Forever night

A quick look at a few of the pictures I have gained while we are in the couple of months of the daytime darkness at Scott Base. I dedicate it to the people who are interested in the monthsof darkness!!

Derelict Junction at Mactown. The main bus stop.

Mt Erebus as seen from the Pegasus Air field which is being groomed for the first flights of the year in 4 weeks. As you can see, the light is starting to come back to this part of Antarctica at a rate of 16 minutes per day.

Chris and I stand in front of the Hagglunds for the camera after unloading it from our trip up to Mt Aurora two days before.

This was the morning sky that greeted us at 11am today 20th July 1998. They tell me that it gets better over the next couple of weeks until the sun finally arrives. If your wondering, Its Erebus in the background.

As I said before. We had been on a trip to the top of Mt Aurora on the 17th July 98 at about 4.30pm. This is a photo of Chris to the Left, Me and then Mike to the right in red. Eric took the photo as the digital camera doesn't have a built in time delay feature.

On the way out to Black Island (where Mt Aurora is) is a small hut called McDonalds, they even painted a large "M" on the side. On the way out we thought we may stay the night when we where on our way home so we cleaned out the snow (which gets in everywhere ) and then got the fuel heater going. We had to get the Hagglunds close enough to the building so Chris could get onto the roof and remove the snow cover off the chimney.

We had tried earlier in the week to do the climb but we struck bad weather just before McDonalds and had to turn back. 40 knot winds and -30 Degrees C with 2 meters visibility didn't make us want to stay around for long. McDonalds is about 60 km away from Scott Base and about 2.5 hours driving in a Hagglunds. The picture below shows a little of the blinding snow Chris was trying to see through as he drove. It took about 15 minutes to get out of the storm and back into 5 Km clear visibility.

This is the visibility 1/2 an hour later on the way home. We could actually se the lights of Scott Base even though it would have been 30 km away.

A bottle of Baileys, on ice, the Antarctic way !!

www.geocities.com/coolrunnernz/

9-3-01

Re-Edited by Shirley Baston Fred - [email protected] - ICQ #15167279