Departure
After my short trip to the South Pole, I returned to McMurdo at 3AM. Ten hours later (eat, shower, sleep, say goodbye) I leave McMurdo. Waiting at the runway, Erebus is smoking quietly behind us, rising 12,500 feet above the temporary frozen ocean on which we are standing and crazy enough to land a multi-ton plane.
While waiting, a C-130 returning from the pole flies overhead. (The toys on this continent are amazing: Helicopters and military planes and drills and robots swimming under the ice and telescope dishes cryogenically cooled to a quarter of a degree above absolute zero and much much more.)
Watching the last mountains of the continent recede behind the plane is a sad view. I will miss it here. I might return someday but I have no idea if or when.
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| A Glacier Tongue protruding into the breaking sea ice |
My colleague, Robin, wrote a moving post about our departure here.
