Arriving at the end of the Earth

“For those of you going to Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station,” we were told, “that first walk from the plane to the base will be one of the most physically demanding experiences of your lives.”

These words repeated in my head as our plane skimmed over the sea ice of McMurdo Sound on the Antarctic coast, headed south to the pole.

My “Poley” companions and I, bound for Amundsen-Scott station, had already been in transit for days. Between Maine and Christchurch, New Zealand, I had spent more than 24 hours in airplanes alone. From New Zealand to the pole, however, no cramped commercial flight with beverage service and packaged dinners awaited us. The flight to Antarctica was in the back of a windowless cargo plane. I eyed the LC-130 warily from the runway.

“How long will we be in the air?” I asked a uniformed member of the U.S. Air Force, the group in charge of air transport to and from the Antarctic continent.

“Five and a half hours – and that’s if we don’t boomerang. If the weather’s too bad to land, we’ll just turn right around in the air and head back.” A “boomerang flight” is not unusual – one crew took seven tries just to make it to McMurdo. “If we boomerang,” he continued, “then it’ll be more like 11 hours. Best if you [go to the bathroom] now. D’you smoke?” he asked me.

“Only when on fire,” I assured him, before climbing up the ladder into the belly of the plane and strapping myself into one of the jump seats near the rear.

We were lucky – our flight to McMurdo base, Antarctica’s central port, made it on the first try. The plane touched down onto the frozen sea-ice runway, a landing strip that will have to be moved a few months from now as the warming summer weather begins to melt and break up the ice. Without windows, we passengers had to gauge the landing by feel alone. The low-friction sensation of setting a ski-plane down on ice is a disconcerting, thrilling one.

There at McMurdo, we got our first sight of the continent. If the arrival at the South Pole is heralded as challenging, the first sight of Antarctica from the ice runways of McMurdo goes down in my books as one of the most breathtaking experiences of my life. We emerged from the plane blinking into a landscape of pure blue and white. Despite the negative temperatures, we all stood spellbound by the 360 degrees of glaciers, mountains and ice.

In less than 24 hours we were brought back down to the runway for our flight to South Pole station, 800 miles away and a good 20 to 30 degrees colder. Strapped into my jump seat, the roar of the engines and propellers dulled by my earplugs, all I could think about was how will I react to the cold. How will I feel when I step off of that plane? Even as I tried to mentally prepare myself, I also considered the not unlikely possibility that our plane would not be able to land – some people bound for the South Pole had already been stranded in McMurdo for nearly two weeks.

Our flight made it (later proving to be the last plane to successfully fly into the South Pole for a solid week because of a spell of bad weather). As we landed, a few other first-timers to the Pole and I looked at one another and simply grinned. We layered our gear, braced ourselves and cheered each other on. The next thing I knew, I was standing before the open door and climbing out into the frigid polar air.

I have to say, while that first walk to the station was physically demanding, my sense of exhilaration and wonder overwhelmed the strenuousness. Though the hours I had spent imagining Amundsen-Scott station had been long, nothing could have quite prepared me for how foreign, how distant and how remote the landscape was. Beyond the station itself, rivulets of white churned only by the wind greeted us. Yet despite that foreign remoteness – or perhaps because of it – it was beautiful. I had arrived at last at the South Pole: the absolute end of the Earth.

Meg Adams, who grew up in Holden and graduated from John Bapst Memorial High School in Bangor, will share her Antarctic experiences with readers each Friday. For more about her adventure, additional information about Antarctica and to e-mail questions to her, go to the BDN Web site bangordailynews.com.