Castle Rock

While I was waiting for my flight to depart, I hiked a 7 mile loop from McMurdo to Castle Rock, a prominent volcanic feature on a promontory.  There are several trails (trail map) around McMurdo, and a few of them require you to check out at the Firehouse before leaving.  If you are not back at the time you say, there is a full alert out and a search party is sent out after you.  Weather turns in an instant, and dangers lurk around the ice.  I carried a radio in case of trouble, and along the trail there are huts with food and sleeping bags for hikers caught in bad weather.  These are called apple huts.  If you see the picture the reason is obvious.  The landscape is fantastic, but even the small scale is interesting.  Here is a close up picture of wind carved snow in an area no bigger than my hand.
You have to wear serious gear in case of trouble, and I wore the infamous “bunny boots.”  These keep your feet very warm, but had given me a blister by the time I reached Castle Rock.  Here I am tending my injury in front of CR.  Right next to me was this exposed rock indicative of the rock and soil in the area.  The origin is obviously volcanic. And of course the volcano is nearby: Mt. Erebus towers over everything as we began our climb to the top of Castle Rock.  The hike to the top of CR was kind of treacherous.  There was a lot of climbing.  Ropes were laid out to help you as you ascended.  Finally, we reached the top of CR (note the bunny boots that gave me blisters).  
At the bottom, my hiking partner, Young Soo Yoon (a colleague on CREAM-II), and I posed for a self-taken photo in front of the rock.  The trip back was all downhill, and we came prepared.  We each had trays borrowed from the dining hall, and we were ready to use them.  The hill felt like it was straight down, so we could get going pretty fast.  
But we had to stick to the trail.  Crevices in the ice, formed as the ice slides down the hill, can be very dangerous.  Black flags mark danger areas.  Note that you can’t tell that there is a crack there.  Blown snow covers the top, making a thin crust that crumples when you walk on it. There are many terrible stories of people who have died stuck in a crevice, including a few who went off the trails around McMurdo in the last few decades.  
There is a funny story connecting these and the trays.  Young Soo slipped off his tray as he was sliding and the tray kept going until it stopped right on top of the crevice with these flags.  He wanted to go get it but I convinced him it would be unwise.  He felt bad because we try so hard to Keep Antarctica Beautiful.  When we got back to the Firehouse to check we confessed that while all the people had made it back, not all our objects made it back.  Immediately the dispatcher said “Let me guess – what you are missing is rectangular, flat, and blue.”  Yup.  Apparently this was not even close to the first time.  The dispatcher confessed that she lost her own tray once.
The rest of the journey was along where the Ross Ice Shelf meets Ross Island.  There were ice formations and pressure ridges.  The total time we were gone was about 5 hours.