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.