Heading Home 18/03/2010

 Well sadly the time has come for the boat to arrive and sail away for the big old land of Aus. Many a rich memory will be engraved forever in my mind and the Antarctic spirit will live on as I stay in touch with those that will remain for the experience of the Antarctic Winter.

Looking forward to seeing George when I get back and of course everyone else!

Friday 19th March

Well it has been settled and there is little room for a change at this stage but the ship is set to sail tonight as all of the cargo has been stowed and there is only one more helicopter to get into the hanger. It is very likely that we will be on our way within a couple of hours which is just great as the novelty of sitting on the ship has already worn off. Looking forward to a speedy journey home with the chance of getting in by the 28th of March.

See you all soon!

Last trip in the Inflatable Ice Breakers!

 What a lovely day to be out on the water! -120C in the sun when it was there and a light breeze as the three little IRB’s headed for the Sorsdal Glacier and Kazak Island for a number of little jobs. Knowing it was going to be cold I went in ready. Two sets of thermals, socks, gloves and then fleece pants and two fleece tops, neck warmer, balaclava, and beanie. Then over the top was an immersion suit and a pair of sunnies.

You can also see that I nearly got crapped on by a Skua!

 The sea ice is starting to harden and make travelling in the IRB’s a little difficult at times as they are not designed to break ice! It is pretty amazing to see the ice as it is actually elastic at the moment and moves with the wake of the boat without cracking. It was about five centimetres thick. Here is hoping that it will not slow down the Aurora Australis too much on its way to get us.

 Moving further south towards the Sorsdal Glacier we turned off the engine for about half an hour and drifted while the Soundman recorded the noises of the glacier as it meets the ocean. He did this with his hydrophone over the edge of the boat and really captured some amazing sounds.

 We were also given the task of having a look for a piece of Antarctic heritage supposedly on Zolotov Island. It was getting a bit late and colder so we did not look for long. It is a rock cairn placed there or somewhere down this end of the Vestfold’s by a fella called Wilkins many moons ago and was one of the first landings in the area.

Soundman at Trajer Ridge

The location was locked in for Trajer Ridge for which there were no complaints and we were off to spend a day recording ice forming and the sounds from within the ice or crevasses. After landing on the ice we had quickly had a bit of an exploration towards some of the known crevasses and dropped a microphone down to the bottom of the crevasse on a ten metre cable. The sound guy was very excited about this chance as it was a blue sky day with no wind. Something that he has not had very much of so was relieved and ready for all he could get his ears on! Leaving the microphone in place we headed for some fresh water ice on the nearby lake.

 Gingerly stepping out onto the lake to see if it was strong enough I took out the gear and then got him to come out turn it all on after I was satisfied that the ice was indeed thick enough. Leaving it to in place there was nothing left to do but sit and wait quietly as the recorders did there thing. Coming back after a hot drink we moved on to a small stream of water trickling down a creek over ice and rock to another lake lower down the hill.

 After getting to the bottom of the stream we found that the second lake was actually very audibly active and was really making a song and dance as it formed. Being a larger body of water it had been open water until recently when it started to freeze. Now it was about thirty centimetres thick and easily capable of holding our weight. The question was could I hack through it with an ice axe to get a hydrophone in?

After much swinging, hitting and chipping away at the ice I had managed to create a hole in the ice! Had I known about the likelihood of having to do this I would have just brought the sea ice drill with me, but alas I was destined to do it with my axe. In the process of doing this there comes a time when most of the hole fills with water and you still need to hack away at it so it can be a rather dampening experience and requires a full Gortex covering.

 Job done! We recorded over 6 hours of sound for the day and the hole and the second lake were by far the most amazing noises that I have heard in nature. It did get me thinking about some of George’s music at one stage with almost electronic duff noises and the sounds of high tensile cable splitting and breaking. Good fun and very rewarding as a different way to know the place that is Antarctica.

Another clear night with the LIDAR on and an amazing aurora to boot!

Field Travel Travel Training - the last one! Day 3

Waking initially as snow fell on my face in the early hours of the morning I continued to drift in and out of sleep. The night brought with it the dump of the summer and I had been sleeping with my bivvy bag open! Lucky me! As the snow fell and continued to build up on the outer surface of the bivvy the weight would compress your sleeping bag until the cold would get the better of you and you would have to shake like a dog until it all fell off to the sides and the process started again.

 This is the coffin like trench where I slept! You can see the ground as that is what it looked like last night! New view from the camp at early hours.

 The walk through the transformed winter wonderland was just great on the way back to Davis Station! SW Edge of Lake Collerson, Perched Rock (it is a rock that perches precariously funnily enough), through the Portals, NW to Lake Dingle and under Sentinel Knoll before finishing off on the old favourite Dingle Road. Arriving at 09:45 just in time to drop off the poo bag to the incinerator before smoko! What a great trip to get in before I depart within a couple of weeks!

Crazy and crumpy penguin on the way home. Obviously forgot his map when he went for a walk!

Field Travel Travel Training - the last one! Day 2

 Me having a bad hair day obviously! Below is part of the massive Sorsdal Glacier.

 The hole that I mad with my ice axe to get water for lunch. The ice won that round as e adze broke off!

 We were ready for bed by about 18:00 but I headed up the hill with no takers for a poo with a view! Looking out over the Ellis Fjord and out to the ocean with the icebergs on the horizon as the sun set. There was a solar pillar tonight which was pretty cool as a pillar of sunlight the width of the setting sun shone towards the cloudy sky like the Batman floodlight (without the bat on it!). Getting back down to the frosty campsite there was not a movement by 19:30 so I readied for bed and watched the golden light move up the western facing side of Tarbuck Crag. Beautiful night with your head out of the bivvy!

Field Travel Travel Training - the last one!

 To make up for the fact that I missed another golden opportunity to head off with good weather yesterday after SAR training (there are no helicopters for ‘Jolly’ purposes anymore) a plan was hatched yesterday. There were a few crew coming in the flight to pick up the SAR team to Trajer and we would walk to the untouchable SE corners of the Vestfold’s. Unsuccessful we formulated a trip in the name of training the only winterer not to do travel training yet.

SAR Training on the Ice with Live Victims!

 More SAR training today which was good to see how much had been retained from last week. Today we had the full contingent and I looked after the crew on the ice while Mike was watching a crew on the rock at Trajer Ridge. We collectively had the rock group lower a stretcher to the bottom of a 70m slope which put it in a position to be raised up an icy slope.

 Packed up early as the Dr was off the station to drop a sick expeditioner to the Chinese to take home. This cancelled all field parties.

Amery for Data Downloads 2

 AMO5 in the middle of nowhere over nothing but 600metres of ice then water!

 As it was the winds were picking up and the sun was setting. Starting our return leg home we had a bit of a tail wind and were hooting across the Amery at 156knots (I am not sure of the conversion but it seemed very fast) stopping in at a fuel dump near one of the Russian bases on the way home for fuel. We had stopped at an Australian Apple Samson Island on the way down and would have used in excess of 1000 litres of fuel during the course of our flight. I shudder to think what that fuel costs per litre after it comes down from Australia and is then flown out by helicopter to the dump sites where it stays to enable flights to go further afield.

 Hanging onto the blades of the S76 so they don't flap around n the high winds!

 The sunset on the way home was just amazing but also hard to explain or take photos of through the tinted windows on the helicopter. We touched down at about 20:00 after a long and cold day.

Another night on the LIDAR!

Amery for Data Downloads 1

 • Polar Pyramid (party style tent impervious to harsh weather)(25kg)


• Cook box with stoves fuel and all the cleaning and cutlery (15kg)

• Water (20kg)

• Fuel (10kg)

• Generator (20kg)

• Sleeping gear and mats (15kg)

• AMISOR Tech box full of computer stuff and some tools (30kg)

• Survival packs X 2 as there were two of us (40kg)

• HF and Satellite Phone (15kgs)

• Me (fully clothed about 90kg) + Adam(fully clothed 95kg)

• Total 375kgs

 What a ridiculous amount of stuff to go on the helicopter for a four hour download! The download is from a site drilled with hot water last year that has a range of instruments at the bottom of the 600m hole in the ice. There are some loggers to record turbidity, temperature, salinity, conductivity and goodness knows what else. Most of these store their information at the device so the download takes a long time to retrieve as it is a very long cable, but some of them record on the surface. To complete the whole download at AM04 (Amery Ice Shelf sit 5) it would take about nine hours. We were dropped off for four and a half so could only get half of the data before having to return. With the unpredictability of the weather at the moment they are not prepared to leave people on the ice overnight as it is too close to the ships arrival to risk.

 I had to set up the tent and make sure that the tech was comfy and had assistance with anything that was needed. So hot drinks food and making sure that the tent was sorted in the wind as well as a bit of digging to find buried cables. It was a very strange feeling as the helicopter left us in the deepest of deep field locations and stuck on the middle of a massive ice shelf with only limited supplies. Makes you feel just how small you are in this world of Antarctica as if the winds picked up we may have missed the boat!

LIDAR and Aurora Australis Just Amazing!

 LIDAR is on and visible for the first time this season! This is not the first time that it has been on but it is the first time that you could actually see the eighty to ninety kilometre beam of green laser light travelling straight up into the ionosphere! Bloody fantastic and amazing to see as it really does not go on that much as there is often too much cloud and weather interference to see it or even to bother turning it on!

While I was taking the happy snaps the Aurora Australis or Southern Lights started to shine which was a rather spectacular and radiated wave of green cloud across the sky. It was all a bit much really having a near full moon, the laser and the aurora going at the same time. They seemed to originate from the north and headed towards the west in a random nature that is hard to describe. How lucky was I to be out there taking photo and it just jumped into a shot!

Day after the melon!

This is a part of Trajer ridge as you can see a very large drop if you fell off!

 Finally it was time to go and we were on our way in twenty knot winds to Crooked Lake Apple and then onto Watt’s Hut where we were to be picked up by helicopter. It was offered as our plans had been slowed down due to the winds which stalled our progress back to base! Great walking, and good to see the small changes that have happened along the way.

Here I am "Skating on thin ice"!

 Just a funky ice formation found on the walk.