My Adventure Continues...

I’ve gotten into the work groove here now and also had a chance to take more photos over the last 2 weeks or so. The weather forecasts here are fairly accurate, and feature such surprising elements as snow, ice, wind chill, and max and min temperatures, all well below zero for the time being. The trick is to wear your clothing in layers. All of them. And then still bitch about the cold on the 5 minute walk to work because it really is THAT COLD. I now wear synthetic silk long underwear that I bought at The Store (the only one in town) and that I swear by. In fact, when we were all trying on our ECW gear at the CDC in Christchurch, we were all issued clothing deemed necessary for our particular jobs, and mine includes a lot of time in a man-made walk-in freezer at -15 degrees Fahrenheit, still warmer than most days get here outside. In my downtime I’ve taken the following pictures.

Mt. Discovery, named after the ship of the same name that brought Robert Scott and his crew to Antarctica from 1901-1904.
The Royal Society Range of mountains very near Mt. Discovery, named after the Royal Geographical Society which sent Scott to the South Pole.

Scott’s actual hut built by him and his crew.

It’s only about a ten minute walk from Hotel California to the famous hut.
Just beyond the hut an icebreaker will carve a path for the main delivery vessel (container ship) which shows up in late January. They unload most all of everything we use here from that one ship every year. Sell by dates don’t have the same meaning down here for a lot of things. They just finished “building” an ice pier to unload the ship with. It’s actually made of ice and thick enough for heavy duty loaders to drive on and remove cargo with and floats on the ocean beneath. The previous one lasted 13 years before breaking in two, one half rising over a meter above the other (over 3.28 feet).
One of Scott’s crew drowned here and they placed a cross to commemorate it just above the hut on a higher ridge.

The view looking “west” from the cross. Again, directions are a bit superfluous here. Somewhere that direction is Shackleton’s Hut, as well as Amundsen’s Hut, two other famous South Pole explorers.
This will all either be melted by warmer weather or broken up by the icebreaker in January.

Another view of Scott’s Hut and McMurdo Station in the background.

Our foodservice party in Hut 10. This hut used to be the commanding officer’s, when the US Navy ran the show in Antarctica. It is the swankiest building on station, as you can easily tell. After the Antarctica Treaty was signed in the early 1990’s, the National Science Foundation took over control. Part of my job is inventory control, and I can still look up rather large ammo in the inventory system, even though it’s no longer on station.
Nacreous clouds, unique to the poles, which look this way because they are so high (over 55000 feet) up that they reflect sunlight from underneath. More to follow in a few weeks or so.