Recreation in Mactown

This entry will be more of a photo essay. I have sooo many pictures I need to start putting more shots up quickly. The recreational opportunities here are quite numerous when the weather is good. For the adventurous there is plenty of stuff to do while not at work (which feels like never). Here are some of the shots I have been getting lately. I hope you all enjoy...

This is what we do during condition fun (see next paragraph. no wait, 2 more paragraphs). Notice the windows behind me in the picture of me playing pool. LOTS of blowing snow is what usually makes things condition one around here. Soemtimes the visability is unbelievably bad, like 10-20 feet. When it's like this there is nothing to do but read, play pool or ping pong, or watch movies. It was fun at first but it can get boring quickly...

When the carpenters get bored, this is what they resort to. Ice sculpting contests!!! Some of them are pretty awesome. The next shot is one of McMurdo in the center of the picture, with the enormous Mt. Erebus looming in the background with it's ever constant plume of smoke coming from it's cauldron. It has been slowly erupting for more than 20 years now. Believe it or not, but those hills directly behind McMurdo are much larger than they look. They are so large that you cannot see Mt. Erebus at all from Mactown, they compltely obscure the view... This shot was taken from the Williams Field Runway on the Ross Ice Shelf. It may not look like it, but I am standing 19 miles from town when I took this shot, and the foot of Mt. Erebus is 30 miles from McMurdo, even though it looks like Mactown is right next to it...

I told many of you that we have not been receiving packages lately because planes have not been able to land. This is why. Over a week of consistent weather like this. This is a photo of the TV set in my room which has weather updates on channel 2. It honestly looked like this for ten days straight. These conditions are what leads to the first photo of this entry, "Condition One, No Travel Allowed". After these ten days of horrible weather it has now become affectionately known as "Condition fun", because we ended up playing lots of pool and ping pong. If it is condition fun outside, we are not allowed to leave the building, even to go to work! Four days of work were cancelled completely, and three others had partial condition fun troubles. We are definitley playing catch up now... Oh yeah the last sunset is coming up. I am planning a big hike for it. Already if you go to the bars on Saturday night, you'd better emember to bring your sunglasses, because when they call last call at 1am and it is time to leave, it is BRIGHT outside. It's a 'you definitely need your sunglasses' kind of bright at 1:30am.

These are shots of the bouldering cave and the ceramics room, which are located right next to eachother. Perfect for me. The cave has lots of routes but I have taken upon myself to be the town's new route setter. I have a new found appreciation for really nice routes in the gym, because they are a bit harder to create than I had expected. My toes have really been hurting a lot lately, which is why I have been climbing in my bare feet. It definitely makes me concentrate on my footwork more. The ceramics room not very big, but actually has a ton of great stuff for such a small space. Two wheels, all the glazes and tools one could ever want, and a really nice, albeit small, kiln. There are some great potters and sculptors here.

This is Discovery Hut. It is right on the tip of the point in front of McMurdo. It was built was Robert E. Scott and his expedition as a base camp for their journey to the South Pole. They landed in 1901 and finished construction of the hut in 1902. Unfortunately, thier attempt to be the first to the Geographic South Pole was ill fated; in not one but two ways. Upon arriving at the Pole, they realized that they had been beaten by about 6 weeks by a team led by Amundsen, which crossed the continent frmo the opposite direction. Both teams left at roughly the same time, but Amundsen employed dogs to carry sleds with their gear, while Scott and his crew carried the gear filled sleds themselves. Can you imagine towing a sled with all of your food, shelter, and clothes from the egde of the continent to the South Pole and back? Over 1,900 miles. Unfortunately for Scott, his team never returned. They all perished about halfway back to Discovery Hut. The hut still stands as a tribute to his team, and is now a world heritage site. The picture of the brown leathery thing is actually the mummified remains of a leopard seal his team had killed and were saving to eat. Temperatures this cold tend to preserve things extraordinarily well, as you can see in these 106 year old seal remains.