23 November--Ob Hill Loop

A luxurious day off and I was able to sleep in until 0630, something I haven't done in ages!  Hit the gym and after lunch go on a hike I hadn't known about around the base of Ob Hill.  It starts down below the Heliport and goes around the hill until it hits the road to Scott Base in Gas Pass.  Once you get around the hill a bit, the sounds and sights of town fall away.  Most of the trail is fairly flat and passes across volcanic cinder slopes with a few volcanic bombs.  In a few places it gets steep and snow covered, but the trail volunteers have done a wonderful job clearing away the worst.  There are great views across the sound to the Royal Society Range and. later on, to Scott Base and the Ross Ice Shelf.  I hadn't seen the boundary between the ice shelf and the annual sea ice before, but it's pretty distinct.  The contrast between the hike here and yesterday's walk around the pressure ridges couldn't be greater.



Passing by the Heliport.



That long and winding road...

Weddell seals sunning themselves in the warm sun.

Mt. Terror, Scott Base, and the Ross Ice Shelf.

Hiking Ob Hill reminds me a lot of hikes in the Flagstaff area.



Volcanic bomb.  Note the spiraling, ropey structure from end to end.





Cheaper by the dozen.

 Addendum: after posting all of the  above, I went on a short hike at 2100 hours to the Observation Tube.  The krill are getting bigger and I saw 2 ethereal, white jelly fish.  There was a weird call of a seal from a distance, nothing like the sounds you might associate with a Sea World performance.  It was almost like those recordings of whales you might remember from the 1970s.

When we came up from the tube and were going back across the ice to shore, we spotted broken ice on the surface of the partially refrozen surface of a melt water pool.  Waiting quietly we were able to see a Weddell seal come to the surface and blow off CO2 noisily.  He came back at about 5 or 6 minute intervals.

Learned that this is the first year that the Observation Tube has been here.  Previously it was at a penguin research site elsewhere in the Ross Sea.