Amery Angst

One of the big jobs over the summer was the retrieval of a whole lot of data from several sites that are logging temperatures on the Amery Ice Shelf. The Amery Ice Shelf lies between Davis and Mawson (around 250km from Davis). It is basically where the Lambert Glacier (the largest glacier on earth) pushes ice out over the ocean. Think big, flat (apart from the occasional enormous crevasse), white and cold. Think one and a half hour helicopter trip one way from Davis. Big problem (as always in Antarctica) is weather. We need a very long period of really good weather in order for the helicopters to get us out there. We needed 12+ hours at each site to download all the data logged over the last year, which meant we needed a really good 24 hour weather window to make the trip worthwhile. Our beloved forecasters did their best, but they had very little data from the region to go on. Basically I got all the gear together ready to go (heaps of it - lots of electronics gear and a whole lot of camping equipment organised by our FTO, Tim) weighed it and then sat around for days wondering when we were gonna get the OK....
Eventually we got a small window and so we decided to cache a lot of the equipment at the edge of the ice-shelf on Sansom Island. We sent two tradies (Neville the chippy and Hughsey the plumber) from Davis with the helicopters, ad they absolutely loved it! The coastline was spectacular there and back. I had seen the coast as far as Zhong Shan, but their descriptions left me champing at the bit to get on with it and get out to do this work. It was to become (another) pretty serious case of “hurry up and wait”!

World Tour of East Antarctica

There is an experiment that is run by the AAD at the Chinese station Zhong Shan. Zhong Shan is located in another bit of Antarctica that is not covered by ice and now - the Larsmann Hills. Luckily, I am the one tasked with keeping the experiment running, so it means I got on the first helicopter trip down to the Zhong Shan base. This first trip meant a little bit of work for me at Zhong Shan, but there was a lot of diplomatic stuff to do too. The Larsemann Hills is a very popular little area for putting bases. There are a lot of freshwater lakes, and a reasonable, relatively close, ice runway. Unfortunately there is a lot of multi-year sea-ice there, so it is very difficult to re-supply by boat. Anyway, India have started looking at setting up a base there (they have semi-permanently erected shelters known as “melons” and “apples”) on an island south of the other bases in the Larsemann's. The other bases are all within 1km of each other and include Law/Racovita base (joint Australian/Romanian), Zhong Shan (Chinese) and Progress II (Russian). There is also a former Russian base (Progress I) a little further inland. Anyway, we got to see all of them in one day thanks to the Davis Helicopters (the other bases don't have Helicopters - I wonder how they get anything done...).
Anyway, here is a picture of our first stop - the new Indian base. I guess you can see why they are called melons! The circular ones are called apples for similar reasons. After finding no-one was home at the Indian Base (no-one seemed to know when or if they were planning to be there this summer), we headed on to the Law Base.We had a quick stop at Law. One of the apples there had been completely destroyed, and had been blow throughout the surrounding hills. We did our best to clean up the mess, but we were running relatively short on time as we had to get to Zhong Shan at a reasonable hour (I think they are on Beijing time!). It is a bit nerve-racking rocking up in Helicopters to a foreign base (at that stage they had no re-supply, so we were the first visitors they had (apart from the occasional Russian) since the Australians visited on a winter traverse. They all seemed very happy - I guess they must have had a good winter. After the obligatory cup of Chinese tea, I got on with my geeky work stuff, while everyone else got a tour of the station. After the completion of our work we were treated to some very good food and were plied with some of their beer, (called REEB - they get it for free as the brewery basically sponsors Chinese Antartic Research Expeditions - CHINARE). I had a couple of beers, but figured it was best to keep well and truly sober, so when offered more I attempted to explain the great Australian tradition of “one for the road”. They laughed as I tucked a can into my jacket and headed off (on foot) to Progress II, so I think they got it. Here's a picture of Ray and myself with our Chinese counterparts at Zhong Shan). Finally we got to he Russian base. We were vary wary walking in, as we had received no response to our fax (the only method of communication we have with the Russians) so had no idea if they knew we were coming or not. The Russian station was very quiet, but the workers (busy completing an impressive workshop come power-house). We were finally approached by a magnetometer scientist who spoke quite good English. He as very apologetic and informed us that the Russian Station leader was still in bed unwell. We offered our doctor from Davis who had come with us, but were informed that they had two doctors already at Progress and that the illness was simply due to it having been the Station Leader's birthday the previous day!Anyway, we were shown around by the Russian's, who were remarkably good natured about us rocking up out of the blue! They keen to tell us about their station and their lives back in Russia, which was really quite amazing. Eventually the Station Leader joined us and we had a Russian beer and a bit of vodka (some had more than others) before completing our tour and hopping back in the helicopters ready for home. It seemed to me that our arrival may have marked the end of what was probably a fairly emotional winter at the Russian base, after one of their communications technicians died of heart failure during the year. There seemed to be a lot more smiles as we waved goodbye than there had been when we arrived. Perhaps they were just happy to get rid of us meddling Australians...As we returned to station, the pilots buzzed the station buildings at the Station Leaders request and we walked into the bar with a couple of slabs of REEB much to the delight of some of the summer tradies, who finished it all at lightning pace! It was a phenomenal day. I have to stop and think sometimes about just how incredibly lucky I am to be here experiencing all this!

Saturday Night Dinners

Given that it is somewhat difficult to pop down to a cafe or pub when you are living on an Antarctic Station, it is common to run a special event of a Saturday Night. Often these take the form of Saturday Night Dinners - Where the chef makes a little extra effort, and we put out table cloths, block the windows (it is light 24-7 over summer, so the candles on the table would seem a bit superfluous if we didn't do this) and everyone has pretty much a sit-down restaurant-style meal. With almost 60 people on station it is a big job for the chef. People are rostered on for Saturday duties (helping out and cleaning up around the station) and normally this includes one or two extra people to help in the kitchen (along with those who help out anyway just 'cause they are nice). I was rostered on to help setting up for the dinner, so set the table fairly meticulously and put on some smart black pants and white shirt and went around trying to set a fairly high bar for whoever was rostered on to do it next time. I even grabbed a pepper grinder and went around to all the (very closely packed) tables asking if people wanted cracked pepper with their salmon or steak. It was also a bit of a Birthday celebration for Clare (one of our Comms Operators - later known as the golden voice of Davis radio). Anyway, a good time was had by all, and I got plenty of compliments for going the extra mile with the whole waiting on tables thing.

Zolotov Is

Now quad trained and ready to go, we took off with Tim, Didier and Dave (the pilot now stranded at Davis waiting for a plane to fly!) and headed to the penguin rookery on Zolotov Island, near the Sorsdal Glacier to the south of Davis station. One of the main reasons for this trip was to check sea-ice conditions in areas where it traditionally melts out early. It was great fun belting along on the quads. Next to the Glacier, the sea-ice was like wet glass! It was impossible to keep the quads straight, I am not sure how they managed to gather any momentum with he wheels having so little traction. Occasionally you come across things that have the unfortunate ability of providing a lot of friction very quickly. Tide cracks around 30cm wide were pretty common, as were small bands of blown snow that sit on the ice (kind of like small Sastrugi). If you hit one of these while you were side-ways, you would know about it! Anyway, we got to see a fair bit of the country to the South of station, a whole lot of penguins and (by Antarctic standards at least) a small glacier. Here's a pic showing a whole lot of Adelie Penguins on Zolotov, with the Sordsal glacier in the background. Riding quads on sea-ice along the edge of a glacier - only in Antarctica!

Field Training

I was lucky enough to be prioritised for early field training. This is good because it means I will be allowed out in the field sooner rather than later, and that we get to train on the quad bikes that are used to get around Davis Station when the sea-ice is thick enough. It was great to be kitted out with all the gear and head off for a good look around the Vestfold Hills. The crew were a pretty mixed bunch (as per usual at Antarctic Bases), but included 2 weather forecasters, one fixed wing pilot, the station Doctor and myself. It was fantastic! The quads make it easy to cover distance really quickly. We belted through the bergs that get stuck fast in the sea-ice to the north of Davis. There was heaps of penguins and the occasional skua to keep us company. Our field training offficer (FTOs are renowned for their vanity) taught us all how to look really good simply by carrying an ice axe. Michelle (one of the forecasters) managed to tip one of the quads over on a bit of steep rifted sea ice. Here is a link to her blog on the topic: how to roll a quad bike. We ended up staying the night in our bivvy bags not far from Bandits Hut. I had my first antarctic snow-cone and spent half the night tying to get a photo of a snow petrel (see above). Also, here's a little picture of me beginning to look a little bit scraggy, but sill very cool, with the aid of my trusty ice-axe.

Gardner Walk II

The second time I went to Gardner was with Didier, who has spent the winter at Davis as the LIDAR physicist (I will explain about the LIDAR in another post sometime), and he was an excellent guide. It was a fantastic evening and we set out from around 10pm to have a look around and take some pictures while the sun was low in the sky. It was quite fantastic, with the possible exception of climbing down a very steep guano covered slope to get to a little bit of ice clinging to the far side of the island. Anyway, the picture at the start is of some nesting Adelie Penguins and the bright colored stuff in the background is the buildings of Davis Station. And here is a panorama (including Dider) taken on the far side of Gardner.

Sea Ice

I had better explain a bit about sea-ice, so people understand a bit about what we are walking around on. When it gets cold enough (below -1.8 degrees) for long enough, the salt water in the polar regions freezes from the top down. Firstly, "grease ice" appears on the surface (some is visible around the bits of solid ice in the photo above). It is so thin, it actually bends without breaking as waves go past. It looks like a darker or lighter patches on the water, depending on what angle you are on. This then turns to "frazzle ice", with sugary crystals of ice floating on-top of the water. Often as the ice becomes thicker, wind and wave action separate the ice into round flat chunks, called "pancake ice" (see blog entry here). Finally the whole thing clumps together and freezes solid to form true sea-ice. As he ice becomes thicker, it effectively insulates the water below from the cold air above, and the rate of growth slows. Eventually the growth almost completely stops at around 1.7 to 1.8 metres. According to our AAD field manual, 200mm of ice is OK to walk on, 400mm of ice is OK to drive quads on, and 600mm of ice is OK to drive the tracked vehicles (Hagglunds) on. The ice we walk over to get out to Gardner Island is called "fast ice" because it is attached fast to land. It is really solid ice, but continually develops cracks at the land/sea interface due to tidal action (tide cracks). Now it is melting (degrading from above) and rotting (degrading from below), care needs to be taken crossing it. You occasionally fall through melted sections to a depth of around 30cm, so it is a good idea to wear water-proof boots! This pic shows some of the melt pools on the surface of the fast ice near Gardner Island.

Gardner Walk

While the sea-ice is in, it is only a 3km walk from Davis to Gardner Island, where there is a large Adelie penguin rookery. We were allowed to head out there, provided we took someone ho was field trained with us. So one morning a small group of us cornered our field training officer and got him to take us out there. It was fantastic. The sea ice is pretty weird to walk on and very slippery in places, but at a measured thickness of 1.5 metres it was pretty much bomb proof! We got to Gardner with few worries. Our group comprised Martin (Met. Tech), Tim (Field Training Officer), Bri (Met Forecaster), Kane (Chippy), Spence (Plumber) and Myself. Once we got out there we started photographing the penguins as they came up to us. Eventually we all were quietly laying on the snow and were pretty much surrounded by the curious little birds. They seem almost fearless. They are keen to get within about a metre of people, but are then wary of going any further. Here's a photo of one of the birds stopping to have a look around as it passed between Martin and myself.
Basically it was great to get out and away from station to see real antarctic stuff even if it was for only three hours. The walk was good excercise and good practice at getting around on the sea-ice with and without boot-chains and ice-axes. Here's a final picture of us heading back, with a vague but discernable ice-halo forming around the sun.

Dingle Road

To give people who are not field trained (i.e. only those of us that haven't wintered at Davis in the last couple of years) an opportunity to get outside (and hence get some excercise) the station management team have allowed access to Dingle Road, so called because it heads to Dingle Lake. It goes past many of my radar (within 1km or so of station), before meandering up Heidemann Valley and turning a corner and rising a little to get to Dingle Lake. So one afternoon when we had nothing on, a group of us headed out for a walk in incredibly bright sunshine. The sunshine heated the rocks of the Vestfold Hills that surround Davis to a much higher temperature than the air, resulting in obvious heat-haze on the horizon, despite the cold.
Dingle Lake is one of the hyper-saline lakes in the Vestfolds that never freezes. It is much slatier to taste than sea water and the small mouthful I had made me feel decidedly queezy during the walk back. Anyway, it is a suprisingly picturesque walk despite the lack of vegetation and being confined to the roughly graded track. There is still enough snow around to make many of the
hills look attractive and the rocks themselves are often very clearly patterned due to their make-up or scarred by glacial action. Anyway, the picture above shows some of the rocks coverered by the salty water at the edge of the lake. And here's a picture of the people
we went with, including plumbers, carpenters, a boiler maker, a weather forecaster, a plant operator, a radio tech, a radio operator and one electronics engineer (me)!

Work Problems

On my first real day of work managed to pick up some problems with a few of the experiments. Some had been neglected for a while as Dave had been getting treatment on his leg and would be unable to do anything with them regardless. Anyway, it was a bit of a baptism of fire throughout the first month. Trying to catch up on everything that had been neglected, do some of the annual stuff that needed to be done (Dave had deliberately put-off some stuff so he could show me how to do it) and getting my first real look at a lot of the hardware I am dealing with. I know not too many people would be interested in exactly what I am working down here, so I will keep it short - Magnetic Instruments (deleting small changes and variations in the local magnetic field), Optical Instruments (looking at lot of the different weird lights that come from the sky when it is dark down here) and Radars (Lots of different types but they are all pointing upward, looking at different parts of the atmosphere. Anyway, here is a picture of one of the 33MHz meteor detection antennas that are going to be replaced this year. If you are really interested (and who wouldn't be) you can look at some of the data it produces by clicking on the "Recent Observations" link from here.

Slushie

Everyone on station takes turns being slushie. There are two slushies everyday, and they help out the chef by cleaning up some of the common areas, doing dishes and generally trying to help out. Some people complain about it, but really it isn't too hard and can be a bit of fun. There was also plenty of people not on the slushie roster who were happy to help out occasionally, which makes things run smoother. I was rostered on for the very first day of the slushie roster. I spent the morning cleaning out the bar and lounge area (called "The Wallow") paying particular attention to the coffee machine that I intend to be using on a fairly regular basis. once all he cleaning and tidying was done, I helped put out the food for lunch and after lunch, we cleared up did some dishes, ran the burnable garage up to the incinerator and had a couple of hours off before sorting out dinner. There are a lot of different attitudes towards having to do slushie duties, but I think that I actually look forward to doing something different for a day occasionally.

Saying Goodbye to BOB

For those not keeping notes BOB was the name we gave to the Aurora Australis (Big Orange Boat!). Saying goodbye to the boat was a fairly big event. The boat comes twice a year and when it slowly made it's way out of Davis Harbour, it was like waving goodbye to our only link to the rest of the world. It was a strange feeling. Happiness at finally being here and able to get into the work, but a hint of sadness at the departure of Dave and the rest of the people on the boat heading on to Mawson, or back to Hobart. Anyway, the picture is of one of my workmates deep in thought as the boat sails away. The smoke is from flares that were activated to say goodbye to the ship. It was a beautiful night, and very warm outside. Here's a photo of me (looking marginally more scruffy than I did in Australia, outside at 10pm in Antarctica waving goodbye to the ship in a T-Shirt. I am absolutely thrilled to be here, but already missing my wife and family.

Goodbye Dave

I have been told that I don't have to do any more work regarding re-supply as it is more important to get information out of Dave's head. Re-supply is going really well and I was asked if I would have had enough time with Dave if the boat left tonight (only three whole days after it arrived!). Anyway, I said hat it really wasn't long enough, but I wasn't going to expect the ship to hang round on my account, so I spent the entire day in Dave's room as people continued to pack his gear and generally say their goodbyes. I took heaps and heaps of notes and tried to record bits of it on an MP3 player. Dave gave me an absolute heap of information on a removable hard-drive and suggest that I get in quick and ask if I could move into his room (it has a much better view than mine). I was thankful that he had come out of the anesthetic without any real grogginess and was able to sped an entire day simply passing the information on. Eventually we had to call it a day, and Dave was assisted out to the heli-pad and loaded into a chopper to be carried out to the ship. He intended to wave to all the poor people that were heading out to the boat across the sea-ice in land vehicles. Here's a photo of Dave on his way! I think I'm going to be busy.

Bad News

After knocking off of my fuel line duties at 8am, I helped out unloading a couple of containers of food (mostly frozen meat and a lot of cheese that looked like it was fairly high quality stuff). Upon coming back in and having lunch, I found the personal effects had been unloaded from the boat and so began moving into my room. Not long after this, Ray (the supervising scientist pictured in my last blog) knocked on my door with a worried look on his face. I immediately assumed that the other Engineer who should have been showing me the ropes over summer was heading home. This proved to be a fair assumption, but Ray explained further that Dave (the other Engineer) was going to be put under a general anesthetic in a few hours, and have his leg set in plaster. So I had a few hours to talk to Dave and absorb as much of his wisdom as possible before he went into surgery. I was surprised that I coped so well with this news, but the prospect of doing the work of two engineers over the summer was a daunting challenge. Anyway, I had a really good chat with Dave, while other wintering expeditioners ran around us packing his stuff up ready to head back to Australia. It was quite surreal and more so considering lack of sleep had left me a little drained. I was very pleased to get a break by the time 4pm came around and Dave was whisked off into surgery, but I hoped that we wouldn't be too groggy in the morning and I would be able to get some more info out of him then when was a bit fresher!

Fuel Line

During the re-supply I was rostered on to work on the fuel line on the 4-8 shift. The first night I was on from 4pm to 8pm(not too bad), then back on the next morning from 4am to 8am (a bit worse). Never really had to do shift-work before and coupled with the fact that we were only getting about 4 hours of near-darkness, I was pretty tired at times during the process. The station has close to 1 million litres of diesel in the fuel farm, and this gets topped up during re-supply by pumping off the ship through a hose of up to 3km length into the tanks. There is a pump on the ship and a booster pump on the sea-ice, which is where I was stationed. When we started work at 4am DBT (Davis Bastard Time = GMT+7 Hours) the sun was just coming up. It was quite pretty. There were a few Adele penguins wandering around, and they weren't too sure what to make of the fuel hose! Here is photo of on of the Physicists down here who was working with me at the fuel farm (note the friendly helpers in the background!).

A beer with the winterers

The guys that have been at Davis all year, invited the new winterers into the bar at Davis on the first night we arrived. We were allowed to walk in from the ship, which was fantastic (see the pic).
The winterers had kindly moved out of the main living quarters and set in the newly commissioned Summer Accommodation Module (SAM). I think they were happy in there as it is more modern, quite comfortable and they had all put work in to getting it on line. Anyway, we were basically able to move into our new rooms straight away. It was great to have a quiet beer (for them it was probably the rowdiest beer they have had since the previous summerers had left last February). By the end of the evening I was quite excited about spending more than a year in at Davis. The bar at Davis looks fantastic! There is plenty of history around the place including a feature wall behind the bar made from a bit of the original station that was built at Davis. The bar is named Nina's after one of the Huskies that used to be an integral part of many (especially Australian) antarctic expeditions.
Met the guy who I was replacing and found that his ankle injury (originally described as a "sprain", then "worse than first thought") was now "a spiral fracture of the fibula. His ankle had gone all kinds of weird colors, but he was pretty confident he would be up and walking around in a week or so.

Finally!

The arrival at Davis was fantastic. Flares were set off and we had a great day to weave through some fantastic bergs and ram into the very solid fast ice that surrounds Davis. It took a surprisingly short time to get to Davis from Casey, due to a large number of open leads. One in particular close to Davis had been caused by a massive ice-berg (>80km long) being blown through the sea-ice and hence clearing it out of the way. It was great to see what will be my home for the next 15 months or so. I was at the very front of the boat when I first began to make out the brightly colored buildings of Davis. Here is my first pic of my new home. And here is one of the ice-bergs that welcomed us.

Melbourne Cup

The second special occasion on the boat (i.e. an occasion where we are allowed to have three beers each) was the Melbourne Cup. We all gathered around, dressed up (at least people did) and listened to a recording of the call of the race that was taken using an MP3 player to record from a HF radio. If you know anything about the operation of long range HF it is probably obvious that we had no idea who the actual winner was at the end of the call, and so had to rely on results that were emailed in over a satellite link! Anyway, it was an evening of much mirth and mayhem. It is amazing how good some of the costumes were considering the very limited resources on the ship. Here is a picture of one of the many ingenious hats/fascinators that were produced!

Helicopter Ops

There was ice and snow all over the boat this morning some of it was quite spectacular. This is an icicle attached to the life raft.
The helicopters are flying to Casey. It is something like 60 nautical miles and is about 1.5 hours round tip. They are carrying gear and people in and out. It is a huge operation. Everyone involved is very busy and frantic. Those that aren't really involved are bored out of their minds. We are not moving, so there is no new ice to look at and no chance of seeing any wildlife unless it is silly enough to come up to the ship (now often referred to as BOB=Big Orange Boat) to see what is going on. We have 3 helicopters on board, two squirrels that will stay with us at Davis for the summer and a big S76 that is going to go home on the ship.
For those of you that aren't helicopter geeks, this is what an S76 looks like:
and this is a squirrel:

Boredom

Sitting on the boat can be quite boring. I have my email set-up on board now. It gets sent/recieved via a satellite link-up three times a day and we are limited to 30KBytes per message. I have actually done some work while on board the Aurora, that is how bored I was getting. Wrote some code that seemed to impress my boss, but suspect it is full of bugs as my head is still a bit groggy and I didn't really have any ability to thoroughly test it. Got an email from my boss indicating that the guy I am replacing (lets call him Dave) had slipped and badly sprained an ankle, which meant that he might not be available for field work for a while!
The ship is totally surrounded by near solid ice as far as the eye can see. Here is a (>180 degree) panorama of the ice from the side of the Aurora. It is stark, beautiful and fantastic, but a little boring after a couple of days!