Fire Training

When South, there's obviously no possibility to call out the fire brigade! So each year, a few members of the winter teams are trained up on basic fire fighting skills with Breathing Apparatus. At Halley our fire fighting resources are limited as we rely on the built in fire suppression system. We would never be fighting a large fire, but we could well need to locate somebody in a smokey room or something more like that. However, going on a course where you DO get to mess around (safely!) with a bit of fire is pretty fun! And the Breathing Apparatus training is invaluable.

The group with a mix from Rothera and Halley.

Getting ready - making sure you're totally covered up, there's no leaks in your equipment and that it's all working correctly.

 Practicing getting a casualty out of an awkward tight spot.

Putting out a fire on a simulated wing of a plane.

The course is held at Duxford Airfield, which is also a War Museum and they have a great collection of aircraft through the ages as well as tanks and other bits and bobs. It was great to see some old planes being checked over and flown around while we were there. It's well worth a visit if you are in the Cambridge area.

Training Begins

The first step to heading South again is heading to the week long training course at Girton College in Cambridge. All the wintering teams from all the bases attend training there each year, along with some of the summer staff. We have a separate training week with the Halley summer team in a couple of weeks so it was just the wintering team there this year. 

All of the training takes place on site at the college, where BAS takes over for the week. What a great maze of buildings!

Training consists of presentations, group discussions and practical sessions shoe-horned in to busy, information-packed days. It is pretty uniform for most people, though there are a few sessions that differ, depending on what your role will be on base. 

Oil-spill training (pictured above) was one of the sessions I did not attend.

But Fire Extinguisher training was pretty fun (and of course informative!). I have more fire fighting training to come next week when I go on another course so I'll try and put an update about that when I am done there.

After a week at Girton all the winterers (again from all bases - Halley, Rothera, Bird Island and King Edward Point) headed up to the Peak District for a few days of outdoor skills training. The course is held at an outdoors centre where most people slept in the tipis provided - though Al and I drove the van up and slept in that. We had mostly lovely weather and were able to brush up on a few bits and bobs, as well as get to know our fellow winterers a little better.

 

This is an example of the tents we use down South when on our winter trips. The massive hole cut out in the side is not a usual feature (not great for warmth or shelter) but merely to enable people to easily see in and see the set up, for those who had not seen it before.

We had the opportunity to brush up on our abseiling and jumaring too.

And then there was the no-expense-spared white-out navigation exercise! I suppose it's hard to simulate blowing snow in a lovely, sunny Derbyshire field on a warm September's day. It also has the added comedy value to offer some light relief.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year!

Once again, it’s been a while. A lot has been happening. We now have about 55 people on station and the summer season is well under way. A lot of the summer staff and the new wintering team come in on the ship, but a few people fly in early (as I did last year) to get bits and bobs done before hand.

Each year a number of structures on the base get moved to avoid snow accumulation, which would lead to them being buried. The structures – the Garage, the Drewry building (summer accommodation) and the Technical Workshops (or WASP as we call it) are built on large skis so that they can be pulled out of the wind scoop that forms around them during the winter. They get moved to one side one year and then back again the following year so they are always in line with each other. For the WASP this means first using the digger to dig most of the snow out around it but after that it’s down to man power. We needed to get underneath it to dig out certain parts to enable it to then be towed up a ramp. No mean feat, but with a big enough group of people it took about a day to do. Not the most wonderful photos I know, as they were taken during quick breaks from the kitchen, but it gives you an idea at least.

A lot of snow accumulates around the main station modules too. Massive wind tales develop on one side and have to be managed too. This will happen in the next few weeks and will involve massive amounts of snow being moved around as well as moving the module legs. I’ll try and get photos of this to put on here when that happens.

Another early summer job is raising drums. These mark out the perimeter and also the route to a place called Creek 3. The drums are empty fuel drums that easily get buried by blowing snow or sometimes get blown away during the winter. We took a Snow-Cat, 5 people and a big German Sledge with some more empty barrels on a trip to Creek 3 on a beautiful sunny day a few weeks ago. The idea was to drive there, have a little look around, and then carry out the drum raise on the way back. This involves 2 people sitting on the back of the sledge and hopping out at every drum. We passed a strop over the drum and left the Snow-Cat to pull the drum out before popping it back on the snow and packing a small amount of snow around the base. Where there are drums missing we grabbed one off the back of the sledge and popped it in the right place along the drum line. We rotated teams every half an hour – even though it was super sunny and lovely, it was still pretty nippy.

We also got a very cool fly over from one of the BAS twin otter planes on their way back from a project flight.

We had a quick evening trip out to Windy Bay to hopefully see the penguins. A trip the day before had enabled a group to get on the ice and hang out with them, but by the time we went the next day the wind had picked up. This meant it was less than ideal to head down on to the ice. You can see how little ice was left in comparison to weeks earlier when it was quite hard to see the sea in the distance. So although it was disappointing not to get down, it was still lovely observing them from afar. You could see groups heading in and out of the water to hunt and also large cracks appearing in the ice. Hopefully the ice held on a little longer to enable those little guys to get a bit bigger.

 And after all of that we had Relief (the arrival of the ship and all the re-supplies), Christmas (which was during Relief and so got postponed to Fakemass a few days later), New Year and a great trip back to Creek 3 for some ice-climbing just the other day. It’s been a busy time and will continue in the same vein for the remainder of the summer season. Wish me luck! 

Happy New Year to everybody! I’ll be seeing a lot of you THIS year, which is a great thing to be able to finally say! 

 

The last two pics were taken by Michal Krzysztofowicz (or Mike K as we know him here) who is down for his second winter as data manager. He takes great pics and has a blog you can check out here.

He’s also started a new project where he’s taking a picture a day and uploading it here

So take a look at that too!

More Penguins

More Penguins

Last weekend saw an opportunity for some of us to get off base and head to Windy Bay again to see the penguins. It was pretty much a year to the day from our first trip out to Windy last year. It takes somewhere around two and a half hours to get there in the Snow Cat. Tom Clements (our wintering plumber) and I set up the abseil to get us all down to the sea ice. We had pretty good weather for most of the day and it was really warm with temperatures hovering about – 10C. Perhaps the penguins were feeling it as a lot of them were having a good old Sunday afternoon snooze. A lot were sleeping on their bellies, but some will also sleep standing up with their heads tucked around to their wings too. The chicks are mostly getting really big and hanging around in little crèches. They flap their little flippery wings a lot in training for when they have to use them in the water.
Anyway, enough chat – here are some penguin photos again!

Face down for a comfy little snooze

I thought this little guy's markings made him look like a Mexican wrestler.