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.