Cape Evan's and the Robert Falcon Scott Expedition

This photo is from my friend Ricky who is now at the South Pole. When we arrived in Antarctica, the weather was Condition 2, which means that there was barely any visibility... it looked like we had arrived in a cloud...

Very EXCITED to be in Antarctica and see Aaron!

Last week, the Shuttles crew took a special trip out to Cape Evans; the Location of Robert Falcon Scott's British Expedition Hut during the the winter of 1911. 25 men of the Terra Nova party lived in the hut. From here Scott and his men set out on the ultimately fatal trek to the South Pole. The expedition to the Pole was set to be the very first to reach the Geographical South Pole. Although Scott didn't know it, a Norwegian expedition had set out from a different side of the continent and beat Scott to his goal. Beaten and far worse for wear, Scott and his party members turned back to travel back to Cape Evans (on the Coast of Antarctica near McMurdo) to rejoin their expedition members who had stayed in order to take care of their camp. Scott wrote, "Well we have turned our back now on the goal of our ambition with sore feelings and must face 800 miles of solid dragging--and goodbye to the daydreams!" 

When Scott and his South Pole expedition did not return, several of the men that had stayed at the hut ventured out on a search party. Scott and two other party members were found in their tent, eight months after their last journal entries had been made.

The hut was reused from 1915-1917 by several of Ernest Shackleton's Ross Sea Party. The hut became the permanent living quarters for ten marooned men from that expedition, and thanks to the supplies left by Scott's expedition, they were able to sustain life in comparative comfort, supplementing these stores from Shackleton's Hut at Cape Royds (another hut near McMurdo). In January 1917, after Shackleton had rescued the survivors, he had the hut put in order and locked up.
Although abandoned in 1917, the hut and its contents are remarkably well preserved today due to the consistently sub-freezing conditions. There are test tubes, beakers, boots, shoes, blankets, and even canned food still in perfect order at the Cape Evans hut. It was kind of unsettling to walk into the dark hut and see everything perfectly still as it was then. Things do not easily decay here and that was very evident inside the hut. There was even a frozen penguin on a side table. A historical society based out of the Kiwi Research Base (Scott Base) that's only a few miles from McMurdo maintains the artifacts in the different huts around the Ross Sea area. I was a a huge treat to get to see this historical treasure.

Outside of the hut

My co-worker Kristy and I riding in the Delta on the way to Cape Evans

An ENORMOUS iceberg that we stopped at on the way to the hut. The Iceberg was trapped and froze into the bay over the winter. It was beautiful and glowed in the descending sunlight. I licked it and it was surprisingly really salty! An incredible place to ice climb but beautiful unto itself.

Fellow shuttle drivers walking around to the back of the iceberg

The broken shapes of ice were very geometric and creaked with the moving water 12 ft below the frozen ice sheet. Icebergs reveal only 10% of their mass above the water with the remaining 90% hidden beneath the water

The setting sun behind Black Island

My Coworker Michael Lucous

Formations near the Iceberg. The mounds or Pumice rock reveal the concentration of volcanic activity that has shaped this landscape

scientific studies that were done by Scott and Shackleton's expeditions

Supplies left behind by Scott's Party

Outside the hut with Mt. Eribus in the background. A majority of the formations and features of this continent are named after ships and explorers. Eribus was a ship

Pumice among us!

A cross was put up for Scott's fatal expedition. There are many crosses that dot the landscape here; in memorial of the many explorers who lost their lives trying to understand this landscape. They're be shocked by "Big Red" parkas and the luxuries we have in McMurdo.

A lanturn left behind