Today lots of snow has melted as the temperature has been above freezing and we have large puddles and slushy snow all over the place. All the annual maintenance items are due this week according to our computer program called AMOS that is used on base to monitor stock and give us jobs to do everyday! As it is not possible to do all that in one week with snow shovelling, SAR exercises, earlies and training of the government officers it will have to spill over to the next few weeks. It just isn’t always possible to do work on the engines when the jet boats are outside and it is blowing 30 knots plus and snowing. Matt and I chipped away at some of them including the 12 monthly service which required us to clean the turbo’s on the engines.

The process results in lots of noise and smoke while Matt squirted cleaner in the air inlet then water and I was in charge of the revs. He also did the fuel and oil filter changes and checked zincs. When this is done we have a very specific part to service due to being in South Georgia. Penguin feathers make it through the fine seawater filters and into the coolers requiring removal with a welding rod!

I serviced the self righting cylinder and bag as you can see it is inflated on the aft deck. We leave it for a few hours to make sure it doesn’t deflate and holds pressure before repacking it.

Unfortunately the hypalon has got a case of teenage acne! The temperature is too low to fix this outside so we will have to wait until we slip the boat and have it inside in the warm and dry to repair.

Hope you have a great weekend. For us it will be one of doing some inside activities as we have a nasty low pressure system already over us that is meant to last through tuesday with lots of wind and precipitation. Saturday night will be a 70’s party in honour of Pat’s birthday at Carse House so everyone will be busy with fancy dress items tomorrow.

After snowing all day monday and tuesday there was a whole lot of snow to clear on wednesday. As you can see the walkway was so full you couldn’t walk down it. At first when I was shovelling the snow was sticking so after cleaning the blade off I sprayed it with silicone spray and that did the trick!

After a mammouth effort by everyone on base we had made a snow tunnel.

As the windows are fire exits they all had to be cleared as well so Tommy, Kate, Matt and myself waded through the snow which as you can see was waist high on Matt!

We all proceeded to shovel a lot of snow!

Just before lunch every door and window was cleared and the guys had even helped me remove all the snow from the jet boats. Normally it takes me all day on my own to do so I was pretty happy about that.

Ali’s snow hole has grown in size so 4 people can fit in it. This is him backing out of it!

On Monday at our 9am radio sched we called in a SAR exercise. Rob made me the casualty I was apparently skiing when I broken my leg just above my ski boot and had a head injury. He gave KEP comms our location and details and left it to everyone on base to then come and rescue me with the equipment which we have been making and testing over the last few months. I hasten to add I was not injured it was just an exercise. As the two boats were out at the time attempting to take Pat and Sarah on holidays they pretended not to have received the call until 10:30 when they got back. Meanwhile Rob Tommy and I finished making our breakfast then I did a little hut maintenance before we headed to Sorling Beach where we would be picked up. It was snowing lightly and the contrast was not great however, the boys went to the Ellerbeck Ridge where the skiing had been so good on Sunday and had a play. Meanwhile as I felt jinxed I sat with the bags and read my book. When we knew the SAR team was headed our way we skinned to the ‘accident site’ and pretended we had only day bags.

We proceeded to make a shelter with what we had in our bags. We dug into the snow making a level platform using the hill side as one wall, the two side walls we built up with snow and then using our avalanche poles and skis we made a roof. The skis were held up by the snow on the hill and ski poles at the front and then the skins were used to keep the bivy bag roof in place. Some large blocks of snow were used to fill in between the ski poles and viola we had a shelter.

We saved two ski poles to act as a splint on my leg and I sat in the shelter out of the falling snow in the relative warm with my book!

Eventually the team showed up hauling the medical pulk and casualty pulk. They remove the shelter from around me and then loaded me into the pulk attached to the spinal board. Then I was pulled back to the shoreline it was a very comfortable ride.

This is all the SAR kit in biosecurity building when we eventually made it back to base as you can see it looks like we are moving house! All in all it was a very successful SAR

After a sunday morning lie in we headed on skis up a small outcrop to the south of the hut beach to get to the main Sorling Beach. The main beach had two huge male elephant seals and a large flock of cape petrels (I counted 90 in total). We climbed up the ridge coming off Ellerbeck peak the snow conditions were really beautiful – hard pack well frozen.

It was a hot climb (hence the shorts!) but we wanted to get up to the ridge right above the glacier – meanwhile the hard top was starting to get mushy so after a few photos it was time to get in a few downhill runs. We got in another 5 runs or so on a smaller section it took around 5 minutes to make the climb and 30 seconds to get down even with long sweeping turns to make it more worthwhile.

Rob headed back to the hut while Tommy and I headed further south along the beach for the glacier face. The brash ice was piled up on the beach we found a great little lunch spot in amoungst it all unfortunately it didn’t calve with us watching. After Tommy did a few minutes of ice ‘climbing’ on a piece of glacier wall we headed on back to the hut. That evening I think we all reflected on the events of Sept 11 10 years ago.

A great relaxing day of skiing and sightseeing and our last full one of holidays as monday we will be picked up by the boats.

After a relaxing morning at Ocean Harbour we climbed back up the valley to the Col that we had come over on Friday. Leaving Tommy at the bottom Rob and I headed for an unnamed peak to the South. We soon removed our snow shoes and front pointed up the ridge to a point where we couldn’t make it any higher or so we thought.

After attempting a few gulleys we found our way up to a small rock outcrop which we sat on and enjoyed the amazing views out to the Southern Ocean the east coast of the Barff. The sun gleamed on the Nordenskol Glacier to the South, to the North we could see back to base on the Thatcher and the Busen Peninsula with Jason Harbour in Cumberland West Bay. The moutains of South Georgia could be seen for 10’s of miles with such great visibility.

We headed back to Sorling at a fast pace as the boys wanted to go for a ski and snowboard but I wasn’t too into the snow conditions so stayed at Sorling.

As we had brought some firewood I built a fire pit lining it with stones from the beach and read my book enjoying the view to the Nordenskol. Lighting the fire we attempted to watch a sunset but at -10 and with the wood merely smouldering and refusing to burst into some warming flames we decided to call it a day. The leading lights into KEC blinked away as the rest of base enjoyed the normal saturday night three course meal. Another early night for us.

The snow that was meant to come through thursday night didn’t come through till early in the morning so we decided to wait it out in the comfort of the hut at Sorling. The route to Ocean Harbour is 5km up a valley over a col and back down another valley.

 By 11:30am the blue skies had returned and it was time to load up the 30kg rucksacks put on the snowshoes and head up the valley.

We stopped for lunch late in the day at a cairn looking down over Ocean Harbour – I had brought some french cheese for my rivita it was tasty!

After leaving off our large rucksacks at the stone shelter we wrapped up in down jackets and headed out to the point in the hopes of seeing a beautiful sunset. We walked past the wreck of the Bayard and came upon a herd of skittish reindeer. Also on the point was a large number of fur seals, some ellies and a small rookery of penguins which had just come home for the evening and were climbing a long way up the hill. The full moon rose above the wreck casting a glow across the cove.

Rob found a great bivvy site for the night. It was another really cold night when we awoke at 6am to see the beautiful sunrise I left Tommy to get up with the camera to take pictures and stayed snug in my sleeping bag for another couple hours.

What a beautiful first day of holiday! We dropped off our overnight kit at Sorling on the south end of Cumberland East Bay and then stayed on the boats and were dropped off at Corral with our day bags.

From there we walked south along the coast back to Sorling which is about 7km. It took us a good amount of time even without 30kg rucksacks. We wore snow shoes until we had to down climb steep sections as there are 3 steep sided valley to traverse and two coves. The first cove is called Sadebugten and the ones after that seems to be un named.

One of the coves had a small number of penguins.

The reindeer tracks were handy for finding a route. (picture by Sam)

Eventually we dropped down onto Sorling Beach on the North side and made it to out overnight gear. Poor Tommy ended up falling into a stream and filling his boot up which we never got dry so he had frozen boots for the next 4 days.

The sky had only a small number of clouds and was brilliant blue which was very pleasant during the day but made for a cold night around -10 we recon. I set about melting snow for water while the guys dug a deep well through the snow to get to a stream. By the time we used the water from the nalgene bottle there was about 5mm of ice on the inside of the bottle!

Our route from Corral to Sorling to Ocean Harbour

What a stunning day to go out boating. We dropped Pat off on La Manche and Saga Sea to do transhipment paperwork.

Then using the food scraps to encourage the birds (a bit naughty) the back deck of Prion became a Paparazzi photography point! You can’t see Sam and Ali’s cameras but there lenses are very very long!

The bird they were particularly interested in was the Cape Petrel (picture by Ali). You can see more about the bird at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Petrel

The afternoon was spent doing some boat maintenance projects unfortunately I didn’t get out for skinning as I am going on holidays tomorrow so had some things to wrap up. Doc School was a reminder of how our stretcher system works. On my way up to Everson Ali gleefully showed off a snow hole he had dug in one of the large snowdrifts that he can fully get inside of – I see him improving it over the next few days 🙂

Wow do I really need that much kit. I still have to put on the skis, snowshoes, plastics, pack the stove fuel etc etc. Going to be another heavy load to lug up and down the beautifuls hills of South Georgia! We are off to the Barff Peninsula for 5 days of skiing and snowshoeing camping on the east side of the Peninsula in the hopes of getting some stunning sunrises over the Southern Ocean.

On Sunday morning Ali and myself took Pat out to Frio and Dongsan for a transhipment inspection. By the time he had finished the weather was becoming quite miserable – sleety etc. However, there were some Cape Petrels which Ali wanted to photograph so we stayed out a little longer to get some pictures for him. With a perfect swell pattern on the way out to pick Pat back up we got a new speed record on the jet boats of 34.2 knots!

The last few days we got a huge snowfall. It started Sunday evening and continued till the early hours of tuesday morning. The snow was wet and heavy like what we all Sierra Cement in california. I was on earlies on Monday morning so there was alot of digging to do on the veranda.

For dinner I decided to make ravioli as I had brought some wholemeal pasta flour south. I used the left over turkey from Saturday and mixed that with spinach, onion and eggs to put in the pasta. A lot of work much easier to buy it! Served it with a vegetable pasta sauce and some avacados with a balsalmic reduction sauce.

We have mince meat that is really very bad quality and seeing as no one can stomach it I spent the day cooking it so that we can dispose of it. All out meat has to be cooked so that the wildlife don’t get any possible diseases from raw meat. This is also why we are not meant to have meat on the bone. As the bones would have to be incinerated.

This morning the whole base got involved in digging out as we were basically stuck in Everson and there was no way to get in the boatshed without a lot of digging!

After the doors and veranda it was time to attack the jet boats.

So basically all day involved using a shovel and then some boat work.

It was a windy but absolutely stunning day shame we weren’t able to go sking as the track is closed as there are avalanches coming down off the slopes of Duse. We have started watching the series Pacific by the same director etc as Band of Brothers it is a great series.

This morning not too early Rob, Tommy and myself headed up to the Duse Plateau to find some snow. After a while we found a great slope with perfect snow if not a little thin in places.

Poor Tommy had a massive fight with a rock and caused some damage to his board but with his helmet on his head survived!

It was a really warm day and we ended up doing 4 or 5 runs after sitting at the top for 1/2 hour enjoying the view out Cumberland Bay.

After getting back to base around 3:45 I had a drink and then headed back out as the tide was really low leaving a wide open beach perfect for a run over to Grytviken and back. Then time for a sauna as someone had put it on earlier in the afternoon before Saturday night dinner. Pretty great day all in all.