Ross Sea

The Ross Sea is the far side of Antarctica from the Peninsula, reached by icebreaker voyages of several weeks from New Zealand or Tasmania, and it holds the huts of the heroic age of polar exploration. On Ross Island, Scott's hut at Cape Evans and Shackleton's at Cape Royds still hold their stores, bunks and sledges, preserved by the cold. McMurdo Station, the largest settlement on the continent, and New Zealand's Scott Base stand below the smoking summit of Mount Erebus. The Ross Ice Shelf ends in a wall of ice dozens of metres high that runs for hundreds of kilometres.