Best day, worst day

Yesterday was quite possibly the best day I've had down here so far. With the penguin herding in the morning, a nice relaxing day (with the exception of the minor fire dept recall in the afternoon) and the Cape Evans trip, I had a blast. This of course was followed by the worst day I've had.

Bad day first. I overslept and was really late to work this morning. The dispatcher had to call me and she woke me up, so by the time I got dressed, up to the station to get my gear, down to the shuttle stop to get the shuttle (which was late, I might add, and then we got stuck behind a dozer that was going really really slow) to the airfield, and actually down to the airfield, it was nearly 0900. I owe Lonnie some beer for staying and covering for me. I spilled some soup on my leg at lunch. No breakfast, no shower. And I'm still tired. Plus I have found 2 holes in Big Red, which is down. So first thing tomorrow morning before I go back to my room, I have to head up to BFC to see if they can put a quick patch on it. Then again, tomorrow we may get mail, so that'll be good. I hope.

Karma. Gets you every time.

So, good stuff. Yesterday. I had a nice relaxing day for the most part. Someone burnt up a car on the road to Cape Evans, so they had a fire dept recall to back-staff the apparatus since some of the guys had to take a Hagglund out to the site to put out the rest of the fire. The problem with this is that a Hagglund is very slow, so it was about a 30 minute or so drive just to get out to the vehicle. When they got there, the only thing still actually on fire were the tracks (it was a tracked vehicle, like our red ARFF trucks), and the rest of the truck had burned up. It's going to take a few days for Haz Waste and the Spill Team to clean this one up. Supposedly, a transmission line blew and the fluid caught fire. They left a 3/10ths of a mile trail of transmission fluid that has to be cleaned up.

The Hagglund the fire crew had to take out to the scene.
The trail of transmission fluid (the red line on the snow).
The truck itself. It was a tracked truck, so the wheels were replaced with gears and a rubber track.


I wasn't needed for the recall, so after I got to the firehouse and got in my gear, I was told to go home. So I went back, ran into someone from Rec who was organizing the trip to Cape Evans, and helped her fill up the Delta with gear for the trip. There has to be a full compliment of survival gear just in case we get caught out in weather.

Cape Evans is where Capt Scott landed in order to make his trip to the South Pole in 1911. (Here's a good website for info. It actually has excerpts from Scott's journal on the trip from the Pole. http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/scott.htm) They built a hut to stay in over the winter before they left for the trip in the summer. Unfortunately, Scott and the 5 others in his party died on the way back from the Pole (which they got to, but the Norwegians, led by Admunsen, got there a month before them). Shackelton also used the hut when he made his trip across the whole continent 5 years later. But the hut is exactly how it was left when the last person in 1917 walked out. Well, mostly. There is a historical society, mostly run by the Kiwi's, who maintains the hut, fixing pieces of the building that are falling down, and stuff like that. They really aren't changing anything at all, and are just reconstructing it really. A lot of the items inside are tagged for cataloging purposes, as it really is like an archaeological dig. But it was really neat to see all the stuff in there, pretty much as they left it, with their clothes hanging on the bunks, the chemistry equipment right there, the newspaper on the table with the dates on it. They killed seals, and ate the meat, burned the blubber for light and warmth, and used the hides to make mittens, boot liners, and blankets for their bed. One of the really neat things is that the hut was pre-fabricated in NZ, and when they put it up, they insulated it with seaweed quilted into canvas. They kept the ponies in stables attached to the hut, and there was a small entry way before you got to the hut itself, and this entryway wrapped around to where the stables were. It is actually quite big and it's clear that this is where they stored all their tools and such. They kept the floor level below freezing so that they could easily sweep the snow off the floor, and then the mid-body area was at about 50F and the rafters were up around 70F.

Here's some pictures of what's inside. This first one is just SOME of the food they brought. The shelves inside are stacked, and they used other crates of things (wine and food) to divide the hut into rooms for themselves. There are also more crates outside the hut that still have tins in them, but those no longer have labels.


This is Scott's desk, which was right by his bed. Yes that's a real penguin, and no one is really sure why he had it. There are also newspapers and a skua skull there as well.


Scott's bed. There are boot liners and gloves that look like they are made out of seal skin, and the top blanket on his bed is also a seal pelt.


Here's a shot of the inside of the hut from the interior doorway. Straight back is the darkroom that the photographer made for himself. He couldn't sleep in the constant light during the summer.

Outside there are lots of crates and stuff that they stored outside, although it may have been Shackelton who left the stuff outside. There are also still bales of hay outside covered in snow.


One of the things they had a lot of was cocoa. Here's a box of it.


Some of the guys were chemists.


Remember what I said about how they burned seal blubber for warmth? There are still stacks of it in the entry way area. Oh, and by the way...it still smells, and it still faintly smells of seal blubber in the hut itself.
Shackelton used the hut too, during his Aurora expedition to cross the whole continent (most of the explorers named their expeditions after the ships they sailed on. Not very imaginative guys...even their place names are boring. Black Island, since all you see is black volcanic rock, White Island, which is all snowy, Inaccessable Island, which you can't get on because it's a sheer face, the list goes on). Anyway, Shackelton used the hut at Cape Evans as a jumping off point, though most of the stuff in there is acknowledged as Scott's as far as I know. They anchored the ship on land, and during one particularly nasty storm, the anchor lines broke, and the ship floated out to sea. The anchor is still there.


On the way there, and on the way back, we saw seals. There is one seal hole right next to the road to Cape Evans (why they don't just move the road, I'll never know). Evidently most of the animals there have gotten quite used to the vehicles going by, so they don't really budge. Here's some shots of the wildlife we saw.


He's yawning, by the way.



So far no more wildlife on the runway today. But, the night is young.