Walk Around "The Point"

What's the point? the point is Rothera Point, as referenced in the name of this blog, and it takes about 45 minutes to walk right round the coast. I sometimes go round in lunch hour and today went for a closer look at the forming sea-ice. It's coming along OK, but it's frustratingly tenuous, since the first decent bit of wind from the north (prevailing direction) will blow it all out. It's been calm and cold for about a week now, so most of the sea is covered in some form of ice. Simply put, the sea surface kind of freezes into tiny little plate shaped ice crystals a few millimetres across, called frazil ice, and once there are lots of these the surface goes a bit slushy (grease ice). Wind and currents then turn the grease into roughly round "panckaes" of ice which then bash into to each other and give the characteristic upturned edges, a bit like giant water lillies that you might have seen in the hothouse of a botanic garden. Eventually the pancakes raft over each other and freeze, or they freeze together side by side, thicken from the bottom, and eventually you can drive vehicles on it... Fingers crossed. But the wind has the potential to ruin everything in a short time.



A Weddell seal, the nicest looking and friendliest of all the sea-mammals around here. Docile and quite happy to have their picture taken.



A pic taken this morning when the almost-full moon was making some dramatic lighting effects on the low stratus.



A photo taken by Matt of some beautiful nacreous clouds we saw a couple of weeks ago - these are stratospheric clouds, very high, and form when the temperatures up there get below -82 degrees C. They are rare, stunning, and very important in the study of ozone depletion events which affect the ozone hole. This is because the surfaces of these clouds provide perfect venues for chemical reactions to occur which destroy ozone. Our weather balloons get info about the level of the stratosphere and the temperatures up there for the Brains in Cambridge to analyze. My boss in Cambridge is Jon Shanklin - one of 3 guys that discovered the ozone hole in the first place and is still studying it.

Mid-Winter Photo

This is what i have to deal with...! Photo by Alistair Simpson, names added by me.

Where were you on the Week of Mid-Winter?

A few photos from our midwinter pub crawl... all pictures not by me - i was sensible and left the camera in my room!

What have we here? BungeeBar! Each different work venue made up some sort of bar based entertainment for the grand Rothera Mid-Winter Pub Crawl. Although around the middle of the night, the crawl was more of an bungee cord inhibited sprint, with the possible reward of various types of drink. In this picture our chef Cyril takes a stroll up the course, defying the taut elastic to ping him - he made it look easy and almost reached the glowing bottle of whisky at the end of the course (similar to Nirvana - nice to imagine getting to, but simply impossible given the rules of life...). Even the mightly Frenchman was beaten by the fearsome retaining power of the giant elastic bands though, having just about time to read the label on his newly won bottle of port as he was pung gracelessly through the sledge store air. I managed reasonably well, coming out with a slightly shaken-up can of Stella but stangely, during my attempts on the prize, all cameras around the world simultaneously refused to work...

The gallant Gaul, stretching the leashes a bit like the Big Bang stretched space-time. Photo by Jim.

The GA bar - made out of the discarded corpses of previous drinks from previous places and times, reminding us all that despite the transitory nature of the hangover, the desire to have a nice pint of beer will endure until the end of the human race. Perhaps. The rocking chair there was made by Pete (head GA and general hardcore outdoor guy) out of bits of an old Nansen sledge that was decommisioned this year. Behind the bar is Roger Stillwell, bassist in our band, and another very decent sort of a fellow.

Boatman Jim "The Boatman" Elliott set up a bar in his boatshed by filling up a RIB with snow and all manner of tasty beverages. By this point, people were inclined towards making the snow into little spheres and throwing them. Photo uncredited...

This is me skiing off a little cornaced edge above the Bonner Lab - trying to find little exciting routes to ski around the base. Pretty cool picture by Matt.

Winter olympics - before the pub crawl we had a winter olympics sort of thing, with speed snow sculpture - a bit like ready-steady-cook, but i'd like to see those chefs making something as good as this in 20 minutes with only 1 ingedient. Of course they cheat in that program by having fresh herbs at the back on a shelf - a luxury not afforded us on this occasion. Other events were skiidoo trials around an obstacle course, abseiling off the communications tower, and throwing Mukluks (winter moon-boot things). My team of Alistair the Doc, and Birgit (marine biologist) came last... Pic by Liz
Matt and Tris had spent a week and a half clandestinely digging in a large snow drift out the back of the base, and unleashed this snowbar on the unsuspecting public on the evening of the pub crawl. Top Notch. Pic by Jim.

In the snowbar - Left to Right - Mike Mailing (base commander), Carpenter Scott Jamieson (with head turned away), Matt and Tris through the little hole in the "VIP Area", handing lethal but innocuous-looking "white russians" throught the portal, Kelvin (dive maestro), Steve Boulton (plumber). Pic by Jim again.

Alistair the Doc is pretty much Tee-Total but that didn't stop him turning his surgery into a den of iniquity, force feeding "fluids" to unsuspecting crawlers whilst they reclined in the falsely reassuring and obscenely comfortable "inspection table". I think Mike is just resting his eyes in this picture... Don't know who took this one.

Songs About Songwriting

I've just recorded a cover of a Stan Rogers tune which i like a lot and thought i'd put it up here since most folk probably haven't heard of him - he's (was, i think he's dead now...) a guitarist and singer from Nova Scotia, sings a lot about the sea and fishing, and this song is about having difficulty finding inspiration. Ironically, (but quite often the case) the lack of a decent song produces one of true quality. Unfortunately you have to listen to me singing this one, but he's well worth looking up because his voice is one of the richest and most beautiful i've heard. Anyway, blah blah blah.... here:

http://www.robertwebster.org/Tunes/songofthecandle.mp3

Crevasse of Doom...

Actually, more like "Crevasse of Frozen Water", which is probably a lot colder and prettier than doom... Anyway, i'm sticking this in as my first post in ages due to mid-winter celebrations and week "off", and communications problems (as distinct from "communication problems"...). A post will follow on what we got up to during the darkest week in an Antarctican's year. On saturday night, when most people in the civilized world between the ages of 15 and 25 are getting "drunk and pissed up on booze", (that's a "The Day Today" joke....!) me and 8 other people decided to spend a night in the Local Crevasse, which is about 1km from Rothera on the Local Glacier.

The interior, after abseiling about 30 feet through a small entrance hole, is absolutely stunning, exactly how i imagined an ice cave to be like when imagining such things as a child (reading Hans Christian Anderson stories perhaps, or Narnia or somesuch yarn with suitably evil ice queen). I hope some of these pictures can give you some idea of how excellent this place is. Also i had my little recording device with me because you can ping the icicles with a finger or another icicle (or kick some of the really huge ones) and they make beautiful resonant sounds like a glass glockenspiel (glassgenspiel?). OK that's enough words - besides, it has been proven that 1 picture is worth roughly a thousand times more than 1 word...

Pink Sky

A splendid sky today - this was around 11 o'clock in the morning.

Optical Phenomenon...

Today we got a nice light show from the north in the form of a sun pillar rising above the setting and invisible sun. It's caused by reflection of sunlight by the flat faces of ice plate crystals which are shaped like tiny "stop" signs (hexagonal). As they drift downwards they are aligned like leaves with the "stop" face almost horizontal and catch the light. Anyway, i think that's basically what happens - i'm no expert. The pillar lasted for about half an hour and held up what little daylight we have for a bit longer.

Runway Moods, Vol. 2

It was such a nice day that the band decided to get out onto the runway to do some filming of us playing some tunes with a stunning backdrop... Most of these were taken between 11.00 and 13.00 - i also include them because they're quite representative of the light levels we're getting down to at the moment, with three weeks left til widwinter. When there's any low or medium cloud in the direction of the sun, then it's very dark and gloomy indeed... rob

Frost and Moon

A few more pics from this beautiful Friday... The frost ones use a little bit of artistic licence in the post-processing but they look splendid so i thought i'd stik them on here.

Long Exposure...

Hi everyone, i've been posting fewer pictures recently partly due to the rubbish weather and darkness - but this morning it was beautifully clear and the full moon was up, so i got some fairly long exposure shots (8-15 seconds) from the operations tower. Also got some black and white photos in the "green" room last night as i was trying to record some drums - thats why all the photos are in blacvk and white - i forgot to change it back, which missed the beautiful horizontal colours, but i think they still look pretty pretty. ok, thats all for now. i'm beginning to think that my monthly report probably won't write itself... rob