Heritage Expeditions

Expedition Search

Cape Evans hut crushed by snow

Taken from 'The Press' on 28 November 2006

Record snows crush historic Antarctic hut

By JOHN HENZELL

Scott's Cape Evans Hut ©

An Antarctic hut used by Captain Robert Falcon Scott is being crushed under record snowdrifts, prompting a marathon digging effort by a New Zealand-led team.

Four conservators with the Antarctic Heritage Trust (AHT) spent a week shovelling 85 tonnes of snow from around Cape Evans hut in a bid to prevent more damage being caused by snowdrifts one third bigger than it has faced in its 95-year history.

A quirk of global warming is that more snow is predicted to fall in Antarctica as temperatures rise, putting more strain on a fragile hut located in one of the planet's harshest environments.

AHT executive director Nigel Watson said the unprecedented conditions threatened the hut and put urgency into the fundraising drive to safeguard it.

"For the last two years rafters in the stables have partially collapsed under the weight of the snow and the other thing we've seen is that when the snow melts, it flows into the hut and refreezes," he said.

"That's never happened before. It's all been in the last three years with an unprecedented level of snow accumulation. There's been a significant change in terms of the environment."

The hut is one of the top drawcards of Antarctica and still features Scott's sleeping bag lying on the bunk which he left in 1911 on his ill-fated expedition to the South Pole, never to return.

New Zealand is responsible for preserving the Cape Evans hut, as well as Scott's earlier hut near Scott Base and another built by Sir Ernest Shackleton at Cape Royds.

Watson said they were looking at a range of options to help the site cope with snow accumulation, including lessening snow build-up by installing wind vanes to create a vortex, or barriers. No decision has been announced and any plan would need approval by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

Amy Ng, a Wellington-based conservator, said in a blog that it took about a week of hard work to dig out the hut so they could use a jackhammer to create a drainage channel in the frozen ground to avert a repeat of the meltwater that flooded the hut in 2004.

She said snowfalls around the hut this winter were much higher than in previous years.

To reduce the need for future manpower, the Antarctic Heritage Trust is in the final stages of developing a strategy to manage the accumulation of snow around the hut. The team of conservators has moved on to the hut at Cape Royds built by Shackleton's 1908 expedition.