Suitcases and Pie: To the Cape!

It's hard to describe that first helo trip to Crozier. I was so excited that the memories are a little blurry. I sat in the front of the helo, my head on a swivel, trying to see everything at once, my camera following. I do remember the slightly disconcerting, unsteady feeling of lifting off for the first time in a helicopter.

Lift off!

Back seat crew: Megan, Amélie, Ben

Pretty soon, we were surrounded by white, but it was far from uniform. The mostly flat sea ice ran up to the crackled, cravassed slopes of Mt. Erebus, where deep blue cracks looked deceptively shallow.

The slopes of Mt. Erebus

After a short 30 minutes, we arrived at out tiny hut at Cape Crozier. And it is tiny. If you didn't know where to look, it would be surprisingly easy to miss our little sanctuary in the vastness of the landscape.

The hut from the helo landing pad

Since it was the start of the field season, we had quite a bit of gear to bring out with us so we had to have a second helo follow us out with most of our gear. Although we could hear it coming, it was still hard to find the tiny speck in the sky slinging all our precious food and sleep kits

The speck

Shortly after lugging all our gear from the helo pad to the hut, the wind picked up and we were treated to a small taste of the legendary Crozier weather. We sheltered in the hut, with gear, as the wind gusted and snow swirled.

I think it's night in this photo. Or is it day? I can't tell.

Inside. Critical components: heater on the right, wine on the shelf.

We did manage to set up three tents in a lull, and Amélie and I tried to sleep in them that night. After a few hours, the wind picked up again and we gave up and moved inside. Welcome to Crozier! Next day it stormed all day until early evening when the wind finally died. By this time we were all dying to get to the colony so we geared up and headed down the hill.

And then there were penguins. Everywhere. The colony stretched out before us, thousands and thousands of patiently incubating penguins. I was immediately struck by the noise. Or rather the lack of it. I've spent a lot of time on seabird colonies in the last 10 years and there are generally two things they have in common: guano and noise. Mates greeting each other, birds fighting, general audio chaos. But for a colony with 500,000+ penguins, there was remarkably little sound. It turns out that most birds at the colony when we arrived were already incubating. The raucous mate choosing had passed, eggs were laid, and females went out at sea. With no mates around, the incubating birds have no one to talk to and spend most of their time sleeping, with only rare shouts at an encroaching neighbor or wandering birds. Apparent peace reigned.