SNOW
HILL
ISLAND
Isla Cerro Nevado
64º 22' 00" S 56º 59' 00" W
The wooden hut (HSM 38) was prefabricated in Sweden to function as a research station and dwelling during the Antarctic winter. The hut was called "the Winter Station" by the expeditioners, but is today named "Nordenskjöld’s hut" or "Casa Suecia" or "Refugio Suecia". The Winter Station was erected in February 1902 on a hill between the sea and the mountains on the west side of Snow Hill Island. Six of the expedition members, including Otto Nordenskjöld and the Argentinian lieutenant José María Sobral, stayed in the hut for 22 months, until the Argentine ship Uruguay came for their rescue in November 1903.

During the stay, the group performed research in geography, geology, bacteriology and meteorology. The near surrounding landscape was set up like a laboratory with various sheds and installations for observation and measurements. The effects of climate change with meltwater erosion and land drift have destroyed and even erased many of these remains.

The Winter Station, a 4.0 x 6.3 metre wooden building, has, however, endured time and is well preserved, but the hill on which it stands is acutely threatened by the melting of permafrost and meltwater ero- sion. Efforts by the IAA from the 1990s up until the mid-2010s to reinforce the hill have probably kept the building from drifting and tumbling. Terraces were made of reused aluminium elements from temporary American aircraft runways used in Vietnam. The Winter Station has been maintained with many layers of tarred paper and new window sashes.

If the building is to stand for the next 30 to 50 years, the recommendation is to continue regular building maintenance and to resume to reinforce the hill using the same methods that the DNA-IAA have applied in the past. The sites with remains from Nordenskjöld's fieldwork are disappearing and require direct rescue archaeology.

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Point Clouds and Meshes
The scanning of the interiors of the winter station took place on the 12th and 13th of January 2020. In total, point clouds from 31 different positions were collected, ranging between 150 and 500 million points per scan. In addition to all the raw files, seven key positions have been processed and are available in full resolution through the repository and as previews below. The interior scans have also been registrered and combined into two point clouds, one for the ground floor and one for the attic. The ground floor point cloud is 2.6 billion points and the attic point cloud consists of 354 million points. These dense clouds can be donwloaded from the repository, and sparse representations of these are available below. The winter station exteriors, as well as the hill it stands on, have been captured through 54 scanning positions at four different occasions between January 13 and 19, 2020. These are available both as individual raw scans through the repository and as two point clouds combining several of the scans. The first one collects 34 exterior scans in greyscale of the station and hill (2.3 billion points) from January 13 and 14, while the second one in colour collects the 19 scans done on the January 18 and 19 of the winter station exteriors. Sparse versions of these point clouds are available below.

In addition to laser scanning, several models were produced through Structure-from-Motion photogrammetry, using both handheld cameras (Fujufilm X-T2 and iPhone XR) and drone (DJI Mavic 2 Pro and DJI Phantom 4). The exterior ground-based models of the hut and the hill were computed using 6657 photos captured with the Fujufilm X-T2, and the model giving an overview of the landscape through 1428 photos captured with the drone. A composit model, combiing both the dron photography of the immediate landscape and the detailed ground photography of the hut, is available as a point cloud.
360 degrees panoramas
The panoramas are obtained from three scanning sessions with the Faro Focus m70 on January 12, 13 and 19, 2020. The original resolution is 20288 x 10144 pixels (full resolution images can be downloaded from the repository). The outdoor panoramas were captured in early morning light on January 19 2020. Corresponding raw data point clouds in FLS-format for each of the scanning positions can be downloaded from the repository.
Orthophotography
The high resolution orthophotos of the site were created with Agisoft Metashape and structure-from-motion photography taken with a DJI Phantom 4, and Fujifilm X-T2 camera between January 12 and 19, 2020.
Plans and Drawings
The drawings of the winter station were carried out using traditional methods and are available both as pencil originals with notes and cleaned up ink drawings. The plans were produced using scan data from the Faro Focus m70 on January 12, 13, and 19.
Video
The videos were recorded using a DJI Mavic 2 Pro drone. The first four videos were captured on January 12 and 13 2020 to provide material for photogrammetric triangulation and the creation of a structure-from-motion model of the Winter station and the hill.
Photographs
The photographs were shot by the team members using a diverse set of equipments and techniques.
Historical photographs