In the UK you know spring has sprung because the crocuses are pushing through and the daffodils are blooming. Here in South G we don’t have such beautiful plants so the official start to spring is when the ellies come back and start having pups. Besides the ellies there is a lot more birdlife and the furries are also slowly coming to the shore. After the FPV cast off her lines to take Ali, Katie and Matt to the Bay of Islands for a Albatross survey Tommy and I headed for the hills. It was a stunning day – absolutely beautiful and really hot. We climbed onto Brown Mountain having to relearn what it is like walking on scree. On the back side we had an amazing bum slide down it was so good we climbed back up the slope for another go at it. The snow won’t last much longer in these temperatures.

We had lunch and penguin river and saw that 3 of the 6 chicks had survived the winter. The colony has grown to around 20 adults.

The beachmasters have created harems all along the coast. The largest one we saw had 75 females most with pups.

Katie counted 154 pups along the beach yesterday. We saw that two had died and weren’t fortunate enough to see any births.

We came across a very sad sight – a pup had lost its mother and was so hungry that she/he was suckling on a rock.

We sat and watched for a while and I sat quite close. Next you know the pup decides that my bottom is a good place to get some milk from. It slobbered all over my trousers desperate for some milk and sucked pretty hard. I was heartbroken as even though this is nature it is terrible to think about the poor little pup dying of hunger.

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 🙂

Base from Grytviken on not such a glorious part of the day while out skinning

It isn’t always dingle days here in South Georgia and now we are in spring weather it is pretty volatile. A friend commented how bright it was down here and not so dull as he thought. That is mainly because I only ever post pictures of it being a beautiful day and also we have all the seasons in one day. Today it was snowing when I got up at 6am but at 12 noon I was out running on the beach in a gentle breeze and blue skies with sun. By 2pm it was averaging 30 knots with gusts to 50 white out at times and large white caps in the bay!

An arty picture of the impellors in our jet units on the launches from inside the unit as I was changing out the internal anodes. The horrible job of grinding off the non skid deck at the helm position was completed and a new section of adhesive non skid mat was installed. Also a new section was put in where you board the vessel.

Prion’s servicing is done and we got her back in the water yesterday in time for a Ice Fishing boat inspection. As she had to go back in at high tide it was an early morning.

Picture of Pancake with mother by Sam Crimmin. Pancake has now been joined by another 6 ellie pups on the beach outside of Carse House.

I have started to make a table to go with the chairs I made for Dad’s birthday. With the forecast for this weekend not looking that great I might have it all put together and primed ready for a top coat next week.

The midwinter picture needed a frame so using greenheart from the whaling station I made a simple rustic frame which Rob cut some glass for and Ali is making the matt for. Sam took the picture and has printed it out so the whole thing is a base affair.

Yet more snow shoes to fix with the same problem on all of them. I also found that the Atlas ones have a problem with a weld that had failed on 4 of them so I gave them to Tommy to fix with some stainless tube, rivets and welding they were good as new.

Yesterday my US tax $ were put to good use! The Nathanial Palmer came to station as they have been doing Benthic trawls of the Scotia Arc and the government invited them in for a visit seeing as they were just off Cumberland Bay. They arrived first thing in the morning but by the time Robert had given them a talk about the Island and they had visited the museum it wasn’t until 1pm that people started to arrive on station.

As it was a stunning morning I went for a 7:00am skin over to the hydro and then as it stayed beautiful and the tide was low a lunch time run along the beach back to the hydro. As Pat and Sarah were on holiday they said I could use the bike in Carse House so in the evening I cycled 20km.

In between I worked on the jet boat resealing the sponsons and started to grind off the deck paint to apply new adhesive non skid decking.

Ali, Rob and myself split up with groups of Americans to take around on a tour of the base and they reciprocated with a tour of the ship which I didn’t go on as I had been aboard at Rothera. However, Rob was sent on a mission aboard to find me some hot chocolate Nestle Swiss Miss style. He succeed in bring me back a full Costco size box, my future camping trips are now complete. Also a plate of proper chocolate chip cookies which I scoffed down straight away – so tasty. Their generosity didn’t stop there! We were given more freshies than we have seen since The World (cruise ship last season) who gave us items back in January. A box of banannas, oranges, pears, avacados, celery, 15 heads of lettuce, more than a dozen cucumbers, potatoes and onions. Tonight we are all full having feasted on all the delicious food. Hence my tax $ at work seeing as I get to pay the US government despite not being in the US for 17 months!

The paraffin filled jerry can at Maiviken hut unfortunately rusted resulting in a substantial leakage. Seeing as it was a low contrast day I decided to walk out instead of ski to the hut with a new can.

Yesterday the first ellie seal pup of the season was born at King Edward Point. As is tradition the first pup is named last year the pup was called ‘Charlie’. Unfortunately Charlie died when a bull steam rolled over him on the way to the water, the result was the death of the pup. As a homage to Charlie the base has named this seasons first pup Pancake.

The wildlife is starting to come back slowly but surely I am sure there will be a rush in the next few weeks. This female ellie lying in the shallows looks like she is ready to give birth any minute soon.

After taking Pat and Sarah over to the Greene for their holidays we enjoyed the glorious weather and went down to the glacier fronts.

Afterwards we headed to the wrecks at the morraine enterance their was no swell so we were able to get up really close to them.

After lunch Ali, Sam and I headed out for an ascent of Duse with ice axes and crampons. The picture above shows the route we took up the gully from the plateau to the summit.

There were snow petrels flying all around the summit they were quite inquisitive swooping around us. As we climbed you could see their shadows on the snow in front of us.

Once at the top the view was exceptional so Ali took pictures for a 360 interactive including the one above of myself.

The sunset was beautiful on the way back down the gully it set over the mountains casting a pink glow over the snowy summits. We got back in time for a quick shower before a tasty meal of Spanish tapas cooked by Katie. (Photo by Ali)

The weather on Friday was horrible there was no way we were taking Pat and Sarah on holiday. I checked in on the two RIBs we had outside when I went down to work in the shed. Both were doing fine head into the wind with their covers on. However, some 60 knot gusts came through and 30 minutes later Matt came down and looked at the RIBs – we had a situation.

Luckily there was little damage to the boat with the only damage being to the navigation light.

In a brief lull we got Tommy and Rob down and the JCB out and we were able to put the RIB upright on the snow. The wind picked up again though so we left the JCB pinning the RIB down, the trailer lashed down and the other RIB lashed to the row of containers.

In the next lull Matt and I lifted the boat on the strops and put her back on the trailer.

After the excitement I wrote an incident report for Cambridge HQ and asked for concrete blocks to be installed so we can tie the boats down in future. Report writing complete Matt and I went back to jet boat servicing and scrub out.

I finished off the job of restocking our pantry shelves ahead of first call so there will be room in the food store for all the new supplies at the beginning of November.

First thing this morning it was a stunning day.

I took off at 7am for a skin to the museum this is the view looking back at base.

The same scene at 10am the weather changes quick in SG at all times of the year.