Getting to Antarctica

Boarding the C17

No matter how many weather or mechanical delays you “suffer” in New Zealand, the time finally comes when it’s time to head South. On the morning of the flight, your alarm clock typically goes off at 4:45am or so, you stumble out of bed and find your way to the door of your hotel. A shuttle soon appears and, after numerous stops at other hotels and endless waits for travel companions who forgot to wake up or are simply MIA, it whisks you off to the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC), right next to the airport and where you were issued your Emergency Cold Weather (ECW) clothing earlier in the week. You hastily rearrange your bags, swap your summer New Zealand clothes for your Antarctic get-up and proceed to Customs.

Proceeding through customs.

Checking into the flight.

The Antarctic program doesn’t go through the normal rigmarole that most airline passengers are subjected through. That’s because the participants fly down on US Air Force cargo planes, namely C-130s and C17s. If you’re lucky, you’ll get on a C17 flight – these puppies are full on jet planes and will carry you down to McMurdo in just about 5 hours. The C-130s are turboprop planes and take about 8-9 hours. I haven’t had to fly on one of those (except for in the Arctic) and I’m not sad about that. So, instead of having to go through the check-in process at the regular airport terminal, all is done in-house at the CDC.

Once you’ve passed Customs, you get a boarding card and are free for the next hour or so. Forty minutes before you are to board, everybody on the flight will gather in the waiting area, where a few people will brief you on the flight and you’re shown a video explaining your arrival in Antarctica and what it’s like to be down there. Meanwhile, a Kiwi Air Force customs person and his or her friendly canine assistant walk around the entire room – I’m not sure what the dog is sniffing for, but it’s just part of the deal.

And then it’s suddenly time to go! You gather up your Big Red (enormous, suffocatingly warm jacket that is the star of the USAP’s clothing line) and your carry on bag, pass through security (yes, there is security!), someone hands you a quasi-palatable flight lunch, and you make your way to the plane.

A military cargo plane is a bit different from most commercial flying experiences. You are still in a pretty uncomfortable seat, but there’s plenty of walking space. There’s no such thing as a window seat, and your view will probably be an assortment of cargo you had no idea was even shipped to McMurdo. This year, I found myself seated directly next to a large tank of refrigerated liquid helium. I was happy that the chains holding it in place didn’t snap.

Looking towards the back of the plane. The large
white item is a tank full of liquid helium.

The cool thing about the plane is that you can see everything – I mean every wire, cable, etc. is exposed. It makes for faster, easier repairs. You can also get check out the flight deck, where the friendly pilots are usually happy to show you what’s going on up there. And you can get up and walk around as much as you like.

On the sea ice runway.

And, before you know it, you’ve landed on the sea ice runway (yep – it really is sea ice and that huge cargo plane really does land on it) and the plane comes to a stop. The door opens, the bright sunlight streams in, and you suddenly feel the snap of the cold air. You step outside onto the Ice only to find a vast, white, sunny landscape that feels unlike any other place - there's no doubt, you’ve arrived.