antarctica prt 3

Scotts hut sits on a promontory looking 60 miles across the frozen sea to the trans antarctic mountains. The volcano Erebus smolders behind it and the barn glacier sticks its tongue out in front .
We Arrived and straight away grabbed a torch and filmed Ben clearing snow and entering the hut. It was the first time anyone had been inside that season .
His torch caught his frozen breath and played across the dinning table, bunks and shelves of food we know so well from photos. It was very very special and a moment i will never forget. I was touching ghosts.

As well as filming we had to live. So cameras down and we started pitching tents.

The pegs were manly steal spikes, the hammer was manly and of the sledge variety. But the permafrost outmachoed both. We all sat exhausted with a bent piece of metal lying next to a small graze in the ice.
Arse
It was left to the hard as steel kiwi John and his apprentice nick to fight the good fight whilst Tim, Ben and I unfolded ground sheets and discussed ' light' .
Evening found us all crammed into the wanagan ( portacabin ).
Here there was a welcome stove for heating and for melting snow for our drinking water. We were split into teams for cooking, cleaning, emptying the pee bucket and tamping the poo!
Our time in the hut was magical. Ben cleared the snow from the windows and I had brought just enough lights for us to film this most atmospheric of places.

It was split into many areas. Officers and men, kitchen, lab, dark room, library, bunks and dining area.
With over 10,000 artefact's there was always something new to see. The work the conservators had done was remarkable. Scotts socks draped over the end of bed, Wilsons paints at his desk, Pontings cuff links lay next to his printing ink. In the kitchen, tomato sauce, birds custard and bovril sat piled next to real turtle soup and balls of cheese- and yes you can smell it.

To try and bring it to life I used tracks and Steadicam. 
Ben's passion was wonderful. To hear him read diary extracts of Christmas day 100 years ago as we stood at the same table was haunting. Tim the director had tracked own the most wonderful diary entries from all the old house mates.
One evening a penguin turned up from nowhere. He handled the adoration quite well and just lay there looking slightly bemused. A week later a seal pitched up from the Icy horizon. He was a bit more bolshy and shouted a bit before heading off to only he knew where.
Life in camp fell into a pattern and we all found our place. Nick pretty much gave up sound recording and went off hitting bits of metal with John.
Ben told us where he would like his picture taken that day and Tim and I discussed light any time something needed lifting or tamping.

Whilst there we celebrated Bens birthday with cakes, candles and cards. A great night. Strange to think of Scott celebrating his birthday a hundred years ago in the hut next door.The volcano didn't erupt, the ice didn't melt and filming went very well.

We had a few forays out onto the ice. the first was to see the work of Dr Tim Haskell. His camp was on the ice beyond the trapped iceberg at the end of our promontory. We all trooped towards an unpromising poli tunnel ( the sort of thing we grow tomatoes and marijuana in in Devon). We walked inside and were first hit by the heat from the stove , then we saw a vast seal lying in the dining table sized hole in the ice. I grabbed a shot before he snorted and disappeared.
The hole had been cut to allow the teams ROV access to the magical world beneath.  As Ben chatted to the guys they released the robot sub with camera down Into the hole. As it sunk our friendly seal ascended and lay possessively in the hole. I hope it will be a nice sequence with Ben watching the seal from above and the robot sub filming the seal from below.
A really really lovely experience.

About 200 ft in front of scotts hut sat a smaller hut, out on the ice, about the size of a garden shed and aestheticaly as welcome as a nuclear power plant. It was American owned so we knew inside there were cages of monkeys, listening devices and oil drilling equipment. One day a vehicle turns up there, so we troop out to break the story. We were welcomed in to find a hole in the ice with two divers emerging. They had been counting starfish .......of course they had!

Shackleton had positioned his hut further to the east, nearer the open sea. We trundled off to see this other Legends abode.

On the way we past close to the snout of the barn glacier, the colours that it sucks up and then emits in cloudy light are unbelievable. You would use up every paint in your box before you got any where near White - apart from maybe red and yellow and orange and burnt sienna and ochre and ....
Shacketons hut was altogether different. It was lighter and more open with a lot happier feel about it. It sat up on a slope looking over a wonderful penguin colony, with cigar shaped seals dotting the ice. From the promontory above we could see  the open water on the horizon, like a Prussian blue wound gashed into the skin of Antarctica.

We finished at Scott's hut and headed back to Base.
On the last night i had walked out onto the frozen sea. There was complete silence and complete clarity. I could see forever.
i will  never forget being given this opportunity.

Back in 'civilisation' we showered, ate salad, and drank frothy coffee. we even sat on a normal loo , although Nick seemed incapable of letting go of his pee bottle and called it his 'noo noo'.

Our last foray was special. we had a helicopter for the day and we headed out to 'cape Crozier'.
This is the destination for 'the worst journey in the world' , often sited as the best travel book ever written.
Three of Scott's party before their dash to the pole headed East.
As opposed to Amundsen , whose sole purpose was 'pole bagging' , Scott's expedition was also a major scientific undertaking.
There was a believe that Emperor penguins provided a vital link in the evolutionary story and by collecting penguin eggs and studying their embryos, it could be proven. 
So in complete darkness, mid winter, Bowers, Garrard and Wilson headed East. It was a journey of indescribable hardship ( quite well described in the book).
It was so cold they had to get there bodies into sledge pulling position, before they froze like that for the day.
I wont go into it, but we landed on this desolate volcanic ridge, with the wind howling. It was the coldest we had seen. 
Ben and Nigel did their best to tell the story and Nick and i did our best to stand upright and keep our digits.
From here we headed onto the Ross ice shelf. A vast slab of ice the size of France. Under which somewhere lay the bodies of Scott's party.
We filmed a very emotive piece then had Ben walk across the snow and ice as we thundered overhead in the Helli. I got to hang out on a harness with my excitement only tempered by the loss of feeling in my face!

We flew back over the most impossible cracks and crevasses with the wind rising.
I asked the pilot to fly over a promontory to reveal the sea beyond. He tried and admitted he couldn't go higher and  was losing power ( in fact the tail rotor had stopped earlier!), when a pilot says such words you listen and go home for tea and biscuits. we went home for tea and biscuits.
We packed our kit, handed in our pee bottles, cleaned out our lockers and thanked our New Zealand hosts.
It had been remarkable.
The journey home was very very long, broken by Nicks birthday and a shopping frenzy in Christchurch. 
On arriving home the colours of the trees and grass looked ridiculous, everything was too colourful and too loud.
but i guess all hardened Polar explorers say that.