A Warm Welcome to McMurdo

Welcome to McMurdo Station! After a quick ride in the Cress vehicles, which took us from the Phoenix Airfield and past the New Zealand Antarctica Base “Scott Base”, we were brought into the polar town we would be calling home for this season. We are planning to be here until the first week in December.

This humble mining town supports scientific operations around Antarctica. Most stay around the station, but this is also a hub that leads work out in the McMurdo Dry Valleys, the South Pole and the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS).

Once we arrived, we made our way to Building 155, the big blue galley building where meals and stores are held, kind of the central building of the station. Inside waiting were fellow Antarcticans with signs welcoming new and returning faces. We met more members of our dive team – Alex Brett and Steve Rupp, legends we had heard Andrew talk about during our preparation. Many introductions and reunions compounded in the space.

We had a brief introduction to the station, received our room assignments, and grabbed some linens to set up our quarters. We all ended up in the same dorm building, 211. That’s 2-1-1, not 2-11. I’ve learned to enunciate each number to avoid confusion here.

Afterwards we grabbed our bags from building 140, which were palletized on the plane, and took them to our dorms, the Crary lab building, or the dive locker depending on their contents. We then went on a guided tour of the station by Andrew as we had no idea where anything was, and many buildings are just referred to as their building numbers. We'll give a full tour later on in the blog.

Now that we've made it to McMurdo, we have a plethora of trainings to do including Field Safety, Sea Ice, GPS, Light Vehicle, Waste Management, Fire Safety, Medical, Science Brief, Lab Chemical, all before we can go out diving in the ice.

It seems poetic that in our first week here was also the last sunset of the season. At 1am, the sun set, illuminating the southern most chapel in the world. For the rest of our fieldwork, we will have 24 hours of daylight. See you next time!