The Blog

We have followed your reports with much interest and enjoyed seeing the splendid photos.  It is most encouraging to us lesser mortals to see you weathering the situation so well. Keep it going, we are proud of you. John Blashford-Snell and the Scientific Exploration…

Well, its time has come. After 100 or so days of being parked up and not turning a cog at -55C and  with winds gusting around it to chill it to the bone, Rover’s dig out time has come round. We all got stuck into clearing away the snow with shovels, ice axes, pry bars, welding rods and brushes.  Most of the morning (Monday) was consumed with removing the surrounding mounds of drift snow that…

After a day of dozing snow away from the cabooses and hand-digging snow from under the Science Caboose,  both cabooses are now almost ready to move. At long, long last and all being well with the weather, the Ice Team will be ready to starting moving the fuel scoots north tomorrow!

The Belgian Antarctic Expedition of 1897 to 1899 was the first expedition to winter in the Antarctic region. It was also the first scientific expedition to the continent itself. At the age of 25 Roald Amundsen was first mate on the expedition aboard the Norwegian-built whaling ship the Belgica. Unfortunately the vessel became locked in the Antarctic pack ice at 70°30′S off Alexander Island,…

Current position: S72 51′ 13.5″     E023 33′ 50.2″ Altitude: 2752m Temperature: -43C Wind speed: 26 knots Today’s actions:  Second Cat dug out, again, and engine compartments cleared, pre-heated and started. Currently warming and will be moved tonight. Both Cats will be left running round the clock with two-hourly checks throughout night. Manual snow clearance under Science Caboose, plus…

Between 1892–1893 Carl Anton Larsen led the first Norwegian expedition to Antarctica aboard the ship “Jason” to explore the possibility of whaling in Antarctica. Larsen became the first person to ski on the continent on the Larsen Ice Shelf, subsequently named after him. He is also remembered as collecting the first Antarctic fossils.

All work and no play. Watch this video from Antarctica showing the team trying to get the Cats dug out and started.

Between 1839 – 1843 James Clark Ross a British naval officer led an Antarctic expedition in command of the vessels HMS Erebus and HMS Terror with the aim of finding the magnetic south pole. He and his crew charted much of the coastline of Antarctica. In 1841, James Ross discovered the Ross Sea, Victoria Land, and the volcanoes Mount Erebus and Mount Terror, which were named after the expedition’s…

In 1820, several expeditions claimed to have been the first to have sighted Antarctica, with the very first being the Russian expedition led by Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev on 28th January 1820. The first landing is alleged to have taken pace just over a year later when American Captain John Davis, a sealer, and his men were the first recorded humans to have claimed to…