Random Writings

I’ve been away for a few days – two days, to be precise, although it felt like a lot longer. I’ve accrued a fair number of air miles and seen a lot of interesting places. After several days standing around waiting for aircraft to be workable and the weather to be suitable, we left early on Sunday morning – pilot Doug, myself, and Kat, one of our terrestrial biologists. We headed initially for Mars Oasis, which is 200 or so miles away to the south of Rothera, on Alexander Island. Mars is the site of a number of long-term studies into Antarctic vegetation (mostly moss and lichen) and we flew in under the low cloud and dropped Kat off, collecting her colleague Kevin by way of exchange. A short flight from Mars is Fossil Bluff, where we refuelled the plane and dropped off Kevin to catch a connecting plane back to Rothera. Fossil Bluff is an old wintering station which is now occupied by two staff from Rothera during the summer and is used as a refuelling station for the Twin Otter aircraft. Doug and I then flew south to Sky Blu, another refuelling stop, which is named for its incredible natural runway, formed from a sheet of blue ice. It’s as flat as a skating rink and just as slippery. Astonishingly, we can land our large Dash-7 aircraft here (on wheels – it doesn’t have skis like the Otters) although Doug is quoted as saying that landing the Dash at Sky Blu is “like a one legged man wrestling an alligator on a skating rink”!
It was good to meet up with Bruce, Alex and Roger, who’ve been at Sky Blu for several weeks now, all except Alex sporting beards and smelling strongly of Avtur, the sweet-smelling aviation fuel that they spend a lot of time pumping into aircraft. After a quick cup of tea in the little fibreglass hut they call home, Doug headed out with Hilmar, one of the glaciologists, who’d arrived that morning on another aircraft. They spent the afternoon and evening flying around the Rutford Ice Stream setting up GPS stations to monitor its movement. The Rutford is one of the big ice streams that drains the Antarctic continent of ice and snow – it’s one of the fastest glaciers on the continent and can move up to a metre a day. Consequently it’s of great interest to our beakers, and we have three field parties doing science there this year. I spent the afternoon at Sky Blu helping out with odd jobs and cooking dinner from an assortment of tinned and dried foods over the Primus stove in the hut. Doug returned around midnight, bringing with him Tom, who he’d collected from Hilmar’s camp when he’d dropped Hilmar off – are you following all this? Sky Blu, being 74 degrees south or so, doesn’t even have any semblance of a sunset even at midnight, so it felt very strange going to bed in the hut in full sunlight.
The following day came (it didn’t dawn – the sun hadn’t set) and I headed out again, this time to take Alex and Roger down to the RABID depot. RABID is short for Rutford Area Base of Ice Drilling, and it was a major field camp during the last few years, where ice cores were drilled into the glacier. Now it’s just a vast depot of fuel and scientific gear, and every year some people get sent to dig it out of the snow and make it secure for the following season. We flew down to the Rutford, where the landscape becomes completely flat except for the Ellsworth Mountains, which look like they’ve been whipped up from Christmas cake icing – all white and lumpy – and which include Mount Vinson, the highest in Antarctica. The plane landed, we unloaded all their equipment, checked that the radio worked, and then flew off back to Sky Blu, leaving Alex and Roger to set up camp. After refuelling, it was time to load the plane with some drums of petrol and boxes of food and fly off to another part of the Rutford to put in a depot for one of the field parties who’ll be travelling across the glacier. This was a four hour round trip! Then we went on back to Rothera via Fossil Bluff. By the end of the 48 hours I was stiff, tired, smelled of Avtur and wondering how the pilots do it every day! But it was good fun and I would do it all again…

I’ve made a short video of Sky Blu and the Rutford – enjoy it!

A sudden change in the weather has hit Rothera and our surrounding remote stations and field parties – we had 24 hours of high winds with blowing, drifting and falling snow, which is giving the base an altogether more wintry look. A lot of the snowdrifts that had been cleared away have now started to reform, but the biggest change is that the sea ice has started to break up and a lot of it has blown away from the base. This is good news for us, as it means that we will soon be able to launch boats and start the marine science season in earnest. It also means that the James Clark Ross, which is making its way towards us with its precious cargo of new equipment, food and beer, not to mention a whole load of summer and winter staff, should have no difficulty in getting into the base when it arrives in about two weeks’ time. You can follow the JCR as it makes its journey from Stanley down to Rothera.

Before the weather changed we managed to get some concreting done. We’re erecting a new mast for communication with remote field parties, and so we took advantage of a few sunny days to get the foundations put in. Now, my only previous experience of laying concrete was putting down a foundation for a greenhouse in my parents’ garden, and it was incredibly hard work and involved moving what seemed like tonnes of stuff in a small wheelbarrow. Here we were laying a lot more, and doing so on top of a rocky peninsula in the Antarctic. The job began with Andy and Pat drilling holes in the rock with a pneumatic drill – these took steel reinforcing bars that would strengthen the concrete. This was very hard work and involved much cursing when the drill became trapped in the rock by dust and shrapnel. Glen the Carpenter built and fittted the wooden shuttering to shape the concrete and then we were ready to mix and pour. Favours were called in, and on a bright sunny morning I turned up on site to find that concreting was already in full swing (I’d had some indoor duties to do immediately after breakfast) – but every labour-saving device was employed to make it a much easier job than at home! Firstly, an industrial concrete-mixer has a hydraulic scoop for the aggregate and cement – so you can load the scoop conveniently at ground level and then tip it all into the mixing drum by just pulling on the lever. Having mixed the stuff, we then employed the Nodwell to deliver it to the pour site. The “Noddy” is like a small lorry on tracks with a small crane mounted on the back. Being painted bright red and moving in the slightly awkward way that tracked vehicles do, it looks like something out of Bob the Builder! However, the Noddy has a hopper attachment for moving concrete – so Pat could park it next to the mixer where we tipped up to 1.5 tonnes of concrete into the hopper, then drive up to the pour site and hoist the hopper up over the shuttering. Pulling on the rope releases the concrete – much easier than using a wheelbarrow!

Me, playing football? On gravel? In a minus 4 air temperature and a fifteen knot wind? With my reputation?

Well, yes, I did. And, startlingly, I enjoyed it too. No-one took it too seriously, which is, I think, what put me off last time I played (aged 10 at junior school – I went to one of those secondary schools that thought that gentlemen played rugby). I’ll now put on my best sports-journalist voice…

Great excitement greeted the announcement of the first match of the 2005/6 season. Assembling at 5pm on a Saturday afternoon, the intrepid teams assembled on the apron in front of the aircraft hangar. No jumpers for goalposts here – the formidable team of Dan Smale and Damien Carson scaled a shipping container behind the hangar to retrieve two battered but serviceable goals and a pile of marker cones. With the pitch laid out, the teams were assembled. A brief suggestion of “picking teams, like in school” gave way to “winterers vs summerers” meaning that the closely-honed team spirit of the outgoing winterers with anti-freeze in their blood was to be pitched against the daring young challengers, full of fresh vegetables and enthusiastic optimism. The wintering team started one player short, but were quickly reinforced by the late arrival of Simon Herniman a few minutes into the game. “The Herminator” gave added vigor and pace to the already animated game, and soon goals were scored and the teams began to come together. A few memorable moments – Dan Smale’s deft dribbling leading to a string of quick-fire goals; Donald Campbell’s arrival in the second half, bringing with it some dramatic midfield action and the tackle that lead to Lowri Bowen and Matt Brown colliding head-on and landing on the gravel in a tangle of limbs, surprised but unhurt.
After 45 minutes play the winterers were 8-6 up, despite the summers having six players to their five. A cry of “next goal wins” went up and the teams redoubled their efforts to score. At the end the winterers smacked the ball into the back of the net, sealing the fate of the contest between vitamins and cameraderie.

Wintering team: Matt Brown (dive officer), Mike Tattersfield (plumber), Jo Coldron (doctor), Dan Smale (marine biologist), Simon Herniman (GA)

Summering team: Claire Hughes (oceanographer), Lowri Bowen (doctor), Donald Campbell (weather forecaster), Pat McGoldrick (Base Commander, Halley), Damien Carson (geochemist), Riet van der Velde (chef), Michael Prior-Jones (comms manager). Not all the summer team played at the same time – Lowri replaced Riet and Donald only played in the second half.

I’ve made another video, with footage of our aircraft and some of the vehicles on base. I hope you enjoy it! You should be able to play it with Quicktime or Media Player Classic.

A note appeared on the dining room wall. In florid handwriting, it invited anyone who was interested in an evening’s adventurous activity to sign up below. I signed.
At afternoon smoko, I was duly accosted by Matt and Tom, two of the new GAs, who said their plan was to walk along Reptile Ridge, and was I still interested. I was. Would I meet them at the sledge store after dinner. I would.
Reptile Ridge is a line of sharp-edged mountains that run for about two miles inland from Rothera Point – it’s a popular location for evenings and days out as it’s close to base and has a variety of challenges for both beginners and experts.
Anyway, I showed up at the sledge store, wearing a fair amount of my outdoor clothing and carrying a lot more in a rucksack. There were six of us in total: three GAs (Tom, Matt and Roger) plus: Andy the boatman, Doctor Lowri and me. We gathered our equipment – ice axes, crampons, harnesses, ropes, ice screws, various chunks of climbing hardware, snow stakes and helmets – and headed out. The wind was getting up, around 25 knots, and the snow was beginning to blow along the runway. Tom and I got going quite quickly and began the long slow plod up the Ramp to the bottom of Reptile Ridge. About a quarter of the way up we were passed by the others, who had elected to take skidoos as far as the top of the ramp. Tom and I felt self-righteous, and he pointed out that the others would have a longer walk back as they’d have to go and collect the doos again afterwards. I rapidly regretted wearing my fleece under my windproof jacket as I was getting too warm already. Getting hot and sweaty is a Bad Thing as it leads to you getting cold quickly later. Anyway, at the summit we put on harnesses and helmets and roped up into Alpine pairs – this is the whole business with having a big coil of rope over your shoulder whilst being roped to your partner, the idea being that if either of you falls into a crevasse, the other can secure the rope and then abseil down to make sure you’re all right.
And then off we went. Up the gentle snowslope at first, taking care to bang the soft snow from our crampons (if you don’t to this you lose your grip in an undignified manner) and going along at a gentle but steady pace. This turns out to be the tricky bit to mountaineering – you need loads of stamina to just keep walking, however slowly, rather than rushing on and then having to stop for breath. I rapidly discovered that I’m not as fit as I might be, but then, that’s not really a surprise! We went up to the ridge, stopped for a breather and a brief view, and then started to traverse along the summit of the ridge, going up and down the snowbanks that form behind the peaks. I was beginning to flag a bit on the final ascent to the top of Repeater Buttress (so called because the repeater for the base’s VHF radios is sited there) but spurred myself on with the thought of a drink of cold Ribena and a square or two of Cadbury’s chocolate at the summit. Not to mention Tom’s encouraging words from 10 meters ahead of me!

Yes, Tom, I am enjoying this, honest!

From here it was downhill almost all the way home. We had intended to go down the back of the ridge and around to Ammo Col in order to get back across the ridge and back to base, but it was getting late, and it became clear that Andy and Matt, who were in the lead had taken a short cut home. Tom and I traced their footprints into a bank of large scree boulders and then to a tiny cleft in the ridge, from which we dropped down easily towards the flagged route back to base. Just as we descended Tom warned of “ankle-biter” crevasses – small ones that take you by surprise, and sure enough within minutes I’d stood in one and was waist deep in snow with my right foot danging in thin air. This isn’t particularly difficult to get out of as the ground around me was solid, so I hauled myself out and we plodded on. At the flag line, which marks the safe route back to base, we unroped and took our crampons off and tramped back to base. This was my first real experience of mountaineering, and I definitely enjoyed it in retrospect, although some sections of it were more grim determination than enjoyment! I’m sure it gets easier with practice. I’ll let you know.

Thanks to the marvels of Autostitch I have a panoramic view of Rothera, as seen from the balcony of the operations tower. Please excuse the lens distortion – the runway and Admirals House are straight, not bent like a banana!

I’ve annotated the panorama with the names of some buildings and vehicles so that you know what I’m talking about when I refer to places around the base.

Today we had a rare visitation from an Emperor penguin – they usually live much further South than us (there’s a breeding colony near Halley station) but this one was clearly lost!

Well, the last few days have been very busy. Despite it being a weekend! Good weather means lots of flying, and flying means work for me. On Saturday we sent two aircraft to Sky Blu, a remote base on the Antarctic Peninsula, where there is a natural ice runway we can land our larger Dash-7 aircraft on wheels. Sky Blu is basically a service station for aircraft, supplying fuel and acting as a depot for supplies heading further south. The Dash-7 got there and back without incident, but the Twin Otter (a much smaller aircraft) developed engine trouble and had to stay overnight. The crew of the Otter thus missed out on Saturday Night At Rothera, which is a big event in the base’s week – with a formal meal and (often) some form of entertainment afterwards. This week was scheduled to be a barbeque, yes, outside, but the 20 knot wind and blowing snow led to the traditional British Indoor Barbeque, ably grilled by our new Belgian chef, Riet. Following the meal we were treated to a rare gig from the Rothera wintering band, Tepid Stan, playing a fine selection of rock and indie cover tunes in the lively atmosphere of the sledge store. My room-mate, “Soup” Laidlaw, enjoyed his birthday hugely!

Tepid Stan, live

A busy night in the sledge store

This morning I had a late start, which was just as well. I’ve been flight following all afternoon, though, but I’m shortly heading off to the delights of the bar quiz. We’ll see how it goes…

Thanks to the magic of DV cameras and high-efficiency video compression, I’ve managed to make a little three minute video to share with you all – contrary to what I say in the introduction, it’s actually a quick walk around Rothera Point, pointing out some of the features and wildlife. For the technically minded, the video is 352×288 encoded in H264 at 240kbit/s.