Black Island

After getting qualified at Happy Camp to travel to Field Camps, we were now ready to head off to Black Island. Black Island is approximately 23 miles from McMurdo by air. We were scheduled to take a helicopter (similar to a UH-1 or "Huey") on 11-Dec-06 and leave McMurdo at 1PM. Google Earth did the best that it could to show a map of the area. For perspective, McMurdo base is SW of Mt Erebus on Ross Island on the water and then Black Island is south of that base.
At 12:15PM, we headed to the helicopter pad for our safety briefing and loading for our 1PM departure. Halfway into it, Flight Ops called for an indefinite delay allowing us to go back to our dorm room to wait for a call. Thirty minutes later, we got the call and headed off. Our helicopter took off and made it about five miles out when the pilot informed us that white out conditions prevented him from moving to our destination and we would have to head back.

Better safe than sorry. So, we went back into an indefinite weather delay and had to wait in our dorm rooms for the call. At 5PM, a couple of us headed to the galley to get some dinner and the call came in. It brought back memories of "eat it now, taste it later" as we scrambled to head out to the helo pad. Our helicopter successfully took off and was able to make it to Black Island. We even got some pictures of the Pegasus crash site from the helicopter--pretty cool. The helo landed on the landing pad that is appropriate for Black Island.












We had arrived. There isn't much to Black Island in comparison to McMurdo. It is a Field Camp. There are some buildings attached to each other that contain a kitchen, main sitting area, some beds for the "permanent" members, storage, a comms room, and antenna domes (one attached and one approximately 50m away). The other detached facility of note is called the "Night Train". It is a white building located at the left edge of the picture where guests stay. It is heated and has multiple bunk beds. Pretty good conditions for a field camp but all of the guests will not be happy--some will be too hot with the heater and some will be too cold with the rock that is used like a damper controller on the door. The rock was affectionately called the BFR.
Since we got there near the end of the day, we elected to conduct our work the next day as our scheduled flight back was at 5PM. Our hosts, Tony and Jessica were kind enough to cook a great dinner and we gladly brought the wine to introduce ourselves to their camp. Quite a "harsh continent", eh?
The next day we started our work at around 9:30AM. Jess cooked an amazing breakfast and that got us moving for the day. When we broke for lunch, we were making good progress when Flight Ops called to inform us that we would be leaving at 3PM instead of 5PM due to potential fog. We jumped into action to make sure we finished everything and successfully did so leaving some time to say goodbye to our gracious hosts. The helo came on time and kept the rotors going while we loaded and took off from Black Island.














After this successful trip thanks to our Raytheon Polar escorts, we can now get ready to head off of the Ice on the 14th.