The MEC (Mechanical Equipment Center) is tasked this
winter to put 250 hours on the new Tucker tracked vehicles.
Once a week, Sean and Josh take two people from town out on
the Castle Rock Loop on a two hour trip. This week, Lynn
and I got to go. We hadn't been to Castle Rock before
and we hadn't ridden in the new Tuckers before so it was
a doubly nice trip. The Tuckers are tracked vehicles so
they roll over the snow easily and had no problem at all
climbing from the Sea Ice up the glacier headed to Castle
Rock.
I was pretty surprised how steep the terrain was around
Castle Rock and it's definitely a long slide down to the
bottom of the glacier. Lots of people make this 9.3 mile
loop trip on foot or skis, but they definitely have more
energy than I do. I was very happy making it in a warm
vehicle.
On the way back, we were riding along the top of the glacier,
so we were fairly high up compared to McMurdo Sound to the
right and the Ross Ice Shelf to the left. At this high
up, you could see that it's a lot brighter to the north,
but you'd have to go hundreds of miles to actually see
the sun. And this was at 3:30 in the afternoon. We had
a great trip and hopefully we'll be able to go out again
after it's completely dark to see lots of stars.
