Continuing yesterday's roll, I walked up Ob Hill this morning. Ob Hill is short for Observation Hill, the eminence that Scott's men made daily observations from during the 1904-5 expedition. It's a bit like Sunset Crater at home, minus the red color, in that it's made up of loose, sliding scree and has a number of trails inscribed in its slopes. It looks like a number of skiers have been cutting turns down it. Going up, the first sight you pass is the remains of the nuclear power plant, now just a metal framework that's scheduled to be retrograded back to the states at some point in the future. Loose fiberglass insulation was blowing around as I passed.
At the top is a cross memorializing Scott and his 4 companions who died after reaching the South Pole one month after Roald Amundsen in 1911, 100 years ago this year. Amundsen reached the pole, but was kept from enjoying the fame by Scott's "heroic" death and his "sporting" approach that disapproved of such things as skis, warm clothing and sleeping bags of caribou, and dogs (especially eating dogs. "No thanks, Roald, I prefer to wear cotton clothing in the Antarctic cold and aren't skis a tad ungentlemanly?"
Amundsen, in his competence, also made it all look so easy. As an aside, Norway had only gotten its independence from Sweden a decade or so before and Amundsen was just one of a bevy of Norse geniuses (genii?) out to make a mark for their new country. Another Norwegian finally explained the mechanism of the Northern Lights and invented the way to fix nitrogen from the air making possible synthetic fertilizers and high explosives, although a German got credit for that, too. Poor Norway, didn't get no respect.
The wind was blasting away on the hike up, threatening to blow me off the ridge at one point. Some of the basalt rocks are vesicular with "frozen" air pockets; some, especially near the top, have been carved by the winds blasting, a process that produces what's known as tafoni, I think. There are even what appear to be swirls that I read as being micro-eddies in the wind. As an aside, there are storms here known as Herbies, standing for a combination of Hurricanes and Blizzards. They aren't just a Winter phenomenon and we could still face these this Summer.
From the top there were good views of Mts. Erebus and Terror and of what might be either the line of open water or a darned good Fata Morgana. What looked like open water was a dark line off on the northern horizon, north of the islands we passed on the way to Cape Evans. Rumor has it that the dark line is open water; I'm betting on Fata Morgana.
Mounts Erebus and Terror were named after the two ships commanded by Captain Ross (of Ross Sea fame) in the 1840s. At the time the English tradition was to name its gunboats after either volcanoes or other hellish things. Erebus comes from Greek mythology and was the son of Chaos. Erebus was associated with Darkness and Hades, making him a likely candidate for English gunboat naming.
Descending Ob Hill I got nice views of helicopters taking off and landing at the heliport.
I ran across an interesting take on glacial ice being a species of metamorphic rock. The reasoning goes that it is made up of a mineral (water) and has been compacted, recrystalized, and deformed under pressure--making it metamorphic.
Finally, I' m assembling some webcam sites for Mt. Erebus and the surrounding area. See what you think.
This is the webcam for the Kiwi's Scott Base:
http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/scott-base/webcams
Here's the official site of the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory. No longer an active webcam, but with a good archive of images and videos.
http://erebus.nmt.edu/
I've found dead links to their webcam and references to it being no longer active. Their archive will have to suffice for now.
McMurdo Station webcam.
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm
On the other side of the continent, at Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula (the one that looks like the extension of the Andes--because it is) there is this webcam:
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/palWebCam.cfm
And, of course, there's always that object of crazy desire, the South Pole:
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spWebCam.cfm
The Brits have their British Antarctic Survey with 4 stations and 2 research vessels. See it all on their webcams:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/images/webcams/index.php
The Australian Antarctic Division likewise has 4 reasearch stations you can view through the links here:
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams
Here's a webcam that features a Gentoo penguin rookery, updated every 15 minutes.
http://www.martingrund.de/pinguine/
The Germans have their Neumayer-Station on the Weddell Sea:
http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/NM_WebCam/
There must be others, too. and I'll keep looking from time to time.
At the top is a cross memorializing Scott and his 4 companions who died after reaching the South Pole one month after Roald Amundsen in 1911, 100 years ago this year. Amundsen reached the pole, but was kept from enjoying the fame by Scott's "heroic" death and his "sporting" approach that disapproved of such things as skis, warm clothing and sleeping bags of caribou, and dogs (especially eating dogs. "No thanks, Roald, I prefer to wear cotton clothing in the Antarctic cold and aren't skis a tad ungentlemanly?"
Amundsen, in his competence, also made it all look so easy. As an aside, Norway had only gotten its independence from Sweden a decade or so before and Amundsen was just one of a bevy of Norse geniuses (genii?) out to make a mark for their new country. Another Norwegian finally explained the mechanism of the Northern Lights and invented the way to fix nitrogen from the air making possible synthetic fertilizers and high explosives, although a German got credit for that, too. Poor Norway, didn't get no respect.
The wind was blasting away on the hike up, threatening to blow me off the ridge at one point. Some of the basalt rocks are vesicular with "frozen" air pockets; some, especially near the top, have been carved by the winds blasting, a process that produces what's known as tafoni, I think. There are even what appear to be swirls that I read as being micro-eddies in the wind. As an aside, there are storms here known as Herbies, standing for a combination of Hurricanes and Blizzards. They aren't just a Winter phenomenon and we could still face these this Summer.
From the top there were good views of Mts. Erebus and Terror and of what might be either the line of open water or a darned good Fata Morgana. What looked like open water was a dark line off on the northern horizon, north of the islands we passed on the way to Cape Evans. Rumor has it that the dark line is open water; I'm betting on Fata Morgana.
 |
| Mount Erebus with Castle Rock in the mid-ground. |
 |
| Open water on the horizon? Or a Fata Morgana? |
Mounts Erebus and Terror were named after the two ships commanded by Captain Ross (of Ross Sea fame) in the 1840s. At the time the English tradition was to name its gunboats after either volcanoes or other hellish things. Erebus comes from Greek mythology and was the son of Chaos. Erebus was associated with Darkness and Hades, making him a likely candidate for English gunboat naming.
Descending Ob Hill I got nice views of helicopters taking off and landing at the heliport.
I ran across an interesting take on glacial ice being a species of metamorphic rock. The reasoning goes that it is made up of a mineral (water) and has been compacted, recrystalized, and deformed under pressure--making it metamorphic.
Finally, I' m assembling some webcam sites for Mt. Erebus and the surrounding area. See what you think.
This is the webcam for the Kiwi's Scott Base:
http://www.antarcticanz.govt.nz/scott-base/webcams
Here's the official site of the Mt. Erebus Volcano Observatory. No longer an active webcam, but with a good archive of images and videos.
http://erebus.nmt.edu/
I've found dead links to their webcam and references to it being no longer active. Their archive will have to suffice for now.
McMurdo Station webcam.
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/mcmwebcam.cfm
On the other side of the continent, at Palmer Station on the Antarctic Peninsula (the one that looks like the extension of the Andes--because it is) there is this webcam:
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/palWebCam.cfm
And, of course, there's always that object of crazy desire, the South Pole:
http://www.usap.gov/videoclipsandmaps/spWebCam.cfm
The Brits have their British Antarctic Survey with 4 stations and 2 research vessels. See it all on their webcams:
http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/images/webcams/index.php
The Australian Antarctic Division likewise has 4 reasearch stations you can view through the links here:
http://www.antarctica.gov.au/webcams
Here's a webcam that features a Gentoo penguin rookery, updated every 15 minutes.
http://www.martingrund.de/pinguine/
The Germans have their Neumayer-Station on the Weddell Sea:
http://www.awi-bremerhaven.de/NM_WebCam/
There must be others, too. and I'll keep looking from time to time.
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