Adjusting back to life at Scott Base is like returning home from a long holiday. There are regular meal times, feasts would be a more accurate description. At 7, 10, 12, 3, and 6 you are fed with mounds of food with plate sizes starting at large. There is a running joke that you have to eat more than your body weight in food as you are in Antarctica and you never know when your next meal is going to be. If you are not careful you will end up looking like the seals out on the sea ice.
Chris Ansin
Life at Scott Base is not just all about the food. As it is essentially a giant box and going outside takes a significant amount of effort, there are often activities and events to keep the spirits high. During the first week back there was a barn dance with live bagpipes and a line instructor, it was the last place that I would expect to see a bagpipe. We spent the Sunday on a field trip exploring Castle Hill where you harness up to climb to the top, quite exhausting but the views are spectacular. From the top we could see cloud rolling in across the ice shelf so we quickly turned around to get back to base.
Chris Ansin
A seal basking on the sea ice
Stuck for nine days due to several storm cycles, some of the people at Scott Base were very keen to leave. I couldn’t think of a better place to be stuck! On the bright side, the storm cycle produced some of the nicest snow Antarctica has seen for a long time. It was bizarre to see people amazed at snow in Antarctica, what I thought would be the home of snow. The snow gods had delivered nearly a foot of fresh powder, and what better way to celebrate by going out skiing cross country.
We have started work on replacing the roof on Hillary’s (TAE/IGY) Hut, and it is about time that I became a roofer. I was always told by my father to get into a trade when I was younger. Here is my chance to live that dream and see if my dad was right.
Written by Chris Ansin, Antarctic Heritage Trust and Sir Peter Blake Trust Antarctic Youth Ambassador.
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The Trust raised nearly a million dollars to save the hut, also known as the TAE/IGY Hut, which was built by a team under Sir Ed’s leadership in 1957 just before his famous dash to the South Pole. The fundraising campaign included a 2012-kilometre tractor journey from Piha Beach to Mount Cook, collecting donations on the way.
Assembling the battens for the roof
The team are now thrilled to have completed conservation work on an iconic piece of Kiwi history.
New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust programme manager Al Fastier says it’s been a long and successful road to save the hut and conserve the hundreds of artefacts within it.
“As a historic site, its significance is that it’s the birthplace of New Zealand’s presence in Antarctica and the link to Sir Ed’s famous tractor trip to the South Pole.”
Antarctic Heritage Trust
Antarctic Programme Manager Al Fastier working on the roof
New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust programme manager Al Fastier says it’s been a long and successful road to save the hut and conserve the hundreds of artefacts within it.
“As a historic site, its significance is that it’s the birthplace of New Zealand’s presence in Antarctica and the link to Sir Ed’s famous tractor trip to the South Pole.”
While working to conserve Hillary’s Hut last season, the need for a weather-tight long-term roofing solution was identified.
Fastier says the Trust wanted the roofing solution to last a minimum of 35 years but more likely 50 to 100 years. A plan was then developed to overclad the historic roof, meaning the original roof remained intact.
Antarctic Heritage Trust
Antarctic Youth Ambassador Chris Ansin working on the hut roof
A key feature of the newly restored hut is the painted aluminium roof, complete with new battens painted in the original bright orange.
“It gives it a real point of difference,” says Fastier, a long time visitor to the ice.
For Fastier, there was an even greater connection to the restoration effort, New Zealand and Hillary, given he slept in the hut on his first trip to the ice in 1987.
Antarctic Heritage Trust
Chris Ansin, Al Fastier and Geoff Cooper taking a break on the roof of the hut.
As if the project itself did not provide enough of a challenge, the team had to work around extreme weather systems that included snow and wind storms.
Temperatures averaged -8 to 15 degrees Celsius during the project, with a few -25 and -30 degree Celsius days thrown into the mix.
For specialist Standing Seam roofer, Mike Burgess, the conditions provided a job unlike anything he had ever tackled.
“I’ve never been that cold,” says Burgess, who had to race indoors on the odd occasion to regain feeling in his hands.
The project manager for Architectural Metalformers is used to working through complicated roofing projects in rural, commercial and urban environments in and around Auckland – and less so in the world’s harshest environment.
When he was granted the opportunity to join the conservation effort, Burgess did not hesitate to accept.
“The opportunity to waterproof such an important New Zealand building with our product, while endeavouring to make it visually similar to the original aesthetic could not be passed up, regardless of the weather complexities,” Burgess says.
Not one to opt out of a challenge, Burgess combined his more than 20 years in the business, with further research, to come up with the robust long term waterproof roofing solution.
Burgess and Architectural Metalformers offered their time free of charge.
Having now returned from the ice, Burgess remains under the Antarctic spell.
“It’s been an experience that I will never forget, images and my words certainly don’t do it justice” he says.
“The scale, beauty and the history of the Antarctic – I’ve been bitten by the bug.”
Burgess and the Trust would also like to thank Pacific Coilcoaters, Sika NZ and Nexus Foams for their donated products and technical assistance.
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Exhausted with desperation, in the dimming light of the Antarctic Autumn, the heroic men of the Terra Nova expedition left back at Cape Evans knew with certainty that the South Pole expedition had failed. It would be another 6 months until the first light of day gave any hope of finding the bodies and learning the terrific and terrible tale of Robert Falcon Scott.
Chris Ansin
Cape Evans
Jars full of salt on the walls, wheels of cheese high above, and at both ends of the hut were two ovens that would have radiated lifesaving warmth. Seal fat still to this day dripping from the blubber pile and a vast array of scientific equipment throughout the hut. This expedition lived in relative comfort, yet the challenges and hardship faced by these brave men were incredibly real. The polar party never returned, meeting their fate just 11 miles from a wrongly located lifeline of food and supplies, enough to ensure a safe return home.
Inside Scott’s Hut…
To this day, the Terra Nova hut at Cape Evans stands strong, the Antarctic Heritage Trust having conserved and made the hut almost liveable for another hundred years. So strong that it was almost enveloped in snow when we arrived. Good thing that I had just had lots of experience digging snow and ice at Cape Royds. We arrived on Friday and spent Saturday digging out the snow to uncover the hut beneath. On Sunday, a trip from Scott Base arrived to explore the hut and completed what we had achieved in an entire day in a matter of minutes. They did have a shorter walk to the snow pile!Scott’s Hut at Cape Evans is magical. It portrays a life of exploration in the quintessential British way of hardship and vision. It shocks you into a reality as if you are part of the expedition. The richness of the environment and the quantity of artefacts makes you feel like you are genuinely living alongside these men, yet it is steeped with tragedy from every heroic era expedition that stepped through those doors and slept on those beds. The hairs on the back of your neck tingle as you bend down to enter, with the memories of the expedition still so present today.
From Cape Royds we moved on to Cape Evans, camping near the Terra Nova hut where we spent four days on the monitoring and maintenance work. There was a lot more snow at this site and the team have been very busy, excavating the snow away from the hut and exterior objects and checking the roof for snow ingress.
Diana McCormack
Part of my job was the conservation cleaning and treatment of mould growth around the hut, and this was particularly important around the exterior walls and bunk spaces. The environmental conditions inside the hut are very cold, but in the summer temperatures can rise high enough to allow mould growth; this would be damaging to the organic artefacts like the wooden boxes and the clothing and bedding on the bunks. We have also been monitoring and recording the condition of the artefacts, which has been great because I have been able to handle some amazing objects.
Diana McCormack
Inside Scott’s Hut
My favourite thing about this hut (which is all utterly wonderful!) is the wardroom table. It sits at the centre of the living space and appears in so many iconic photographs from the Terra Nova expedition, such as the one of Scott’s birthday dinner. Looking at it closely you can see the worn and scratched surface from years of intensive use in a really crowded space; for me this brings the warmth of life into the room, much more than if everything were in pristine condition.
It is important to remember in conservation that signs of use on artefacts are a huge part of their history and telling the story of the expeditions, and the AHT have done a wonderful job of preserving these living objects.
Diana McCormack
Digging snow outside the hut
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An avid adventurer, Mr Bradshaw designed a prototype for an emergency backcountry ski hut in Arrowtown. Antarctica New Zealand has commissioned him to provide three for the southern continent.
Turk
The tanks, called ‘turks’ (not a tank, not a hut, not a yurt!), have a 10m² floor area and cost about $15,000 each. They’re being transformed into a living area, a work shed and a store room for Cape Adare. They’ll stay put there for the next four years as a temporary base for New Zealand Antarctic Heritage Trust experts conserving the first building on the continent – the hut of early explorer Carsten Borchgrevink.
The Cape Adare site made headlines around the world this year when a 118-year-old watercolour painting and a 106-year-old fruit cake were discovered as part of the artefact conservation project, which saw around 1500 items conserved at Canterbury Museum in Christchurch.. Both artefacts are thought to have been left there by the Northern Party from Scott’s Terra Nova Expedition (1910-1913).
Inside the Turks…
Mr Bradshaw is well aware of the conditions his huts will face.
“Temperatures reach -30 degrees, winds can get over 200 km/hr … these huts need to be sturdy! We’ll fill their bases with 2 tonnes of gravel, so they won’t go anywhere in the harsh Antarctic conditions” he says. “They’re also relatively light, so we can move them by helicopter. We’ll have the whole camp set up in a day.”
The turks took six weeks to assemble, and were built in Lyttelton. They are now being transported on the Chinese ship Xue Long. They’ll eventually arrive in February next year.
“Cape Adare is also home to the world’s largest Adélie penguin rookery, so we have to time the turks’ arrival for when the birds have finished nesting” says Mr Bradshaw.
Erik Bradshaw
The Turks being loaded on to the Icebreaker
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Scott Base is situated on Ross Island which is connected to the mainland by the Ross Ice Shelf. Before venturing out onto the ice shelf and go exploring we had to go through Antarctic Field Training.
Chris Ansin
This is as exciting as it sounds, spending the night out on the snow in a polar explorer tent, which uses the same design as the original tents used for the early Antarctic expeditions. After getting everything organised and briefing the team, we loaded up the Hagglund (an off road monster) out to our campsite to pitch the yellow triangles of tents. We were pitching our tents on the Ross Ice Shelf where the ice was approximately 300m thick. We spent the next few hours setting up camp and digging our kitchen in the most picturesque landscape imaginable. There are few places where everything in all directions is pure white, and we were being shadowed by Mt Erebus steaming away in our backyard.
Chris Ansin
Chris in Antarctica
There was not a wisp of wind in the air as we cooked dinner and had ourselves a merry feast of backcountry freeze-dried food and hot chocolate. This was camping at its finest! After dinner we went out for a Hagglund back country cruise, a short trip and a mild scramble to the top of Castle Rock to get 360o views of McMurdo Sound and the mountains. The view was simply stunning. Unfortunately, time was not on our side as it was already nearly 11pm at night and we had to get back into camp. Somehow, I lost track of time being out in the field and around 1am I went to take a nap and fell straight asleep despite the daylight. This is inside the tent at 1am with my new found roomie and friend Grant who is showing off his supreme selfie skills.
Chris Ansin
Camping Out
Travelling back, we had a short excursion on the sea ice outside Scott Base to see the Weddell seals with their pups. The seals come up in the cracks in the sea ice where the ice is pushed against the land causing pressure ridges. This provides the seals a safe place to sun bathe and raise their pups away from the dangers of the open water. The seal pups are amazingly cute and fluffy, this seal is about three days old and is still in the care of its mum.
Chris Ansin
A seal pup on the ice
Tomorrow we are traveling to Cape Royds and then to Cape Evans to camp out in the field for 8 days. We are doing the yearly maintenance on the historic huts of Shackleton and Scott. The sea ice out at Cape Royds isn’t stable enough to drive out to so we get to go in a helicopter to drop us off. I am already excited!
Written by Chris Ansin, Antarctic Heritage Trust and Sir Peter Blake Trust Antarctic Youth Ambassador.
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We have now had a whole week out in the field, visiting the historic huts. Our first trip was to Cape Royds by helicopter, as the sea ice is already too unstable to travel over. We came here to complete the annual maintenance and monitoring work on the hut, starting off by digging away all the snow and ice that had built up around the hut walls over the last year.
Diana McCormack
Stepping into the hut was an amazing experience, and for me this was a very long-anticipated moment. What really struck me was that even after so much time reading the accounts of the expedition and thinking about this trip, that it was still surprising. The artefacts and the furniture in the hut really brought home the domestic aspects of what life was like for Shackleton and his team, and for me that brought them off the page and into reality.
The stove at the centre of the hut is like the beating heart of the space, and is immediately comforting, even though the temperature inside the hut was -11 Celsius when we arrived. There were so many other little joys inside, and it is difficult to pick out the most special objects, but it was amazing seeing Shackleton’s own handwriting on the walls where he had marked out each man’s bunk space with their names.
The team worked in this hut for three days, checking for snow ingress, recording the condition of the objects and doing some conservation cleaning to remove the dust and scoria deposits from the last season. It’s wonderful to contribute, even in just a few days, to conserving this amazing piece of Antarctic history. Thanks AHT!
Written by AHT Conservation Ambassador Diana McCormack
Diana McCormack
Shackleton’s Hut at Cape Royds
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Has there ever been something that has always held your curiosity, but you never thought you would be able to experience? For me this was something that always captivated me every time I would fly out of Christchurch.
From the moment I set eyes on this majestic aircraft in 2011, I have always wondered what it would be like to be inside one. Today I finally got to step onto the C17 Globemaster and it did not disappoint! More importantly, I boarded this beast to fly to ANTARCTICA!
In the late 19th century only the most driven, brave and brash explorers ventured this far south into a world of the unknown. In 1898 Carsten Borchgrevink, the leader of the British Antarctic Expedition set the sails during the ‘heroic era’ of Antarctic exploration, and built what remains as the only example left of humans’ first dwelling on a continent, at Cape Adare.
Chris Ansin
Flying over Antarctica
I am travelling with the amazing people from the Antarctic Heritage Trust, a charitable organisation that has conserved the original huts of this era – including the huts of Scott, Shackleton and Sir Edmund Hillary and the thousands of items left behind. We will be working to conserve these historic buildings and artefacts to protect them for generations to come. Through these programmes the Antarctic Heritage Trust hopes to inspire the next generation with the spirit of exploration so they continue to discover the world around them.
It has been a fickle start to the summer this year with the weather playing tricks as usual. I was welcomed by Antarctica with a three-day delay as the weather had turned the week before. I am writing this as we are flying over the Pacific. It is a balmy -31oC with wind chill and I can’t wipe the smile from my face.
Before we can venture out of the base we must do a crash course on how to set up a tent in Antarctica. It sounds like this is shaping up to be a pretty good summer, camping by the beach, a bit of hard work, and great people…what more could I want?!
Stay tuned to find out how camping on the ice went, and whether jandals made the cut!
Written by Chris Ansin, Antarctic Heritage Trust and Sir Peter Blake Trust Antarctic Youth Ambassador
Antarctic Heritage Trust Conservation Ambassador Diana McCormack shares her experience of Antarctic Field Training.
Everyone who comes here has to complete Antarctic Field Training, which means spending a night camping out on the ice and learning how to cope with the conditions outside of the base. We have just finished our training before heading into the field to work at the historic huts. Now I have been camping before, but this was camping and then some…
Diana McCormack
Mt Erebus in the background during Antarctic field training.
First of all the location is pretty hard to beat, with a stunning view of Mount Erebus just outside the tent flap. The tents we used were the Scott polar type, and it’s amazing to think that the design of these tents hasn’t changed for a hundred years, but then they are pretty good tents! It was really very handy to be able to stand up in the tent to get all the extreme weather clothing on.
Testing the clothing and getting used to the cold was another factor of the training. Trying to keep track of exactly which of your 37 pockets you have stashed your gloves in is a challenge, and one I still haven’t mastered.
We built ourselves a shelter by cutting blocks out of the compacted sea ice and making a wall, which may not look like much, but made all the difference in getting us out of the wind. Without the wind chill factor we were at -10 Celsius, which surprisingly can feel really quite pleasant with a cup of tea, good company and an amazing view. Can’t wait to put all this training to use in the field next!
Diana McCormack
Ice shelter – Antarctic field training.
Diana McCormack
Setting up tent during Antarctic field training.
Diana McCormack
Mt Erebus in the background during Antarctic field training.
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Chris Ansin 
Chris Ansin 
