Uncle Rickie on Ice

Right around Christmas I was offered a flight to go out to Lake Vida in the Dry Valleys, but then we had gross weather for several days. I heard nothing about it after that for a while so I was just waiting for the flight to go back on the schedule. Then I heard I might be going on a different flight out to Cape Crozier, but that was cancelled. Then I finally got the call that we were going back to Lake Vida, but this flight we were going to be making a couple stops! Woohoo! So come along while we make a quick stop at Lake Vida, then LaCroix Glacier, then on to Marble Point. Lets get that ceiling fan spinning and do this thing!

Hi! Look it’s me!

The Pilot and the help tech getting things ready to go.

Here. We. Go! You get to see a pretty good view of town here. Some buildings, lots and lots of outdoor storage, massive fuel tanks, and then a view of the windmills and “T-Site” or the transmitter site where all the radio transmitters and antennas are.

Can you see me waving in the shadow?

So cool

We’re flying over frozen ocean, that’s why it’s so flat, and of course some mountains back there.

An apartment building sized ice berg that got caught in the ice and hasn’t made it out to open ocean quite yet.

I wanna go see what’s back there, but that’s not where we’re headed.

Big ice chunks all frozen together.

Starting to get into the Dry Valleys. You can see why they call it the “Dry Valleys”. The humidity is extremely low, and there isn’t nearly as much snow as other parts of Antarctica. It’s the largest ice-free region in Antarctica.

You’ll see lots of these glaciers trying to make their way down the mountain.

The cloud cover was so low that it as just haloing these mountains. It made flying through so pretty, and something I can’t imagine ever seeing again.

ahh

At some points we were flying so close to these mountains it felt like you could just reach out and scoop up a handful of gravel.

An interesting rock formation.

The clouds are just so low.

Here we are coming up on Lake Vida.

The lake is a hyper saline lake which means its is considerably more salty than seawater.

There is a permanent ice cap of about 70 feet thick, but there is very salty water under there.

Back in the early 2000’s some scientists were able to thaw out 3,000 year old microbes from the ice and they reanimated, grew, and even reproduced! Crazy!

This is the gear we were there to pickup. They didn’t even shut down the helicopter, we just got out and loaded all that gear onto the helo. I didn’t even have time to get out my phone to snap any pictures.

Gear is all loaded, so off we go to our next stop. LaCroix Glacier, here we come!

We were so close, I wanted to just snatch up some rocks.

All of that ice working its way down the mountain.

I can’t believe I get to do this stuff.

LaCroix Glacier, dead ahead.

This is what we’re here to pickup, it’s mostly pee, yep, pee. We can’t leave anything on the ice. So the scientists who were here before left these gifts for someone to pickup. I got to be that lucky someone. Haha

Unfortunately, I didn’t get a video of the landing. I was probably too grossed out by the… ya know, pee.

The glacier from the ground.

We were only on the ground for a few minutes, so they left the helo running again.

At least I got to take a few pics and a video this time.

The helo tech, loading up the…recycled water.

Yep

More cool mountains.

Some of these views are just beyond words. So you can just watch.

The higher cloud cover, the low cloud cover, the flat white ice. So pretty.

If you’re gonna fly on a helicopter I’m pretty sure it’s required to take a selfie. 🙂

Marble Point is a sort of fueling station for the halos. It’s about 40 minutes from McMurdo. So while the helos are going from field camp to field camp they can save time to stop here at Marble Point to refuel so they don’t have to go all the way back to McMurdo.

Those are six 20,000 gallon fuel tanks, but they haven’t been able to refill them in 3 years, so only one of them has fuel in it right now. They’re going to try to refill them next year.

Lots of different buildings and I don’t really remember what they all do. There’s a generator shack, a shop for fixing stuff, a bunk house, the main building, and, well I don’t remember.

This is Peter, we both got picked to go on this flight to help them out. We’re standing in front of Wilson Piedmont Glacier.

I had to go wee and this is their potty.

Getting the helo repacked, they moved the pee to the outside of the helo. You can’t see it, but there is a round metal cage on the other side of helo they can put stuff in, so the pee got kicked out and had to ride outside.

Off we go, back to McMurdo. I had one of the best cookies of my life at Marble Point. 🙂

Some of the gear we picked up at Marble Point to bring back with us. They even put the seats up, so we had to face backward for the flight back, so a little different view.

Back over the frozen ocean

Water!

Mt. Erebus, the southernmost active volcano in the world. If memory serves it’s about 18 miles from McMurdo. So I get to live 18 miles away from a volcano. I never really thought about it that way before.

Can you see the boat? That’s the USCGC Polar Star. That’s a Coast Guard icebreaking ship that is out there breaking up the ice so that a fuel tanker and a couple resupply vessels can come see us very soon.

You can see McMurdo off to the right, almost back.

Andddd we’re back. Nice soft landing.

I love you all KHASBVG! Be good, and do something amazing!

“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” —Will Rogers