I finally made it out to the drillsite, located about 20 miles from McMurdo Station (see map). The drilling rig is draped by a big white shroud, which serves to keep the weather out and allows the drillers to work in a warm environment. Associated with the drilling rig are a series of containers that are outfitted with work stations at which people carry out various analyses on the cores. Other containers are used as living quarters for the 30 people who live at the drillsite. The trip took about 2 hours by Mattrack truck, on a road across the sea ice that is maintained by an army of plows and monitored constantly for cracks that start to develop as the weather warms. The sea ice right now is between 6 and 8 feet thick. This might seem thin considering the water below is several hundred feet deep, but it's thick enough to land C-17s and other large jets. The route is marked by a series of flags mounted on bamboo poles, located about 20 feet apart. This seems a close spacing, but there are times when the visibility deteriorates to the point where it's not possible to see from one flag to the next.
