Hut Inspection Tour - or the "I Actually Get To Work Here" Tour

Right up until Friday evening this week has been utterly beautiful, bright blue skies, diamond snow and only one snow flurry. The GOs therefore decided that this week would be a very good one to do a hut inspection tour. This meant that we had the arduous task of boating, in wonderful weather, to every hut except for St Andrews, checking the overall condition, doing an inventory of the contents, checking the first aid kits and replacing items where necessary and taking some ‘baseline’ photos of the inside and the outside. There are 6 huts within our travel limits and 3 outside of them: St Andrews, Sorling, and Corral on the Barf peninsula, the Greene hut on the Greene peninsula, Maiviken and Harpon on the Thatcher peninsula and Carlitta, Jason Harbour and the Tonsberg huts on the Busen peninsula. The Busen peninsula is not within BAS travel limits so only the GOs and visiting scientists can use those huts. We did not visit St Andrews or the Tonsberg huts because they are outside of normal boating limits and both of them had recently been restocked and inventoried. Jo, Hazel and I had done Maiviken when we went there for our holiday so that left us only 6 huts to check.

On Tuesday we went down East Cumberland Bay in the afternoon to visit Sorling and Corral. We had to negotiate some ice but all was lovely until we had to leave Sorling and looked towards Corral: of course the only place in the entire sky with a big black cloud over it. 

Guess where we were headed.....

 We put our buffs (neckerchiefs) and goggles on and proceeded to make our way in a bit of a snow storm and then came home to prepare for the slightly longer trip round to West Cumberland Bay on Wednesday. 

It was an absolutely glorious ‘dingle’ day, bright, bright sunshine, not a cloud in the sky and not a drop of wind. After a false start (a flat camera battery and a forgotten bit of kit) we finally headed out into the sun. It was about a half hour/ forty five minute run up to Harpon and when we got there Joe took Jo, Rod, Hazel and Nik ashore and then waited inside the moraine line while I waited on  the Jetboat outside the moraine. Moraine is the rocks and substrate that can be found on a glacier. When a glacier melts and retreats moraine is deposited, quite often as a barrier behind which there is deep water in a fjord leading up to the glacier face. The moraine that the RIB had to negotiate was deposited by the Lyell glacier which in summer time is black with moraine sitting on it.  Once we had recovered our inspectors we nipped across the bay to Carlitta. There I left Jo in charge of the jetboat and I took her place in the inspection team and Joe replaced Rod. This gave me a chance to get ashore. It is one of the very very few downsides to being the boating officer; when people need to be taken into places the boating officer takes them to the bay but usually never gets to go ashore since they are manning the boats. This time however I got ashore and it was wonderful. The hut at Carlitta is modern, no wooden shack here, it felt rather like the Hilton compared with the huts we have access to.

We inspected, inventoried, removed the first aid kit completely and then returned to the jetboat for a well earned lunch in the sun. Pat had asked us to go and take some photos of the Neumayer glacier to check how much it had retreated. This was not a chore! We went up to the face of it and when I looked at the chart plotter I found that the face of the glacier had moved by 3.5 nautical miles from its position appearing on our chart dated 2001.  It was quite a funny feeling to be seeing my vessel symbol on land and knowing that it wasn’t a satellite error. On our return up the fjord Nik spotted a big leopard seal so we hung around a bit having a look at him and enjoying his presence. It is always a little disconcerting seeing how little they are bothered by us and knowing that it is because they know they are at the top of their particular food chain – which include us!

The RIB against the Neumayer Glacier

Leopard Seal   (photo: R Strachan)

On our way to Jason Harbour, further up West Bay, we had to curtail our trip. We suddenly realised that the Pharos was coming back from a fishing inspection and there were not enough people on base to tie her up. So we had to race her back to base. She had a huge headstart but considering that we were going at 25kts to her 10kts (we had to wait for the RIB, the jetboat can do 31kts) it was a pretty unequal contest. It was probably for the best that we returned when we did, the joy of the clear skies and the sun did mean that it was really rather cold and it took all of us about an hour to regain full feeling in our feet.  We will just have to return to Jason Harbour to do that inspection at a later date.

The last hut we needed to inspect this week was the Greene. To get there you have to go into Moraine Fjord which the jetboats can’t do, so it was the RIB Luna to the rescue. Rod, Hazel and I were expecting everybody to want to come since it was such a beautiful day but in the end it was only us three. Getting into the fjord was touch and go. There was a huge amount of ice that had come from the glaciers at the head of the fjord and at one point we really weren’t sure that we were going to be able to get to the hut. I drove the RIB and both Hazel and Rod, who are mad keen photographers, were in seventh heaven with the shots that they were able to take. By the time they had finished at the hut the ice had moved which meant that we had to go further into the fjord to get round it. Since we were doing that anyway we decided it would be criminal of us not to go and check the Harker and Hamburg glacier, which we duly did.

That is a lot of ice!  (photo: H Woodland)

Pipit  (photo: R Strachan)

  To end that rather wonderful Thursday we had doc school. Now usually this is quite popular but this doc school was on cannulating – inserting a thin tube into a vein - so we had fewer takers than normal. Jo, Daniel and I arrived slightly nervously at the surgery and sat down for a lesson. Hazel and I had made a fake arm earlier in the week for us to practice on but unfortunately the only tubing we had to hand was rather tough so we didn’t get quite the feeling we should since you definitely don’t need to push that hard to get a needle into a real vein. I am an advanced first aider and have practiced cannulating on a proper fake arm a number of times, Daniel is the BAS advanced first aider so was able to practice cannulation on his course and Jo has done it as well so at least we weren’t going into it completely cold, but it was with slightly sweaty palms and a few nervous jokes that I prepared to cannulate Daniel. It didn’t go as well as it could have but my second go, on Hazel, went better so I have now cannulated someone and could do it in an emergency if I had to. I think if I was doing it for real my palms would be even sweatier though!

Our Saturday night cook was one with a difference this week. Sue made the pit room corridor into a mock up of an airliner and we all sat in the seats with trays on our laps pretending to be on a flight. It was incredibly well done and the food, delicious as always with Sue, was served in foil tins on plastic plates with plastic cutlery. It really was an amazing feat of imagination and I don’t think anyone else could have pulled it off. These are the things we have to dream up to keep ourselves amused!

On Sunday Hazel, Jo and I went for a slightly drizzly walk to Penguin river. This was to get off base but also to see if we could find any Elephant Seals who had come ashore. We found a couple, one of whom had the most wonderful nose. They are fantastic creatures but you really don’t want to get in the way of their sighs, their oral hygiene leaves something to be desired!

A meeting of the Ellie Appreciation Society

Look at that nose!

Practising his roar

Furry Seal on his berg

Saturday was the 9^th anniversary of my father’s death. As we travelled around the bays in the glorious sunshine with the snow reflecting myriad suns from each crystal face I thought of the poem by Mary Elizabeth Frye:

Do not stand at my grave and weep,

I am not there; I do not sleep.

I am a thousand winds that blow,

I am the diamond glints on snow,

I am the sunlight on ripened grain,

I am the gentle autumn rain.

When you awaken in the morning’s hush

I am the swift uplifting rush

Of quiet birds in circled flight.

I am the soft stars that shine at night.

Do not stand at my grave and cry,

I am not there; I did not die.

A comforting thought as I enjoyed the diamonds covering my world.