30 December 2007
Mt. Paterson, Antarctica.
Our first seismic installations of the 2007-2008 season began quite normally. A one-day delay, then an LC-130 flight to Siple Dome (see the POLENET map for site locations) where we installed the first station on snow. I have had a seismic station at Siple Dome during the ANUBIS project and have camped there during many seasons, so it was a bit familiar. The plan was for us to install GPS and seismic stations using the Basler (a rebuilt C-47 from 1942), an aircraft I have always wanted to fly on.
We are back in McMurdo from Siple Dome now, but under circumstances unplanned. I did get my flight on the Basler, and our two station installations went well. Unfortunately, we crashed on take off from Mt. Paterson (260 miles from Siple Dome or 550 miles from McMurdo along the coast of the Ross Sea). The good new is that no one was injured. The weather was very good and we camped out for 17 hours until they were able to send a pair of Twin Otters to retrieve us. I always wanted to make the NY Times, but not this way!
The weather at Mt. Paterson was questionable on Wednesday afternoon, so we had to wait for a break before launching. We loaded the equipment and were off deck around 5, having decided to wait for dinner. Boy was that a mistake. By 7:00 we had landed on the snow and had moved about 4000 pounds of equipment to the rock. The GPS crew worked on their equipment while I helped install the seismic station. Fortunately, the weather had turned nice and even at midnight it was only about -10° C with very little wind and only an occasional cloud around. At about 1 in the morning we packed up the boxes, spare equipment and tools and were ready to take off by 1:30.
