I didn’t really write a lot about my week at Fossil Bluff and seeing as at the moment we have had a few days of bad weather on base and I have only been doing paperwork I thought I would write a little about what you do at Fossil Bluff. The place is a fueling stop for the twin otters taking field parties south into the deep field. We make sure the runway is clearly marked and the flags and drums are maintained. When a plane comes in we man a fire sledge and give them the latest wind speed and direction and after landing we fill them up with fuel from the drums.

So basically you are a fuelling attendant and also a met observer when you are there. Every hour we do met observations for the airplanes and call Rothera on the HF radio with the information which includes – wind speed, direction, dew point, temperature, cloud cover and height, contrast and horizontal definition, pressure etc.

This is the met office at Fossil Bluff! The file folders have reports going back to the early 60’s when the base was used as a base for geological studies. They had a few dog teams at the hut to get field parties further south and across to the antarctic peninsula.

This picture shows how anything that is left on the snow eventually melts in and then freezes in so it is a daily job to hack away at the ice with an ice axe and make sure that drums of fuel stay on wooden pallets so they can be used and then the empties removed back to Rothera. In previous decades the drums were emptied and then left but now BAS is being responsible and all dunnage is taken out. We spent a few days digging out dunnage from the ice from many years ago.

Some days planes don’t come in but we still have to do the met obs but we can do them on the satellite phone allowing us to go for climbs and walks in the local area.