Jim, Manavi, Alex and I are here in McMurdo, all packed up and ready to join Jani, Barb, Steve, and John out at CTAM tomorrow (hopefully). A friend we made here says the key to coping with constant schedule changes is maintaining a “zen-like detachment” to flight plans. We’re working on that. In the mean time, we’ve found plenty of ways to entertain ourselves! The weather here has been spectacular – 26 to 36°F and almost always sunny – and we’ve taken advantage of it to go on several hikes around town. Here’s a map of the trails accessible from McMurdo and a few pictures from those hikes. The first was taken up near Arrival Heights and shows some of the beautiful rocks of Ross Island, McMurdo, and Observation Hill. The next picture was taken on Observation Hill (Ob Hill, if you’re in the know) looking north towards town and Arrival Heights. It’s great having easy access to these trails being able to hike them any time – a bonus of 24 hr/day sunlight!

 

We also walked to the New Zealand Station at Scott Base along the Hillary Track, named for Sir Edmund Hillary, the Kiwi mountaineer who is acknowledged as being the first climber to reach the summit of Mt. Everest, the first to reach the South Pole overland by vehicle, and the founder of the New Zealand Station at Scott Base. While there, we got a tour and picked up valuable information we hadn’t yet learned here in McMurdo. For example, we learned how to deal with penguin close encounters. We are now well versed in the art of reading penguin body language and can identify an angry penguin from a mile away. We’re optimistic about avoiding the dangerous “flipper bash,” should we happen to come across any penguins! That being said, we have yet to see a penguin here. I heard one was spotted wandering around on the ice right in front of town, but that rumor started late in the evening after the bars had closed so I have my doubts about the veracity of this account.

 

Cross your fingers, light some incense, and do a pre-emptive victory dance – we hope the next blog post will be from the whole team together again at beautiful CTAM!