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The road leads from Scott Base to McMurdo Station |
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Hope Bay was discovered by Otto Nordenskjold during The Swedish Polar Expedition in the 1st years of the 20th Century. Nordenskjold and five men from the expedition spent the winter of 1901-02 on Snow Hill Island conducting research. The Steam Freighter Antarctic, which dropped them off, was to retrieve them in the Spring of 1902. Unfortunately, next year's ice was treacherous and the Antarctic couldn't reach the island.
Three expedition members on the Antarctic, Dr. Gunnar Andersson, Lt. Samuel A. Duse and Seaman Toralf Grunden, were put ashore at Hope Bay with plans to reach Nordensjold at Snow Hill Island by sledge. They were supposed to tell him that the Antarctic was having difficulty reaching Snow Hill Island. The Antarctica then continued its efforts to approach to Snow Hill by sea. Unfortunately, the Antarctic was crushed by the ice, and the party from Hope Bay could not get to Snow Hill either. The 3 parties of men, the team of researchers at Snow Hill, the 3 at Hope Bay and 6 survivors from the Antarctic, spent the winter of 1902-03 in 3 separate huts in 3 separate locations. From December 1902 until September 1903, Andersson, Duse and Grunden lived in the shelter pictured here. They used the nearby Adelie penquin colony for food and fuel. When the weather warmed, they resumed their efforts to reach Dr. Nordenskjold and his team. On November 8, 1903, all three parties were reunited at Snow Hill Island, and they were all rescued by Captain Irizar and the Uruguay, which was a gunboat that Argentina had sent to search for the Antarctic when she did not return to Argentina. This tale of winter survival is one of the great stories of early Antarctic exploration. The stone hut remains as a tribute to the men and their extraordinary experience. Thank you Sally for showing me the door. |
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Hercules C-130 on the Pegasus white ice runway in McMurdo.
Group of 50 people arrived on 5th of Jan 2009 to Antarctica after 8 hours flight from Christchurch, New Zealand. They move to Ivan the Terra Bus, the only public like transportation vehicle in Antarctica connecting Mctown with the airport. |
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Asgard Range |
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Ground Control Point collecting on the little plato in the Asgard Range in Dry Valleys of Transantarctic Mountains, Antarctica. It was cloudy and cold morning. |
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The pictures were taken with a photogrammetric Hasselblad MK-70 film camera.
Livingston Island is an Antarctic island in the South Shetland Islands, Western Antarctica lying between Greenwich Island and Snow Islands. This island was known to sealers as early as 1819, and the name Livingston has been well established in international usage for over 180 years. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Livingston_Island |
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The South Shetland Islands are in the Southern Ocean just west of the Antarctic Peninsula. Half Moon Island is well-placed in the opening of Moon Bay on the east side of Livingston Island in the South Shetland Islands. This rocky island is only 2 kilometers across.
Half Moon Island is the home of the Argentine naval station Teniente Camara, which is operated only during the southern summers. The island also has an impressive Chinstrap Penguin rookery which can be viewed in another panorama on this gigapan.org web site. Looking for information about the island on the internet, I discovered that Half Moon Island was the locale for the stranding of 21tourists from the Lapataia in February of 1967. During the incident, the castaways used supplies from the naval station, which was at the time closed for the season. This panorama was shot with Nikon D80 and stitched with Autopano Pro. If you can't see the island on the map at the right. try clicking + a few times. Hey, you never know.... |
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Here is another view of Base Esperanza, the Argentine research station that is situated at the northern end of the Antarctic Peninsula. |
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This is Base Esperanza, an Argentine research station on Hope Bay at the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula. Antarctic bases are unique places to work. Researchers here experience isolation, cold and months of prolonged darkness. This base, in those respects, is like most of the others.
Base Esparenza is very unusual in its population, which includes families with children. There is even a school here. There are also a museum and a chapel and a cemetery along with the usual scientific laboratories and supply buildings that we saw at other Antarctic research stations. We had planned to land at another site on February 26, but early in the day we were blown around a bit by a late summer snow storm. Our lessons aboard ship that morning included an introduction to the Beauford wind scale. We put in at Hope Harbor, and were happy to be sheltered from the gale. Notice the fresh snow on the roofs and the snow blowing off the ridge and the mountains. The base commander kindly let us visit when the weather cleared. Thank you for the tour of the base and for the biscuits and tea. I hope that the folks at Base Esperanza enjoy this portrait of their home as seen from the deck of the MV Professor Multanovskiy. |