This week's trip to Siple Dome was an amazing, but rather truncated trip. We flew 510 nautical miles East form McMurdo (to be actually 7 miles closer to the South Pole than Mactown) in a Hercules C-130 (background of first pic) and landed on top of this so-called dome, strangely with nothing really "domish" about it... flat snow for as far as the eye could see was all there was.

Formerly a drilling site for geologists, Siple is now primarily used as a fueling station for planes flying deeper into the field. With a staggering population of three and only one heated building, the town is not much to look at, especially since the only building is buried under the snow.

However, don't let that fool you into to thinking this place is desolate, cold and lonesome. As a matter of fact, while we were there, the weather was mild for Siple standards with no wind (very unusual) and upon leaving, there are now two buildings! (The purpose of the second was to move the galley from its old location under 15 feet of snow to an aboveground and much less "lair-like" situation.) The plan is to let the old one get buried, then send ten GAs out there one summer for a week to dig the whole thing out and take it back in pieces.

The flight was nice and the landing was something else. Once again, not many windows, cargo seats and lots of bumps and loud noises... reminiscent of my flight from Christchurch. However, the offload was pretty neat as the standard procedure for deep field includes dumping out huge pallets with all of our gear out the cargo ramp while the plane continues to taxi to avoid freezing up the engines. They let us run out the back quick and then took off for Mactown.

As shown in the second picture, strange fog inhabits the dome frequently and ice crystals form on everything. Even though it is further from the coast than McMurdo, the winds blow such that high humidity and oceanic weather is much more common, making for an airport with poor reliability rivaling that of Juneau International. Luckily, my tent stayed pretty dry and surprisingly warm, I slept like a rock.

The original plan was to be picked up on Sunday, so we worked 12+ hour days with hopes of maybe getting everything done in time to enjoy some skiing and relaxing; however, we ended up working a little too fast and Mother Raytheon had us hop a flight back on a Twin Otter (sardine can, in our case) and fly home early to save a few bucks. We couldn't all fit, so a couple stayed behind to finish up a few things and most likely get weathered in and enjoy peace and quiet, skiing and relaxing for the next week... grrrr... BUT, it turned out great and our foreman gave us Saturday off! Woo Hoo! Off to Castle Rock!