Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton

I write again feeling as though I have been neglecting my journal. It is not because there is nothing to write about, because everyday I see and experience things that I will never forget, but mostly because I like to write alone. Such a desire makes daily journaling nearly impossible when personal time is so difficult to come by. In our small camp people are up, about, and distracting from 6:00 am until nearly 11:30 at night. Instead of waiting for personal, time I have just decided to make my own, and ignore the rest of the group as I write.


Journal

I don’t know if any of you have heard of “Planet Earth” a TV documentary series produced by the BBC, and if you know that it is unquestionably the greatest natural history documentary of all time. If not, now you do. I mention this because the “Planet Earth” crew is down here shooting an equally amazing nine hour sequel called “Frozen Planet”. They have invaded McMurdo and are treated, (perhaps rightly so) as celebrities. The aggregation of people who collect down here at the bottom of the planet are those who most appreciate the power and brilliance of “Planet Earth”, and consider its makers among the greatest film makers in the world. That said, the camera crew is amazingly friendly despite the non-stop attention they get. Since we are “The Seal Experts”, and also since our seals are to be a major uniting character in their Frozen Planet series, they are continually out at our field camp looking for insight on where to get the best shots, or what kind of behaviors we are seeing, etc. They have come out so much that they have become good friends with all of us and have even entrusted our crew with one of their underwater cameras. We have free license to film seals underwater for them, and if our shots are good enough they will be included in “Frozen planet”… we may even be mentioned in the film credits. I say all this because a lot of my free time has been spent laying out on the Sea Ice in front of an LCD screen and a joystick, filming seals every evening.

When not padding my cinematic resume I continue to tag, sample, and weigh seals, even though the majority of pupping is rapidly grinding to a halt. During the past two weeks we have tagged over 400 seal pups, and retagged over 100 females, and the occasional male. Its strange to think that I am starting to get used to walking through, and sometimes climbing over, towering unearthly blue walls of Ice. I have yet to get any real good pictures of the beautiful sculpture like pressure ridges caused by the power of the tides, and ocean currents below. Today I am heading out into our most jumbled and amazing pressure ridge regions and will make an effort to shoot as much as possible, hopefully coming back with a few shots to share.

Although beautiful in their elegant design, pressure ridges are not the only amazing ice formation around (surprise). Yesterday we skirted along beneath the shear face of our friendly neighborhood glacier where we were humbled as we strained our necks to pear up towards the top of the crevassed and broken 200-foot-tall Ice walls which stretch for miles in both directions. This unbelievable mass of ice, enormous as it may seem , is hardly a glacier in comparison with beardmore, or some of the others across McMurdo Sound that stretch for hundreds of miles, are nearly 10,000 feet deep, and are sometimes more than 40 miles across. I continue to be amazed by the vastness of this place, a place that puts the well known grandeur of Alaska to pitiful shame. A place that will spoil me in desolation, immensity, humility for many years to come.

After visiting the Barne yesterday ( and collecting about 150 pounds of prehistoric glacier ice for our drinks back at camp) we made our way to the Adelie penguin colony at Cape Royds about 10 miles north of camp. A dusty and black outcrop of volcanic rock Cape Royds flows out from the base of Erebus and provides the natural eastern shoulder to Erebus Bay. To its south stretch the multi-year ice, our camp, McMurdo, and beyond that the great Ross Ice Shelf. To the North lies the open water of the Ross Sea, the Antarctic Ocean, and the rest of the world beyond. We scrambeled up and over the dust and penguin guano of the cape to be greeted for the first time in over a month, by the sight of open water. Straining our eyes toward the Northern Horizon we scanned among broken Ice flows for the tell-tale signs of Orcas, Humpbacks, or Grey whales after nearly an hour basking in the calming energy of the ocean to our front, we turned back into the Ice and home.

This cape is more than a barrier keeping Ice in and open water out of Erebus Bay, it is The onetime home of Sir Earnest Shackelton, when he made his bid to be first to the pole. His disheveled hut is still nestled in a small protected pocket of land. Unopened boxes of provisions still line the walls, dog houses, stand at the ready for another pack of sled dogs, Horse stalls remain, with tackle intact to harbor those unfortunate ponies that would be killed on the barrier (Ross Ice shelf) to the South. It as if Shackelton himself will be back tomorrow. I am excited, awed, inspired, I don’t know what I am. Some of the group is not. We cannot go and check it out, we cannot even look in the window, we are at CAPE FUCKING ROYDS! Where EARNEST SHACKELTON lived and because our boss doesn’t care at all about Antarctic history, (and she is the only one “certified” to let us into the hut) we cannot go in. I get yelled at for stepping too close… The rest of the population of McMurdo can go into this hut, and Cape evans hut, and the Discovery hut, every week if they want, and we will come here only one time this season, Today. Today, Jen doesn’t want to take 10 minutes to let us look inside. My blood boils as I think about how hard we work every single day for her, as I think about this possibly being my only chance to come to Antarctica, about this being my only chance to ever step foot on Cape Royds, about how she doesn’t even care how much this means to not only me but the rest of the crew as well.

I keep quiet and walk back to my snowmobile, thankful for the half hour of solitude I will have to calm down as we drive back to camp.

Next time I am going to look in the window. Next time I will simply ignore Jen and her completely arbitrary and nonsensical rules.

For Cape Royds there is no next time.