Solidarity from Antarctica and a very cold hike

I didn't actually take this one, but I figured it was awesome enough to be worth nabbing and sharing. You might have seen this kicking around other places on ze interwebs, as it seems to have gone viral on facebook and reddit and other such things. Four of these folks are my roommates, and they took this a few days before I arrived. Kind of crazy how small the world can become...

Yesterday was my day off, so I waited around in the galley until I found someone else who doesn't work Tuesdays so I could kidnap them and go hiking. You have to take a buddy with you on most of the hikes that you can do around here, and you also have to check in with the fire house and get a radio and give a detailed account of where you're planning on going and how long you'll be gone. If you don't show up by your estimated return time, they start mobilizing helicopters and search and rescue. People have died while out hiking, so it's a very good policy, but the fire house gets very mad at you if you forget to check in and they have to send out helicopters when you're actually just back in your room drinking a beer.

One of the two emergency shelters along the route. They're pretty adorable. They're stocked with caches of food, extra sleeping bags, camp stoves, and a very random assortment of out of date reading material. One of them had a National Enquirer from 2009 in it.  

  

Complete with classy furniture!

They look a bit like flying saucers from the inside. 

...which is fitting because the landscape looks like another planet.

That little dome off in the distance is some sort of fancy science thingee. I'm going to go investigate it sometime this week. 

This is what I looked like by the end of the hike. It's a very strange feeling to not be able to blink properly because your eyelashes are frozen together. Also, this picture further confuses me as to whether my eyes are hazel or brown. I think I could argue for either?