Gearing up in New Zealand
After months of waiting, our Antarctica’s Secrets team leaves Los Angeles on a non stop 12 hour flight to New Zealand. Their first stop is Christchurch, New Zealand, where they pick up their extreme weather clothing for the trip to Antarctica.
After months of waiting, we leave Los Angeles on a non stop 12 hour flight to New Zealand. We ‘are’ Mike Kaplan at Lamont Doherty, Kathy Licht a professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, and Nicole Bader a student from St. Norbert College in Wisconsin. Nicole is finishing her undergraduate at St. Norbert but will be doing her Master’s thesis research with Kathy starting in the fall. Her project will focus on what we do in Antarctica.
It is hot and humid when we landed in Auckland. We went through customs and had the customary 15 minute walk to the domestic terminal. We noticed the heat and humidity not just because we just came from the ‘winter’ in the United States, but we are soon to go to the coldest part of the planet.
We stayed in Christchurch a day. This is to get our gear at the CDC (clothing distribution center). All the extreme cold weather clothing is issued here. We try things on, ask for more (and more!) clothing, and pack everything for our trip. We wait, and walk around Christchurch, including their beautiful Botanical Gardens, have a great Thai meal – knowing thesis will be the last of such sights and greenery (and hay fever!) we will see for a month. We also meet Mike Roberts here, a New Zealander originally, who is our mountaineering guide and new companion. He will be an integral part of our field season and our team and we are happy to meet him finally.
Mike, Kathy and Nicole