McMurdo -- Week 1 Pix

For those of you not on facebook, here are some random photos:

Ice Runway at midnight

The ice has many different looks throughout the day. The sun never sets, so we get to see all sorts of conditions and lighting. Hiking at midnight, the glare off the ice was amazingly bright, the picture hardly does it justice. This runway is where I landed, about a mile out on the ice.  The ice is thinning and melting, so this runway has now been closed.

Seal on Ice

Several seals hanging out near Hut Point. The ice around it is part of the seasonal ice, it will be clear water by the end of January and we are likely to see penguins and sometimes whales here.  This is the same ice they built the runway on.  Kudos to the crew who groom it.

Ivan

Ivan the Terrabus, an iconic ice vehicle which drives a lot of people in from the airfield.

The taxi fleet - -heavy duty 4WD vans.  We work outside town, so we ride these often.

When you miss the taxi, you walk.  Trekked from our second site to the NASA antenna after a mix-up with our ride.  The building is locked, but there is a warming shelter in one of the milvans (steel containers), which happens to have a phone, so we called for a ride.

More later....