Holidays part 2

I had a rather lovely week last week, as you can see, this blog entry is a little late due to my having been on holiday. Hazel and I had decided to go on a walking holiday across the Barff to try and see some Macaroni Penguins and the other side of the Barff. We timed our exit rather well, the rest of the base has been coming down with the flu left right and centre. They caught it off the fishing vessel ‘San Aspiring’ and it has whipped through the base like wildfire. The main thing apparently is just to make sure that only a couple of people get it at a time or else the whole base shuts down and that is a rather bad thing. The rat project is rather worried that they might catch it in the field which would be a disaster for them but so far they seem to have escaped.

As the complete opposite to my last trip to the Barff the weather was forecast to be horrific - solid snow and wind for three days, but we decided to risk it anyway. As it was the weather was not nearly as bad as forecast and we actually had better weather than they did 10km away on base.On Thursday we were dropped off at Corral hut with two rather large packs. We stashed our snowshoes, avalanche transceivers and avalanche probe at the hut with the plan that if it did start snowing we would scuttle back there and so not need to carry them with us. With the sun beaming down on us we hulked our packs on our backs and started the tramp to Rookery. As ever, getting anywhere in South Georgia involves a fair amount of hills but first we had to negotiate rather furry tussock. We eventually passed the ‘Furry line’ (like the tree line but with sharper teeth) and started tramping on rock and scree. We fell into a routine pretty swiftly. Hazel is just that little bit quicker and rather a lot fitter than me so she took the nasty job of trail blazer while I trailed behind checking navigation and generally huffing and puffing. We reached a place called Three Lakes and had our first pause there, rather regretting not having brought towels for a swim. We then slowly climbed to the Pass called Rookery Col. There we stopped and had lunch and a short snooze (well we were on holiday).

Rookery

The descent from Rookery Col involved a gulley full of thigh deep snow and rather uncertain footing under that which meant that one moment you were dancing along in an inch of snow and the next you were floundering (remember we had packs that weighed about 20kg) in thigh deep powder. I managed, and I have NO idea how, to get just one leg stuck so badly that Hazel had to come back and dig me out, not before taking photographs of course. 

Snowy gully

We eventually came through the snow and found ourselves in Rookery Bay. The sky by now had clouded over a bit and threatened rain so we quickly pitched camp, threw some essentials into one pack and went in search of Macaroni Penguins. We walked all along the bottom of the cliffs and just when we had hit a dead end Hazel spotted some white objects on a tussock cliff. We climbed up the tussock and as we nearly reached the top I suddenly heard a rather unusual chirping and turned to find a Pipit (a bird that looks remarkably like a sparrow but that is really rather rare) hovering above us. I am incredibly pleased to have seen one and I think that alone made the whole holiday worthwhile. 

The Macaronis, once we had found them, were very, very worthwhile. Some of them were moulting and were looking as bedraggled as only moulting penguins can look but others had finished the process and were looking extremely beautiful with their bright red eyes and their wonderful eyebrows. We went down to the sea and also watched them come out of the water, battling against some rather large waves onto a flat rock. A wonderful sight.

Macaronis

 On our return we had a gourmet meal of out of date ration packs, rehydrated to perfection by Hazel who turned out to be able to boil water really very well. Both before going and on our return we were slightly derided for not taking any alcohol and for eating only ration packs but since neither of us drink that much and we knew our packs would be heavy we decided that rat packs, as they’re called, were for the best. I quite enjoy rat packs really, well, I enjoy the hot and filling food that they provide, let’s not exaggerate too much. That night was rather windy and I woke once to find the canvas of the tent touching my nose, despite double poling it. The next morning we did the morning sched (when away from base you have to do a nightly scheduled radio call: ‘sched’ to let them know where you are and what your intentions are for the next day so they have more hope of finding you if anything goes amiss). However, the doc (currently Hazel) and the BC (Base Commander) also have to do a ‘sched’ at 0900 every morning to have any issues at base reported to them. Boring but necessary. After that we broke camp and had an explore of a cave below the camp site. Then it was back on with the packs and off to Cobblers cove around the corner. To get there we had to negotiate across a scree slope with a rather strong wind trying to blow us off. It was most disconcerting and rather unpleasant I can assure you. We reached Cobblers which is a lovely little bay, almost completely encircled, and from there we could see Godthul, the next bay along which had once had a whaling station in it. After investigating whether we could go around the base of the cliffs we decided to try the ridge above us to see if we could move on. After humping our packs up to the start of the ridge it became rapidly apparent that we were NOT going to be attempting that, even if we had no packs and were roped up. I am afraid of heights and even the thought of the ridge was enough to make my knees shake a little. I was rather pleased when we returned to a nice little campsite we had found and pitched camp there for the night. 

Cobblers camp

 The next morning (Saturday) we woke to the sound of a deluge. It was raining hard and fast and it was so unpleasant that we took one look out of the tent and decided to stay in our bags for as long as it poured.  It was so horrible that we couldn’t even open the porch to boil water so we had our lunch of oatcakes, marmite and cheese instead. We didn’t dare wash it down with anything because the last thing we wanted to do was need to go out in the rain to pee. We had a very lazy morning with the only worrying point being when Hazel looked into the porch of the tent again and saw that there was a river running under our tent. It was at that moment that I noticed that every time she moved I felt the tent floor wobble. It was like lying on a waterbed, not knowing whether the floor was about to start leaking at any moment. We were both very glad to be in a new tent and these tents (Terra Nova) are very good so we remained fairly dry, cozy and happy. The rain reduced about 1300 so we decided (since we knew snow was forecast and we weren’t sure whether we would get back up that gulley with any more snow) to break camp and leg it back over to the other side of the Barff. It was wet!! It was very wet and rather unpleasant getting out of that warm dry tent and into wet gear, packing away a wet tent and then carrying our packs (now heavier due to the wet tent) back the way we had come. 

That would be a river under our tent!

 I am not entirely sure how we got back up to Rookery Col, it was one small step at a time but we did and when we got there we found ourselves in a break in the mist. We were covered in the very fine droplets you get in a mist and rather chilly so when we had to make a choice of whether to go down to Reindeer Valley, pitch a sopping tent and then sit in wet kit trying to keep our down bags from getting damp, or heading for the hut at Corral where we knew we could hang things up and wouldn’t have as much trouble keeping things dry, the choice was pretty easy. 

We made our way back to the hut and I immediately put the stove and the Tilley lamp on. After a feast of our breakfasts (which we had not eaten and so had not had any lunch because we had had our lunch ration for breakfast) and getting into dry things we felt like kings. We decided that there was no chance of us getting carbon monoxide poisoning (a real fear in those huts) since we could see the stuff we had hung up waving in the breeze coming through the huts. Thank God for Dry bags though. Without them we would have been miserable; as it was we could get into dry thermals and socks and were very happy. 

The next day it started to snow so we decided to walk to Godthul via Reindeer valley carrying one pack between two and going at a leisurely pace. However; try and imagine, it is snowing outside, not hard I grant you but still, you are in your warm dry kit and you know that if you want to be warm and dry tonight you have to get into the cold damp kit you attempted to dry last night. There was a good deal of whimpering I can tell you, from both of us as we dragged wet thermals over our heads and then pushed our feet into freezing sodden boots. We warmed up pretty quickly once we started walking though and it was very pleasant. The only downer of the whole day was Hazel leading me up a scramble to get into Reindeer Valley. I was not entirely happy with the height but we were fine and I ‘manned up’ and stopped whimpering soon enough. Reindeer Valley was definitely worth it. At the foot of this long flat valley was a lake which normally would have been limpid but was now slightly milky from the run off from all the rain we had had. It was a real delta of a valley and we kept to the side of the hill to attempt not to get bogged down. The sun came out through the snow and it was truly lovely. We got over to above Godthul and had lunch in a tiny cavelet. We got pretty cold quickly though so we turned our heads for home. By the time we came out of Reindeer valley the snow was coming down rather harder and we turned to our snow goggles to keep the wind from flinging it into our eyes as we negotiated a small ridge. Another night in the hut proved to us that Corral is definitely not the hut to be in in winter, it was bloody freezing but our bags did keep us warm. 

Monday was our last half day, we were due to be picked up from the beach at 1500 so we decided to wander down the coast to try and find a good view of the glacier. We had a glorious lunch on top of a ridge with the whole world at our feet.
 

Lunch plus the world at our feet

 We returned, disturbing a herd of reindeer, and then had a last cup of tea on the beach watching the boats coming for us. It was glorious and I am very grateful to Hazel for making it such a lovely holiday. I will however quote my mother on the subject: “I'm so glad you enjoyed the holiday - and SO glad I didn't have to be there too, with a river running through the tent and cold wet boots to put on every morning. You are insane - you know that, don't you?” Yes I am insane but being here is a truly glorious insanity. 

Have a great week- go on, do something insane!

It's so fluffy! Great Petrel chick

Forces of Nature

On Sunday night we were forecast a fairly impressive storm. The barometer’s pressure dropped to 905 hPa in a couple of hours which is the lowest I think I have ever seen it (it normally hovers around 1000hPa). This meant we were in for a blow and the forecast was for 50knots of wind in the cove. That is ridiculous, even on the worst days I have seen here so far it has only ever been forecast up to 35kts in the cove. Keiron said that in four years of doing the job he had never seen a forecast like that. 

I woke up around 0500 to the wind whistling, wondering why my room felt a little chillier than normal. When I got up at 0730 I discovered that it was because the wind was in an odd direction and so strong it had forced snow through the very small opening in my window.  I had to clear my desk and floor of a small, rapidly melting drift. That was a wake up call. We had breakfast and the morning meeting to the background noise of howling, and then we all went and battened down the hatches. Paula and I doubled up the lines on the jet boats and ensured the jetboat trailers were secured. I discovered when I went to check on the fuel dump that it was almost impossible to work without snow goggles. This is summer and yet Erny managed to ski down to the boatshed in the afternoon and we had to fight to get anywhere in thigh deep drifts of snow pushing against 50kts of wind. Most of the time I just went backwards. On Tuesday we also discovered that there had been two small avalanches on the track. Doing my last rounds was fun I can tell you. I had to take a shovel to be able to open most of the doors. It really was a good experience for those of us new to winter, as to what it can be like. 

Snowstorm

The next day we had the Pharos in. She (and every other ship in the area) had been hiding for cover. We heard that the rat team had had to dig people out of their tents in the morning just so they could get some food. We spent most of the day clearing up and trying to get rid of snow so as to be ready for last call on Wednesday. I loved walking to the boatshed and spying where the Furries were lying by the little pillars of steam coming out of the snow. They lay there with all their flips tucked up, keeping them warm and looking extremely sweet.

Traditionally Last Call for BAS stations means the end of the summer season at all the bases. The last of the summer crew have gone, it is only the winterers left and operations shut down to their more modest winter levels. At KEP of course things are slightly different. We will continue to have ships come in throughout the winter: Fishing vessels, ‘reefers’, the Pharos and possibly some other visitors. This means that Last Call does not have the same ring to it for us as it would at Halley where the onset of winter means the sun starts to depart and they descend into several months of darkness. However the words ‘Last Call’ do send a slight frisson down one’s spine. 

Last Call went very well, the weather was much, much kinder than at First Call and we had far less to do so really it was only those of us who were JCB drivers who were needed. In the middle of all of that I took people out to the Pharos so they could go home with her when she goes. Four of the people I took out were Hugh, Derren, Gemma and Thomas. They have been a fixture of my time at KEP so far and it will be odd without them. We will miss them all. While taking them out we brought Steve, the Fisheries Officer, back to KEP for a couple of weeks. While on our way back to the base I noticed a bit of wood in the water and directed Hazel, who was driving at the time, over to it. It turned out to be a huge, heavy, waterladen piece of one of the jetties which had been wrenched off during the storm. With a great deal of effort Steve and I managed to haul it on board to find that it was longer than the Jetboats are wide (about 3m). We brought it back on shore so that it would not do any damage to any vessel inadvertently hitting it. 

Dinner on Wednesday was the first that we eight have had alone as the wintering team. It felt  odd to think that other than the GOs, once the builders have gone, those were the only faces we will have on base for the winter. Luckily we are a fine team that gets on, so it also felt good. There is some good banter bandied around and there are of course one or two little differences but nothing that isn’t overcome. As a small base we have a much more ‘family’ feel than at one of the bigger ones such as Rothera, which I like and we all try our best to get on. It did dawn on all of us though at that dinner and it was interesting to see it dawn on each person,  as one by one we came to the same conclusion and you could see it on everyone’s faces. We soon got over it though and enjoyed a good laugh together watching ‘The Guard’, a rather dark comedy about an Irish policeman. Rather good actually. 

Thursday saw us heading round to Carlita again to pick up Andy and Jen who have been in the field doing monitoring for the rat project and were coming back to base for a while. The trip round there is so normal now that sometimes the beauty of the place can leap out at you and take your breath away. It was the first time I had seen the island carpeted in snow and it was awe inspiring. 

On Friday Hazel and I took the GOs, Steve and Sue to a New Zealand fishing vessel: The ‘San Aspiring’ for their inspection. I was very pleased with myself because I unfortunately got kelped up to such an extent that I couldn’t use my starboard bucket. This meant that I had to hold the launch against the side of the vessel using only one engine which is bloody tricky. I managed it though, so I’m not sure that anyone knew there was anything wrong. I felt rather pleased with myself!

While still pleased with myself over pinning the jetboat with one engine, I was less pleased on Saturday morning to be told half way through my breakfast that we needed to move the boats out of the boat shed so that a helicopter could go in. It would normally not be a problem but Luna is sitting on tyres on the boatshed floor which means that it was a bit of a palaver. Everyone was rather annoyed that we hadn’t been informed that the boat shed would be needed. I then discovered that they will actually need to use it 8 to 10 times more. Anyway, my point of view is that as long as it doesn’t affect our maintenance, we get notice and they understand that we may need it in an emergency; this is a small sub Antarctic island and we should all help each other.

Chopper in the Boatshed

To get away from the annoyance bubbling over in the base during Saturday I went over to Penguin river and saw two King Penguin Chicks. They are big, brown, fluffy and very beautiful (in the way only ugly things can be). I very much enjoyed my day and my weekend turned into a very enjoyable one also when I climbed Brown Mountain with Hazel (doc) and Mickey (one of the builders) this morning. It was incredibly beautiful and a really lovely couple of hours, ending with a beer on the verandah in the sun. What more could anyone want? 

King Penguin chicks

Greene Peninsula from Brown Mountain

I want to warn everyone that my blog for next week might be a little late; I am off on holiday this week and probably won’t get back till next Monday so I will have to write it then. Till then. Have a good week and

Happy (belated) St Patrick’s Day

Surrealism

To begin with I think I should say ‘Happy Mother’s Day’ and hope that everyone was able to have as lovely a conversation with their mothers as I was this afternoon. It was disturbed slightly by a ship calling on the radio to talk to the government so my poor mother had to listen to a heavy Russian accent talk about anchoring at Grytviken over a telephone line that goes from South Georgia, into space, hits a satellite, goes to Colorado, then back into space, to Cambridge, then to her ear. And that is just the beginning of the surrealism that hit me this week. 

On Monday we had to take Andy Black and Jen to Carlitta so they could walk over to Husvik to join the South Georgia Heritage Trust (SGHT) Habitat Restoration project (known affectionately as ‘Team Rat’). Imagine going through ice and round mountainous bays that you know have no one in them to arrive at your destination to find a helicopter parked on the on the beach and a group of 5 people gathered round it and a fire, waiting for the wind to die down enough for baiting to restart. It was an odd feeling I can tell you.

We then wanted to check the extent of retreat of the Neumayer glacier. If you look at the most recent chart (2003), the Neumayer glacier ends at 54º15’S, 36º41’ W. We started there and drove ‘on’ the glacier for 15 mins before we hit the real front at 54º14’S, 36º44’ - a whole 3 minutes of a degree further in than when it was last surveyed! We were driving over what should have been ice. At some stage this glacier retreated at 1m per day which is a huge rate of destruction. We think that this might have slowed slightly since the survey GPS points are not as different from last year’s as they should be if that rate had been continued in the interim. We stayed close to the snout (at a safe distance of course) while measurements were taken with the rada,r and it dawned on Hazel and me (who were in the RIB) that we were sitting where a very few months previously there had been ice and rock while above us flew a huge flock of terns which seem to congregate round the snout of glaciers. It was a beautiful and awe inspiring site. The blue of the newly calved ice contrasted perfectly with the broken, black, rock covered ice still creeping on the sides of the mountains like a canker scouring the body of a giant. The terns seemed to be pin pricks which only served to accentuate the immensity of the environment we were in and to highlight how precarious our position on this island really is. 

Following Pipit through the glacier

Pipit in front of the glacier

  As we returned from the glacier and arrived back into the cove our eyes were drawn to the sky which looked remarkably like a Dali painting, I expected the mountains to dissolve into clocks at any moment. We both just sat in the RIB watching the clouds meld across the sky, morphing shadow into light. 

On Wednesday it turned into such a beautiful day that Rod declared a half day and he, Richard (the BAS IT expert here for a couple of weeks), Daniel and I decided to climb Mount Duse. I had never climbed it before and while I will do it again I am very, very pleased that my first time was on such a calm and dry day. We had to go to Grytviken and climb up to the Duse flats. From there we walked until we hit a scree slope of nearly untenable steepness. Every step up resulted in a slide backwards and I had to resort to thinking light thoughts and trying to go up on all fours just to make some progress. We then arrived at what Rod reassuringly calls ‘The gully of death’! We had to stick close to each other to avoid being brained by a rock that the first person would inadvertently send down onto the others. It was impossible to stop that from happening and we just kept tucked into the sides and kept our wits about us. Now I need you to consider that I am really, really not fond of heights in the slightest. So bearing that in mind imagine what it felt like to top out of the gully and find myself on a small ledge about 4 foot wide with 400m of sheer drop to the sea below on the other side, with no warning that this is what I was about to find. I would HATE to do it in any type of wind. We got off that ledge (very quickly) and had to go up through a small tunnel created by one rock which had fallen on some others. We then climbed onto a smoother section and were finally at the top. Daniel (also afraid of heights) and I just sat there, rather still, quietly eating a Kit Kat, more for a morale booster than for the sustenance it provided. 

Mount Duse

Gully of Death!

Base from the top

From the top

Down the other side

 One of the surreal things about that day was that it was so still that we could hear, very faintly, the drone of one of the choppers on the Busen peninsula, far away. It is odd how used to silence one can get and how intrusive anything that disturbs that silence can be. 

Getting down off that rounded rock at the top will remain as one of my top five things NEVER to do on a wet day. I was convinced that one wrong step would send me plummeting. It  wouldn’t have, but that didn’t make the feeling go away and if it was slippery at all I would NOT want to do it in the slightest. However, we got down with all of our limbs safe and sound and it did feel very good to have been up there. The view was absolutely incredible and so awe inspiring. I felt incredibly lucky once again to be working in such an environment.

After the glorious day that we had on Wednesday, Thursday turned out mank. In the afternoon it started to rain so of course I was out boating. I took Pat and Gemma (one of the museum folk) to find and GPS tag a possible rocket propelled grenade that Gemma and Derren had found a week before. I dropped them off on the inside of Morraine Fjord and then as they walked over Zenka Ridge I sat there in the wet with the rain dripping off the end of my visor, unable to see very far because of the fog that had come in. In order to keep the old spirits up I started singing. At first I sang under my breath then I found myself singing at the top of my lungs, serenading a group of fur seals that were playing in the kelp and every so often looking up at me as if I was insane. The drive back to base was quiet with the tendrils of mist creeping up the side of Duse making me expect to see a dragon emerge at any time.

Friday arrived with the rain heavier than ever and the prospect of pup weighing looming over us. This was the hardest time yet, there were only 6 of us and the pups were at the biggest we will ever catch them. They led us a merry old chase all through the tussock and up and down the beach. It was quite difficult to tell whether some of the smaller widges were actually pups and there were quite a few ‘whoa, you’re not a pup then’ emanating from the tussock. I managed to get nipped by one pup which infuriatingly left teeth marks in my waterproof. Luckily no skin broken so all fine but it has left a bit of a bruise. We earned our cup of tea on the veranda in the sun and to be honest most of us couldn’t really move from there for a while. I was encouraged by the others to go and shower after falling in 3 wallows and smelling rather rich. I was so fed up of falling over by the end of that day!

Bite marks in what used to be my waterproof!

Visitor in the Boat Shed

 Saturday was a grand day with a game of rounders and a BBQ organised by the museum. It was a lovely evening and when we returned to base we got a lift on the SGHT pick up from Grytviken and dropped some wood off in the builder burn pit. As we left from there the sparks from the burn pit were rising like fireflies in the sky and when you let your eye follow them it was led straight up into one of the most beautiful displays of the Milky way I have ever seen. It was surreal. 

Happy Mother’s Day and enjoy your Sunday.