The flight back to McMurdo. Enough said.

This is Con here, reporting in from McMurdo Station. As you might have read, Johnny and I splintered off from the main group yesterday to form a recon team. It was sad to leave the herd. If all goes well, we’ll reunite in mid-March at the LPSC conference. The flight from South Miller Range to McMurdo took a little more than 2 hrs. Looking out the window in the Basler, I saw Nina and Cindy wave me farewell. 🙁 We taxied to the end of the runway on the other side of camp. The ‘runway’ was a bit bumpy, as we didn’t have a great deal of time to groom the snow before the Bassler got to us. By the time we had reached take off speed, we had just reached the end of the runway. Felt like a close run thing! We did a low level flyover the main camp, rocked our wings and headed off. Unlike our put-in some 4 weeks ago, the weather on our flight was spectacular, and the Trans-Antarctic Mountains made for a short flight. I hope the team will be similarly blessed on their return.

Four weeks in deep field have come and gone. A Basler turning from ‘base’ to ‘final’, ready to take Johnny and I away from our friends, nay our family.

On landing approach, I could clearly see the icebreaker blazing a trail in the ice. Winter is coming, and the resupply ship carrying much needed materials is due to dock in a few days time. And there’s so many seals! They litter the ice. Haven’t seen any penguins yet though. Where are my penguins!? The contrast in air temperature when we landed to that on the plateau where we left couldn’t have been more dramatic. I don’t know what the temperature was, but I was sweating like the oven-roasted  pork I made for Christmas.

An icebreaker… hmm…..breaking ice I guess….

The Bassler took me and Johnny, our skidoos, camp gear back to McMurdo. We also flew back (called retro) a lot of food waste, mixed recyclables, used propane and any unused cargo that the main camp didn’t need. And don’t forget the poop buckets. Today, Johnny and I sorted out these out so they could be shipped back stateside for proper disposal (no blog photos needed, not a pretty sight – you owe me beer you guys!). I also made the mistake of opening my email Inbox. Let’s just say it took many many hours for the emails to get in.

Tomorrow is a Sunday, a rest day, so we have to wait. I might take a hike to hunt for my elusive wing’ed penguin friends. We are then scheduled as a backup for Monday. If we fly, a pair of Twin Otters would put us into Elephant Moraine (EET), perhaps more on that in tomorrows blog. Since Johnny and I won’t have the technology (otherwise affectionately known as the “bloginator”) to blog at EET, I’ll do as much now as I can while I have dial-up speed internet.

Off to have a shower and some frosty boy. Why? Because I can!

– from Con, smelling of nothing but the deep odor of fragrant shampoo at McMurdo Station.