October 5th – Day 1 of “The Commute”

Today I begin another journey South. This one is not for a full winter-over, but I figured I would keep the blog going and give a little insight to the current COVID-era operations.

First thing to note about this year is the restricted summer crew at South Pole. Because of COVID precautions, the United States Antarctic Program (USAP) is being extremely cautious to avoid contamination on the continent (and in countries we have to travel through to get there!). They’re also limiting the amount of personnel who will be deployed — essential people only! I happen to have volunteered to go down and represent the South Pole Telescope (SPT) collaboration by training this year’s winterovers (WOs) and making sure there is a smooth transition as the current SPT WOs head home after a long year.

Another thing to note about this year is that I will be the only “experienced” SPT person at Pole during the summer (once the current WOs leave, of course). In a usual year there are handfuls of SPT folks that come down during one part of the summer or another to do yearly maintenance tasks and operate the telescope during the summer. I also happened to have a lot of difficulties getting physically qualified (PQ’d) for various reasons – not the least of which being the extremely overworked medical staff who I had to constantly bother to tweak this , or sign that, or check this box , and to whom I have a great deal of gratitude for ( especially the poor people working for the Antarctic program who have to deal with getting people through quarantine and down to the Ice while also telling me I missed a check mark here, or need to tweak that there, or sign somewhere I missed..). Anyway- all that is to say that I finally PQ’d the evening before my flight to San Francisco (which was leaving at 7am the next day) and so had to scramble to find someone to drive me to a hotel near the airport late at night. But I made it! And now I’m living the dream holed up in the Grand Hyatt SFO for the next 4 days — 3 meals a day, a little espresso machine, view of the airport and arriving planes coming in over the South Bay — what more could I ask for?!

So as part of the COVID mitigation strategy (and in compliance with New Zealand protocols, etc), the USAP is requiring 4 days of quarantine in SFO before departing for NZ. We are required to remain isolated within our rooms except for our COVID tests spread over the few days to ensure no positive cases reach NZ. We do have scheduled outdoor times as well but I’ve yet to experience that so I’ll have to report back tomorrow — there is no running allowed, sadly.

After SFO we fly a contracted flight (containing only Antarctica-bound folks) to Christchurch, NZ where we begin a 2 week long Government mandated and operated quarantine. Again this will be in a hotel room with daily(?) scheduled outdoor times — and again, no running.

After our required isolation in NZ, we fly to the Ice (weather permitting, of course), though this year it is claimed that we will fly either in a C17 or an NZ Air National Guard 757 which means that the flight will only be about 5 hours instead of the 8 required by the prop-driven C130s. Once in McMurdo, we’re required to wait at least 7 days before leaving the station (i.e. no McM-Pole flights), and then after that I’m on (I think) the ~3rd Basler flight to South Pole around Nov 5th – just about 1 month from now. That is, if the weather at both Pole and McMurdo cooperate for the longer time window required for Baslers to make the round trip… and we all know how that goes!

One month of travel… That’s one hell of a commute.

I think I might just veg out and watch some TV… or you know, start writing my thesis, or doing some thesis-related analysis. Who knows. The world hotel room is my oyster.

Maybe if I didn’t write these damned blog posts, I could put more effort into thesis writing . Hm.