It’s the last night here and the 2010 winter team is currently on board the ship having their pre-winter meal while we all sneak around base laying the traditional booby traps for them to come back to and leaving us something to smirk over as the ship pulls away from the wharf tomorrow morning. We’ll be on the ship for a couple of weeks as we sail our way northwards to the Falklands via Signy and South Georgia to pick up and resupply personnel on the island bases and hopefully we should get some jollies on the way. There’s even some talk of a stop at Deception Island which is quite a rarity.

As you might expect, lots of emotions and thoughts running around the mind at the moment and all that can really be said is that it’s a strange mix of being sorry to leave such a special place but grateful for a wonderful experience and very much looking forward to coming home. Well, that’s it really! Thanks to everyone for all the comments, mail and all that and I can’t wait to catch up with you all when I’m back in Blighty in a few weeks time!

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!

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!

…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!

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!

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!

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!

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…?

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…

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…