10.15.12 CAPE EVANS WALL HUT

I will learn to play the ukulele - even if it's in Antarctica...

Here I am driving one Pisten Bully with three souls aboard heading towards a hut at Cape Evans to continue with our fishing expedition.


Soul #2

Soul # 3

Driving while taking pictures through a dirty windows:


It's very long snow road to our destination:

Our flagged route:

We stop for a few beautiful photos:

I took this photo of Brad carefully checking up on these two seals (the two black lumps). 


Just before Dan took this picture of me:


Then I took this picture of Dan:

It was a breathtaking day, very windy - but amazing weather. These photos aren't the best due to the fact that some were taken through a dirty window while I was driving - but they are worth taking a look. The clouds take on strange shapes and textures here and mimic the softer parts of the landscape in some ways.

I believe this is Tent Island below. The snow and ice have built up on one side of the island and the sun reflected off of it's face in such a way that gave it a defined crisp, shiny, metallic sort of mirror to reflect the sun rays right back into the broad surroundings. It isn't particularly clear here, but hopefully later I can try again to capture this description within an image.

We finally make our way to the hut at Cape Evans Wall and start the fish catching extravaganza. One for Dan - six for Marissa. Hah! No, he caught more but I think I might have actually won on this day for once.

A lovely jelly fish floating in this dive hole - it's curious to think of where it might have come from and how long it had been here. Another place for it to come to the surface of the water, as in the open ocean, aside from the cracks opening and closing here and there - is quite a distance from this particular spot so densely surrounded in sea ice frequently 6 feet thick or so.


We rotate positions and I get to ride with all of our necessary items in the back - including the cooler on the bottom right full of our new found fish.


I cozy up in Big Red and prepare for a pretend nap during the nearly 2 hour journey back to McMurdo.

It's much more comfortable than you might think...


This is a picture of the window from the inside of the Pisten Bully on our way out:

Here is the same window on our way back in with the sun melting the ice off. You can see Mt. Erebus here.


Mt. Erebus zoomed in through a dirty window. Lovely, really.