Brett's Southern Crossing

Antarctica isn’t just a continent of glaciers and mountains, it’s also packed with history.  Ross Island, where McMurdo Station is located, was also where many of the expeditions of the Heroic Age of Antarctica exploration were based.  One of the most famous was Captain Robert Falcon Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition, in which he fatally raced Roald Amundsen to the South Pole.

Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans is located about 12 miles up the coast from McMurdo, and for several weeks at the beginning of the season we’re allowed to take a Sunday tour to visit it.  Due to the dry, cold weather the hut is in amazing condition, still full of the everyday items (including food!) as when it was used 100 years ago.  It’s almost as though the last person walked out the door 10 minutes before I arrived.  The only indications of how much time has passed are the old style brands on supplies and the skeleton of the dog in the stables, still on his chain.

Inside the hut are a well-stocked kitchen, bunk quarters for the crew, a science lab full of chemicals and charred test-tubes, plus Scott’s bed.  Next to Scott’s bed is a table where the crew was doing a scientific exam of a dead penguin.  The rear of the hut has stables, which were used to house dogs and ponies, as well as supplies.

Check out my full gallery for more pictures of this!

My boss at McMurdo is the Operations Manager and he likes to say that Airlift is the lifeblood of our program.  There’s a lot of truth in that statement, most science cargo and personnel come to McMurdo and South Pole Stations via the 65+ C-17 and 10+ A319 flights that come from Christchurch.  The 6-7 million pounds of cargo and personnel that could be transported on those flights still wouldn’t be enough to support a program as large as ours, however.

Our pier, built with ice roughly 16 feet thick. The thing next t0 it is the old ice pier, which broke in half last year and will be towed to sea if the channel opens enough

A temporary bridge allows our trucks to access the pier. The pier itself is floating and is tied to the island by thick steel cables

The rest of our supplies come via 2 vessels that should be arriving over the next couple of weeks.  We have a tanker vessel that will be delivering 5 million gallons of fuel (mostly AN8 aviation fuel, plus some unleaded gasoline), then a cargo vessel will bring huge quantities of food and equipment for the following year and haul away a year’s worth of trash and a bit of cargo that people are willing to wait a few months to receive.

Another angle of "Winter Quarters Bay." Behind it is a bit of McMurdo and Observation Hill.

I took these photos next to "Roll Cage Mary," which is officially called "Our Lady of the Snows" and memorializes Richard T. Williams, a Navy equipment operator whose bulldozer fell through the sea ice in 1956

Yesterday was the first hint of what’s to come.  The Swedish icebreaker Oden had nearly reached McMurdo, and I spotted the RV Nathaniel B. Palmer research vessel about 15 miles behind it.   The Oden docked early this morning, with the Palmer following later in the day.

The Oden

I’m looking forward to seeing the vessel offload process.  The station will go to 24 hour shifts until they’re finished due to the amount of work it will take, and I’m sure due to the fees they pay to keep a vessel docked.  The actual removal of the cargo containers will be done by NAVCHAPs, the Navy’s cargo handlers.  There will be 113 of them this year!

The RV Nathaniel B. Palmer, one of the US Antarctic Program's polar research vessels