Precious Cargo

As most of you know my job here is to handle, chain, move, strap, lift, drive, load, and unload any and all cargo leaving the station. Much of my job involves handling delicate science equiptment. The other day a co-worker and I unloaded ice samples from a plane that came from a field camp where they were drilled from about 900 feet below the surface. It is some of the oldest ice in the world, and I later had a chance to drink a coke with some ice that had been drilled from about three hundred feet below the surface. We sometimes unload small planes that fly from remote field camps, but much of our cargo is sent to and received from the south pole. Much of this season in McMurdo cargo has been focused on sending large amounts of steel to build the new station at the South Pole. The Scott-Amundsen South Pole Station dome, named for the first two explorers to reach the pole, was finished in the 70's, and no longer fits the needs of the science program. In the extreme cold it just does not insulate from the storms, and it will be torn down at the end of this season. In this picture you can see a typical shipment of steel that we have built and chained down at the runway, 12 tons of it. We build them on these orange sleds, and when it is time to load a plane we push them to the back of a C-130 Air Force jet with a track loader. The steel sits on large metal pallets and they sit on rollers that can be pushed in by a few of us (on a perfect day) or bumped in with a forklift. It has been exciting to be part of transporting supplies for the building that will keep the south pole station running for the next 30, 50, or 100 years. Plus it's just cool to move huge stuff in big machines. It's like playing with life-size Tonka trucks!