Wednesday 5 February 2014

It's Time to Leave Already?

5 February 2014
Although we've been working hard to dry, organize, and pack up our science kit so it can be transported home on the ship, we have been taking advantage of the area to have fun. Others have been out skiing or snowboarding. If the weather improves, there will probably be the opportunity for a bit more hiking and climbing on a nearby ridge. We took a short field trip to a crevasse on the hill above base. This crevasse is more like a show cave in slow-moving ice. It changes a bit each year, but they keep opening it up and setting up ropes so people can see it each year, so it's pretty stable and relatively safe. We geared up with some waterproof outer wear, mountaineering boots and crampons (little, sharp pieces of metal attached to your boot so you can walk on ice), harness and ropes so we could get into the crevasse and attach ourselves to the ropes inside, and helmets to protect us from falling icicles and other miscellaneous bonks on the head.

It was absolutely stunning inside the cave! The blue color inside made it feel even more like a dream. It felt very much like a cave as we were lowered down a steep incline through a relatively small opening at the top. Inside, it had various ice formations inside with full-length icicles that reached from floor to ceiling, rows of skinny icicles, and areas where new crystals were growing in beautiful shapes on the outside of icicles. It is impossible to capture in photos, but I tried my best!



We're out of time, but we've all got more plans of things we'd like to do before we leave. I guess those will have to wait until next trip... unless our flight gets delayed. Nothing is final here until it happens and plans are only guaranteed to change. Being ready to take advantage of opportunities as they arise is the best way to enjoy life here. Although it also provides the possibility of creating your own opportunity if there's something you really want to do - everyone is flexible and there are always people willing to try new things.

Saying goodbye to Rothera will be hard. I think I will miss the little things the most. We were on gash (cleaning duty in the communal areas like bathrooms and kitchen) and washing dishes while we watched icebergs move past the window. I walked 10 minutes down the point and took a panoramic picture that contained at least 15 seals (three different kinds!) and 5 penguins with a background of rocky outcrops, mountains, and ice. Although it's started getting darker at night here, I've enjoyed ~20 hours of sun each day (although the temperature is also dropping on base, so not quite tanning weather!). Not to mention the daily penguin hazard: almost tripping over penguins that like to hang out near the living areas :) We head out tomorrow - backto the 'real' world, ready or not!

Sunday 2 February 2014

Back on Base (Rothera)

28 January 2014
We didn't end up getting out on Jan 26 after all. We spent all morning packing up as much of camp as possible without packing up our personal things that we use each night and then the weather turned and the first plane didn't end up coming at all. We had just over 10,000 pounds of gear and people, which works out to 5 Twin Otter plane loads that needed to come out of the field. The logistics for all of this are amazingly complex, but well managed.

Black and white photo of some of the clouds forming over Marble Hills

When we woke up on Jan 27, we were told that the first plane would be there in a little under 2 hours - birthday present for me! It's very cool to see the plane land on skis on the snow runway. These pilots are some of the best in the world and it is so amazing to see them practice their trade. We also get to be copilots for some of the legs of the trip, which means we get to sit up front and help the pilot. How many people get to fly an airplane in Antarctica?



Leaving the field was more emotional than I expected and I was sad to leave, but there are some advantages to being back in civilization so I tried to focus on the positive things (like water that comes out of a faucet instead of having to melt it myself!). All the scientists (sometimes affectionately referred to as 'Beakers' by the other people on base) were uplifted in the first plane and we flew back to Sky-Blu (~3 hours). We helped unload the plane and then were given a wonderful lunch of bacon sandwiches and tea. Another two planes came in with more gear later, but other than that we had a bit of free time to chat with the people who were working at Sky-Blu or enjoy the warm, sunny day. I took the opportunity to take some fun photos with my new camera in weather so warm (comparatively speaking) that I was almost too hot in my field clothes! It was still -8 degrees Celsius, but with sun and no wind it felt very warm.



We spent the night at Sky-Blu in a tent (they are used to visiting guests and have room for 8 people extra to spend the night). We got up in the morning and got on a Twin Otter headed back to Rothera via Fossil Bluff around midday. We got back on base early enough to have a quick shower before tea (the big meal at the end of the day, also referred to as dinner or supper in the States). We were told that we wouldn't be allowed in the dining room until after the shower, so it's a good thing we arrived at a reasonable hour!

View out one of the windows on the Twin Otter as we headed home from Fossil Bluff - very lucky to fly on a mostly sunny day!

The shower was amazing and eating non-dehydrated food was good, but the field season was relatively short compared to others and we hadn't started having cravings yet. It's nice to have a bit of luxury - going into the bedroom using a door instead of a small tent hole, heated towel racks, flush toilet instead of a toilet tent, clean clothes, not re-hydrated vegetables, electricity at all hours of the day, and warm water that comes out of the tap. However, I also miss the field. Everyday life sometimes feels more difficult in the field because I had to think about so many new things every day - just staying warm was hard, let alone drinking and eating enough, not being sunburned, wearing the right clothing, and trying to stay focused and organized enough to also get the science completed.  But life in the field is also simpler in some ways: get up, stay alive, do science, prepare for tomorrow, sleep. Life in the real world takes a back seat to these everyday tasks. Other things seem distant, both physically and figuratively, and you are able to achieve complete focus on the immediate scientific tasks on hand.

It will take some time to get acclimatized to being back on base, but I hope to keep some of the focus that I found in the field and use it to keep working on my projects as I slowly return to 'real life'. A part of me will miss being in the field, but I'm looking forward to other aspects of the project and seeing where the journey takes us.

Celebration in the Field


26 January 2014
I was very happy to hear that I would be in the field for my birthday - who could ask for a better present? It happened to coincide with our uplift date (the date we start trying to leave the field), so we moved our celebration earlier to Jan 25, which conveniently coincides with a Scottish holiday called Burns Night. We also hadn't used all our special food (stuff that isn't dehydrated) and there's no point in hauling that back. Our special food included a bit of alcohol as well. All of these things combined to create an absolutely amazing night of celebration.


Out in the Patriot Hills playing with boulders and building up an appetite with Scott, one of our Field Assistants
We started the meal off with a creative chicken dish. Phil (a field assistant) used the relatively mundane ingredients in the cooking box to create a delicious tomato-based sauce for chicken breasts (mainly tomato paste, honey, chili powder, and lime juice). Then we had a baked Camembert with a glass of red wine. The meal continued with a fantastic walnut and date bread (they call it cake here, but it's essentially a dense bread in American terminology). At this point, they broke out improvised candles and sang 'Happy Birthday'. Andy even brought presents all the way from Edinburgh!





Presents from Andy and Kate with a card from the whole field party. Andy gave me a book: The locals' guide to Edinburgh. We used it in place of Robert Burns' poetry on Burns Night - I learned some new Scottish words. It will probably require its own post later. So much new vocabulary on this trip!
Typically, Burns Night is celebrated in Scotland by reading Robert Burns' poetry (typically 'Ode to Haggis' at the very least) and then stabbing the haggis. We didn't have haggis (Kate is from Scotland and might have tried, but she didn't think that would have made it through Chilean customs on the way down!). Instead, Kate shared her homemade tablet (this is a Scottish dish - kind of similar to fudge, but a bit harder and it can be difficult to perfect, but it was delicious). We opened a bottle of Scottish whisky (Balvenie, 12 years for anyone who's interested) and hung out talking until we headed to bed late. It feels like we saved a lot up for one evening, but we had an amazing time in the field, successfully completing all our scientific goals for the trip, and we definitely deserved a bit of a celebration! I can't think of a better end to the trip...trying to start uplift today so we'll just have to see how it goes!