Cape Royds and Emperors

The main piece of fieldwork which we undertook this week was a survey of Shackleton's hut from his Nimrod expedition at Cape Royds. Every year we survey it to determine if it is rising or falling due to ice buildup underneath. It's reasonably stable at the moment.

We took a Piston Bully tracked vehicle out. This is slower than a Hagglund (it took 3.5 hours each way, making for a looong day), and it doesn't float if it goes through the ice. As we were driving over sea-ice (frozen ocean), we stopped a few times at cracks in the ice to drill through and make sure it was thick enough to take our weight as we drove over.

There's an Adelie Penguin Colony at Cape Royds. The biggest difference from last year is that the sea-ice edge is about 100km closer than it was this time last year, to the point that it's about 1km from Cape Royds, so you can easily see open water (something I didn't see at all last year). One of the results of this is that there are a quite a few Emperor Penguins wandering around. On our drive back, we saw a group of 5 about 300m off the road, so we went over and checked them out.

We also stopped at the ice cave at the end of the Erebus Ice Tongue. It wasn't as impressive as last year, but I think I got some interesting photos. Last year there wasn't as much direct light in the cave, so there were a lot more intense blues which didn't really come through this year.

This evening I'll be continuing the century-old tradition of men wearing skirts in Antarctica, as it's the Scott Base Skirt Party, whoop. Photos may or may not result.

American Hag