Random Writings

I like to take life one day at a time, but recently several days have attacked me at once…

It began last Sunday (29th Oct) when we had four Twin Otters fly in from Punta Arenas. All four work for Kenn Borek Air, who are a Canadian firm who operate aircraft on behalf of several national Antarctic programmess. In this case we had one plane working for the US, one working for the Italians and two working for Antarctic Logistics & Expeditions, who run an adventure tourism business from a summer-only base camp at Patriot Hills, on the edge of the Ellsworth Mountains. In addition to 12 Kenn Borek aircrew we also met Di and Chris who were ALE’s “advance party” that would open up Patriot Hills ready for the rest of the team to arrive on the mighty Ilyushin-76 aircraft they charter from the Russians.

Anyway, the following days produced a lot of aircraft-related running around. Kenn Borek operate all their Twin Otters on fixed skis during the season, which means that they have to change from wheels to skis here at Rothera. The fixed skis weigh less than the wheel skis that we use on our aircraft, allowing them to carry a higher payload. Anyway, the two ALE planes had flown in with wheel skis on, landed at the skiway (which is a big flat area of glacier about three miles from base, marked with a 2.5km long line of oil drums) and started to change over to fixed skis. The other two landed on wheels on the runway at Rothera.
Monday saw a good deal of ski-related faffery, as the two sets of wheel skis taken off the ALE planes then had to be dragged down to the hangar behind the Sno-Cat and then fitted to the other two planes. These then flew up to the skiway, landed on the wheel skis and then took them off again in order to fit fixed skis. Unsurprisingly, this took all day!
On Tuesday we had a tricky development – Jim, the pilot working for the Americans, got a phone call asking him to go back to Punta Arenas and collect some spare parts for Kenn Borek’s Basler BT-67 (which we’d seen the week before). This was just at the point at which he’d got his aircraft converted to fixed skis! Fortunately for him, a heavy dump of snow had fallen on Monday night, allowing him to land on skis on the snow-covered runway before going back to wheels again. So Jim flew back to Punta whilst the team working for the Italians flew down to McMurdo – they didn’t leave Rothera until 21:30 and I finally handed them off to McMurdo at 01:30, which made for a late night.
Wednesday was another long day. Jim flew in from Punta Arenas and arrived at lunchtime, changed over to skis (the runway still had just enough snow on it) and then flew out to McMurdo.
Two down, two to go. The ALE planes left on Thursday afternoon and failed to get into Patriot Hills due to low cloud – they diverted to a place called Hercules Inlet and went in to land. After the first plane landed, the pilot of the second plane was unable to contact him by any means, and eventually landed at another location and rang Kenn Borek in Calgary to find out if the other plane’s tracking device was still working. It was, so the plane was still either flying or taxiing. About a day of occasional muddled phonecalls ensued until we rang ALE’s office in Punta Arenas and found that they’d heard from the other plane and all was well.

On Friday Tim declared a day off (as everyone had worked on Sunday getting ready for the planes) and, unusually, we got some decent weather and went skiing. The snow conditions on the Ramp (the steep glacier close to base) were good, and when we later headed up to the main ski area, Vals, it was covered in soft powdery snow, which was great.
On Saturday, feeling a little stiff from the day before, Tim encouraged Ags, Jade and I out for a day’s ski instruction. I can now do something more closely approximating a parallel turn although I think I’ve still got a long way to go…
On Sunday the weather was rather less pleasant and so most people stayed indoors. In my case this was enforced by the fact that in spending all day outside skiing I’d managed to chill my back (the day had started warm and got colder, and I hadn’t been wearing a fleece between my baselayer and my jacket) and it stiffened up. I spent a very pleasant afternoon sitting in the library in a supportive chair reading “The Shadow of the Wind” – a complex and gripping adventure/romance/detective story set in Barcelona in the ’50s.

Today, Monday, we’ve learned that the planes are coming! – the final clearances for the Twin Otters arrived in Cambridge on Friday and two of the Twotters have already left Oxford to make the long journey down. They’ve flown to Porto initially, and will then make their way down through the Canaries and Azores to Fernando de Noronha, a small island off the coast of Brazil. From there it’s on to Rio, Montevideo and finally Stanley. We expect to see them on Monday (13th). The other two Otters and the Dash-7 were fogbound in Oxford this morning but should leave tomorrow. But a lot could happen between now and when they finally get here!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 7th, 2006 at 12:35 am and is filed under Antarctica.