A Change in the View

For as long as I've been coming down here,
there have been two buildings halfway up
Observation Hill. At one time, there was a
small nuclear power plant located on this
site. After it was dismantled, two buildings
were left over. Building 087 was one of them.


Used for storage, it was slated for demolition
this year and once it started to go down, it
didn't take long.


Now, when you look up at Ob Hill, all you see
is Building 126. It too will be coming down
soon and all traces of buildings on the side of
the hill will be gone.

A Sense of Scale

A few days ago, I posted about open water
and how nice it would be if more ice blew out
of McMurdo Sound. Someone took this photo
from the top of Observation Hill and it gives
you a pretty good idea of how much ice would
have to blow out for McMurdo Sound to be
ice-free. A lot! Those mountains are about
70 miles away so about 70 miles of ice headed
north would take a pretty big gust of wind!

Ob Hill Loop

Overlooking McMurdo is Observation Hill...or Ob Hill
for short. It stands 750 feet above sea level and
provides a wonderful view of the surrounding area.
On this night however, I didn't climb Ob Hill...I
hiked around the base of it, on the Ob Hill Loop.
This is one of several fun hikes that make up the
Ross Island Trail System. At 3:00 in the morning
there are very few folks to share the trail with so
I found myself alone while making this interesting
hike.


Hiking around the base is a bit of a misnomer. In
most cases one walks across it, about halfway between
the summit and McMurdo Sound, far below. See the line
about halfway up in this photo? That's the trail. Not
a lot of room for error, especially since the trail is
less than a foot wide for most of it's length. When
I told Lynn afterwards that I hiked this trail by myself
(which is totally within the rules), she told me she was
glad she didn't know because she would have been a nervous
wreck!


On the backside there is a small crater that holds a
tiny pond. I had no idea this was here before I saw it.


Most of the trail meanders a bit, with lots of switchbacks
to cover elevation rises and falls.


Although there isn't any life along the trail (Characteristic
of all of Ross Island), there were some areas that seemed
even more barren than others, containing thousands of
square feet of volcanic cinders.


From one point, one gets a great view of Scott Base,
seen on the edge of the Ice Shelf. The fog was pretty
heavy, making it feel very "Brigadoon-ish".


Along one section there were bleached penguin bones
scattered along the cinders. Skuas apparently take
their penguin prey here for dinner and only the bones
remain.


The wind does some weird and powerful things to the
rocks, causing strange formations.


I found it really interesting to see all of the
different colors that were present in the volcanic
rock that makes up Ob Hill.


I knew I had reached the end of the trail when I saw
the trail marker sign showing the beginning if coming
from the other direction.

It was a great hike. It was really really nice to have
complete silence away from town and even have my adreneline
flow a few times. Well worth the couple of hours to
commune with nature.

A Really Big Rock

Distance and Light (or lack of sometimes) can really play
tricks on your mind of how big something is or how far away
things are down here. Our friend Brody took this photo of
Castle Rock the other day and the photo's depth and scale
do a good justice of how big it really is. Surprisingly,
I had never been to Castle Rock until this winter and I was
pretty amazed by its size...especially since it practically
springs from the glacier it's located on and is the only non
snow or ice object for quite a distance. It was formed about
1.2 million years ago as a volcanic vent (plug) and is one of
a dozen or so of these vents that extend all the way down the
Hut Point Peninsula from Mt. Erebus to Observation Hill. At
1355 feet tall, it is theorized that it actually formed under
the Ross Ice Shelf when the shelf was 1350 feet higher than
it is today. So at one time, I would have been taller above
the surrounding terrain than Castle Rock was. However, time
changes, Ice Shelves erode and Volcanic Plugs tend to remain.
In many ways, it's similar to one of my favorite places,
Shiprock, in New Mexico. I'm looking forward to visiting both
again in the near future.