Field Trip

So I got to go out to Cape Evans last week. It was a great little trip, just a few hours long, but still a lot closer to the Antarctica of my time at the Pole than this year in Town.
You climb into the vehicle called a Delta and strap yourself in as the driver gets the thing in gear. It's a bouncy ride at the best of times, and if the road is rough you can catch some air on the bumps. The trip is over the sea-ice and there are pressure ridges where the glaciers and the pack ice are moving together. The flags on the roadside keep the vehicle out of the cracks and holes. The Barnard Glacier rises up not far from the hut site, but w couldn't go too close to it-we didn't know where the holes were and no-one wanted to go for a swim!
After about an hour you can see Tent Island rising up in front. When Scott got here much of this ice was water and he sailed right in. Then he built a hut, which is still standing. It has stables for his ponies, and the equpimnet is still there, including the pony-snowshoes. Inside the cabin proper it's actually very dark, but my flash did a great job. Nice to see that the cocoa was available in quantity! Of course, so was the pickled cabbage-mostly there as an anti-scorbutic.
Scott had himself a few square yarsd of space, while the enlisted men got to be crammed in almost as tightly as onboard ship-18" between hammocks. Never understood that method of housekeeping, egalitarian that I am.
Of course, they left piles of stuff everywhere-crates and so on clutter the area. The group that mantains the place had to remove some a few years ago- they were afraid that someone was going to setp on a buried crate and injure themselves.
A few of the surviving crew put up a cross for the ones who died in the area- Scott and his companions were buried in the snow just as they were. I got one nice shot from the top of the hill and my batteries conked out, Alas.
But the view was just as nice without the camera, and I had a great time getting to see some of the continent.
Here's a link to the photos!
http://s106.photobucket.com/albums/m266/bheydemann/Cape%20Evans/?sc=6&start=all