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.