Winter Trips

Winter Trips

Over the last few weeks all of us on base have had the chance to head out for five days of Antarctic camping. We get two trips - one at the start of winter and one at the end of winter. As the summer season dragged on pretty late this year it meant trying to squeeze them in before the temperatures dropped too low and the weather/light crapped out. Instead of going in groups of three (two people and our GA), we were in groups of four (three people and the GA).

For my trip our group was Nathalie (doctor and awesome former room mate of mine), Alex (part of the science team), Ian (GA) and I. The weather cut our trip to four days as winds were too high and contrast too poor to leave on the Monday. We waited until the Tuesday when we woke up to wonderful sunshine and no wind. A great way to start the trip … but sadly the best weather of the week, after which it was mostly not so good with poor contrast and some high winds, which saw us tent-bound for most of Wednesday. Luckily the temperatures were pretty favourable and we managed to stay cosy and comfortable.

I won’t write too much, I just thought I would post some photos where you can see what we got up to. It was great getting off the base for a few days and to get out and about doing things. Nathalie and I were really happy to be able to get out together and be tent buddies once again. And it was lovely to then come back to a warm welcome back at base afterwards and have the great feeling of coming home (well it’s home for now).

Now we are well in to our last month with sunlight. Sunrise is getting later every day and sunset even earlier. I believe the last day with a sunrise and sunset is the 1^st of May. There was a week or so when I was able to enjoy the sunrise by myself as I am usually the first one up and about. So I thought I’d include a couple of photos of those. I’m no photographer, so can’t really capture them as I want – they are amazing to see and an image is never quite the same (well the ones I take at least). It’s wonderful every morning, even if you just catch a small flash of colour on the horizon before it hides in the low-lying cloud.  

Start of Winter

Start of Winter

It’s been a few weeks now since winter officially started for us here at Halley. The usual way of doing things involves the ship the Ernest Shackelton, known as the Shack, which was also used to bring in supplies for Relief. It returns from the Falklands with fresh food supplies and any other bits and bobs we may need, drops them off at a site near here and, in turn, picks up the summer workers and outgoing winter team. Unless, that is, it can’t make it through the sea ice….which is what happened this year. No ship meant finding another way of getting people out of here and food deliveries in, with planes being the only option. The Baslers flew us in some much needed supplies and then, in a couple of trips, took the summer folk out of here…leaving just the 13 of us to winter.

It was cool to gather as a winter team and wave the final plane off. All of us who were on base were there minus Malcolm, our comms guy who needed to be in contact with the plane, and Alex who was doing air observations for the plane too. Ian, Celine and Hue also missed the fairwell as they were off on their winter trip (more on that in my next post). We waved them off with the traditional orange smoke flares before returning to a quiet and peaceful base for lunch.   

Trip to Gatekeeper

Trip to Gatekeeper

We had a couple of trips out to a crevasse near here called Gatekeeper recently. It was a chance to get people off base to go and do something, as well as getting in some more training for the SAR (search and rescue) team, of which I am a part. I went out on one of the trips last weekend and took some pretty rubbish photos before my battery died, but they at least give you a little idea of what we were up to. The contrast that day was quite poor, which didn’t help. I did manage to grab my other camera out to catch the spectacular sunset we were fortunate to be driving back to base under though. Amazing!

Folk Night

Folk Night

We had a great open mic type night here not too long ago. A number of people put their egos on the line and got up and performed and it really was a lot of fun. I got roped into doing a couple of numbers with Pete, our local wintering musical guru. He plays the guitar beautifully and let me ruin it with my totally mediocre uke playing, which I hope I masked successfully with my singing?! I do have recorded footage of these, to be shown to a select few at a later date…perhaps. A scary evening…but a lot of fun! And I also got dragged in to a couple of other acts along the way too. Everybody did really well and it was such a good evening and something we’ll hopefully do a bit more of in the winter…with a slightly smaller audience.

Sunset

We recently had our first sunset since getting here in November. We missed celebrating the first “official” sunset as it was masked by heavy cloud for a few evenings. But we made sure to mark it when we could by going up to upper obs for the best view in the house. Notice Natalie sporting the latest in Antarctic sunset spotting eyewear.

The evenings are now getting longer and it’s pretty much dark for a while at night. The temperatures are slowly dropping and work is winding up here for the summer.  

Winterer’s Training

A couple of weeks ago we, the 2015 winterer’s, had a weekend away from 
base to undergo some training to prepare us for our “winter trips”. Once 
the ship has left with all of the summer folk there is the opportunity 
for us to go out in groups of three (two people and the GA) to explore a 
little over a number of days. This means…Antarctic camping. So the 
training weekend was to give us a taster of how this is done and give us 
practice in practical exercises such as using the Primus stoves and the 
Tilly lamps. We also covered some rope training, crevasse rescue and 
linked skidoo travel training.

We set off to Creek 3 on Friday afternoon and after a brief chat we set 
up our tents. Natalie and I were tenting together – a good thing in case 
we suffer separation anxiety from spending more than a couple of hours 
away from each other! It was a lovely evening, which made it 
straightforward.

Nathalie digging snow blocks/defensive trench (!).

Once the tents were up we were free to cook some dinner, melt water and 
chill out for the rest of the evening. The whole BAS tenting system is 
super comfortable. I will post more on that when we actually go on our 
trips, but it is toasty and cosy in those things, especially at this 
time of year when it is not yet cold (!).

The next day we grabbed a partner and were split in to two groups. Our 
group went with Nick (a GA visiting from Rothera to give us a hand with 
training at the moment) and started with some rope work and general 
crampon/ice axe training. What a day for it!

Creek 3 is where the ship was able to moor this year for “relief”. Just 
weeks ago there were some big vehicles driving back and forth on the sea 
ice off loading all the cargo. You could still see the tracks … heading 
straight to the water now as a lot of the ice has broken up since.

We finished the morning with some abseiling and belaying each other on 
safety ropes.

After some lunch we then headed to the other side of camp to do some 
“fall arrest” and crevasse rescue training. This is for if the partner 
you are roped together with falls into a crevasse – you can stop them 
going further, build an anchor, take the strain off the rope and rig up 
a pulley system with which to haul them out of the crevasse, should they 
not be able to climb out themselves. We had covered this on our field 
course so it was great to be able to put this in to context and to brush 
up on what we had learned (and nearly forgotten) a while ago now!

We took it in turns being the “casualty” at the end of the rope and 
conducted the exercise on a small slope rather than anything more 
severe. Steve wins the prize for most dedicated casualty – giving his 
partner absolutely no assistance as he was being halled up the slope as 
total dead weight, and for a part of it at least, face first.

We also got to have a little walk to admire the view…

Day 2 saw the weather turn a little – the wind picked up a little and it 
was pretty overcast. Some of us were woken in camp by a little visitor…

We then packed up camp and took a little while to sort stuff out and 
decide on what the group wanted to do next. Most of the group wanted to 
head back to base, but three of us stayed behind with Nick to do a bit 
of recreational ice climbing. It also meant we could do our link skidoo 
training on the way back to base afterwards.

It was great to get away from base for a couple of days, especially over 
a weekend (a real treat for a chef). Winter trips will be happening 
soonish as it is already February. The ship is due in at the very end of 
the month and will be leaving somewhere around the first week of March. 
Not long and we’ll be down to 13…

Halley International Airport

We had the two BAS Twin Otters come through last week. They had been through two weeks before picking up and dropping of the Sledge India science field party to a remote spot roughly a two hour flight away. This involves not only taking the 4 man party out there, but also all the kit including skidoos and it took 5 separate flights to do so.  And so last week they were tasked with picking up the guys and relocating them to another area. This took 4 flights (I think) to get them to Halley, where they stayed for the night, and then a further 4 flights the following day to take them out to their field location.

On my day off last week I was able to accompany Natalie to the ski-way - the groomed “runway” just outside the perimeter where any planes coming through land. They also get refuelled here and if they are stopping over they get tied down in case the weather changes.  I had been out with Natalie and John to the ski-way before, but this time the weather was great and I remembered my camera! I love getting out of the kitchen and seeing these things, as I don’t get to do it every day. And I don’t know anything about planes, but the Twin Otters seem pretty cool to me. 

And lastly, some visitors.