Coming down the hill to Maiviken hut picture by Sarah Lurcock

Today was the half marathon which is 13 miles and as we live on a mountainous island involves 1500 feet of ascent, scree slopes, bogs, fur seals, elephant seals, tussock and burnap (prickly seed that sticks to everything). The course is base behind the football pitch up to Gull Lake across the dam up to the summit of Brown Mountain along the ridge down the other side of the mountain back to the fuel farm at base then out to Maiviken hut and back.

I dragged myself out of bed with a fever and against the Drs advice took to the start line. I wrunkled (basically run with some walking) and completed the course in 2 hours 46 minutes. I think I might have been able to do it about 15 or 20 minutes faster had I been well. When Claire comes through from Rothera maybe we will re do it with the Dr and Rob. Sams broken foot is still not healed enough and Rob was smarter than myself and stayed at base feeling ill. Time to sleep before my parents arrive on base tomorrow for their short visit.

Alastair was the first winterer to finish being preceeded by Hugh who was only 17 seconds off the course record, Lee (a singlehanded sailor who is tied up across the way at the moment) and Theis. Hugh, Lee and Theis are all over the age of 40! Shame on the young ones 🙂

Another busy day at KEP for boating. By 10:00am we had had all four boats on the water. A pick up of hut workers at Sorling followed by checking the rat boxes on the Greene after a swap from jet boat to RIB. There were 4 rats so we only have 10 more to go from that peninsula. While a team of four of us did this Matt Kenney and Rob took the Dr and Kieron out to a large fishing reefer. The reefer had steamed here from 480 miles to the NE with a potential case of malaria aboard wanting our Dr to check the patient. The crew were Russian and Sam said their chart keeping with the crews vitals were better than some she has seen done by NHS nurses!

After this flurry of activity I ended up in bed for the rest of the afternoon as I have come down with the virus that is going around base. A general feeling of lethargy and a mild fever.

The wednesday night ‘movie’ was Thies and Kicki (who are back from a month in the North of the island) slideshow of the last 20 years of cruising all over the world. They have some stunning pictures and experiences to share. Unforutnately they will be leaving us after spending two years in South Georgia at the end of the month. It will be quite a loss to the KEP residents when they leave us.

Wanderer III was made famous by Eric & Susan Hiscock during two cicumnavigations in the 1950’s. In their book, ‘Around the World in Wanderer III’ the couple set out from Yarmouth, England(1952) and circle the globe by way of the West Indies, the Panama Canal, Tahiti, Samoa, Fiji, New Zealand,Australia, South Africa, the Ascension Islands and the Azores, returning home three years later. Wanderer III has completed five circumnavigations and is sailed by Thies and Kicki Matzen. The designer was Jack Giles and she was built by William King in 1952. The keel and deadwood are elm, the stem, sternpost, frames, carlines and deckbeams are English oak. Iroko planking with cedar decks and a mahogany interior. She is sailed everywhere as the engine is hard pushed to do much pulling 7.2 tons and they only carry 20l of fuel. Her LOA is 30 feet with a beam of 8 foot 5 inches.

Yesterday was a very busy first day back at work after holidays. We started at 8am with a quick RIB trip over to the Greene to check the rat boxes and rebait them. The wind was at the upper end of our limit so the beach landing was a little exciting. There was one rat to bring home with us so we have now caught 6 over there (14 to go). Then as we were exiting the fjord on the horizon we saw the Sill (fishing boat) that had our beaker (Katie) and another BAS beaker aboard. We dropped off the RIBs and jumped on the jet boats and went out to pick up 30 boxes of cargo, drop off Rob and Kieron to check the dimensions of a net (there are strict net size controls in the fisheries), pick up Sue and Katie and transfer everyone back ashore.

Next job was to quickly have lunch and walk 7km to Maiviken to catch 100 seal pups and weigh them as it was the 7th of the month. Some are now very large I think 16kg was the biggest, they are bitey and fast. We were all pretty knackered by the end of it. We then had a missing person (one of the museum staff) so we split into two groups of three. One group went and checked the 10 rat boxes on the beach at the other end of Maiviken and we went to the other end and then all 6 of us walked up the valley to the hut yelling the persons name. This wasn’t an exercise and it all went well with us finding the person at the hut without a radio. So by the time we got home it was 7pm and time for dinner and for me bed.

This morning I was on earlier so was up at 5:45am in time to see a beautiful sunrise. A day of maintenance on the boats, paperwork and cooking. I made a slow roast pork leg joint, roast potatoes, brocolli, onion gravy, roasted mixed veg, sausages, crackling and stuffing. Followed by steamed treacle sponge and custard.

Oh I forgot to mention the beautiful chocolate cupcakes that awaited me with candles made by Alastair and Sam yesterday morning. They were not only good loooking but extremely tasty for eggless cupcakes!

I got back on Sunday night from 5 day holiday on the Barff Peninsula which is across Cumberland East Bay from base. We were dropped off by boat at Sorling which is a cove with a little hut right near the Nordenskjold Glacier. After a 6 hour hike with 28kg (61.6 lb) rucksacks on our backs we arrived at St Andrews Bay.

The hut at St Andrews

It is a 14km hike via Hound Bay so there is quite a lot of height gain and loss involved. It was a very low cloud, misty day with reindeer appearing out of the gloom making it feel like walking in Scotland. We walked past some giant pretrel nests and Hound Bay was teeming with fur seal pups like at Maiviken. The last bit down into the Bay is very steep and my knees felt it! Large pieces of scree which were quite slippy underfoot.

The next day (Thursday) was my birthday it was a stunning hot sunny day with bright blue skies. We got kitted up in waders and headed out to spend a day at the colonies. The waders leaked but it made no difference as being in amoungst 150,000 penguins more than made up for it. There were elephant seals, fur seals, penguins, skuas, giant petrels, reindeer, sheathbills. There were many different sounds – the penguin chicks ‘whistled’ and the adults had a harsher sound to them which as Rob said – ‘how do they have so much to talk about!. There was signs of new life and death scattered over the beach with penguin carcasses, adults sitting on eggs and chicks molting their brown baby fluff away to adult black, white and orange feathers. We went over to Clark Point and climbed up a outcrop surrounded by wave cut platforms and topped with dense tussock grass.

We sat in tussock chairs and admired the view before heading back for skeds. Rob cooked me a 3 course ration pack meal and we sat up talking for quite a while.

Thursday night a front came in and it was raining and blowing at dawn it had not changed so it was a morning of sleep for Rob (till lunch) and reading a book for me. In the afternoon it was still drizzling a bit but we went out for a walk up towards the Heaney Glacier and explored the fringes of sadly receding glacier. Under ice streams bubble up like springs at the end of it creating a flood plain with many little islands which the penguins gathered around. The sides of the glacier were covered in scree with ice arches and caves.

On saturday it was a hot beautifully sunny day so again we wondered over to the colony and Clark Point. We sunbathed on the point and watched a shag and some sheathbills who were very curious about us. After lunch we loaded our large packs back on and hike up through St Andrews Col and over to Hound Bay. It was a hot day for it taking us 2 hours to get to the Col where we were happy for the relief of mostly downhill to Hound Bay.

That night we camped on the edge of the Bay up the hill slightly with a view of Cape Vakop.

Sunday morning was a 6:30am start with a quick breakfast before hustling in dense mist/cloud over to Sorling Hut for a 10am pick up before the wind and swell picked up making it impossible to safely get the RIB to us. We witnessed a large section of the Glacier break away adding to the swell.

So a relatively relaxing time across the Bay with amazing wildlife watching experiences. A great way to spend my 33rd birthday!

My image upload tool is broken on the blog so I can’t show you pictures of monday and tuesday work.

Basically monday involved attempting to fix an old repair on the RIB which didn’t work so it now deflates quickly. More successfully in the afternoon we moved all the emergency supplies from disco house to the old jail (which has be refurbished). The emergency supplies are what we need if a cruise ship is abandonned and we end up with 500+ people on station.

Today (tuesday) we went to the Greene Peninsula to check the rat traps and rebait them and then took a little ‘jolly’ in the rain down the morraine fjord to the Harker Glacier. We had a bit of ice driving near the Glacier which was good fun – like Rothera boating. I then had to write the month report and more emergency supply moving.

This evening I packed my bag to go on holidays tomorrow so I will be offline till the 7th. Have a great week.

This morning the cloud cover was really low however, we still decided to head out to 2320 which is a mountain at the end of Glacier Col. Sam, Rob, Andy and myself left at 11am and didn’t get back to base till 7:30pm!

At Glacier Col

It was a long but fun day including glaciers, summits, waterfalls, flood plains and a walk back along the beach with the surf crashing on the shoreline.

We went up Glacier Col the normal way past Gull Lake and had lunch at the top. The snow has ablated dramatically. After lunch despite the low cloud cover we decided to continue on up to the summit of 2320.

Picture by Sam

We decided not to go home the same way so took a valley down towards the Hamburg lakes. It turned into a steep sided gorge at some points with a beautiful waterfall cascading down to the lake. It took a while to pick our way down the valley to the side of the lake. Where we found some nice smooth rocks to skip across the still water of the lake. I managed to pick up a glacier pole here made from brass which will make my second wind chime out of.

We continued along the side of the lake and onto a flat flood plain which after about an hours walk we got to Penguin River and the tussock along the shore line where there were a load of elephant seals, furries and King Penguins.

The swell has been coming in all day and the waves on the shore were pretty large giving off a large amount of spray especially where it hit the wrecks at the enterance to the Morraine Fjord. The beach was covered in whale bones and beautiful large smooth stones.

The Bremen a cruise ship was in however, Hugh who had run up to Glacier Col and back had made some brownies. The museum folk had us in for some tea and brownie at Grytviken before heading back to base for some bangers and mash for dinner and a movie with Adam Sandler. Now it is off to bed.

On Friday I was hoping to be left off at Harpon to get a coat of paint on the hut and stay the night. However, with work being done by tech services on our hyrdoelectric plant there wasn’t enough people to run the boats. So instead we went and picked up Kieron and Ruth at Carlita. It was a stunning day to be on the water and we had some fun on the way over there with the RIB jumping over the jet boats waves. The picture by Sam above has 3320 (which we climbed a month ago) in the background rising above Lyell Glacier.

After getting back Alastair and I headed did our scrub out duties and headed out to Maiviken to tag a seal with the GPS and try to get the seal that had evaded us on thrusday. After tagging the seal we went in search of seal number 29 and she was again sitting on the island in the middle of the lake.

So this time I took my walking boots off and waded into the water with just my socks on as I didn’t want to have wet boots over night! Needless to say she jumped off the island when we got there and swam further down the lake. Determined to get her even though it was 6pm we trapsed through the tussock and found her sitting on a rock the other side of the lake taunting us. So we decided to call it a day and come back on Saturday.

We went back to Maiviken hut and put dinner on the primus and Alastair got the camp fire going hanging up our socks to dry.

As Alastair had not taken his boots off to wade across to the island they were soaking wet so he resorted to gloves to keep his second pair of socks dry!

I didn’t want to sit on the damp grass next to the fire so I made a bench out of the roof and sides of the old generator shed that was next to the hut and was not longer in use. This picture also shows the new panel we put in and the paint job on the hut that we did on saturday morning. Also in front of the hut is the bench I made on Friday night while the dinner was on the stove!

On thursday we went with Alastair over to Maiviken to help him weigh 50 penguin chicks and also to see if we could recapture a seal with a GPS tag. We were meant to count the number of penguin chicks however, there was one group that was so large it was impossible so instead Sam took photos so Alastair could count them on a computer screen!

After weighing the chicks we saw one of the seals with the GPS on the island in the middle of the lake so Alastair and I were about to wade out there when Tommy said what you doing that for there she is! Indeed there was another tagged seal about 100 yards from us on the shore. It was the seal that we had lost as her VHF tag had stopped transmitting. So we recaptured her and took off the faulty VHF and GPS and then the two of us waded up to our waist out to the island in the cold water. The second seal saw us and jumped into the water and swam away so we returned to the shore squelching.

We returned to the hut next to the lake and put up one of the new panels before heading home. The walk seemed a lot longer with a few kg of sodden boots and socks to lug up the hills! So quite a long day all in all 🙂

We had a productive day on base yesterday starting with a long boating trip followed by a short boating trip followed by a Burns Night dinner.

After base meeting we loaded camping gear and rat boxes onto a jet boat and RIB. Just as we started out it started snowing with big large flakes and the visbility went down. We also got a call from Katie that there was a banded seal outside the dining room so we tied the boat back up. As we were in our boatsuits we waded in to the water to stop the seal escaping to sea and corralled it to against Everson House. Needless to say the seal was quite uphappy. It was a piece of rope this time and it was not in the skin but was very tight.

So back to the boats we stopped first at Poa Beach Maiviken and the guys set 10 rat traps along the tussock line in the bait boxes we had made. They also picked up some emergency food stashed in a sealers cave. Next stop was Curlew Cove where there is another very large sealers cave which had a lot of food. None of us had been their before so the RIB went in close along the shoreline looking for the cave.

We continued along the coast to Harpon and went over the submerged morraine which got to 2.5m deep and inspected Harpon Hut. Again we removed food that wasn’t in a metal container measured the hut for a new door and figured out it needs a good paint! By then it was 1pm and the RIB party was getting cold so Sam transferred into the jet boat cab which had the heating going full blast.

Last stop before returning home was Carlita to drop off Kieron and Ruth for a four day holiday. The hut there is beautiful and new but we aren’t allowed to stay on that Peninsula as BAS personnell.

When we got back to base it was so flat calm we decided it was ideal weather for going to the Greene with another 10 rat boxes.

Photo by Matt K
The water in the cove was slushy as it was covered in snow and there was 2 inches on the jet boat that had been left at base. It really looked beautiful which got Alastair started on Christmas tunes!

As the rat boxes were half constructed Alastair and I banged in a few more nails and got 10 sorted before heading out again at 3:15. We got to the Greene pretty quickly so we split into two groups Alastair and Sam setting rat traps with myself and Mr Boat collecting bits that had broken away from the wrecks on the morraine – a lot of plastic pieces, electrical, polestyrene and we loaded the RIBs up. I also went to inspect the hut which needs a good lick of paint and some small jobs doing on it. We have to check the rat traps every 2 days so when the weather is good we will put some paint on the hut while we are over there and continue with the beach clean up.

By the time we got home put the boats away clean up all the beach clean up rubbish and the food it was 6:30pm and time to get dressed in tarten for Burns Night. The light was absolutely stunning in the evening.

We had the traditional meal with Pat acting as MC with a paint brush sporon and Rob playing his fiddle while the two walked around the table carrying the steaming haggis.

I was on lates but couldn’t hack it as I was very tired after the last few days so I swapped with the Dr who took my lates and I have hers on Saturday night. However, I did get a picture of the sunset before heading to bed.

Today (wednesday) was a day off so everyone is doing laundry getting up late and of course the weather is awful however, Alastair and I are going over to Maiviken to see if the seal is in with it’s GPS tag and maybe we will do a thing or two in the hut!

Alastair lying down on the job

The not very pleasant weather broke on saturday and it was a very hot beautiful day. We went over to Maiviken with 6 VIPs off the RFA vessel to show them the pups in Evans Lake. Hugh, Alastair and I went ahead with Sam bringing the VIPs. Hugh got some work done on the door (post box red), I got a coat of green paint on the hut and Alastair unfortunately was unsuccessful at finding the seal that we need to get a tag back from so he joined in with a bit of trip painting.