4 December, 2000

Well I have finally made it to the South Pole! I am very excited to be here. It is very white and very flat and the temperature today is -15 degrees F with a wind-chill of -51 degrees. Now that is even cold for me. About 20 minutes after my arrival Von met me in the Dome at the Galley. After a quick lunch he showed me all the sights of the Dome and then walked with me (and even carried my bags) over to our Hypertat "Fred" part of the Bedrock group of housing. Von carried my bags since I am a newbie and the biological elevation is 10,150 feet today and frankly I am a little light headed. After changing out of my ECW for the flight I took a walk over to the SPARCLE Trailer Park (our research site to see what is happening. Von showed me how to take the Polycorder (dataloger) out of the FPH. I will be working with this instrument as soon as we get all the bugs worked out. Eventually we will be flying these instruments on the Blimp, but we are about a week behind due to poor weather getting folks down to the Pole.

I am simply amazed at the vastness and starkness of the Antarctic Continent. I can understand why the early explorers felt that this was a wasteland. But today we can make the 800 miles in a few hours and explorers like Shackelton took months to cover this distance. I am lucky!

Here you can see the Ice and mountains of the Antarctic Continent as we fly on a New York Air Guard LC-130 with skis to the Pole.