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!