This is actually the partial solar eclipse - the moon's shadow is on top of the disc of the sun.

antarctica054 Two days later, I was back in town for the workday. The midwatch left our commander - LCDR Joseph - a little gift from the night before. The balloon guy has something on his mouth that reads

antarctica055 One of the perks to Wintering-Over was the one week of Rest and Relaxation (R+R) that we got in Christchurch during the spring to summer months. My R+R was during the week of Thanksgiving in 1993. I left McMurdo on November 20, 1993. A couple days later, I went to the International Antarctic Centre in Christchurch near the airport. This is where we picked up our gear before heading to The Ice, but it is also where they have a museum dedicated to The Ice. I hadn't had the chance to see it the first time in Christchurch.

antarctica056 Later the same day, I headed down to the center area of Christchurch. This is a cathedral in one of the squares.

antarctica057 Here is one of the statues dedicated to...

antarctica058 ...Robert Falcon Scott. The rest of the plaque says,

antarctica059 On November 25, 1993, John Jodon (left), Paul Plunkett (right) and I went to Queenstown, New Zealand for the day. John and Paul met this guy in the pub one night and found out he was a student pilot. We managed to get a ride with him from Christchurch to Queenstown in his plane. He agreed to fly us there and back in the one day, but we had to be back before sunset since he couldn't fly after dark as a student pilot.

antarctica060 Here's the whole plane we flew in to Queenstown.

antarctica061 Once in the air, we flew by the Southern Alps.

antarctica062 A view from the cockpit at the Queenstown Airport runway straight ahead.

antarctica063 Queenstown is a gorgous town with some great adventure things to do, if you like a lot of that stuff. Here, hang gliders can be seen around one of the surrounding mountains.

antarctica064 The big reason why John, Paul, and I went to Queenstown, New Zealand was to do the so called

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