Cape Evan's Hut and an ice cave

I hope the photos make up for the poor formatting.


Here's a photo of when I first arrived in Antarctica. No, I'm not the one with facial hair.













I've been having some computer and camera issues. This is my second attempt at a post tonight and it seems all the photos on my camera have been deleted. Luckily, I had already transferred most onto my computer, but I found out when I was looking for a particular photo.

Today the weather was supposed to be pretty warm, high's at +18 degrees F. Ice on any dark surface melts during the day and the roads get pretty wet as a result. At night the water freezes back.

Today I was able to visit Scott's hut at Cape Evans. It's an amazingly well preserved hut built in the early 1900's as part of an expedition. Slabs of seal blubber, food, and a penguin are in pristine condition. The hut also contains anthrax and asbestos. You can also still smell the smells of the barn. It was a pretty neat trip that involved riding on a "Delta". I intentionally took a photo of Delta today, but it was my search for that photo that made me realize all the photos on my camera have been deleted. It was about an hour ride over sea ice. I'm still very new to all this so my explanations may be wrong, but bear with me. Sea ice is seasonal, it forms over the ocean in the winter and melts during the summer. The ice shelves are not seasonal. The balloon base is on an ice shelf which is apparently nearly 90 feet thick where the balloon base is located. However, under both sea ice and the ice shelves is ocean. Really neat pressure ridges from where the sea ice rams into the ice shelf. In the coming weeks, they may allow tours of the pressure ridges nearby which I would hope to go on. Dangerous cracks can be found on sea ice, ice shelves, glaciers, and snow packs here, so you're best bet is to stay on the marked paths. Snow often times covers up these chasms, which makes things even more interesting.


This is a photo of the actual hut. Just outside of this photo on the left is an anchor from one of the ships that from my understanding was there one night when they went to bed, but gone in the morning. Mount Erebus is in the background on the left.







Apparently it was important to have a bicycle here. (I haven't quite gotten the image stabilization feature on my camera figured out as you can see in this photo and the photos of the ice cave)



















































I saw my first animals today. There was a Weddell seal on the ice near the hut and a skua, a large gray seagull-like bird, at the base. Skua's apparently have learned to swarm anybody walking out of the galley with food, which is an entertaining spectacle to anyone but the person with the food.












On the way back we stopped at an ice cave at the edge of a glacier on the side of Mount Erebus. The cave was pretty spectacular, I wish my photos had come out better. If you use the flash, you lose the blue color of the ice, but the lighting was dim in there and my image stabilization didn't seem to work.


























This is a good photo of the caves, and that is my backside.
























Apparently there is some program where elementary school students make paper figurines and mail them to various far off locations. Included is letter from the student telling the recipient what the student would like Stanley to do and some information about the student. A student from near Port Hueneme mailed a flat Stanley too the "Science Center" in Antarctica and so various groups have taken him around. He's been to a penguin rookery, went on a helicopter flight, went ice diving and seen the sea floor, travelled to the South pole, and today came with us to the hut and the cave. He has seen more of Antarctica than just about anyone, and each group that takes him is apparently quite enthusiastic about getting comedic and/or amazing photos of Stanley. This clearly won't be one of those photos, but I thought it was a neat story.

It looks like I will be camping for five days or so out on an ice shelf with two scientists and a guide. I'm really looking forward to it as I've done car camping before, but never plane camping. We will be all alone out there though, so that should be interesting. I don't know when I leave, but it will likely be sometime next week. I'll keep you all informed, but it will mean I will be out of contact for some time.