How does it feel to see Antarctica for the first time?

To see Antarctica, you must travel there. Tourists who want to visit do so through South America, but most scientists enter by way of New Zealand. Toursits take ships from the tip of South America and cross the challenging Drake Passage to explore the Antarctic Peninsula. The main Antarctic continent begins at the southern end of the Peninsula. I like to think of the Antarctic Peninsula as Antarctica’s Florida. The rest of the continent, as big as the US and Mexico, is more like a visit to Minnesota or arctic Canada in winter. Many scientific stations or bases are on the Peninsula, but the major US base is at McMurdo Station south from New Zealand.

After a commercial flight from the US to Christchurch, US scientists are flown twenty-five hundred miles south to McMurdo on military aircraft. In the early days of my visits, aircraft were either US Navy or New Zealand Air Force Hercules, C-130s, some equipped with retractable skis. That trip south takes about eight hours and is told in the first chapter of my book, Mighty Bad Land. Below, I share what it was like for me to take this trip and see the continent from the air for the first time in my life.

Approaching the continent in a C-130 Hercules

“Twenty or so passengers and we were planted in red web seats on fold-up aluminum frames that stretched along both sides of the Hercules cargo hold. We sat on these, crammed hip to hip and knee to knee. A parallel center row in the aircraft held a dozen more, including Steve and Dave, two of our expedition team, across from us. …

“I want to see Antarctica from the cockpit,” I shouted to Tucker, Steve Tucker, my friend, and one of our mountaineers, who sat next to me. “We must be close now.”…

I stepped between the knees of the other passengers who sat alongside and across from us and turned each foot sideways to slip my oversized white rubber Bunny Boots between legs. With each step, my knees bumped knees. I made my way forward.”

On the Hercules flight deck

“At the entrance to the flight deck, I met the legs of a crewman above me. “Hello, can I come up?” He waved okay. The Hercules, a New Zealand Air Force C-130 with four colossal turboprop engines, could glide through the sky like the best of them. Our aircraft approached Antarctica from over the Southern Ocean.

I climbed up a few steps. A brilliant sky met me. After the murky cargo hold, my eyes needed time to adjust to the blinding brilliance, my ears to the quiet of the flight deck. The aircraft floated in the sky. Excitement caught in my breath…The pilots sat at the front of the cockpit, the engineer behind and between them in a jump seat. The navigator sat at an instrument panel to the right rear…Flight instruments covered ceiling and wall space. Floor-to-ceiling windows wrapped around the cockpit, yielding wide, startling views. Immediately, I sensed a moment of inspiration ahead.”

Inside my mind; the observer

“The pilot dropped our altitude, then flew the Hercules over the coastline. An inconceivable expanse of white stretched ahead and beneath us. Ice reached beyond the horizon—pure snow below a vivid blue sky. Glaciers spread out like rivers and tributaries. Steep, pointed, dark, majestic peaks jutted up from the blanket of snow and ice. I imagined myself as the first person to discover this amazing scene. I became still, lost in that thought.

In the distance, the ice dominated. The immense Antarctic Ice Sheet buried the highest peaks, ignored their existence, made them disappear. I visualized the continent without it. Ice wasn’t always here; it started to grow and then bury the landscape over thirty million years ago. The continent had sucked up a good part of Earth’s oceans to form this white blanket. Sea level had dropped over two hundred feet to build the ice. What triggered that change, from a warm greenhouse Earth to the present-day icehouse Earth we live on? I dwelled on that deep mystery.

Soon I would step foot on the landscape below, as a geologist and explorer, finding answers to fundamental questions about the breakup of continents. A thrill came over me—mixed with a wisp of dread. I flashed for a moment on the stories I had read and heard from the veterans, the warnings of danger and death.

The scene before me looked alien, not of Earth. So overpowering was this vast, vacant expanse, a white ocean of ice with scattered islands of rock. This moment so special, this sight a beauty beyond explanation, its impact on me profound and not expected. I knew my Antarctic adventure would not be topped in my life. I knew I’d carry it with me forever. A warmth flowed into me with that realization.”