Hut Point and Arrival Heights

So, with yesterday being my Kelly day, I decided to finally take a trip out to Hut Point and maybe a little bit longer hike. So I got one of the guys from A-shift, Lonnie, and we took a walk.

First we got to Scott's Hut. This thing was built on Hut Point by Capt. Scott, the New Zealand explorer who used it as a base for his trips to the South Pole. He died coming back from one of the trips, and the hut has remained as it was when he left for the past 112 years or so, including the dead seal they had killed for meat and not yet butchered, which is laying on top of a bunch of burlap sacks outside the hut. It is pretty amazing to see that hut, and know that 112 years ago, men used it for storage (they lived on their ship, the Discovery) and if you touch those timbers, you are touching something that was built in 1901. This hut was used by just about every expedition to cross the continent. Both Shackelton and Scott used it. You can't really see inside the windows, but they do sometimes take trips out there. There is one tomorrow, but I won't be able to go, since I'm working. Bummer.

Just for Melissa...a 112 year old seal carcass...



Then we walked out to Vince's Cross. The cross is at the very edge of Hut Point, and was raised by Scott in rememberance of one of his sailors, who slipped off a cliff (pretty damned easy to do, let me tell you) during a blizzard while trying to return to the ship during a blizzard. The inscription on the cross was also engraved by Scott.


Then we walked up to Roll Cage Mary. This is a Virgin Mary statue that is protected (?) by a set of pipes welded together. There are several necklaces, sets of dog-tags, ID badges, etc that people have left there, I guess as a kind of pilgramage or something. She was set up in honor of a SeeBee who died in the 50's when the bulldozer he was operating to off-load a ship (I'm guessing it was moored pretty far out, before the days of ice breakers) fell through the ice into 350 fathoms of water.


The trails around here from what I've seen and heard tend to be rather all the same...slippery and more or less dangerous. They do try to mark them, but people tend to steal the markers to take home, so a lot of the places don't actually have markers with arrows...just rock cairns with bamboo sticks marked in orange at the top where the markers used to be.


Then we did a rock scramble up to Arrival Heights. I don't know how high it actually is, but it's pretty high up from the sea and the path up is not all that steady. A lot of loose, slippery rocks and hard packed snow on the paths, and they are very narrow, almost like goat paths. There are also a lot of neat rocks up there, but they are all volcanic, so some of them are sharp and some are light with lots of holes in them. But they are all loose, so you really have to watch your step.


It took us a while to get up there, between the scrambling and the stopping for small breaks. There were a lot of little 'glaciers' in between the hills, where water had collected at some point and then froze over the winter. In a few months when it warms up, they will all melt back into ponds.

I also got a picture of something called fada morgana. Its basically a mirage, made from the cold ice meeting the (relatively) warm air, kind of like the heat shimmers you get from blacktop or sand on a hot sunny day.. I can't believe I actually got a decent shot of it. It's at the bottom of the mountain in the picture below, and makes it look like there are cliffs all along the base of the mountains.


We got up to the top, and there is a sign there that basically says "End of the Road." There is a radar dome and a clean air monitoring station past that point, so you can't go near them. I did get a good shot of Mt Erebus though. So we turned around and went back.

Going down was much much worse than climbing up. You really had to watch your step, and it was pretty nerve-wracking going down those steep, slippery rocks with nothing but a several hundred foot drop to the ice covered sea on one side, and a slightly shorter drop (but generally much more rocky) down to a small valley on the other. I did slip once, but I stayed on the trail.

We managed to make it back down, stopping for a few good picture along the way. I did take one picture towards the sea, but I don't know that it came out that good. But it was really neat to stand up there and know that if you took away Ice Town and all the associated buildings, you would be looking at the same landscape that Scott and his party (heck, Shackelton too) looked at 112 years ago. I mean, look at this picture, the way the waves have frozen. If Scott or Shackelton, or any of those other guys were standing here in the end of October in 1901, they would have seen pretty much the exact same thing. Kinda trippy, when you really stop and think about it. And it's nice to know that more or less, SOMETHING in this world hasn't changed much in over 100 years. It's rather comforting I think. I also think I've found my new meditation spot.



Here's a shot of McMurdo from just down from Arrival Heights.


I also got a halfway decent shot of Mt Erebus, the volcano. She was smoking pretty good too!


After that is was hightailing it down to get to dinner. I pretty much crashed after that, my legs and back were hurting pretty bad from all the hilly stuff. I got some reading done in my forensics book, and then went to bed but I couldn't fall asleep for a while.

Today was laundry day, since I really needed clean uniforms for this week. I still have one load to put in the dryer, but other than that, everything is done. I'm also trying to decide what to dress-up as for the party tonight. Some of the other FD guys are doing the Firefly cast, and someone suggested I go as Zoe, who is actually a tall, thin, muscular black woman, so you can clearly see the resemblence. I might, depending on if I can figure out something else.