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2 8 t h d e c e m b e r 2 0 0 8
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whew, finally got a chance to put up some photos of the fairly manic last few weeks! i was a fossil bluff and then sky blu (about 400 mies south of Rothera) for "openup" which involves de-winterizing all the equipment and melon huts (pictured above), setting up communications, heating, tents, and food; getting machines going (skiidoos, snowblowers etc), getting fuel out of mostly snow-buried depots, setting up equipment depots, and attempting to clear the 1km blue-ice runway of snow drifts - it was pretty intense work, but we had really good weather (almost now wind) for most of the week which meant that working outside in -15 to -20 was quite pleasant. The only thing we failed to do was to clear the runway, as the hard drifts on it requires the use of a caterpillar vehicle that only mechanics are allowed to drive - all the mechanics were busy preparing for the inaccurately titled "relief" back at Rothera - the RRS James Clerk Ross turning up with nearly 300 tonnes of cargo to be unloaded... above, the two of permanent structures called melon huts which are used for comms, cooking, and sleeping in. the top of the hill behind them is nearly 1600 feet above the camp - i skiied the front, left face of it in a spot of late night skiing one night, after the days work was finally completed - together with Gabriel, the GA in our 3 person open-up group.
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inside the cooking and comms melon hut looks like this.... Riet (featured in previous year's blog posts and returning again for a winter as chef in 2009) is cooking up some delights from sparse ingredients on a couple of primus stoves. ...and me having a play on the "field guitar" which requires a pair of pliers to tune...
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a few pics from our skiing trip. this view is typical of the base of the Antarctic peninsula and towards the main body of the continent - flat, white, nothingness punctuated by occasional nunataks. below - we climb to the top and get ready to ski down. the perspective is hard to gauge from these photos, but you can just see a faint line of dark things over Gabriel's right shoulder - that is the sky blu camp, which we managed to ski all the way to; and on the flat plain to the right of the picture about half way up there is a little black dot that is the skiidoo being driven back to camp by neil ross (one of the scientists working on the Subglacial Lake Ellsworth project and awaiting deployment at that site).
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below, sky blu near midnight at the end of the our ski, with melon huts, a weather-haven rigid tent, some vehicles, and a couple of pyramid tents.
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immediately before and after heading to sky blu, i was doing work on the Larsen C Iceshelf during 3 separate trips over there. 2 trips involved building three automatic weather stations along the length of the iceshelf, for a University of Colorado NSF project which ran out of time to do the work themselves due to the certification and weather problems we had earlier in the season. below is the second weather station myself and matt b built, in it's almost finished state. (photo by matt balmer)
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below is one of 5 Automatic Weather Stations that are run by our met department and which are scattered across the peninsula and ice-shelves. the work that i did on this one involved doubling the height of the mast and adding a new solar radiation sensor array and an Iridium satellite data transfer system. back on base now, and after the fun of relief, we know have a whole load of new people on station including my replacement Celine, and Matt B's replacement Mike - they will need to be trained up over the next few weeks so that i can leave in just less than a month without leaving behind a big mess of misunderstanding... we had a decent christmas although people involved in operations never really have a day off, and we will be working over new year, but never mind - i feel i could do pretty much anything given that i'll be on extended holidays with a month! more next week.... rob
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7 t h d e c e m b e r 2 0 0 8
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Some music - still poorly recorded but gives an idea of the sound of my guitar, a tune i made, a cover of a shins song, and a drum jam. plenty more in the pipeline, as soon as the time comes along to record...
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website by rob webster -
two thousand and eight emedentesathotmaildotcom |
