Nowhere To Go But Up

I appreciate all of the warm words of encouragement for my travels, but unfortunately they have not yet begun. I am at the south pole. Still. Flight delays descended upon the south pole like an evil shroud and have endured for the past week. For the people who were scheduled to leave on the second Herc flight out of pole, the wait is up to a full seven days. Delays from the first group spilled over into the time in which my flight was scheduled to leave. Day after day, no flights. Each time I think that there’s a flight, I have to clean my room, wash my sheets, pack everything up in anticipation of leaving, and wait for a plane to land that has no intention of doing so. Then I go back to my room, remake my bed, pull out the things I need to exist for an evening, and repeat the process the next day. This is a state of purgatory.

Being weather delayed alone is frustrating for everyone involved, but the nature of these delays really make it hard to swallow. There have been high winds at the take-off point in McMurdo. There has been poor visibility here at pole. There have been mechanical problems. There have been windows of opportunity that were missed. There have been weather predictions that indicated poor weather, which prevent flights from being planned, but the weather never came. There have been scheduling issues, such as no flights on a Sunday when the weather was fine.

Particularly crushing was Tuesday, when the planes took off toward clear skies at Pole only to get here and, literally minutes before landing, the visibility went to next to nothing. The planes made approaches towards the invisible-to-them runway, just a stone’s throw away. They couldn’t land and boomeranged back towards McMurdo. There were three planes in the air, but the weather in McMurdo had changed dramatically as well. Two of the planes were diverted to the Italian station because they wouldn’t have enough fuel to circle McMurdo to wait for a clearing. The plane that was closest made three attempts at landing in the high winds that had overtaken Mactown. With each attempt and the approach being so bumpy, people began to lose their lunch. Each successive approach yielded more digestive victims, but they landed with no casualties other than a few splattered barf bags. We now have the south pole version of the Vomit Comet.

The several strange events of the week (we even had a piece of tracked heavy equipment fall through the roof of an under snow building) have caused those of us who are stuck to wonder what we have done to tempt the fates. Does somebody here have bad karma? We thought maybe it was Derek, who had never been to the pole marker after a full winter at the south pole. We sent him out twice to touch it, but our plight remains unresolved. What if one of us is being punished by the heavens? We have two men of the cloth on station, sent just for an overnight stay originally, who are supposed to be flying out with us. One would think that they would offset any evil that existed in our midst. Maybe it’s because Ann Curry wants to come here and see the pole. We’re not being stopped from leaving, but possibly she’s being stopped from coming. No flights out = no flights in. I think what it really comes down to is that this is the south pole. Things can and do go wrong. There’s nothing you can do to change it, you just deal with it.

Dealing with “it” has consisted of a group of winterovers gathering in the galley or one of the lounges each day to wait for the flight announcements. Some people are packed and ready to go, others are more pragmatic and wait for a plane to actually take off. Each day this week the flights have been pushed back, boomeranged, and/or cancelled. Each day as it becomes apparent that we will remain one day longer, polies start checking off travel plans that need to be changed or scrapped, bemoaning their fate, then huddling together in a group that resembled a wake. With each passing day, the look on everyone’s face becomes more bleak, the spirit in their voices fades, and their minds begin to spiral towards a hopeless feeling of the nightmarish futility of it all. Some of us have ‘only’ been here nine months, some for a full year. We’ve endured round after round of what the south pole brings during the winter and we’re walking back toward our corner after the bell only to be sucker punched from behind.

Everyone is handling things differently. Some are in denial, some openly frustrated, some just roll with it. I’m doing what I didn’t do at the end of my last winter, which is trying to be social with the summer folk who have made it down. A lot of people who are going to be wintering with me next year are already here, so I have been trying to establish some connection with them. There’s also the familiar faces who return summer after summer. Having my sore ankle has kept me away from athletics, but conversation fills in the gaps. It’s not so bad for me. This is just the longest I have ever been stuck in an airport in my life.