On Top of the World (at the 'Bottom' of the World)

So, I feel 'On Top of the World' because it has been a VERY BIG and exciting week.

First, we had our field trip to the Beacon Valley, which is part of the Dry Valleys Area in Antarctica, and we ended up staying overnight at the New Harbour Camp because the helo could not fly back to pick us up because of bad weather at McMurdo. I have read about the Beacon Sandstone and Ferrar Dolerite (some of the rocks we saw) since I was an undergraduate student - and now I was actually going to the Dry Valleys to see them! Now I am trying to figure out how to use what I saw and learned in my teaching. The excitment did not stop there. On Wednesday I had the an incredible opportunity - an overnight trip to Mario Zucchelli Station (formerly known as Terra Nova - the Italian Station), coming back Thursday morning. This trip was a result of the great effort put in to international cooperation in education and outreach, as part of ANDRILL ARISE. I was very fortunate to have this opportunity, along with Graziano Scotto and Joanna Hubbard.

Today (Saturday 24th November) we have our Thanksgiving Dinner, and there was a 5K run (called the Turkey Trot) this morning out to the Ice Runway and back. Far too much for me to tell you about all at once, so I'll try to break it up into little pieces over the next week or so -that way you can see what I saw and learned in Beacon Valley and at Mario Zucchelli - I am still somewhat overwhelmed by it all!

About the Turkey Trot
Here are some of the runners from ANDRILL. Down below you can see me dressed for the run with my race number. I have not found out how long it took me - I was quite slow (longer than 30 minutes), and one of the last runners in - although there were a bunch of people that walked it behind me. It is just like a fun run anywhere - we signed up half an hour before it started and got our race numbers. They divided us into two groups - under 40 and over 40 (I was in the over 40 group, in case you are wondering). I wore some special winter long johns that I have for running in Minnesota, with wind pants over them. I had a polypropylene top, my windbreaker, a wool beanie, a neckwarmer, gloves and sunglasses. I wore my lightweight hiking shoes - I was worried about slipping on the ice, and they have a firmer grip than my running shoes do. Unlike many people, I had not already tried running on the ice. Running on the snow and ice was the hardest part - it was a beautiful day with only a relatively light breeze.

On Top of the World?
Now, lets get back to the topic of this blog - 'On Top of the World.' How often do you talk about places in the Southern Hemisphere as being 'on the bottom of the world' or make jokes about people 'walking around upside-down' in the Southern Hemisphere? The portrayal of our planet with the Northern Hemisphere ‘at the top’ is simply an artifact of how early European explorers drew their maps. Planet Earth is simply a sphere moving through space; there is no ‘top’ or ‘bottom.’ It is just our perception and visualization of the Universe, based on early maps that make us draw the earth with the North Pole in the ‘up’ position, and the South Pole in the ‘down’ position.

To students at Coon Rapids Middle School:

I am working on a blog about the science process for you - check back in tomorrow (Sunday 25th).

Signs of Spring

When we first arrived, low temperatures hovered around -30F without windchill. As weeks go by, those numbers keep creeping upwards- now nearly always in the positive. Recently any day that is sunny has created puddles, dripping eaves and icicles, and muddy spots. I even saw some joggers the other day.

Another sign of spring is the return of our skuas. These scavenging birds are very effective at finding food resources, they know that Building 155 is where the galley is located, anyone carrying out food wrapped for later has to be prepared to keep it from the birds. The first skua of spring was actually spotted flying past on the 4th of November but they didn't really move in to town until a week or so after that. Now they are sitting boldly in the middle of the road or parking area most mornings.

The hard packed snowberms that surrounded the buildings and encroached on the roads when we first arrived are mostly gone now. It seems like a strange time to have Thanksgiving, the sun and melting make me think of Easter and spring instead?

What signs of changing seasons do you look for or notice first?

The Mackay Sea Valley Survey

At long last, I made my way out to the deep field camp of Granite Harbor for the geophysical survey of the Mackay Sea Valley. Granite Harbor is a small bay in the Ross Sea, nestled along the old granite cliffs that form the basement rocks of the Central Transantarctic Mountains. The setting is quite breathtaking! The Mackay Glacier is a large glacier which terminates in the Ross Sea. In past years, when the ice sheet was larger, the Mackay Glacier carved out a deep trough on the continental shelf. In subsequent years, as the climate warmed, this trough became an area where deep packages of marine sediments accumulated. Those marine sediments are the reason for this site survey.


The Ross Sea in this area is still frozen over – so our camp is built on frozen sea ice, approximately 2 meters thick. As we look out toward the sea, there is solid ice as far as the eye can see – with old icebergs from last year, or perhaps older, embedded in the sea ice.
They are quite monumental – standing sometimes hundreds of feet up above the ice surface and can be seen for many miles away. As the sun moves across the sky during the day, the illumination of the icebergs is constantly changing from bright white to deep blue to gray – to every shade in between.

Our deep field camp consists of 11 people. 7 Scott tents, 2 Rac tents, 2 snowmobiles, and 2 Pisten Bullys (oversnow vehicles).
The Scott tents are for sleeping, 2 per tent, and the Rac Tents are for eating and for science. The Rac tents have heat and generators for recharging electronics. It is remarkably comfortable and “cushy” in this remote camp!

Why are we here? We are in Granite Harbor to conduct a seismic survey of the seafloor and the rocks below the seafloor which accumulated in this large trough carved by the Mackay Glacier. Under the leadership of Dr. Ross Powell, of Northern Illinois University, we are working to get a picture of the rocks below the seabed where thick accumulations of Holocene (the past 7,000 years) sediments are located. These sediments are of interest because they can tell us information about what the climate has been like in this part of Antarctica for the past 7,000 years, and how it compares to the climate seen in atmospheric records and marine geological records for other parts of Antarctica during the same time period. The seismic survey will not drill for rocks, but will provide information for future drilling projects about where the sediments are located and where a future drill hole should be placed.

Seismic surveys operate using a sound blast, made by an airgun, which is set off below the ice. We drill a hole through the sea ice so that we can place the airgun, which is on a cable, down 8 meters in the water. We have a 1.5 kilometer long streamer that is dragged on the ice, behind the piston bully that carries the laboratory with all of the seismic recording devices. The streamer contains 60 geophones that record the sound waves after they have traveled out of their air gun, and traveled down through the different layers of rock on and below the sea floor, and been reflected back up. Different types of rocks give off different types of reflections, and require differing amounts of time to travel back up to the geophones. Computers in the mobile lab record the sounds as they bounce back to the geophones, and based on their time delay, they give an image of the different layers of rock in the subsurface. This type of work is typically done by ship with the geophones towed behind the ship. We are using a very new technology to conduct this survey over sea ice, and getting excellent results.

The survey was very successful in identifying where the pockets of sediment are. The seismic data was all collected digitally and will require continued processing back at Montana Tech University where Dr. Marvin Speece, the geophysicist on the site survey, teaches. Once processed, the seismic records will tell us in much greater detail, about the types and thicknesses of sediments – and allow scientists to determine the optimal site for future drilling.

Field work dominated life in Granite Harbor. But there were also wonderful moments of exploration and fun. Please visit my next blog, entitled "Reflections from a Remote Field Camp" to learn more about life and exploration in the Granite Harbor area.

Educator Night at Mario Zucchelli!

American Night at Scott Base is a Thursday night tradition where shuttles run from McMurdo to Scott and back for most of the evening and Americans are welcome to visit the Kiwi station. Kate, Graziano and I did the Italian & American version when we had the good fortune to be invited to visit the Italian station up the coast - Mario Zucchelli (formerly Terra Nova). We grabbed our ECW and overnight things in about 20 minutes and hightailed it to the airfield. We rode north in a 14 seater souped-up Twin Otter run by Ken Borek Air Ltd, a Canadian company under contract for smaller scale Antarctic air transport between many nations' stations in this area (2-8 hour flight radius). Also on the flight with us were a few Italian base staffers, the new French station manager for Concordia (a year-round joint French and Italian base at Dome C on the polar plateau) and a Polish-Canadian pilot catching a ride. Antarctica is a wonderful model for international cooperation, everyone is working towards similar scientific or logistical goals under extreme conditions.

The hour and a half flight was a fabulous flightseeing opportunity as we hugged the coast of Ross Island, then crossed sea ice in many forms, a glacial ice tounge and two polynyas (large ice-free areas). The patterns created by the fracturing and crushing, melting and refreezing of the ice were ever changing and gorgeous. I was especially fascinated by the new ice where fractures had split apart and then pushed over and under each other, creating a zipper effect.

Mario Zucchelli station is situated on a granite peninsula with wonderful views in every direction. We were warmly welcomed, fed an amazing dinner of clam pasta, breaded sole and soup, and then given a tour of the station. Much of the main station building is made from connected container vans and is a cheerful blue and red. Kate and I found our names on the door of our dorm room, and very cozy bunk beds inside with fluffy feather comforters. We didn't spend much time in our room, as we had such a short time at the base, we got out and did as much walking as we could. The weathered granite with exceptionally large crystals around the station was very different from what we see on our volcanic island home, or in our visit to the Dry Valleys. After a great breakfast we took off for McMurdo, far too soon. A HUGE THANK YOU to Roberto, Jean, Lucia, Guissepe, and all the other folks at MZ who made our quick visit so special!

How many countries have Antarctic or Sub-Antarctic Stations? How many are seasonal vs year-round? How many people work there? Can you find pictures of what some look like?

Beacon Valley...or Gilligan's Island?

Beautiful view of a huge glacier in the Dry Valleys.

Two tiny climbers in red are on this mountain--can you find them? This is to give an idea of scale!

Remember the old TV show, Gilligan’s Island? Well, we also started out on a fateful trip…

Just sit right back and you’ll hear a tale…a tale of a fateful trip.
It started from this icy shore aboard a flying ship.

The mate was a mighty helo tech, the pilot brave and sure…
Eight passengers took flight that day for an eight-hour tour…

The weather started getting rough, the tiny craft was tossed
Helo Ops stopped all the flights, so the crew would not be lost.

The explorers hiked across the hills, to the shore of New Harbor Isle…
They had to make the best of things, they’re here for a long, long time.


We took a helo field trip out to Beacon Valley--it's a valley farther than the Taylor Glacier which was as close to the polar plateau as I had been before. The mountains at the end of Beacon actually hold back the polar ice sheet. Beacon is one of the Dry Valleys; an incredible landscape that reminds one of Mars—red sand and rocks, and dry as a bone. According to written records, it has not precipitated there in over fifteen million years, and what does fall is all snow or ice, which often ablates before hitting the ground.
Louise showing scale of a rock split during freeze-thaw cycles. Looks like Our helo taking off after dropping us in Beacon Valley.
a huge 3-D jigsaw puzzle!

It was windy and very cold, but as long as we kept moving, we were quite comfortable. We hiked around the bouldery valley floor and up the mountain slopes to take a look at the outcrops of rock, which are partially responsible for feeding sediments into Victoria Basin where we are drilling right now. After about four and a half hours the helo picked us up and took us to Commonwealth Glacier where, in 2002, I had studied the streams that melt and run-off in the summer. It was exciting to “come home” to the place I had spent eight weeks my first time in Antarctica.


We were dropped with our survival bags about a mile and a half from the glacier, so we hiked over to take a closer look, then hiked back to the drop point. We still had an hour before the helo was to come back, so some (I opted out--I had already hiked about five hours--a lot of it uphill) climbed down a steep embankment (about fifty yards down) and then up the other side to an outcrop there. I took a nap on a huge, tabular rock--great view of the glacier and mountains, and it felt great!


The rest of the group finally came back, and we waited about half an hour for the helo which didn't come-our radios weren't working in the valley, so a group hiked to the top of the closest hill and tried again. Mac Ops told us that they were weathered in and no flights could get to us. We had two choices: make camp with the survival bags--ugh! Nasty freeze-dried food, tents, pads and sleeping bags that aren't all that great, and stoves that we were trained to use in Happy Camper School, OR, walk three and a half miles over a small mountainous or hilly terrain to New Harbor camp. We chose that option. Our weather was fine--so off we went. I felt it was tough going—others thought it was a walk in the park! I’m sure it was all a function of age and fitness level—guess which end of the spectrum I ended up on! You decide where on the spectrum you would have fallen. Some of the way was through snow that would break under your feet and end halfway up your calf--you'd have to pull your leg free. Then you'd be on large rocks that turned and twisted under your boots; then over small, pebbly surfaces that moved like sand and were hard to walk through. I preferred the larger boulders and hated the snow! I was carrying a heavy backpack and sweating as we crossed the last of the three hills (not quite "mountains" but enough elevation for me!).

But the walk was well worth it. We arrived at New Harbor about 10 PM. The camp was a double "jamesway", a curved canvas shelter with electricity, wooden flooring, tables, chairs, a gas stove and cots with blankets and pillows. It also had two large propane heaters, so we were toasty for most of the stay. There wasn't a lot of food, but we had hot chocolate, granola bars, and Ramen noodles--so not a bad deal at all. In the morning we found that some frozen food had been stored in a cold cellar, so we baked raspberry turn-overs and if we had had to stay longer, we also found bagels we could toast up.

The only difficulty was during the night. There were only five cots and eight people, so three slept on the floor or on tables. The cots weren’t exactly cushy, but I fell asleep fairly quickly just wishing for a toothbrush! In the middle of the night, my shivering woke me up, and I knew from survival training that your body is heading toward hypothermia if you don’t take steps to warm up. The propane heater had gone out, and I was closest to the outside wall. The cold air was sucking the heat out of my body from under the cot. I got up and folded a blanket to give me four layers under me, put my Big Red on, and found another blanket for my feet. I can’t say I was warm, but at least I wasn’t shivering anymore.

The next morning the weather was still bad in McMurdo and we had a low ceiling in the Dry Valleys, so we explored the sea ice and a small fishing hut that was located in the harbor. The sea ice is amazing. I think this is multi-year ice, so it is very thick, but it also had huge pressure ridges, cracks, and lots of sediment that has built up on the surface. While on the ice, we found a large seal that had pushed her nose through a dive hole, lifted off the cover that the divers had attached, and flopped down to take a nap in the sun. She was funny to watch. She’d lift her head and check us out, but it was obvious that she knew the redcoats were no threat because she plopped back down and went right back to sleep. Have you ever watched a dreaming dog with its paws running? Well, she, too, seemed to be dreaming as she flipped her tail and made little grunting noises. I’m not sure if it was a happy dream or a nightmare, but she was certainly busy!

Finally around noon, the ceiling lifted enough that a helo was able to go pick up our survival bags, about 100 pounds of rock samples we had collected, and then it came to get us.

Our eight-hour tour had ended up being a twenty-four hour “boondoggle.” When we arrived back in McMurdo, we were met with concerned looks over our “survival trial”—that is until they found out what a cushy setting we really had! So they wanted to know how ‘Gilligan’s Island’ really was, and although I thought we should have agreed upon a good story about facing the harsh Antarctic winds as we fought our way on foot across the mountains…we couldn’t help but just grin over our grand adventure!

Thanks Kate Pound and Joanna Hubbard for sharing your pictures! My camera was dropped about a week ago, and I am so grateful that you are taking so many great shots!













Kate Pound in front of the jamesways at the New Harbor field camp.
Joanna Hubbard

Beautiful Beacon Valley

On Monday, we were lucky enough to take a field trip to the Dry Valley Specially Managed Area. We went in a helo up the Ferrar Valley, and were dropped at the head of Beacon Valley for a four hour wander, and were taken out again along the length of Taylor Valley, stopping for another chunk of time at the mouth of the valley by the Commonwealth glacier and stream. We had fairly mild to good conditions but before our helo could come pick us up and bring us home, McMurdo weathered in and we had to stay out overnight. Rather than break out our survival packs and make camp where we were, we hiked three miles to New Harbor field camp at the shore of McMurdo Sound where we had propane heaters, cots and blankets and an outhouse. We were picked up the next afternoon from our very cushy "survival" spot, no problem.

Beacon Valley is special for many reasons. One is the sheer distance to get to it, further than most of the commonly or easily visited Dry Valleys like Taylor or Wright. It is a wonderful place to see a large amount of Beacon supergroup sedimentary rock (around 400-230 million years old) and get up close to it. The Beacon supergroup is a very deep/thick series of sand and silt stone sediments deposited by water and later uplifted. I scrambled up a scree slope of eroded material to get to the steep cliffs of rocky outcropping and to a vertical section of dark Ferrar Dolorite (an igneous intrusion from around 180mya).

After getting a closer look at the large chunks that had fallen off the crumbly looking rock, I decided against going right up to the wall and touching the rocks. I got as high as I could on the unstable slope and sat to look out at the valley for awhile. I could hear the wind whistling past the irregular surface of the huge rock face, and nothing else. Really lovely after the hustle and bustle of McMurdo's 24/7 transportation hub noise. I couldn't sit too long, keeping moving there was important as it was chilly and windy even though the sun was partially out.

Another Dry Valley feature that is a little different in Beacon was more easily seen from the helo, the huge frost polygons on the valley floor, hard to recognize them on the ground, even when we were standing on them. Other areas we saw polygons had smaller ones. The ice underneath the polygons here in Beacon Valley is thought to be some of the oldest ice in the world somewhere between 7-14 million years old, scientists are sampling it to get ancient atmosphere.

Everyones attention was definitely attracted by the extreme wind weathering in action visible on every rock in the area to some degree. Many of the finely grained rocks have a satiny smooth texture and rounded edges that comes from being sandblasted by airborne sediment in the wind. There were pockets of this blasting material in the lee of most large rocks. Other rocks have been sculpted into strange, sinuous shapes by the same action, their softer areas being more vulnerable to abrasion.


What do you notice about the rocks from the Beacon Valley floor in this picture?

ANDRILL Open House

I took this photo of the Ross Island cable TV channel that posts activities in McMurdo. As you can see, all the folks involved with ANDRILL hosted an Open House for the greater community to attend. It was a really great event. As one of my fellow ARISERS said, people appreciated the enthusiasm the scientists had for their particular area of expertise.

We teachers staffed the meet-and-great area of the open house where we shared activities that can, or are used in schools with students. Most of the activities we used were developed by LuAnn Dahlman, an ARISE teacher from last year as part of her Flexhibit. Thanks LuAnn

In the photo to the right, you can see some special people using the core drilling model Joanna and I put together to demonstrate the actual drilling process. The gentleman on the left is Dr. Peter Webb. He first started coming to Antarctica as a geology student mapping the area know as Wright Valley (I hope to be taking a field trip out there in the next couple of weeks) and has been a leader in geology research here ever since. You can learn more about him, his early adventures and the science he is still doing by viewing Megan Berg's latest video (video #3) at www.andrill.org/iceberg. The woman interviewing him is Moira Rankin who produces stories for Sound Print Media. Her stories are picked up by some NPR stations. Her sound technician is Jarred.

Once a group of ten or so guests had assembled, ANDRILL scientists and staff led visitors on tours of the labs to see all the work that is being done as part of this very complex project. In this photo, Dr. David Harwood is getting a group together for a tour. We had some great feedback from some of the 150 or so guests that it was a tremendous afternoon. I wish everyone I know could have stopped in too.

Good Question Mrs. Miller!

In a comment posted, Mrs. Miller asked me what three things I'll miss once I leave the ice to head back home in a little over two weeks. Hmmm. Let me think about that for a moment...



One thing I'll miss is the novelty of being here. There seems to be something everyday that makes me stop and think, "Wow! I'm in Antarctica!!" When I step out the door in the morning and the cold wind bites my nose I think, how cool- I'm in Antarctica! At brunch on Sundays the first thing I put on my plate is several slices of fresh watermelon. And then I think, "Wow, I'm eating fresh watermelon and I'm in Antarctica!!" And after being in the science camp for a couple of weeks the temperatures started to climb as the sun climbed in the sky and stopped setting at night. Sleeping in sleeping bags in tents, you would think would be really cold, but I found I was too warm at night and had to unzip my sleeping bag to let some heat out. I thought to myself, "my gosh I'm camping in Antarctica and I'm too hot!!! How crazy is that?" These novelties, I will greatly miss.

The breathtaking scenery is another thing I'll miss. McMurdo station isn't a very pretty town, but even the view from the library in the Crary science building is beautiful and it's a great spot to watch the weather changes roll in. From there we look out across from Ross Island to the Transantarctic Mountains and see several glaciers. I took this photo yesterday from the Library windows. In the foreground you can see four planes out on the sea ice runway with the mountains in the background. The area where our camp was (the coordinates for our camp: 77 degrees south, 163 degrees east) was even more striking. I took this photo from our camp. Even though the mountains in that area are only 6,000 ft. I loved watching the light change and to see how it affected the way the mountains looked. I'll never forget that place.

I think the third thing I'll miss is all the really cool science that is being done here and the enthusiasm of the scientists conducting this important research. ANDRILL is just one of many projects here. I know of at least four projects being done on Mt. Erebus- the nearby active volcano, at least three projects involving seal research, two penguin projects, numerous benthic communities research groups, and several involving glacier research. I also know of other projects using GPS surveying sea ice stability and countless atmospheric and astronomical projects. Its great to have the chance to meet these scientists and see the enthusiasm they have for their specialties. All these groups give lectures in the evenings and I've attended as many as I'm able to. I've learned SO MUCH!! And being able to call myself an active participant in this science community makes me feel like the luckiest person I know of. Actually, I need to finish this blog so I can get to a lecture on the new British Antarctic Survey station, Halley VI, to be constructed over the next couple of years.

Thanks for your great question, Mrs. Miller. Say hello to your second grade class for me. I'll be sure to stop in for a visit as soon as I get back to Delaware in a few weeks.

Tools of the Trade

The science teams here use lots of different tools while examining the core, some simple, some very complex. By far the most commonly used items are magnifying lenses of all types and lab or science notebooks. White wax pencils, probes and flags are all used to mark the core, and meter sticks are used to find the precise location of a sample.


Besides the already described tools used by the curators to take samples (see Core Curating, Nov 9), lots of smear slides and thin section slides are made from samples of the core. Smear slides involve scraping a tiny bit of sediment from the core with a pick and spreading it very thin in water on a glass microscope slide. Thin sections are a very thin slice of rock attached by strong glue to a glass microscope slide and then ground down until there is barely any left. Many specialized tools are used in this whole process (more details to come in a future blog!) including the one shown here, pressing the rock onto the slide as the glue dries to make an even bond. Once we have all these slides, we need lots of microscopes to look at them.

One very important tool we use to gather data is the high quality scanner that takes a very detailed picture of the face of the core once it is split. This information is entered into a computer program called Corelyzer that everyone can access. We have lots of computers and our own ANDRILL drive that everyone can access and upload information to share. Another important computer program used is PSICAT- it creates a graphical record of all the core characteristics as they are logged, cm by cm.

There are other scanning machines that don't take pictures but instead make measurements of various features of the core. This one, at the drill site, measures the core density, its velocity (how quickly a sound wave travels through the core), its infrared emmissions, and magnetic susceptibility (how magnetized the core is in response to a magnetic field).

What tools do you use on a regular or daily basis? What specialized tools do you use for a particular purpose? Are there tools that would be useful to you that you do not have?

Stepping Back in Time: Discovery Hut

Just outside of McMurdo on Hut Point Peninsula sits Robert Falcon Scott’s ‘Discovery Hut.’ Scott was a British naval officer who led two memorable expeditions to Antarctica. Discovery Hut was built during his first expedition in 1901-1904. (and you thought my 2 ½ months in Antarctica was a long time!) During this expedition Scott achieved the record for reaching the furthest point south at 82°17’. He also explored the Ross Sea area and discovered the Dry Valleys. (The Dry Valleys are the 2% of Antarctica that has no snow or ice cover and has had virtually no precipitation in the last 15 million years. This is where I was camped in 2002.)
Looking toward Cape Evans from the hill above the hut, you can imagine
watching Scott’s party trudging over the ice and snow to get to this depot.


During Scott’s second expedition to Antarctica, his goal was to reach the South Pole. His ship became icebound, but most of his crew lived on board and only used the huts at Cape Evans and Hut Point Peninsula as a staging base and storage facility.
It is generally so cold in Antarctica that there is very little decomposition.
This is a mummified seal on top of some canvas left outside of the hut by
Scott’s men. The seal is probably a century old!

It was this second expedition from 1910-1912, that is the most famous and also the most tragic of his stories. Scott and his men set out to be the first to reach the South Pole, man-hauling their sledges loaded with supplies. They survived fierce winds and storms, but were buoyed by the knowledge that they were approaching the South Pole. Using their sextant, they calculated the exact point and upon reaching it, instead of a joyous celebration of conquest, they were met by a rock cairn and the Norwegian flag. By just a month, Roald Amundsen had beaten them to the prize. The defeat was disheartening, and the men faced another 800 mile treacherous journey back to their ship.

Some historians have questioned Scott’s leadership. On his earlier expedition, several men suffered from scurvy, a disease that as a naval officer he was keenly aware. Another questionable decision was that the men had collected rock samples for scientific studies, but they continued to haul them, even as they grew weaker and weaker. The group was on the verge of starvation; many became ill; they were besieged by frostbite. Two men died on the journey back, and then a fierce storm forced the last three to hunker down in their tent, and eventually they all succumbed to starvation and the elements. The saddest part of the tale is that they were just a mere dozen or so miles from the hut and their ship. Scott wrote, "Our luck in weather is preposterous...the conditions simply horrible". The truth of the matter is that Scott’s team did endure terrible, unusual weather for that time of the year, and that bad luck probably did play a large role in the sad outcome.

The supplies are left in the hut pretty much as they were when Scott and his men were here. There were times that you expected one of these heroic explorers to step around the canvas curtain hanging in the center of the room and greet us.

Instead, I peeked through the curtain!
On the other side of the curtain was the cooking space, so I tried my hand at cooking.

Would you like a little New Zealand lamb for dinner?
We found it hanging in the food storage room. Not exactly
fresh meat now that a century has past!

I had to put this picture in of Hunter's Oatmeal--this is for my son, Hunter!