Antarctic Monkey

Departure

2009-02-21T21:07:00.004Z

Farewell Antarctica

It's Saturday evening of the 21st February 2009.
The final night at Halley for 10 of us (myself included). For tomorrow we head north aboard the Ernest Shackleton.

And thus concludes my Antarctic adventure...

The past 15 months on this fantastic continent have been simply fantastic.
I guess I don't need to bleat on about how much fun and how enjoyable it was, as you all have probably gathered that from my various blog entries. And that is just a small sample of them...I simply couldn't have recorded everything in this blog.

There have been many experiences whcih will live with me for the rest of my life. To summarise the most significant...In the space of 15 months I have:

- walked amongst a colony of 1000s of emperor penguins, several times over
- watched the southern lights from my front door
- sat under the millions of stars of the southern sky...in the middle of the afternoon
- flown an aeroplane over the Antarctic continent
- been to the 84th degree latitude
- watched the sun both set and rise in the space of an hour
- experienced -50degC
- abseiled into a cathedral of ice-crystals in a deep crevasse
- lived in a tent in the middle of Antarctica
- conducted experiments and measurements for world science
- seen some meteorological phenomena I'll never see again (probably)
- ran outside naked in -47degC!

The list above has hardly scratched the surface.

And now it is time to start my 6 week journey back to the UK via the Falkland Islands and South America. And then to reintegrate myself into normal society and slip back into the life I had before I left.

All I can say is this...I am so glad I took this opportunity to experience all of the above (i.e. all that I have shared with you in this blog). I have no regrets at all.

See you all in a few weeks time.
Beers are on you!

All hail the Penguin

Departing and Incoming metbabes/engineers
15month contrast

Tight deadlines, masses of work, short staffing levels, sacrificed season time...The madness that is "Halley Summer '09"

2009-01-21T00:55:00.075Z

"Damn you Lidia, and all the men inside you...keeping me awake 'til early hours in the morning"!

It was sure sign that the Antarctic summer was beginning.

The first of the Basler aircraft stopped off at Halley en route to the Russian station of Novo. "Mia" and "Polar 5" had already passed through, Mia dropping off next year's wintering Field GA, Niv, and also vehicles manager, Ben.

"Lidia" came through a couple of days later after a delay following a mis-hap at Rothera a few weeks previously (for mis-hap, read "engine failure en-route and subsequent controlled crash landing").

She was repaired in no time and was flying through Halley with her crew shortly after, thus keeping me awake 'til early hours in the morning having to provide met obs every hour while she was in the air.

So.
Summer 2009...

Summer 2009 Team Photo - 43 on base

...forever it will be remembered as probably one of the busiest times in my entire working life so far. It has been somewhat of a mad few weeks. However, I have enjoyed every minute of it.

"Surely you still can't be looking at Halley through rose-tinted glasses" I hear you say!

Well, yes, I can.
Even if the stress does sometimes get to me, even if I do sometimes feel a little overwhelmed with the workload, even if I do get so tired by the evenings I am falling asleep after dinner, I can still take a step back and look at the lifestyle and the varied nature of the job here and get that buzz I got when I first stepped foot on Antarctica.

We're now in the midst of the summer season. Well in actual fact we are coming to the end of the summer season. I have taken so long to get this blog updated.

The initial furore of relief ended early January, life begun to settle into a new routine soon after

The ship (RRS Ernest Shackleton) finally arrived on New Year's Eve, as did the Twin Otter hairyplane. Both much later than planned, particularly the Twin Otter as she was supposed to be at Halley on 16th December so that I could do some early field science work before the summer season kicked off in full.

However, on the flip-side, due to the late start to the season we were graced with the chance to celebrate Christmas as a wintering team. Unlike last year when relief was in full swing at Christmas and base was over-run with loads of people, Christmas this year was a relaxed and chilled out affair for all of us (well, except Paddy who cooked us a proper 3-course dinner)...just like how it should be.

Early December 2008
The calm before the storm...

Another (and I was hoping 4th and final) week on nights began on the 1st week of December.

I have found that the switch from days to nights often does strange things to the fine balance of my mental state. It can make me the funniest person on the planet.

For example, I was discussing with Paddy what kind of theme he could do for food on the up-coming Saturday night. I had suggested a steak night, and Joe had already suggested a burger night. Paddy wasn't sure on either. "Well," I said, "at least I've given you food for thought..."

A-thank-you!

Or,
The Drewery (summer accomodation) building was been given a good scrubout by us all in the morning. I was scrubbing out the kitchen with Scott and decided to show him how to pretend to use a mop as a toy horse. With Scott looking nonplussed I ceased the activity immediately and apologised. I explained to him that I was merely..."horsing around...".

Heh.

December was a busy time for all. The base was being prepped for the summer.

The garage boys were busy de-wintering the vehicles for relief operations and general transportation needs. This presented an opportunity to have a little play on the machines...

Nodwell crane de-icing

Myself, helping to dig out the sno-cats after a heavy blow

K14 freed of it's icy coccoon

Giving the Genie lift a bit of a test run ready for use in the summer.

Scott on top of the world (well, at the bottom of the world I guess) at full height of the Genie Lift.
Get a good bird's eye view of base from up here

The Drewery building was moved. Each year a wind scoop approx. 1.5m deep forms around the building from a combination of snow accumulation and high winds. If left, the scoop would get larger and larger and would finally fill-in and bury the building. So, each year the building has to be hauled up onto level snow, hence why it is on a large pair of skis. The same goes for the garage building (see early Dec 2007 blog entry for garage move), all the storage containers, the sat-dome, and the vehicles.

Moving the Drewry...a big 60tonne building on sledges. First prep the surface, then make a ramp for it...

...and pull...hard!

Once the Drewery was moved, it was time for the tech boys to jump in and get it up and running again. Big engines sparked up, generators plugged into the power system, the heating, ventilation and water plumbed in and the sewage connected up.

How it's actually done.
A lot of horsepower
Two Nodwell cranes acting as anchors linked to two dozers pulling. Two more dozers pushing from the rear.

For me, summer science and instructions were coming in left, right and centre from Cambridge over the ZMet email account. I was busy compiling a structured plan for the summer workload which myself and my replacement would be conducting.

"Roadways" between all the buildings and the vehicle park were being groomed to compact the snow into a hard surface.

Rich was training Niv on Antarctic field operations for when Niv spends days out in the field with the incoming science bods.

Such was base life during the few weeks before Xmas.

It was time to have our official winterers photo and various team photos taken...

Official Halley Winterers 2008 team photo
left to right: Les, Scott, Rich, Hannah, Dave, Lance, Paddy, Bryan, Dean, Joe, Ags
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

All around the met office in the Simpson building are photos of the various met teams who have wintered at Halley since Halley V (since 1992 I think). Each year there has been a team of 3 meteorologists and/or engineers on the Simpson, and this is evident in the photographs. Not to break with tradition, I had my own team photograph taken...

The Halley 2008 Science Team photo
from left to right: David Stephenson

Totally egotistical, but that's me!
In fact, it reflects the various roles I have here...as meteorologist, electronic engineer, and data manager. But which one above is which?!

It was announced early December that the ship would be a week late due to springing a leak. Unfortunately they were stuck in the Canary Islands while repairs were carried out! The poor sods. However, it's arrival was imminent.

Late December 2008
It begins...

Christmas begets New Year. And for us at Halley, New Year begets pain and relief.

No, not the relief from pain as one would assume with that above comment...but relief as in the madness of the a) ship docking at the sea-ice, b) the invasion of Halley station with loads of people, and c) the cargo depoting from the ship to the base.

The later-than-originally-planned arrival of the ship allowed us on base to actually enjoy Christmas. Last year Christmas was a non-event due to being in the middle of relief operations and completely innundated with 114 or so people.

However, this year we were able to enjoy the day in the proper relaxed and chilled out way Christmas should be enjoyed. A quiet morning and afternoon with traditional Xmas films was followed by a full 3-course Xmas dinner put on by Paddy, and the rest of the day was spent playing pool, having a general laugh and watching more Christmassy films.

Xmas dinner
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

Bryan, Niv, and myself (me evidently doing my squirrel impression with two roast spuds!)
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

Xmas day in the local
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

The Twin Otter aeroplane finally arrived at Halley on New Year's Eve. It just pipped the ship to the finish line as the ship arrived a few hours later. The Twin Otter was originally supposed to be at Halley on 16th December so that I could do a lot of field work on the remote science equipment before the summer started in earnest. This was not to be, and so summer started for us in the science community with the stress of knowing that a season already a week late in starting was also backlogged with flights needing to be conducted. What was worse was the news that the ship was to have it's time down south cut short by another week to save costs. The pressure was on us...

But we were not going to let all that worry bother our New Year celebrations.
The ship was hovering about in the Weddell Sea just outside of Halley and so we had the evening off to see in the new year. And we did it in style. Ags brought out a ceramic pitcher of brandy cladded in a wicker basket which had been stored in the emergency supplies for what looks like since the 70s or maybe earlier. We all had a taster. And it tasted like liquid gold.

And then...
INVASION.

On 1st January 2009 people started arriving on base en masse. Those amongst them were the new 2009 winterers replacing us weary lot, and the summer staff (mechs, chippies, engineers, steelies, etc).

What was 24 hours previously a quiet sleepy base was now a hive of activity, with hardened experienced summerers jumping straight into action with vehicles, base tours for all the new faces (kindly provided by your truly), and plenty of newbies walking around with a dazed look on their faces.

Relief started instantly putting the base into 12-hour shifts and 24-hour operations for the next 5 days gettng cargo off the ship.

Turns also out that the 1st January was also the hottest day of the season so far, peaking at +4.5C. Water was everywhere on (and in) the buildings from the ice and snow melting from the thermal radiation.

Halley AWS wx display showing the rise in temperature...
...clearly linked to the drop in wind speed, but still, it was logged by the system and goes into the records

The Simpson building, all winter having been quiet and sleepy, was once again the central hub of Halley science. Giles (my replacement) in the met office with me, Ryan (glaciologist and 2009 science coordinator) back in the ozone lab at his little workstation, and DJ Max (electronic engineer) floating about between all rooms getting his kit ready for deployment in the field at A77 and A80 for a few days.

Life on base is now a steady hive of activity. The summer met / science world (a hefty team of 4 at it's peak, but now just 3) is now on 0700 - 1900 days. I am slowly handing over the reins to Giles, (who is willing to continue with the title of "metbabe") and simultaneously plowing through the summer science workload, (which to be honest is somewhat astronomical compared to last summer).

Now, I'm not one to blow my own trumpet (*snigger*), but Giles and I have got the raw end of the deal purely due to lack of science staff and an over-zealous workload this year. We are covering 12-hour days, 7-days/week. Hey ho...this is the Antarctic, and we are hardy heroes after all.

In between helping out with general base duties, doing deep field work, coordinating science cargo, conducting the usual met observations and ozone measurements, conducting the additional science activities, and training sessions for the newbies, I somehow find some time to give Giles his handover so that he gradually takes over responsibilities.

The daily newsfeed of 28th January gave me an opportunity to lay it on thick with one of the headlines on the front page.

"Stephenson is next Met Commissioner"

The headline was "Stephenson is Next Met Commissioner"

From then on, I referred to Giles as my "metbitch" while I was over all "commissioner of met". It's a hierarchy that works very well methinks. Giles doesn't complain too much, and if he does I give him more work so it works in his favour to keep quiet!!! :o)

(I do of course play on all of the above in jest)

Sunday 11th January 2009
Ozone Network Uplift

Relief was finally over and the base was settling into a summer routine.
Us in the science world (Ryan, Giles and myself) were itching to start getting the science flights started and out of the way with so that we could crack on with the general base science workload.

With the stress of trying to get a lot of science flights (10 flights or so) completed in a matter of a couple of weeks, a plan was devised for the priorities. Ozone network first, followed by Life of Halley kit, followed by GEF (geo-electric field) field deployment, followed by servicing of LPM (low power magnetometer) sites.

The idea wasthat some flights could be sacrificed if time ran out. But credit to us, we managed to get every single science flight completed. Yay, go team science!

So, the first of the flights was the ozone network uplift. A series of autonomous loggers were deployed at coastal sites around the local region last year. Their purpose is to measure the content of surface level ozone throughout the year (nothing to do with the large ozone high in the atmosphere, but rather the effects of build up of ice crystals on the sea). Our job this year was to go to each of these sites, do some tests, download the data, and dig out / uplift all the kit and bring it back to base.

Locations of the Ozone Network sites around Halley

So off Ryan and I go for the first science flight to Ozone Network site Foxtrot to uplift the instruments.
And what a bastard it was!

A half-buried surface level ozone logging station (all the exciting bits are under the snow!)

Not only was it a cold site at -20degC, but it was also at 9000ft altitude.

I read somewhere that at that altitude, air is 20% thinner. And shit, didn't we feel it?!

The snow accumulation at that site is somewhere around 1m per year and thus we had to dig all the kit up. With 20% less air to feed our exertions we were knackered after just a few minutes. As Mark (pilot) said to Ryan and I after we all stopped 5 mins into digging; "I'm a 50 year old smoker...now you guys know how I feel all the time! Imagine how I feel now!"

The thin air was also making us go a little crazy.
I found myself in a panic that I was not wearing my snowglasses and ran back to the plane to put them on, only to discoverI was actually wearing them.
Mark did the same thing with his hat asking both Ryan and myslf if we'd seen it...yeah, it was on his head!

The digging was finally done, and the tests were completed. Then came the fun bit...lifting the 100kg battery box out of the pit we had just dug. These are not particularly light or ergonomic for such activites, but with a lot of grunting, heaving and pushing we got it out, carried over to the cargo doors of the plane and loaded up. The rest of the kit was loaded, and then it was time to head on to Site Echo to do the 2nd site of the day (which was thankfully at a lower altitude).

And thus continued the ozone uplift flights for the following two weeks or so. 5 flights and 10 ozone sites.

Wednesday 14th - Monday 19th January 2009
Pillow Knob Fuel Depot

Pillow Knob.
*snigger*

An urgent depot job which needed to be done this season was to deposit several drums of avtur and petrol at a location called Pillow Knob at the Pensacola Mountain range. Fuel had to be stocked there in preparation for the arrival of a geologist and his field GA next summer.

The depot run would involve:
a) set up camp and raise a fuel depot at Berkner Dome South. Meanwhile,
b) over a series of 3 return flights, fly fuel from a recently raised depot at Touchdown to Berkner South to provide enough fuel to,
c) fly (over a series of 3 return flights) several drums of fuel to depot at Pillow Knob.
d) Once the depot has been completed, fly to ozone sites India and Juliet en route to Halley to uplift the kit.

The final route of the Pillow Knob depot journey
(thanks to Dean for producing the map)

I was asked if I would like to go (due to the need to uplift a couple of ozone sites whilst on the job), and I jumped at the opportunity. Who wouldn't?

It was to be 3 days off base flying around the local part of Antarctica. Chance of a lifetime and all that...

What was intended to be 3 days off base ended up being 6 days off base owing to crap weather at Halley.

What do 4 people in the middle of Antarctica with their own plane and with time to kill actually do? Well, go for a jolly flight to The Therons mountain range and camp there of course!

The night before we left I almost completely jeapardised my opportunity for this big excursion by deciding to mince up my thumb through sticking it into the very fast sharp spinny metal bit of a wood routing tool! Hmph. What a complete retard I was for that.

I now have scars to prove my Antarctic Heroism.
(even if it was from me sticking my thumb into a dangerous machine)

I was a brave little soldier and didn't cry.

I had a couple of stitches to hold it back together and was cleaned and dressed every day. Susanna (the new Doc) gave me some local anaesthetic to clean it and then proceeded to stitch it. By the time it came to the stitching the anaesthetic had worn off, and I felt every single moment of the stitching process. It hurt like a mother-f...

The issue was that on this fuel depot excursion I would be doing lots of manual hauling of heavy drums weighing 200kg each, so the risk would be of damaging my thumb further. But the doc was being especially nice and let me go anyway. And in the end I was fully capable of working without the use of my right hand opposable thumb. P'hah...evolution obviously got it all wrong!!! Well, saying that, the problems really arose when it came to doing one's "business" in the field...but more on that later!

Finally by the afternoon Mark, Rich, Dean and myself were on our merry way to Berkner South Dome.

It was an amazing few days out. Plenty of hard work and long hours, but we all had immense fun. We were like little children throughout the week, with purile humour, practical jokes and plenty of innuendo-esque connotations in almost every conversation.

Day 1:
Berkner Dome is apparently an island under loads of ice surrounded by ice-shelf. So, from the sky it actually looks like a slight rise in the surrounding field of white. And it is massive...at a guess almost as big as Ireland.

Dean and Rich set up base camp there and started to dig up the depot while Mark and I headed off to Touchdown 148nmiles away to collect some 4 extra drums of fuel. On returning to base camp we rotated co-pilots, finally collecting 12 drums from Touchdown over 3 return trips.

Drums were buried under almost 2m of snow accumulation at Berkner South, and so had to be hauled out once dug out...

...and deposited on the snow surface ready to a) refuel the plane, and b) load onto the plane to be depoted at Pillow Knob

The pink elephant baby's toy so lovingly sent to me by my good friend Lee-Ann.
Why? I do not know.
But it is now part of my travelling zoo of stuffed toys who accompany me across the Antarctic.

Mark and Dean return from Touchdown depot with 4 more drums collected there

Plane pulls up alongside basecamp

Mark takes a quick tea and manfood break before heading off to Touchdown again with Rich.

Day 2:
The next day flights started for depositing drums of fuel at Pillow Knob approx 300nmile away. Rich copiloted first while Dean and I sorted the drums of fuel into seperate piles for each trip (piles of those to go onto the plane to Pillow Knob and those to fuel up the plane itself).

Rich and Mark returned, a quick tea break, refuelling of the plane and loading of the next batch of drums, and then Mark was off again with Dean copiloting.

By the time Mark and Dean returned it was late, so the next batch of drums went the following morning with me copiloting.

Day 3:
So, off Mark and I were to Pillow Knob. It was an amazing flight. Boring white flatness soon turned into exciting views of mountainous peaks poking up through the snow...the tops of mountains dotted here and there where they rose out of the deep layer of snow to show their dark peaks. These are what are called Nunataks.

Wow...rocks and stuff. Not seen these kind of things for over 12 months!

A field of nunataks protruding from the snow surface

Evidence that although flying at 1000ft above the surface of the snow, we are in fact 7200ft above sea-level. The above pictures are tops of mountains poking out of a layer of snow 6200ft deep!
Unreal!

Other impressive views consisted of huge glaciers "pouring" down through mountain peaks, huge pressure cracks in the icefields, and me.

Glacier flowing down a valley between two mountain peaks
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans cos I'm still a retard photographer)

Soon a dot appeared in the distance within the whiteness. It was the depot. Seeing it in the middle of nowhere surrounded by all these nunataks gave me a very deep sense of just how insignificant and remote this little depot was. Truly sobering.

The depot (centre of photo) in the middle of nowhere.
A teeny blip in the sea of white

The depot was completed, pictures were taken, and then Mark and I were on our way back to basecamp.

The completed fuel depot.
12 drums of fuel at the Pensacola Mountain range, costing equivalent of 4 men working for 3 days and burning 35 drums of fuel for the flights. Not to mention the cost of getting fuel to Berkner and Touchdown in the first place.
No wonder Antarctic science costs can inflate exponentially the further south it is conducted.

Playing with my new wide-angle camera lens.

Me proudly sitting on the last drum to be depoted at Pillow Knob this season

The Antarctic Monkey, still not making much of an appearance in this blog, decided to get out for a photoshoot at Pillow Knob.

Oh Mark...so funny!!!

In the cockpit of Twin Otter VP-FBB

The Antarctic Monkey and Weird Pink Elephant Thing making acquantances

Back at basecamp we struck camp pretty much straight away on Mark and my return, and we all headed to ozone sites India and Juliet on the eastern side of the Ronne Ice-Shelf. India was approx. 120nm NE of Berkner South and was upifted. Time was running short by the time we got to Juliet (100nm SE of India), so we pitched camp there (using the hold of the plane as our kitchen/dining room) on the premise of uplifting Juliet in the morning.

Using the hold of the plane to cook our dinners at Ozone Site Juliet

Days 4 & 5:
Juliet was uplifted without too much hassle.
Word on the HF radio was that Halley was experiencing a blow and so returning there for the time being was impossible.

So, 4 people and a plane with time to kill.
Mark decided that a trip to The Therons would be appropriate and would be ideal to refuel the plane rather than risk flying into Halley with only a short endurance time remaining in the fuel tanks. The Therons are approx. 90nm from Juliet.

The Therons are another mountain range. These ones are cool in that they hold back a plateau of ice and snow behind them on one side and have a good 1000m drop on the otherside. Mark took us on the scenic route in to see this. We ended up flying below the level of the peaks along the wall of snow and mountains. Recent avalanches and crevassing were clearly evident. We landed at the fuel depot...and I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the depot is literally in the shadow of the mountains. After spending 14 months seeing no rocks at all, it was simply perfect to be setting up camp with the view of mountains and rocks and stuff out of the tent door.

Camp set up at the Therons

View from the door of the tent Dean and I shared. Surreal to be so close to the peak of a mountain, particularly after spending 12 seeing nothing but flat snow and ice around Halley

As soon as we landed the weather, (which had until then been perfect everywhere we went), decided to mank out on us and so we had a very low layer of stratus cloud hanging over us for the next couple of days, preventing any chance of taking off this close to a mountain.

The Antarctic Monkey and me posing in front of the Therons

We didn't mind being stuck here though. What was a work trip had now turned into an impromtu Antarctic camping holiday.

And did we have fun!

It is time to go talk about the less glamourous side of camping in the field in Antarctica. Namely that of toilet facilities.
The only way one can expunge one's bowels is to dig a hole in the snow. The best practice is to dig a deep main hole and in front of it dig a smaller foot hole leaving a snow-bridge between them. That way it is easier to squat over the main hole by standing in the foot hole. A shallow wall made from snowblocks is used to add a little extra privacy.

Simple.

But apparently not...

Dave and Dean standing by the rear of the plane. Rich approaches holding loo roll, confused look on his face.
Rich: Which hole do we use?
Dean: The one without the poo in it.
Rich: But they have both got poo in.
Dean: What? How can that be?
Rich: Well, someone has obviously got a little confused.
Mark: (leaning out of the cockpit door) Erm...I think I might have been the one who got a little confused.

Rich, Dean and I looked at one another and then burst out laughing. Mark had inadvertently used the wrong hole which meant he had been standing in Dean's shit!

Dean: (wiping tears of laughter away) How can you get confused? Which hole did you use?
Mark: The one with the pile of snowblocks behind it.
Dean: You were supposed to sit the other way.
Rich: But why would you make a toilet so that you would be facing the camp and looking at others?
Mark: (bursting out laughing) Do you like to look at people when having a crap Dean?
Dave: You know, to some people that's a sexual fantasy.
And so the discussion went on.

A third hole was dug as a new foot hole.
But this obviously still caused some issues...as by the end of the 2nd day at the Therons there were 5 holes in total, all in a line, and all containing shite!

I myself also had some consternation with the Theron toilet facilities...but of a different nature. It all mainly came down to my invalid thumb. I was at one point using the facilities, lowering myself into squat position when I had to support myself with my hands. Forgetting about my thumb, I had a shot of pain from it and instantly withdrew my hand, losing my balance. I dropped down, and was just able to stop myself falling any lower and landing arse-first into a big pile of turd. Phew!
How would I have ever lived that one down?!

At camp Rich and Mark shared one tent, Dean and I shared the other. Some general light-humoured insults were thrown to and fro between the tents one evening. It later came to radio sched time with Halley. For this Mark has to use the radio in the plane and has to start one of the engines to get the generator running. While this was going on, Rich popped his head into our tent said hello and disappeared. At that point I said to Dean "did rich just come in, bugger off and leave our door open?". A few seconds later Mark rammed the propellor into full reverse thrust, blowing loads of surface snow into our tent with us in it. The git!

Dean and I popped over to the neighbours for dinner the first night. We made a good job of completely destroying the snow surface below Mark and Rich's sleeping bags so as to make the night's sleep as uncomfortable and annoying for them as possible. The next evening they came over our tent for dinner and laid various objects like tins of cheese and tins of tuna under our karimats in an attempt to make our sleep as uncomfortable as theirs the previous night. Unfortunately for them the ploy did not work for we never felt any discomfort! They also spiked Dean's manfood with oodles of curry and chilli powder, but Dean would not let them win that one and so ate the whole lot.

Oh, what fun.

Day 6:
The next morning the mank cloud at the Therons had cleared enough for us to quickly strike camp and take off. Before long we were back at Halley ending our 6-day deep Antarctic excursion.

By the time we got back, life at Halley had finally settled into a summer routine.
Chatter on the VHF radio had once again returned to the usual "professional" level we all are accustomed to.

VHF is a very handy way of communicating with one another when out and about around base, or when working on jobs together requiring constant updates. Conversations on VHF radio can be heard by all on base who has a handheld radio...which is pretty much everyone. Therefore, communications are often quick and impersonal...

...but not always...
For example, the conversation between Baby Joe and Welsh Dean, 22nd Jan 2009:

Dean: Okay Joe, I'm ready when you are.
Joe: Okay Dean, I am pulling it now.
Dean: Joe, you couldn't pull in a brothel!

(pause)

Joe: Dean, you ... you couldn't pull ... in a field full of sheep!

Classic stereotypical racial based comical quips from Joe.

Entertainment and social activities continue even though everyone is busy. The small social activities are what help everyone de-stress and chill out. Saturday's have become theme nights again.

One Saturday evening after relief we had the summer BBQ.
It was a very social evening. Many people finally getting a chance to interact and get to know one another. A game of rugby was played, many jokes shared, and we all began to start to relax with one another.

We were even joined by a Skua.
(I consider them the pigeons of the Antarctic...bloody greedy sods always scavenging food)

Skua interrupts game of rugby

Skua

We celebrated Burns Night on Saturday 24th Jan. Whiskey was dished out to all, a full Scottish meal put on by the chefs (Haggis anyone?), and highland games were played outside...welly throwing, some tossing of a heavy deadweight thing, the tug-o-war and of course the caber toss.

I am proud to say that I won the caber toss competition. Much to the surprise of everyone (including myself), particularly the macho burly mechs. Heh heh.

Burns night also was the night a few people on base will never forget.
A "tradition" at Halley (long and forgotten and rarely repeated I am glad to say) is Naked Bar.
The title alone no doubt gives a clue as to this activity. It usually occurs later on in the weekend evening activities.

One previous winterer instigated this activity after talking about it, and soon was joined by 4 others stipping down to their birthday suits. Mark was still in the bar and was not going to join in. He was however apperently happy to stay in the bar chatting.

Said previous winterer was talking about how he was once caught by the Base Commander doing Naked Bar. To which Mark replied that he would love it if our current summer BC (a female) came in and saw the 5 of them like this.

In a matter of 2 minutes later the BC popped into the bar!
And her gaze was met by a scene of Mark surrounded by 5 naked men! Oh dear.
Many a red bashful face was seen the next day.

23rd January 2009
Science Continues...

The following week, a pushed summer at Halley continued.
In the meantime the science flights were still on-going, consuming a lot of the science resources (all 4 - and soon to be 3 - of us):

- Ryan was busy installing his GPS stations at varius locations on the Stancomb Wills Ice Stream (glacier) east of Halley. He was also doing some ozone uplifts at those sites near his GPS stations.

- DJ Max was deployed into the field at M80 (and then A77 a few days later).

- Giles done a round robin of all the LPM stations (7 in total), going as far south at 85deg South, (including servicing my little baby at M84 - the AWS I installed last summer).

- And I was off uplifting more ozone sites. The final two I coordinated were sites Golf and Hotel.

The flight to sites Golf and Hotel was purely amazing. These sites are a few nm down the coast west of Halley. Mark flew us (himself, myself, and Bryan copiloting) along the coast where we could see plenty of icebergs and sea-ice. Dotted all over the sea-ice were seals, looking like tiny slugs from our height.

We dipped down to low level and Mark weaved the plane in and out between massive icebergs. It was a hell of a fun flight.

Some big icebergs litter the ocean around the ice shelf...

...and Mark kindly took us down in some amazing low level flying to weave in and out of them

Some random photos of the flight...

Bergs in the process of breaking off from the main shelf

Uplifting Hotel and Golf were fun jobs. The weather was perfectly clear, sunny and calm. We were situated on a rise from the coast and so had a view of the ocean and the icebergs floating in it. Site Golf turned out to be the biggest bitch of a site to uplift having almost 1.7m accumulation burying it. It took ages to dig up.

We got there in the end though. After a lot of sweat I hasten to add.

Mark and Bryan digging themselves into a hole...literally
(I did ask them after this shot was taken how they proposed to get out having not dug in any steps!)

Yep...a pretty deep hole indeed.

Bryan and I at Ozone Site Hotel

By the end of January we had managed to complete all of the science flights.
What seemed like the impossible at the beginning of January with the late start to the season and the limited time that we had the plane at Halley was made possible by the hard work put in by Mark, Ryan, Giles, DJ and myself.
If there was ever a reason to be full of self satisfaction and smugness, this was it.

The next stage...
...doing the post flight science and data management, conduct the extra summer science needed around base, continue with the handover to Giles, and continue with the routine met and science requirements.

2nd February 2009
Snowblock Sampling

It was time to do a little digging...for a change!

It was time for the task of delicately extracting a block of snow from a clean section of virgin snow at Halley and somehow get it posted back to Cambridge (without damaging or melting it) for the directorate summer cocktail party!

Sorry, I meant, "posted back to Cambridge for delicate testing of the chemical composition of the snow layers!"

The activity of snowblock sampling involves dressing up in cleansuits so as to not contaminate the snow, and dig a big block of it out. This get placed into a clean plastic liner, which in turn is placed into a styrofoam box, which in turn is placed into a cardboard box, which in turn is placed into a large aluminium zarges box. Repeat x3.

Giles and I kitted out, headed to the CASLab, suited up, and got digging.

Ooh, suits you sir!
(that's a flag behind my head!)

Giles and I suited and booted...time to dig some holes

The instructions (based on my report and recommendation last year) said to dig a pit, and then cut the block out from the edge of an area which should have been untouched. It also said to dig 1.5m down so as to conduct a snow density and stratigraphy profile.
A what?
Basically, weigh some smaller blocks of snow of certain dimensions and note the ice-crystal structure within them.

Glad my electronic design engineering background has come to full utilisation at Halley!!!

After digging up the snow blocks (which were a fraction of the size of the pits dug) we attempted the density profiling. And found the tool supplied was next to useless.
Therefore, two 2m x 1.5m x 1.5m pits dug by Giles and myself ended up being a complete waste of our time! Grr.

Suppose we should have tested the tool first. Something any engineer would have done! D'oh!

Giles gingerly cutting out a snowblock sample.
Note the f-ing massive pit and the tiny snowblock!

5th February 2009
Raising the Halley 6 AWS

The Automatic Weather Station (AWS) at the Halley 6 construction site needed servicing. After a year it would have been buried by 1.3m of snow accumulation. The job each year is to visit the site, download the data it has logged and raise all the equipment back onto the snow surface.

Yay...more digging!

This was another hand-over for Giles, so we both headed out to Halley VI in a sno-cat, accompanied by summer admin assistant Tracey as a pair of extra hands.

(Tracey who incidently, I find, happens to have a family holiday caravan in my home village...fancy finding out things like that in Antarctica. Small world)

Heading out in Sno-Cat K24

Giles inspects the AWS halfway through up digging to the bottom of the structure

Me digging up the solar panel and the battery box

After spending the past few months in the UK reading about the exploits of the famous Antarctic Monkey, Giles finally gets to meet him in person, and proceeds to viciously attack him with a shovel.
The brute!

The AWS was finally lifted back onto the surface of the snow.
The cables were tidied and the instrument legs levelled.
New deadmen were dug-in and the equipment secured with guy-ropes.
The data was downloaded off the logger internal memory.
And the job was complete....
...for another year at least.

Another job well done. Me standing proudly next to our erection.
(Tee hee)

Giles and myself pose with our handy-work.

It was time to head home back to Halley V.
We returned to find Ryan had been doing some modern art and created a sculpture of some sorts!

Well, in reality he had been busy sorting through the multitudes of poles on the Simpson open platform. They are always shipped in for science projects, and the surplus always ended up back on the Simpson. Over several years the Simpson had collected a mass of odd lengths of scaffold poles, glaciopoles, and snow-stakes.

It was time for a good sort out for the scrap metal dump. All non-required poles were literally chucked over the side of the Simpson platform.

Ryan's modern art would have impressed our resident summer artist, Neville

And to think I spent a considerable amount of time during the winter in the freezing cold measuring and counting every measly one of them poxy poles for the annual indent. Bugger!

10th February 2009

It is 12 days to go until us winterers of 2008 are finally sailing away from Antarctica after spending the past 15 months living at Halley.

Just under one and a half weeks to complete all the summer work, pack all outgoing cargo, pack all personal kit into boxes, and give any final handover info to the winterers of 2009. Time is a push, but the light is just about starting to glimmer at the end of the tunnel...hopefully not from a train on a head-on collision.

But it wasn't the end of digging for Giles and I yet.
Today was a day for rasing the AWS here at Halley. It too was a bugger of a job, digging 4 large trenches and a massive hole all 1.5m deep. The system was finally raised onto the snow surface, tethered up with guy-ropes, and reconnected.

I sat back and realised this was to be the last big dig of summer 2009, but more significantly, the last big dig in Antarctica for me.

I let out a cheer...for after this season I now absolutely hate digging snow!

This probably has been my last blog update at Halley station itself.
All being well, I aim to knock out another either just before we head out for the last time to Creek 4, or while on the ship heading north to the Falkland Islands.

Either way, my Antarctic experience is not quite over yet as we have Signy base to shut down for the winter and of course lots of cool photos from the journey to the Falklands. More to come on that hopefully, so watch this space.

Many thanks to avid followers of this blog, your comments kept my interest and enthusiasm to write this blog going strong.

Dean's Crack, strange folk, dodgy hairstyles, and OMG...fresh produce. Another normal time at Halley!

2008-11-30T23:34:00.034Z

"Hannah handed me her box and I proceeded to give her some!"

Any innocent eavesdropper would have thought conversation within the orange pyramid tent, perched on a hillock overlooking the large chasm of the Brunt Hinge Zone, had dropped to a low level of decorum. But, in all honesty, it was a perfectly innocent comment, albeit with some subtle leanings of innuendo. (in-your-end-o, surely - Ed).

Rich was in fact explaining to me that Hannah had passed the wine box over to him, and he was topping up her glass with the contents of said wine box. We were having a toast to another successful day of tent pitching, abseiling and ice-climbing. Still, it gave me cause to snigger like the puerile red-blooded male that I am!

Most of October and November was 2nd winter trip time for all on base. We each, (in teams of three), had 10 days "holiday" time to go out and have a bit of R&R around the Brunt Ice Shelf.

October and November were also the months in which we had visitors in airplanes stop over for fuel en route to the Russian base of Novo. It was the first time we got to see other human faces since the ship left us in March

And October and November were the months of taking advantage of the warmer, lighter weather to get a lot of prep work complete for the coming summer season when the ship arrives in Mid-December. Everyone have been involved and have been working very hard to get such prep jobs done.

Yep...the months of October and November have been a busy couple of months indeed.
This is my excuse for the 2-month hiatus in my blog entries! :o)

A rare chance to sit down for a break with a cuppa and catch the latest news from the Boundary Players.

Saturday 4th October & Sunday 5th October 2008
Another Trip to the Penguin Colony

"What Ja-makin' Paddy?" I shouted as I entered the kitchen, grinning.

Satisfied with my amazing ability to use word play to such comical effect, turned heel and exited before I got any answer.

It was another Saturday night, and Paddy was putting on Jamaican themed meal for the evening.

I had practically waited all my life to make a smart-arsed quip like that, and the timing was perfect! Ah, word play and me are practically bedfellows.

So, it was an evening with Jamaican themed food, but I cannot for the life of me tell you what we had...no doubt a consequence of my haste to leave the kitchen after indulging myself in my own humour and not listening to Paddy's answer. Meh, it was worth it though.

Sunday brought about another opportunity to visit the penguin colony again. It was precisely a month since I last visited the colony, and feeling cheated that I never got to see any chicks last time (apart from frozen dead ones...which I apologise for putting pictures of onto my blog ladies), I thought it would be worthwhile going again.

And indeed it was.

A line of penguins form a spur from the main colony to welcome us

There were loads of chicks running around this time.
And here they are...

And of course, I have to have the customary pose with my army of penguin fans...

What amazes me is now naturally maternal/paternal the emperor penguins are. They fight over each other to look after a stray chick. During our latest visit I witnessed many times when a chick would break free from its parent, and suddenly a huge tussle would ensue where penguins would fight over one another to get to the errant chick and to put it between their feet and nurture it. Sometimes the scrambles would get a little violent and the chicks would get trampled on.

And one one occasion I witnessed a lone penguin struggling to get a chick inside it's pouch. It would succeed, then try walking off with the chick between its legs. It would end up walking off leaving the chick behind not realising it had slipped and popped out from behind him! This particular penguin would try again and again, with the same result each time. It clearly was not used to looking after a chick. In the end, another penguin waddled up, slipped the chick under his pouch, and waddled off again!!! Like a true pro. It was quite comical to watch.

For all you ladies I know who requested that I bring them home a baby penguin (which is pretty much every single one of you), this is for you...!

Chick-napping

Monday 6th October - Sunday 26th October 2008
October...Boring!

For once, I really do not have much I can write about in this blog. October was a largely uneventfful month due to people being on winter trips, people being knackered after a hard day's work, and just generally enjoying relaxing in the evenings before the furore of the summer season kicks off.

Dean and I finally got the sign that our winter was over on the 9th. While chatting over a cup of tea in my office, we witnessed a flock of Snow Petrals buzzing around the base...our first sight of airborne wildlife this year. It was a positive sign that temperatures were warming up, wildlife was returning to the shores, and the winter was all over.

Scotty requested my services as a qualified electronic engineer to help fix the speedometer on Sno-Cat K23. It hadn't been working all winter. I helped him out, and took the opportunity to have a little joy ride around base in K23.

(well, I did need to hook up some test equipment to the dashboard to measure signals as the Sno-Cat was driven).

A few hours later the speedometer was up and working again.

Electronics 0 - Stephenson 1.

Me and Sno-Cat K23

From Fri 17th Oct until Fri 24th Oct I was on NightWatch.

Not a particularly exciting week on nights, but I was treated to some amazing sun-sets and sun-rises. By this time of year the sun only sets for a couple of hours.

Sun-Rise at 0300hrs

Tuesday 28th October 2008
Fresh Faces and Fresh Food

The 28th saw the final sun-rise of 2008. From this day on the sun will be permanently in Halley's skies until it sets again in February 2009. We already have 24 hour daylight, but now we will have 24 hour sunshine (when it's not cloudy that is!).

This final sunrise was the last thing on all of our minds. In fact, the moment passed without us even realising. We had more important things to think about.

The first plane of the season to pass through Halley was on its way. Having flown all the way down from Canada, via Punta Arenas and through Rothera station, it was now winging it's way to Halley for a fuel stop before continuing en route to the Russian base of Novo.

People were busy getting the ski-way set up for the arrival of the plane, Dean was in the comms office flight following, and I was providing hourly met reports on the weather. All the time only one thing was on our minds...

...fresh vegetables, fresh salad, and fresh vegetables!

It had been 8 months since eating an apple, or chewing on a piece of lettuce, or tasting the juicyness of a tomato. And now the plane was bringing us 100kg of fresh food.

The plance arrived, the fresh food was given priority VIP treatment and transported to the larders, and we all of a sudden had 4 new faces on base. The first glimpse of other human beings since March! It was really surreal.

I tell you, you don't know what it is like to taste fresh salad again after so long. The succulent taste of moist cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers, lettuce, etc. was sensory overload. It was quite orgasmic. In fact, in my enthusiasm to describe it I might have gone as far as saying it was like an orgasm in our mouths....but that would sound very very wrong indeed!

Friday 31st October 2008
Halley Hallowe'en Party

Ah, it was time to celebrate Hallowe'en at Halley. Another theme night. Paddy pulled out all the stops to put on a fantastic spread of blood and guts labelled food, and Dean spent the afternoon decorating the bar with Hallowe'en related things.

The table-spread...complete with evil ginger-bread bunny rabbits and ginger-bread skeletons

And being a theme night, it was fancy dress.

Dean came as a ghoul, Joe came as Jason from Friday 13th films, Hannah and Ags as witches, Rich as a voodoo-esque skeleton man (like in James Bond Live and Let Die). At the bar were Hallowe'en themed cocktails with lots of red food dye for blood colouring. Hmm, nice!

Hannah and Rich

Lacking in inspiration for something original for my fancy dress, I formed my idea based on a costume I saw last year at a friends party. (Many thanks to Sally) I came as a blood spattered doctor.

But not just any blood-spattered doctor...but in fact a blood-spattered gynaecologist, complete with blood-stained saw and chisel!

Dr. Stephenson - Gynaecologist

On several occasions during the evening I asked the girls if they wished me to "service their bits" but they politely declined!

The evening ended with a game of cards, playing the latest craze at the bar for Dean, Paddy, Joe and myself...Shithead.

Losing at Shithead

Tuesday 4th November - Thursday 13th November 2008
Post-Winter Winter Trip

Finally the time came for me to go on my 2nd winter trip. I was paired up to go with Hannah, and obviously Rich being our GA was to be our "guide".

10 whole days of holiday time to go out and about camping around the Brunt Ice Shelf and doing various activities such as abseiling, ice-climbing, walking, exploring crevasses, and chilling out in the tent.

Tuesday to Friday - Creek 4 caboose
After an initially crappy start to the day's weather, the wind soon abated to allow us to head off. Our first port of call...Creek 4 12km north of Halley.

The 1st day was a lay-up day due to strong winds and wet snow. So, we just ended up chilling out in the caboose. By Thursday the weather had improved and the clouds had broken up to give us the most gorgeous sunny and warm day. Temperatures reached up to -7C, which is rather balmy compared to the temperatures I experienced during my first winter trip with Joe.

We linked up via rope and harnesses and took a walk to Creek 5. Here a crevasse has formed between where cliffs of the ice-shelf form a natural V-shape. For some reason this got named Dean's Crevasse. And it was time for Rich to take Hannah and I to go exploring within Dean's Crevasse! (it's much more pleasant than what it sounds!).

View from outside Dean's Crevasse

Inside it was amazing. A short tunnel in which we had to crawl through opened up into a huge cavern which I can only describe as a cathedral of ice. It was a beautiful sight to behold. The tunnel led to a ledge from which we abseiled down 30m to the bottom of the creevasse at sea-level. From here were were able to make our way through the crevasse approximately 250m horizontally into the ice-shelf.

Abseiling down from the ledge to sea-level

A shrimp frozen in the ice of the crevasse wall

Edging along the bottom of the crevasse from the abseil point

Delicate formations filaments of ice dangle from the walls and overhangs

Rich leading and lighting the way through the dark

Chandaliers of ice-crystals cling to the ceilings

The Antarctic Monkey stopping to take in the view

We reached the end, and then turned back and made our way out again.

Back outside is a complete contrast after being inside the crevasse so long...beautiful cloudless skies and a hot sun beaming down on us

It was a most fantastic experience.

Creek 4 caboose - our home whilst at Creek 4

A massive tableau iceberg sits out on the sea beyond

Antarctic Monkey poses on the Nansen 1/2 unit sledge

Later in the evening we took a late-night stroll onto the sea-ice, out to the pressure ice which had formed over the winter. The landscape was quite alien. Chunks of ice broken up and refrozen in the sea to form a very rough terrain. And here and there were emperor penguins walking around in groups of 3 and 4.

Taking a midnight stroll out onto the pressure sea-ice

Me, looking out over the alien terrain

The scene was so peaceful and calm. Not a sound could be heard apart from the occasional call from these penguins. And then every now and again I could here a "whump". And again..."whump".

These sounds turned out the be unseen penguins (behind ice rocks, etc), dropping onto their bellies to scoot around. It was quite comical to hear.

Friday to Monday - Hinge Zone
Our next port of call was the Hinge Zone 40km south of Halley. We ended up pitching camp on the top of a hillock over looking a chasm formed where the Brunt Ice Shelf flows off the main Antarctic continent. The evening was a beautiful one, and we took advantage of the good weather to go out for, what Rich called, a "short stroll" at 2100hrs.

Camp at the Hinge Zone.
The tent on the right is the "poo tent".

Four hours later we were back at the tent, exhausted.

Our "short stroll" actually consisted of skidooing to a feature called Aladdin's Cave, abseiling down to the bottom of the hole, climbing up to the cave itself on the opposite wall, then climbing over the top of the cave, and walking all the way around back to the skidoos.

Aladdin's Cave...the actual cave can just about be seen on the far right of the picture

Rich abseiling down to the melt-pool at the base of Aladdin's Cave...

...and climbing up to the cave itself on the opposite wall

It was bloody knackering. But damn good fun.

I didn't think it was much fun when I was climbing up the ice-wall of Aladdin's though. If you ever want to hear a fully grown man talk dirty to a wall of ice, then watch me do ice-climbing. Not only was I moaning like a bitch all the way through it, I was getting angry with the stupid ice-axes and the stupid crampons on my feet.

I tell you, it's just not natural to be clinging to a wall of smooth ice with nothing but two ice-axes and two spikes on the end of each boot to support you. Not natural at all I tell you.

Rich and Hannah sillhouetted by the sun on the top of Aladdin's Cave

Saturday turned out to be a lay-up day due to overcast skies. Travel in the Hinge is very dodgy when contrast and visibility is at a low due to all the hidden crevasses around.

Sunday was not that much better, but an improvement nonetheless.

Rich decided we should go hunting for a crevasse and chuck ourselves down it. We found one a few hundred metres from our campsite. Rich dug into the snowbridge, opened up a hole into the crevasse, and then we all took turns to abseil into it.

Rich finds us a crevasse to play in

Hannah observes down the hole, and just like out of some dodgy horror movie, a hand pops out through the ice not far from her.

Again, what an amazing view. Directly under our feet is this huge cavern of ice, with ice-crystals the size of dinner plates protruding from the walls and chandeliers of ice hanging from the ceiling. And just hanging their on the end of a rope it is as still and peaceful as anything.

Abseiling down into the crevasse into a cavern of ice

While I am dangling on the end of a rope, Rich appears on a ledge a few metres away

A few photos later it is time to jumar back up the rope to get out again.

Monday to Wednesday - Rumples.
Next was to strike camp and head to the Rumples. These are located 15km east of Halley. The Rumples are a naturally formed set of icebergs, ice crags, and crevasses. There is a formation of rocks under the sea, and the rumples are formed from the Brunt Ice Shelf crashing into these undersea rocks causing ripples and buckles in the ice...but on a grand scale.

We pitched camp and the next day went on one of Rich's "little strolls" for four hours.

After abseiling from the cliff, we walked around the sea-ice which fills in where the ice-shelf has broken up. Within the sea-ice are huge ice-bergs (from the breaking up of the shelf) which are literally frozen in place and free for us to walk around and climb up on. These bergs are huge.

Cliffs form a wide crevasse at the Rumples. Our entry point down to the lower Rumples features

Hannah for some reason gives me the Jazz Hands as I abseil down!

Rich stops to take a few snaps on his way down

On our walk through the Rumples

The lower Rumples

It was during this walk that we came across a Weddell Seal basking in the sun.

This was my first ever encounter with a seal. It was an amazing thing to see. These creatures are huge. It was just laying there, and didn't even get startled when we approached. Instead it gave us a nonchalant look and went back to basking in the sun.

A Weddell Seal lounging in the sun, soaking up some rays

Seal gives us a lazy look, and goes back to sunbathing

And if that wasn't enough, 5 mins later we came across a female Weddell complete with seal pup.
Cute.

Female Weddell Seal and her pup

aawww!

The next day we went on another walk to the top of the Rumples (whereas the day before we were in the lower parts of the Rumples on the sea-ice). It was quite a knackering walk, and not one without several occasions of being half swallowed by hidden crevasses. But we made it to the top. And from here we could just about make out some features of Halley station, such as the Laws building, and the long line of storage containers for the Halley VI build.

View from the highest point on the Rumples.
Campsite can just about be seen in this picture on the middle-left

View out to sea across the Rumples

Me pointing out where Halley station is to the Antarctic Monkey

Wednesday to Thursday - Windy Creek
Our final call was to Windy Creek (where the penguin colony is located) 15km north-west of Halley. We arrived late and so settled for the evening drinking whiskey and having a cultured night, whcih continued until 0700hrs. Well, it was the last night of our holiday after all!!

The plan was to spend Thursday afternoon at the penguin colony, but unfortunately the wind picked up and we were forced to instead take a peak at the colony from the top of the cliffs.

Soon it was time to go home as the holiday was over.

But what an amazing time we had. Besides all the adventure and climing and walking, etc, there was plenty of tent time where we just chilled out reading books, listening to music and ignoring the worries of base life. Groovy.

Tuesday 18th November 2008
Happy Birthday to ME!

Happy Birthday Dave indeed.
27 years of age! Ooh, I feel I am out of my mid-twenties now!

I agreed with Ags and Hannah that they can spend the evening pampering me and giving me a "makeover". Hannah decided that it would be fun to rag my hair. Not knowing what it was I agreed instantly.

I soon realised it involved rolling bunches of my hair into cotton strands and tying them up. I then had to spend the evening with my hair like this until it dried.

Getting "ragged" by the girls.
Huh huh!!

But in the meantime I was given a facepack/mudpack thing to cleanse my face and make me look youthful again....
...or look ridiculous. But you know me, I'll do anything in the name of entertainment.

Hmm...no comment!
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

I was later presented by my cake. Hannah had spent the entire previous night making 4 different cakes, each one cut into the shape of a letter of my name. The final product? Four cakes topped with colourful icing spelling out my name. A ginger cake, a Slovakian cake, a coffee and pecan cake and a Mary Poppins (fruit) cake.

Hannah explained that she was at a loss as to a theme she could base the cake on for me (as she had done with previous birthdays). She eventually opted to base the cake on the thing I love, and as I love myself she decided to make my name out of a cake. I wasn't sure whether to be insulted with that or not...but as it was such a wonderful cake, I opted for "not insulted"! :o)

Dave cake
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

Hannah explaining the nature of the cakes to me
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

I have never had a birthday cake made for me before, so this was quite a momentous occasion.

27 candles, one big breath
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

And Dean presented me with my card. On the front is a picture of Han Solo with the head of beaker photoshopped instead of Han's. It has been evident that I am a former Star Wars geek (with a lot of geeky Star Wars knowledge retention) and my role here being the base "beaker" then Beaker's head was the obvious option.

I was very chuffed with that.

My birthday card

My rags were removed the next morning (for I was told I had to sleep with them in).

Removing the rags...

...and brushing the clumps of hair out.
And boosch! Instant Afro

For the next couple of days I was walking around Halley looking like the stereotypical scouser whenever I wore my shell-suit-esque purple shiny nylon outdoor jacket!

Which was not a good image to introduce the first of the new winterers who arrived on the next plane to pass through Halley en route to Novo. Rich's replacement, Niv, came in on the Polar 5 aeroplane to begin his handover relatively early this season.

Ben, summer vehicles manager, also came in on the plane. Two extra hands on base is going to be a great help for us in terms of man-power.

I've managed to get the errant flying radiodome back up and running on the Laws building, the GPS antenna on the Simpson is now receiving a strong signal, and replacement parts are on their way for the balloon data loggers and the exploding UPS. Science survived the winter...

To continue my tally...
Electronics 0 - Stephenson 1
Science 1 - Stephenson 1
Weather 1 - Stephenson 1

I'm just about winning methinks.

And so ends the latest 2-months of life at Halley.

I'm now on NightWatch once again, my last hopefully.
The BAS Twin Otter plane is due to arrive on 16th December, from which date I will be busy with field work servicing several remote science sites on the continent and uplifting some kit which needs to go back to Cambridge.
The ship is due to arrive sometime around Boxing Day, at which time relief will happen instantly.
So, it's soon going to be busy busy busy x10-fold pretty much until the ship takes us out of here on 1st March.

Adios for now.

August/September...Birthday's Galore!

2008-09-18T22:53:00.031+01:00

Ah August...
The coming of the O-hole!

The sun is back.
And with it it brings sunburn...snowblindness...and the euphoric feeling associated with our thyroid glands returning to full operation again (read T3 Syndrome). The summer approaches and we are happy.

Not only does August see the return of the sun at Halley, but also the start of a series of processes beyond my control which make my role on base a hell of a lot more busier than normal. In other words, the coming of a gigantic hole in the high stratosphere.

The sunlight provides the energy which kick-starts the chemical processes that cause the annual spring-time destruction of the ozone layer above Antarctica. The dark winter months allow the conditions 15km - 20km above the earth to prime themselves to destroy the ozone layer once the sun returns. And I'm here to record the destruction of ozone above Halley, 4 times a day, 7-days per week.

For information about the depletion in ozone above Halley and Antarctica in general, and the processes involved, please visit the BAS webpage.

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/met/jds/ozone/index.html

Thursday 7th & Wednesday 13th & Saturday 23rd August 2008
"For God's sake...anyone else got a birthday in August they want to inform us about?!?!"

There was/is definitely something about the month of November and the parents of would be Antarctic winterers!
Three people on base celebrated their birthday in August. That is more than 25% of the entire complement at Halley.

Is there some kind of bizarre link between a) those who wish to spend months on end confined to a small building with a handful of other people in the most hostile place on earth, and b) the parents of said people doing "coitus" during the month of November?!

No matter how much of scientific role I have on base, this kind of research is beyond my call of duty! Thank goodness.

First we had Hannah pushing further towards the realm of old age on the 7th.
Closely followed by Rich hot on her heels, in both age and date of birth, on the 13th.
And finally Scott sneaked in on the 23rd.

"Tradition" is for a cake to be made for the birthday boy/girl by the Doc (Hannah). And there is always a theme relating to the persons job or hobby.

Hannah's birthday cake - a field medical box cake inside....a field medical box! Genius!
Cake made by Ags

Hannah made Rich a cake in the shape of a camera. You probably guessed by now that Rich is a keen photographer from the numerous pictures I "borrow" from him for my blog.

Rich with his birthday cake - a camera shaped chocolate covered chequered sponge cake
Cake made by Hannah

The level of quality in the cards made by Dean is outstanding. Here is Rich's card

Scott (vehicle mechanic) received a ginger-bread biscuit-cake-thing in the shape of the garage, complete with vehicles.

Scott's ginger-bread garage
Cake made by Hannah

Scott and Hannah

Saturday 16th August 2008
Sun-Up BBQ

The rubbish weather which hampered us from ever seeing whether my prediction for the sun-up last weekend (Sun 10th) was correct also prevented us from having a celebratory BBQ.

Not to be deterred, we celebrated it anyway...the following week.

Paddy in action

See, fire does work in -30C!

The best party within 800km...probably!

And as it was a celebration, and as we had plenty of out of date emergency flares which needed expending, we decided to light the sky with our own "fireworks"...Fire and flares.

Flares illuminating Halley - in my poor attempt at photography

And as an added bonus, we also were treated to a total lunar eclipse that very night.
Do visit Dean's (our Comms Manager and resident computer & network spod/geek) blog for awesome pictures of flares being fired off the platform and the lunar eclipse:

www.teeks.org

Sunday 24th August 2008
Another Birthday!

This time, it was my dad's 60th birthday
Happy Birthday Pop!

Sorry to miss out. As a present I'll buy all your bus fares for the next 20yea...oh, looks like the state beat me to it!!! :o)

Tuesday 26th August 2008
The saga of the balloon radiodome...continued

It had been sitting in Joe's workshop for the past month or two, but it was time to face the ordeal of repairing and remounting the stupid flying radiodome (see last blog entry for details).

I had already ascertained that there was no serious damage to the dome from it's fall. Just some cosmetic damage to the fibreglass shell. The antenna elements inside survived, if a little bent to one direction from the impact.

I wielded some super whiffy glass-fibre filler and proceeded to repair the shell. I eventually succeeded in repairing the dome, and also succeeded in spreading the stench of my efforts (that is the smell of the fibreglass filler and not my body odour!) throughout the building via the internal air system. Oops.
At least everyone was happy that evening!

It was then time to remount the dome.
In -30C temperatures, there was not even any point in thinking about soldering connectors onto cables and such for re-establishing the comms to the radiosonde system. That job would have to wait until the summer when it was warmer. However, the first stage had been completed...the dome, with help from Dean, was back on it's pedestal.

Dean, on the Laws roof, observes the sun skimming the horizon.
The radiodome sits waiting to be remounted to the pedestal (bottom right)

And he equalises. Stephenson 1 - Weather/Science 1...
A draw...but not for much longer. Once I connect that cable, victory will be mine. Ha ha

The Laws that very same night with the milky-way overhead.
No doubt my last night pic at Halley

Thursday 4th September 2008
A Trip to Windy Creek

Aha, you've been patiently waiting for this
Windy Creek...*snigger*
An unfortunate name for a place, but a pleasure to visit.
Why?
Well, it's where our closest neighbours live...

The Penguins.

The first penguin trip of the season was organised by Rich, and so in the morning, myself, Dean and Rich took a Sno-Cat and drove the 15km to the coast.

It is always a pleasure to visit these amazing birds. After a long dark winter, (which was a struggle to ourselves even in the comfort of our warm base, good food, and entertainment), these birds have managed to survive the extreme temperatures and nurture an egg.

They are so naturally inquisitive when visited by us humans. We would approach the colony gently for fear of disturbing the penguins, and they will instead take it upon themselves to break off and actually come to us to have a look.

We didn't approach the colony, the colony approached us (well those on the edge anyway).

I was busy taking some photos of a couple of penguins before me, and I could hear the crunch of penguin claws on ice behind me. First one, then two...then more....getting closer and closer. It was quite unnerving in a way. I turned around to find I was practically encircled by a bunch of penguins all about arms length away, motionless, staring at me.

Amazing.

Visiting the penguin colony probably alone can completely justify my reasons for being here at Halley. Of course, there are many experiences I have had and am yet to have down here which makes this job amazing, but simply visiting the penguins can be enough to make it all worth while.

The colony

They actually came to us to have their photos taken

Rich snaps a penguin

Although all the chicks by this time had hatched, there were many abondoned eggs lying around, and it was often sad to see the devotion some penguins had to their eggs when it was obvious to us that it was never going to hatch. I watched one penguin, (pictured), keep picking up his egg and transport it whenever the group of penguins we were watching shuffled to a new spot. And there was the occasional frozen carcass of a chick who hadn't made it. Such is the harsh reality of nature.

A sad devotion to an "unhatched" egg, the chick within obviously dead from exposure.

No bigger than my hand, the occasional dead chick was found. Was a sad sight to see.

Unfortunately, even though we could hear the calls of plenty of chicks, I wasn't lucky enough to see any in good view. All were towards the warm centre of the colony and were hidden under the belly of their parent. Occasionally a beak could be seen protruding from between the feet of the adult penguins.

Rich, within a sea of birds

You can see our reflection in his eye

We were treated to some amazing lighting conditions as the low sun passed behind some alto-stratus clouds, giving a beautiful orange-pink glow as a backdrop to the North.

A damn good trip.

Monday 8th September - Sunday14th September 2008
Bondage in the Simpson?

I spent most of the week getting all hot and sweaty with Rich, lashing up nice and tight with him using twine and us both pulling hard on leather thongs with one another!!
Other activities included cleaning our skids, getting covered in lots of viscous goo and adding metal hooks to our body.

What on earth was going on in the Simpson?

Well, Rich has been using old met-lab in the Simpson to service his sledges.
I took it upon myself to assist him in completely refurbishing one of these sledges. All of the lashings holding the wooden struts together were replaced, the leather thonging attaching the bridges to the sledge skids were replaced, the skids were touched up, dope was used to seal the lashings, and new tow rope was tied around the sledge.

The 14 year old sledge was as good as new once we finished, ready to be stored for use for field parties, science trips and winter trips.

A very satisfying activity away from my usual duties.

The completed item

And awaiting outside for stowage at the GA container

The sun is now starting to set at a reasonable time in the evenings now, more familiar to us that sunsets at 1500 and 1600 as we'd been expecting. As the sun sets in the north-west, we get treated to some fantastic lighting.

Take these shots of the Halley VI construction site below,

Halley VI modules silhouetted by the setting sun

Orange and pinks, as close as I can recreate with the camera and Lightroom software

*sigh*
What? Another birthday?

Yep. Another birthfay to celebrate.
This time it was Base Commander Ags' birthday, so we felt obliged to make an effort with this one. (one wonders if we all secretyl feared a bad rview in our performance report if we did not).

Lucky for us Ags was on nightwatch for the week, so she was out of the way for us to plan things.

We all knew she likes balloons, so we decided it would be fun to completely fill her office with the things...even going through the trouble of inflating one of the huge met balloons I use for the daily met radiosonde.

Ags got a pleasant shock when she opened her office door to be attacked by loads of balloons flooding out. Heh.

Balloons which were stuffed in Ags' office soon littered the Law corridor.

Ags enjoying her birthday "treat"

We celebrated with a 3 course meal put on by Paddy, a fantastic colourful ice-feature made by Ags herself being the centre-piece of the table (you can just about make out it's semi-melted form in the photo above). We finally partied the rest of the night out in the bar.

Saturday 20th September 2008
Vikings visit Halley

The headline on the daily "newspaper" we have here at Halley read "will there be raping and pillaging through Halley tonight?".

I can't for the life of me think who would put such a heading!!! :o)

Rich had proposed earlier in the week to have a Viking theme night for Saturday. Paddy agreed to put on what Scandanavian-based food stuffs he could think up. Turns out he could think up quite a wide range of Scandinavian-based food stuffs! He did a fantastic job.

To add to the Viking theme several of us decided to make us some Viking costumes from what clobber and props we had in the fancy dress cupboard.

I ended up improvising with a monks habit, a bedsheet, and a safety helmet with some tin-foil.

Top marks goes to Rich with the Viking helmet he made. Mine looked like a prop from a very bad sci-fi B-Movie.

Dean, Ags, myself, Hannah and Rich...trying to be dressed as "Vikings".
And also attempting to look mean!!!

And finally...

The first full Solar halo of post-winter 2008

An exciting moment for a humble metbabe like me.
A full huge solar halo, produced by diamond dust in the air, dwarfing the Laws building.

Melt-Tank Movie

Dean has kindly uploaded a video onto You-Tube depicting the not-so-glamourous side of life at Halley...digging for the melt-tank in a 40knot blow in the middle of winter.

Have a look-see at:
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=8GoYq3lCOX0

Now you see why we justify calling ourselves "Antarctic Heroes"! :o)

That's it for now
Hope you enjoyed the entry.
Adios for now.

July: both my lover and nemises of winter months thus far

2008-07-12T18:12:00.031+01:00

DONG!
It was 0200 in the morning.

A big resounding dong from somewhere above me woke me up with a start!
It awoke few other people too.
Dongs are common within the pitroom section of the Laws building, but nothing ever of this magnitude.

We were experiencing a particularly strong wind, with gusts of up to 55 knots shaking the building. A loud "dong" on the roof somewhere above my room was heard.

However, I thought nothing more of it, turned over, and went back to sleep.

Life at Halley plods on. Several signs are beginning to emerge signifying that we are all spending too much time in one another's company.

Names are a classic example.
It is becoming more and more commonplace to accidently mix peoples names up.
I'm not talking about simply calling one person someone else's name (although that does occur quite regularly also). I'm talking about the juxtaposition of fragments of peoples names.

Dean often absentmidedly mixes my name with Joe and calls me "Jave". Which isn't so bad really...I have on many occasions been heard to both call Joe or Dean "Jean".

And the girls don't escape either. I am often finding myself calling Hannah a combination of her own name and Ags' to produce "Anna". But poor Ags get's the worst of it when I find myself in an awkward position after calling her "Hags"!

Saturday 5th July - Sunday 6th July 2008
The Base Falleth Apart

And so began 24 hours of bizarre events.

After a couple of weeks recovery from the mid-winter celebrations / jam-packed social activities, it was soon time to have another theme night.

Ags proposed a Polish night for Saturday 5th.

With a name like Agnieszka Fryckowska, we had never disputed her claim to a Polish heredity.
Nor had we disputed that she could cook Polish food. And good job we didn't...it was gorgeous.

The night was loosely a theme, but with the come-down from mid-winter there were not many takers for dress up. In fact, the only people who ended up dressing up was Hannah and myself. Hannah came as a Polish gypsy and I came as a very dodgy looking cossack.

Unfortunately, any photos I have came later in the evening. By this time, many of the layers of clothing I was adorning had gradually come off, revealing me in my underlayer...some crazy woman's one-piece star-fish outfit! Us actors do have to improvise down here in Antarctica.

A Fez, a pair of mukluks, and a woman's one-piece suit...perfect for looking like a Cossack

Hannah: either she turned up as Cousin It, or was showing off her "The Exorcist" party trick. I couldn't tell which

Joe attempts to show Ags' his meaner side...but failed to realise he was sitting on it!

And then it began.
The high winds we were experiencing this particular weekend were to be the cause of many consternations for the next 24 hours.

First was the fire alarm going off unexpectedly.
A false alarm, but totally unexpected...causing every one of us to totally soil our underwear. We all acted as trained in a professional manner even if it was very late Saturday night.

Sunday morning the ladies toilet grifter pump blocked.
The grifter is the device which pumps human waste from the temporary tank down into the main waste. Les was on cook duty, but also had to sort this little problem out too. I was trying to ignore the fact that he was juggling cooking and potentially dealing with with human waste at the same time!

Sunday afternoon was no better.
The melt-tank chute was blocked from over-zealous digging the day before. A team consisting of Joe, Bryan and Dean had to go down into the tunnels and unblock it before we could even start filling the tank for the day's supply.

And then was the dodgy radiosonde data from the weather balloon on Monday morning.
And of course the mysterious dong on Monday night.
And the dodgy radiosonde data again on Tuesday.

The link between the final three points above was never made until Tuesday morning when Dean went onto the roof to check his comms masts....

Tuesday 8th July 2008
Science takes another hit on the chin

Science had been experiencing yet more problems.

The radiosonde (weather balloon) from Monday and Tuesday mornings were transmitting sporadic telemetry. I had a feeling that the antenna for the radiosonde system was not working properly, possibly a loose connection caused by the high winds.

Then at the precise moment I came to that conclusion, the call came in on the radio. It was Dean, who was up on the roof doing his inspections...

Dean: Dave, I have found the problem with your balloon antenna
Dave: Is it damaged?
Dean: A bit worse than that.
Dave: You mean it's fallen over, and laying on the roof somewhere?
Dean: Try "it's now probably halfway to the penguin colony!"

The weather balloon antenna, a 1m sq dome weighing close to 30kg, was missing!
It had simply disappeared!

So, there it was...the source of the loud "dong" on Monday night was in fact the sound of the balloon antenna, not just simply being damaged by the wind but rather the sound of it being blown clean off its mount and launched off the roof.

There was absolutely no evidence of it anywhere. No wonder why I was receiving dodgy signals and the loss of the radiosonde at a few hundred metres.

Amazingly, after myself, Dean and Joe searched for 30mins, we found it.
Imagine yourselves searching for a white object in the snow in the pitch dark!

Dean and I...just after we discovered the errant antenna dome

Next problem: how the **** to get it back to the Laws?!

The dome had fallen into and got trapped in a wind scoop from the tented Halley VI modules 1km away! If it wasn't for those modules stopping it, it would have probably been blown 20km to the east cliffs to join the penguin colony...we would never have recovered it.

Extaordinarily, the dome was relatively undamaged. And the fittings had no evidence of being stripped off the mounting pedestal. Nature showing that it is no force to be reckoned with.

Dean gormlessly indicates the missing dome from pedestal on roof

Weather 1 - Stephenson 0

In the mean time, I moved the radiosonde equipment to the Simpson where there is a spare antenna mounted on the roof over there. Lucky for me we have the luxury of a back up.

Friday 11th July - Sunday 13th July 2008
Refuelling the House of Pain

Friday 11th
Throughout the week of 7th - 11th July, horrifying screams of pain, chilling moans of torture and pant-wetting grunts of displeasure could be heard coming from the surgery.

And if one listened carefully, one could also hear the sound of rigourous teeth brushing coming from the bathrooms.

It was the week that Hannah and Lance were to act as dentists and perform their practises on us unfortunate victims/ginuea pigs.

Orthodontist Lance examines Paddy's teeth...
(photo courtesy of Joe Corner)

...and dental assistant Hannah breaks out the heavy duty machinery
(photo courtesy of Joe Corner)

I was due to have my teeth "examined" in the afternoon.

But before then, I was to go on a mini-excursion down into the Halley tunnels and help Bryan and Les refuel the "flubbers". Rubber fuel tanks = flubbers presumably.

Hauling the fuel tank up to the tunnel access shaft to pump fuel into the underground stores (1130am)

The tunnels were laid when Halley V was being constructed circa 1991. They are a set of interlinking metal boxes between the Laws, Simpson and Piggott buildings, designed to be buried as the years went on. Each year or so, an extension is made to the shafts to maintain access to the tunnels, while the buildings are jacked up to keep above the accumulation of snow. The tunnels carry all the services (electrical, plumbing, comms, etc) between the buildings and also house the melt-tank and the flubbers.

Me, in the flubber room. Two big rubber tanks holding 2 months supply of fuel for the Laws

The tunnels are now approximately 30m below the surface of the ice from 18 years of accumulation. The scary thing to realise is, when at the bottom of the tunnels, you are in fact standing at around sea-level. Any crack in the underside of the ice-shelf anywhere near the tunnels could potentially result in flooding of the tunnels. But it's very very unlikely to happen.

As a result of being 30m below the surface, there is a serious amount of weight and pressure pushing in on the tunnels from the surrounding ice. The forces of nature are just mesmerising to see.

Looking down the tunnel towards the Simpson end.
When installed the tunnels were perfectly straight!

Signs of the movement of the access shaft from downward pressure.

The bendy back wall of the flubber room

Squish!

The weight of the ice above the tunnels are squeezing in from the top and sides...

...as you can see here! (Bryan doing his checks)

The flange plate above Bryan's head in the previous picture

The Antarctic Monkey, sitting amongst some ice-crystals in a tunnel access shaft

The melt-tank is in it's own separate section. It obviously has a warmer environment due to the heat pumped down there from the Laws generators to keep the snow we dig each day melted. The warmer environment gives rise to some crazy ice-stalagmites.

No comment!

Refuelling the flubbers was complete, and after lunch it was my turn for the dentist. I could not put it off any longer. It was time to make the visit.

It was a relatively easy going session. I was only perturbed slightly when Lance sat down to dive into my mouth stating that he'd "just got in from plowing some snow in the dozer!". Not the usual kind of activity you associate your dentist to doing before delicately prodding the inside of your mouth with a sharp pointy-thing

Saying that though, Lance did polish up me gnashers beautifully.

Saturday 12th - Moroccan food
Ah, another theme night.
Moroccan food was on the menu.

I walked into the lounge to find the room had been turned into a huge tent-like thing using tablecloths. Sheepskin rugs had been thrown all over the chairs and floor. Food had been spread out on a large table, candles were lit, two fans were blowing the sheets gently to recreate a mild desert breeze, and a desert image was projected onto the back "wall".

Inside the "tent"

We ate. We chilled out. And we generally had a very relaxing and quiet Saturday evening.
A well appreciated change after the manic week we all had the week prior.

Sunday 13th - The first light
And then suddenly there it was.
After enduring 2 months of total darkness, some light was splilling over the horizon to the north.

It came so suddenly...I need to emphasise this point, because it was a beautiful things to see. Having lived in a dark cocoon for nigh-on 2-months, to even see the remotest hint of daylight was a poetic, symbolic moment.

The Laws building, sillhouetted by the 1st glow on the horizon since the end of May

It was a sign that the sun was returning and would be with us in a matter of weeks.
Although it was a slight glow lasting all but an hour, I knew the level of daylight was going to exponentially increase in magnitude and duration each day from this moment on.

And I had to record the moment with my camera.

Halley V, cast in a warm, pinkish glow

Winterised vehicles sitting on the vehicle mound

The Antarctic Monkey, wistfully looking to the horizon, patiently awaiting the return of the sun come mid-August

Thursday 17th July 2008
"Extreme" Science

Some days I really am humbled to have the job that I do. Outside work can be a real pleasure when it's as beautiful as it was on this particular day. A cloudless sky, still wind, an almost full moon, and a slight dusting of diamond dust in the air.

One moment the moon was out, casting long grey shadows on the snow surface, and then later, the glow on the horizon at noon would sillhouette all buildings, equipment and people in front of it.

The AWS in the glow of a full moon (well, a day before July full moon)
proving that it's still dark in the middle of the day...

...but interrupted with about 1 hour of a sort of daylighty type glowy thing going on

Me, doing the weekly snow sample

Saturday 19th July 2008
Snowcave Sleepover

The BurtCave.

That's what Dean has dubbed it.
Named after Rich who instigated the digging of a huge snow cave all the way back in January.
Why do such a thing? Well, why the hell not. Where else would you get to do such a thing.

And I'm glad I put all the effort into help dig it back in January, for myself, Rich, Dean and Hannah were to spend the night in the BurtCave this very Saturday.

Local noon on 24th July. The Piggott (shutdown) covered in snow & frost
(photo courtesy of Joe Corner)

It was a chance to get away from base for the evening, and to do something completely different. Sleeping out in a snowcave in Antarctica where outside temperatures were as low as -30C. How many people in Antarctica would be doing this very thing at the same time? None I would hazard to bet.

There was a little extra digging to do during the day on Sat, just mainly to open up the entrance again and make some more room inside. After that, we went back to the Laws for dinner, and returned to the cave with our sleeping systems, duvets, sheepskin rugs and...of course...port and whiskey!

Rich Burt, looking smug in the midst of his creation...The Burtcave!
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

Myself and Hannah relaxing in -25C in the cave!
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

Dean, me and Hannah, and Rich behind the camera
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

The four of us had a superb night. Even though it was cold, it was very very relaxing. Once the nights fun was over and we were in our sleeping bags, I was more cosy and toasty than I ever have been in my pitroom back on the Laws.
Ironic.

Sleeping
(photo courtesy of Dean Evans)

W/C Monday 21st July 2008

Wednesday 23rd - trip to Windy
A trip to the Life of Halley GPS site at B00 was organised. Many of the GPS sites placed by Ryan in the summer were not communicating to the logger system on the Simpson platform. Ryan, back in Cambridge, had investigated the issue and had requested that the sites be visited to perform a quick fix.

B00 was first on the cards as it was on the way to Windy Creek east of Halley. A Sno-Cat was fired up, and Les, Rich, Lance and myself were out on an excursion. First we stopped off at the GPS site so I could perform the fix, then we carried onto Windy so Les could service the door on the caboose there. While he was doing that, Rich, myself and Lance harnessed and roped ourselves up and walked to the cliff-edge to assess the snow ramp onto the sea-ice.

The reason for this is in preparation for the up-coming penguin trips.
Even though it was still quite dark at noon, and the visibility was a bit low due to the weather, while standing on the cliff edge, in the distance a black blob could be seen on the sea-ice.

The black blob was the penguin colony. All huddled together to keep warm from the harsh temperatures and winds. From our vantage point on the cliff, carried in the wind now and again, the sound of the penguins calling could be heard.

It was a taster to the inevitable penguin trips starting late-August once the sun returns.

Thursday 24th - Polarstratospheric clouds
After scanning the dark skies all winter, I was finally treated with a view of the type of clouds I was desperate to see. Polarstratospheric clouds (aka nacreous clouds).

These clouds are really high up in the stratosphere, often formed from ice-crytals. They seed the destruction of the ozone layer in the winter, as they create a base for the chlorine in the atmosphere to attach to water molecules. The chemical reaction with the O3 molecules of ozone causes desctruction of the ozone layer. It's a process that only happens in extreme cold temperatures. Hence why the ozone hole is always associated with Antarctica and sometimes the Artic circle.

Polar-stratospheric (nacreous) clouds.
The evil clouds which seed the destruction of the ozone layer over Antarctica during the Antarctic winter. Very rare to spot here at Halley
(photos courtesy of Joe Corner)

Friday 25th - Nightwatch again
It was my turn to be on NightWatch once again.
Unfortunately, I had no plans for crazy shenanigans and jokes this week, but decided to chill most of the time by reading books.

The best I could come up with on the practical joke side of things was to book the gym out (using the whiteboard on the gym door) in Paddy and Joe's names for Ballet at 2000hours!

Mwa ha ha haaa!

Saturday 2nd August 2008
48 Hour Antarctic Film Fesitval

An email was sent to all the bases (all nations) in Antarctica from the Americans at McMurdo Station. Each year they have a 48 hour film competition, and they were inviting all stations to produce an entry.

The rules:
Produce a film in 48 hours which contains a set of defined quotes, props, persona and sounds within the film.

Ags, Rich, Hannah, Dean, Scott and myself signed ourselves up to produce the Halley entry.
The rules came in from McMurdo on Friday night.
All bases had to include in their films:
a) a cardboard box,
b) the quote "what do you mean you want a day off for mid-winter,
c) the use of a bodily sound, and
d) an apparent "new guy" (which the Americans call an FNG or "fingy")

After a meeting we had an idea for a film, Dean hastily drafted a story board, and we soon started cracking on with the filming.

The box, poised for the 1st action shot of the weekend!!

Filming the box in a different location. Behind the scenes photography

Hannah, assisting with prop placement for the box

I provided acting coaching to the novices (aka, the cardboard box*), Dean supplied the ideas, Ags edited, and Hannah directed. Rich decided to take a more sublime role, knowing that there were too many chiefs already. He had the right idea...I never realised that doing something that sounded so fun could cause so much grief and break-downs of friendships! :o)

But we got through it. Dean's vision was recreated, albeit with a more abstract look and feel compared to the original storyboard, but it worked.
The video was uploaded Sunday evening for the other bases to download.

Next Saturday was to be the critical review of all entries, by all bases.

*Mr Schollar...No silly comments about my acting being about as good as the cardboard box, or anything along those lines. You and I both know the real truth! :o)

For a sneak preview of our entry, go to www.teeks.org/film/halley.zip

Saturday 9th August - Sunday 10th August 2008
Sun-Up

Saturday - 48-hour film festival review
Dear God, you truly get an idea of just how crazy/odd some people can get living an Antarctic winter, no matter what nationality they are, when you end up watching their cinemagraphic "creativity"!

Aside from being jealous of the scenery and amazing bases a lot of the other nations get to live in across Antarctica, you appreciate that everyone is in the same boat (so to speak).
13 entries were received from the film fesitval, ranging from the Americans, British, Australian, New Zealandish, South Africans, and Germans.

Everyone had put a lot of effort into their productions, and obviously had a lot of fun making them. Some videos were very contemporary, some were promotional and many were just plain mad (funny).

Saturday night at Halley was spent watching the other entries downloaded off the internet over the past week. Every base was asked to give an assessment rating acting, cinematography, story, and best use of the required elements.

It was great fun to watch and gave one a great sense on comararderie with those living on the other bases.

Sunday - The Sun Returns
Sunday 10th August at 1410, according to my calculations was the time that we would be seeing the sun finally peak it's head above the horizon for a few minutes.

Sun-up

Tradition, (just like on May 1st where we had sundown), is to have a ceremony celebrating the return of the sun to our skies.

The ceremony involves the youngest member on base to raise a brand new fresh Union Flag high above the Laws, make a speech and the rest of us clap and take photos.

After the complete dissing I got for my sundown prediction (I still stand by the fact I got it right and that everyone witnessed miraging for the two days following my date), I was secretly relieved to find that the day was dreary and overcast with now chance of witnessing the sun whether it was there or not!

Everyone gathers on the open platform. A dull dreary overcast day.

Of course, if it wasn't a dreary day, the sun would have been seen, as my calculations are flawless. Cambridge even independenly confirmed my prediction with their own predictions.

Joe hoisted the flag at the allotted time.
Well, he was a few minutes late due to confusion as to how to ties a flag to a flag pole lanyard.

Joe, having knotted the wrong end of the lanyard, takes to gnawing at Her Majesty's flag!

After several "expert" opinions from those of us on the platform, Joe finally got the flag raised, said a few silly words (poor fellow told us he didn't do speeches), and we all went in.

Finally the flag is hoisted...

...and Joe salutes the flag and makes his speech

The flag taken down in May for Sundown was raffled off once we got indoors.
And as an insult to every Brit on this British base, the winner of the draw was resident Kiwi garage mechanic Scott!
The swine :o)

I was on cook duty that Sunday, so I whipped up a chicken chasseur for the rest of the base. Even I was surprised by how good it tasted.

Kitchen Bitch

And that concludes another entry into the blog that is Dave's life on Halley Station 2008.

It's Mid-Winter already?

2008-06-16T00:29:00.035+01:00

Happy Mid-Winter from all of us at Halley

Left to Right: Rich, Paddy, Les, Bryan, Dave, Lance, Hannah, Joe, Dean, Ags, Scott
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

"Move, move, move...gangway" I shout excitedly, as I run down the length of the corridor holding it in my hands, "it's gonna blow"!

Turns out it didn't, but I thought it was.

For those of you with your minds in the gutter, I am in fact talking about the spare UPS (uninterruptible power supply) which I had transported from the Simpson to the Laws.

It was arcing and filling the computer room with a nice electronic-like burning smell. 230V supplied from the internal battery was shorting somewhere inside and I needed to disconnect the battery quick.

Some snow must have got into the inside of the UPS during transit and when melted had shorted out some of the electronics. Usually I leave electronic equipment to warm up and dry out when transporting them between buildings. This time I neglected to consider that the lead-acid battery inside would be supplying the circuitry constantly. Ooops.

Needless to say, I discovered it in time, and removed the battery. Averting disaster and burning down the entire base. From hero to zero to hero again!

Still, I have a repair job to do, as testing it a few days later caused it give an almighty bang and produce a jet of flame from an exploding power transistor or two. D'oh.

Science 1 - Stephenson 0

It's now been almost 2 months since my last entry. Not so much from me being lazy, but really from having too much to do each evening. The social calendar is packed.

The 24hr darkness soon came within a couple of weeks of the sundown ceremony. Life and work continued and monotony kicked in. I refuse to bore you with details of my job. And there really is little I can remember about day-to-day life and activities during the social hours.

That said...life on station is fun. Sometimes it can be damn good laugh.

The Darkness Descends

So, the Sundown ceremony came and went on 1st May, complete with an amazing aurora display to tie in with it. One month later Halley was quickly plunged into perpetual 24 hour darkness. Although on a perfectly cloudless and calm day a glow can be seen on the northern horizon at local noon (1400GMT), other than that it's dark.

Bloody dark.

With no light pollution and when there is a new moon, standing outside at night can be very spooky. It is so dark it is disorientating. But it gives an amazing view of the cosmos above though. There are loads of stars!

Thursday 9th May - Friday 16th May 2008
Nightwatch Shenanigans

A week after sundown was my turn to spend a week on nightwatch duty. We take it in turns here to spend a week on nightwatch. Nightwatch is needed to ensure that someone on base is awake and alert to keep an eye on all the systems, watch for any issues, provide 1st line defence against any possible outbreaks of fire, and do all the general cleaning which cannot be done in the daytime.

We also get a chance to make bread.
Look at these puppies I made! My first ever time at making bread.

Before...dough

After...bread-tastic

It can be a boring week on nightwatch, unless one amuses themselves somehow.

Me...I amuse myself by leaving practical jokes for people to discover the next day.
Mwa-ha-ha-haaaa!

On Sat night I thought it would be a laugh to leave a picture of me giving the thumbs-up and a cheesy smile on the inside of the ladies loo cubicle door. They have loads of pictures of beautiful scenery and vistas, so I thought I'd add to the collection with a picture of me too! It'd be a nice surprise for whoever sits down to do their business in the morning! heh heh heh

tee hee hee

Turns out that the girls never noticed it there until Dean pointed it out in the afternoon when he was doing the cleaning.

The following night I was doing my rounds, and I found I had been defaced by the girls. I didn't know whether to be honoured or insulted. I chose honoured, as later they took down all the other pictures and left mine up! Where it stays until this day...well, until some clown drew a big phallus on my head that is.

Acknowledging you have a problem is the first stage!

On Saturday night at the bar Hannah made a little pink girly horse balloon thing wearing a tie. Nobody knows it, but this little thing became my companion during those quiet evenings on nightwatch. It would watch films and programmes with me. It would watch me mop the floors. It would sit with me whilst I ate my meals. She was the only friend I had during that lonely week whilst out of sync with the rest of the base.

The cutest balloon horse in Antarctica...a girl one...phwoar!

On Wednesday night, whilst cleaning the bootroom, I decided it would amuse me to place a couple of M5 nuts in everyone's boots. And by God it did amuse me. I was giggling to myself all night.

But there was never any mention of nuts in boots for 2 or 3 weeks afterwards. Not one person made a comment about it. Until one night at the bar. Ags mentioned about finding some nuts in her boots, and then everyone piped up stating the same. I tried to join in, but my guilty face gave me away. By the way everyone turned and looked accusingly at me, I realised that I too was to become a target of many a practical joke myself at some point.

Saturday 24th May 2008
Mexican Night

Another theme night, and another chance for people to raid the fancy dress cupboard.
Joe had proposed a Mexican-themed food night. Soon it was proposed to dress up also.
We had a good turn out.

Joe came as, what he called, a day-to-day modern mexican...he said he looked it up on the internet. To us he looked like a builder with a waste-jacket!

Paddy came as a Mexican terrorist. A little stereotypical maybe, but we were working with limited variety.

Rich came as a Mexican nobleman. He just radiated nobility and power whenever one was in his presence.

Ags and Hannah dressed in whatever I guess Mexican women dress in. Spanish-esque I suppose!

I came as Zorro...with an incredibly poorly made eye-mask which restricted my view. I could not look at anything unless I physically pointed my head specifically at objects or people. Twas the source of much amusement for the evening.

A beady eyed Zorro
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

And we all sat down to eat Mexican food.

Lance, Scott & Paddy at the servery
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

Then we partied the evening away Mexican style.
Like whacking a paper bull, which was hanging from the ceiling, by the means of a radio antenna in order to get sweets out of it. In other words...a pinata.

A bizarre activity, but fun nonetheless.

Ags viciously attacks a poor defenceless little bull!

Monday 26th - Friday 30th May 2008
The week the science died

The exploding UPS was just a small part in what was to be the week of hell for science at Halley.
My life was about to get a little more busy than usual.

The balloon PC decided to start playing up when recording balloon data.
The weather station stopped recording wind.
The weather PC stopped logging it's midnight measurements.
Of course, the UPS blew up on me.
And Ryan's network of GPS loggers out in the field were not communicating with the Simpson building.
What else could possibly go wrong on me?

Well, nothing actually, because there was literally nothing else left to go wrong.
The situation became somewhat of a joke with the rest of the winterers. Even the nightmet board was showing mockery (thanks to Hannah's artistic abilities).

Nightwatch met obs -
Hannah's artistic representation of me (looking like Jesus) killing the science

Extreme Science - Antarctic Style

We were experiencing a good blow throughout the week. Rich wanted to get some arty photo shots of balloon launches. Not one to turn down the chance to be photographed, I instantly agreed to help out.

Extreme Science - Launching a weather balloon in a 30knot blow at 1100GMT
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

And some pictures in not so blowy conditions...

After filling the balloon with Helium in the BART, it is launched out of the front door...
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

...we usually experience easterly winds at Halley, so more often than not the launch is done from the same door
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

The balloon shed is called the BART. Balloon and Radiosonde Release Terminal, or something like that. Obviously a title derived from the acronym, rather than vice-versa. It's a beautiful pun to the fact that the met building is the Simpson.
In it's hey-day, all equipment and computer systems on the Simpson were named after characters from the Simpsons.

Aside:
I'll take this opportunity to wish my good friend Leigh-Anne and her new husband Rik all the best in their new married life. Sorry I couldn't be there, but we shared a toast in your honour on the day.

Sat 31st May - A toast.
Ags, myself, Hannah, and Rich behind the camera

June came, and suddenly everyone was under pressure to complete their respective mid-winter presents they were making for whomever they pulled out of the hat in March. Myself included. Must of June was spent sawing and filing wood, and many people were not seen for several days at a time.

Wednesday 18th June 2008
Mid-Winter week begins

After being treated to the most spectacular aurora display ever on Saturday, the week was off to a good start. Wednesday was the last working day before we all chilled out for a whole week, and celebrated mid-winter.

Mid-winter week being very much like Christmas celebrations, and mid-winter's day being on 21st June.

To kick it all off was the traditional office party at the Simpson. I was busy all day prepping the building for a mini-party. I set out one of the rooms as a bar with a table for a buffet. Mood lighting was set in my office, and chairs were set for the revellers.

And soon, after 2000hrs, guests started arriving.
Rich and Ags were first, followed by Dean and Joe (not as a couple). Scott, Paddy and Bob from Accounts soon followed also.
Who the hell was Bob from Accounts? He looked rather feminine, sported a very dodgy moustache, had a million pens in his shirt pocket and was very boring. He also looked uncannily like Hannah.

Excuse the dodgy focus...it wasn't just my eyes being bleary then!

A very subdued office party.
Must have been my choice in music

Constructing the mid-winter present

Well, I completed it on time. The masterpiece I had been making all this time since early May.
I had drawn Scott in the secret santa back in March. I was racking my brains as to what I could build him, and eventually decided on a clock with a personalised touch. Practical and ornamental.

Friendly hint:
never ever decide to build a circular frame from 4 short pieces of wood. It's a bitch.

It all came together really well in the end, and I was happy with the outcome.
In fact, I wanted to keep it for myself! :o)

The completed item and idiot

Scott is well travelled in the Antarctic, having now wintered at 4 different bases
I commemorated this with an etched brass plaque

It was the first time I ever used a router to give a curved edge

Filing the Antarctic shape from brass was a nightmare.
As was chiselling the depression for it in the plywood base

The numerals were burnt into the wood with a soldering iron. Pyro-etching I think they call it.

It all joined together beautifully

Enough of me blowing my own trumpet.

Mid-winter's eve

Friday was the coldest day of the year so far.

Brr

Although the PRT sensor reading here says -49.3C, we actually got -49.9C at the lowest peak in the evening.

minus 49.9?
Why could it not drop that little extra 0.1C?
How cruel to tease us like that. It's seriously disturbed my zen not seeing that display hit 50.

Regardless, it was a good enough temperature to perform a favourite Halley trick.

Collect those of on station with long hair (Ags, Hannah, Bryan and myself).
Go out onto the open platform and stuck you heads in buckets of warm water.

Hold your head upside down for 20 - 30 seconds

And then stand up straight and let everyone laugh at you

I knew there was a reason why I haven't had my hair cut since leaving the UK in November!

Apart from freezing our hair, mid-winter's eve was quite a chilled day of watching old films on the reel projector. The darkroom has oodles of cans of film from times past. We had them running all day and all evening, Joe and Bryan manning the projector in turns.

Joe sets up the projector for a viewing of Sir Vivien Fuch's crossing of Antarctica

The evening brought us a German Feuerzangenbowle. Dean was the perpetrator of this. Mulled wine stuff with a block of sugar suspended above it. Pour brandy over the sugar and set fire to it. The sugar precipitates into the mulled wine, creating a very potent and very tasty hot drink.

Well, we were celebrating, so we're allowed to indulge ourselves and enjoy such a beverage.

A ghostly Dean sets fire to the brandy soaked sugar cone.

Mid-Winter's Day

Having gone to bed at 0600 in the morning, I was up again at 0900 to observe the weather and prep a weather balloon. Yes, although it was a week off, and we were now on mid-winter's day, science continues in Antarctica.

Dean and I helped put up the decorations, Paddy was in the kitchen prepping our mammoth 10-course meal, and the girls were busy finishing their winter presents. Nothing like leaving it to the last minute.

Soon the whole base had surfaced, and activities started.
At mid-afternoon came the traditional mid-winter's day naked run.

Yes, you read correctly. A run around the outside of the base...naked.
In -47C, you probably think it's a mad thing to do. It is, but hell, what an experience.

The only people brave enough to do it was Dean, Joe and myself. We're obviously true Antarctic Heroes!
No pictures I'm afraid.

At 1700 we started the 10-course meal.
At 2000 we took a break to open the presents and listen to the mid-winter radio message on the BBC World Service.
At 2130 we resumed dinner.
At 2230 we chilled for the rest of the evening.

Before dinner.
The dinner table, surrounded by the flags of all the nations with a presence in Antarctica.

Canapes kicked off the 10-course dinner

The tree with presents under it

During the summer, a package was received addressed to the metbabes. It was from an ex-metbabe who wintered at Halley. I think she was expecting the team to comprise of a majority of girls with small feet. Such a stereotype that the met department is always full of girls. It's discrimination I tell you! Not to let her down, I wore the socks that were in the package, much to the amusement of the rest of the group. Particularly when we were all dressed in our smart outfits.

Metbabes are men too you know...so unisex socks would be better
Particularly ones which do not have a polar bear theme!

Me opening my present from Dean

Scott unwrapping his present from me.

My present came from Dean. He made me a personalised weather detector. A piece of runner from an old Nansen sledge with an etched brass plate mounted on it. A frame supported a piece of Antarctic rock hanging from a string. The brass plate explained how to tell the weather by looking at the rock. If it's white then it's snowing, moving then it's windy, casting a shadow then it's sunny, etc. It is brilliant. I was very happy.

The general workmanship of all the members of the group was extraordinary, as the pictures below show.

All the gifts on display

Rich's gift to Ags
An etched aluminium gong

Top: Les's gift to Rich...a brass scene copied from a photo overlaid over a copper background
Bottom: Ags' gift to Lance...a crib set in a box

Lance's gift to Joe...A framed display of knots

Bryan's gift to Paddy...brass salt & pepper shakers in the shape of a fuel drum
(fuel drums are plentiful here)

Scott's gift to Dean...a clock made from a Sno-Cat wheel

Hannah's gift to Bryan...a box of Antarctic survival gear (food, drink, warmth, and porn)
(the picture of a tractor is porn to Bryan)

Paddy's gift to Hannah....a reversible candle holder

My picture of Joe's gift to Les did not come out...but he made a framed picture of Halley V and Halley VI which he developed himself in the darkroom. The frame was made from wood from an old Nansen sledge.

Like I said, the quality of craftmanship was extraordinary from all.

All in all, mid-winter's day was a fantastic day.
The celebrations continued over the week with a biathalon organised by Dean, a murder mystery dinner organised by me, a bowling tournament organised by Rich (using the Wii) and many others.

Bryan curls one off...
...in the bowling

We can all now chill out now the stress of the lead up to mid-winter is over.
It feels like we are on the home straight, but it's another 5-6 months before the ship arrives.

Next entry due when?
Damned if I know.

Oh, and please, do check out the official Halley web-diaries on the BAS website. They are a good read taken from other people's perspective:

http://www.antarctica.ac.uk/living_and_working/diaries/halley/2008/index.php

Only 105 days 'til the next sunrise. And, oh yes...Aurora yay

2008-04-26T19:14:00.021+01:00

In the gloom of the late evening, the external lights of the Laws platform barely penetrate 20metres through the thick blizzard of blowing snow. The whole building shakes and sways in the wind, standing proud on it's 20 legs, akin to a gesture of defiance to the hard winds which buffet it.

Inside, in the warm and relative safety, 11 people take shelter from the harsh Antarctic blow. The long flourescent lit hallway runnng the length of the building is devoid of people, and many of the rooms either side of it are dark and uninhabited. It is as if the building is deserted. The only evidence suggesting the contrary are the sounds eminating from the lounge...

To an outside observer, permeating through the howling winds from this lonesome building on an Antarctic ice shelf one would hear the sounds of whoops of joy, screams of passion, and groans of disdain.

What sordid group activity could possibly be going on in the lounge?
Had the group dynamics of a small isolated team living in close proximity to one another degenerated into a kind of orgy-fest?

The answer to this burning question will have to come later.

Wednesday 2nd April & Sunday 6th April 2008
More Met Phenomena

Veil of fog on 2nd April

Sun Pillar on 6th April

9th April 2008
The First Aurora

It was only very faint, and it was short-lived, but Halley saw the first visible aurora of 2008. Save for Dean, it was the first experience of such a thing for many of us. And it was a beautiful sight.

Joe came rushing down the corridor excitedly screeching that there was an aurora outside. As soon as Joe had made his announcment in the lounge/bar there was a momentary pause and then suddenly everyone leapt up and the base was alive with commotion. People scrambling over each other in the boot room to get kitted up in outdoor gear. People raiding the dark room for spare camera tripods. People fighting to get out of the door onto the open platform. It was close to all civility being lost.

The external lights were extinguished plunging everything into darkness. Soon our eyes had adjusted to the low light and then...

...suddenly there it was.

In the distance to the south was a faint arc of a green-ish hue. Slowly the hue could be seen to move, dancing subtly.

I was witnessing my first aurora.

Aurora and Milky-Way with the Melt-Tank shaft and Simpson building

The swirls of the Aurora

Myself watching the show

It was short lived and had all but disappeared within 30 minutes.

Seeing that aurora was in itself justification for uprooting my comfortable life in the UK to work in Antarctica for 18months. And I was pleased that I had several more months of more intense auroras to come.

Saturday 12th April 2008
Casino Royale

Another Saturday and another opportunity to have a theme and dress up for no other reason than being fun. The theme for this weekend...James Bond Casino Royale.

It was Paddy's suggestion. And everyone put in an effort. Even Paddy who was busy cooking a predominently Russian style meal managed to find time to get dressed up. The dinner table was set out with betting chips strewn over it and laminated playing cards acting as coasters.

The lounge/bar was decorated as a casino theme to continue with the theme after dinner.

We had all kinds of fancy dress, from Joe being commando Bond to Lance being a Bond-girl. We had evil henchmen in the form of Les, Odd-Job (or was it Random Task) in the form of Paddy, Pussy Galore in the form of Ags (who employed a good use of lateral thinking for the costume), Dean came as Q and Bryan came as a gun-weilding bad-guy. I was running out of ideas and ended up coming as my own made-up bad-guy....a smooth one-eyed Spanish-Mexican gambler complete with pencil moustache and a guitar as my secret weapon (I would kill people with the tunes I played on it).

Casino Royale - a hive for all kinds of villains, heroes and beautiful women

The Bond Girls - Pussy Galore, Solitaire...and Lance
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

A few friendly, non-competitive games of blackjack and poker were played as the evening entertainment.

20th April to 28th April 2008
The life consuming world of "Rezy"

The week began with a beautiful full moon on Sunday 20th. A slight mist had caused the light from the moon to produce a subtle halo. I tried and tried to capture it in it's full splendeur, but only to get the result you see below.

Full moon with halo above the Simpson

So, what had happened to the residents of Halley during the blow of the week of the 20th to 28th? What was causing the cries of joy, screams of passion, and groans disdain?
Was it an orgy?

The answer is no.

For instead, a new addiction had taken over the lives of this group in the form of a video game. Resident Evil on the Nintendo Wii had ensnared and consumed the lives of a certain few of us in the group.

It's quite extraordinary how a video game could capture the passion of so many people and compell them to play from early evening until 0100 or 0130 in the morning. A core group of 7 people would sit down ech day after dinner to watch and/or assist in the zombie bashing.
The game is so consuming that all observers would be shouting assistance to the person playing the game. People would whoop when a puzzle was solved, scream when a monster jumps out of nowhere, and groan when another life was lost. And on this went, all of Sunday 20th and every evening of the following week. By the end of the following Sunday we had managed to rack up 24 solid hours of playing time on this one game. 24 hours out of 144. That's almost 13% of the the week spent sat in front of the big screen shouting at monsters on a video game. Bonkers.

And now it is complete we're all suffering from a feeling of loss and emptyness. We are also feeling very cheated. The ending was a complete anti-climax. We had fought through villages, fortesses and islands over-run by possessed zombie-like people. We had rescued the girl after killing 900 monsters (ourselves having died 70 times in the process). In the end, as we floated on a jet-ski basked in the golds and reds of sunset, the girl offered herself to our character...

...AND HE REFUSED HER!!!

Oh, how we men booed and bayed as the end credits came up.
Booed and bayed I tell you!

The week of Rezy also brought us several chores, activities and celebrations to remind us that there is also life outside of the world of computerised zombies and sexually confused heroes.

The 21st April was Laws scrubout day. A day for everyone to get down and dirty and give the entire base a damn good cleaning out, doing the stuff that gets missed in the weekly gash chores.
Ags and I got busy with the walls and the stores in the utility room, Paddy commanded a crew for the kitchen, Dean and Joe blitzed the lounge. Everywhere throughout the Laws was the satisfying stench of chemical cleaning agents and sweating armpits. By the end of the day the entire place was spotless. Dinner was served and then we settled down for some zombie/monster bashing.

The 23rd April was the beginning of another few days of a blow. It was also St. Georges day. Paddy agreed to cook up a traditionally English dinner for the evening. But that was as far as the celebrations went due to crappy weather and being mid-week. We soon lifted our spirits by settling down for some zombie/monster bashing. I suppose the blood bath of cutting down the maurauding undead with shotguns and rescuing the presidential daughters can be tenuously related to the legend of St. George slaying the dragon and rescuing the girl.

The evening of Saturday 26th April was a surprise to us all. We all went to bed on Friday night (at different times of course!) to find a balloon attached to our bedroom doors with an invitation to the dining room at 1930 on Saturday. What could this mystery be?

Something secret was going on all afternoon and nobody was allowed in the room. Then, at 1930 the door was opened to reveal the dining room decced out into a party venue, complete with decorations, buffet and cheesey music. Everyone even had a party bag with treats and toys in them.

Oh, how I was excited. Cheesey parties are the times when I shine, revealing my amazing dance routines and oh, oh, oh....the prospect of getting the ol' patented Leg Guitar out!

But it wasn't to be.
False alarm. The party was shorted lived and soon people retired to the lounge/bar and chilled out. A few of us kept the party going by playing some games. But alas, the opportunity for the leg guitar had passed.

A slight aurora was showing itself in the south sky that evening, but it was only subtle.

Thursday 1st May 2008
Sundown

Now that Halley is fully into winter mode of operation, there is a more generally relaxed and chilled out atmosphere on station. It is easy to lose oneself and spend hours playing video games as you do not get the guilty feeling that time has been wasted. We do still have our 0900 - 1730 jobs to do Monday to Friday, but even work days are relaxed.

Back in Beakerville I continue to monitor the weather, launch the daily weather balloon, take air samples, sample precipitation snowmelt, look after the science data loggers, maintain the science equipment, manage the data, write reports, conduct ozone layer measurements, record weather statistics, and live the daily annoyance of being referred to as a scientist by my fellow winterers!

As the season progresses, the amount of daylight experienced each day gets shorter and shorter as the earth's orbit round the sun gradually points the southern tip of the planet away from the sun light...an effect of the tilt of the earth's axis.

The 1st of May (according to my predictions) was to see the sun dip below the horizon for the last sunset of the winter (known as "sundown"). The Halley tradition is to celebrate sundown by having the oldest member on base lower the union flag which flies proudly above the Laws building.

The Union Flag flying proudly above the Laws at night, illuminated by the cloudbase spotlight

The flag is raffled off during the mid-winter celebrations in June. A new flag is not raised until Sun-up when the sun peaks it's disk above the horizon again in August. This ceremony is performed by the youngest member on base.

Sundown

So, at 1317hrs (again according to my calculations) ex-army tank driver Lance lowered the flag after making a fantastic speech.

Lance salutes the weather ravaged flag...

...and then lowers it down

We will not see the sun again until mid-August.
We all definitely now feel that winter at Halley is in full swing.

The celevrations continued with a BBQ outside.

Later in the evening we were treated to the most spectacular aurora display to date. It covered almost 1/2 the celestial dome.

No reason for this pic other than the light effects look cool!

The Laws with aurora and cloudbase spotlight.
My favourite picture

The Antarctic Monkey joined me to witness the show.

Antarctic Monkey poses with the aurora...

...and so do I.
(well, it's got to be done)

And that's it for another month or so.
It's getting more and more difficult to talk about every day base life as activities are very sporadic and low key now that it is winter. So please bare with me if I now talk about mundane things like playing computer games rather than exciting things like flying aeroplanes.

Note: If anybody wishes copy any of the photos above and use them for their own purposes please get in touch and let me know, or at the very least acknowledge me in their use. Thanks.

4-nights, 3-men, 1-tent...a sitcom in the making?

2008-04-05T16:55:00.014+01:00

I don't know what our fellow winterers must have thought occured during the few days myself, Rich and Joe were living in close proximity to one another in a small tent in the middle of nowhere in the middle of Antarctica. But, upon our return, the outburst by myself when walking into the dining room for lunch that "I feel like a new man", and the appearance of a blemish on Joe's neck which suspiciously looked like a lovebite, certainly fuelled people's imaginations.

Yes, indeed there were three men spending the majority of their time stuck in a tent due to bad weather. The risk of boredom being very real in such situations may lead people to think that we may have "entertained" ourselves (for "entertained", read "big gay three-man gangbang") but this was certainly not the case.

When walking into the dining room I was in fact referring to the euphoric feeling following a nice hot shower after spending 4 nights without such facilities, and Joe's unfortunate lovebite was the result of mild frostnip from the skidoo journey home.

Rich and I, Gimps Inc.

More later.

Saturday 15th March 2008 Cambridge Science Festival Live Link-Up

The atmospheric chemistry group at BAS participated in the week long Cambridge wide science festival organised by the Cambridge University departments. The BAS exhibition included a pyramid tent, various Antarctic clothing for people to try out, a reconstruction of one of the 10 low-level ozone monitoring sites deployed from Halley by Andy Rankin during the summer, various BAS scientists and an exhibit where people can talk (through the power of modern technology) live face-to-face with a real Antarctic scientist...me.

I was linked via webcam and VOIP to a computer terminal in the exhibition room, and the display was projected onto a screen. The idea was for people to just come up and have a chat to me about life and science here at Halley. I was on a wireless link with the laptop, so I was free to walk around the Simpson building showing different bits of science and give live views of activities going on outside, such as base commander Ags making snow angels in the soft snow we had the night previously.

Ags, standing proud next to her snow angel

The exhibition lasted all day, and the main purpose was as an educational tool for the various children walking around. They were each given a question sheet to answer by finding out the information by asking me.
I was ill prepared.
Although I had received a copy of the types of questions that would be given out, I hadn't done my research. I was soon finding myself being asked questions to which I could not answer, such as "how big is the ozone hole over Antarctica?" (particularly embarrassing as I am the guy who does all the ozone hole monitoring here), or "how old is the oldest ice-core"?

My guesstimates were quite accurate (being mulitple choice questions), but not brilliant. Luckily for me the exhibit stand was overseen by the lovely Rebecca to assist/chaperone the whole thing. She saved my skin serveral times, thank you Rebecca. :o)

I had an amazingly fun day, and I like to hope I have provided inspiration for all those scores of children I spoke to. They did all seem generally interested in what I had to say, some even lucky enough to witness a snow angel being made live 14,000miles away.

Sunday 16th March - Thursday 20th March 2008
Winter Trip - Sledge Echo

The following day I was off on me holidays. 5-days camping Antarctic style in the Hinge Zone with the aim of exploring ice-caves, climbing ice-cliffs and abseilling into crevasses.

Camp, with me standing proud next to the poo-tent
(photo courtesy of Joe Corner)

Myself, Joe (who's original trip got cancelled in the summer due to a 4-day blow) and GA Rich all packed up, kitted up and headed off on skidoos towing sledges to the Hinge Zone.

Each skidoo/sledge combo had to be linked to the skidoo/sledge combo in front in case any one of us happens to fall into a crevasse. So we made a nice long train approx 150m long. Each person was also clipped into the system via a harness so that if a skidoo did drop into a crevasse, the rider would not fall to his doom by falling off the skidoo itself.

The Antarctic Monkey came along on holiday too
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

As explained before somewhere in this blog (I think), the Hinge Zone is where the Brunt Ice Shelf is fed from the Antarctic headland. Therefore, it is adorned with natural features where the ice shelf buckles and bends as it flows over the rocks below. This creates lots of brilliant features for us to climb around, and plenty of hidden crevasses to avoid also.

And so we headed off on our skidoos. The temperatures were about -20C, and so it was wise to wrap up properly if riding on a skidoo. This meant donning the special gortex face masks we get issued with. They keep the windchill of your face...and they also make you look like a gimp. Again, another unhealthy image to associate with three men about to head off to go camping together!

Rich has a beard.

When you have a beard and you breath in -20C, your breath condenses onto your beard and freezes instantly.

Rich breathed a lot during the 2 hour journey to the Hinge Zone. Thus, he had a lot of ice on his beard as a result. A lot of ice which was sticking his gimp mask onto his beard. The facemask Rich wears just happens to look like a cricket batsman's box!

When he finally ripped off his mask, it was probably the most disgusting thing I have ever seen. For in this instance, it looked like a cricket box with a good set of curly pubic hair stuck around the rim!

Have you ever laughed and gagged at the same time?!
I have!

We set up camp, pitching up the 3-man pyramid tent, the HF radio, setting out the inside and outside supplies. And finally, most important...pitched the poo tent. It is a converted pup tent with the floor cut out. A hole is dug in the snow, with a ledge in the middle and a deeper hole on the other side for the crap and the tent is pitched over it. A wooden seat with a hole is the added for the finishing touches. And presto, a toilet in the field in Antarctica, complete with shelter and a seat. It is luxury compared to the alternative.

Mind you, the deep hole end was facing the wind and so a nice breeze would get in under the canvass to blow down between your cheecks when using the toilet tent, so one had to be quick when doing ones business. And it was imperative to restrict ones trips to as few as possible, i.e. building up the bowel pressure somewhat during the day and releasing it in one go!

Anyway. I digress.

Unfortunately the weather wasn't the best it could have been. It was cloudy the majority of the time and the wind picked up now and again. These conditions affect visibility and contrast and so it would be silly to go out in crevasse fields in conditions like that. We did get a good couple of 1/2 days out though, and got in a few trips climbing and skidooing around the large chasms.

The Matterhorn - We climbed that
Rich, Joe and Myself in linked travel (in case one of us falls down a crevasse)
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

Rich mounting the 'Horn!

Joe belays Rich...

...and then it was my turn

Skidoo travel around the chasms
(photo courtesy of Joe Corner)

The Pope Mobile was very handy for transporting our kit and acting as an emergency shelter
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

We had one complete lay-up day in the tent, but it wasn't too bad. I was totally chilled out, reading a book, in a nice warm tent, with the wind whistling outside buffeting the tent, the primus stove soporiffically lulling me to sleep. I was so relaxed. And then it would be ruined by the need to nip outside to the pee flag of the poo tent.

Joe and I enjoying a cultured evening drink of port in the tent
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

Rich presents his sticky pudding to Joe and I

The pyramid tents are quite efficient. Although it would be -20C outside, in the morning the temperature inside the tent would be a mere -9C!!! It quite an experience to wake up in the morning with ice all over your sleeping bag where you've been breathing.

Conversation was never lacking in the tent, with Joe routinely reminding Rich and I how "regular" he was prior to visiting the other tent, and coming out with classic quotes such as "ooh, I need a p*** do you need a hand Rich" or "I really could do with a McDonalds".

The other good day we had out, we walked to what is known as Stony Berg.
I had no idea why it was called Stony Berg, but it all came apparent later on. It's got stones in it!

Myself (left) and Joe (right) walking along the cornice of a cliff. I almost slipped down the slope, which would have dragged the others with me as we were linked!
(photo courtesy of Rich Burt)

Rich and Joe show why it's called Stony Berg

Stony Berg is unique. The Brunt Ice Shelf is exactly what it is...a shelf of ice.
But, within all of this ice there happens to be just this one special feature. The aeon slow churning of the ice as it slides off the Antarctic mainland has obviously caused some rocks to be dragged with it. And years and years later, the rocks have been spat out on top.

After being here for 4 months and seeing nothing but snow and ice, it was quite surreal to actually see some real rocks. I was quite outstanded. And to think that for millions of years these rocks have been covered by thick ice until they were disturbed by the flow of the ice, eventually rising to the top of the very ice that had incarcerated them all that time. And here they were, silently sitting on top, the only visible rocks for miles and miles to be seen, waiting for residents of Halley station to stumble upon them several years ago.

Rich and I at Stony Berg

On the Thursday it was time to pack up camp and head home. We had heard on the radio sched the night before that the weather was going to turn nasty.
We returned home on Thurday with a westerley wind coming from our left. And that is how Joe got the lovebite on the left of his neck.

Rich stops to take a photo

All in all, it was a fantastic week. It was fun to get out and about away from base, and live life in a tent in Antarctica. Not many people will ever get to do that in their lifetimes. People would in fact probably pay tens of thousands of pounds for a holiday like that. Me...I get paid to have a holiday like that.

I am also proud to say that I survived eating out of the manfood box a packet of freeze dried macaroni cheese which was dated mid-1995!

Friday 21st March 2008
Winter BBQ

Back home and straight into some proper self-made winter entertainment.
a BBQ in -19C!

-19C has become quite a balmy temperature for us of late. Whenever the communal weather display in the dining room shows anything above -20C we see it as being quite a warm day.
It just so happens that it turned out to be a warm evening for the planned BBQ on this particular Friday.

Paddy excelled himself by proving a brilliant meat-tastic spread of BBQ steak, sausages and burgers, jacket potatoes and salad (of the salad we had remaining from the shipment in January)! It was all finished off with some lovely freshly made toffee apples for pudding.

The BBQ was splendid, and although I got some photos, none of them does it any justice and so I am not going to even bother put any on this blog.

The same evening was a chance to take a group photo of the wintering team. Not in any way our official winter photo mind, but rather one to send to our neighbours...the Germans at Neumayer (800km or so away) who had kindly emailed us wishing us a successful winter, complete with attached picture of their team. I see that they have a metbabe also...a proper female one at that too!

The 2008 Winter Team
left to right: Bryan, Dean, Joe, Scott, Les, Ags, Lance, Rich, Hannah, Paddy and Dave

And then we went indoors into the warm to continue the evening's entertainment, which absurdly ended up being a gaming-fest of mastermind, pool, darts and battleships. Oh how we live it up here on a Friday evening.

Saturday 29th March 2008
80's Theme Night

Oh yes...this was it. A chance to fulfill one of my life long dreams and have a totally 80's themed evening, complete with dressing up!

Ags turned the lounge into an 80's themed restaurant (deliciously named "Simply Irresistable") and I was to be her waiter. A waiter is in no way like a butler, so I was excused to be a bit slack in my approach to serving the tables.

The restaurant came complete with video screen displaying 80's pop videos, and plenty of 80's style posters. There was even on the wall an "employee of the month" award. Coincidently, I happened to be the employee of the year, (probably something to do with the fact that I made the award myself).

Waiter of the Month

Everyone made an effort and dressed up. I took hardly any pictures all evening so I cannot show you the wonderful costumes we had. I came as a New Romantic, we also had a punk rock chick, John McEnroe, The Karate Kid, some eccentric entrepreneur (or it could have been Scott just being his usual self), what I can best describe as an 80s rock singer, and an 80s disco king.

Me as an 80s New Romantic

Scott, bonkers as usual with an 80s twist

After dinner, we partied the night away to 80s classic after 80s classic. And you've got to admit, there were plenty of classics from that decade, huh???

Sunday 30th March 2008
The end of the 1st month of Winter

And thus proves that, with a lot of hard work and team spirit, Halley station can be run with a skeleton crew of just 11 people.

That is, of course, until I have to step into the role as Sunday cook! As was the case on Sunday 30th March.

Even the chef needs 2 days off during his week, and so we all take it in turns to cover those days and cook for the rest of the base. And it was soon my turn. Little did they know what they had let themselves in for!

But, it turned out alright in the end, and everyone survived my lamb hotpot. The only thing that didn't survive was my ill-fated attempt to make honey pudding. Well, it was edible. It just didn't turn out to be how Linda McCartney told me it should look.

The Melt-Tank

The following week I was on melt-tank duty with Bryan and Hannah.
Melt-tank duty is another responsibility shared amongst us.

The melt-tank shaft at full moon

Our water supply comes from the snow that surrounds us. In order to get it from the snow surface into our pipes we have to dig it and chuck it down a chute. The chute feeds the Laws melt-tank which is now under 18 years of accumulated snow (some 30m below the surface). The melt-tank melts it, and the melt water is pumped up into a day tank on the Laws platform where it is filtered and treated with UV light en-route.

A dozer preps a mound for the melt-tank

The melt-tank team digging the daily water supply

The chute channels snow down to the melt-tank 30m below the surface

Lance sometimes brings his big yellow shovel to help

Digging for the melt-tank each takes a team of 3 people 30 mins to fill to the appropriate level. And this has got to be done in all weather. Luckily, this last particular week I was on MT duty was good for weather. The time previously was during a good blow.

And that concludes the activites during the remainder of March.
What wonders willl April bring the team at Halley? Only time will tell. But a heads up from the chief scientist at Halley (the only scientist), yours truly: April 30th brings sundown, the final sunset at Halley for 3 months. The dreaded 24 hour darkness is nigh.

Goodbye Summer...Hello Winter

2008-03-06T00:28:00.017Z

It seems to have come about all of a sudden.
The very day each of us Winterers have thought about non-stop for the past 3 months has finally arrived....

It is the day when we no longer have to find water jugs in the fridge with no water in them. It is the day when a visit to the loo is no longer a game of "bog-roll roulette", never knowing if there's going to be loo paper in the cubicles or not. It is the day when a seat is available at the tables at mealtimes. It is the day that digging snow for the melt-tank is no longer for 100+ people. And it is the day when Halley V is stopped being used as a hotel. It is of course, the day when all summer staff are safely on board Ernest Shackleton and are sailing away, marking the end of the summer season.

It is a glorious day.

5th March 2008 - Goodbye Summer...Hello Winter

In no time at all since my last entry into this blog the moment for everyone to depart suddenly arrived. The number of staff on base dropped from 100 or so down to 11 in the space of 24 hours. The usual hustle and bustle on the Laws platform and the constant stream of people and activity around the station has now gone, leaving feeling like a deserted ghost-base. The silence and the space and the privacy seem so alien. But it is backed with a good feeling of achievment and relief that each of us 11 feel. There's not the slightest bit of remorse amongst us. We are here, like it or not, for the next 8 or so months. There is no ship as a potential life-line and there's no aircraft to take us out via air.

We are now a fully remote Antarctic research station manned by a handful of the essential staff...oh, and the science-type-guy too.

Despite the strain put on the base to support such a large complement of people and despite the extremely busy nature of the summer, the season went well and a lot was achieved.

Summer '07/'08 Team Photo
(photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

Adios Shackleton

It was finally time to see off those who were the last to join the ship. The winterers (joined by the Antarctic Monkey who had been absent from the limelight for some time...the summer obviously affected him enough to turn him into a recluse) went down to the coast to say our goodbyes and watch the Ernest Shackleton depart.

Hannah takes some pics of the departing Shackleton

The Antarctic Monkey joins Hannah to say goodbye to those on the ship

Antarctic Monkey yet again sitting on wood

Once the final bits of cargo were loaded, it was time to pull up the gang-plank and release the mooring lines. Soon the ship was pushing away from the edge of the ice and manaeuvring itself to sail away leaving us standing on the ice alone. We marked the occasion by firing flares from the coast.

The Shackleton pulls away to a volley of flares fired from the coast

The Shackleton cuts a path through the grease ice

In no time at all, the ship was on the horizon, leaving a trail in the grease ice marking it's path from Creek 4. There was no turning back now...we were now officially over-wintering at Halley.

Suddenly realising he's on his 2nd winter, Dean looked a bit anguished

The Shackelton on the horizon as I look on from the edge of the sea-ice
(photo courtesy of Hannah Deakin)

Soon we were heading back to base for a well earned cuppa. The dining room furniture had already been rearranged by Bryan and Les (who had remained at the station) to give us a single communal table to sit around for lunch and dinner. We 11 sat together drinking tea and not a word was said by anybody.

Thursday 6th - Saturday 8th March 2008
Welcoming the winter in style

Summer over.
There was a little work to be done in prepping the base for winter. This included shutting down the summer accomodation building (The Drewry building). Les, our mechanical services technician was busy Wednesday and Thursday draining the plumbing and shutting down the boilers in the plan room. Before putting the Drewry to bed, it is Halley tradition to have the annual melt-talk party.

Melt-Tank Party

The melt-tank for the Drewry is drained and cleaned for winter. But, before this is done, it is used as venue for a party.

Yep...we bathe in the summerer's drinking water!
Left to right: Ags, Dean, Scott, Joe, Paddy, Hannah, and myself
(Photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

At one point we had the whole 11 of us in the tank. It was a squeeze, but it was good for group bonding.

This was to be the first "bath" we've all had since November, and the last one we will enjoy until we leave this chunk of ice.

In practice for our mid-winter naked run, Joe, Hannah and myself decided to jump out of the tank and do a run around the Drewry in just our swimwear - at -20C.

And it was f***ing cold.

The following day it was my responsibility to clean the inside of the tank. The filth at the bottom of the tank was unbelievable (and I assure you, not from the dirt and grime of us bathing in it the night before). There were all sorts of crap in the bottom, the most hideous being the cigarette ends which had obviously been unwittingly been shovelled in when people dug in the daily snow. Ick!

1st 2008 Winterers Meal

Saturday saw the first Saturday evening meal for the 2008 winterers. To mark the special occasion Paddy whipped up a gorgeous 4 course meal, and everyone poshed themselves up for the event.

The main course...we tried upsetting Paddy by calling it a burger!
(Photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

It was also the occasion to draw the names for the mid-winter gift nominations. It is tradition at Halley that we all make each-other a gift for our mid-winter celebrations. This is done "secret Santa" style from drawing names out of a hat.

A simple name-drawing affair I'm sure you agree.

However, this wasn't the case.
It took us 7 attempts before we got it right. People kept pulling out their own names...myself doing it 3 times out of the 7.

To quote Harry Hill...."What are the chances of that happening, eh?"

Already people arew working on their presents, and I have yet to come up for inspiration for the person I have drawn to make one for.

Another Meteorological Phenomenon

Friday 7th March saw yet another meteorological phenomena at Halley

A Fog Bow.

It was a foggy day, with low fog. The sky was devoid of cloud and the sun was shining brightly.
Perfect conditions for a fog-bow. And again I didn't have my decent camera with me on the Simpson building...only the shitty little point and click thing I bought. Thankfully Rich heard my call on the radio informing of the phenomena and got his out (his camera of course). Thank you Rich.

Fog Bow over the Laws
(Photo courtesy of Richard Burt)

My Empire begins

The only beaker at Halley.

The Metbabe and the The Antarctic Monkey

The sailing of the ship saw the departure of the remaining science person on station. Simon Coggins, the Science Coordinator, was gone, thus leaving me in charge of all the science and the data management at Halley.

I now have the Simpson building all to myself.
It gets lonely now that there are not 6 people working from it.
But, it's mine, all mine.

The Simpson building.
My office in Antarctica

I find it ironic that I moved from an office building in the UK where more people were shoehorned in it than it could support, where hot-desking and overcrowded office space was a contentious issue. I now have an entire building to myself to work in in the Antarctic.

I think I am excused to feel a little smug.

The days get shorter

The coming of the winter is symbolised by the shorter and shorter days we experience here at Halley. The 24 hours of daylight experienced when I first arrived in November is now no more, and presently (23rd March) we have a normal daylight/darkness daily pattern as would be experienced in the UK. This will gradually evolve into 24 hour darkness.

Final sundown is on 30th April.

At the moment, we are experiencing some amazing sunsets and evening light.

Piggott building at sunset
(a bit of camera blur in this pic I'm afraid)

Stratocumulus cloud illuminated from below from a setting sun

The Halley VI accomocdation module

Halley VI Build...the end of the first construction season

I'm quite conscious that I have posted hardly any news of the Hally VI build all summer.
There's a good reason for that:

I inadvertently deleted all of my photos of the construction site and the stages of the build.
D'oh. What a muppet I am. I still have a few.

The 1st fully clad module
Accomodation module

Cladding was only shipped in for one of the modules to test it's response to the extreme cold. The module above is an accommodation module.

The arse of the accomodation module

A lot of fitting has yet to be completed within the module. The pit-rooms come pre-fabricated and are slot into the steel infrastructure prior to the cladding being added. These are then pushed to the side to make the internal corridor and are then connected up with the appropriate services.

Early in the season. Services and plant are installed on the spaceframes before the superstructure is added
(photo courtesy of Simon Gill)

The space frames unloaded from the Amderma were fitted with the hydraulic skis which will enable the Halley VI modules to be raised above the snow accumulation each year. All the verious plant and services were installed on the services modules. Note in the above picture the pink coloured fuel tanks and generator housing. A wonderful idea from the architects to give a more psychologically aesthetically pleasing and calming effect for the Genny Mechs. You can imagine how pleased the Genny Mechs are with the colouring!!!

View of the construction site from the Simpson building mid-Feb

Accomodation modules. The steel frames are added after the pit-room modules are installed onto the space-frames
(photo courtesy of Danny Wood)

The roof cladding being added to the accomodation module
(photo courtesy of Andy Cheadle)

Half clad accomodation module
(Photo courtesy of Andy Cheadle)

The half completed modules are all put under tent for the winter

To avoid confusion as to the use of all the other big yellow containers on massive sledges we didn't have dotted around site, this one was kindly labelled for us!!!!

That's me done for now.
I have stories of my winter trip coming up in my next entry.
Three men, one tent, a lot of cold...what could possibly happen?

A weekend of fun and pain...mid-Feb '08

2008-02-23T03:41:00.015Z

1st ever Halley sponsored Ski-to-the-Pole
Fundraiser for the RNLI
Sunday 17th February 2008 Please donate to our cause

It was proposed back in the beginning of February that the staff at Halley should pool their efforts and attempt to ski the equivalent distance to the pole in 12 hours. 1600km in 12 hours by 110 or so people. It was no easy feat but Sunday from 1000 to 2200 saw plenty of people either skiing, walking, running, kiting or man-hauling around the 5km perimeter. It was a bold proposal, but it gave us a goal to focus on. In the end we completed a total of 214 laps (106 short of the 320 needed), but we did pass the 1000km mark. To date (22nd Feb) we have raised £3500 and it is still going up. If you wish to donate, there is still time.

www.justgiving.com/ski_to_pole

You still have until 17th April 2008 to donate

Wonky Caboose - the Ski-to-Pole nerve centre!

2008 Winter BC Ags (complete with crazy hat) preparing for her lap (of many laps)

Sat 16th Feb ’08
Folk Night

It was proposed by Kirk early in the season that Halley should host a Folk Night.
A chance for people, if they so chose, to put on an act, sing, play music, tell jokes, read poems, etc. for the entertainment of everybody else.

The day had finally come.

And with some careful planning by Dave Evans (and others), a venue was organised. Using the temporary skidoo repair tent (more than large enough to accommodate all), a stage was installed, as were lighting, projector, sound system, heating and decorative signs. The stage was set for a evening of the best entertainment in town.

The venue kicked off at 1930hrs (local) with the first act on at 2000hrs.

Acts included:

- a rewritten version of Monty Pythons “Always Look on the Bright Side of Life” with comical references to summer life at Halley,

- a rewritten version of The Eagles “Hotel California” from the Halley VI site prep crew with lyrics about life in the cabooses 20km away,

- poetry, so moving that the whole tent became quiet,

- the girls performing a brilliant parody of “Grease Lightning” complete with BAS issue overalls and tight t-shirts (much to the whoops of delight from us lads) and riding into the tent adorning a snow-adapted Honda quadbike,

The girls performing a very entertaining parody of "Grease Lightning"
(Photo courtesty of Pete Wilmott)

- Kirk projecting a fantastic “mockumetary” video of him as an ex-fid presenting life at Halley complete with footage using the bloopers from his footage.

- and, of course...myself.

"Pray tell what this performance of yours was Dave"

I performed a mini-play written by myself, starring myself, all about myself. (I titled it “Ego”). It was a short piece with me on stage talking to an on-screen pre-recorded projection of myself.

I spent 7 minutes talking to me about how funny I was, and how great an actor I was.
The latter was confirmed with the me on the screen prompting the me on the stage to portray a series of emotions, which I did so with passion.
I told myself a joke or two particularly about the time I met a beautiful woman on a narrow bridge and debating whether I should have blocked her passage or tossed myself off!
And then I accidently let slip that I loved me. After an awkward moment between us, I concluded by confessing my undying love to me.
The performance concluded by me singing a duet with myself to Elton John and Kiki Dee's “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart”.

I think there were several bewildered faces in the audience at first, but then it soon dawned on people what I was doing and soon they got into the swing of it.

Z or Dead, recovering from the loss of bass player Alex, had a replacement...
...scientist and unstoppable running machine* Andy Rankin.

To herald the new line-up, they renamed themselves as Toucan Rool, (no prizes for guessing the inspiration for that name) borrowing the Toucan from the Guiness advertising slogan as inspiration.

Toucan Rool mid swing with special guests from the Morrissons crew (Manii singing and Marlin on drums)
(Photo courtesy of Pete Wilmott)

The band played a couple of acts and rocked the joint with their versions of classic rock tunes. By the end of the night everyone was singing and dancing and generally having a bloody good time.

It was a good release after a hard long summer. And my appreciation goes out to all those who helped organise the evening and put on acts for the entertainment of the rest of the base complement.

Base Commander Vicky sings a set with the band
(photo courtesy of Pete Wilmott)

Everyone enjoying themselves.
I particularly like this picture as it captrues everyone in a different action
(Photo courtesy of Neil Brough)

* so called for his contribution to the sponsored ski-to-pole

17th Feb ’08
RNLI charity Ski-to-the-Pole

Ouch ouch ouch! My feet were in pain.

Three laps in some brand new plastic ski-boots and my feet were already shredded halfway through the 1st lap.

But it was in aid of charity and so I persevered.

By the end of the 3rd lap I was in agony. I knew I should have opted for the older leather boots, but I was being greedy and wanted the newer ones. Oh, how I paid for that decision. I had to stop and don my tracksuit bottoms and running shoes and jog the final lap.

And I am glad I did jog the last lap. It is somewhat really refreshing jogging in -15C. As I went round the base perimeter the sun dipped below the cloud layer which had been hanging over the station all day and gave a breathtaking view bathing the entire white surface of Halley in a pink hue augmented by an orange glow under the cloud.

How ironic it was that I was carrying my camera with me all day until I started jogging. So, no piccies of said view. However, as I finished the jog, I fetched my camera and managed to get a shot of a sun pillar that had suddenly appeared at the time. Yet another meteorological phenomena captured on “film”. Fantastic.

Sun-pillar behind the Laws

Some people pledged 4 laps (such as me) other pledged 10 (Rich). Those kite-boarding clocked 15+ laps. But Andy Rankin (the new bass player), often seen jogging round the perimeter during the summer, just kept running and running.

And running.

By the end of the day he completed 19 laps purely from jogging. 90km or so in total. Mad...but also very noble.

Note...I may add piccies to this entry at a later date when I get hold of some from other people.
But for now, all you have is the poorly shot ones I have here.

Summer hits its peak

2008-02-23T03:38:00.028Z

The summer science programme draws to a close, Halley VI construction winds down, the sun starts dipping lower and lower in the evening skies and temperatures begin to drop. The summer season has peaked and is now nearing it's end.

The remaining science team "beakers" enjoying a celebratory beaker of wine on the Simpson open platform - 1st week of Feb-08
left to right: Joan, Neil, Me, Jules, Andy and Simon

Regardless of having an extremely sweltering afternoon at +3.4C on 15th Jan, a sudden noticeable drop in the daily temperatures mid-Jan gave us newbies an insight into what it’s really like to feel cold. Evening temperatures dipped to -15C to -20C as the sun got lower on the horizon in evenings.

Towards the end of January we started to see an average daily daytime temperature of around -15C. But it’s amazing how quickly one adapts to these conditions...and also how quickly one learns not to put things like metal fittings and bolts between ones lips when working outside.

Needless to say, it is my pleasure to report as the Halley meteorologist that we experienced the coldest January at Halley on record (since 1956). Average temp -6.5C.

22nd Jan 08 – Snowblock samples

“I have to do what?” I exclaimed, “Dig a couple of blocks of snow, pack them up and send them back to Cambridge?”

I was sitting in a meeting in an office in BAS HQ, Cambridge, UK in late-September 2007 when I was requested to dig blocks of snow for analysis in Cambridge. As part of my training I was meeting with many scientists and taking notes of the tasks and jobs I would be doing for them once I was at Halley.

The job of digging uncontaminated blocks of snow seemed like a simple, relatively painless and somewhat fun task to add to the list. And now here I was, at Halley, performing said task, dressed head to toe in a clean suit and other paraphernalia to protect the precious snow from contamination.

And it was not simple, nor was it painless but at least I was having a little fun though.

Myself and Rich...Practicing our dance routines before digging the sample

The preparation and physical nature of the job meant it took a solid 4 hours to complete. Assisted by our winter field GA Rich, and summer admin and general station lynch-pin Nicola, we cleaned all tools and items which would be used in the dig and donned our beautiful outfit.

The only boxes available for the samples were very large metal Zarges boxes. Large boxes meant large samples. And large sample meant large weights. As the samples were to be dug in the Clean Air Sector, these large, heavy boxes had to be manually hauled the 1.5km to the freezer store.

Snowblock #1 takes shape...all 80kg of it

The curses streaming out of my mouth as we man-hauled a pulk with 170kg of carefully dug snow over the 1.5km were not ones to be repeated to man or beast. I was knackered.
But the satisfaction that yet another task completed in the Antarctic for the sake of global science made up for all the hardship.

Apologies for the quality of the pics. It got quite overcast and the contrast dropped making photography difficult.

23rd Jan ’08 – (more) Field Training

The 2008 wintering team were given the day off normal base duties to head to the coast and revise the skills we learnt on the field training in Derbyshire, UK (all those months ago in September ’07). It was good R&R and a chance to escape the base for the day. It was also the first time that the ’08 winter team had been together as a group like this since the field training.

It was also the first time that the ’08 winter team had been together as a group like this since the field training. Although we all live and work on the same small base, it is a very rare thing to have all of us together in one place at a time. The chance to work together and enjoy one another’s company was just excellent, and enabled us to bond together again and refocus ourselves as to why we are doing what we are doing.

Ags: winter base commander (BC),
Lance: vehicle operator/mechanic
Scott: vehicle mechanic
Joe: electrician (sparky)
Bryan: generator mechanic (genny mech)
Rich: field assistant
Hannah: doc
Paddy: chef
Les: plumber
Dean: comms manager
And myself: the beaker

We couldn’t have asked for a better day. It was sunny, it was warm, it was calm, and it was fun. It was in all essence, generally a beautiful day at the seaside.

We practiced skills such as roping up, walking over steep inclines, climbing up and abseiling down ice cliffs, performing crevasse rescue, among other things. Such as stomping up and down a cliff in single-file.

We were told we were going to learn to walk on snow
(photo courtesy of Agnieszka Fryckowska)

(photo courtesy of Agnieszka Fryckowska)

Starting small...

...finishing big.
(photo courtesy of Agnieszka Fryckowska)

We stopped for lunch on the cliffs and watched the calm Southern Ocean below silently glistening in the afternoon sun. In the second half od the day we roped ourselves up and done some linked glacier travel before chucking weighted bags over the cliffs and practicing crevasse rescue.

Picnic at the seaside

The view from our picnic

Paddy, broken by the thought of having to return to base to cook for 80+ people, attempts to garrote himself...

...and then chuck himself over the precipice

We finished the day with a BBQ at the caboose. Splendid.

25th Jan ’08 – Burns’ Night

Another excuse to celebrate was upon us, and it was proposed that we shall celebrate Burns Night.

Considering the short notice of 2-days to prepare and the fact that everyone were still on long days, it was amazing how quickly things were organised, providing a true example of how people pitch together to make an evening out of the basic materials we have to hand.

The resident Scotts of Halley - Brin, Kirk, Rich, Stu, and Barry

Jimbo spent the spare time in his day creating a “Toss the Caber” / welly-throwing range.
It was a Friday after all, and gospel that we have our fish and chips (as resident Kiwi Scott would put it) shark and tatties, but the chefs bravely forfeited our usual battered fish and chips dinner and fed us a hearty Scottish dinner complete with Haggis. Rich, wearing kilt, gave a recital of a Burn’s poem during the dinner while we all enjoyed a shot of whiskey each, setting the evening off.

And then the games begun.
It was cold and it was crap visibility, but we still came out in our droves to have a good ol’ toss together!

Mukluk throwing

Wellies and cabers were flying left, right and centre.

Someone’s mukluk boot was liberated from the boot room and used as a substitute welly. The wind was cutting perpendicular across the range and made accurate throwing difficult. Nonetheless, people learnt to throw into the wind to correct for wind shear. However, some people over corrected. Ant (’07 chef) unfortunately miscalculated somewhat and sent a mukluk “bomb” careering from the heavens into the crowd standing behind him. Calls of “incoming” and “run away” rang out and the crowd dispersed in blind panic to avoid mukluk induced coma. Oh how we laughed.

Yours truly, with a feeble attempt at chucking a mukluk

Maniy, one of the South African labourers on Halley VI, snapped the caber in half. With no replacement caber, he caber tossing was abruptly stopped as a result. He’s a big chap is Maniy.

It's cold at Halley and things freeze, as Jimbo found out

And finally the evening was finished with a good ol’ fashioned tug together!
A tug-of-war contest was fought (best of three making the winner). After playing in one I gave up. I was too knackered and my hands were frozen. Besides, my skills as referee were required.

Tug 'o' War

And that was the end of the evening entertainment.

29th Jan ‘08 – Major Incident Plan

“All station, all stations. We have a major incident between the garage and the Drewery. A doctor is required.”
Was the call on the radio, Tuesday 29th Jan at 1630.

But don’t worry. We were expecting it.

It was just a simulated exercise, the purpose of which was to test the operation of the base staff in response to a big incident.
Read on, and comfort yourselves in the knowledge that if things were to go awry here at Halley, we have the properly trained people on station to deal with it...

The scenario:
a crash involving a sno-cat, a nodwell crane and a skidoo pulling a happy sledge, resulting in a series of broken people. One with a head wound, another with a broken arm, someone with a serious compound fracture of the leg and finally...a dead person with missing legs!

Of course, a scenario completely unlikely to occur, but all the same, it was a good idea to plan for the worst case. The big test was of course to see how the new doctor would cope in such a situation. And I have to give it to Hannah, she performed admirably.

Hannah attends to an "injured" Shaggy
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

As soon as the call went out on the radio, we all leapt into action. The plan for a major incident is to muster at the signpost outside the Laws, unless you are on scene or (of course) part of the incident itself.

Hannah kitted herself out and headed straight to the incident site while the rest of us calmly proceeded to the signpost outside. Being one of the first to arrive I was given the roll call list to account for everyone and to determine who may be involved in the accident/incident. Imagine my horror when I had accounted for all, even those who were injured, and found out over the radio that there was also involved the incident an “unidentified” female.

Oh, the questions running through my mind at the time.
We all know each other here and there aren’t that many females on station, how come you can’t identify her? Are you sure it’s female? Has her face being completely mangled by the crash? Have we got a stowaway on station smuggled in by some randy chap who gets his sexual needs tended to? Had the Basler flight which stopped off earlier in the day left one of its party behind? I was in a bit of a panic. Who was she?

It turned out to be Annie.
Resuscitation Annie.
The standard basic life-support dummy had been dressed up in a boiler suit and thrown under the tracks of the sno-cat to act as one of the casualties.

Joe attentively attends to Annie, who's legs were unfortunately stuck under the tracks of K25
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

I was insulted. I had previously approached Rich C (the 2007 doc) offering my acting prowess to help in the incident exercise. He turned me down. And instead opted for the lifeless, limbless plastic dummy? Had it come to this? Was my career as an actor to be overshadowed by an inanimate object?

Truth be told, I actually wasn’t allowed to be a “casualty” as I am a winterer and I need to participate in the exercise proper.

Turns out that the dummy was wrongly regarded as a fatality. In the debrief afterwards, it was explained by Rich that the idea was for “Annie” to be treatable too, but everyone just assumed it was a fatality and zipped it up in a body-bag and stuffed it in the freezer! Heh...I hope that wont happen in a real life crisis. It wouldn’t be easy to explain oneself out of that situation.

The makeshift hospital in the Drewery
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

All in all, the exercise was a complete success. Everyone played their respective roles very well indeed. In a scenario such as that, the first people on the scene take the coordinating roles. And Ags (our winter base commander) and Paddy (our wintering chef) did an outstanding job running the resources and the makeshift hospital respectively. And of course Hannah fixed everyone in time for dinner.

3rd Feb ’08 – Tractors and fun

The 3rd of Feb was a Sunday and for a change I had a completely relaxing day. I had a lie in and got up the latest I have done all summer. I then watched a movie or two which were being played in the lounge. And then I drove some of the big vehicles we have on site: The John Deere and the Challenger.

As a bit of afternoon recreation, Martin, our summer chief plant mech / logistics manager type guy offered people the chance to learn to drive the big machinery. I jumped at the opportunity, purely as a chance to relive those moments of playing with the little John Deere tractor in my grandparents garden as a toddler, and put closure to the sadness endured all my life when it was thrown out.

Within minutes I was churning huge troughs in the snow by whipping the Challenger into tights donuts going round and round in circles. You can do amazing donuts in those things as they can turn on the spot. And, yes, I was feeling like a great big kid...all over again. Whoopee!

Challenger

Challenger in action during relief pulling 7 sledges of drums
(photo courtesy of Richard Corbett)

John Deere

7th Feb ’08 – Tunnel Rescue Scenario

Another week and another day of training for the doc and for the ‘08 winter team. This time we were stage a tunnel resuce.

The scenario:
to tend to and rescue someone who was seriously injured in the service tunnels 30m below the snow surface.

You see, when Halley V was constructed, service tunnels providing power, comms, plumbing, fuel tanks, etc between the Laws, Simpson and Piggott buildings and the and melt-tank were built. These tunnels were designed to bury over the years as the snow accumulated. They are now approx 30m below the surface with tons of pressure pressing down on them from the ice above. Space within them is tight and they are gradually collapsing under the pressure. And there is always the risk that fumes within them could overpower someone.

So...they have a significant level of risk and we, as a wintering team, need to be prepared to handle a rescue situation if ever the need was to occur.

Hannah had prepared a beautiful dummy as our victim, and he/she/it was a good weight. This was essentially lobbed down the access shaft to the tunnel systems (ensuring that any medical attention was a necessity) and we set to work.

Preparing to place the victim in the tunnels
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

Soon we were all kitted out with whatever rescue gear we needed. Rich was coordinating the rescue operation up the shaft, Hannah was coordinating the medical side of things down below and Ags was coordinating the crew up top (winching, belaying, etc).

And then the operation commenced. I’ll spare you the boring details of the step by step process. What is important to tell you is that we managed to successfully rescue the victim (whom only had mild concussion and a broken leg) out of the tunnels. Unfortunately, his head got snagged on a rung of the ladder up the shaft as we hauled him up and thus his neck snapped.

Hannah’s urgent screams to stop went unnoticed by us up top and so we just kept on winding the winch.

Although we did manage to get him out of the tunnels, he was quite dead.

Oh dear. The irony.

Out comes the injured...more broken than what he/she was when they were in the tunnel
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

However, the theory worked and in the wash up afterwards it was concluded that many lessons were learnt. As I said to the group, I was glad things went wrong because we learnt from it. If it all went perfectly, then we would never know of the extra risks like ladder rungs and unsecured lolling heads.

Heroes -Paddy, Hannah, Me and Dean (on floor)
(photo courtesy of Pete Milner)

9th Feb '08 - GEF data collection

Flying to A80 and A77 yet again.

This time I was joining Joan in collecting the recent data logged on the new GEF (Geo-Electric Field) monitoring stations he and Jules installed in January. I was to observe the process in servicing and checking the system on the premise that I might be requested to do it next season.

And, damn, those sites truly are getting bloody cold.

Another site, another hero pose

Joan and Jules were living in a field camp for almost 2 weeks setting up the two systems, and so there was some evidence of their time at the sites.

Igloo, built by the GEF team, complete with armchair.
It was successfully tried and tested by Jules one night too

The GEF measures the electric field of the earth through some magical whizzy science.
One of the detectors is a big shiny globe suspended in the air.

Joan checking the GEF globe

And then we returned to base landing approx 2300hrs.

Halley from the skiway @2300hrs

14th Feb ’08 – Valentines Day

Another year, another valentines, and another day lacking in romance.
Once again I did not receive any cards. But this is probably a good thing when it comes to an Antarctic research station comprising of 95% males. However, I am always hoping that several cards will be arriving with the post when the ship returns in November. *subtle hint ladies* :o)

The 14th also brought the very first setting of the sun of 2008. All 2 hours of it.
It was predicted by the helpful computer programmes at my disposal that sunset would occur at 0103GMT on 14th Feb. As we are currently on GMT-3, it wasn’t too late to stay up and witness it.

1st sunset

Quite a few people were out that evening to witness it. I myself was on the Simpson platform preparing my masterpiece for the Folk Night on Saturday. But, I stopped and stood on the balcony all alone with thoughts of romance and love, watching that sun dip below the horizon. The weather was kind to us, and gave us a perfectly clear evening sky in which to see the spectacle unfold.

We've also been experiencing some low mist on some evenings, which freezes on the cold surfaces outside and forms crystals. It's called rime. It can give some amazing effects, and will no doubt get better as temperatures drop even more.

Rime forming on the signpost

After the sun set, I returned to the office and continued compiling the extravagant performance I was piecing together for my moment on stage for Folk Night the following weekend!
More on this to come