Leaving the Ice

Wowee, does the South Pole ever have a short summer. I can't believe that, so soon, the season has drawn to a close and the Air Force is eager to get us all out of there so they can cease their flight operations to Pole until next November and the beginning of another summer.

As the last few flights to South Pole arrived, we got an ENORMOUS shipment of freshies to start the winter-overs off on the right foot (though soon enough they will be subsisting on preserved foods and what little greens the greenhouse can provide)...

...we started making daily trips out to the flight deck (this is the "international terminal" at South Pole!) to say goodbye as more and more of the summer crew departed and the station got emptier and emptier (eerie!)...

...until finally it was my turn to say adios (for now) to my home of the past three months. A Herc took us north north north...

...and I got to ride up in the cockpit and see the amazing machinery and scenery (Mount Discovery, Erebus, Pegasus and Willie fields) as we came in for a landing at McMurdo.

The Herc's flight deck:

View of Mount Discovery:

At one point during our descent, we passed through one layer of clouds only to find a second below us and for a brief time we were sandwiched between the two layers...so amazing!

And after a brief layover in McMurdo, a bunch of other people redeploying were bussed to meet us on the airfield and we all boarded a C-17 back to New Zealand.

So there you have it, the completion of my first Antarctic adventure. I say "first" because before I left Pole, I signed a contract to return next summer as Retail Supervisor, running the station store, post office, rec program, and a bunch of other random things. I'm super-excited about this, and will certainly be filling the blog with more pictures of dominated by icy scenery in the future.

But for now, I am back in New Zealand and thrilled for the chance to explore this amazing country for a few months. So stay tuned for posts from here, starting soon...