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If you're not the lead dog, the view never changes
The last few days have been a flurry of activity for the Camp Winter crew. We successfully finished our repairs, dissassembled the workshop tent, and packed Camp Winter to travel. After a celebratory photo, we aimed our vehicles south toward the Pole.
Location: en route to South Pole, 89.40S, 125.5E
Elevation: 2934m
Weather: -31C, 4 kts
Although Antarctica is an extremely clean and open place, there are some rules we need to abide by as we approach South Pole station. Perhaps the most important rule is to be aware of the Clean Air Sector upwind of the station. This is some of the cleanest air on the planet, and samples of this air can tell a great deal about what is going on in the Earth's atmosphere. Consequently, we need to drive around the Clean Air Sector; otherwise exhaust from our vehicles would contaminate the sector. As luck would have it, the Clean Air Sector lies directly between Camp Winter and South Pole Station, meaning we have to make a significant deviation. Although as the crow flies, the distance is about 350 km, if the crow had to drive a vehicle and avoid the Clean Air Sector, the distance is about 500 km. Not a small difference, when you travel at 10 km /hr.
At any rate, our journey southward is going well, and we expect to reach the South Pole tomorrow mid-day. The driving is not particularly exciting. John and I take turns driving the lead vehicle, Lasse. The others follow our tracks, so it's up to us to set a straight line, which turns out to not be easy in the relatively flat snow. However there are subtle hills, and we continue to lose elevation as we descend to South Pole, the station being about 300m lower than Camp Winter.
A small group from South Pole staff will come out to meet us and escort us in the last ~20 km or so. This is necessary to avoid the skiway, numerous science experiments, buried power lines and other traffic around the station. I'm told they have a parking spot picked out for us, very close to where we stayed while we were at Pole last month. Soon, the dynamic here in camp will change as the second group comes from McMurdo to join us on Friday (12 Dec) and Kjetil, Rune and Glen head northwards for home on Saturday (13 Dec). We are looking forward to continuing the trip, and moving on with the project.
The endless Antarctic Plateau stretches out beyond the top of the Beardmore Glacier, seen from a C-130 en route from McMurdo to the South Pole. Photo: Stein Tronstad.
