Hey ho!

Hi folks, sorry about the lengthy delay in posting anything - things are good here, but it's been very dark and i haven't really taken any photos for ages. Also i have been very busy with something which i can't talk about at the moment, but is pretty exciting! "It" is currently taking up every spare minute of time for me and several other folk on base. All will be revealed at some point, assuming it doesn't turn into a big mess....!

Cheers, Rob

My Newish Website!

Just a post to let you know about my website which i'm rebuilding at the moment - if anyone's interested it's got a fair amount of music on there, some photos which will be added to regularly, and in a while it'll have poems and pictures i've made. It's here:

www.robertwebster.org

Song Cover

Hey ho - our rubbish weather continues, today it's freezing fog (like normal fog but with supercooled water droplets which freeze immediately onto cold surfaces) and visibility is less than 1000m - incidentally this is the difference between mist and fog.

Sooooooo.... I'm working on a new website which should be finished in a few weeks which will have a nice design and have all my music and words and stuff like that on it which i'll post a link to if anyone happens to be interested, once it's done.

In the meantime, here's a picture of my hat:

For no other reason than i think it's a nice image... Anyway, last night i did a cover of a Nick Cave song called Hallelujah - don't know if it's about anything particular, but the words are a bit unusual and amusing despite the sadness in the song:

Hallelujah (Nick Cave Cover)

(Right Click and Save As...)

Rob's Back From His Winter Trip...

Hello all, i'm a few busy backs from my first winter trip - the antarctic equivalent of a holiday, although significantly colder and less relaxing than any holiday i've previously had! Out of 6 days away we had 1 day of ski-mountaineering, 3 days of climbing, and 2 days of "lay-up" - basically whimpering in our tents in prohibitive weather. As these trips go, that's a very good record! Anyway, here are some pictures:

This is a view of Gwendolene, which we skinned up (climbed on skiis) on the first day, and then skiied down, taken from the top of Trident, the second day's climb.

A view back down the ridge of Trident we'd just walked up (click to enlarge).

One of a couple of beautiful sunsets from our camp on the Wormald Ice Piedmont, a tapaulined skiidoo in the foreground. Everything has to be flagged and tarpaulined to protect them from snow and to mark their positions in case a storm was to arrive suddenly. This picture is looking SW from the camp.

Left to Right - Andy (Mechanic), Liz (my FGA), and Me, climbing a hill called Orca, on account of it having a "dorsal fin" of rock on top of it. Photo by Roger Stilwell, Andy's FGA.

Loaded Nansen sledge, of a type used for pretty much a century. This is one half of the sledging provision for one group of 2 people, and is called a half-unit. When we travel we use 2 skiidoos and 2 sledges (a unit) in the following way: GA on skiidoo, attached by 10 metres of rope to one sledge, then 30m of rope to the front of my skiidoo, then i pull the other sledge behind me. The drivers are attached by harnesses and ropes to the skiidoos. All this is to save your life if any part of the convoy happens to be swallowed up by an invisible crevasse (it does happen! But not very often).

Stunning sunset looking towards NE.

Looking East from the camp at around moonrise/sunset.

Green, Blue, Pink, Purple. Black.

This one is great - you can clearly see Orion's belt if you blow the image up a bit.

We were lucky enough to be out camping when the moon was near to being full, so whenever it was partially clear we had amazing light, sunsets, moonrises, stars and with no light pollution it was really spectacular. Despite having my fingers nearly lost to cold (not really, but it was bloody brisk!) me and roger were having loads of fun with his tripod and long exposures in the moonlight, getting amazing shots of the scenery almost as if in daylight but with the added beauty of the stars. And a bit of cleverness in the use of headtorches and external flashes we got some pretty cool images.... The one of the 4 people (clockwise: Me, Pete (head GA), Andy, and Birgit (Marine Biologist)) was taken by Roger, the rest by me.