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 1st
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.
No comments:
Post a Comment