Scott's Discovery Hut

Last night we took a walk to Scott's Discovery Hut. It is located, how appropriately, at Hut Point, just a short distance from McMurdo. It was built for Scott's 1901 expedition to the ice, but was not lived in during this expedition as it was too cold. It was however, later used by Shackleton and his crew in1908, and again by Scott in 1910, and one last time by Shackleton in 1917. At one time, there were 16 men living in it for a month. It was, in a word, amazing.
Approaching the hut:
We'll come back to the hut in a bit. First, we continued walking past the hut up to Vince's Cross.
Here are some of the views from that portion:
Here I am, with Scott's Discovery Hut behind, and McMurdo Station further behind that.
And finally, the view from Vince's cross.
Pretty pretty, no? Back down at the hut, we found something they left behind.
That is a seal. A dead seal. A dead 100 YEAR OLD SEAL! Wow. Just wow. But wait! There's more. Before entering the hut, we had to clean our shoes off really well so we didn't track in salt and dirt and such. The lock on the door was giving us a hard time, but Chicago winters have prepared me for such a thing, and we eventually got the door unlocked. Entering the hut was incredible. There is snow everywhere in it, and it is dark. We had these sub-par flashlights (boy, could we have used some X-Files flashlights) and really could only see things by taking a picture, and looking on our LCD screens which, amazingly, hadn't frozen by this point. I know people have been there before, but I felt like Carter discovering Tut's tomb.
Their food and gear has all been left behind. Even their stove is ready for cooking:
It was very cold and very dark inside. It smelled pretty bad, I'm sure we all breathed in some fairly foul stuff. And, there was snow everywhere:
It must have been truly horrendous for these men who had to survive here. One last picture. I haven't edited any of these yet, but I love this one. I think I'll call it "Closing the Hut":