Scott Base

Blog trollers with very long and very detail-oriented memories may recall that on my way to South Pole in October 2015, I had the opportunity to visit New Zealand's Scott Base, which is just a few miles from McMurdo and by far our closest neighbor.

Scott base only has 12 winter-over residents, so they are as eager to interact/socialize with us over here at McMurdo as we are eager to up our coolness factor by hanging out with Kiwis. Every Thursday night at Scott Base is "American night," wherein they open their bar and bravely issue a blanket invite to everyone at McMurdo to come over to visit. (McMurdo runs shuttles back and forth for those not wanting to walk several miles in the sub-zero temps.)

So a couple weeks ago, I went to Scott Base with a couple of friends from the galley. Honestly, the most amazing part of it was how unbelievably gorgeous the night was. Here is a panoramic video looking out over the sea ice as the NSF shuttle van that dropped us at the Kiwi base was pulling away. Note the many seals hanging out on the ice.

And then a couple of stills. You can see in the second one that the sun was actually making the glaciers on the surrounding mountains glow pink. And then a Maori totem in the foreground makes for a pretty weird but lovely pic, I think.

I might have spent quite a bit of time outside enjoying the scenery before I bolstered myself up to head inside into the craziness. Not only was it American night, but the Kiwis really did it up with a St. Patty's Day theme. One of them even played the bagpipes for us!

In the end, though, it was still a party at a bar, and for me one of the joys of getting older is that there is less and less expectation of me to hang out at bars, which I've never enjoyed and always avoided. After an hour of this particular adventure, I had to leave because I was losing my voice from having to yell to be heard while trying to chit-chat with people. So instead, I've volunteered to be a shuttle driver for American night, and some Thursday evenings for the rest of the winter, I'll be driving a USAP van back and forth between McMurdo and Scott Base, refueling it under the Auroras, enjoying the night sky and the winter quiet along the way, etc. And then picking up a rowdy bunch of these folks to drive back home.

Weird or not, that sounds way more fun to me than actually being at the bar. Maybe there will be a post about that driving gig down the line, we'll see...