Equipment cache run

Last month Tommy, Rob and Ashley went on a camping trip to the Greene peninsula, by the time the guys had broken through the sea ice with the RIB’s to collect them the light was beginning to fade an there wasn’t time to collect their stash of gear from the glacier. This was good for me as I got to go out later on a mission to collect their gear. It was a stunning day so Ashley, Tommy and Sam took to one RIB, and Rob and I took to the other.

Heading into Morraine Fjord we were breaking through sea ice, and avoiding the bigger bits of glacier ice. A short was into the fjord we spotted a Leopard Seal asleep on a piece of ice; they can be individually identified by the patterns of spots on their skin, so we went for a closer look to take some i.d. photos. The Lep looked to be in good condition (nice and fat), and was obliging for our photo requirements! I feel very lucky to have seen such an awesome predator, they are a stunning creature, despite their slightly menacing smile. I certainly wouldn’t want to be a penguin with one of these chaps around!

Further up into the fjord there was a second Lep, again looking nice and plump. Over the summer there was plenty of krill around, and judging by the condition of the seals and penguins it must still be here. This is great news for the coming breeding season as the animals will start off in good condition.

Heading further up the fjord there was plenty  of sea ice, Tommy was driving the first RIB through so I just had to follow the path he had cut, this was quite slow going, but worked well. In a few places there were some ice free patches of water, they were perfectly still and the reflections were stunning, it was a lot quicker to go round the ice in the clear water too. As I was driving Rob got to have a play with my camera and took some really nice photos, so I now have some photos with me in them!

Eventually we reached the equipment depot, where Tommy and Sam went ashore. This was easier said than done as the ice meant you had to lift your legs entirely out of the water to step forwards, it was as if they’d just stepped right out of the ministry of funny walks.

Having picked up the gear we made use of the beautiful weather and went up to the Harker glacier. Sitting a safe distance away we were able to shut down the engines and sit watching and listening. All around the glacier ice was fizzing and popping as bubbles of 10,000 year old air trapped inside it were released from the melting surfaces. Every now and again we would hear a louder crack from the glacier, and sometimes a chunk would fall off and crash into the sea. One larger noise was particularly intriguing as nothing seemed to happen. Then bursting up to the surface like a surfacing submarine we saw the chunk that had broken off, rather than falling off the top it had broken off the submerged part of the glacier.

The drive back was a bit quicker, Ashley driving the lead boat, and having a better idea of the ice conditions. Rob was driving our RIB this time so I was able to take some photos of him driving. It was a stunning day to be out on the water, and really shows us how lucky we are to be able to work (and play) in such an incredibly beautiful place. As in all good stories we were home in time for tea, cakes and lashings of ginger beer. Well, a late lunch and a cuppa anyway!

360 degrees at dawn from the beach outside base

Mt. Hodges attempt

With such beautiful weather I thought it would be an ideal opportunity to get in a winter walk up Mt. Hodges, and get to see the view and take photos of everywhere carpeted in snow. We set off in the morning, having packed crampons and ice axes, guessing that it would probably be quite icy higher up on the windswept slopes. For a change we also decided to head up the back of Hodges, a slightly longer route, but not so steep. This ended up causing us a few issues!

The back of Hodges is quite undulating, and therefore the  snow had settled into all the hollows, and had formed some quite deep drifts. This was difficult to walk through, and unfortunately we didn’t have our snow shoes having thought it would be icy instead. Some of the short, steeper sections of scree had iced up too, and then had a covering of snow, making the conditions quite unstable and difficult to walk up. After almost 3 hrs we had got up to the flats behind Mt Hodges and had our lunch. We still had quite a bit of climbing and potentially more deep snow to go, and with the days being fairly short at this time of the year we decided not to carry on. I think next time I shall go up by the normal route, and possibly take snow shoes too. It was a lovely walk though, and we all had good fun which is the main thing so we weren’t too disappointed.

Don’t let kids have all the fun!

Whilst the campers were away we weren’t going to miss out on our own fun with the snow. Not enough for skiing we made do with sledging instead. Cheap plastic pulks make excellent fast adult sized sledges, some for 2+ people too. Being a mountainous place the trickiest part was finding a slope that didn’t have ‘PAIN’ or ‘BROKEN BONES’ written all over it! Fortunately the nursery ski slopes behind Grytviken are ideal, assuming you avoid the deep ditch and stream handily positioned at the end of the run off area. Have a look at the photos and enjoy the video put together from headcams, and an SLR by our base mechanic Matt Holmes.

  Keeping control just about!

Matt Holmes and me getting some good speed

  Robert the Government Officer enjoying the snow too

  Matt not stopping before the ditch!

  Katie giving the skeleton bob technique a go

And as Sue ‘face plant’ Gregory so well said:
“Growing old is compulsory, growing up is optional”

Happy birthday Katie

As it was Katies birthday earlier this month I though I’d start this blog entry off for my bestest science buddy!

Katie asked if we could go camping for her birthday, so we decided on the sealers cave at Maiviken. We hoped that the view from the cave might be nice for sunrise, and it would be a different place to spend the evening some time. It also tied in nicely with work so I could collect seal scats the following day on the way back!

Having walked over to Maiviken hut we picked up some waste wood for a campfire and headed down to the cave. It was breezy but a nice afternoon and we walked along the beach so I could collect some scats. As we were doing this it started to snow, that put a stop to my work burying everything! I made a nice campfire in the cave entrance, and we sorted out or sleeping bags, thermarests and bivvy bags on the sleeping platform inside the cave; which incidentally has a door and window, properly hobbit style!

After an evening chatting, having dinner and a bottle of red it was time for bed. The cave was surprisingly warm, much warmer than being in a tent for certain.

The following day there was a fresh couple of inches of snow, so my work was out the window. The walk back however was really nice, everywhere always looks beautiful with a covering of snow I think. It wasn’t so deep as to require snow shoes, although we did find the occasional deeper drift to sink into. The walk back down bore valley was very nice, and the sun was shining too. We strolled back into base ready to work the day having had a great night away from base, and a chance to recharge our batteries away from the usual busyness of base.

Milky way panorama

After a day of 30-40kt winds, sleet and snow it was something of a surprise to see crystal clear skies. Having had a look around the web at ideas star photography, in particular looking for a software solution to an equatorial mount I came across the blog entry Sleep is for Sheep. Their vertical panorama looked good and was something I had though about but not yet tried. It was still windy and freezing the knobs off the camera, but worth a go.

Trying to get plenty of detail requires either a slow shutter speed, a wide aperture, or a high iso. All of these have their advantages and disadvantages, and you are restricted to a maximum of a 30sec shutter if you don’t want to get trails, even at this speed you can still see trails on stars further from the poles. This means cranking the iso up to 32,000 and having the aperture as wide as I can go at f/4 on my sigma 10-20mm lens, and a 30sec shutter.

The merged panorama here has come out OK in Photoshop, but it’s not quite accurate enough for my liking, so I’ve been testing a couple of other panorama programs, PTGui and Autostitch. Autostitch wouldn’t do anything, PTGui required some manual input of reference points, but then did a really good job of the merge. Unfortunately it’s only a trial, but is widely regarded as one of the best photomerge programs available, and isn’t too expensive.

There are a few things that could improve the picture I think, have a faster lens and a less ‘noisy’ camera, but obviously these are costly. Other free modifications would be to also do some long exposures of a few minutes on both foregrounds to bring out the detail of the Fenix and two Gentoo penguins which you can only just get a hint of currently. Fortunately I’m here for another 20 or so months so should get plenty more opportunities!

Having played around with some vertical panoramas it was getting a bit on the cold side, but before heading in I thought it would be nice to have a silhouette of Katie, the fisheries biologist who had come outside too, and myself in front of the milky way. It turned out OK too, go team science!