Back home from Antarctica. Well I have been back home for a week now.

Well after 5 months I finally have my Hero shot from Antarctica! This proves that I have made it to the actual continent. That’s all I need. Our trip to Marble Point was very relaxing and enjoyable. Not a heavy workload which was very nice and lucky.

This post will be one of my longest. So Burf don’t go over break time reading this and Kate you might have to keep the boys through lunch to get this one done.

Here is a little tour of the Marble Point facility. This is the main house; it has an office, kitchen, dining room, living room and two bedrooms. It is your average mobile home. But remember this is in the middle of the most environmentally protected land in the world. So some things are different than back home. The barrels that you see in the foreground are full of urine. Think that is disgusting? Guess what is in the barrel around the other side of the building next to the outhouse. You get the idea.



This is the workshop and the generator house. The red building is the workshop and the white building is where the two 30kW generators are housed. We had to finish up a 2000 hour preventative maintenance service on each, which included setting valve lash and some other items. Also these generators have been modified to run on an electronic governor system and one of them is malfunctioning.



Next on our tour is the guest house. It is a nice little two bedroom place with sleeping for 8. Hope you are all good friends when it is full. Luckily we only had four of us staying this trip.



And here is the business end of Marble Point. This is what a helicopter gas pump looks like. “Filler up with AN-5 and check under the hood” (AN-5 is a kerosene type fuel; you are on the web if you want to know more look it up!)



These are the six 25,000 gallon fuel tanks. All the way to the left is the fuel pump and the helo landing pads. They now can land four aircrafts at one time.



So the other main mission of Marble Point is a cargo launching point and collection point for the Dry Valleys. Marble Point is about 50 miles from McMurdo and it is at the base of the Dry Valleys which is a very important scientific area in Antarctica. So rather than carrying all of that cargo all the way from MacTown via helicopter most of it is delivered to Marble on the first traverse across the sea ice. Fresh equipment and fuel is delivered on the traverse and last seasons waste is returned on the traverse. This is a huge savings on precious helo time during the main season.





This is the equipment that Keith and I worked on. These are the Gen Sets.



And here is the 931 track loader that is used to load and unload Deltas during the traverses.



And here is a 1968 D4D dozer. This has been out here for the last few years for some projects including building two new helo pads. It is a LGP model (Low Ground Pressure) and so it is not really designed for work on rock. It will likely go back to McMurdo in the next year or two. It is a bit of a liability here if it has a major breakdown. We had to winterize the D4D while we were here.



Here is the 931 in action. There was a few carpenters and pipe fitters building new fuel tanks for the generators. If you look at the first photo of the Gen house you will see the old fuel tank next to the building. It has been replaced with two double wall tanks. This is the platform base being lowered in for the third time.



So that is the facility. Now it is time for a walk in the countryside. I went for a nice 3 or 4 mile hike on Wed. night to see the sights. This first shot is looking North at the Bay of Sails. I really liked to see icebergs off in the distance. It is a stunning sight and one that we do not get to see here in town.



Here is just a really cool eroded rock that I found. This are has many different types of rock unlike McMurdo which is mostly volcanic. I don’t know enough to identify the type that I saw, but I will learn incase I get back for another trip sometime. And since there is nothing but rock to walk on and look at, you spend allot of time studying the rock.



Here is a view of the complex from the bay side. You can see the fuel hose that runs to the station from the bay. It is a six inch hose that runs for a mile from the bay to the fuel tanks. This station is refilled either by traverse or but the fuel tanker ship if ice conditions cooperate.



Well headed back behind the station you will find two interesting things. First are five lakes that are filled by runoff. And this little thing called a GLACIER! This thing is huge and photos can’t do it justice. From the station it looks like a big wall, but it is about a 300’ wall of ice.








You can see in this photo the running water from the glacier runoff. This was my favorite place that I have found in Antarctica yet. I found a nice large flat rock and laid back and took a nice rest. The bright sun kept me nice and warm with just my windbreaker on, and the running water reminded me of sitting by either Cazenovia Creek or next to the Merced River, and all of that time I was staring up at a huge glacial wall. It was a very nice place to stop and enjoy the day.






So my little nap buy the glacier was over by 4 pm so I wouldn’t miss my flight home. Or flight was early and we left about 5:30. We did a hot load into the A-Star helo which is a much smaller craft than the Bell 212 that we flew out on. Our pilot, Mike, was great. It was his last flight of the day and so he didn’t have a pressing schedule to keep and he took us for a nice tour of the ice edge.



Here you can see the ice edge as well as one of the icebergs that is trapped in the sea ice. There are several bergs just off of Marble Point.



Here you can see one of the ice bergs that we were flying right towards. Mike asked if either of us had been close to an iceberg before. As you can imagine we hadn’t so we received an up close look at it. We did some high speed banking turns around and over the berg.



This shot is just as we crested over the edge of the berg; remember this is about 200 or 300 feet above the sea ice. Then Mike asked if either of us had been on an iceberg, which was a redundant question, so he touched down the skis on the berg and announced to us “now you have” and then we were off again. When we got to the edge we did a sharp dive off of the side with a banking left hand turn thrown in for good measure. Very Exciting!



This is brash ice that has been blown out of the shipping channel.



And another spectacular view of Erebus. The two dark islands that you see to the right hand side are Inaccessible Island and Tent Island. And for our loyal readers you will remember these names from our Delta trips to Cape Evans and several Pisten Bully rescues. We were driving 25,000 pound wheeled vehicles out there about 2 months ago.



If you look very closely along the ice edge here you can see a whale that is surfacing for air. We likely saw about 100 whales in the open water and in the shipping channel. Tons in the channel.



And here is the Oden in port back and lovely McMurdo. The light tan buildings on the right area our dorms.



And we end the story the same way as we started. The Antarctic hero shot. I may look stupid, but it doesn’t matter, I just came back from Antarctica and I got a killer helo tour of the Ross Sea. Most of the time life is dull here, but on days like this they don’t need to pay me. You can’t buy an experience like this.



And FYI 19 days left.
R.J.