The journey to Antarctica begins with a late night of packing and a plane flight from El Paso to Houston.
It is 8,307 miles from El Paso to McMurdo Station, Antarctica as the crow flies. However, getting our University of Texas of El Paso (UTEP) field team to Antarctica involves an even longer journey. Our flights will take us from El Paso, TX to Houston, TX to Auckland, New Zealand to Christchurch, New Zealand (NZ).
Christchurch, NZ is home to U.S. Antarctic Program (USAP) offices where we will pick up our cold weather gear and receive our initial training. There are no commercial flights to McMurdo Station. From Christchurch, the U.S. Air Force will fly us to McMurdo Station, Antarctica in a C-130 Air Force plane.
Packing for field work in Antarctica
Our luggage consists of scientific equipment (GPS, seismic radio trigger systems, hard drives for data) and personal gear such as hiking boots, warm clothes, and various other important items like a good science fiction book and a frisbee.
Preparing for the field season
Our larger TIME team of scientists from University of Texas at El Paso, University of California Santa Cruz, Stanford University, University of Oklahoma, Cambridge University (UK) and Leeds University (UK) first submitted our proposal to the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the National Environment Research Council (NERC) in early 2017, so this project has been several years in the vision and planning stages already. The field season planning escalated about 6 months ago and has involved numerous phone calls with our TIME science team and USAP to discuss logistics and possibilities.
Stay tuned for another post soon with further details on our TIME science goals investigating the Eastern Shear Margin of Thwaites Glacier!
Marianne Karplus
Assistant Professor, University of Texas at El Paso