June 22nd, 2010 Comments Off
Whilst the majority of you yesterday enjoyed the longest day of the year, we enjoyed our longest night. Across Antarctica this is treated with reverence I would ordinarily apply to Christmas or Easter. We received wishes of ‘Merry Midwinter’ from across Antarctica’s bases of all different nationalities, Russian, Ukrainian, Chilean, Brasilian, American, French, Italian, Japanese, Australian, Kiwi and also from our own bases at Halley, Bird Island and South Georgia.
The day started with our Winter Base Commander, Dickie, bringing us breakfast in bed, a novel way to start the day. The day then passed in traditional style, with second breakfast of brunch, then a screening of ‘The Thing’, an Antarctic horror film set on an American base.
The most important parts of the day were still to come. Everyone on base has been beavering away on midwinter presents, and yesterday we exchanged gifts; the quality of work was incredible, as was the innovation that went into the gifts, photographs to follow.
We then enjoyed a fabulous meal prepared by Justin, during which we took a between course break to brave the weather and head across to the radio tower to listen to the BBC World Service Antarctic Broadcast. Friends and family had been invited to leave messages for their winterer, and so we huddled around, listening to the tidings to people at Bird Island, KEP and Halley, and also our own messages. As we sat there listening to this special broadcast it really did bring home how lucky we are to be here, and how few people have enjoyed the unique experience of an Antarctic Winter, and how support from home is so essential to our task. You can listen to the broadcast by following this link, enjoy!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/programmes/2010/06/100621_antarctic_midwinter_special_2010.shtml
More surprises ensued as dinner drew to a close, with Father Christmas,Dickie dressed in red, toting Royal Mail parcel bags, distributing a shoe box to each person around the table; our families had been called upon to make up a surprise gift. Beckie’s choice of card, Stonehenge at the Solstice, seemed remarkably apposite, as did the myriad of gifts inside, Cadbury’s Chocolate Fingers were particularly popular!
I shall leave you with the Rothera Midwinter card, and thoughts of increasing daylight again!
June 19th, 2010 Comments Off
Antarctica presents many opportunities to witness the rare and unusual. Whilst walking across from Admirals, our accomodation block, to New Bransfield, the building where we spend most of our free time eating, using the library, TV rooms and lounge, I noticed the most incredible sky. It looked like irridiscent clouds, stunning beautiful, slowly changing in the sky, like oil on water. They proved remarkably tricky to capture on film, however I gave it my best shot and thought I would share the result.
Whilst increasing my meteorological knowledge on nacreous clouds, also known as polar stratospheric clouds, it transpires that these beautiful clouds have a menacing side and are implicated in ozone depletion by a variety of mechanisms, supporting production of active chlorine which catalyses ozone destruction, and removing gaseous nitric acid. Quite the femme fatale of the meteorological world!
On a cheerier note midwinter approaches and everyone on base is busying around completing midwinter presents, myself included! Monday promises to be an interesting day and very different to my solstice last year, sunrise at Stonehenge before heading down to Salcombe to race in the gig rowing regatta!
June 16th, 2010 Comments Off
It seems rather strange writing about my Winter trip that happened almost two months ago now, however some gremlins have wrought havoc upon my blog and only now do I find it fully functional again, so I shall endeavour to bring you up to the present day.
In the meantime I shall share some favourite moments from the winter trip. The Myth was a great start to the activities, and with a only a few heart stopping moments went without a hitch. All this does serve to remind you of the importance of paying attention during field training, i.e. the trip to The Peak District pre-deployment and the training upon arrival. Knowing how to ice axe arrest and the correct method of retrieving someone from a crevasse with pulleys and jumars become quite significant here!
As previously mentioned we were extremely fortunate with the weather during our week, and we also had a reasonable amount of daylight, eight hours per day which meant we could fit in plenty of trips, although we did suffer one day of Antarctic storm, enforcing lie up in the tent. You could barely see the tent of Sledge Juliet a 100 metres away, wind pounding the tent and with visibility so poor the prospect for outdoor endeavour were limited so we read, played board games and made endless cups of tea. The weather brightened in the afternoon and so we took the chance for up again the following day which permitted us to skidoo for about 2 hours to Carvajal, a former British Antarctic Survey base that we sold to the Chileans a while ago, although it is not currently inhabited. It looked like a ghost town, quite surreal.
