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I left on Thursday, November 7th. My trip involved changing planes three times and nearly 17 hours of flight time. First I went from Denver to Los Angeles, then from Los Angeles to Auckland, New Zealand, and finally from Auckland to Christchurch on New Zealand's south island. Since we crossed the International Date Line, I reached Christchurch at around 10 AM on Saturday, November 9th. My three pieces of luggage did not. All had been lost in transit, including a $20,000 piece of surveying equipment. (Fortunately, they located that item quite quickly!)

A representative from Raytheon Polar Services was there to meet me and three other passengers on the same flight who were also going to Antarctica. Raytheon is the contractor that has been hired by the National Science Foundation to take care of all the logistics associated with getting to and being "on the ice." Raytheon employees do everything from helping researchers get scientific equipment and fixing computer problems to arranging for transportation and making sure that all USAP participants are well-fed. Raytheon employees also meet USAP participants at the Christchurch airport and tell us what hotels we're staying at and where we should be when.

Commonwealth Stream in Taylor Valley is one of the only Dry Valley streams to actually empty into the ocean.

It turned out that Sunday I was supposed to be at the Clothing Distribution Center (CDC) and so I went. There, I tried on my extreme cold weather (ECW) gear to see if it fit. The next day we were we scheduled to fly out.

On Monday at 6 AM, around 60 of us reported in to the CDC. Among us were people from Japan, New Zealand, Peru, Russia, Spain, Sweden, and the United States. We put on some of our ECW gear like our windproof bib overalls and our vapor barrier bunny boots. We also made sure to place our big red and super warm "monster" parkas in the one item we were allowed to hand carry on the plane, a CDC-issued orange duffel bag. In case of an emergency landing, our ECW gear was important.

 

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