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?