Christmas on Ice, Part 3 - Camp

With thousands of pictures to sort through I've tried hard to keep it light, but have admitted a certain defeat with this next lot. I have decided to let the images do most of the talking. So browse through them, read the captions, and if you want to know more, just ask. This is my photo essay of our time while camping in Antarctica. Enjoy.
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Putting up the polar tents. Two people slept in each tent, but the more help you got putting it up the better.

The toilet. Antarctica is a "bring it in, bring it out" kind of place, so the yellow bucket collected poo and the white box collected pee. After 10 days of living in the field a certain level of finesse was acheived for peeing into small openings.

Camp. Crystal and my tent is on the left, in the foreground is our little snow kitchen.

Flags marking the way to Scotts Hut at Cape Evans. The flags are left in place until there is nothing but bamboo left, this takes anywhere from 2-10 seasons depending on the location, whether is protected from wind and snow.

Captain Scott's hut built at Cape Evans. With strict regulations in place and extensive restoration work, this is one of the most amazing museums I have ever been to.

A chemistry set from Scott's Hut.

Lots and lots of cocoa.

Preserved for almost 100 years both the penguin and the paper show little sign of decomposition.

Inside the hut.

Driving the hagglund with Girard. Built in Sweden, these machines are also used for warfare in desert countries as they work well in sand. If you look around the machine you can see the various mountings for machine guns and other things.

Off to look for seals. The long poles are to test the sea ice as we walk along. Because seals come up and hang around holes in the sea ice, we have to be careful not to fall into any nearby cracks or breathing holes.

One of the highly photogenic seals. Proabably a pup from that year.

Our Christmas feast. Some of the students spent Christmas eve digging out this table for us to share our meal around. On Christmas day, Santa (and his twin and three elves) came out to deliver us a delicious and HOT dinner of turkey, ham, gravy, kumara, veggies, cookies, cake and merangues. It was amazing. Unfortunately, it was also the coldest day. No matter. Everyone enjoyed the food, the company and the stunning view from the dining table.

Most days we were out of camp, driving around in Hagglunds to carry people to various places. This is on one of the lovely crystal clear days we had after Christmas.

One of the fanciest kitchens built, but really it wasn't all that fair, they had a carpenter in their group.

One of the projects the students did was on snow compaction. This is a 6 metre long drill core they took to examine crystal deformation.

Another project was looking at the geology of Castle Rock.

Part of that project included climbing to the top of it.

The view as I emerge from my tent on a bright sunshiny day, or is it night, I can't tell.

Late on boxing day night, Crystal, Sean and I took off on the skidoos to get a better view of Erebus and just generally escape camp. It was amazingly still, quiet, and wonderful. We just sat there for almost an hour and didn't get back to camp until about 1am.

On the last day in camp we pulled up some ablation stakes a "real" scientist had set out the previous year to measure loss of snow or ice mass in the area. It was a hard four hours of trudging through thigh deep snow stopping every 100 metres to pull up a 2-6 metre tall stake. Despite the overcast sky and chill temperatures, we ended up in nothing but sweaters and gloves. Once we had pulled up all 81 stakes, we headed back to camp and packed up for our return to Scott Base the next day.

St. James Walkway

This past week, Stephen and I hiked the St. James Walkway. A popular tramp amongst kiwis, it is more common to find hunters and families along it than foreigners looking for their fill of New Zealand bush. Similar to most of the parks and tramps on the Southern island, the St. James walkway travels through several cattle and sheep stations, and therefore has no lack in megafauna encounters (though they tend not to be very charasmatic with all that poo lying in your path).

The walk starts at Lewis Pass, where a bus dropped us off at a tiny bus shelter on the side of the highway - gotta love the bus system here. There was a light drizzle, so that even at 11am when we started hiking, the sky was grey and gloomy. We tramped through a pretty dense forest, up Cannibal Gorge to Cannibal Hut and on to Ada Pass Hut. Along the way travelling across avalanch paths, along steep slopes, and towards the end, through some quite nice alpine meadows. Arriving at Ada Pass Hut was nice though, where we shared the place with three other groups - one couple out hunting deer, one couple doing the same thing we were, and a teacher and student from the NOLS New Zealand 'adventure' waiting on their team members to come over the pass. Stephen went to bed early as he was full on into a strep throat battle, but I stayed up and chatted with the others until a very late 8:30pm when we all decided to conserve the one candle we had and go to bed.

The next day, without tent or wet gear to deal with, Stephen and I were out of the hut in an astonishing half hour. Even more astonishing was the fact that we were on the trail at 8am, that's earlier than I'm usually out of bed at home. But today was a long day, as we were going past the next hut and onto the following one, an agonising 20km hike through grazing land for cattle and apparently lots of Canada geese. We were lucky enough to spot 3 wild boars along the way, along with the plethora of song birds that live here, especially the Bellbird (http://www.nzbirds.com/birds/sound/bellbird2.wav). The Anne River Hut was our final destination for that night and proved every bit as nice as the Ada Pass Hut, although it was empty all but us. The hut system here in New Zealand is amazing. I mean imagine all the extra food we were able to bring without having to carry a tent (the answer is too much - though we had fresh fruit and veg the entire time).

The third day, the walk goes up another river valley to Anne Saddle and down into the Boyle River valley. Probably the most diverse in landscapes, this day was also sunny and warm. We spent the 6 hours from hut to hut dodging cow paddies, watching birds, finding mushrooms, and eating all our lovely fresh food. We got to Boyle Flats Hut at around 2pm with lots of light left in the day and plenty of books to read (what else do you do with free tent space?). So after soaking our feet in the river, reading the various magazines left by previous visitors, we settled into making dinner and enjoying our last night in the bush.


The last day was a quick hike down to Boyle Village, with really only one stop to enjoy the show put on by a little male Fantail (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3-KtEu0Tf4&feature=related). He was quite forward, almost landing on my head a couple of times. But we had a bus to catch and so continued on. At 2pm, the bus picked us up 15km south of where it had dropped us off along the highway and we were on our way home again, both wishing it could have been longer. We're already planning our next tramp, either Banks Peninsula or Harper Pass, depending on the weather. . . . .