Cargo Again!

At dinner, I sat next to Barry, the helo pilot who flew Dale, Megan, and Rebekah into Lake Joyce this morning.  He said they got in fine, but when he tried to fly in a sling load of 100 lb propane tanks, he couldn’t make it.  A katabatic wind was blowing off the Taylor Glacier down Taylor Valley so strongly that he started dropping every time he tried to fly over the toe of the glacier.  The sling load was heavy and caught too much wind.  When Barry lost too much lift, he turned back down the valley over Lake Bonney, stabilized the load, and tried again.  Twice.  "Three strikes and you’re out," so he took the propane back to Marble Point.  

This is a satellite view of the area.  Taylor Valley is the brown (dry) valley a bit left of the middle of the image.  Barry was flying from Marble Point, to the north, down the valley to get to our camp.  The winds were (are?) blowing very strongly off the ice cap to the south and down the valleys over the Taylor and Ferrar glaciers (winds represented by the black arrows).  These winds blow downhill (the definition of katabatic wind) because the air over the ice cap is extremely cold, which makes it dense.  The air over the sea ice (under the words "Marble Point" in the photo) is much less cold and less dense, but it is at a lower elevation.  Thus, the ice cap air sinks under the sea ice air, creating very strong winds between the ice cap and the ocean - and down Taylor Valley.  


I circled the area Barry couldn’t get past.  There is a big jump in topography from the floor of Taylor Valley (and Lake Bonney) to the top of the glacier.  The winds are also funneled through this narrow part of the valley.  Geography and temperature differences make this a challenging place to fly.  When we broke camp last year, I flew out with Barry, and we were going sideways from camp over the first part of Taylor Glacier when we had to cross the winds.  The helo pilots decided to wait to take out the sling loads then, although the passengers all got out fine.

At any rate, the winds kept helos from flying in sling loads to Lake Joyce, so they don't have a lot of propane.  However, Ian and Alfonso got in fine with the extra camp gear, and Barry did manage to fly in a load of internal cargo.  Unfortunately, that was cargo that goes down on the lake where we’ll melt the dive hole, and it isn’t too useful for setting up the main camp.  A few minutes ago, the helo techs were loading a helo with some of our remaining cargo and the white boxes with camping gear and food are ready to sling.  I can watch this from the Crary library where I'm writing this blog entry.  However, I haven’t seen any activity in the last half hour or so, which suggests that they won't be flying it out tonight.  I saw an extra 40 lb propane tank with the cargo, so I suspect they try to get that out first thing tomorrow.  We'll see!

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UPDATE:  H08 took off to Lake Joyce with internal cargo and the white boxes at about 8 pm.


Mt. Discovery in the background.


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