After several years of construction, fabrication, and testing at Boston University, the Antarctic Submillimeter Telescope / Remote Observatory (AST/RO) was finally deployed at the South Pole in November, 1994. Having worked on the computer interface and programming for the AST/RO project since 1992, I stayed at the US Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station for two months in the 1994 austral summer.

The US Antarctic Programs required all personnel to be physically and dentally cleared before going to Antarctica, due to the harsh environment, lack of medical support, and high cost of transportation there. After months of preparation -- appointment after appointment for physical and dental examinations, lab tests, x-rays, and drilling, filling, extracting (two wisdom teeth!), and root-canaling -- I was finally cleared and received my tickets to New Zealand, from where people fly to Antarctica in some big honking Navy cargo planes.

I stopped over in Los Angeles on December 8, 1994, before flying south at night. Looking at the skyline of LA vanishing in darkness, I was excited that I would soon be stepping on the remote, tranquil land of Antarctica, a continent that is permanently covered with more than three thousand feet of ice, a place only several thousand people in human history have been to before. Generations of explorers and expeditioners have tried to reach Antarctica and the South Pole, or died trying. The most well known expeditions were perhaps the one led by Norwegian Roald Amundsen and the one by British Robert Scott, which started almost simultaneously, in pursuit of being the first to reach the South Pole, in 1911. Without event, the Norwegians reached the Pole about a month before the British team, which ran out of food and perished during a blizzard on their way back, only 11 miles from safety.

Nowadays the kind of trip to Antarctica that I was making has become more of a routine operation in nature. Many countries have set up scientific research stations on the continent. Scientists can stay in relatively comfortable houses, usually without worrying about the harsh weather. Still, the environment in Antarctica is not naturally suitable for human life. One could easily get frostbite in unprotected areas. It has happened before that, at a research station, people had been frozen to death, just several feet from houses, in a whiteout storm.

One hour before landing at Auckland International Airport, the landscape outside the window blew away the sense of climate that I had built up in cold, wet, slushy Boston. Underneath glaringly white clouds there were patches of small green islands slipping by. The ocean started to have a green hue. Then there came green land and mild mountains, laced with beaches where they met the South Pacific. I was in summer now.

From Auckland, I changed to another flight to Christchurch. What I needed to do in Christchurch before boarding the Navy plane was to get a brief orientation on living in Antarctica, and to receive some 40 lb of "Extremely Cold Weather Clothes."

The orientation was nothing compared with the one given in Washington DC in October, where pictures of frozen fingers and pieces of toes were shown, one after one.

It looked like the ECW gear was a mixture of stock winter clothing, a big selection of handwear and socks, plus some army surplus (dead heavy rubber boots, olive green fleece jackets, etc.).

After I and a bunch of people, who were also going to the ice, had tried everything to ensure that they fit and that there weren't two left boots in the pack, the supervisor announced: "Everybody must arrive here at 6 AM tomorrow, from your hotel, to take the flight."

I wasted no time before touring around downtown Christchurch.

Images of downtown Christchurch: fountain in Vectoria Square, street band, and the Cathedral.

The next morning I overslept a little, so when I arrived, they were already standing in line. There was supposed to be a US congressperson on the flight. From this point, the Navy took over. "Now all of you can go upstairs and have a coffee. The plane takes off at nine." ... Oh well.

After the herd of us finally passed the weight test and drug sniff, we were stuffed into an LC-130 cargo plane. Minutes before the plane took off, the congresswoman arrived. Everyone was given a pair of earplugs so that the 100 db noise wouldn't make us crazy. It was impossible to talk to people sitting beside you, although everyone was sitting tightly close to each other in a kind of nylon netting seat.

Image: Inside an LC-130 cargo plane.

Actually, you couldn't hear yourself speaking. One had better do some zenish meditation to kill the time, or simply sleep. The flight would take about 8 hours.

I tried to stay awake so I could shoot some landscape from the plane.

No way.

I woke up sensing people talking(!) and walking around. We were already flying over the ice now. Looking out of the small, rounded translucent window, I could see sand dune-like mountains sitting lifelessly on a white plain of snow. After a while, there came the best part of the flight: everyone was allowed to go to the cockpit for a minute and have a good look at the landscape through those panoramic windows.

It was breathtaking. The huge ranges of mountains and mighty glaciers no longer looked lifeless.

Images: Glaciers, and the view from inside the airplane.

The plane finally landed at McMurdo, about 800 miles from the South Pole. Getting off the plane, we were actually standing on ice. It was the last week in the season that sea ice was still used for landing strips. When the weather became warmer, all planes would be landing on permanent ice cover, which was several miles away.

McMurdo Station was the logistics center of most inland research. Since it sits in McMurdo Sound, big freight ships could dock and load/unload cargo. LC-130 planes flew to field camps, remote stations, or back to NZ from here almost every day in the summer season.

There were more than one thousand people staying at McMurdo -- National Scientific Foundation employees, scientists, visitors, and conspicuous Navy staff (Operation Deep Freeze). The weather was very good that day. The temperature was just below the freezing point -- even warmer than in Boston at the time. Some people were wearing shirts and skirts.

Constructed on dark brown volcanic debris, with no evidence of green life forms in sight, McMurdo looked amazingly ugly. Dull colored board houses, which you could see in a typical mining town, were scattered everywhere. They were usually numbered to be identified. Some were stenciled with more interesting names like "Hotel California." The station was actually quite tidy. I didn't see garbage and debris lying around unattended. But it was still ugly.

I chose to fly to the Pole on the next day, so that I could have a good look around the vicinity. There were a shop, a P.O., a barber shop, a coffee house, a gym, miscellaneous clubs, a church, and some historical sites, besides buildings more directly related to business.

After dinner I climbed up Observation Hill, just outside the station. The cross was a historical monument that was erected for those who devoted their lives to increasing our knowledge of the continent. Down the hill in the picture is McMurdo Station, with McMurdo Sound seen to the left.

Image: Oberservation Hill.

There was a good view of Mount Erebus, an active 3,800 meter high volcano, from which lava had flowed and formed Ross Island, which McMurdo is built on. I suspect the small patches of cloud near the top were actually evaporated from the warm outlet of the volcano.

Image: Mt. Erebus in the background.

When I came down Observation Hill I went back to ``Mammoth Inn'', where I lived for the night. It was strange to walk around after midnight. McMurdo was 20 degrees south of the Antarctic circle. Almost everybody was sleeping at the time. Yet the sun was still high enough to surround McMurdo Sound with a bright golden atmosphere.

Image: Clouds were coming from the inland direction.

Some flights were delayed the next morning because a seal was found resting in the middle of the runway. The ice had been thin enough for it to dig a hole and have a sun bath on the ice.

When I got ready to leave for the Pole, it was snowing. My flight only had three passengers and several boxes of cargo. That LC-130 was operated by the New York Airguard. Nobody was allowed to go to the cockpit during the three hour flight, much to my disappointment.

Finally , we landed on the airstrip of the South Pole Station.