30 January--Castle Rock

This was the second of my 2 consecutive days off and a welcome break it was.  I finally hiked the Castle Rock Trail and ascended Castle Rock itself.  Jerry Perkins and I left soon after dinner and were back by Mid-Rats.  To hike outside of town any distance, you have to file a plan with the Fire House, have at least 2 people and a radio, have attended the Outdoor Safety lecture, and must check in afterwards.  The trail begins outside of town, up by Arrival Heights, and goes for several miles out to Castle Rock.  Most of it is over hard-packed snow and because of visibility issues, there are flags on bamboo wands every 30 feet or so.  For variety, you can link into a trail that goes back via Scott Base.

 Along the way there are two survival huts called Apples, stocked with sleeping bags and pads; a stove, fuel, and pot; and emergency food.  The second one has a telephone back to base.  I called the Shuttles Office to see if it worked, but was thinking how cool it would be to call Flagstaff.

The Castle is an old volcanic neck made up of basalt and a basalt conglomerate from what must have been a later eruption.  There are lots and lots of basalt pieces included in the reddish brown matrix.  In places there are fixed ropes up the steeper sections of the route.

It's been known as Castle Rock since Robert Falcon Scott's first expedition.  Early in that expedition, a party came up into this area and were hit by a blizzard.  The group had done no prior practice or training--that was pretty standard practice for Scott--and were unable to set up their tent.  Some people tried to make their way back to the nearby Discovery Bay and Hut Point.  One man, George Vince, fell off a steep slope, slid into the water, and drowned.  That's the origin of the cross on the low hill above the hut at Hut Point.  Interestingly, another man knew to burrow a bit into a snow bank and let the storm cover him.  He slept out the storm snugly and walked back to Hut Point the next day, none the worse for wear.

Ice crystals growing inside my water bottle.

The open water meets the sea ice.  A few icebergs, calved off from the Erebus Glacier were visible.

Glaciers flowing out of the Royal Society Range across McMurdo Sound

A Skua doing what it does best.

Tri-walls of food waste awaiting retrograde to Port Heuneme for composting.  MREs for Skuas.  Each is about 1 cubic meter.  (Tri-walls are triple thickness cardboard boxes--just the thing for home storage.)