Midwinter Week

Midwinter Week

We had our midwinter celebrations this week. It also marks the half way point for some of us who came in early, as we are now 8 months in with 8 months to go. In some ways it has flown by and in other ways not. But here we are at the end of June, in the darkness and experiencing our coldest temperatures so far (- 55.7 C).

Sunday the 21^st saw our main midwinter celebrations and it’s somewhat like Christmas in ways. I started the day in the kitchen, of course, but midwinter brunch responsibility fell on our winter base commander Tom Welsh. We gathered together in the bar for a relaxed brunch complete with bubbly and freshly pressed orange juice I had put away in the freezer months ago.

Then it was on to our winter gift giving/opening (Bescherung). I’ll explain this a little bit here…

Months ago, at the start of winter, we each drew a name out of a hat who was to be the recipient of a gift we had to make ourselves. Some were kept more secret than others. I shut myself in my room for a long time stitching my fingers to the bone to complete my embroidery piece for Tom W. I enjoyed it…until probably the last few hours of work, which nearly broke me!

The gift given to me was made by Dave – one of our science team here and the youngest member on base. Thanks so much for your efforts – greatly appreciated and I will make sure to look after it and treasure it.

It was great to see what everybody had come up with and hear their stories of success or woe in the making process.

Thanks Tom Welsh for the photo

After the gifts I hopped straight back into the kitchen to sort Midwinter’s dinner out. This had taken the last couple of weeks and some late nights in the kitchen to prepare for, so on the day it was pretty straightforward. But it still meant many hours in the kitchen making sure it all worked out alright. I was pretty happy with how it turned out in the end, and I hope the rest of the team was too.

Thanks again Tom for the pic.

After dinner I could finally run and grab a shower, change into my glad rags and join the others in listening to the BBC World Service broadcast. Each base selects a song to put on, requests a guest speaker to say a few words, and then gets a message or two from loved ones back home (thanks lots Mum, Dad, and Becky). We also had a quick conference call with last years’ winter team, who were having their own solstice celebrations back in the UK.

After all of this we managed to fit in some more food in the way of cheese, homemade crackers, and a Christmas cake (Dave’s granny’s recipe, made by Dave…expertly, or NOT, iced by me – in the shape of Windy Bay with the penguin colony) and more drinks. 

We all had the rest of the week off and filled it with a mix of doing absolutely nothing, and some organised traditional events. The Halley Olympics was pretty funny and got everybody out and about. The events were a hammer throw, jumaring in the garage, man hauling team members on the kiddy sledges, mass egg and spoon race (with orange golf balls instead of eggs), curling under the modules (with heavy pans and brushes), team table tennis, table football and ending with the corridor bungee. Good work everybody…. especially the team I was on…who won!

Later in the week we had a base pub-crawl. Most of us came up with a drink and a bar that we set up in our workspaces and it was a good change of scenery to our usual bar. Some drinks were nicer than others…

I chose to make good use of the copious amounts of processed tinned meat we have on station…

And then we had the crazy golf tournament set up around the place by Pete and Ian. Most of us made our own clubs for the occasion. In case anybody needs this advice for the future – the dough hook from the mixer strapped to a ski pole does not make the most accurate golf club. Now you know.

And so it’s back to work. It’s come around so soon, as it always does. Our next week off will be our second round of winter trips somewhere around October. That seems way off right now, but I am sure it will be here in a flash.  

Sun Down

Sun Down

A few weeks ago we had our sundown celebrations – on the last day of a 
full sunrise and sunset until August. Luckily we had lovely weather for 
it so we could actually SEE the sun doing its thing. We worked the 
morning and then had the rest of the day for some festivities…though, 
being the chef, having a half day wasn’t really an option.

It was great to be able to spend the day and evening together as a team 
and have a lot of laughs. We have still had ever dwindling light for the 
few weeks since and, of course, the sun won’t pop over the horizon for 
some time to come. The modules have tinted glass so from inside it looks 
like it is pitch black constantly. We have SAD lights in our rooms that 
some people choose to use but they are more like the bright bright sun 
burning in your room and are a bit too much for my retinas!

Anyway, here are a few picks from just before sundown and the day itself. ..

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.