So this post will be about my incredible adventure out at
Fossil Bluff.
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| You can just make out Bluebell cottage perched on the edge of the scree looking out over the George iv sound. |
When I got offered the chance to go to Fossil Bluff I could
not hide my excitement and I certainly couldn’t turn it down. Fossil Bluff is
located on Alexandra Island over 200 miles south of Rothera the island itself
is about the same size as Wales and has only one building, Bluebell cottage,
which would be home for (Tom) Stoops and myself for a week. But why on earth
were BAS sending these two twenty somethings to the remote wilderness of Antarctica.
Well the purpose of Fossil Bluff is to act as a refuelling stop for planes
heading from the interior back to Rothera or vice versa. This essentially
involves giving hourly met obs, daily skiway reports (like a runway but on snow,
the snow needs constant “grooming” to keep it level and safe for the pilots to
land on) and refuelling any incoming planes.
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| refuelling a visiting Twin Otter |
We were blessed with good weather but more importantly fresh
food! (For this reason this may turn into a bit of a food blog, sorry not
sorry) Some of which was put together by Chef Trev from Rothera which I took
down with me. So the first job on arrival was to discover what goodies we had
been sent, our boxes consisted of: 6 chicken breast, 6 different blocks of
cheese, a punnet of tomatoes, cucumbers, spring onions, aubergine, peppers,
lettuce, apples grapes, garlic, ginger, tinned tomatoes, courgette, leeks,
pears, Robinsons fruit and barley squash (Trev I am forever in your debt!). But
more impressively, the day before I arrived the Union Glacier (over 600 miles
away) kindly donated their surplus freshies. Which included grapefruits,
grapes, oranges, nectarines, some fresh yogurt (something I hadn’t had since
leaving the UK). This volume of fresh food left Stoops and I temporarily speechless.
That did not last long, food quickly became the main topic of conversation and
we strived to feast like Kings every day that we were there.
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| unpacking our freshies for the first time |
So whilst the uk was suffering from a lettuce shortage!!??
(really?? This happened?) our first meal was a leafy salad with spring onions,
bell peppers and cucumber polished off with a cheese and tomato salad and freshly baked
bread.
The next morning, we had to get up for our early morning met
ob (0700) but we were able to enjoy fruit salad with yogurt and muesli before
rushing off to “work”, this consisted of a 2km scramble along scree and snow a
couple of streams to jump across before a quick skidoo ride to the skiway.
Where we busied ourselves with maintaining the fuel depot and the skiway
itself. Before long our fisrt plane had landed been refuelled and sent on its
way. With the day’s work done we could turn our attention to preparing our next
dinner. To start we made bruschetta followed by chicken and leek pie with side
salad which didn’t turn out too bad considering all we had to go on was a
couple of primus stoves and a reflex heater.
The following day we had no planes but had to continue the
obs for planes flying in the local area so we couldn’t stray too far but were
not needed on the skiway so we had no choice but to spend the day in the “kitchen”.
After Stoops had baked some more bread, I baked a victoria sponge with a thick
layer of strawberry jam in the middle. This left us plenty of time to create an
Indian banquet. And what a banquet it was with a chicken curry as the centre
piece with onion bhajees, chapattis, raita dip and a selection of pickles and
chutneys.
For breakfast on the third day we did branch out from fruit
salad and treated ourselves to eggy bread. When we found out that it was going
to be a no fly day due to bad weather elsewhere we decided to head up pyramid a
reasonably accessible mountain visible from the cottage. Whilst everyone else
was suffering poor weather we were hiking in shorts and t-shirt! When we got
back we tried baking a cherry and apple crumble. This didn’t go as well as our
previous endeavours and turned into more of a biscuit with jam mess.
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| coming back down after climbing pyramid, we had to call on the sat phone to give a met ob |
Our next culinary success was a stir fry. A dish which
became a staple during my last year at uni but something I had yet to
experience in Antarctica. Needless to say it was delicious with fresh ginger, garlic,
dried chillies and oyster sauce to season the chicken and veggies.
I think it is clear to see that we achieved our goal of
feasting like kings! Although it was surprising just how refreshingly normal it
felt to cook for myself again, in some ways life felt more normal being stuck
out in a remote cottage than it did being on base with all the mod-cons. However,
somethings were wonderfully bizarre. Listening to the true sound of silence
will stay with me for a long time as well as the spectacular isolation we
shared and the ever changing backdrop of ice and mountains.
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| flying lessons |
I was definitely sad to leave the Bluff but that soon left
me when we were up in the air banking around the mountains. There is nothing quite
like being handed the controls of a twin otter and told by the pilot to wake
them up when we’re home. I smiled the whole way back.
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| stunning views of the Western Antarctic Peninsula |
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