I am a part of the Australian Antarctic Program, this is Wilkins Aerodrome where all our flights carrying passengers and cargo arrive in Antarctica from Hobart, we also support medical evacuations. Australia funds an Antarctic program to further understand the climate we live in and how it used to be, breeding populations of Animals here in summer and support meteorology with twice daily balloon releases and forcasting.
Our runway is a blue ice runway built straight on the glacier surface and we use snow blowers to remove snow off the ice surface and then utilise dozers to push the snow berms made by the blowers further away from the runway to avoid more snow buildup and keep our airstrip active.
We use three D7 LGP Dozers to push the Snow the Snow Blowers shift off the runway as far away from the runway as possible by working as a team and slot dozing.
These are the two original dozers around 12 years old and a newer one with 2500 hrs, we also have two brand new NextGen D7's arriving on this February's Resupply Voyage.
LGP is abbreviation for Low Ground Pressue, which are the wider than standard tracks on these machines so they dont sink into the snow.