2 November, 2001

Robert Scott's Hut

Today was really cool (get it’ "cool?") because this morning Dan and I walked down to Hut Point about a mile from McMurdo. This is where Robert Scott and his crew built a hut in 1902. The hut is kept locked so that people can only go inside with a guide, but we did peak through the window and saw some of his supplies. They wintered there before trying to reach the South Pole. On this trip, they only made it to within 450 miles of the pole before turning back. Finally, in 1911 he made it to the pole only to find out that Roald Amundsen beat him to the pole by three weeks. Imagine his disappointment after that long, arduous trip only to find that he wasn't the first one to reach the pole. Scott found Amundsen's tent with a Norwegian flag flying from it. Scott wrote in his diary "This is an awful place and terrible enough for us to have labored to without the reward of priority." Unfortunately, Scott's team was not in good shape. They didn't bring enough supplies for five people and they were badly frost bitten. On their return trip, they were stuck for 8 days in bad weather and unable to continue on. The group froze to death on the ice only 11 miles away from their stash of food they had left for the return trip.

Even though the walk was short, it left us pretty tired. It is amazing how much the cold can take out of you. In the afternoon, Susan, Dan, and I were finally able to get some work done for our own expedition. We are taking boxes with us to store the ice cores that we'll be drilling and bring back to the U.S. We have 100 boxes so far and each of them has to have a total of 9 labels put on them for shipping back to the states. It took us 4 hours to label fifty boxes, and again, although it was easy work, we were very tired from the cold when we were done (the boxes are stored outside). Tomorrow we will do the second half of the boxes.

I also want to say that I am sorry for the bad captions on the pictures. We are working on the problem. Thanks for your patience.

Susan, Cobi, and Dan talking overe the day's work.

Robert Scott's Hut. Notice the roof slants in all directions so that the snow will slide right off.