Yesterday, our first wave (Johnny, Steve, Barbara and I) finally made it out into the field on the big LC-130 aircraft, the same kind that brought us to McMurdo from Christchurch. These are amazing aircraft, run by the New York Air National Guard unit because they also support operations in Greenland in the northern summers. The aircraft are equipped with skis and can carry a lot of gear. This flight had our four skidoos and all of our camp gear for four of us. It took a couple of hours to fly to our camp, which is just uphill from the Ross ice shelf on the way to the South Pole. There is amazing scenery to see from the aircraft on our way across the Transantarctic Mountains, which has some pretty high peaks (we passed one above 13,000 feet) and tons of crevasses. The camp itself, which I remember as Beardmore, is at about 6,000 feet and is very close to our field site, but the weather here is nearly always amazing – tropical, as Johnny says. It has been calm and sunny with a fantastic view of big mountains nearby. That said, it’s still pretty cold at about 24 degrees, so it is a perfect place to get our field legs underneath us. We tore our gear apart from the Herc (LC-130) pallets, got camp set up, and got ready to be taken to our field site in stages to the Miller Range by Twin Otter, which you can see here next to the Herc as it was leaving. Three Twin Otter pilots stayed with us in camp last night, in prep for running some gear out this morning, which was fun. We love those aircraft, they can go anywhere and do anything, as can their pilots.

Jani, Sat 14 Dec

PS – Here’s a shoutout to Mr. Radebaugh’s class! And thanks, Mike Malaska for your text – good luck in the field.