My Midwinter Week

As I write this we have passed midwinter and slowly, incrementally, as the northern hemisphere starts its gradual descent into winter, we in the Southern Polar regions begin our rise into the sun. Midwinter is the most important celebration in the Antarctic. It is the time when finally the nights will start to get shorter and for those on the continent it marks the time when they can start the countdown to seeing the sun again. Here on South Georgia we never lost daylight. The days have been short and we have had no direct sunlight on the base for a month or so but we have never had to experience what our colleagues at Halley station are going through. They are currently in continual darkness with temperatures of -40’C and winds of up to 50kts whirling the snow around their base. 

Across Antarctica all but the most necessary of work stopped and we have all had a week of relaxation. We have had Midwinter greetings from most of the bases on the continent: the French, Norwegians, Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Argentineans, Chileans, Brazilians, Americans, New Zealanders, Australians, the other British bases and many more all sent photos to every other base and we sent ours back. We got a Midwinter message from David Cameron and Barak Obama. It made me feel much closer to the Antarctic community than I have ever felt before and made it seem as if we were part of a family. 

Our Midwinter message to all the other bases

 As part of the Midwinter celebrations the British Bases all have a ‘pubcrawl’ at some point over the week. We did ours on Monday night. Everybody who wants to sets up a bar with a theme and then we all traipse over the base visiting them. We started with the Docs Bar up in the surgery, which I had spent some of the afternoon helping Hazel to decorate. She made ‘Death in the Afternoon’ a cocktail created by Hemingway which is a mixture of absinthe and champagne. It was a very civilised way to start the evening. We then moved on to the Techies Bar in the welding bay. The drink here was homebrew that Joe has been making for a while. It isn’t bad at all. From there we made our way up to the Base Commander’s office which Rod had filled with balloons for a very fun bar. Then it was the ‘Boaties Bar’; Paula and I  made them all dress up in oil skins and gave them ‘Salty Seadogs’, a mixture of vodka and grapefruit juice with a rim of salt. The challenge of having to tie themselves to each other using only one hand to tie a bowlin went down well and then we moved on to Shack Villa for the GO’s bar. This was a Vicars Tea Party with Pimms and scones and Jo dressed as the vicar and Keiron dressed as the vicar’s wife. The last bar of the night was the Beakers (scientists) Bar in the sauna, a beach theme. It all went off very well and everyone had a very enjoyable night.

When I said that only the most necessary of work went on during the week, unfortunately taking the GOs to inspect krill boats was necessary. We had three boats to inspect but it went well and I even managed to get some training in for Rod and Hazel coming alongside the ship. The only bore was it taking an hour to dig the boats out so that we could use them. There must have been about 3 feet of snow on them which is a lot when you have to dig it out carefully so you don’t damage anything. The snow was also falling off the roof in front of the doors of the boat shed, meaning that we had to dig out the doors. I, for one, started running in and out of the door as fast as possible; I did not want to have a pile of that snow fall on my head. 

A lot of snow on the boats

Boatshed doors dug out

 Unfortunately it snowed most of the week which meant that the track round to Grytviken was closed. This meant we couldn’t leave base. The restrictions actually made me feel rather closer to the explorers of Scott or Shackleton’s time, when they couldn’t leave their bases and were stuck inside most of the time preparing for the travel of the summer. The effort that went into their Midwinter dinners just goes to show how important it was. They kept certain things back for the celebration and made a real effort. There was one famous trip done in the depths of winter: Dr Bill Wilson, Apsley Cherry-Gerrad and ‘Birdie’ Bowers went in search of an Emperor Penguin colony to attempt to collect eggs for the scientists in the Natural History Museum back at home. If you want a tale of unimaginable suffering and courage then read ‘The Worst Journey In The World’ by Apsley Cherry-Gerrard. I guarantee it will freeze your blood no matter where you read it. 

 In corners of the dry food store, the cold food store and the freezers have been little boxes with the words “For Midwinter” scrawled across them. They held little goodies or things we were running out of, like marmalade, so that we could have a treat over midwinter. Bringing them out and finding myself happy at remembering that we had olives or tinned pineapple again made me feel a kindred spirit to the explorers of Shackleton’s day and made it even more special. 

Midwinters day dawned and I woke up to clear a path from the sauna to the sea for later activities. We had the BC’s breakfast (a combined effort from Rod and Paula) at 1000 which was the works, everything you could possibly want in a cooked breakfast. Then once we had semi digested that, at 1130 we steeled ourselves and all went for a Midwinter swim. The air temperature was about -2’C but the water was a balmy 4’C so in we all jumped. I can’t say that we stayed in very long and soon we were all ensconced in the sauna getting feeling back into our toes. It was very refreshing though.

At 1400 we had the Mid Winter Present (MWP) giving. We had all taken names out of a hat in April and had to make a present for that person. I got Jo Cox the GO. She is also a Master is the Merchant Navy and has her own boat so I decided to make her a set of navigational dividers, a stand for pencils and slide rules for her chart table and a box to put the dividers in. Daniel  made me a box very cleverly fashioned to look like a Jet boat. Jo made Joe a backgammon set inlaid with a picture of South Georgia. Joe made Sue a clock and a book stand for her recipe books. Sue made Rod a box with a lid inlaid with an engraved picture of Grytviken. Rod made Keiron a picture frame with one of his fantastic photos of Adelie penguins in it. Keiron made a table out of wood from Discovery House for Erny and Erny made a milking stool for Daniel. Paula had knitted a hat, glove and scarf set for Hazel and made earrings out of reindeer bone and a knife with reindeer bone handle. Hazel had made Paula a set of 4 light boxes with x rays inside them. I had helped her make them and it was very intricate. Everything was wonderful and very well thought out for each person. It really was amazing since none of us have experience in this type of thing. I think I may have got the creating bug though and I might find myself in the carpenter’s workshop (Chippy Shop) a lot more now. 

All the Midwinter Presents

My present from Daniel

 

My present to Jo Cox

The Midwinter Dinner was a huge affair and everyone pitched in to make it a fantastic evening. The dining room and table were decorated, we all got dressed in our formal wear and the food that was produced was unbelievable. We had a starter of king prawn and scallop on black pudding with bacon and a balsamic dressing. Then we had a palate cleanser of gin and tonic sorbet. This was followed by a main course of roast goose (provided by the builders from the Falklands) and all the trimmings. The pudding was white chocolate ice cream and then a cheese board and port with chocolate truffles. All in all it was a huge success. 

Scott's Midwinter Dinner

 

Our Midwinter Dinner

 I don’t know if this will have been only the first of many Antarctic Midwinters for me (I have a feeling it might not be my last) but it is certainly one that I will always remember.

A World of Liquid Light

On Saturday it snowed a little. On Sunday and Monday the skies opened and snow, big fluffy flakes, crystalline and so big that you could see each individual one, floated from the sky like cherry blossom in the spring. It has been cold here. The mercury hasn’t risen much above -4’C all week. This has been good but it has meant that the snow hasn’t bedded down yet, resulting in billows of pinprick cold every time you kick it.  The snow is knee deep which means that until we got tracks run into the snow around base your boots would fill unless you took great care. Doing my earlies rounds on Tuesday I tried to follow Rod’s footsteps in the snow but he is 6 foot something and has an enormous stride so I found myself flat on the floor in the snow laughing at my own predicament. I think I might start wearing my waterproof socks!

On Monday Hazel taught me how to ski. I have never skied in my life and I will admit to the fact that the thought of it doesn’t fill me with all the warm fuzzy feelings it should. I have bad knees and I am not looking forward to learning how to go downhill. On the flat and uphill it is fine. It is easier than snowshoeing and actually quite fun once you’re in someone else’s tracks. In this snow however, breaking trail is a real trial and very hard going.

On Wednesday I had to do some night boating. This is rather a palaver here. We need three people on board, rather than the normal two. You have the coxswain (me) then a deck crew and an icelight operator. The icelight operator also maintains a radio watch while the cox and deck crew are on deck dealing with transfers. In the coastal waters of the UK there is nearly always light at night. Whether it is the coastal towns casting their orange glow over the bays or the reassuring flash of the guardian lighthouses guiding you home, there is nearly always light. In London, where I do most of my lifeboating nowadays, going down the Thames at night is literally like floating on a river of light, with all the lights from the city reflected under the hull of the boat. Going to sea at night is a strange experience, even when you can see the lights on the coast; your other senses are pulled compellingly to the fore. Hearing becomes more important but I find that your sense of smell becomes incredibly powerful. Whenever I was out in the Bristol Channel at night I could always tell when I was close to a river by the smell of the freshwater hitting the sea. It is quite difficult to describe but it is intensely powerful. You can imagine what going out at night here is like. There is only the lights from the base and the leading lights on the shore to orientate you (leading lights guide you in through a channel; as long as you keep them in line, you are in safe water). Once we had picked our slow careful way out of the bay, avoiding the kelp only by seeing it lit up in the icelight that Joe was sweeping across the bows, the only light we could see was that of the ship we were meeting. Her icelight swung across the bows, mimicking ours and her deck lights lit up a patch of sea around her hull. You could almost smell the snow as well as the kelp giving off its familiar ozone tang. Everything can be a bit disorientating in the dark and you have to take much more care while out boating but it all went fine and we returned to the safety of the lights of the base and Rod’s excellent bean burgers.

Hazel, Jo and I tried to get to Maiviken on Friday, for a night off base, but in the end the snow and the rapidly gathering darkness defeated us. Instead we skied around Grytviken and the bay and enjoyed the cold, crisp sunset. The sky wavered from cloudless blue to pastel pink with the mountains on the Barff painted an exquisitely delicate shade of coral. As time went on the pink darkened to purple and above the mountains the air was a deep electric blue. It looked too real to be true and we just stood and drank it all in, listening to the pancake ice on the bay crackle as ripples made it sway in the water. Hazel and I took up Jo’s kind offer of dinner at Carse house that night and we had a really nice evening on her sofas just chatting. When it came time to leave we wandered out into the cold air and found that the new moon was picking out every facet of every snow crystal on the ground, making it feel like we were walking on diamonds. We looked up and I suddenly felt very, very small, with the whole weight of the universe towering over me. I have never seen skies like that. There was no black. The illusion of darkness was only there when you didn’t focus your eyes on the stars that were in every corner of the sky. The Milky Way swept across our view like a brush stroke of light across a canvas of velvet and while we were transfixed a shooting star suddenly flashed. across the sky. It was breathtaking, literally breathtaking and a sight I don’t think I will ever forget. I was reminded of a phrase in C.S. Lewis’s ‘Voyage of the Dawn Treader’. Eustace says “In our world a star is huge ball of burning gas”. He is answered by Corriakin (a star resting on earth till he can take up the dance once more): “Even in your world that is only what a star is made of, not what a star is.”

This week is Midwinter’s week and it is going to be quite busy, with krill boats to licence and Midwinter activities to do. I won’t write another blog till after Midwinter so I will say Happy Midwinter now and leave you to enjoy your week.  

            Dawn                            (Photo by Hazel Woodland)



Me working - not very hard!   (Photo by Hazel Woodland)

Me driving the JCB                             (Photo by Hazel Woodland)

 

Sunset with Ice on the Bay                    (Photo by Hazel Woodland)






And Then There Were Ten ...

Well nine actually. There are meant to be ten people on this island over winter. The eight members of BAS staff and two government officers. One of the GOs, Keiron, had to be shipped out to the Falklands with the SGHT (South Georgia Heritage Trust) team for a dental problem but it has all been fixed and he is on his way back as I write. Once he returns the full team will be here. It is a rather odd feeling sitting at dinner and knowing that the eight other people in the room are the only people for hundreds of miles. We dropped down to nine on Thursday. Before that we had an incredibly busy three days. 

On Monday HMS Argyll arrived fresh from South Africa. Close on her heels was RFA (Royal Fleet Auxiliary) Black Rover. The Black Rover is essentially the tanker ship for HMS Argyll and allows her unrestricted movement in remote locations. Since we only had the nine wintering team, Richard McKee (the Executive Officer for the government, down on a visit) and Andy Black here it was all hands on deck. We actually lost Joe (sparky) and Erny (mech) because they were working on the hydroelectric plant. We have been having a fair amount of trouble with the power and the manufacturers had sent an engineer down to help them fix it. Poor Joe, Erny and Tom (the engineer) worked from early on Saturday morning till late on Wednesday evening trying to fix the system. So far it seems to have worked and we have had steady power since. It did mean however that we were two people down for helping to do things with our visitors. 

Argyll had two hundred people aboard and Black Rover forty and they all wanted to get ashore for a leg stretch, a visit to Shackleton’s grave and the museum, so we lent a hand with boating. This meant that from 0900 to 1530 (civil twilight and the limit of our day operations) Paula and I were running a ferry service back and forth between the two ships and the jetty in Grytviken. While we were doing that (each of us took either the morning or the afternoon and spent the other half of the day acting as back up and doing other odd jobs necessary on base) the other winterers either had to be our crews,  man the museum, take the post office on board the ships or help with social events (there was a lunch at Carse House on Monday,  on board Argyll on Tuesday and Black Rover on Wednesday). Everyone helped out or went to at least one of the lunches and they were very nice. I went on board the Argyll and we had a lovely lunch in the Ward Room (the Officers' Mess) and then got a tour around the ship. It was fascinating, because different to other naval vessels I have seen.

Paula and I had a bad time on Tuesday; while I was on the Argyll she discovered an oil leak in Pipit’s starboard engine. This meant that Pipit was out of action until we could fix her. Very annoying. 

As soon as we bid farewell to our guests on Thursday morning Paula, Erny and I headed down to the jetty and then spent the rest of the day in the engine bay testing and checking, retesting, fiddling and trying to figure out what on earth was wrong with her. We couldn’t see anything (but then Paula and I are not engineers so it was not surprising we couldn’t see anything) but after some testing and some deep thought by Erny she was declared operational within Cumberland Bays. We have to keep a close eye on her and if anything untoward happens then we will have to strip the engine but till then (and we all have our fingers crossed that nothing will happen) we can use her which is the main thing. 

As a reward and thank you for all the hard work we had done Jo Cox (GO) hosted a pizza night on the sofas of Carse House. It is wonderful to just be able to sit on a sofa in somewhere which is actually a house and not a base and just feel normal for a while. 

During all of this we have had every type of weather possible. Last week we had had a glorious covering of snow but then we had some torrential rain that managed to sweep it all away. At the same time it swept large parts of the track to Grytviken into the sea and started some landslides. Very unpleasant. We had snow and sleet on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday interspersed with brilliant bouts of sunshine. On Thursday we awoke to large amounts of ice in the bay which had blown in there. It cleared again but is now back with a vengeance. 

Last weekend was the first in a while that I hadn’t gone off walking and I felt the lack of it by the end of the week so Rod, Hazel and I decided to get out no matter what on Saturday. We started early in bright sunshine with some haze, hoping it would lift so we could go to Glacier Col again and walk along the tops. As we paused for smoko at Upper Gull Lake it started to snow so we decided to make our way to the Ice Cave we had found before and decide on a plan after that. No matter the weather, the grandeur and grim beauty of this place always grips me. Walking along the bottom of a valley, surrounded by steep hills with their tops hidden with veils of snow slanting through the air was very special and invigorating and I thank my lucky stars every day that I am here. 

En route to the Ice Cave

 

Hazel and me in the Ice Cave       (photo: Rod Strachen)

 

I actually get paid to be here ...        (photo: Rod Strachan)

The rest of the weekend has been taken up with my Midwinter Present. I am not sure if I have described it before but we all draw a name out of a hat and have to make a present for that person to be presented on Midwinter’s Day (21^st June). People take it more or less seriously depending on their nature. I think that as long as it isn’t horrifically bad and you put some effort into it,  it is the thought that counts and the fact that you have spent time making something for someone that is important, so I am not worrying about it as much as some people. I am very much looking forward to seeing what everyone has been doing shut up in the workshops for so long though. After an afternoon yesterday and a long morning today I think I am pretty close to finishing. I need to bolt something together, put a lid on a box and then it is a matter of sanding and waxing till I am happy that it is done. 

Speaking of which I think it is time to go see if my box has glued together. 

I hope you have a good week, we are counting down till Midwinter week now. 

In the meantime, here are some more photos I thought I would share with you all:

Funny Face     (photo: Rod Strachen)

Hazel, Daniel, Rod and me at the Hamburg Lakes     (photo: Rod Strachan)

 

I seem to be a midget! (a very chilly midget)             (photo: Rod Strachan)

Hazel, Jo and me on Glacior Col        (photo: Rod Strachan)

My room

The Bar

Holidays and hard work

First I should apologise for not having written a blog last week; the reason was my having gone on holiday. Rod, Hazel and I were meant to go to St Andrew’s Bay to stay in the midst of the penguin colony there. Unfortunately there was a slight hiccough with that plan. On the Sunday before we were meant to go I woke up with an incredibly bad back. I don’t get bad backs so this was really unpleasant. After a number of days on Tramadol and nights on Diazepam Hazel (the Doc) said that the holiday to St Andrew’s was out (I was not able to carry my pack the 5-7 hours that is needed to cross the Barff peninsula to get to St Andrew’s). She diagnosed a slightly slipped disc and prescribed rest. I am NOT good at resting! In the end Rod and Hazel decided that the weather wasn’t looking good for St Andrew’s anyway so they changed their mind to a hut holiday on the Greene Peninsula. I was allowed to come only if I promised to allow Hazel to carry the kit I would need for walks in her daysack. I take pride in not needing help and, being stubborn,  it took a fair amount for me to agree but I am incredibly glad I did. 

The morning we were meant to leave I opened my curtains not to the Greene Peninsula and the water between us and it, which is my usual view as I brush my teeth, but to a wall of white snow. It was fairly warm wet snow and not a problem for us to get to the Greene so we duly got into the RIB and Paula and Jo Cox took us over there. The navigation was a little tricky since we couldn’t see 3m in front of the bow but GPSs are wonderful things. 

We landed and quickly got settled into the hut with a cup of tea. Rod had decided not to brave the floor of the hut but to pitch a tent behind the hut so we helped him to do that and then we headed off along the beach to Dartmouth point. The Greene Peninsula makes up one half of Moraine Fjord which has formed through the retreat over the centuries of the Harker and Hamburg Glaciers. The entrance is protected by a line of moraine that runs across it with one gap for a safe entry. There are two wrecks on the moraine entrance, of fishing vessels that ran into difficulties on a stormy night. Dartmouth Point is opposite Penguin River and there is quite a swell that breaks on the unprotected side of it. Once we had rounded the point we came across a whalebone graveyard. Apparently there were only two or three years when the whaling industry didn’t process the whale bones and instead just discarded them and the bones that we see strewn around the beaches come from that. It is a very sobering thought considering that there are thousands of bones and sometimes the very ground you walk on is made up solely of whale bone. The scale of the operations that were here is just unbelievable. For three years, when the whalers first arrived in Grytviken in 1904, they could catch enough whales from the shore that they didn’t have to get into boats. That is a mindboggling thought. In modern times we have so few of these leviathans that to see one is a big event, and to think that there were once, not so long ago, enough to be caught from the beaches is very sobering. Anyway, enough of those grim thoughts; the whalebones are fascinating and Hazel was amazed at how similar to humans the spine was. We ventured a little further along the beach till we could see up East Cumberland Bay and to the Nordenskold and then we returned to the hut. 

The huts are very cosy (well most of them are, Corral hut is rather like a sieve). They generally have a porch for wet gear and then a single room with a workbench arrangement on which are the Tilly Lamp and Primus stove and all the utensils etc. Opposite that are the two bunks.  Once we had lit the Tilly lamp and some candles and put the Primus on for our pasta and to warm up the sauce I had premade the day before, the hut got very cosy. I have written before about the Primus stoves that we use and how archaic they are but they do work remarkably well and I have become fond of them. 

Cosy hut

The next day we awoke to the rain lashing down. Rod had woken up, rather cold, to find he was sleeping in a pond. We were pretty much hutbound the entire day while the heaviest rain we have experienced all year pounded the tin roof. We passed the time chatting, reading and playing Bananagrams and Pass the Pigs. It was very nice to just relax and do nothing. Even on our weekends Rod Hazel and I are usually off tramping the hills so to just sit and do nothing for a day was a real change. But  I think if it had been for much longer than a day we would have got a little bit of cabin fever. In order to make sure he was dry in his tent (which he stolidly persisted with even though we kept telling him to come into the hut) Rod took out his boatsuit and slept on that underneath his sleeping mat; apparently the boots made a comfortable pillow.

Daybreak

  

Early morning

 The next day dawned grey but dry so after our breakfast of tea and porridge we set out with a plan to traverse the peninsula. As we walked along we came across several streams which, with the heavy rainfall, had developed into raging torrents which were a little tricky to cross but cross we did. As we ventured closer to the glacier the earth became less and less green and more and more a land of rock and ice. Everything was monochrome except for the blue of the glaciers. It really was beautiful and awe inspiring. We had lunch in the moraine field and then decided not to traverse the peninsula but investigate the source of the many waterfalls running down the rock. The rock close to the glaciers is some of the most solid you will find on the island because cold and ice haven’t had enough time to work on it and turn it into loose scree. We wandered all the way up the waterfall and found that its source was the edge of the Paget glacier which comes down to meet both the Harker and the Nordenskold on either side of the Greene. It was incredibly humbling to think that we were the first people to ever walk were we stood, since the glaciers would never have been this far back before. Each pebble and rock still caught in the ice was exposed to air for the first time in a thousand years or more. It made me feel very small and insignificant to think how little time on this earth humans have had and how really tiny we are. Sometimes it is good to be put back in one’s place in the universe. 

Harker Glacier

Nordenskold Glacier

Ice in the Cove

The next day (Sunday 26th) we awoke to find that it had snowed and was snowing on and off. We decided to climb two peaks, Eosine and Peak 591. We made our way through terrain that felt remarkably like Scotland  in winter (Rod said that he kept expecting to see a snow hare leap from his feet) to the foot of 591. It was an easy climb till the last 300m which became steeper and covered in windscoured snow. Hazel trailblazed for most of it and my admiration for her fitness just increases every time I go walking with her. She kicked steps at a high rate for 200m vertically till she had to stop because her thighs were burning. I took over and continued till we reached the peak. We had to stay away from the edge due to the rather large cornices that were visible and once we were up there it suddenly started to snow and blow quite hard which meant that we got rather chilly. It was beautiful while we could see the view though and I felt on top of our little world. We descended and had a very chilly lunch before tackling Eosine. It was a wonderful day and we had really earned our cup of tea by the end of it. 

Our illustrious leader on Peak 591

View from the Peak

 

It got a bit chilly!

 The next day we got picked up and brought back to reality. Luckily my back had completely healed by that point so I was able to finally work in the boatshed again. The SGHT (South Georgia Heritage Trust) team, who've been eradicating rats, had been back for a week and dismantled all three of their helicopters which left us with the boatshed and enough high tides to get both of our boats out of the water to careen them (clean their bottoms) and complete the 3 monthly checks necessary. Paula had got ahead of the game and got one out on Sunday and then swapped them on Monday before coming out to get us so I had a very easy job on Monday. 

The rest of the week was taken up by cleaning bilges and reslipping the jetboats, working on gelcoating cracks on the hulls of both RIBs and helping SGHT pack up. I helped their doctor Jamie test one of the pilots’ survival suits. He got into the water while wearing one, in fairly benign conditions with no windchill and no waves, and stayed in there for 40 mins. It was very interesting. The water was probably around 3C and he was wearing gloves and warm clothing underneath his suit. By the end of 40 minutes he was having trouble tying knots and was slowing down in his recitation of his 7 times table. He was able to get out of the water by climbing up the jetty by himself but as soon as he stood up he felt dizzy. He was fine after a minute and warmed up rapidly. He determined that his temperature had fallen by 0.2’C every 10 minutes. It just goes to show how important it is not to fall in!

On Saturday we had a wonderful dinner cooked by Hazel of bruschetta followed by pumpkin risotto and then chocolate flan that was so rich you could feel your heart slowing down. It was the last night of having the SGHT team on base and it really was a nice evening. On Sunday we waved them off  on the Pharos but then Hazel and I saw them again much sooner than we expected  when we had to chase the Pharos in one of our boats, to take them one of their passports which had been left behind. It was very sad to say goodbye to some of them and I for one will miss them. Hazel and I then spent the rest of Sunday clearing Kelp from near Tajuka jetty (the jetty over at Grytviken). Pulling kelp up into a small boat is a tiring and slimy job and we very much deserved our cup of tea at the end of it. 

Next week is going to be incredibly busy so I will sign off now and go and prepare by having a little nap I think. Have a good week.