The South Georgia Govermnement is based in the Falklands and at the moment we have some visitors. Instead of cooking a normal Saturday night Sarah invited everyone to Carase House. As I am on earlies I insisted on providing dessert and bread. Below is the apple pie I made to go with homemade vanilla ice cream.

I made a rustic olive herb bread. Or rather it was a team effort as I made the dough and had it rise and then had to leave Ali to actually bake it as I rushed off to take a RAF Mountain Leader up Duse. He had tried yesterday but the route still requires ice axe and crampons so I was given the ‘job’ of taking him up. It was very windy at the top and the conditions were similar to when I went up a few weekends ago in terms of soft snow.

The view down to base shows how much the snow has melted recently.

I rushed on back and finished up making the apple pie before heading out on the jet boat (the RIB was also out with Rob and Matt) with the Government visitors for a tour of Cumberland East Bay. First we went to look at the wrecks on Morraine Fjord then on to Sorling to have a look at the reindeer enclosure. This is a fenced off area showing what the vegetation would be like without the reindeer. The beach was completely covered in Ellie seals which is vastly different from when we were on holiday a few weeks ago when there were only two large males.

Hard to see the Ellies in this picture on the beach!

This picture was taken by Ali a few months ago of the enclosure. As you can see lots of tussock inside and none outside.

Next stop was the Nordenskol Glacier which I mapped at the same time. I will put the figures together to see how much this one as retreated. The clouds were moving really fast over the Greene and Thatcher Peninsulas while down at the Glacier it was flat calm and beautifully sunny. On to Corral where we put a new first aid kit in the hut that Sam had made up and we spotted 20 or so reindeer on the hillside.

Back to base for a clean up and onto Carse House for dinner which is bound to be very tasty. 

Enjoy your weekend.

The executive officer of South Georgia Government is down for a visit and with quite a few little jobs needing doing in Cumberland West Bay we took the opportunity to take him and Robert on a circuit of the Bay. With Sam and myself on the jet boat and Tommy and Matt on the RIB we first stopped at Maiviken. We left off Ali with the seal tagging board which I had rebuilt at Maiviken so he could also check in on the Gentoos and walk back to base. He is checking to see when they start nesting. Seeing as they don’t nest on snow though they probably won’t be nesting for a while.

Next stop was Jason Harbour which I had never fully been into. On the way across the bay the wind had picked up and the boys were bouncing around in the RIB but it calmed down later on so all was good. At Jason we went ashore and Sam left a first aid kit. She got some great pictures.

Grafitti from 1920’s onwards carved into the table in the hut.

The hut was used in the whaling days to store the post. The whalers from Grytviken side would leave the mail in the hut and the whalers from Leith and Stromness would walk over to Jason to pick it up.

A lone reindeer

Next stop was Carlita where there is a hut that needed an updated first aid kit. Richard had never seen the new hut there so was interested in seeing it. It is very plush but unfortunately so large it is hard to keep warm. BAS staff aren’t allowed on the Busen Peninsula for holidays so we have only seen the place when we have dropped off government officers for theirs.

We went onto the Neumayer Glacier as it was 8 months ago that we had done the first ice cliff mapping. As we entered the fjord we came across a very large area of massive icebergs blocking the enterance.

These bergs were grounded in 40m of water which is a underwater morraine. Either side of this morraine it was over 100m deep. We found a way through on the west side it showed up very well on the radar.

We made our way down to the ice cliff and just looking at it we could tell there had been a substantial amount of calving. When we got back to base I inputed the position of the new face onto the GPS program. Some sections of the cliff had not altered at all but others had fallen back almost .3nm. That is almost 1m per day. Also on the west side there had been a continuous ice cliff as two glacial ‘rivers’ met to form a single cliff. Due to massive calving it is now two distinct glacial rivers and ice cliffs.

We stopped in at Harpon for another first aid kit swap out and also installed a bolt on the new door and took away the old door to burn on November 5th bonfire night at base. Last stop was back at Maiviken to leave off Robert and Richard for a night at the hut there. We headed back to base – the boys were quite cold by then after 5 hours in the RIB. We had offered to change out crew but jet boats are for girls apparently… !

All pictures are by Sam.

Spindrift covers the view to base from Brown Mountain flats with Duse poking out

Or should I saw Antarctic! It was a chilly weekend with temperatures dropping to -8C but it felt even colder with the windchill as the winds got to 60knots. I got lots of paperwork done on Saturday and almost finished mum’s table. Sunday the wind dropped enough that I was able to do a circuit of Gull Lake after taking the Museum folk (who arrived on Friday) their bond from this side as they didn’t want to brave the elements.

Matt was over at the musuem when I went over and they needed to clear the snow from the Carr Gallery doors so Team Boat took 25 minutes along with Katie from the Museum and did the job for them. A little bit of community work 🙂