Discovery Hut & Scott's Hut

Yesterday and today, we had great opportunities to see relicts of Scott’s 1910-1913 expedition to the South Pole. Yesterday, Cheryl (who works in the Crary Lab and went to sea with Z a few years ago) gave us a tour of the inside of Discovery Hut. Discovery Hut is very close to the McMurdo base. It was a staging area for preparing food caches, but was not intended to be occupied. It was not well designed for the cold climate in that it has one large room with a very high ceiling. A group of people from Scott’s expedition did get caught there for five months, and they screened off an area with the blubber stove with blankets to keep a bit warmer. It would have been miserable.

Discovery Hut was built in a pass with a good view across the sound (on a clear day). Today, we could barely even see the C-17 on the ice runway. It is one of the grey smudges just left of the hill with the cross on it.

The design of the hut is not ideal for keeping warm, with its high roof. It was prefabricated, and Cheryl said it was modeled after buildings designed in Australia to stay cool in the heat of the outback. One wonders at the thought process behind such an impractical design.

On entering the hut with our trained guide (Cheryl), we first clean our feet. Alfonso and Dale are leading the way.

The hut is poorly sealed now (and may always has been). The pile in the foreground consists of whale parts dusted in snow. Bones and blubber could be identified with imagination. Cheryl is standing near some boxed supplies.

The clothing Scott’s team wore were mostly made of canvas, although there are three fur mittens(?) in the foreground of this photo. Ahmundsen’s team, which beat Scott’s expedition to the south pole by a month, wore mostly fur clothing. Ahmundsen had a lot of experience in the high arctic of North America and learned a great deal from the native peoples about thriving in the cold. Fur is better than canvas. Soft wool, down, and pile are excellent, too!

Seal and whale blubber was both a fuel and food. Here is a piece of marine mammal dripping black fat. Things decay slowly in the cold, but they do decay...

The stove burned blubber for warmth and to cook food. There is completely unidentifiable food in the middle pan. The walls seen here are blankets that were hung under a lower part of the ceiling, I’m guessing in an attempt to keep more heat in.

Seal parts to eat, burn, and wrap up in...

There were also crates that contained imported food, including biscuits for people and dogs, hot chocolate, and pemican. These were probably luxuries once supplies started running low. I think the men that got caught at Discovery Hut were coming to pick up supplies to take back to the rest of the men at Scott’s Hut. It was a tough life!

+++++

Today, we went to the Evans wall, south of Cape Evans and north of McMurdo, for Dale and Tyler to dive with Rob and Steve. I’ll write another post about that. After the diving, we went north to Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans and looked around outside. This was were most of the expedition overwintered. It is surrounded by snow drifts and has lots more evidence of human habitation, such as old weather stations, crates, etc. The hut isn’t open for tours as of now, so we didn’t get to go in. My overwhelming impression is how different my visit is to Scott’s team’s life here. We drove up in a heated Piston Bully and returned to our research lab with plenty of time for a larger dinner than I should have eaten. I stayed warm all day.

Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans with Mt. Erebus in the background.

Scott’s team lost a lot of supplies when a ship broke free from this anchor in a storm.

I suspect that most of the men surviving the winter here appreciated the beauty of light and snow at first, but may have cursed it later. At what point in a difficult adventure does aesthetic pleasure become lost? Is it possible to appreciate the beauty of your enemy?

Men did die.

And from their memorial, I can see our ride home to McMurdo against the backdrop of shining snow and ice.