Cape Royds

In 1907 Shackelton arrived in Antarctica and searched for suitable place to start his attempt on the pole from. He found Cape Royds. Rich with penguin life at the rookery perched on the tip of the peninsula and with easy sea access he built himself a small hut nestled in the volcanic stone and readied himself for the trek ahead.

[The Barnes Glacier Crack]

On Sunday, we headed out from Scott Base in our Hagglund filled with people and lunches and ECW gear. We rumbled along in the Hagglund, a Swedish tracked vehicle built for warfare in desert environments. It is not a smooth or quiet ride, but rather unique to the whole experience of being here in this place. Padded with jackets and foam mats, and fitted with ear plugs and headphones, you can actually make yourself quite comfortable. Which is good as the drive to Cape Royds takes about 3 hours. We stopped every so often to drop things off at various field camps on the way and to do sea ice profiles at the cracks we encountered to make sure they were safe to cross. But mostly it was the deep rumble on the machine under our bums that kept us going.

[Driving on the sea ice]

[Barnes Glacier]

[A seal hole chewed in the crack]

[Weddell Seal]

[Drilling a sea ice profile]

Finally we arrived at Royds. We stumbled out of the Hagglund, grabbed our bags and headed for the peninsula. We started by hiking up a slope to find two frozen water lakes. Their surfaces frozen to a smooth glassy sheen that rippled like liquid water. Parts of the surface were pocketed with holes made by dust and stone blown onto the surface and causing differential melting. It was great fun to carefully slide across the surface. At one point I bent down to lick the ice to see if it was fresh or salty, I discovered much to my companions delight that it was quite salty and didn’t taste all that great.

[Frozen lake at Cape Royds]

We then moved on to the coast. What a view. Seeing open water was much more exciting than I had expected. Just the amount of life that seemed to teem there surprised me. We watched penguins fly through the water and up onto the sea ice below us. Seals lazing on the coast and watching as penguins waddled by in long lines. It was phenomenal. We hiked down to the waters edge and just took in the total difference that it offered from our experience on the Ice Shelf (which doesn’t melt each year). Even the presence of fluffy cumulous clouds was different, as there are none out by Scott Base because there is very little moisture to produce them.

[The Ross Sea]

We wandered along the coast and took pictures of penguins and seals. We found a really neat pressure dome to climb inside and explore. And we eventually made our way over to Shackleton’s hut nestled beside the penguin rookery and out of the prevailing wind by the surrounding volcanic hills. The raucous sounds of the penguins filled the air almost as much as their fishy smell. To think that these are the same smells and sounds and sights that Shackleton and his men shared is a neat feeling. It was a neat feeling. The inside of the hut was pretty amazing as well. The musty light filtering through the old glass windows playing with the dust moats in the air. It was very still and quiet there, filled with the tedious memories of cooking dinner on a wood stove, eating dehydrated eggs from a can and fiddling in the dark room with cold fingers to produce the images we can see today in books and museums. Very cool indeed.

[Penguin prints]

[Adelie penguins]

[Adelie penguin]

[A pressure dome in the sea ice]

[Walking along the sea ice]

[ASPAs - or Antarctic Specially Protected Areas - are meant to protect things like penguin rookeries, important ecological sites and scientifically significant areas]

[Shackleton's Hut in the shadow of Mount Erebus]

[The inside of Shackelton's Hut]

[Mmmmmm - preserved cabbage]

Soon our times was running short and we still had a 3 hour trip home. So we climbed back into the Hagglund and rumbled across the sea ice to our own little oasis on the other side of Ross Island.