10 mile hike to Castle Rock

Scott looking super cool in his antarctic shades ;-)
Castle Rock reminds me of pictures I've seen of Ayers Rock (Ularu?) . This was about 5 miles into the hike, and the temperature in this shadow was about thirty degrees cooler than in the sun. Kind of like the dark side of the moon...
Distances are so deceiving here. You think you have just 500 yards to go but it ends up being several miles.
We hiked for about 4.5 hours and I was exhausted at the end because the snow was a little deeper than this in most spots, so it was quite a slog. Absolutely gorgeous day though!
This is a little safety pod they have out on the trail in case of emergencies. We had to check out radios with the fire department and check back in when we returned (otherwise they send out search and rescue and that can be embarrassing).
Erebus, the live volcano was definitely in a Mt. Doom mood today. It had an eery Lord of the Rings cloud going on for the first part of the day.
That little dot is a tomato emergency hut probably 2 miles away.
These cliffs are where the land meets the sea.
Scotty peeking in the tomato hut. It's like a little space pod. And wow, it was warm!

When we started it was warm enough not to have our Big Reds on (about zero degrees), but later on the wind picked up so we were thankful we wore them around the whole day like some sort of half-molted insects.
Towards South Pole and ultimately AGAP, Scott's new home next month. This will be what he gets to see every day, except that it will be 50 below zero.
Ah, it's heavenly to get out and away from the station! We had a blast today.
The trail.
Pinching ourselves that we are actually here in Antarctica...
4-armed Scott


Funny thing happened yesterday. I am now training people on the big Deltas and I read in the manual that it is very important to check the petcocks in the engine of these old beasts. Well, no one trained me on that so I had to go around asking what a pet cock was. Yes, people knew that it was a safety issue, but no one remembered where these little petcocks were. One wise guy in the office said he knew where his petcock was. Ha, ha. Well, I held it together pretty well, not laughing and all (who named these things anyway?) while in the office but when I told the people I was training that they would have to come back and get special petcock training once we located where the damn things were, I finally couldn't hold it together any longer. I started giggling. And thank God, they did too. Sheesh it's hard to act my age sometimes.

Bad news. Ben has the Epstein-Barr strain of Mono and is quite sick. Elizabeth is also a little overwhelmed at the moment too. It's hard to be 10,000 miles away from those guys when they are going through rough times. So, any family members feeling like giving them a holler? Thanks a million.