Ross Island - best place in the world.
First up, just to
clarify, we are currently alive and back home. We had no internet on
the trip so the blog was written then but I'm only getting around to
publishing it now. I only realised yesterday that this may be
confusing when we met a friend who thought she was hallucinating
because clearly we were still deep in the Southern Ocean. Sorry.
Day 18 – It's Tuesday today, which is weird 'cause yesterday was Sunday. So I guess we must've crossed the dateline. One guy on board missed his birthday, which would have been Monday, so he gets a reprieve from entering his 50s.
Well today was just
absolutely bloody fantastic. We're at Ross Island. Now if you know
your Antarctic history and have read all the explorer books (like I
have) this is wildly exciting, this is where all the action happened,
where all the big expeditions were based. All the landmarks here are
so familiar to me – Mount Terror and Mount Erebus (volcanoes named
after Ross' ships who first came by back in around 1840), Cape Evans,
Cape Royds, Hut Point, Mount Discovery, Terra Nova Bay. We hung
around off Cape Crozier which, as well as being very pretty, is where
poor old Cherry-Garrard went one winter to find emperor penguin eggs
and wrote a book called "The Worst Journey in the World".
It's famously windy and was today too.
Ship's in ice again, with the island in the background:
The medical evacuation
happened successfully in the morning and then the helicopter pilots
decided they felt like taking us all for a flight.
Now a little miracle
happened today – I fell in love with helicopters! The best thing
ever! Granted, with a little assistance from my friend Valium. We had
the most amazing flight with pilot Marcelo, swooping low over the land, getting an
amazing sense of speed and of the scale of the landscape, absolutely
bloody fantastic.
Wheeeeeee!!!!
Day
19 Just when you think things can't get any better......we get to
visit Scott's hut from his 1911-1913 Terra Nova (aka "last")
expedition!!! This may be the best day of my life. I mean the wedding
was pretty good, and so was Everest Base Camp, but this is really
really really exciting.
We went by helicopter (of course!), taking off with pilot Julio:
We went by helicopter (of course!), taking off with pilot Julio:
On the way we buzzed (loving helicopters) Shakleton's hut at Cape Royd's: As you can see the sea ice here is solid all around the island which is why we couldn't get in by ship.
And then to Scott's hut at Cape Evans. This is how you make a helipad in this part of the world:
just stick up a wind sock.
And just in case something goes horribly wrong (in the tradition of polar exploration) we need to take along some supplies – like cooking supplies and a toilet:
So the history of these huts, for those of you who haven't devoured all the Heroic Age literature, is this. Beginning of the 20th century, Antarctica was the last great unexplored corner of the world, everyone wanted to get to the South Pole and to claim as much glory/land/economic potential as they could for their own nation. The Brrritish Empiah was particularly invested in this.
The
way you attacked the Pole was this. Head down one Summer by ship (the
only time you can get close, when some of the sea ice has melted,
also it's a bit dark all Winter what with the sun never rising and
all), establish a base and take a few trips inland to bury some food
stores for the big trip to the Pole, hang out all Winter doing
Important Scientific Work, set off for the Pole as early as possible
the next Summer, die/nearly die, become a hero. And so the
expeditions all came and built huts for them to spend the Winter in.
As
the expedition tended to be rather keen to just get the hell out of
there by the time their ship returned, a year of two later, alot of
stuff got left behind. And also other expeditions could use the huts
and remaining supplies in emergencies. It being quite cold down here
the huts and contents were preserved quite nicely for years but more
recently they have been formally treated and preserved by (I think)
the New Zealand Heritage people.
The
galley area, with stove, in the "men's" part of the hut,
which was separated from the "Officers'" part of the hut. All pots and pans and condiments etc. still lying around like you could just march on in and cook up a storm.
The
dining table, with bunks in the background, in the Officers' section of
the hut. Mattresses, pillows, sleeping bags, piles of socks, scientific equipment, magazines all waiting for us to just move in.
A
pile of seal blubber (not as stinky as you'd think for hundred year old blubber) which was used for cooking and heating.
The
hut nestled on the shore of its little bay, which is covered in sea
ice. They liked the sea ice as it was easier to travel over than the
land – nice and flat to ski across. The island is volcanic, hence
the black sand and rock. This is taken from Windvane Hill, where they stationed the meteorological equipment, and where there was enough wind to bring tears to my eyes in the middle of Summer and these guys struggled up here in the deep dark of Winter to take their measurements.
And
flying back to the ship.
Day 20 Ross Ice Shelf Day
Back
to Cape Crozier for a closer look at the ice shelf, the big one, the
size of France, that one. It was a gorgeous foggy morning and some
combination of the fog and cold made the air sparkle like it was full
of glitter. Magic. Though at first people thought their eyes were
going funny or they were about to faint or get a migraine.
This is how you get down to your zodiac and then hope to time the bobbing of the zodiac with the bobbing of the ship and not fall in the water in between:
The ice shelf up close, it's about 40-50m high above the water with a couple of hundred metres below. Doesn't it look like a lovely big chunk of icing that you want to break off and munch through?
And
then in the afternoon, just when you think it can't get any better,
they announced........helicopter flight! Best. Flight. Ever.
The ice just goes on and on and on and there's just nothing else out here. This is what the explorers (Scott, Shackleton etc.) walked across for hundreds of miles. Helicopter included for scale.
And then......we landed! We couldn't get out but it was amazing to be down on the actual shelf looking at the flat, never ending whiteness.
The flight (apologies for dodgy quality):
So there you have it. Ross Island, best place in the world. Next stop, somewhere else.
Comments
Post a Comment