Jason in Antarctica: Ski trip

Here the photos (lots of them) from our ski trip on the Castle Rock Loop. It is about 9 miles, you ski about 6 of them and hike the other 3. I had not Nordic skied in awhile but it came back pretty quick. It was just great to say I skied in Antarctica! In the middle of the loop is a large rock, they call the Castle Rock.

We had a prefect day, there were some clouds but as you will see in the pictures they made for some great formations. There was no one else out on the trail which was great!

This was also a great trip because it made me feel like I was in Antarctica. It was just white snow, ice and glaciers all around. As you saw from previous posts, around McMurdo is pretty brown.

That is Mt. Erebus in the background

The trail is marked by flags. You always need to stay near the flags. These trails are checked weekly for safety. Going off trail here can be really dangerous, the snow covers most crevasses. So you would never see them, then fall in. Black flags mark known crevasses.

The green little hut is a warming hut they have through out the loop. Then call them "Apples".

This is me skiing up the trail

This is the Kiwi ski hill. They installed a tow-rope powered by a generator. If you are not Kiwi, it is by invite only (rare for Americans). It would of been cool to downhill here.

The whole ski/hike we did was on the ice shelf or glacier. This is a crack in the ice shelf. From the picture you can see how long the crack is.

I was trying capture the size of the crack and you can see it goes pretty deap.

At the Kiwi ski hill is where we transitioned to hiking.

Not sure you can tell but the hike was very steep up to Castle Rock. Then we skied from Castle Rock home.

A cool picture of the trail and different blues in the sky

This picture does not show well on the blog but is post card worthy in its full format.

We then climbed the Castle Rock. You can see the rope that is in place that shows the trail. It was a pretty steep climb and lots of loose rock/gravel.