Travellin’ South

The beginning of the end..!

Well, the end of the season is truly upon us here at Rothera. This week has seen the final departures of our aircraft and only 45 people remain on base until the ship comes in around the end of the month to take 23 of us home and leave the 2010 winter team behind…

The weather has certainly taken on a wintry edge to it over the last couple of weeks – enough to see our last two Twin Otters depart under cover of darkness on Tuesday night to get out in between two weather systems and that presented a nice opportunity for some photos of the runway lights deployed. Given that our aviation takes place in the summer season of the land of the midnight sun and all that it’s a rare sight to see the runway lights on around here!

Activity on base is now focused on the impending arrival of the RRS Ernest Shackleton, the station’s “last call” before winter (although not strictly true this year – the US icebreaker Nathaniel B. Palmer is going to call in April to pick up the gear left behind from the NSF Larissa project). Much packing of cargo is afoot and that includes the outgoing winterers packing up their personal effects for shipping home. On almost every level that’s quite a scary process, almost as much as it was 18 months ago on the way down!

Antarctica’s busiest airfield…?

It’s been pretty manic the last couple of weeks in the tower as Rothera surely became Antarctica’s busiest airfield for a short while! It’s pretty much the end of the field season down here and we’ve had all the aircraft that transited through us come back through on their way north. Various factors combined and it ended up that one night this week we had a total of 12 aircraft overnighting at Rothera – our own Dash-7 and 4 Twin Otters, 2 DC-3 Baslers and another 5 Twin Otters run by Kenn Borek Air for the US and Italian programmes. 12 aircraft is Rothera’s record and I’m proud I can say I was a part of it…

As the majority of the Borek fleet headed north to Punta Arenas the next morning it looked rather empty over on the apron! We’re not done yet though – we still have to pick up our last field party and close down Sky Blu and Fossil Bluff for the winter. We’ve also got the German Basler “Polar 5” staying with us while they conduct some joint work with our own scientists (see the above pic of Polar 5 and our own Twin Otter in formation with cloud probes) and yesterday we took the BBC’s Frozen Planet team flying around the Wilkins Ice Shelf – it was a beautiful afternoon yesterday and you can expect some pretty awesome aero footage next year when it makes it to TV!

So, you can see it’s not all over yet, we’ve still got a few weeks of flying before the Air Unit pack up and head north. After that I get to breath a sigh of relief (no more 6:50am starts!) and get a few relatively quiet weeks to finish up handing over to Mike, my successor, before the ship arrives and takes us home… only 59 days to go!

Yes, I know it’s been a month…

…since the last update and it’s been a busy one honest! The way I write these is basically to look back on the pictures I’ve taken to remind me what’s happened and there don’t seem to be too many to choose from this month so I must have been flat out! As it is we’ve all but completed the field season for BAS and we only have two BAS field parties remaining out on the ice although we are currently supporting two teams for NSF out of Rothera. Since the last update we’ve seen three visits from the American icebreakers Nathaniel B. Palmer and Laurence M. Gould and there seems to have been a constant stream of unfamiliar faces wandering around station which is perhaps good training for my impending return to the ‘real world’ in about 9 weeks…!

All that activity on base has kept me pretty busy between shifts in the tower and time spent fixing things that break at the most inopportune times. We’ve had relatively good weather this month including a few days that seemed unbearably hot (up to +4°C and no ozone layer to shield us from the unrelenting sunshine!) and plenty of whale sightings out in the bay. In fact I’ve managed to get my first photo of Orcas that shows them larger than 2 pixels wide.

So it’s February now and I leave Rothera at the end of March. That’s next month. Like actually NEXT MONTH! Thoughts of home and what to do next are becoming more and more the topic of conversation amongst the outgoing winterers. We’ve already had a couple of us leave station for other locations but Celine and James are the first two of us to be properly leaving to go home on Monday when they fly north. Scary stuff – the next time we meet will be in the real world with trees and grass and different clothes and beer that isn’t in tins and all sorts of wondrous things!

Long time no post…!

Sorry folks, yes, I know it’s been a long time since my last post on here and probably many of you are wondering if I’ve fallen down some mega-crevasse or been eaten by a raging leopard seal… I’m glad to say neither is the case, I’ve just been rather busy with what has turned out to be an excellent first half of the field season down here.

The keen-eyed amongst you may have noticed that I did in fact sneak a new image gallery onto the blog here a few weeks back but other than that I’ve only just had enough time to send a few e-mails and make the odd phone call home. However, as well as many long shifts in the ops tower there has been the odd break from ‘the office’ including a two week stint out in the field spent mostly at our forward depot at Sky Blu and a rather splendid jaunt down to 84°S to help move one of our field parties in the Pensacola mountains just about within striking range of the South Pole itself.

Weather down in the deep south was rather pleasant as you can see from the pic on the right and it was a good break from the craziness of being on base in the height of the summer season. Work at Sky Blu is a mix of digging snow and grooming the blue ice strip we use as a runway and there seem to be only two opinions of the place – it’s either likened to a white paradise or a penal colony. Personally I’d go with the first one but it all depends on your point of view!

I made it back from the field just in time for New Year and it was celebrated in excellent style with two bands plus DJs playing in the garage which is our main party venue when the need arises. With plenty or practice behind us the winter band put on an excellent set of Rothera favourites and all was good.

Um, yes, lots more has happened, obviously, but just too much to scratch at here so I’ll call it quits for now. I shall try and be more diligent in my record keeping for the second half of the season! Hope you all had a merry xmas and all that and perhaps even a bit of snow too by the sounds of it!

The summer season has begun…

Well, the summer season is truly upon us and it feels like it’s arrived all too quickly! It’s quite a shock for those of us who’ve been here through the winter to suddenly have scores of people arriving and everyone is working flat out to get the base into high gear and get all the field equipment ready for deployment any day. An unfortunate strike of flu in the Falklands delayed the arrival of one group of incoming personnel – that included Crispin, the first of my team to be joining me. That’s meant (because I’ve been the only qualified radio operator on base) I’ve pretty much been confined to the ops tower talking to aircraft every day for the last fortnight… and we’ve seen a lot of air traffic in that time! Right now on base we have two of our Twin Otters, the Dash-7 is doing passenger runs from Punta Arenas and the Falklands almost every day, two Twin Otters from the Chilean Air Force are visiting and a DC-3 came in last night and departed for South Pole this morning. Thankfully Crispin arrived yesterday on the Dash and, after getting quickly back into the swing of things today, it looks like I can finally have a lie-in tomorrow!

Around base the weather hasn’t changed much yet, we’ve had a few nice days but there certainly is a great deal more sunlight, noticeable every day. It won’t be long before we’re light throughout the night and there’s certainly enough light now to go for a good long walk round the Point after dinner which is a novelty.

Right, I could go on about what a strange experience it is for us to be alone for so long and then suddenly have all these strangers descend on what’s become our home but, to be honest, tonight is my first chance for some good rest in quite a while and I’m going to make the most of it!

We’re not alone anymore…!

A big day yesterday – the first flight to Rothera for some 8 months and the arrival of new faces and some fresh supplies! Our first arrivals this season aren’t our own people but are in fact two aircraft contracted to the US Antarctic Program on their way over to McMurdo station via us and the South Pole. Our aircraft are making their way down through the Americas right now and are scheduled to arrive in about a week’s time. Fortunately, our visitors were generous enough not to arrive empty handed – a crate of fresh fruit and vegetables from the Punta Arenas supermarket was very quickly the centre of attention as soon as it was unloaded from the aircraft!

Marginal weather across the continent will keep our friends on the ground here for at least another day - I guess that means we haven’t scared them off yet despite the incredible urge to stare open-mouthed at the seven new people! All that we’d been warned of seems to be true and it’s quite a bizarre feeling having new things pitch up on base after we’ve been all alone for 7 months. Brunch seemed like an incredibly busy affair today – an extra table had to be added in the dining room and I actually had trouble following conversation around the table with all the extra noise…! Totally crazy!

The final week of winter…

We’re in the final week of winter here at Rothera, well, what’s scheduled to be the final week anyway… the weather may have other ideas! The whole team was busy on a base-wide scrub out today making sure everything’s ship shape for the arrival of the first aircraft which is scheduled to fly south to us on Friday. The current weather and forecast for the week is pretty bleak though so we may get a little more time to ourselves. In fact we’ve probably had as much snow in the last week as we’ve had all winter. Well, that’s what you get for trying to clear the runway I guess…

What else has happened? Well, we did have a clear afternoon last week, good job too as we were running out of time to take the official 2009 winter team photo. The base got off lightly actually with several photo spots being captured in just 40 minutes although the jury is still out as to whether or not the film shots have developed well enough or if we may have to resort to another session.

Coo, in the next post there’ll probably be a picture of an aircraft! Ummm, either that or more blizzard shots…?

Penguins of Rothera…

This week saw our second Emperor penguin visit of winter. Not a common sight around Rothera, Al spotted this chap as he casually walked past the dining room window on Thursday afternoon out on the sea ice that still remains to the north. The last Emperor to visit Rothera was fairly sedentary (well, he was asleep mostly) so I reckoned on having enough time to finish my cup of tea before heading out to take pictures. As it was, this chap was fairly quick and had made it across the runway to the hangar and was on his way back out to sea by the time I arrived. That plus camera difficulties led to a fairly small number of pictures. Ah well. We also had a Gentoo penguin hang around for a few days a couple of weeks back so I’ve at least completed the set of “Penguins seen at Rothera”. That is to say I have photos of 2 Emperors, 1 Gentoo, 1 Chinstrap and thousands of Adelies. Summer is on it’s way and a couple of seal pups have been sighted in the local area. It also won’t be long before our beloved Skuas return to plague the runway and generally flirt with death in the path of aircraft propellers.

With that in mind, preparations for summer are in full swing. The first aircraft is due at Rothera in just under two weeks and my recent time has been mostly spent finishing the field equipment servicing and running checks on all the ops tower equipment (including a rebuild of one of the main HF radios) to ensure we’re in good shape for the coming season. Winter trips are coming to an end next week and the increasing length of days has led to some glorious views from the tower during evening scheds, the mechs have tentatively started clearing snow from around base and will soon be getting the snow-blowers out to clear the runway - the feeling on base is definitely that we are coming to the end of winter. It won’t be long before the peace is shattered and Rothera is again teeming with people and aircraft. It’s not all bad though, we might be able to get some more Vegemite sent down…

Back from the wild blue yonder…

I have returned (in fact I’ve been back a week) from a highly successful sortie into the wild blue yonder, a continuation of our essential winter training. Dave and I headed out last Monday in excellent weather which allowed us to travel through the pass in the mountains to the north of base and around the back of all that terrain to the south end of Adelaide Island. We camped just beneath the dramatic hills with a view to climbing the next day. Three more days of perfect weather with hardly a breath of wind ensued and Dave and I went on to knock off pretty much all the sights before a day of lie-up on Friday.

We had a good couple of days climbing hills and enjoying the excellent views afforded by the unusually good weather. In fact as we climbed the Myth (the peak left of centre in the photo above) the problem was more of overheating despite the temperature around -15°C or so. We also had a break form climbing one day to head down to the southern tip of the island and have a look around the abandoned base there which was the predecessor to Rothera.

The weather took a turn for the worse on Friday and we were forced to abandon our plans for more climbing when visibility dropped to maybe 100m in snow so we took it easy before heading back to base on Saturday morning in what turned out to be rather more exciting weather than was forecast. Although we’d only been out for a week, it felt very strange arriving back on base and very crowded around the dinner table on Saturday night, perhaps a small taste of what it might be like when I return to the “real world” next year…

This week has been a busy one. It’s not long now before the first aircraft of the summer is due to arrive and the preparations for the coming field season need to be finished off, gear checked and allocated to projects. We also had a rather messy power-down this week which was a little more prolonged than usual and served as a good reminder as to just how isolated we are. Top marks to Paul (the genny mech) though for getting the situation back under control and in the end there was no harm done other than us missing morning smoko…

Update on August and I’m off on holiday tomorrow…

I’ve clearly been busy in August because I don’t seem to have found the time to update this blog (and I’m hurriedly writing this as I really need to be packing my gear to leave on my second winter training trip tomorrow morning!). Hmmm, what have I been up to? Well, we’ve had good weather and bad weather in equal doses this month. During the good weather there have been more visits to the repeater on Reptile Ridge, and the now usual long spells out in the cold on any clear night to make the most of the darkness while we still have it – summer is approaching and in just a couple of months we won’t have much night-time at all. Night photography at Rothera will be a thing of the past for me at least…

Winter trips are out again so every evening I’m in the ops tower chatting with the field parties over the radio, checking everyone’s safe and well. We’ve had a couple of fairly monster storms with winds over 60 knots on base at times so a good deal of lie-up was had by a couple of the teams in the field, their return to base delayed until the weather calmed down enough for safe travel. The forecast for the next couple of days looks about as good as it gets although it’ll probably be a little chilly where Dave and I are heading, round to the south end of the island.

We’ve had some more nacreous clouds over the peninsula although these ones didn’t stick around so long and I wasn’t up early enough to catch them before sunrise when they’re at their most colourful. I’m still not sure about the best way to photograph them – this is a HDR shot which, although a fairly good representation of the scene, doesn’t get across just how bright the clouds really are. They are just jaw-droppingly amazing.

It’s been a weekend of clear but very windy weather and, after the battering from the storms, the sea ice around station has broken up. At the ice edge birds are mostly engaged in a feeding frenzy and I’ve spent a bit of time trying to get the hang of photographing them in flight. Yet another photography learning curve that needs to be climbed but there should be fair opportunities over the summer and I’m not exactly going to be doing much night photography!

OK, that’s about all I’ve got time for, I’d better get back to packing my gear and then get an early night - it’s probably going to be a long day in the cold tomorrow…