Climbing and Skiing

When I'm not busy at work and the weather is calm I try and get outside as much as I can. One of my favourite things to do is to go climbing there are some great winter routes close to the base which has allowed me plenty of opportunities to improve my climbing.

Straight from the fridge on North Stork

One of my first winter climbs was on North Stork, Blair led us up Straight From The Fridge.

It's always good to be belaying when you've got a stunning view

Belaying on Irn Bru Butress

Squeezing my way up Irn Bru, it was an interesting climb as the snow was very thin and loose.

top of Irn Bru

I have also been learning to ski which has been a lot of fun and a lot of hard work!

Skinning up vals for my first ski lesson.

My second trip down vals was also combined with my last glimpse of the sun, a small group of us sat at the top of vals to watch the sun rise and set all within a few minutes.

making it down vals

getting ready at the top

A steady start

CRASH!!!

winter traditions

It's been along time since my last post, so whilst I'm on night watch I thought I would take the time to update you all (as I'm writing this at 4 in the morning apologies for any spelling or grammar errors!)

Winter has been an awesome time of year with lots happening so I'm going to start off with explaining some of the winter traditions that we have on base.

The first of which is the flag down ceremony which marks the day when the sun sets for winter. Once set it does not reappear again for another two months. It is not completely dark for the two months instead we have a shorter and shorter period of twilight until midwinter when there is less than two hours of twilight.

Samways the staion leader sharing some words of wisdom 

Trev lowering the flag

The day is marked with a small ceremony at the station's flag pole where it is tradition that the oldest base member lowers the flag as the sun sets. Trev had this honour he also shared a poem that he had written himself. We then enjoyed the rest of the day off to celebrate!

After flag down everyone’s focus moved to Midwinters day. Midwinter is very important as it marks the shortest day of the year and the promise that the days will get longer and the sun will soon return.  It’s like Christmas with time off to relax a big dinner and presents!

Midwinter greetings from some of our fellow wintering stations our equivalent of Christmas cards

The day started by Samways waking everyone up with tea and coffee in bed, before he headed to the kitchen to cook us all breakfast (eggs Benedict!).

Some of us then settled down to a board game before getting our smart clothes on to begin the celebrating.

We then listened to Samways share more words of wisdom and to pass on some mid winter greetings including messages from friends from the summer team the governor of the British Antarctic Territories and Theresa May.

We then moved onto the giving of the winter gifts. Way back on our first day of winter we each drew a name out of a hat. We then had up until midwinter to make our person a gift. Needless to say the last weeks, days, hours running up to midwinter were spent making overly ambitious gifts.

I made a gift for Julie. I sketched some scenes from our winter trip then learnt how to make a frame to present them in.

In return Steve made me a gift. He done an excellent job of re-fashioning an old pyramid tent into a backpack and hammock!

Here are some of the other gifts. They were all of a very high standard!

After the present giving we all sat down for our feast!

Trev cooked up a magnificent 9 courses! It was full of culinary delights with flavours that we hadn't tasted for a very long time!

Half way through the meal we all ran across to the ops tower to tune into the world service where Cerise Matthews read out the midwinter broadcast with guests David Attenborough Bill Bailey and many more listen in here! http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p056bgm4 

The last tradition of winter is flag up. This celebrates the return of the sun which was most welcome after being absent for two months. In contrast to flag down, the responsibility of raising the flag goes to the youngest. Which is me!

I  also had to give a speech to mark the occasion after writing some inspirational words I decided to go against tradition and invited everyone to join me in an interpretive dance to Jimmy Cliff's song wonderful world! We all had a good laugh and thankfully I wasn't the only one dancing!

Winter is here!

The Shackleton arrived last week and after almost a week of moving cargo it left on Sunday. Leaving just 22 of us alone on Adelaide Island, until late October, when the planes will return and the summer season will begin.

Winter Team 2017 left to right: Tom Sylvester, Julie Baum, Matt (Mabell) Bell, Trev Hancock, Theresa Murphy, Matt (Denzel) Washington, Zac Priestly, Ben (BB) Robinson, Dan (Rio) Duran, Mairi (Maz) Simms, Joe Burton, Alan Messenger, Ben Keich, Will Van de Wouw, myself, Steve, Jenny (JenDoc) Douglas, Braddley (Bradders aka Mr Tickle) Morrell, Neil (Brownie) Brown, Mike (Mucky) Bell, Paul Samways, Blair Fyffe.

Our group photo was taken just after the Shack had left, the first time the group had been alone together as you can imagine it took several attempts to get the official shot although I much prefer this one, it is definitely a better representation!

Relief was very busy but we were lucky with the weather which allowed for some great photo opportunities!

Theresa managed to catch Saz Joe and I hauling on the mooring lines from the bridge

arty shot from Kate

It was strange to see everyone pack up with bags and boxes appearing in every free space. But it was also very exciting as the prospect of winter drew closer.

While the ship sailed away we made good use of all the out of date flares.

The first week of winter was filled with a full base scrubout which was a good way to give us a fresh start before cracking on with the winter work.

Wildlife

This post will be dedicated to the fantastic wildlife that we are currently getting some of which can be a hindrance to work but it is always spectacular.

Birds,

We get lots of different sea birds but the most iconic, of course is the penguin. We mainly get Adelie penguins round here who are very inquisitive and will often call back to you if you imitate them.

Adelie penguins

Adelie swimming

The largest bird we get is the southern giant petrel or more affectionately known as GP they have a wingspan of 2m and often soar past the boats flying low over the waves.

Giant Petrel

Antarctic shag on a rock

Seals
There are five main seals here at Rothera. The smallest are fur seals they are a lot like Labradors very excitable but too cute to be scary (until they start chasing you!).

Fur seal

Next in size is the crab eater seal. It doesn’t eat crabs but instead feasts on krill they sometimes travel in pods as many as eight together.

Crab eater seal (credit Jenny Douglas)

Weddell seals look like a typical seal big dark round eyes and a very large belly they stay around all year even when the sea ice covers the bay. Consequently, they usually pop up in the dive holes that are cut into the ice to get a breath of air.

Weddell seal with a skua

During summer adolescent elephant seals haul themselves up onto the base where they stay until they’ve moulted they are very smelly and create a lot of mess.

Elephant seals squeezing onto the wooden bridge on base

Last on the list is the leopard seal. Leps are true predators, with surprising agility for their size (adults are over 3m long). Because they are an apex predator we don’t dive when they are in the water nearby.

Leopard seal this one we found back in january it was well over 3m (credit Theresa Murphy)

Whales

Lately we have been getting lots of whales. With close encounters of both orca and humpbacks. Being on a boat less than 10m away from such magnificent animals is spectacular. The following photos were all taken on the same morning, we were out on the boats sampling but became a little bit distracted by orca and humpbacks... (thanks for the photos JenDoc!)

Orca going past while getting the boats ready to go out

Humpbacks visiting the guys out on Nimrod

Humpback

baby orca

we can count 11 orca in this single shot

This was taken earlier in the month Simon and I had been diving South Cove when Orca swam past the entrance to the cove we were immediately recalled to the surface where we followed them round the bay. Thanks to Steve for taking this great shot from the wharf

One of the best things to see on base, apart from the wildlife, is seeing people get excited by wildlife! If whales are seen close to the wharf an all stations is put out on the radios and within minutes people will be running from all over base to see the spectacle. Although the best place to watch is on the boats, something that always feels special.