Weather: -39F, Winds 20Kn, Cloudy/Blowing snow, Pressure Elevation is at 10,557-ft
Greetings All,
Hope this DSP finds everyone happy and safe.
We arrived at the South Pole on Monday and have been acclimatizing over the past three days. The weather has been bad and all our flights to begin setting in our seismic stations have been canceled. As a matter of fact, our Basler and Twin Otter airframes have not been able to get here from McMurdo station...so we wait. It's a game played down here often!
As far as the 13,000 foot camp goes...same deal...weather has delayed those flights as well, so we have no cargo and no equipment staged up at our high camp. It's getting kinda late in the season to be playing around up on the plateau. There is a estimated date that the temps begin to fall below -50 F and the LC-130's will not fly to the plateau in those temps...and that date is around January 19th. So we are really behind and its looking like a short field season as of now.
So, I have finally attached a few pics for you folks. One is the brand new South Pole Station. It's still under construction but fully operational. Pretty sweet station...it is all decked out on the inside like a space station and designed to operate as an independant station without outside support for months at a time. And best of all, the food is pretty good as well.
Myself and the other medical mountaineer have been spending our days looking after our scientist and getting the seismic stations ready to install when the planes arrive. It's been pretty busy up until today as we have just gotten caught up. Now it a waiting game.
We only have email from 3:00 AM to 6:00 PM due to satalite positioning, so better send this off now before I run out of time. Maybe I will have time for one more dispatch before departing to the high camp or maybe I'll be able to send fifty more due to our current weather pattern delays?
Hope life is treatin' you well and wishing everyone a Merry Christmas.
"Don't knock the weather. If it did not change, nine out of ten people could not start a conversation"
'Till Then,
Tayloe
