Category: Antarctic Blog
-
Cape Evans: Aft Cabins
Coming out of the Tenements, we proceed down towards the end of the wardroom and find ourselves looking into a corner that is almost, but not quite, its own little room. This is where Captain Scott’s bunk was, as well as that of Teddy Evans, technically his second-in-command, and Dr Wilson, who everyone else considered…
-
Cape Evans: The Tenements
As we walk deeper into the hut from the mens’ quarters, coming through the gap in the bulkhead, the view looks like this: Today we’re going to look at the section to our left, or mapping the hut in nautical terms, starboard amidships. This is the area of the hut that was known as ‘The…
-
Cape Evans: Men’s Quarters
It’s time to step into the Terra Nova hut. Look, the door is already open. It’s open because the Antarctic Heritage Trust is here doing their annual check-up. Just because they’re here, though, doesn’t mean you don’t have to do the same boot-brush-and-sign-in routine that you do at Hut Point, so you do that. Here’s…
-
Cape Evans, Exterior
I have enough photos of the interior of the Cape Evans hut to fill twenty posts, but to get a good idea of the context for the hut, let’s do a little exploring outside, first. If you are standing facing the hut as in the photo above, the outward tip of Cape Evans is off…
-
The Road to Cape Evans
Having done Sea Ice training at last, I was clear to head out on snowmobile. My coordinator’s intent had been to do a ‘shakedown’ one day – a practice run, to get used to the vehicles, how to load and tie down the sledge, a chance to get things wrong when it doesn’t really matter…
-
Sea Ice: Crack Safety
Water ice is a curious material: though apparently a solid, it can nevertheless flow, bend, and wrinkle. The mile-thick Antarctic ice cap is very gradually flowing out to the edges of the continent, through the mountains in glaciers, and when those glaciers leave their channels they spread out like hot fudge (only much slower). Most…
-
Sea Ice Basics
Antarctica is, as we all know, a continent of ice. But the ice isn’t just the ice caps and glaciers on the continent itself – it extends off the coast in all directions as the Southern Ocean seasonally freezes over. This fringe of frozen sea gives the penguins a place to escape their predators and…
-
Arrival Heights
With the heavy schedule of trainings and breakfast meetings, I fought to get every ounce of sleep I could. Word on the street was that the light was much better for photography at ‘night’, when the sun was lower in the sky – the angle making the light warmer, and shadows longer and richer –…
-
Discovery Hut Photo Tour
My first full day in Antarctica was the coldest of the whole trip. I noted in my journal that it was -4°F/-20°C – I don’t recall if that was with wind chill or without, but it was definitely windy that day, so you can imagine. The previous day’s flurries were still blowing around, so the…
-
The Story of the Discovery Hut
The Discovery Hut is named such because it was built on the Discovery Expedition, in early 1902, when the ship had found its permanent berth in the small inlet at the end of the southernmost peninsula of Ross Island. This was imaginatively dubbed Winter Quarters Bay, and the spit of land adjacent to it was…