Traversing the Space Between

For Christmas each year we send a helicopter with Santa and the elves to deliver Christmas goodies to those scientists out in the field camps from McMurdo. These camps are only accessible by helicopter. Seven lucky people get selected as elves after being nominated by their departments. This year, I got to play “Santa” since I’m the NSF Representative in Antarctica. Thankfully, I only had to wear a Santa hat and not a whole getup over my Emergency Cold Weather Gear we have to wear on the helos. First stop was Marble Point, which is a small refueling station that houses one camp manager (Katie) and a fuelie that rotates in that position. This Santa was thankful to get to that location after 1.5 hours of flying in a middle seat without a window. Katie has made the little hut a real home with homemade cookies, biscotti, and bread upon arrival and a computer generated “fire” on the fireplace and holiday music playing. We all took a chance to sample the goods, take in the holiday feel,

  On November 28th, I was finally able to fly to the South Pole. I was planning on just spending the day there, however due to weather, I ended up staying two nights. My fellow civilian passenger, Ase from Sweden, snapped this shot as we waited to board the LC-130 that would take us there.  When I landed, the South Pole management team whisked me away on a whirlwind tour of the facilities and issues the station is facing. As the Operations Program Manager for all of our Antarctic Bases, it's necessary for me to understand what the problems are and what needs to be fixed first. They also took me to the geographic South Pole and the ceremonial South Pole.    That's the South Pole Station in the background, which is one long building with three lodging wings off the main hallway.  Inside, they have a display of South Pole markers throughout the years. Each year, the team at Pole votes on a design and creates the marker that will be at the geographic Pole. There are lots of intrica