Temporary Camp at Halley 6

As most of you know, the big (huge!) project this season is moving the camp from it ‘s current position, at Halley 6, to a new position about 23km away – Halley 6a. The main job on site so far has been getting the Temporary Camp up and running so that people can move out of the modules and work can then start on decommissioning them. The Temp Camp is built mostly out of containers joined together by a sealed corridor, which leads to a communal mess tent, or Weatherhaven tent, at the end. The containers have all been kitted out so they work as sleeping quarters, bathroom units, a boot room, a laundry, a melt tank, a freezer, a fridge, a dry stores, and of course a kitchen.

The above pic shows the Temp Camp infront of the Modules. To the right is the WASP (work shop) and then at the far right are the Tech team containers.

The Weatherhaven tent with the kitchen container to the right.

As usual there are also people still staying in the Drewery building (the summer accommodation unit), which is where I am for now. But this year there are also four cabooses outside housing more people. They each sleep four people. I’ll make sure to get some pics of the interiors of them and the temp camp at a later date, as it’s an interesting set-up.

The move to the Temp Camp could come early next week, at which point we’ll have to move out of the main kitchen to be working there. We are three chefs at the moment with a fourth joining us in a couple of week’s time. The idea is to set up another Temporary Camp at the 6a site and have the chefs split between them.

Cape Town to Halley

Lucky for us our plane from Cape Town stayed more or less on schedule and we found ourselves heading to the airport early on Thursday morning. You check in with ALCI (the company we fly into Antarctica with) as you would any other flight and go through normal airport security.

It’s a pretty “no-frills” affair, but comfortable. The flight to Novo (a Russian base) took about 5 hours during which we were offered refreshments and were able to use the loos – two port-a-loos strapped down at the back of the plane. When we neared our destination we were asked to put on our warm clothing and we were able to watch our landing on a TV screen at the front which beams through footage from a camera in the nose cone.

We hung around at Novo for a little while. There was cargo to sort and passenger lists to adapt. The initial plan was to fly us on to Halley in two groups in quick succession. But the crew from the next plane we would be using were called in to help with a medical evacuation else where in Antarctica. Luckily, they were still able to take one group through, and I was in that group. The next group are having to hang out at Novo for a little while until the middle of next week … hopefully!

And so it was on to the Basler plane. These planes fly through Halley from time to time and always look amazing, so it was great to get a chance to fly on one. We helped the crew load her up and we were on our way. A quick 4 hour journey over to Halley in amazing weather! A Piston Bully towing a sledge was our taxi ride from the ski-way up to base. We quickly unloaded our bags and grabbed some dinner, whilst saying hello to the wintering team we left months ago in March. This was followed by a quick briefing and then to bed. Easy as that!

Cape Town

A very quick post from Cape Town. A large group of us from BAS travelled down on Sunday/Monday and should all go well we will continue our journey to Halley tomorrow. But we had a day and a half to have a look around Cape Town with some fantastic weather. An open bus city tour was the order of the day.

Autumn Colours

I've been trying to make the most of my time before I head South in little under a week! It's hard to try and make sure you see people, whilst trying to sort all those little last bits and bobs out. But it's been lovely seeing family, some old friends, and soaking up all those lovely Autumn colours. I'll soon be surrounded with mostly all white, so I'm trying to absorb and remember all these wonderful greens, reds, oranges, yellows and browns while I still can.

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!