Antarctica, Austral Summer 2019 - 2020 (Part 12 - Back to Reality)
February 12 marked the beginning of my last (scheduled) week at McMurdo. Zac, one of the seasoned veterans in the kitchen with 12 seasons under his belt, told us that the weather starts getting bad this time of the year and that it’s not uncommon to see weather delays. In fact, the flight scheduled to arrive that day suffered a 24-hour delay due to high winds here.
The next morning, the second cargo vessel of the season, SLNC Magothy, docked at McMurdo bay, a day earlier than anticipated. Considering the fact that it was already over a week late, its earlier than expected arrival was exciting to those of us that were hoping to leave Antarctica on our scheduled departure date. The weather on this day was also good enough for the C-17 that was delayed the day before to arrive and take people back to the real world.
Everyone waiting to leave paid close attention to the flights as they came in and out. Not only were they making our jobs easier by decreasing the population of the station, but any delay would mean that airlift schedule would fall behind, meaning that we would also be delayed until the flights caught up.
The first flight in the mass exodus out of McMurdo was scheduled for Friday. Everyone on base held their breaths as the C-17 stayed in Christchurch for an additional four hours due to weather delays. A low pressure system north of McMurdo was set to begin pummeling the station with snow and strong winds for the entirety of the weekend.
20 minutes before landing, the crew aboard the C-17 made the call that the weather on the ground had become too risky to attempt a landing and turned back for the five hour trip back to Christchurch. By this point, the weather was expected to get even worse the next day and stay poor throughout the weekend.
By Monday, the weather had improved enough that the Air Force crew in Christchurch decided to attempt the flight to McMurdo. A massive sense of relief washed over the station as the plane touched down on the ground and took the first load of people back to New Zealand.
Since Tuesday is my scheduled day off every week, Monday also marked my last official day on the job. During the vessel offload, both of our food clerks drive a truck down to the wharf to grill for the military personnel working down there. One of our food clerks wasn’t feeling very well, and seeing how I’ve been wanting to go down and grill at the wharf, I volunteered to go help out despite the -15° F wind chills.
On Tuesday morning I finished packing my stuff and cleaning my room before my pre-departure room inspection. Before going to lunch I checked the departure and arrival screens and surely enough, there was my name scheduled for the next day’s bag drag and flight.
Later in the day as I was checking the flight statuses, my heart sank when I found that the passenger manifest had disappeared from the McMurdo “intranet” page, only to have be replaced by the message: “Updated passenger manifest will be posted by 1730 today.” It is not terribly uncommon for them to move people around flights as necessary. People will get bumped to a flight a day or two later in order to accommodate people with a higher priority to get home. I desperately did not want to stay any longer at McMurdo, and I refreshed the screen multiple times over the course of the next three hours hoping for some good news. Fortunately for me, since I requested to fly home ASAP, I was kept on the same flight.
I had to wake up bright and early on the morning on the 19th to go to my bag drag. I donned all my extreme cold weather gear, grabbed my bags, and made my way up the hill to building 140 where both me and my luggage were all weighed in anticipation of the flight later that day.
With 125 people on the flight that day, I made sure to get there earlier than the scheduled time at 8:00 AM. I was among one of the first in line so I was in and out in five minutes once they actually started “checking us in” for the flight. As I was leaving building 140, the line to bag drag was literally out of the building.
Since I was wrapped up with my bag drag right around 8:15, I had a few hours to kill before we had to transport to the plane. I hung around in the lounge in 203A where a bunch of the military bros that were leaving on my same flight were hanging out playing pool and watching “The Fighter” on the TV.
Our transport time to the C-17 was at 1:30 in the afternoon which gave us all time to eat lunch before heading out. Since it is such a long flight, we’re all encouraged to make ourselves bagged lunch before hand. Most people opt to grab something from the Grab-N-Go box but I opted to make myself a few sandwiches in the deli for the 5 hour flight back to Christchurch.
I made sure to say goodbye to all my friends from work one last time before leaving the galley. I went back to my room one last time, put my linens into the blue bag we originally got them in, and placed it in the hallway as is the custom to do when you’re leaving.
Since most of the people on my floor were firefighters scheduled to be on my flight, blue bags lined the hallways as my building became a ghost town.
I grabbed by carry on and made the walk up to building 140 where we would be transported to Phoenix Field. One of our drivers was Jake who was friends with a lot of the galley people so he put five of us in a small six-seat cabin directly behind the driver's seat, giving us a little VIP treatment on our way out of town.
Our trip out to Phoenix took a little under 50 minutes, getting us there before our plane even landed which gave us all the opportunity to get the opportunity to get some pictures of the C-17 as it came in for landing. As a massive AvGeek, I was so excited to fly in a military cargo plane, a privilege not many outside of the armed forces get to experience.
Once the plane landed we all had to wait outside while they unloaded and loaded cargo before we were allowed to board. Despite the fact that there were 125 of us we completed boarding in under 10 minutes so we could be on our way as soon as possible.
