We’ve been back in McMurdo now a week. Unfortunately we’ve not been anywhere near an aircraft. It’s the end of the season here in town, and things are supposed to be winding down. The weather, which has been marginal, to put it mildly, all season, has not really improved much and our project is getting pushed back, and pushed back, and pushed back. The crash that our team was involved in earlier in the season is eating up a lot of resources, with a camp and mechanics out in Marie Byrd Land feverishly trying to put humpty-dumpty, sorry – I mean the Basler, back together again before the weather changes for the worse. Unfortunately that’s sucking up resources here, which means that our weather window is moving back and back into the autumn.
Compounded on this, people have been nicking fuel from “our” fuel cache that we need to work farther south in the mountains. So now that needs to be re-filled somehow. We also have to do some extremely long commutes from McMurdo. Our work at Mt Howe (the farthest south mountain on the planet) from McMurdo will involve some very very very long days. With the Basler they would have been manageable. Even flying from Pole they would have been manageable. Now those days are going to be “challenging.”
We’ve staged pretty much everything we can out at Willy Field, the ice shelf runway just to the south of town, but now we’re kind of at a dead end. People we need to talk to keep disappearing from town on day trips, planes keep on being tasked to go and bring people in from the field (which I can completely understand), but I have this sinking feeling that we keep on coming up on the bottom of the pile or are just being “slotted in.” We’re a huge project with a huge amount of gear, there’s not much other way to look at it. It’s a little worrying to think that we’re being pushed back and pushed back, while the weather gets colder and windier at the places we want to go. I know it’s the same with every other project. Its just frustrating that we planned this project since last May, but the reality is everything here is done by winging it and being ready to go somewhere (anywhere) at the drop of a hat.
Todays forecast, and I quote, “stubborn clouds and a couple of flurries of light snow hang on desperately today as some sun tries to break through this afternoon. Still no large scale weather systems on the horizon.”
A low pressure system in the Ross Sea would fire up the katabatic winds off the plateau, that would effectively sink us, right now.
As an aside, here are the flight tracks that we have completed for the project for those of you that use Google earth. Right-Click and save them:
Mt Paterson
Brimstone Peak
Wilson Nunatak - trip 1
Howard Nunatak
Haag Nunatak - trip 1
Wilson Nunatak - trip 2
Cordiner Peaks
Windy Pass
Haag Nunatak - trip 2
Pecora Escarpment
We're missing flight tracks from Merrick Mountains, I will get them at some point soon.
Cheers,
Mike