Saturday, September 29, 2007

Nordic skiing.

Today I went Nordic Skiing around the three cols (14klm) last time I used skins,normal ski's and mountaineering boots and bindings this time I used leather boots and Nordic ski's .
No blisters but my legs feel tired and my face got sun burnt, the hole in the ozone is at it's largest at this time of year.
I'll sleep tonight

Thursday, September 27, 2007

CTD in Ryder bay

The other day I went out with Mike and Ali to do a CTD which is where you lower a device 450m into the sea it then takes readings of the temperature, salinity and density of the water.Ali needs a hand with this as you have to manually wined the apparatus up and down.


This Weddle seal was asleep on this ice burg till we woke it up.

It didn't stir form its slumber much.

RO troubles (not as painful as it sounds)

Last night I was woken up by night watch at 11.50 as the alarm was going on the RO plant, the reverse osmosis plant produces all our drinking and washing water, so as you can imagine it is very important.

I was up till 3am taking and testing water samples from each set of membranes, pictured above they work by magic as they remove the salt from the seawater which then gives us pure water.

The tests proved that two of the membranes were faulty and the rest were on the way out so I replaced them all.
Another job well done.

Snow Clearing

Andy and Matt blowing the snow off the runway, getting it ready for the planes coming in a couple of weeks time.

There is lots of clearing to do not just with diggers there is a lot of hand digging required.

The weather and wind conditions have to be right to clear snow like this.


Thursday, September 20, 2007

Garage Party Cont....

Tris doing some sort of erotic dance.

Taking Health and safety a little to far.

I have no Idea what song that is were dancing to.

Tris really getting into it.
A great night.

Garage Party

Tech services dance team.
Kenny doing Ballet , Scott break dancing , me funky chicken.
As there are only 4 weeks till the planes start to come in we are making the most of our time together. A disco was arranged in the garage it was a great success.

Rob and Mike.

As you can see enjoying every minute.

Ken Hanging a Mech some sort of tradition.


Last time I saw that face was on Lord of the Rings.
My Precious.
This photo is rated 18 as it may be scary to children.
Look Away now kids.

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Three Colls.

After last nights disco I went skinning up to Vals then around the three colls a distance of 14 kilometres.

Some of the scenery on route.

It was so peaceful on my own a great way to gather your thoughts.


I had four blisters on one foot and three on the other by the end.

Saturday, September 15, 2007

Climbing wall

At Rothera we have a climbing wall which is just another thing to do on those bad weather day.

Friday, September 14, 2007

What a trip.

The remains of an old Single Otter that crashed here years ago.

A ice cave formed by the crashing waves in early winter.

During a clear night we saw the Milky Way, some Iridium Flares and a shooting star.

A race for home trying to get to Rothera in a small weather window.

Drew my keeper for the week.
Thanks to him I had a great time.
Bye the way I let you win at cards.

Scenery

Where glacier meets the sea.

A shattered glacier.

Every line tells a piece of history.

Snow cornice.

A sunset over a frozen Bellahusen sea.
Stunning.

Fun at Carvajal

We went skiing.

Snowboarding.

Blow hole inspecting roped up in true Antarctic fashion.

Ice climbing 100 meters above sea level, centimetres that is.

Both Drew and I read a book ,Fatal Passage,that I will highly recommend, which is about John Rea a famous Scottish Arctic explorer who found the lost Franklin expedition who were looking for the North West Passage. In the book he describes how he survived by building igloos, so we gave it a try there were a few holes in it but wasn't structurally sound as the wind blew it down that night.

Carvajal

Cavajal with its out buildings which include a garage including a boat and 2 skidoos, a generator shed and a workshop.



As you can see there is a fair amount of snow built up around the buildings.

Drew and I trying to keep warm in a building that has no electric,running water or heating apart from a paraffin stove. We had Tiley lamps for light and a Primus stove for cooking.
Due to bad weather we ended up staying here for 7 days where we had planned only 2 days.
To keep ourselves amused we read, played cards and slept for 12 hours a day.
When the weather let up for a couple of hours we managed to get out for a walk etc.

Carvajal here we come

For my second winter trip I chose to go to Carvajal an old British base, now owned and run as a summer only base by the Chileans. My Field GA was Drew Cook. To get there we had to do linked travel as we had to go over crevasse fields, first we had to go down MacCallums pass then up the Slowman Glacier.

It was -11 without wind chill while travelling.

We passed some amazing scenery .

The Slowman Glacier with crevassing in the distance.

Carvajal.
The base is in disrepair but still it's a good change of scenery.