Just heading to bed...

I've been on observations since 7 this morning and its now nearing midnight - am pretty knackered but its such a nice evening that i thought i'd stick up just a few more photos before turning in...

More Rothera Photos...

Matt (electronic engineer that I trained with in cambridge) and Ags (whom i am replacing) getting ready to ski at Vals yesterday. The fresh snow was getting a bit heavy so we had to piste a 10m width with the skidoos for a nicer surface. Not much like hard work...

The caboose at Vals, where we had a cup of coffee after a few runs. The snow sculpture there is supposed to be a female rabbit. I was not responsible for this in any way...

A view from the top of Vals NW to Stork with ski pole and glove. I don't know where the other two went.

This is a view down Admiral House, which is the accomodation block for almost everyone on the base, it's really pretty comfortable too. Just inside the door on the left is a table tennis table and laundry, and my shared room is the first red window on the lighter green bit of the building. This is looking pretty much due South and the hill you can see is actually an island called Jenny Island (1900ft, 33kms away - i need to know all this stuff to work out visibility and cloud base height...). It's a bloody nice day today! I'm still on hourlies at 7 tonight because the planes are still flying but im going to head to the music room for a practice with the "band" for new years eve celebrations. Bye for now. rob

descriptions coming later...

Rothera Photos!

Hi, sorry for the delay but ive finally put up some photos of where i now call my home... We just celebrated christmas day yesterday and the chefs did themselves proud, producing and exquisite array of culinary delights, including the oft forgotten "bread display" featuring crazy and diabolical breads from the oven of Cyril, our resident Frenchman. Cyril had the room in fits after dinner with a faux queens speech, having a dig a most of the management and our royal visitor (the princess royal, don't really know anything about her but shes coming for a visit in a couple of weeks time but hopefully i'll keep well out of her way). The seating plan for that visit has been released, and luckily i am miles away from the royal chatter - my predecessor Ags has not been so lucky, being directly in the firing line across Her Majesty. Is she called so? Or is the majestic adjective reserved only for the pinnacle of royal greatness, our glorious Queen Elizabeth? If anyone could enlighten me regarding the appropriate title for Princess Anne i would be very much obliged. Anyway, on to some photographs:

A view of the back of Bransfield House, where all of our offices, dining room, bar, library, phone rooms, and so on are. Theres also the communications or operations tower - basically a small air traffic control tower which is the sticky up mustrad coloured bit. This is where I go to do some of my observations, the others being done there and also at the top of the little hill (100ft) behind me as i take this photo. The point in that is to see over to the other side of the point to check for sneaky bits of fog that could be hiding at sea level ready to sneak around to Rothera and cause chaos with the planes. In the front there are a tiny fraction of the mountains of cargo boxes that still need sorting out...

This one shows the snow ramp, with the start of reptile ridge at the top. In the foreground is a little bit of the gravel runway, and the buildings are part of Admiral's House, where i have my room. The tracks heading up the ramp are skidoo and snocat tracks which are heading up to the ramp and then about 1km to the right in a big traverse ending at Vals, (after Val Disere in the French Alps) which is our little ski area.

This is a view almost North, showing the aptly named North Cove, complete with small and some larger bergs. The building site bit in the right is our new Bransfield House which is going to be a complete replacement to the building im currently sitting and drinking coffee, which will be decommisioned in a few years. The new one should (should...) be finished by the winter.

This is our largest aircraft, the four propellor Dash-7, which is the mainstay of our cargo and personnel shifting work between, well here and pretty much anywhere else. It has been the cause of most of the problems this year because it has been constantly faulty and has meant that some people have had projects cancelled and others have had to change their plans. In this picture it is taking a load of people in from Stanley who were meant to be here much earlier. Hopefully the problems are sorted now.


Here's a pic that i took at the top of Vals, while trying out my new telemarks. The little black cube thing down at the bottom is the caboose with loads of emergency "stuff" in it, including hot chocolate and biscuits, so you can have a piste-side brew... The mountains to the right and across the water are the hills of the actual Antarctic Peninsula, whereas we are on Adelaide Island.

Heres Jim the Boatman in traditional Christmas ceremonial hat, driving a skidoo whilst running our shuttle service to the top of Vals. The rope trailing behind has a couple of loops in it to take up 2 people at a time.


This view is from the bottom of Vals, looking pretty much North to a set of 3 hills called Stork. The col between the two hills there is the top of a bowl (Stork Bowl...) which is hidden from view but apparently offers brilliant skiing of a slightly more technical nature than the easy Vals. You have to be accompanied by a field GA (general assistant) who are basically the outdoor experts employed to make sure no-one does anything stupid in the harsh environments around here.

The weather was great and ridiculously warm (up above 3 degrees some days, and feeling warm in the sun) but i woke up today (26th) to heavy snow and there are already 3 inches of the stuff lying on everything. It's halted flying for the moment, we'll have to see what happens...

OK, thats all for the update today, but i'll try and get more regular ones in from now on. It's all becoming quite normal, to live amongst ice bergs and 8000ft mountains, next to a runway and walk past bright red aircraft in the hangar to release balloons into the sky 4 times a week, to ride around in little 4x4 golf buggies and skidoos and communicate via VHF radios. Well, not really, it's pretty bizarre, but i guess the impact has been lessened by all the strange stuff that happened in the 6 weeks it took to get here. If i'd just arrived from the UK in 48hrs, i would have been pretty crazy methinks. Still i know that stuff which will quickly become normal for me will still be interesting for people at home so i'll make an effort to get the blog going smoothly again. Bye for now, Rob...

Rothera!

Hello everyone keeping up - i have now finally arrived at Rothera, and it's pretty amazing! We've had beautiful weather for the last 3 days and the point and surrounding areas have shown themselves to be stunning. I am extremely busy at the moment with induction training and relief (getting cargo off the ship), and I haven't got my laptop approved for connection yet so i apologise for the relative rubbishness of the blog just recently and for the next week or so... In half an hour i'm going to be starting my field skills course which covers a lot of techniques for staying safe in the middles of nowhere - cooking, tent use, crevasse rescue, rope techniques, skidoo maintenance and such like, then i'll be staying up on a nearby hill tonight in a pyramid tent. I have some good photos which i'll get up as soon as i can to give a better idea of what i can see! Cheers, rob

......?

Getting the RIB into Vernadsky

Glassy Sea with Ice

A Taste of the Antarctic Peninsula....

Another One

Lots of sea ice

edit II - photos are from other people for the aforementioned reason
edit - internet connection is playing up - photos to follow!

Today has been absolutely, indescribably great, so i'm not going to use too many words! Knowing that we would be passing through some of the most stunning scenery and narrow channels in the peninsula, i got up at 4am and got straight up on the monkey island, where i was amazed to see that the snow that was falling only 4 hours before had vanished and been replaced by sunshine and atmospheric cloudscapes. I was up there from 4 until 12 for lunch, and took some great photos. But the curse of tiny technologies hit me this afternoon and my SD card has been rendered completely unreadable - my pc won't even see it and the techie guys on here say it's gone. So i was pretty upset about that, so don't have any photo of the superb sights of most of the day. In the afternoon though i changed to another card and got some pictures. Summing up the day - channels, sheer cliffs, avalanches, whales (a few in the distance), seals (2), penguins (lots), sun, icebergs, RIB, Ukrainians, vodka, pork fat, technological infuriations, sea ice, open water, old speckled hen, rest! The Ukrainians bit was a visit to Vernadsky Station, formerly the British Faraday Research Station, and welcoming hosts for a short 30 min visit to wander around. Anyway, i can't do justice to it so here's a few photos which give an idea, and hopefully i'll find some good ones from earlier to post later... Tomorrow (and i can't quite get my head around it at the moment...) we arrive at Rothera Point. Cheers, rob

Across The Drake Passage...

Hi again, we've completed our crossing of the notorius Drake Passage, the part of the Southern Ocean between Tierra del Fuego and the Antarctic Peninsula! It's supposed to be the most dangerous and terrifying stretch of water on the planet, but we've had a smooth ride all the way and sighted the South Shetland Islands yesterday through low stratus and generally obstructive drizzly cloud. But it was bona fide Antarctic territory and it was bloody exciting! In fact the last few days has been full of firsts: I saw my first bit of floating ice, my first chinstrap penguin (playfully leaping out of the water as they torpedoed alongside), my first view of proper antarctica, and arrival inside the zone officially described (by lawyers) as "Antarctica". This is not to be confused with the Antarctic, which is the continent itself, or the Antarctic Circle, which we have still not crossed (66 degrees South) and which defines the most northerly places at which you still have days where the sun does not set in the summer and does not rise in the winter... There! A whole heap of firsts... And the first time i've been truly cold for ages...

The picture above is of all we could see of Elephant Island, made famous by the incredible Shackleton story and which lived up to my mental image of it as a gateway to some kind of freezing cold alternative hell! If anyone reading doesn't know the story of the aptly named Endurance expedition then i would highly recommend that you read "South" by Shackleton himself. It's certainly very poignant for me to see this place as i found the account in "South" very powerful.

Today (13th) we stopped off the coast if King George Island, and sent a RIB (rigid inflatable boat) ashore to pick up a couple of other people going to Rothera who had been working on science there for the last 3 weeks.

Here's a view of a small bit of the island with the ship's crane which has just hauled the RIB out of the water. Then it was on with the journey, passing along the southern coasts of the South Shetland Islands, with fairly poor visibilty, for the rest of today. At about 6pm we passed about 10 miles away from Deception Island, a horseshoe shaped island with only a tiny little entrance gap which is still used as a natural harbour ocassionally. It is whats left of a volcano and has hot springs inside it where you can swim, but unfortunately we don't have time to go in!

I'm going to bed early tonight to get up about 5am tomorrow because we will be entering the famous Lemaire Channel, a tight little strait with towering cliffs on either side. I'm hoping for an end to the rubbish visibility we've had so far - Antarctica is there, but stubbornly refusing to remove it's veil. Hopefully i'll get some great pictures and will post them tomorrow. We've been making good time, and i should be arriving in my new home in two days time now...

Pub Quiz Music Round...

edit: (8th December) : For some reason the link below isn't working, but you can get it from my website front page by going here if you are so inclined. There's also another new one with crazy beat structure called Manatas. For no particular reason other than it's memorable to me...!


We had a pub quiz about a week ago on the Shackleton, although it seems like longer... It was organised by Richard and Tamsin, compered by Dave, and was a great success. My contribution was a music round where i took bits out of popular tunes that would be well known and messed around with them to make a 4 minute clip with them. The idea was to identify the tunes, a bit like an audio wordsearch... If anyone fancies having a go the round is here to download (right click and save as...) . There are 14 tunes in there, not my usual style it has to be said, but it went down well. Answers on an e-mail postcard, and i'll post them in a week or so. rob

Falkland Islands III - Volunteer Point

Today was amazing! A small group of folk from the JCR decided to fork out for a tour to one of the most renowned spots on the islands, a place on East Falkland called Volunteer Point. After a 4x4 ride for almost 3 hrs over gravel roads and peat moor, we got to an absolutely stunning beach with more of the crisp cold blue and brilliant white sands that were at Gypsy Cove. But this was on a new scale entirely....



1500 King penguins, a Gentoo penguin breeding colony, and heaps of Magellenic penguins, relaxing in their burrows or larking about at the edge of the sea. This was very impressive - I spent the full 4 hours that we were there with no regard for time whatsoever, watching and photographing the various birds. This was a geographical anomaly even more than a temporal one: Look east and you have vast white sandy stretches and ice-blue clear and shallow waters with penguins all over the shop. Look the other way and you have the Sutherland in Scotland, peat moors, desolation, rock runs, sheep, lochs, and... literally 1000s of penguins. Very bizarre and a very special place to visit. It was definately worth the 6 hours of driving! The weather, again, amazing. This is very unusual for the Falklands i'm told...



Here's me with a suspicious looking Gentoo, hanging about the waters edge looking like trouble and wandering apparently aimlessly...! I bought a tripod in Stanley yesterday and got seom good use out of it as i fired off 300 photos, and i'm definately getting better at taking them....





Here's a King penguin doing something or other, and looking pretty superb whilst doing it. If you click on these pics you should be able to get slightly bigger versions. On this one you can see the texture of the feathers really well. Here are a few other pictures to give you an idea of what the place looked like and how packed it was with wildlife. We also were lucky enough to see a sealion coming in and stalking the Magellanics, another first for me. Still enjoying the warmth as much as possible as it's about to get very very different.... We sail on Thursday 7th December. It should take about 2 weeks into Rothera, with stops for science stuff on the way down. Will try and resume normal blogging until Rothera, weather permitting of course! We're about to go into the worst seas on the planet. Rob

Falkland Islands II - Gypsy Cove

Second day in the Islands and the weather was even better - hottish and almost windless, so myself, Tamsin, Dave and the cadet Alistair headed out along the coast to the south and east of Stanley to go to a place called Gypsy Cove where we were promised a colony of Magellanic penguins. We got them and loads more - the place was absolutely outstanding! A pretty much Carribean beach with heaps of penguins, crystal clear baltic waters and crisp white sand, the cove forming a natural wind break and gathering wildlife together. We pretty much spent the whole day here, taking hundreds of photos and sunbathing before walking the couple of hours back into town. I even had a fairly quick swim in the freezing water, and there were Magellanics ricocheting about just under the surface nearby and leaping out of the water in dolphinesque displays of aquabatics (...?).





There were plenty other types of birds here too, some ducks (above), the bright red-breasted military starling, lots of little yellow finches and the ubiquitous upland goose, the bird that lends it's name to BAS's lodging house in Stanley.

Here are a few of the Magellanic penguins, my first ever sighting of a penguin so an exciting day! These were very friendly and not particularly bothered by human nuisance or my intrusive lens. They're pretty small, about a foot and a half tall, and they live underground in burrows that you have to be careful not to collapse on the descent to the sand.

Here's a picture of me enjoying the delightful heat and still reeling from the surprise of how much great stuff there actually is to be had in good weather here. You probably didn't expect pictures like this from me at this stage - neither did I...

On a different note, it was also a sad day for me as i've now moved to the JCR, BAS's science flagship, and the Shackleton is on it's way to Signy Island in the South Orkneys, and i've had to leave Dave and Tamsin and other friends on there who i'd got to know really well since the start of our training on 10th July. They are now added to the list of people who i'll miss during my Rothera time. All the best!

Falkland Islands - Mt. Tumbledown and Stanley

Hello again after a hefty absence due to changing from one ship at Mare Harbour in the Falkland Islands to a new one, the James Clark Ross, at Stanley. So now i'm settled into my new home (for 2 weeks) and have finally got the laptop reconnected to the internet, my regular updates on this blog will continue.....

The Falkland Islands have been bathed in beautiful sun for the whole period of our trans-shipment stay, providing an excellent 3 days of exploring to silence those who have complained about the monochrome and dull Islands that they have experienced on previous occasions. The first day i got a bus into Stanley (about 1 hrs ride on half tarmac-half crushed rock roads) with a few other FIDS and we had a look round the capital, a quaint little town of 2500 inhabitants comprising well-spaced and well-kept wooden houses with attractive coloured roofs and walls. The people were friendly, and recommended a day's walk out to a few "mountains" about 4 miles inland - Tumbledown Mountain and Mount William. Both were teeming with wildlife, but since the hills were important battlegrounds during the 1982 war there are still minefields cordoned off and military debris scattered here and there to keep you thinking... The photo is of me at a memorial cross on the top of Tumbledown, the clarity of sky and air providing an amazing panorama of the barren landscape. There were also quite a lot of interesting plants, none of which I could identify, but i thought this one was maybe an orchid of some kind...?

Updates...

Hi everyone who's following the blog. Just a little one to let you know why i haven't updated for a while - I'm in the Falkland Islands now, and since the other FIDS (BAS people) joined at Montevideo it has been extremely packed on the the Shackleton, and i haven't had my laptop plugged in. Also the internet was down for a few days. So it's been pretty hectic, and i've now completed my move from the Shackleton at Mare Harbour, to the James Clark Ross at Stanley Harbour. Also have managed to get two days with lots of walking around the Stanley area in, which i'll post about in detail when i get my laptop connected here in the next few days.... Cheers, rob