RWSE Day 17: Berkner Island Landing

A leisurely lunch. More deck time. And then we heard group 1 being called to the ‘departure lounge’ for their turn in the helicopters. We returned to our cabin to gear up for our flight, which would be called next.

Mui took the co-pilot seat on the outbound flight with Marcelo Lira at the controls. As always, he gave us a thrilling ride. It was a longer scenic flight on the way to Berkner Island … about 11 NM from Ortelius. We thoroughly enjoyed every minute of our time viewing Gould Bay from an aerial perspective … the sea in ice and liquid form littered with ice ranging from brash to tabular icebergs.

Berkner Island is one of the most significant, yet least visible landmasses in Antarctica. Acting as a stabilizing factor, it lies between two ice shelves … Filchner and Ronne. Berkner is covered entirely with ice … the weight of which has forced most of the island bedrock below sea level. For that reason, looking at it — whether from the ship or from the helicopter … or even standing on it later — one has no way of differentiating it from the ice shelves on either side of it.

Once we were off the helicopter, we were directed to see Tennessee, who gave us a bit more information about Berkner and how it has been used as a staging area for expeditions into the interior. One of the things we learned from him is that had Endurance been able to get through the Weddell Sea — and had Shackleton managed to get onto Berkner Island — he just might have made it to the South Pole and beyond to the Ross Sea. Tennessee also told us about the island’s importance to scientists who are studying climate change … drilling deep into the ice covering Berkner for ice cores that they can study for greenhouse gases and other indicators of past climate changes for comparison to current conditions.

Tennessee then pointed out the black flags that mark the locations of three caches that Deep South expeditions rely on. These caches store fuel, equipment such as tents, food, and machinery such as skidoos … all flown out here by aircraft. He told us that we had time to walk around the perimeter — identified by poles — to get a closer look at the caches … but asked us to not disturb them. Sunshine and no wind whatsoever made for a very pleasant stroll, but we decided against the longer walk that Tennessee said would lead us to the South Pole … a mere 700 miles or so as the crow flies!

For the return flight, I was co-pilot since I’d been in the middle seat on the inbound flight. The ride back to the ship wasn’t long … a straight shot directly to Ortelius. We later learned the reason for this was that fog was moving in slowly and the expedition team wanted to ensure that the remaining groups got a chance to fly out to Berkner Island before conditions made it impossible to do so.Baca lagi