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!
