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Field Trip: Cape Evans

Field trip. Why the heck not? I heard of the opportunity to go to Cape Evans to see Scott’s hut, so I bundled up and joined about 30 other people for the trip on Sunday. The hut was first constructed and used by Scott’s party, and then later used by Shackleton’s group. Shackleton’s ship broke anchor and sailed away with some of the men on board, leaving the rest of Shackleton’s men shipless. Three died, seven survived and were saved over a year later.

Our journey was much less taxing. We piled in to two Deltas, which are big vehicles that can drive across ice, and headed on our way.

Our first stop was an impromptu stop to see a seal. As the first of us hopped out of the vehicles, we stopped beside the Deltas to look. But we were far away. The general rule is, you can approach wildlife only until it starts reacting to you. The same goes on foot as in ground vehicles and helicopters. As more people disembarked from the Deltas, the group slowly started to inch forward. Then, becoming more bold, the group moved more rapidly, almost in unison, and formed an arc advancing toward the seal until the arc was just twenty or so feet away, and the seal looked up and around and, eventually, started to shook off away from the arc. Attack of the two-legged red-coats. A small group of us hovered back to watch the spectacle. It was a bit embarrassing, really. But the seal was beautiful: silvery coat, shimmery in the sun, like magic.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the seal, or the attack. In fact, I don’t have a digital picture of anything. Beth forgot to bring her spare battery. So, no pictures of Scott’s hut. Sorry, Dad! And, as luck would have it, I only had about three pictures left on my 35 mm. Bad, bad Beth.

I’ll tell you the highlights, instead. Appologies for the lack of historical details.

Because of the cold, the hut and its contents are preserved pretty much as they were left when Shackleton’s men departed. Half a jar of Royal Plums, among other goodies, on the food shelf; dead penguin on the dissecting table; beakers and catalogues and clothing on tables and in bunks. In the shed, which I did not see, the names of ponies carved into the wood alongside the stalls, the pony’s snowshoes, and piles of whale blubber. I was in search of one of the dog skeletons. Don’t ask why. We didn’t find any dog skeletons (hypothesized to be under snow), but did find one anchor of Shackleton’s ship which blew away. The anchor is pretty hard to miss: it’s huge. It gets my seal of most impressive thing about Scott’s hut. But I don’t have a picture of it for you.

Also, there were a few seals near the hut. One was dead, and was having its eyes eaten out by a skua (very large sea bird), and the others were a mother-cub pair. The latter two were much more endearing. The cub fed off its mother and squealed.

The tour consisted of: walk through the hut, search for dog, search for anchor, play hackey-sack (in Antarctica. That’s cool.), watch seal, load back into bright orange Delta.

The driver poked his head into the back of the vehicle before starting off and asked, “Are you guys up for heading down to Barne glacier? It will add about an hour onto the trip.” Not everyone was into it, but, luckily, they weren’t the vocal ones. Admittedly, I wasn’t that stoked on it either.

(Photo compliments of snow-school Kevin.)

But, look at this place—how can you not be stoked to be there? We were standing right at the toe of a glacier, staring up into clean white ice, blue in the crevasses. Most of the crowd again mobbed a poor seal. I didn’t even see the seal until my way back—Beth was headed straight for the glacier. Cold, but very impressive. Definitely cooler than Scott’s hut. Although, yes, the hut was cool. Nature vs. history. I can’t help it. I can’t connect to Scott’s hut—it’s somebody else’s, and has nothing to do with me. I can’t comprehend it, even though it’s human. My imagination works much better on the glacier—mass of ice, collected as snow and compressed and pushed slowly down by the weight of overlying snow and ice while being pulled slowly down by gravity. Huge blue wounds gaping open to the air, silent, the whole thing representing the power of time and patience and continuous processes. Starting small and growing enormous. From one small snowflake, to this shear cliff standing before me. Power in numbers. Impressive.

That’s one thing that happened. I stood before the glacier, and admired it, and thought about it, and felt good. What also happened is the four or five or so of us sitting at the back of the Delta gabbed the whole way home. The conversation was great, and is a good example of chatting in McMurdo, and made me aware of a thing or two. I was sitting next to roommate Jill, and we were both quizzed (and quizzed each other) on our science. I had a blast explaining it. It’s kind of cool stuff. That’s thing one. Thing two is that there are a lot of interesting people down here, both doing interesting things and having done interesting things. Everybody’s got stories to tell, and everyone surprises me. It’s inspiring.