McMurdo Sound
McMurdo Sound
Our arrival in McMurdo was exciting because it was going to be our first chance to get off the ship and walk on the ice. We were moored to the ice by using large railroad ties to which our mooring lines were attached.I was surprised at how vast the landscape was and delighted that we were going to be allowed to go out on the shelf and walk around.
It was exciting to get out and explore the ice shelf. It was also comforting that there was a ship to go back to. It was cold in McMurdo much of the time. The inside of the hatch (door) of the fire control shack was covered with frost and ice--this made it seem even colder inside.
In the distance we could see the active volcano, Mt. Erebus. It seems strange that in the midst of all this cold, there could be one place that was very warm.I had only seen one other volcano, Mt. Vesuvius in Italy, and I took a lot of pictures of Mt. Erebus. I guess I thought it might erupt while I was doing this and I would get some fabulous pictures. No such luck.
We were allowed to have one beer a day, but we had to drink it out on the ice shelf. Someone rigged a volleyball net and we amused ourselves by playing volleyball and drinking beer--the beer never got warm nor did we!
I did not play volleyball, but joined the spectators so I could get my daily ration of beer. We were allowed only two cans, but I managed to trade my dessert (for weeks in advance) to other sailors who did not like beer.
Our job, of course, was to get gasoline to the air base and to do so we had to run a very long hose from the ship to the base.
Since we had a fuel line that might freeze up or leak and cause problems, we had to patrol it. For that purpose we had "weasels." I had to be a part of these patrols and I asked the driver if the weasel floated. He told me that they were supposed to float, but if we fell down a crevasse it wouldn't make any difference. I did not enjoy these trips after that.
It took a while to get the fuel lines in place to deliver fuel to the air base, so the impatient pilots decided to land on the ice shelf and taxi up to the ship for gasoline.
Here a P2V Neptune is being refueled. I wondered about these pilots who had the courage to land on the ice in a plane as heavy as a Neptune.Of course someone had to get funny and make a sign for the pilots to see when they taxied up (sorry, it's not a very good picture). The sign says the southernmost gas station in the world.
It was brought home to us that the Antarctic was a very dangerous place when one of the bulldozer operators was killed when his dozer went through the ice while crossing a bridge over a crevace. This picture shows the remnants of the bridge.
Another ever-present danger was whiteouts. All sense of direction is lost in a whiteout. In this picture we see the conditions just prior to a whiteout at McMurdo.
One of the exciting experiences was to refuel the plane that was taking Admiral Byrd for a flight over the South Pole. The plane was so heavy that it had to use jato units to take off. Luckily we didn't have to move our volley ball net from the flight path.
