Sunscreen.

Sunscreen has very little taste, but it's not pleasant. I know this because I'm slathering it on, and sweating it off, so I still get burnt. It just falls off. And thanks to this damn ozone hole - whose presence was published from a desk less than 10 feet away from me - I'm getting burned pretty good.

I'm out in the field, now. Today we went to visit the Ice Rumples - a place 15km from Halley where the ice shelf is encountering much resistance and there is much activity. And by activity, I mean crevasses. We measure the locations of a triangle of stakes, roughly 100 metres apart from one another. Each year they move relative to one another, and we calculate the strains in the ice from these movements. A picture is forthcoming.

This year, one of the stakes was about 2 metres from a crevasse, so we roped up for our visit. But, of course, no problems ensued and that was that.

Except for the sunburning.

Catch-up!

Ok! I've been a bit busy the last few days...time to go back a bit.

After my nightshift at Rothera - which ended uneventfully - I took a nap and woke up at noon, to find that our flight was coming in at 5pm. I packed, and said my good-byes, and had dinner, alongside the pilots. We loaded up our stuff into the plane, shown below. When I saw it, the first thing I thought was "Nice try, Lao Che!"


Anyone? Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Ok, never mind. The plane was decidedly less comfortable than the Dash from Punta - no heating except for an extremely hot cylindrical object that spanned the plane at boot level. So, my left foot was burning, and everything else was freezing.

We got into Halley at 4:30am GMT (which is what Halley runs on; apologies for an earlier comment to the contrary). A pleasant surprise awaited us - the entire Halley winter team was waiting, for an enthusiastic welcome. Of course, we also brought their first fresh produce in a long time, so that may have had something to do with their enthusiasm.

So, I'm here now, and I've been busy going out on trips, organizing my desk, and doing some basic field trips. And, lucky me, one of these trips was to the local Emporer penguin colony. A picture!

These pictures are gold, and I'll save some of the others for filler when I haven't got anything else to show. And there will be several periods of nothing, believe me. The penguins will be leaving as soon as the sea ice breaks up, which will probably be in the next month or two.

And now, off to the lounge. Halley also has a band, and it's currently playing. I wouldn't want anyone to think I'm unappreciative.

Halley, Halley...this is Lifetime Ryan

Hey - just a brief note to say that I've made it into Halley. I've got an early start in the morning and can't write much...expect a longer entry tomorrow night, and - with any luck - some really nice pictures.

A brief explanation of the title, though - when you call Halley on the radio from the field, you use the format of the title. But there's a Brian on the base already, and I need a new name. It may be "Lifetime Ryan", short for "Ryan on the Lifetime of Halley Project". However, it may well be something else. I think there's another Anderson floating around here too, so that's out. We'll see.

3am and all's well on the night shift

The clock is just rolling over 3am here, and I am sitting in a dark air traffic control tower, listening to a radio frequency which is mainly static, with occasional strange music (maybe) and screeches mixed in. I'm waiting for some to start screaming "Mayday! Mayday!", from one of the other remote stations in British Antarctica.

I don't mind saying I'm a bit freaked out here.

I signed on for a night shift at Rothera, which means I'm the only one awake should something go wrong. This could be anything from the sewage system overflowing, to a fire at the docks, to a medical emergency at Sky-Blu, a station 800 km to the south. Thankfully, none of this has happened yet. And, except for the times that I'm sitting in the tower (or patrolling the hangar), it's quite comfortable.

But right now, this radio monitoring is very eerie. There's just enough structure to the static in the radio to be unsettling. It's a bit like Stephen King's The Langoliers.

Another five minutes, and I can go back to the bar, where I have set up camp for the night. But first, I must go to another building and check that our freezers are still working.

Man, I'm tired. About four more hours to go.

Waiting, as we lose the plot

My flight is delayed until Thursday. And there will be no mysterious passenger. I've now got a few days to kill.

I think I'll go see how Doris is doing.

Waiting, as the plot thickens

Still in Rothera. The plane may or may not be on its way. But something interesting has occurred - we will have a mysterious co-traveller on this flight, whose identity and destination are unknown. Intrepid explorer? Government agent? The Thing? Speculation is abuzz amongst the Halley-bound Rotherites, and I smell the makings of a good novel here, somewhere. Of course, it's probably just a spare mechanic, but we don't have that much to gossip about here, so we assume the most dramatic.

In the meantime, I'm planning out my field trips, making maps, and continuing to play with my toys. I'm also helping to install a beacon called Doris. Actually, Doris is the name of the entire satellite system that helps to identify satellite positions precisely - like GPS, but in reverse. It relies upon a worldwide network of beacons, like the one I'm helping to install.

And here are some completely unrelated pictures, which I filched from one of my co-travellers, Neil Ross.

Here we are, boarding the plane at Punta.




Here's a better picture of the ice cave crevasse. You can pretend that's me, if you like.


The band shown below is called "Ass of BAS", and they set up in the sledge store on Saturday night for a party, complete with a bar with "barmaids" in drag. The entire production was quite comical, and I'm sure some of it will end up on Youtube.


And now...I will sit and wait for the plane. And the passenger!

More rescue practises, and winter camping

Well, yesterday was another day of throwing Toddy down a crevasse and having him wait while I pull him out. This time, I did it in just over 30 minutes. This is a reasonably ok time, and I didn't screw anything up in particular. Probably, I can shave another five or ten minutes off that time, when I start to build up some muscle memory.

This time, we were working in a crevasse that was a bit of an ice cave. Quite nice; I have a picture or two that's pretty poor:

Toddy took better pictures than me, so I'll get those from him and post them later. The top of the crevasse also provided a good look at the entire Rothera base:

That's it; runway, a couple buildings, ocean, and some mountains. After we finished the crevasse rescue, we went back to base, packed up some equipment, and went camping. The BAS camp hasn't changed too much in the last 30 years, I believe - HF radios with 20m wire antennas, kerosene Tilley lamps, and kerosene Primus stoves, so we may shake hands with beef. Or freeze-dried chicken pieces in a balti sauce, as the case may be. Setting up camp takes about 2 hours, and I'm not looking forward to doing it in heavy winds and snow. It was great on this day, though - you can see the weather in the above picture. Some of the other guys came up in the evening to ski, and then we packed it in at about 11pm. We then woke up at 6:30am, took down the tent, and were back at base in time for breakfast.

Now, today is Saturday, a half-day for work. I'm starting to pack things up, because word is that the Halley flight may be on Monday. Tomorrow, Sunday, is our full day off. Might kick back and watch a movie, perhaps. A nice relaxing finish to my week of Rothera.