Terra Novela: Let me take you on a walk

The weather has been exceedingly nice for the past couple weeks. Above freezing every day and calm bright skies. I’ve been trying to take advantage of the good weather on my nights off. The night shift doesn’t pose a problem for me because the sun won't begin to set until late February. This particular night, I set out for the complete seven mile circumambulation of town. At 35 degrees under the ozone-less sky, I could feel the sun’s rays warming me when I stood still. This is not a familiar feeling.

I started on the new Ob Hill loop, camera in hand, because I’d heard rumors of whales emerging in some of the open water stretches just at the base of the hill. On the West side of the hill, which descends directly into the Ross sea, dozens of Weddell seals can now be spotted lounging on the ice. They’ve come up through the tidal cracks and pressure ridges which have recently opened up. The condition of the sea Ice is always a popular topic around town. It’s been almost a decade since the last time McMurdo has seen open water. This year, everyone’s hopes were high that it would finally break up and wash out but that has yet to happen. There is still time though. The combination of these high temps and a few good southerly storms would probably do the trick. The open water would bring Orca and Minke whales to town. There have been a few whale sightings already in the channel carved out by the icebreaker but I’ve yet to be so lucky. And of course having camera at the ready pretty much guaranteed that I wouldn’t see any.

Weddell Seals

I made my way back into town, along the would be waterfront and by the pier. We’ve currently got two icebreaking vessels in our waters. The Swedish Icebreaker Oden and the USCG Cutter Polar Sea. They broke a channel through the meter thick ice all the way up to our “ice pier”. Continuing around the pier I walked to Hut Point. The ice on the back side of hut point has opened up into wide stretches of open water. What was solid ice just weeks ago is now deep black, eerily still ocean. And yet, still no whales. I stood and watched the Oden continue smashing through huge ice floes in the “turning basin” just offshore. It is currently preparing an area large enough for a cargo vessel the size of a football field to maneuver around in when it arrives in a little over a week.

ice pier

Icebreaker Oden

After thirty minutes of waiting for whales that never appeared, I started up the Hut Point ridge loop, certain that my departure would ensure that a dozen or so Orcas would surface immediately after. Just a quarter mile into the loop I heard a tiny, high pitched trilling sound. It took me a second for my mind to register what most humans on earth would instantly recognize as “bird”. You see, we have two kinds of birds here, both of the squawking rather than singing variety. I’m pretty sure these are legitimate ornithological distinctions. So a shrill chirping sound did not compute. I kept walking, not seeing what was making the sound until I was greeted by a loud, unmistakable Skua SQWAK! and an angry flapping of wings. On the ground about fifteen feet in front of me was a momma Skua and one impossibly white, impossibly fluffy and impossibly cute, Skua chick. Mom let me know that I best keep my distance. Her baby didn’t seem to understand that perhaps the constant trilling was a dead give-away to their location but I suppose when they have no natural predators, baby Skuas lack a certain amount of discipline growing up. I’ve always thought that Skuas are completely unlikable birds, but this little hatchling, actually about the size of a full grown chicken, proved that even Skuas start out cute. Oblivious to my presence, it kept pestering its mother until she literally coughed up the goods. I took this as my cue to leave.

I followed the ridge up toward Arrival Heights where they do some sort of “Science” inside a giant grey dome. There are actually two big domes on the McMurdo skyline. One white one, commonly referred to as the “golf ball” and this vaguely sinister looking grey one. I think it’s obvious one is for good science and one is for evil… In the background you can see Mt Erebus.

good science

bad science

Along the way I passed Rollcage Mary, a statue of the Virgin Mary surrounded by a tractor's roll cage. This is memorial of sorts to a Navy man who was lost to sea when his tractor plunged through the sea ice near Cape Royds. But this was back in the fifties or something. We don’t drive heavy vehicles on the sea ice anymore. Oh wait, yes we do.

At the top of the ridge I snapped a picture of the ice edge. There is now open water at the Dellbridge Islands. To put this in perspective, just two months ago, there was a road that went to the Dellbridge Islands and then continued on another ten miles past that. I drove to the end of that road just two months ago to the Penguin rookery at Cape Royds. Now the birds at Cape Royds are right on the waterfront.