What a stunning saturday. I went for a 90 minute run up around Gull Lake then along Brown flats to the helicopter and back to base (around 10km). It was challenging in several ways – using different muscles to skinning, the earth was liquid from the amount of melt water saturating it and when I got to snow banks the icy crust when I broke through chafed my skin above my trainers causing some bleeding on my shins! However, it was a glorious day and great to be out in my trainers, shorts and tshirt and be almost too hot! Saturday night we had a pizza dinner which was very tasty cooked by Rob followed by a pub quiz which our team came 4th in.

Sunday Rob and I finally made it to Osmic which is a little hill on the north west side of the Morraine Fjord on the Thatcher – around 20km round trip from base. On one side it overlooks the Morraine fjord and the other Hesterslatten. To get there we had to take off our boots and wade across the frigid (snow meltwater) Penguin River. It was a stunning view of Paget and the hanging glacier at the back of Hesterslatten however, a very cold wind picked up so after eating lunch we headed quickly back down. As we made our way through a bank of tussock surrounded by scree we heard the sound of a burrowing petrel. Rob pulled out his sound recorder and took a recording of the sound the petrel made before we made a quick exit to the scree as we didn’t want to risk damaging any of the burrows. A skua circled above waiting to see if it could score a quick snack of the petrels.

Again it was time to wade across Penguin River despite trying to find a better crossing we ended up at the same place. We heard some Sooty Albatross calling from the rocky cliffs overlooking the river at the end of Brown Mountain. While Rob headed up the scree with his sound recording I stayed by the river and watched over 50 skua enjoying bathing in the river.

It was a great scene as now spring is in full swing the place was alive with skuas, kelp gulls, giant petrels, sooty albatross, terns, king penguins, ellie seals, fur seals all getting on with their lives.

Unfortunately I found Rock Sucker’s (Tommy’s name for the starving ellie pup from last weekend) carcass very close to where we had left him. Very sad…

There were a few one year old widges that must have been born here last year on the beach sleeping amongst the tussock. I quite like them when they are small like that still fierce but very puppy like.

When we got back the kitchen smelt of roast lamb which Matt H decided to cook up. The lamb came from the Poncets who have lots of sheep on Beaver Island in the Falklands. They brought it down on the Hans Hansson as a present for base. It was very tasty and a great way to end the weekend.