Vivid Contrasts

This is a country of incredibly stark contrasts; from the mountains screaming straight up 500m into the sky directly from the sea, to the weather which has, outside my window, turned from bright summer sunshine to a thick impenetrable snow storm in just 15 minutes. I experienced the contrasts of both terrain and the work expected of us this week as well.

We had field training all of Thursday and Friday to teach those of us who don’t know it some camp craft and navigation, but most importantly to teach us how things are done here. I spent 5 weeks this summer on expedition, camping in terrain and conditions pretty similar to here, high within the Arctic Circle in Norway, so I am fairly au fait with both camp craft and navigation. The terrain on this island, however, I have only just begun to experience. We were very lucky to have James the ex BC (Base Commander) do our field training for us. Before being a BC he was a GA (a field assistant who took scientists out into the field, mainly from Rothera) and he is an accomplished mountaineer, so has a very good idea of what we need to know to be safe in our travels around the area.

We spent the morning learning how to use and maintain both the lightweight stoves we take camping and the old fashioned Primus stoves that are in the huts. There are huts dotted around the Cumberland Bay areas as emergency shelters in case someone gets into difficulty. Technically only the GOs (Government Officers) are meant to stay in them but there is a lot of ‘camping outside the hut’ that gets done for a holiday. Inside these huts are an old fashioned Primus stove and a Tilly lamp. Both of these bits of kit are the main source of heat, light and cooking used by BAS. They are fairly heavy but since most BAS travel is on skidoos that doesn’t matter. The stove is almost exactly the same design that Scott and Shackleton used on their expeditions, a big heavy brass object which burns kerosene and has to be primed using methylated spirits.

Primus

Since Scott’s time BAS have only made a very slight modification and that is an extension of the legs, thereby reducing the production of carbon monoxide, which is possibly the greatest danger one faces down in Antarctica .Luckily on the island bases where we don’t use skidoos we carry the modern lightweight stoves normally used while camping.

Once we had spent the morning learning (or remembering in my case) the maintenance of stoves, and a little bit of navigation, we set off. The start was a deceivingly gentle walk along Bore Valley, halfway up Deadman’s Pass, to two rocks. There I jokingly asked “Are we going that way now?”,  pointing to a sheer and scree ridden climb. Unfortunately the answer was “Yes”. This just went to prove that to get almost anywhere on South Georgia involves going up. Even getting down off a mountain can involve going up over a shoulder from one valley to another. We spent the next 5 hours experiencing South Georgia travel. There are pretty much only 4 different types of terrain here: Scree (sharp, crumbly and omnipresent), snow, tussock (which can hold the delights of falling into an Ellie Wallow or the teeth of a Furry) and bog. We traipsed our way across all of these in the 5 hours we tramped across the island. We actually only did about 10.5km as the snow petrel flies but with the gain and loss of altitude this was in effect greatly increased.

We climbed up the sheer face described above to reach a flatter area with lakes. These were still covered in snow so we had to take care to go round the edge of them rather than fall through the middle of the snow covered ice. We then had to cut steps into a snow field and traverse a slope leading to Boulder Pass. We dropped off this into terrain that can most aptly be described as ‘walking on marshmallow’. I am not sure in the end which was the most draining, the scrabbling up scree with the ground beneath our feet sliding away with every step or the wading through boot stealing bog which sucked at our feet with the tenacity of a bulldog (both with large packs on our backs). We eventually made it to the hut at Harpon on Cumberland West Bay and camped outside the hut there.

We all felt that we had earned our supper that night. For field travel BAS supplies ‘Manfood’ boxes. These can feed a field party of 2 for 10 days. They are still called ‘Manfood’ even though it has now been 13 years since you would also take ‘Dogfood’ boxes into the field with you. BAS is a very traditional organisation! I think I must be one of the few people in the world who actively like dehydrated manfood but then I actively like any type of food when I am hungry. There was a very small amount of drift wood near the hut so we made a small fire and sat around it chatting, passing a hipflask of whiskey and listening to the evening. Perfect. Lying in your tent listening to a South Georgian night is not the silent experience that one might think. Being near a beach there were both Ellies and some Furries around. The Elly males take great pleasure in finding an echo and then producing a deep, bone rattling roar to ring around the hills for minutes at a time (you can see the percussion waves from their roar for a good 3 feet in front of them on the surface of the water). We fell asleep to that and, every so often, to the sound of the Lyell Glacier calving 2km behind us.

Our return journey was much easier (relatively). We had a ‘long slow pull’ over rock, scree and snow up to Echo Pass. This was made far more exciting by the storm force winds that buffeted us as we climbed. I eventually figured out that if I went at an angle to the wind it would push me up exactly as if I were tacking while sailing, thereby using far less energy than fighting it. The only interesting moment was when I was on the edge of the ridge and the wind literally took me off my feet. The descent from the Pass was also slightly ‘gnarly’ with a steep section that just invited ‘bumsliding’ down it (a note to anyone who ‘bumslides’ down a snow slope: sit on your pack; many a coccyx has been damaged by failing to do so). Home and lunch were very welcome when we arrived back.

One rather funny incident occurred after we got home;  James and I were changing fuel drums in the fuel store. We had just removed two empty 220l drums and were putting a full one in place when a gust of wind took one of them, knocked it over and rolled it all the way down the beach, through a Furry harem and past squealing Weaners, with me chasing it as fast as I could. I wasn’t fast enough and had to stand and watch as it was blown off shore. I had to field radio calls from everybody while James and I got dressed in our boat suits and got into the Launch to pick it up. Unfortunately the entire Base all happened to look up out of their windows at that precise moment to see the result of our mistake. Thankfully we had done the drum up so it floated and we were able to pick it up easily but it could have been a slightly embarrassing miniature fuel spill to explain.

The contrast between the different kinds of work we are expected to do fits nicely with the previous story because the day after I had been in the field camping and then chasing after fuel drums, I found myself in the kitchen, with an apron on, cooking a 3 course dinner for 21 people. I have to say that the cooking side of things was the one I was the most apprehensive about before arriving and it is still the duty I enjoy the least but I haven’t given anyone food poisoning – yet. Saturday night is a big event on BAS bases, everyone dresses up a little bit and there is a 3 course dinner. We generally invite the GOs and whichever of the builders (who are currently here refurbishing Discovery House) want to come. (For those who want to know: we had leek and potato soup followed by shepherds pie and Keiron the GO took pity on me and made sticky toffee pudding - generally someone does help out with at least one course).

After the domesticity of Saturday, during which I left the kitchen only once (for ½ an hour to walk round the track to Grytviken, to maintain some sanity), Sunday was different again. At 1000 I was out on the Launch doing my first pick up from a vessel, collecting the Chief Justice of South Georgia who had come down from the Falklands on the RFA (Royal Fleet Auxilary) Gold Rover (getting a person and their luggage on or off a pilot ladder is really much harder than one would think). At 1400 I was out in the RIB following the launch as we went to drop John (the Doc till mid January) and James off in Corral for a holiday and pick up the habitat survey party from Sorling. At 1930 I was out again in the launch dropping Sue off on the Pharos so she could do the monthly plankton trawl. It was very lucky that the Pharos was coming alongside on Monday morning or else I would have been out again at 2330 to pick Sue up again. From bright sunshine when we set off to drop James and John, in 15 minutes the weather had changed to a small blizzard and I can tell you that when motoring at 16kts into the wind and snow any scrap of skin not tightly covered is instantly found and attacked by the wind. To have to take both a helmet with visor and sunglasses on a single trip just brings home the contrasts we live with here everyday.