Tour of Scott's Discovery Hut

-
I'm a bit behind on my adventure posting....Thanksgiving resulted in both celebrations and long days at work so I have been trying to catch up after the holiday. More about Antarctic Thanksgiving in another post. I will also be making the change to working days early next week which will be a big deal for me. I've never actually slept at night and been awake in the day since I arrived, as the moment I got off the plane I started transitioning to working nights. I hope it will expand my world as much as it sounds. It will be nice to be able to take part in town life more, and even enjoy simple joys like eating breakfast after I wake up.


A few of us galley folks got to tour Scott's hut that was constructed by his 1902 Discovery Expedition. The Discover Expedition was Robert Falcon Scott's first trip to Antarctica, and was the first British expedition in 60 years. Scott's second expedition, the Terra Nova Expedition, was an attempt to be the first person to reach the South Pole. Scott did reach the South Pole, but by that time, Roald Amundson had already reached the South Pole. Scott and his team died on the return trip. The Discovery hut contains layers of Antarctic exploration history as the hut was repurposed to support additional expeditions after Scott. It has been beautifully restored, and contains almost all the original building materials and many artifacts from the period of Antarctic expeditions.
This photo I took back in October when I first got here. The hut was a pre-fab building that was designed for the Australian outback; in other words, to keep hot air out and cool air in. Needless to say, that design didn't bode well for long-term living in Antarctica. Scott's crew ended up continuing to sleep on the ship most of the time because it was warmer and instead used the hut as a staging area for the rest of the expedition.

 This pile of actual seal blubber may or may not have been around since the early 1900's. In any case, it's been around a long time, preserved in the most part by being frozen almost the entire year.






Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Antarctica

-
Image
I'm going to Antarctica this year.  People ask me, "Why do you want to go?" I say, "Why not go?" I currently live in the Pacific Northwest, in a city with an elevation of 50 feet, an average yearly precipitation of 36 inches, and average winter temperature of 54 degrees Farenheit. I'll be traveling to McMurdo Station, Antarctica, on the Ross Ice Shelf, elevation 33 feet, average yearly precipitation of 8 inches, and it will average a whopping 27 degrees Farenheit in the warmest month, January. Not too different from those nice brisk January days in good old PNW! Surprised? Antarctica is full of surprises! Read on for more surprising facts! It's the highest continent in the world. The South pole is at over 9,000 feet (close to the altitude of Mt. Thielsen). The highest point in the continent is Mt. Vinson at 16,000 feet (2,000 ft taller than Rainier!). It's the driest continent in the world. It is a super-arid desert, a category
Read more

Holding Pattern in Christchurch

-
Image
Greetings from Christchurch! I am writing from a very nice business hotel in downtown Christchurch. I am a sucker for hotels, as I rarely get to stay in them, and all the hotels I stayed at as a kid were those sketchy motel 6- types. So a nice hotel with comfy beds and room service is the way I pretend to be rich. Why am I not in Antarctica? I underwent training and tried on all my cold weather clothes that the program issued me, and was supposed to fly out today. However I'm sipping tea in a hotel and procrastinating packing my suitcases so I can be moved later today to a new hotel. What's going on? The answer is a Condition 1 storm on the continent. Flights have been cancelled and we are getting backed up. Once the storm is cleared and the runway is re-cleared of snow, flights will begin again, but that means I have to wait to fly until the delayed folks ahead of me have been safely delivered to Antarctica. I might be able to leave tomorrow or I might end up in New Zea
Read more

Hello from the Ice!

-
I'm writing this from the computer lab at McMurdo Station, Antarctica!  I wish this post had some pictures to prove it, but I'm working on that - hopefully pictures to come! In my last post, I talked about being delayed because of storms-and those storms ended up resulting in me being delayed about 2 1/2 weeks! It was not a historic delay, but the longest delay for the program in decades, according to the news articles I read. It was great to get to explore Christchurch but I was ready to start my job and get down to the ice. I rode a C-17 down to the ice, operated by the U.S. Air Force. This was a new experience for me, and a new type of aircraft - after all the small planes in Alaska and the various passenger jets, it was a completely different experience to be in a large plane with no windows. It was a remarkably smooth flight down to the ice and the crew did a great job handling us. I can't really describe the moment I stepped out of the plane. The white
Read more