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ANTARCTICA

Pegasus Field

Photos © 2002 Seth White

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Pegasus Field is out on the Ross Ice Shelf, about 15 miles from McMurdo. It sits directly between Ross Island and Antarctica Proper, about 1/4 of the way to the continent. This is where we land wheeled aircraft after the Sea Ice Runway gets closed down in mid-summer. Although it is on the ice shelf like Williams Field (which only supports ski-equipped aircraft), there is not nearly as much snow accumulation here. So, you don't have to dig very far down to find solid ice capable of supporting the high pressures underneath wheeled aircraft.

The normal road to Pegasus takes off from the Williams Field road. Here is a view of "Willy" as seen from the Pegasus road.
This is a road sign along the Pegasus road. Like the Willy road, they will rotate between allowing wheeled and tracked vehicles in order to help the different lanes become more stable and solid. A lot of work is required to make and maintain a nice smooth road on the ice shelf.
Here is the well-known Route 66 sign on the Pegasus road. You actually see this sign on the way back to town from the airfield.
This is downtown Pegasus. This field is much smaller than the Sea Ice Runway or Willy Field. It is uncontrolled (there is no tower) and is only sparsely manned unless a flight is coming in. There are only a couple buildings here even at the height of the season. On the left is a weather station and on the right is the passenger terminal. I forget what the building in between is.
Here is that funky tracked fire vehicle and the power generation station ("smurf shack"). The fire crew will come out to act as emergency response each time a plane comes in.
Here it is again, with Mount Discovery in the background this time.
The weather station building. Aviation Technical Services (ATS) provides aircraft ground support and weather forecasting services for McMurdo. This contract is a strange arrangement between the Navy SPAWAR branch, SRC, and ATS. There are many outfits operating down here.... NSF, Raytheon, ATS, Navy, Air Force, Air National Guard, Coast Guard, Kenn Borek Air, Petroleum Helicopters Inc., and probably some others that I'm forgetting. I have gotten to know the ATS crew pretty well over the winter.
Here is the outhouse door. Evidently, this facility got pretty funky over the summer and was only to be used in the case of real emergency.
A fantastic and thrilling fuel sled!
The smurf shack is the name for a little hut which sits by the generators. The label on this panel tells you that you're at the Corporate Headquarters of the Smurf Gas and Electric Co. This hut is left out here over the winter in case an emergency flight is required. Pegasus is kept in a state of semi-readiness during the winter season just in case such a flight is needed. A couple years ago there was a mid-winter flight which took out 11 people....some for medical reasons, some for psychological reasons, and some for work-related reasons. A winter flight here is a big deal, but it can be arranged in pretty short order. It's nothing like South Pole, where only one flight has ever landed in the dead of winter. That was a couple years ago where they medevac'd the doctor. This wasn't the breast cancer story, but rather a real mid-winter flight which was MUCH more dangerous than the one she went out on, which was only a few days before the first scheduled flights to Pole anyway.
Here is a giant plane, used to smooth the runway. In the background is Hut Point Peninsula, with Castle Rock sticking up. Great views of Mt. Erebus can be had from Pegasus when the weather is clear, but today was not such a day. The persistent low-lying clouds which plagued the station all summer are here.
This is Black Island, as seen from Pegasus. To the right is the runway itself.
I came out to Pegasus as a somewhat unauthorized visitor one day late in the summer season. Pegasus is not like Willy Field - it only grinds into action when a plane is coming. There are no shuttles running here, so unless you have a reason to be here (i.e. part of the flight ops crew, fire crew, or a passenger coming or going), you can't really tag along. But I was able to snag a ride out for one of the last flights of the season anyway. I wanted to check out the field in operation, since it would not be functioning by the time I leave in October. On this day, a C-141 was landing. Three airporter buses and Ivan the Terrabus were used to bring the passengers out. I tagged along with one of the shuttle drivers in a van containing the flight lunches for the passengers. Here is a pic of the various shuttles parked outside the passenger terminal.
This is the passenger terminal, or PAX terminal per the local slang. It is just a little hut on skis that is dragged out here for the summer season. The bald guy in the front is Dave Havner, who I didn't know at the time. He is one of the ATS crew and I have gotten to know him over the winter. Since he was staying the winter, he was headed out to Christchurch for a week of R&R on this particular day. The regular McMurdo staff used to get this, but not any more. However, the ATS guys still do.
Here is the 141 approaching the runway. These things seem to be quite unreliable. They are always having problems with the landing gear and other systems. A year ago, an entire wing of a 141 literally fell off as it was being refueled on the ground!!! The whole fleet was grounded for a while after that, but they're back in action. I flew in on one, and will probably fly out on one. Hooray!
Getting closer.....
....and passing by right in front of us. These planes are pretty cool looking
Touchdown.
Here, the plane has turned around and is taxiing back towards the terminal.
More high-octane taxiing action! But this one actually turned out nice, with Mt. Discovery in the background. The 141's are very low to the ground - their landing gear almost disappears beneath the plane.
Another one of the plane taxiing by.
This is where the 141 came to rest. First order of business: get the cargo off and start refueling.
This is a closer picture of the nose of the plane. When these are on the ground, they have to keep the landing gear warm. So, they hook up these Herman Nelson heaters to flexible hoses and stick the outlet ends up in the landing gear bays.
The tail of this aircraft. Pretty cool looking.
Here are a couple Deltas and a loader, used to get the cargo off and transport it back to town.
This is the unloading operation, just finishing up. The Terrabus is on the right, waiting to deliver the passengers to the plane.
This Delta is loaded up, and is also going to drag the nearby cargo sled back to civilization.
The workhorse Delta, loaded up and ready to go. This is just not the kind of sight you see many places in the world.
On our way back we passed that same Delta. The shuttle driver radio'd the Delta driver to let them know we were going to pass...then we blew by them.
The driver today was really cruising along the road. Here, we're looking back toward McMurdo and Ob Hill, with a Route 66 sign on the right.
So why is Pegasus Field named Pegasus Field? Well, many years ago a Navy Super Constellation aircraft named Pegasus crash landed near here (1970, I think). It had a rough time coming in due to severe weather, but the skill and experience of the pilots allowed the plane to land with only bumps and bruises on the passengers. The plane was not so lucky...its starboard wing was broken off. The passengers and crew waited out the storm after landing, and all was well (or at least as far as plane crashes are concerned). The Navy salvaged all they could, but they did not want to leave this wreck sitting near Williams Field where it crash-landed. Bad for morale, you know, to see a wrecked aircraft right near the airstrip as you're flying in. So they dragged it out farther on the ice shelf and left it, as was the usual practice in those days. As an aside, the Navy crews left a LOT of crap around in this area. Winter Quarters Bay, where the various ships dock at McMurdo (and where Scott originally moored the Discovery) is still extremely polluted. The Navy simply bulldozed their trash into this bay. They would also send out old dozers and equipment on ice floes and dynamite them, leaving the wreckage to sink to the bottom of McMurdo Sound. Hut Point Peninsula and the nearby areas of McMurdo Sound are probably the most polluted bits of land and sea in Antarctica! Nowadays, spills and contamination are closely monitored and contained. But there are still a lot of things left over from the old days that nobody really wants to deal with, and are more-or-less ignored. Anyway, I had heard about the Pegasus and wanted to get out and see it. It's only a mile or so from the airfield. As soon as the station closed, Mike Poole and Tim Brox started organizing various excursions as part of station recreation. They did several trips to the Pegasus, including one where people dug out the Pegasus name and emblem on the plane (they had seen where these were located on the airframe from old photos!). I didn't go on that one, but I did go on the first one. And so here are a few pics from my trip to the wreck of the Pegasus. There really isn't that much snow accumulation at this site, so a good deal of the plane is still uncovered. This is the cockpit.
Another view of the cockpit windows.
Looking aft towards the tail.
The US Navy lettering, on the port side of the aircraft.
The tail section. I am not sure if the right tail fin broke off on landing or not. I have heard it was scavenged as a souvenir by somebody-or-other some years ago, but I don't know. This day was a little overcast, but the clouds made a nice scene as the sun went down. It was cold, but no wind, so all in all, not too bad a day for such a trip.
Another view of the tail section, which is the most exposed part of the plane.
Side-on picture of the port side tail fin.
All uncovered parts of the plane are covered in graffiti. I probably shouldn't have, but I couldn't leave without putting my name there too. So here it is.
VXE-6 is the name of the squadron which used to fly down here in the Navy days. This is their lettering from the side of the Pegasus.
This is the view directly up the tailpipe of the plane, with all measure of components and controls inside. I'm not exactly sure why the tail cover broke off. Maybe somebody horked it, I don't know. But it was interesting to see part of the guts of the aircraft.
There is a little open compartment on the side of the tail section....just big enough for a person to squeeze in. It's off the ground a ways, so it's no mean feat to get yourself in there. A lot of contorting was required, but I managed to get all the way inside without straining/breaking/injuring anything....bunny boots and all. Here is the not-so-heroic shot. (photo by Olivia Billett)
A little ways from the plane is a trash heap, left here of course by the Navy during their salvage operation after the crash. Windless Bight, only 15 miles from here or so, gets 5' of snow accumulation per year. There, this trash heap would have been covered in one year. But after 30+ years it is still showing at Pegasus. Weather patterns here are very strange and localized.
Some people brought along galley food trays to sled off the side of the plane with. Not a great sledding hill, but fun nonetheless.
This is a cool picture - of a lone person with a beautiful sunset in the background. Photo by somebody whose name I forget.
On June 20, a 141 was scheduled to fly close to McMurdo as part of a test of new avionics systems. ATS worked to get the ground systems ready for this test. As part of this, my friend Dave had to go out to Pegasus quite a bit to set up and monitor a critical piece of equipment. One day he had to go out, and so did my friend Steve - who was setting up a temporary telephone link out there. So they invited me a long and we drove out one morning. A nice way to begin the day - driving out with friends to the middle of Nowhere, Antarctica. Plus, I didn't have to do any work like I do on the Windless Bight trips, so that was extra nice. I just took pictures. Here is one of the Pegasus facility in the dead of winter....just the lights from the van (left) and truck (right). I took a lot of different exposures, but I liked this one the best. The washed-out lights surrounded by absolute blackness are pretty surreal.
There are a couple dozers parked at Pegasus, and here they are. I backed up the van to illuminate them with the headlights.
With low light, these bulldozers were ghostly apparitions....steel hulks sitting silently in the middle of nowhere.
Inside the smurf shack is this - a wooden shotgun mock-up....to chase away those polar bears....
And here is a box of neat-o accessories for those lonely nights when the weather traps women out here alone....
This is a cool road sign somebody made up and stuck inside the smurf shack....Antarctic Highway 1!
On the way back I jumped out to take a picture or two of McMurdo from the Pegasus road. Or more precisely, the Pegasus shortcut. The boundary between the sea ice and the ice shelf is pretty irregular, so the main road to Pegasus takes you on a roundabout route past Willy field, so you're always on the ice shelf. But in the winter when the sea ice becomes stable again, they will make a shortcut to Pegasus that basically goes straight from McMurdo to the airfield. So we drove this road on our way out today.
A few weeks ago, the electrical crew brought out the runway lights to Pegasus field. These lights were purchased a few years ago by SPAWAR, the Navy branch which ultimately oversees ATS's runway and weather operations. Evidently, they were not cheap...and they are certainly impressive. The runway is visible from town, and if the conditions are right and the lights are running at one of the higher power settings, it's a very cool sight: a flashing multi-colored line of lights off in the distance. This is especially cool at night when they are floating in the blackness. The first night they were operational I was driving home from Arrival Heights and was really taken by surprise. They were on full power, and the foggy atmosphere tended to make them appear a lot larger than they are. Anyhow, Dave had to go out to Pegasus one night to check on the equipment there (as he does every day), so I came along with my camera. Here are the runway lights up close. There is a field of blue lights at one end, a long column of yellow lights in the middle, and a column of flashing white lights at the other end.
A view of the lights looking straight on.
Dave had told me the blue lights here were incredible...and he wasn't lying.
A side view of the ice and snow, bathed in the blue light.
We thought we'd take the opportunity to get hero shots in the blue light. Here's mine...
...and here's Dave's.
This is the TACAN shelter - short for TACtical Aid to Navigation. It's the primary system used to guide the incoming planes for a precision landing. It sits off by its lonesome about 1/4 mile from the main Pegasus buildings. Dave and Aeon Jones are the two technicians responsible for this (and other) equipment during the winter.
Another one of the TACAN shelter. That's the moon, in case you were wondering. The sun doesn't come up until tomorrow....August 19.
This is Dave inside the TACAN shelter, gesticulating as he talks to Dave Smith about the operation of this system. Dave Smith is another friend, who is working at the power plant this winter. He's accepted a job with ATS, and will be coming back this summer as one of the technicians. So he also came along for the visit to Pegasus this day.
After making sure the TACAN was happy, we took a few pictures. It was a still, beautiful, and very cold day. This is the view of Pegasus proper, with Erebus looming in the background as always. The ground fog was pretty cool - Erebus just rises out of nowhere behind this tiny little outpost. The little plume of smoke coming from Pegasus is from the White Elephant...the nickname for the large portable generator shack.
Mounts Erebus, Terra Nova, and Terror. Photos like this make me wish I had a higher resolution camera. In a related story, I have ordered a new camera. Barring misfortune, it should be here in a few days at Winfly. Although it has limitations, the Canon A40 I bought before coming down here has done pretty well...certainly worth the ~$300 I paid for it. So I decided to get a new Canon - the G3. I also got telephoto, macro, and wide angle lenses, along with a filter and some other crap. Do you really care? Probably not, but the fact that this is my website gives me license to blather on about whatever trivial thoughts happen to be floating through my tiny brain as I make these pages....so there! Which reminds me of a great joke I heard over McMurdo channel 10 the other day (this is also known as Crater Hill or the MCC channel, in case you were wondering). Anyhow - what's the difference between the Rolling Stones and a Scotsman? Well, the Rolling Stones say "Hey, you, get off of my cloud" and the Scotsman says "Hey, McCloud, get off of my ewe!". Yeah!
So, anyway, this is another one of Pegasus, with the line of flags going out to the TACAN.
A panorama of the whole thing. The name of this picture says it all.
Here are the two Daves, taking pictures outside of the big-tired van we used to drive out here.
A little while later I tagged along again. And as luck would have it, there were some nacreous clouds today. Unfortunately you have to be a pretty good photographer with a pretty good camera to capture what they really look like - and even then, it's not really possible.
Guess what? More nacreous cloud pictures! I like this one.
The two lights at the bottom of this one are a dozer which was pulling a sled along near the landing strip while I was there.
This one and the next one are two closer-in views of the clouds, which again, don't even come close to showing how pretty they really are. I hope my new camera arrives safely and I get a few more opportunities to photograph nacreous clouds.