"Dash-ing" Across the Drake Passage

Alas, it is taking me forever to get my entries up to date with the present day, but I’m getting there, slowly but surely, bowing first to the will of classes and teaching. Ladies and Gentlemen, join me now on my Dash-7 flight south from Punta Arenas, Chile to Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctic Peninsula.

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Our flight was supposed to leave Punta Arenas on the 21^st of December, but because of foul weather on the Antarctic Peninsula, we were held up in Chile. After five days of restless anticipation, we were told at 6 PM on Christmas day that we’d be leaving for Rothera at 9 PM that evening. I waited excitedly in the lobby of Hotel Diego de Almagro along with Dave (my thesis advisor), Dan (one of our BAS mountaineers), Becky and Christian (Geologists from the UK), and Andy (Antarctic old-timer), as Rev (BAS Air-mech), and Nico and Mark (BAS pilots) bustled around making sure all of our passports were squared away and that we’d all have a bite to eat on the plane.

Two vans pulled up to the front of the hotel, and we threw all of our bags inside and piled in for the ride to the airport. We stood in Punta Arenas’ empty airport on Christmas evening, waiting for the security guards to drive in to work to check our baggage. And then we sat waiting in an empty terminal for the plane ride of a lifetime.

Waiting...

I stood staring out of the window and watching my fellow travelers lounge around and cat-nap, and felt my heart skip a beat with excitement as the big, beautiful, bright red Dash-7 aircraft rolled down the runway and taxied up to the terminal. This was it. I was about to board a blazing red quad-engined beauty bound for Antarctica!

Daisy, the BAS Dash-7.

We were led onto the tarmac and walked up the steps into the back of the plane. We settled down in several rows of seats in the back of the aircraft, behind the missing 2/3rds of the plane’s seats that were replaced by kit and cargo.

Nico netting the cargo.

After the last of the cargo was secured and we received a quick briefing from Nico, Mark and Nico began to taxi down the runway. The Dash-7, which can operate off of less than 2000ft of runway, leapt swiftly and gracefully from the blacktop, ready for it’s five hour journey south, and hungry for Antarctica and the gray gravel runway of her Summer time home.

A final glimpse of green... and cutting through the clouds.

From the windows of the Dash, I caught what would be my last glimpse of trees for a month, and then we began our ascent through a thick, white wall of clouds. After several minutes of nothingness, the Dash popped up above the cloud cover and continued to ascend into the lowering Summer sun as we sped our way south. As we flew above the Drake Passage, the gateway between southernmost South America and the Antarctic Peninsula, the sun never set that Christmas night. Here is some of the beauty that Earth and atmosphere gifted me with that evening.

Sun over the Southern Ocean.

Nico and Mark. Two awesome pilots.

No other aircraft is more fit to make such a journey.

A view of the cargo-filled cabin.

Mark telling me about the plane's GPS before he let me fly the Dash!

Utterly stunning.

Instrumentation.


The lowest the sun got that Christmas night.


Rev and Dan.


The ink-blue water of the Southern Ocean finally displays itself beneath the clouds.


The Antarctic Peninsula comes into view. My first glimpses of ice-shelf and iceberg.


Looking east toward the Antarctic Peninsula from 18,000 ft.


Mineral H2O.


Beautiful.


Mountains, Glaciers, and Ice-sheets.

Views from the cockpit as the plane banks toward Rothera.

As we neared Adelaide Island, I moved from my cabin seat up into the cockpit to sit on the jump-seat between Nico and Mark. The Dash banked steeply to the left and the gravel runway of Rothera Point slowly leveled out in view. At 2 AM on Friday, December 26^th, 2008, Boxing Day, my Antarctic adventure began as I, a girl from Auburn, Alabama, stepped out of the Dash-7 at Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctica.

Approaching the runway at Rothera Point.

(Next posts: Around Rothera, Antarctic Field Work)