The exciting part about this year is that I got to go for Winfly.

Winfly is the best time of the year in McMurdo. Winfly starts with a set of flights that come in to McMurdo during August, for just one week, to amp up supplies and personal for the summer. They don't land flights in the dark here because on the Ice, a visual landing is needed. In mid August, the sun starts to come up, and is up just a few hours at noon, and then goes back down. Those couple hours leave a small window of oportunity to get flights in. Once the sun starts coming up more and more each day, and going down at night, the temperature change brings in the bad weather, and so they don't fly flights in again until the sun is up for 24 hours a day, in October. However, this Winfly, the weather was great pretty much the whole time through. I've only heard of the bad Winfly weather thing, but we didn't get it this year. (just for clarification, Winfly is what we call the season from August-October), after those flights come in, but before Summer (or Mainbody as we call it) starts.Go right to the PHOTOS, as they tell the story of my Winfly 2005 (there are captions included on all of them. If you just start with the first photo, and scroll through the whole slide-show in order, the Winfly story will be layed out for you). The rest of the summer, was pretty boring, but there are PHOTOS, so check them out.

Email me while I'm on the Ice at Zondra.Skertich@usap.gov .......................................................... Return to Zondra.org