Back at Rothera

Jo with skidoo

Our first campsite

You have probably guessed by now that I am back at Rothera! I arrived at midnight on Friday, after a really long day waiting for the planes and watching the weather deteriorating rapidly. It was a bit too exciting for my taste....we heard the planes but couldn't see them, because there was a lot of low cloud around our campsite. Then eventually they descended through the clouds and I breathed a sigh of relief. But it was not over! They landed O.K., and we packed up both planes with all our gear. This took quite along time because we had two skidoos and three large sledges, as well as 2 tents and all our other gear. Then the first plane tried to take off, bounced down the skiway in a very alarming fashion (pitching nose to tail all the way) and tried but failed to take off at least 3 times. It was horrible to watch, especially knowing I was going to have to do the same in a few minutes! In the end the pilot decided to take out some of the load, and we had to leave a depot of equipment at the site. If the skiway had been less bumpy, and my rocks lighter, the plane could probably have got off the ground with no problem. Anyway, then it was our turn. I was a bit more optimistic because our pilot is very experienced indeed, and seemed quite confident he could do it. But he said we needed to hold on tight because it would be bouncy driving down the skiway. I held onto the seat, shut my eyes and concentrated on wiggling my toes, whilst praying we would get out alive. I heard the sound of the engines change, and Roger tapped me on the shoulder only seconds later to say we were airborne, and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief. Finally we were out of there! The rest of the journey was uneventful. I got to be co-pilot on the second leg from Fossil Bluff, and it was beautiful because by this time it was 10pm and the sun was going down. The light on the mountains was very pretty.

A Twin Otter flying to our first campsite

When we arrived at Rothera, it was really quite dark, and I couldn't see much because I only had my sunglasses with me! We managed to find some food when we got back, and then I had a very quick shower (nice) and fell into bed. It was 2am. Since then I have been very much enjoying relaxing, chatting to other people, and eating food I have not had to cook myself and that is not highly processed. It also does not make me fart! It is the weekend here, and so there is no great emphasis to get on with any work. I wanted to go skiing today but the weather is not great (cloudy and snowy), but I am lining myself up for a little boating trip later this week and hope I can get out for some exercise at some point. I saw lots of seals and penguins last night, and 2 humpback whales in the bay during coffee time today. Other than that, I am packing cargo and helping out other people with their work if I can. It's a very nice change, and a very nice slow introduction to the real world again. I fly out of here on 6th February. I am looking forward to it now it seems so close. The mountains, sledges and tent are already quite a distant memory - but one, of course, that I shall cherish. As my field assistant commented one day, even money couldn't pay for a trip like we had. I basically said where I wanted to go, and we went there! Private expeditions cannot do that :)

Sledging across Johnston Glacier

Not such nice weather - Echo uplift in nil contrast

Oh and I weighed myself again - verdict 60kg with my heavy boots. I reckon that means I have not gained or lost any weight (it was 59kg before I went away), or alternatively that I have gained 1kg in muscle!

P.S. I am no longer using my field party email account, so you can now contact me on my gmail account.

Homeward bound....soon

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 26/01/2012:

The weather here is worse today than yesterday, with fog almost all around our tent and light snow. It is not pleasant! We were told by Rothera this morning that they want to uplift us as soon as possible. So that officially marks the end of my work here, and now we are all bent on trying to get back to the base as soon as the weather allows. Since we have done all our preparation for this already, today has been mostly spent lounging in the tent getting bored. I really hope we leave tomorrow because I will be going slightly mad if we have to have a 4th day in the tent (today is the 3rd), and we could potentially be waiting for even longer than that. We are pacing ourselves with cups of tea! It is quite a contrast to how I feel back at home though - there I hardly have a minute to think, whereas here I have a lot of time to think, and more than I would like. The grass is always greener on the other side as they say.

Once back at Rothera I will be busy sorting out all my gear for return to the UK on the ship. That will involve weighing and packing everything correctly, and writing Bills of Lading for every item to be sent back. It is time-consuming and fairly mind numbing. Before we left Roger weighed us both, to see whether we have gained, lost or stayed the same weight during the season. I left as 59kg, and I will try to remember to tell you the answer when I get back! I don't feel like I've lost weight, and I've certainly been eating lots of fatty food! But it has also been at least as cold as -10C most days, and down to -15C on occasion, so I expect I've burnt some of that keeping warm.

I'll keep you posted...

Still here!

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 25/01/2012:

We are still at Mt Light, despite having glorious weather again today. It is frustrating, and now I am pretty much sure we will not get moved to the Latady Mts, but will instead go straight back to Rothera as soon as the weather allows. But anything can happen! So not much to report today. I have enjoyed reading my book and listening to music, and with this fabulous backdrop of scenery the music takes on so much more character and emotion. It was even warm enough to sit outside and read my book with my sunhat on today! It is going to be very strange going home and finding it dark in the early evening and at night. We have had some sunsets of sorts, although the sun is not actually going down much at all - it just seems that the light gets reflected by clouds, and takes on an orange colour. It definitely feels like the days are shortening but the sun is still high in the sky all the time.

Anyway, I will leave it here because I don't have much else to say right now. Watch this space for my movements (or not) these next few days!

No-fly day

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 24/01/2012:

Today we were supposed to fly to the Latady Mountains, to our next camp site. We were up until 1.30am sorting out a skiway for the plane - that involves running a skidoo up and down in straight lines to make a snow-runway, which needs to be smooth. Roger had to do a lot of digging to get rid of the nasty sastrugi. We were tired after that, but then we had to be up at 6.45am to give weather observations to Rothera. When you want to fly, you have to do these observations every hour until the planes are safely back at Rothera after moving you. It's a big bind! But after the 9am weather observations, they said we should stand down because the weather was not good enough....and sure enough, the cloud came in and the contrast went poor. So it was another day of sticking around camp. We did some more work on the skiway, and I read my book and wrote up my notes. I think we are both rather exhausted now, and in many ways it would be good to miss out the last part of the work and return straight to Rothera - we may have to do just that if the weather is not good enough for us to move our camp later this week. I think we'll give it a few more days first before making that decision though.

So, the next week will be full of uncertainty and surprises, no doubt. I wish I could look into a crystal ball to know what will happen. I also wish I could have a magic carpet so I could fly anywhere I liked. Home would be top of my list......counting down now!

Going nowhere

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 21/01/2012:

After the excitement of 7 days glorious sunshine, we have been grounded in the tent for the last two (Friday and Saturday). The weather has not been bad as such, but very cloudy and we are sitting in fog again. However, I think both of us needed some rest so it is not all bad. I have been reading The Kontiki Expedition, which is fun and suitable for my trip because it makes me think of adventure!

We are still planning our plane move for Tuesday, so hopefully the weather will be good for that.

I thought you would be interested to see the list of requests we have placed for our plane move next week. Here it is:

• 2 cans CocaCola
• 8 sausages
• 2 eggs
• 1 loaf bread
• 1 block of marzipan
• some kitkats and twix
• 1 bag rowntrees fruit pastilles
• 1 carton pineapple juice
• a few pieces of fresh fruit

I have yet to find out what Roger wants to do with the marzipan, but it sounds good! I am sick of eating Cadburys Dairy Milk now. Many days we have not had lunch, but just survived on chocolate and fruit pastilles. It's not good, but it's too cold to get your hands out to start pasting sardines onto biscuits (the other option), and I've been rushing around all day to get the work done.

Speaking of work, it has gone quite well overall I think. I have 90 samples so far (which is quite a lot considering most weigh more than 1.5kg!), and lots of material for analysing. The rocks have been more complicated than I have experienced before, so that has not made life easy. I am also sick of seeing the same rock type everywhere (granodiorite) and not many erratics to speak of. However that is interesting in itself. I hope we can go to some higher elevation sites in the Latady Mountains, to complete the transects of altitudes I have from here. But we'll see.

Right now, I'm enjoying my books, thinking about the next move, and thinking about going home - not too long now!

Busy busy busy

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 19/01/2012:

We have now had 7 days work on the trot, with glorious weather throughout. The next few days are going to be very busy indeed because we have just finished at our camp and are going to move to another (our 4th!), hopefully tomorrow. The trip across Johnston Glacier was fantastic - we had perfect weather, and although it took all day, it was fun. We drove 78km, pulling three sledges with all our stuff. The glacier itself is 10km wide, so that was quite a trek whilst looking out for crevasses. The snow was really deep on the other side so we had to pull the sledges uphill one by one. Anyway we have a superlative view from our tent here, and I will be sad to move - but I finished working on the two ridges I wanted today, so we will move on again. I like travelling  through the scenery, so I am happy, but it is really hard work and we both need a day off to recuperate (well, just to think).

So please don't expect much from me these next few days. We will be at Mt Light tomorrow for 2-3 days, then hope to get a Twin Otter (plane) move to the Latady Mountains on Monday for our final week of work. Fingers crossed the weather will be as good as it has been this last week! You cannot imagine how beautiful our views are here, with pointy mountains all around, and the sea on one side. I think I am finally enjoying myself! But of course I very much look forward to getting home in less than 3 weeks!

thanks for your messages, and I will try to post again when I have a moment.....

Bye for now

One day, one sample

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 15/01/2012 (was written before the 'Monday' post but turned up after):

Today showed just how much effort goes into even collecting one rock sample here. We set out in glorious weather on the skidoos, then the sledge turned over and I got stuck in deep snow twice. Once we had rectified that the fog came in (off the nearby ice shelf - this is recurring problem for us), so we had to abort our short ski and return to the skidoos for a quick lunch. Once it had cleared we tried again. We had to scuttle across a crevasse which was bridged by snow (scary) and then ended up on a really steep icy slope that gave me the jitters. My leg started to wobble involuntarily and we had to stick in ice screws to keep us safe. We managed to grab one sample from the steep rock face before retreating rapidly back the way we had come (except this time avoiding the crevasse). And that was it for the day. We were both a bit unnerved I think! We had a nice drive home in sunshine again, but about half an hour after we got back to the tent, the cloud came in and the wind picked up as if out of nowhere, and really strong. The weather can change so dramatically quickly here, it is amazing.

Someone asked me about how we power everything here. We have a small generator which is enough to charge my laptop, satellite phone (how we download emails - we don't have internet access or anything fancy; it's a dial up connection that takes forever), angle grinder batteries and our MP3 players. We put a mix of petrol and oil in the skidoos, use paraffin (primed with meths) for the stove and tilley lamp, petrol for my rock saw. Roger told me that we brought 400 litres of petrol and 60 litres of paraffin out here with us, which we carry in 20 litre jerry cans on the sledges (we have 3 sledges). We also use solar panels to charge the radio batteries. We could have brought a larger solar panel but it didn't work very well for my laptop. It's all a bit of a nuisance to keep refuelling and making sure we are economic on fuel, but we are self sufficient for at least an extra month (which is essential in case we get stuck in bad weather). Every time we go out more than a few km from camp, we go with our half unit sledge, which contains tent, sleeping bags, food, medical box, fuel etc - enough for a month. It's reassuring to have this in case the weather changes rather like it did today.

Anyway I am in the middle of my dinner, so should leave this here. We have had 3 days work on the trot now - probably time for another day of lie-up?

Monday

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 16/01/2012:

We have just finished work in this area, after a glorious 4 days of weather, so now plan another camp move across Johnston Glacier tomorrow....fingers crossed for the weather and safe travel! I am excited to be seeing a new area and some different rocks. With only 2 weeks left to go, I still have a lot of places I want to visit, so we will see how it all goes.

Today we heard a plane in the distance and got very excited, and scrambled to the highest rocks to see if we could see it......it is a rare thing to see other evidence of human activity here. But unfortunately it disappeared and we never saw it. I felt quite strange afterwards - I suppose the feeling one might feel if in dire need and a plane comes near but doesn't see you. Anyway, of course it didn't matter, but it was a curious feeling. We will probably be transferred in a week or so to a new area by Twin Otter anyway, so then we will get to see a plane for real! It's all weather dependent from now on though....

Weather

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 14/01/2012:

To be honest, I thought today was not going to be fun. With a weather forecast from hell but having sat in the tent for 2 days, we had to go out but were rather unenthusiastic. The water in my mug had frozen overnight,and temperatures were probably close to -20 C (I checked at bedtime and it was -18!). The sun had come out nicely but the wind was really strong, giving us a grim windchill. At moments like this, I concur with Roger - I would really rather my digestion stopped working....thus avoiding the need to go out of the tent to the doo loo. However, of course what goes in must come out, so we both had to venture outside. After much discussion, and Roger asking 'how do you feel about going out in this?', we decided to go for it. We skiied 2 km to our worksite. I couldn't feel my toes after the first km, which was not pleasant, but we kept going and got warmer. It was freezing in the wind when we started work, but it also had the added effect of making us work faster. In fact it was a very successful day from the work point of view, and when we reached the top of the ridge, the wind died down. We had a gorgeous view over the valley where we are camped. I love times like this - when you face the day with trepidation but it comes good in the end. I certainly would have been disappointed to stay in the tent! But as we came down the fog closed in and we skiied back in freezing fog and poor visibility. The little sledge with my rocks on turned over 4 times and Roger got very annoyed with it. I just plodded on doing my thing. Actually I like the skiing - it's harder work than driving the skidoos but it gets you warmer and you feel like you're doing everything under your own steam in the most environmentally friendly way. But it does take longer, and when the weather is closing in, that is not good.

Now we are back at the tent, melting snow to make 10 litres of water ready for tomorrow. I sure am looking forward to turning a tap on when I get back home! I have not had a wash yet, and with these temperatures I doubt I will bother. Taking ones clothes off is not high on the agenda. I don't think I smell too bad actually (!).

Tomorrow's weather forecast is quite good, so we hope to get out again and if we manage it, we will almost be finished in this area. With only 2.5 weeks to go (at most), I still have a lot of work to do. But I have already collected A LOT of rocks (in weight, not so much in number). That should keep me going for a while back at BAS.

Hope all is well at home.....send me any questions you have and I will try to respond!

Question Time

Hello, Uncle François here...

No it isn't about political discussion... But Jo seems a bit isolated on the other side of the planet and would like to hear more from her blog readers.

Do you have any comments regarding her posts?
Do you have any questions? (technical or not)
Is there a subject you'd like her to raise on a future post?

Please fire away... I'll forward them to her.

PS: Note that all comments are published by default. Do not include private details. Thank you!

Moving house

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 09/01/2012:

We have moved! We are now at 74 deg 32.553 S / 62 deg 29.495 W, and 700m above sea level. Unfortunately the journey to get here was hard work - it took us 2 hours to drive 12 km, because the snow was deep and the sledges very heavy, and there was virtually no contrast so we could not see our way very well. I got my skidoo stuck once, and we had to drive in first gear all the way! We were both exhausted when we got to our new camp site, and now we are getting our camp together - actually, my primary task is to melt lots of snow again! We are forecast reasonable weather for tomorrow, but then 2 days of snow. This is bad news. It has just dawned on me that I only have 3 week left in the field, and I have a lot of rocks I want to work on. But we cannot do more than the weather will allow.

It is odd looking out of the tent door at a different view, but everything else being the same. Our camp is arranged exactly like the first one - facing the same way, with pee hole and skidoos/sledges on one side (so the nasty fumes go away from the tent, and so if the wind blows hard they will not collide with the tent), and the snow hole on the other side (so it is nice and clean when we melt snow from it for drinking). Our view is not as good as the previous one, but it's still amazing to look out and see so much snow and ice. Because we are lower in altitude here, we also fear getting fogged in more frequently but I want to be at lower altitude for my work. Anyway we shall see!

What's on the horizon?

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 08/01/2012:

First, thanks all for your lovely messages - Francois forwarded them to me. It's nice to hear who is reading my blog! If you want to email me, please ask Francois for the address. I will reply as soon as I can, and as soon as I have enough battery power on my laptop (we need good weather to run the generator!).

We have just finished a busy few days working in this area, and today we wanted to move our camp 12km to the east so that I can complete my work on some mountains closer to the coast. Unfortunately though, the weather today is rubbish - everything is white and it's snowing, and we can't see the horizon at all. We waited until 3pm to make a decision not to go, so I haven't got much else done. Frustrating, but something you learn to accept down here. I am excited about making our 'full unit move' - we will be taking our two skidoos and three sledges, complete with my 4 boxes of rocks. It will be quite a mission I feel....but exciting because it feels really Antarctic, if you know what I mean. Only a decade or so ago, the skidoos would have been dog teams. I love the history of this place, but I think I would prefer noisy smelly skidoos to noisy smelly dogs that need to be fed constantly! But it does remind me of those glorious days of old and the great achievements BAS scientists made then.

When we have moved camp, I am going to treat myself to washing a few clothes and hopefully also washing myself. Having said that, it will be a hard job because we will have to melt plenty of water for it. But I am finding nearly 3 weeks without a wash of any sort rather unpleasant. I've done 6 weeks of it before, but I think I wasn't working so hard then!! We climbed the highest peak in our area twice this week, and I got quite hot doing it. Anyway, I thought you would be interested to hear what are the three things I would most like right now.....a shower, a cuddle from Phoebe, and an orange.

Must go now - time for another cup of tea, and some catching up with the work. When we have moved camp, I will post my new location. It is lower and likely to be a lot more fogged-in than our current one - nice!

Mount Owen

Message from "Sledge Echo" - 05/01/2012:

Yesterday Roger and I climbed up the tallest peak in our immediate area, Mt Owen. It is about 1135m at the summit, although one of our reasons for going up there was to take a GPS receiver to check out the exact height. I need to know the altitude of each sample I collect, and accuracy is important. Unfortunately this meant Roger having to carry the Trimble GPS up to the top, and it weighs 12kg!! I gave him the option, but he wanted to do it.....or at least that's what he said in the morning!

We had a long day out on Mt Owen, and didn't get back to the tent until 9.30pm! However, it was very enjoyable. It took us 3 hours to get up it, during which time we climbed mostly on ice with crampons and ice axes, roped together in an 'alpine pair'. The views were very good, across Johnston Glacier which is very crevassed - some of the slots in it are big enough to fit a house inside! I found it exciting going up Mt Owen because it is marked on the map as granodiorite, but I was unsure if anyone had been up to check, or whether they had just looked through binoculars and guessed. It was granodiorite, but had been very heavily metamorphosed in places, so looked quite different from the other rocks I had visited in this area. I was happy at the top though, because there were several erratics - unlike the other peaks I've visited here. That made my work easier, although the strond wind on the summit ridge counteracted that somewhat! One of the best moments of the day was when 4 snow petrels came close to us. they are completely white, and quite small, and they circled overhead, probably wondering what on earth they were seeing. It was nice to see them, because they are the first signs of life (apart from lichens) we've seen in this area - in fact, they are our only companions within a 300 mile radius. I am now keen to find out where they are nesting because I might be able to sample some of their stomach oil and date it with radiocarbon to see when they first started nesting at the site (this tells me the minimum amount of time that that site has been free of ice, which is useful for my work). I have an idea where they might be nesting, but whether I can get there is another matter (Roger can decide).

Today we have had strong winds yet again, and decided not to go out considering we didn't get to bed until 1am last night and the wind makes work very difficult indeed. So I am typing up my notes and will later enjoying reading my book and relaxing a little. We hope to move camp later in the week - I will keep you posted.