Day off!

11-4-11

A much needed day off. I slept in a little bit (till 7am) and then attended a tour guide training for the huts (like shackleton and scott's huts), so that I can take people on tours there. One of the main reasons I am doing it is hoping to get a helicopter ride out of it. There are three main huts in the area that they normally visit, but this year b/c of bad sea ice (last year was the first year the whole ross sea melted out, so all ice this year is completely new and no old ice like years past)2 of the huts that are pretty far away are not safe to go to via deltas. Sadly, this means the common people from McMurdo (like myself) won't be able to do the cool trip out to those huts. But they still will be doing about 20 trips by helicopter out there for scientists and distinguished visitors, so I am hoping that maybe I could get picked for one of those. If not, it's pretty cool to be a guide. I visited discovery hut today on our training (scott's orginal hut). It's pretty cool inside and there are still cut up seals and tons of other stuff inside b/c the cold weather preserves everything so nothing really decays. An interesting fact about these huts is that they are the only builings on a continent in which the very fist dwellings are still standing. On all other continents, of course, the original structures are long gone.

Did some laundry today and then headed off for the walk to Scott Base to do some Christmas shopping. There were a whole bunch of seals down in the ice pressure ridges (where the ice is lifting up into cool jagged chunks at the transition between sea and land) today. After getting some Christmas gifts, I did an absolutely gorgeous hike on the ob hill circuit trail. Not a cloud in the sky today and pretty warm (18F with 0F windchill), so it was really nice. Great views towards the mountains and out across the sea ice and down to the ice runway.

I forgot to mention that yesterday I had to take some fuelies out to Pegasus, the place they will build the new ice runway (on permanent ice field once the sea ice gets too thin). The road wasn't well maintained yet b/c no one is really driving out there. So there was tons of powder on this huge flat area with no obstacles anywhere around at all. It reminded me of, and perhaps this is where they film these sorts of things, those seemingly fake car commercials where you have some jeep or truck just hauling it through deep snow. I just stepped on the gas (thought I was only going 30mph as the max speed limit anywhere on this continent is 25, but I needed a little extra to carry momentum), and plowed and swerved through the snow. Pretty fun!