Crash Site
December 06, 2011
Remember my first field trip to Pegasus?
Pegasus airfield has been on holiday. This year's sea ice runway leapt into operation at the beginning of October, meaning that all of our deliveries of fruit, mail, equipment, and scientists have landed less than two miles from town. But the ice runway closed this last weekend, and all flight operations have moved back to Pegasus. The ice begins to thin, and open water grows ever closer. (Relatedly, the Ob Tube was extracted the 14th of November.) I can't help but think wryly of all that work--all those machines chugging and beeping around the clock, grooming the ice in preparation--in order to have planes land at the doorstep for a mere handful of weeks. Evidently the proximity of the ice runway for even that narrow window of time saves McMurdo millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. Incredible. Sometimes I think that this whole program deserves a prize for inefficiency.
But in addition to saving the NSF a few bucks, moving air operations to the ice runway for a little while also affords us townies an opportunity to visit Pegasus for recreational purposes: most notably, to examine the wreckage of the crash that gives the airfield its name.
Arriving at the airfield after an hour-long, juddering ride in the Delta, we clambered from the iron box to discover that the wind out on the ice shelf was kicking it something fierce. Station policy mandates that everyone leaving town---for any purpose---bears with him a full complement of Extreme Cold Weather gear, including Big Red and bunny boots, and most of us have gotten pretty good at dressing for the weather around here, regardless, so nobody complained of the cold. (Also, any temperature above zero no longer feels cold.) Still, the wind threw a lot of snow into our faces and camera lenses, taking one hell of an edge off of the collective intrepid spirit, especially without any dire accounts of pilots' fevered last-minute decisions to hold our interest.
Plane half-buried in the white waste, hooray.
After taking a few photos of the tail and scratching a some initials into the paint, we were done. I'm pretty sure we spent, oh, seven minutes walking up and down the wreck. Tops.
But the trip was saved! Because trudging our way back to the Delta we found…ice! Yes! I know! In Antarctica!
Being very big (as well as very red), Big Red, as any McMurdoan can attest, often functions as a SAIL. (They don't tell you about your coat's multifarious wiles during Orientation. It also sheds tiny feathers into all your clothes. And eats tubes of chapstick.) Usually you really wish it wouldn't, such as when you're stumbling slowly up a scree-covered hill, straight into the wind, seeming to make no progress whatsoever. Or while traversing a veeery steep and icy slope, when you've forgotten to bring Yak Traks and each fresh gust threatens to break the tenuous grip of friction and send you careening down the side of the mountain onto the sea ice.
But in this case, the wind-catching prowess of our oversized coats, combined with the flat, slippery plane of ice we happened upon, turned into a glorious game of slip-n-slide. Get a running start and--let the wind do the rest.
Pegasus airfield has been on holiday. This year's sea ice runway leapt into operation at the beginning of October, meaning that all of our deliveries of fruit, mail, equipment, and scientists have landed less than two miles from town. But the ice runway closed this last weekend, and all flight operations have moved back to Pegasus. The ice begins to thin, and open water grows ever closer. (Relatedly, the Ob Tube was extracted the 14th of November.) I can't help but think wryly of all that work--all those machines chugging and beeping around the clock, grooming the ice in preparation--in order to have planes land at the doorstep for a mere handful of weeks. Evidently the proximity of the ice runway for even that narrow window of time saves McMurdo millions of dollars and hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel. Incredible. Sometimes I think that this whole program deserves a prize for inefficiency.
But in addition to saving the NSF a few bucks, moving air operations to the ice runway for a little while also affords us townies an opportunity to visit Pegasus for recreational purposes: most notably, to examine the wreckage of the crash that gives the airfield its name.
Pegasus Field…is named after Pegasus, a C-121 Lockheed Constellation, still visible there in the snow after crashing in bad weather on October 8, 1970. No one on board was injured."That is the sum total of information I managed to unearth about this catastrophe. I'm really rather disappointed. I heard better stories during light vehicle training about fools getting disoriented during a whiteout and driving halfway to Black Island (it's a long way, the wrong way). Our tour guide, Pedro--although an estimable guide in other ways, e.g. waking up on a Sunday to lead a midrats tour at the "unreasonable" hour of 9am, operating a radio with great panache to inform the firehouse that 18 souls on board Delta Dawn were departing the McMurdo compound--either didn't know anything more or felt disinclined to share with the rest of the class.
Arriving at the airfield after an hour-long, juddering ride in the Delta, we clambered from the iron box to discover that the wind out on the ice shelf was kicking it something fierce. Station policy mandates that everyone leaving town---for any purpose---bears with him a full complement of Extreme Cold Weather gear, including Big Red and bunny boots, and most of us have gotten pretty good at dressing for the weather around here, regardless, so nobody complained of the cold. (Also, any temperature above zero no longer feels cold.) Still, the wind threw a lot of snow into our faces and camera lenses, taking one hell of an edge off of the collective intrepid spirit, especially without any dire accounts of pilots' fevered last-minute decisions to hold our interest.
Plane half-buried in the white waste, hooray.
After taking a few photos of the tail and scratching a some initials into the paint, we were done. I'm pretty sure we spent, oh, seven minutes walking up and down the wreck. Tops.
But the trip was saved! Because trudging our way back to the Delta we found…ice! Yes! I know! In Antarctica!
Being very big (as well as very red), Big Red, as any McMurdoan can attest, often functions as a SAIL. (They don't tell you about your coat's multifarious wiles during Orientation. It also sheds tiny feathers into all your clothes. And eats tubes of chapstick.) Usually you really wish it wouldn't, such as when you're stumbling slowly up a scree-covered hill, straight into the wind, seeming to make no progress whatsoever. Or while traversing a veeery steep and icy slope, when you've forgotten to bring Yak Traks and each fresh gust threatens to break the tenuous grip of friction and send you careening down the side of the mountain onto the sea ice.
But in this case, the wind-catching prowess of our oversized coats, combined with the flat, slippery plane of ice we happened upon, turned into a glorious game of slip-n-slide. Get a running start and--let the wind do the rest.
