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Monday, December 13th
White Hot Sun, Blinding Ice
I'm standing on the musher's step of a sled being pulled across the sea ice. It is a gorgeous day. There is a snowmobile leading the way and four more snowmobiles pulling sleds behind me. Twelve of us are on an outing to Cape Royds, where Sir Ernest Shackleton built a hut as the staging point for his 1907 Antarctic expedition. The trail is surveyed and marked with an endless procession of green flags on bamboo poles. As long as we keep to the marked trail, we will be OK. The sea ice is nearing its break-up and we cross numerous cracks that have opened up and then refrozen. When the break-up occurs, these cracks will outline large flat sheets of ice floating in the Ross Sea. I'm wearing polarized sun glasses and the sky looks a deep royal blue. The sun is a white hot dime-sized spot high in the sky. The glare off the ice makes me squint even with only 40% of the ambient light coming through my lenses. I put my goggles on over my sunglasses and the world looks pretty good. At least I'm not squinting.

My chest is cold from the frigid air leaking through the wind flap of my parka, through my fleece jacket, through my Carhartts, and through my long johns. My entire face is covered and I'm wearing mittens with glove liners. I am wearing my mukluks with two felt insoles, and inner boot liner and my thickest socks. Except for my chest, I'm nice and toasty.

The trail is bumpy and rutted, and the sled bounces and slides from side to side. To keep from being bucked off, I hold on to two handlebars at my sides, keep my knees flexed and follow the motion of the sled. It's like riding a tilt board.

My head is two feet above everyone else and the view is spectacular. Ice cliffs jut into the sea and are towering walls riddled with cracks and crevasses. Soon they will begin calving small icebergs that will add texture to the slabs of sea ice. Ross Island is volcanic and the exposed land mass and small islands look black. Up close, the soil is coarse and pebbly and a very dark brown. Nothing grows here. It is absolutely barren -- so one might think ...

A Sack of Jello
An hour into our trip, I spot a very unusual black rock several hundred yards to my left. Unlike the sharp-edged, angular rocks I have seen so far, this one is rounded, with soft curves. As we pass, this rock moves parallel to our course. It is a large adult seal sunning itself on the ice. As it moves, it looks for all the world like some unseen hand is bouncing a half full balloon of Jello on a table top. Seeing a seal move like that is awesome and comical at the same time. Before the day is over, we will see many groups of two or three seals. This is the height of summer and the seals are here to feed and get fat for winter.

This whole area is actually teeming with life, but it isn't on land. There is abundant life in the water. After the break-up, we will see sea birds, seals and whales. Near the bottom of the food chain are the krill and the birds, fish and mammals each occupy their own part of this diverse ecosystem. For our part, we humans come here to observe, but not alter or influence the ecosystem.

Lunch Tongue and a Skeleton
After about 2-1/2 hours of travel, we reach Cape Royds, which is at one end of Ross Island. Shackleton's hut is the main attraction. The hut isn't very big, maybe 30 feet on a side. The hut was prefabricated in Australia and looks like a typical outback house with a veranda around three sides. Tins of food dating from 1907 are piled along one side, and there is a stable for Shackleton's ponies along another. The interior of the hut is full of artifacts and is actually a museum operated by the New Zealand Historical Society. There is no attendant, and the key to the hut is kept in McMurdo. Our mountaineer and tour guide signed it out for the trip.

The early Antarctic explorers put up with a lot. Their living space was dark and dank, and even with the stove going full blast (on seal blubber), I doubt that the temperature was much above freezing in the hut. However, as I have found out, 30 deg F feels pretty good if you can get out of the wind.

As I looked at the cans and tins of food preserved in that hut, I came across what must be a uniquely British delicacy: Lunch Tongue. Even now, several days later, I wonder if Dinner Tongue might have tasted better. There were a lot of tins of crackers and jar after jar of salt. After my experience in the field, I expect what we see today is not a true sample of what Shackleton and his men ate. They no doubt ate first what they liked best. We see what they didn't like or need and left behind.

I found Ernest Shackleton's signature in the hut. It is always a hunt to find it. There is a sleeping room in the hut that is separated from the entrance foyer and storage areas by canvas curtains. The sleeping area has six narrow and short plank beds and a cast iron stove used both for heat and cooking. It is cramped and probably was not comfortable at all. One of the beds has a headboard made from the lid of a crate. Centered and upside down in that lid is Ernest Shackleton's signature in letters about 1/4 inch high. It is very hard to see in the gloom, and most people miss it. I had to go through the hut twice to find it.

Not far away from Shackleton's hut and just over a low rise are a couple of skeletons - two of Shackleton's ponies. Shackleton attempted to pull his sleds with them, but wasn't very successful. When they didn't work and Shackleton decided to pull out, they were shot. Some of them might even have been shot for food. One set of bones are picked clean (by skuas, probably) and glisten in the sun. The other skeleton still has hide covering the bones, but it looks shrink wrapped to them. These skeletons are part of the historic trust and will be left in situ.

Tuxedos and Skuas
The skeletons are opposite a penguin rookery. Out tour group spent a lot of time watching the rookery. An area of special scientific interest surrounds the rookery, so touristas can't go in -- only penguin researchers. However, the penguins can't read and don't pay any attention to the orange boundary markers and they like to come out to visit.

The day was between 25 and 30 deg F with almost no wind. I leaned back on a particularly soft and comfortable rock and rested my eyelids. They opened an hour later to an enormous cackling commotion. Some skuas were in among the penguins trying to steal eggs. The penguins are pretty docile when they are by themselves, but as soon as a skua gets in among them, all hell breaks loose as the penguins chase the skua out. The skuas will rob nests, and eat the eggs until they are stuffed. In McMurdo, if you find something and keep it, you have "skuaed" it, as in "I skuaed a roll of tape."

Black, White and Iridescent
About 45 minutes before our departure, I walked back over a low saddle to where our snowmobiles were parked. A small flock of eight adielie penguins were paying a visit. If you get on your stomach, they will get very curious about this other orange "thing" they see and walk over to investigate. I shot an entire roll of film on this little flock.

They hold their wings out when they walk or they will flop down on their bellies and push themselves over the snow. It is pure comedy to watch their antics. When they get close to you (3 to 5 feet away) they will hold out their wings turn their head to one side and actually pose for the camera! Their curiosity is incredible! By the way, these are wild birds and not used to human contact, so we have to be careful not to box them in with a bunch of avid photographers. A penguin's feathers have a brilliant iridescent sheen to them. The feathers are quite pretty and appear to be perfectly manicured with every feather in its place. After satisfying themselves we were harmless, this little flock wandered off around a small promontory and toward the rookery.

High Walls and Azure Ice
On our way back from Cape Royds, we stopped at a small iceberg locked in the sea ice. From a distance, it didn't look so big but at its base, it was huge. The sheer wall was at least 100 feet high, and it was perhaps 1/4 mile long. Standing next to it and seeing the volume of ice sticking into the air, all I could think of was the mountain of ice below the waterline. At the very end, where we were, parts of the berg were splitting off. Our guide checked everything out and let us go through an ice tunnel. Light filtering through ice is heavy in the blue spectrum, and this ice cave was a very pretty light azure.

Another hour on the trail, and we were home. After a full day outside and in full sun, it was good to be back. But Cape Royds was great, and I would go back any time.

I will be leaving for AGO-6 soon. Originally, Anna and I were supposed to leave on December 15th and meet our two groomers (Dave and Vinnie) there. But, there was deep field trouble at AGO-6 this year. Just after putting in Dave and Vinnie on Sunday (12th), the Twin Otter crashed on take-off. The plane was not loaded and the two pilots are not hurt (except maybe their pride). The Twin Otter apparently was caught by a gust of wind just as it lifted off and its wing touched the snow. The wing was torn off the aircraft and the fuselage cartwheeled back onto the ice. The NSF, Air Force, Ken Borek Air (which owns the Twin Otter) and ASA folks are planning how to extract the pilots, salvage valuable aircraft parts, make a skiway for an LC-130, and have time to do the science before everyone hits the point of exhaustion. We will see.

If I don't write next week, it is because I'm at AGO-6. I will get back on line as soon as I return. There are lots of heroes here, and one of them is Dave Zastrow who is holding things together at AGO-6. -- Tom Barfield