Amber on Ice

The flight from MacTown to SP takes about 3-hours give or take. We fly from nearly sea level up to about 9K feet. Along the way we fly over the beautiful Trans Antarctic (?sp) Mountains. There were only 3 of us on the flight down and 1 pallet of cargo so we had a lot of space to walk around, stretch, sleep, etc. The pilots were pretty open about us coming and sitting up in the Flight Deck with them during the flight.

I elected to take meds prior to flying to SP to help prevent altitude sickness. I haven't spent a lot of time at altitude, I think the highest I've been was Quito, Ecuador around 9K feet back in high school. We had 7 medavac flights from SP earlier this year of people suffering from altitude sickness, none of them had taken the meds. The first day I experienced a pretty intense headache. I just kept drinking lots of water, avoid alcohol and caffeine, and got to bed early. Walking up and down stairs nearly killed me. My second day there I played s0me recreational volleyball and ended up bentover. Um yeah, volleyball isn't that cardiovascular intense. Mind you I had run 19-miles at McMurdo the Sunday before in preparation for the marathon. By the end of the week I was able to run on the treadmill, any changes in elevation such as stairs still whupped my butt.

Apparently the air at the poles is thinner so the physiological effects on the body are usually more like 10-12K feet.

The C130s make several trips a day to SP. I just learned that the Hercs are how we get fuel to the SP. They can carry about 10K gallons of fuel in their wings.