Scott's Hut

You are probably aware that it is from this area that Robert Falcon Scott started his epic failure of a journey into the heart of Antarctica in his quest to be first to the South Pole. The place is practically littered with huts of gear and food that his expedition left behind. There is one hut about 500 yards from downtown McMurdo, on appropriately named Hut Point. The site is protected, and is only occasionally open for tours. I took one of these this week, and have some photos of the inside to share.

The hut is a prefab unit Scott purchased in Australia. It was designed to keep people cool in the outback. The first thing that you notice as you walk in is how incredibly funky the smell is. The next thing you notice is how it looks like hardly anything has happened since Scott left. There are seal bodies that have been preserved in the cold dry weather here, like the Chilean Andes mummies. There are boxes and boxes of dog biscuits, some clothing hanging out to dry, and shelves full of tinned chocolate, tea, meats, and other foodstuffs.

The area around McMurdo is also littered with crosses commemorating those who gave their lives here for one reason or another. The cross on Hut Point is for George Vince, the doctor in Scott's expedition, who was last seen walking across the sea ice, but never arrived. He probably fell through a hole and drowned. Another cross, on top of Ob Hill, is for Scott himself, and has the famous quote from Tennyson, "To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield" engraved on it. Yet another cross memorializes a young man named Williams, who was driving a tractor hauling supplies in from a Navy vessel during the establishment of McMurdo Station and fell through the sea in 350 fathoms of water. His body was never recovered. nor was the tractor. Rough place, Antarctica.