I successfully made it through my first night shift from last night at 1730 to this morning at 0530. I wasn't overly tired and was able to go to breakfast at a normal time and then sleep for 6 hours. I had spent most of the last 3 days trying to stay up through the entire night and then sleeping through each day--neither very successfully. I was feeling pretty disconnected, not having gone outside much during that time. I was strongly doubting I could pull it off. Time will tell whether I can do it for 6 week, but it seems that life is resuming.
My intention was to take an afternoon nap, but I ran across 2 fellow shuttle drivers and we took a hike around the Hut point Ridge Loop. The wind was blowing like crazy on the heights, but out of the wind the temperatures were quite comfortable--if you were dressed in your ECW gear! It was somewhere along the heights that Vince,one of Scott's men on the Discovery expedition, fell and died. The cross on the low knoll above the hut is dedicated to him. If I understand the story correctly, a party of men were up on Arrival Heights near Castle Rock when a blizzard came in. Being fresh on the ice, they had huge difficulties setting up their tent and were unable to get their stove working. Panic may have set in and led to an
ill-advised decision to try to get down to Hut Point and the Discovery in blinding, blowing conditions.
This is the shrine to Williams, a Navy heavy equipment operator, whose machine plunged through the ice back in the 1950s or 1960s. The official name is the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, but everyone knows it as Roll Cage Mary. Williams Field, the back-up ski-way near Pegasus on the Ross Ice shelf, is named after him.
Shuttle drivers Jenny and Jerry. Jenny is a counselor from Portland, Oregon and Jerry spent 5 years in Bolivia and 2 years in Chile advising farmers on setting up co-operatives.
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| Lots of people are wondering, how far away is the open water? |
I successfully made it through my first night shift from last night at 1730 to this morning at 0530. I wasn't overly tired and was able to go to breakfast at a normal time and then sleep for 6 hours. I had spent most of the last 3 days trying to stay up through the entire night and then sleeping through each day--neither very successfully. I was feeling pretty disconnected, not having gone outside much during that time. I was strongly doubting I could pull it off. Time will tell whether I can do it for 6 week, but it seems that life is resuming.
My intention was to take an afternoon nap, but I ran across 2 fellow shuttle drivers and we took a hike around the Hut point Ridge Loop. The wind was blowing like crazy on the heights, but out of the wind the temperatures were quite comfortable--if you were dressed in your ECW gear! It was somewhere along the heights that Vince,one of Scott's men on the Discovery expedition, fell and died. The cross on the low knoll above the hut is dedicated to him. If I understand the story correctly, a party of men were up on Arrival Heights near Castle Rock when a blizzard came in. Being fresh on the ice, they had huge difficulties setting up their tent and were unable to get their stove working. Panic may have set in and led to an
ill-advised decision to try to get down to Hut Point and the Discovery in blinding, blowing conditions.
This is the shrine to Williams, a Navy heavy equipment operator, whose machine plunged through the ice back in the 1950s or 1960s. The official name is the Shrine of Our Lady of the Snows, but everyone knows it as Roll Cage Mary. Williams Field, the back-up ski-way near Pegasus on the Ross Ice shelf, is named after him.
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| Vision of McMurdo by someone with too much time and Photoshop on his hands. |
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