OHYAT: Cape Crozier!

One hundred years ago yesterday, Bill, Birdie, and Cherry finally dragged themselves and their sledges to a landmark near Cape Crozier known as The Knoll, where they planned to build a stone hut to use as a base for their work with the Emperor penguins whose rookery was nearby. They camped the first night, but

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO TODAY

– they started building.

Our scheme was to build an igloo with rock walls, banked up with snow, using a nine-foot sledge as a ridge beam, and a large sheet of green Willesden canvas as a roof. We had also brought a board to form a lintel over the door. Here with the stove, which was to be fed with blubber from the penguins, we were to have a comfortable warm home whence we would make excursions to the rookery perhaps four miles away. Perhaps we would manage to get our tent down to the rookery itself and do our scientific work there on the spot, leaving our nice hut for a night or more. That is how we planned it.
     "... We ... chose a moderately level piece of moraine about twelve feet away, and just under the level of the top of the hill, hoping that here in the lee of the ridge we might escape a good deal of the tremendous winds which we knew were common. Birdie gathered rocks from over the hill, nothing was too big for him; Bill did the banking up outside while I built the wall with the boulders. The rocks were good, the snow, however, was blown so hard as to be practically ice; a pick made little impression upon it, and the only way was to chip out big blocks gradually with the small shovel. The gravel was scanty, but good when there was any. Altogether things looked very hopeful when we turned in to the tent some 150 yards down the slope..."

Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World, quoting from his own diary.

It was Bill's wedding anniversary, so he named it Oriana Hut, after his wife, and the hill Oriana Ridge.

Winter Playtime

Often the only way to get any solitude at Cape Evans was to go for a walk. What one did with that solitude is anyone's guess. In response to this journal entry:



It was a long shuttle ride home from the airport.

I'm not saying that's a good excuse, but it's all I've got.