After a sunday morning lie in we headed on skis up a small outcrop to the south of the hut beach to get to the main Sorling Beach. The main beach had two huge male elephant seals and a large flock of cape petrels (I counted 90 in total). We climbed up the ridge coming off Ellerbeck peak the snow conditions were really beautiful – hard pack well frozen.

It was a hot climb (hence the shorts!) but we wanted to get up to the ridge right above the glacier – meanwhile the hard top was starting to get mushy so after a few photos it was time to get in a few downhill runs. We got in another 5 runs or so on a smaller section it took around 5 minutes to make the climb and 30 seconds to get down even with long sweeping turns to make it more worthwhile.

Rob headed back to the hut while Tommy and I headed further south along the beach for the glacier face. The brash ice was piled up on the beach we found a great little lunch spot in amoungst it all unfortunately it didn’t calve with us watching. After Tommy did a few minutes of ice ‘climbing’ on a piece of glacier wall we headed on back to the hut. That evening I think we all reflected on the events of Sept 11 10 years ago.

A great relaxing day of skiing and sightseeing and our last full one of holidays as monday we will be picked up by the boats.

After a relaxing morning at Ocean Harbour we climbed back up the valley to the Col that we had come over on Friday. Leaving Tommy at the bottom Rob and I headed for an unnamed peak to the South. We soon removed our snow shoes and front pointed up the ridge to a point where we couldn’t make it any higher or so we thought.

After attempting a few gulleys we found our way up to a small rock outcrop which we sat on and enjoyed the amazing views out to the Southern Ocean the east coast of the Barff. The sun gleamed on the Nordenskol Glacier to the South, to the North we could see back to base on the Thatcher and the Busen Peninsula with Jason Harbour in Cumberland West Bay. The moutains of South Georgia could be seen for 10’s of miles with such great visibility.

We headed back to Sorling at a fast pace as the boys wanted to go for a ski and snowboard but I wasn’t too into the snow conditions so stayed at Sorling.

As we had brought some firewood I built a fire pit lining it with stones from the beach and read my book enjoying the view to the Nordenskol. Lighting the fire we attempted to watch a sunset but at -10 and with the wood merely smouldering and refusing to burst into some warming flames we decided to call it a day. The leading lights into KEC blinked away as the rest of base enjoyed the normal saturday night three course meal. Another early night for us.

The snow that was meant to come through thursday night didn’t come through till early in the morning so we decided to wait it out in the comfort of the hut at Sorling. The route to Ocean Harbour is 5km up a valley over a col and back down another valley.

 By 11:30am the blue skies had returned and it was time to load up the 30kg rucksacks put on the snowshoes and head up the valley.

We stopped for lunch late in the day at a cairn looking down over Ocean Harbour – I had brought some french cheese for my rivita it was tasty!

After leaving off our large rucksacks at the stone shelter we wrapped up in down jackets and headed out to the point in the hopes of seeing a beautiful sunset. We walked past the wreck of the Bayard and came upon a herd of skittish reindeer. Also on the point was a large number of fur seals, some ellies and a small rookery of penguins which had just come home for the evening and were climbing a long way up the hill. The full moon rose above the wreck casting a glow across the cove.

Rob found a great bivvy site for the night. It was another really cold night when we awoke at 6am to see the beautiful sunrise I left Tommy to get up with the camera to take pictures and stayed snug in my sleeping bag for another couple hours.

What a beautiful first day of holiday! We dropped off our overnight kit at Sorling on the south end of Cumberland East Bay and then stayed on the boats and were dropped off at Corral with our day bags.

From there we walked south along the coast back to Sorling which is about 7km. It took us a good amount of time even without 30kg rucksacks. We wore snow shoes until we had to down climb steep sections as there are 3 steep sided valley to traverse and two coves. The first cove is called Sadebugten and the ones after that seems to be un named.

One of the coves had a small number of penguins.

The reindeer tracks were handy for finding a route. (picture by Sam)

Eventually we dropped down onto Sorling Beach on the North side and made it to out overnight gear. Poor Tommy ended up falling into a stream and filling his boot up which we never got dry so he had frozen boots for the next 4 days.

The sky had only a small number of clouds and was brilliant blue which was very pleasant during the day but made for a cold night around -10 we recon. I set about melting snow for water while the guys dug a deep well through the snow to get to a stream. By the time we used the water from the nalgene bottle there was about 5mm of ice on the inside of the bottle!

Our route from Corral to Sorling to Ocean Harbour

What a stunning day to go out boating. We dropped Pat off on La Manche and Saga Sea to do transhipment paperwork.

Then using the food scraps to encourage the birds (a bit naughty) the back deck of Prion became a Paparazzi photography point! You can’t see Sam and Ali’s cameras but there lenses are very very long!

The bird they were particularly interested in was the Cape Petrel (picture by Ali). You can see more about the bird at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cape_Petrel

The afternoon was spent doing some boat maintenance projects unfortunately I didn’t get out for skinning as I am going on holidays tomorrow so had some things to wrap up. Doc School was a reminder of how our stretcher system works. On my way up to Everson Ali gleefully showed off a snow hole he had dug in one of the large snowdrifts that he can fully get inside of – I see him improving it over the next few days 🙂

Wow do I really need that much kit. I still have to put on the skis, snowshoes, plastics, pack the stove fuel etc etc. Going to be another heavy load to lug up and down the beautifuls hills of South Georgia! We are off to the Barff Peninsula for 5 days of skiing and snowshoeing camping on the east side of the Peninsula in the hopes of getting some stunning sunrises over the Southern Ocean.

On Sunday morning Ali and myself took Pat out to Frio and Dongsan for a transhipment inspection. By the time he had finished the weather was becoming quite miserable – sleety etc. However, there were some Cape Petrels which Ali wanted to photograph so we stayed out a little longer to get some pictures for him. With a perfect swell pattern on the way out to pick Pat back up we got a new speed record on the jet boats of 34.2 knots!

The last few days we got a huge snowfall. It started Sunday evening and continued till the early hours of tuesday morning. The snow was wet and heavy like what we all Sierra Cement in california. I was on earlies on Monday morning so there was alot of digging to do on the veranda.

For dinner I decided to make ravioli as I had brought some wholemeal pasta flour south. I used the left over turkey from Saturday and mixed that with spinach, onion and eggs to put in the pasta. A lot of work much easier to buy it! Served it with a vegetable pasta sauce and some avacados with a balsalmic reduction sauce.

We have mince meat that is really very bad quality and seeing as no one can stomach it I spent the day cooking it so that we can dispose of it. All out meat has to be cooked so that the wildlife don’t get any possible diseases from raw meat. This is also why we are not meant to have meat on the bone. As the bones would have to be incinerated.

This morning the whole base got involved in digging out as we were basically stuck in Everson and there was no way to get in the boatshed without a lot of digging!

After the doors and veranda it was time to attack the jet boats.

So basically all day involved using a shovel and then some boat work.

It was a windy but absolutely stunning day shame we weren’t able to go sking as the track is closed as there are avalanches coming down off the slopes of Duse. We have started watching the series Pacific by the same director etc as Band of Brothers it is a great series.

This morning not too early Rob, Tommy and myself headed up to the Duse Plateau to find some snow. After a while we found a great slope with perfect snow if not a little thin in places.

Poor Tommy had a massive fight with a rock and caused some damage to his board but with his helmet on his head survived!

It was a really warm day and we ended up doing 4 or 5 runs after sitting at the top for 1/2 hour enjoying the view out Cumberland Bay.

After getting back to base around 3:45 I had a drink and then headed back out as the tide was really low leaving a wide open beach perfect for a run over to Grytviken and back. Then time for a sauna as someone had put it on earlier in the afternoon before Saturday night dinner. Pretty great day all in all.

Monday night Ali and I took off on the fisheries patrol vessel to do the OTEP transect work.

Ali was doing the bird counting which requires identification of all the birds and standing out on the bridge wing all day in the cold. I was doing the trawling which requires working in the night time hours. The first two trawls we did in Cumberland Bay East Ali showed me the ropes and after that I was on my own. We started as soon as it got dark and were done by 8pm.

The trawl net consists of a square opening and at the end is what is called a cod end which is where the catch is collected it is dragged from the stern on a 100m line. The trawls in Cumberland Bay and Rosita are done one after another of 30 minutes each. So after replacing the first cod end with a new one you go up to the ‘lab’ the old pantry on the top deck and sieve the contents into a jar filled with ethanol. Then back down in time to chat for 15 minutes before doing the same with the second trawl.

Tuesday morning I was up at 6:00am to do one trawl before we started the bird count transects.

This was successful and looking at my Dave Barnes Nearshore Marine Life Guide there were a large number of amphipods called Themisto gaudichaudii.

On Tuesday afternoon the wind built to force 8 and the sea bird transect was abandoned as the vessel had to be slowed so much in the large swell that Ali would have been out on the bridge wing till past dark and he was also seasick. All Tuesday night we plugged into the swell at 4 knots and reached Rosita Harbor for a 5am trawl.

We did two trawls in Rosita which is at 54 00 7S 37 26.1W one after another. Neither were a large haul. The first one had what I think is a Nuda ctenophore (combi jelly type organism without tentacles) and a fern like translucent organism which wasn’t in the guide (but I think is a type of diatom). The second trawl didn’t have much of interest except maybe one fish larvae.

As the sky became lighter (no real sunrise as it was overcast) the topography could be seen tussock atop 90m high cliffs with snow. We motored on into the Bay of Islands (54 00.0S 37 15 0W) and anchored in 30 meters of water just between Tern Island and Albatross Island with a view of the penguin colony at Salisbury Plain with binoculars!

The penguin rookery extends quite surprisingly high up the hillside in some places considering the plain is the flattest area of South Georgia. The plain consists of wind blow moraine silt with fast flowing rivulets from melting glaciers similar to St Andrews. It is the second largest penguin colony on South Georgia and is also an elephant seal breeding beach.

It was a tad frustrating being so close to Prion Island, Albatross Island and Salisbury Plains and not getting ashore. The coast and islands are well covered in tussock and there are many glaciers to be seen including one at the end of a Fjord called Sea Leopard Fjord.

The day at anchor was spent organizing photos and reading a book getting a bit of sleep before three trawls on Wednesday night/Thursday morning. The first two were done by 9:30pm allowing a long period of sleep before the third at 5:30am. Thursday night/Friday morning involved another three trawls but the first didn’t start till almost 10pm so the second was a 1am and the third at 5:30am. There was a light snow falling during the trawls so maybe KEP had some snow fall. I thought the first would result in a large amount of krill as we were in amongst the krill trawling fleet of three but there was only a small amount. We did get another large Nuda ctenophore and another comb shaped organism.

I should explain that there are 4 blocks as it were of surveys one to the south of the island the rest to the north. The one in the south is rarely done due to the weather normally not being conducive and it being a long way to go. The other three are spaced one near Bird Island one off the Bay of Islands and one off Cumberland Bay. Each block has two transects which run for 30 miles perpendicular to the shore each of these transects are 15 miles of so apart. So at night the vessel does trawls spaced one in the middle of one transect and one each on the ends of each transect. Being as they are 15 miles apart it takes around 1.5 and 2 hours to travel from one to the other. Each trawl is 30 minutes in length and is done at a boat speed of around 2 knots. During daylight hours the bird survey is done on the same transect however, both transects are done in the block. The bird and trawl data is then used together – one set of data on its own is not that useful. The trawl samples I took are all safely in pots preserved with ethanol and labelled up. These will be analysed back at base in the lab where the organisms can be identified, weighed, measured and counted.

By Friday late afternoon Ali was done with his bird surveys and it was time to head back to KEP before a forecasted windy weather system came in.

Back just in time for scrub out to be finished. I did ask the captain if he talked to base to put Ali and myself on a chore but the guys handled it all. Katie is now back on base after almost 2 months aboard the toothfish vessel San Aspiring. We are coming to the end of the fishing season with the toothfish fisheries now closed and only a handful of krill vessels still at it so we should have a relatively quite period this month before the first cruise ships arrive for the summer.

Saturday was absolutely stunning so I went for skin on my own up to Gull Lake and did a circuit. In the middle I took off up the ridge and had lunch looking into Junction Valley and at Mt Paget and Sugartop.

The snow has be sculpted by wind where there use to be a waterfall. It has drifted to the wall making it possible to ski along the wall of the dam area.

Friday I made some fruit bread as we had plenty of plain and as there were freshies made a steak fajita feast for dinner.

Every morning I eat yoghurt which is made using powdered milk and powdered yoghurt culture it is very tasty and only takes a few minutes to make.

On Sunday it was OK weather in the morning and we had some work to do so Rob and I took Robert out to La Manche who was transshipping with Saga Sea. The first trip out was stunning however, the snow shower and fog had come in by the second trip. As it got even warmer it turned to rain just in time for our BBQ! Typical…

Monday was a bank holiday in the UK so we took the day off however, Ali and I took off on the fisheries patrol vessel to do some science work for the week.

The skiing in Pinnacle Bowl on Monday was not as great as Saturday due to the high winds on Sunday scouring away a lot of snow. Tommy, Matt and I went up to the Bowl and despite lots of slabby snow Matt did a good job of learning how to ski and doing some turns. It was windy as you can see from the picture so there was quite a bit of spindrift.

Tuesday Ali, Sam and I headed over to Maiviken after lunch to collect samples for Ali and to watch the gentoos returning from sea. Every morning they leave the rookery and go to sea to feed to come back in the evenings. There are around 1000 of them which means they were sucessful this last year with low mortality rate amoungst the chicks. This time last year there were about 25% of this years numbers. We skied to the hut and then snowshoed to the beaches from there. When we got to the beach the swell from Sunday had scoured the beach leaving sheets of ice.

I was able to shoot quite a bit of video which Sam is going to edit into a little movie with some of her photos. I will put a link up when we have something to show. Below is one of her shots it was hard to get them in the action of jumping out of the water onto the shore!

We stayed the night over at Maiviken as it was very late by the time we left the beaches having collected all the samples. It was a clear night so Ali and Sam took some pictures of the milky way and some star trails which were really beautiful as usual. Early Wednesday morning we headed back to base. The temperature had increased substantially in the night leaving us with heavy wet cement to skin back in. It was hard going as we were carrying a whole ski length worth of snow up the hills! The contrast was so poor that when it came to the downhill after Deadmans I came halfway down and after a few scrapes of my skis as the snow was thin in some places I took them off. Sam, Ali and I continued with skis strapped to our rucksacks and snow shoed to the track before going back to skis without skins.

As it was Rob’s 29th birthday we had a tasty chicken dinner made by Ali and gave him a bunch of presents. I made the frame from California Redwood and Sam took the stunning panaramos of base in all the different seasons. The mount was cut by Ali which was hard going with the staggered photos and dates. Tommy made a beautiful hip flask out of copper sheet which he hammered and then soldered together. The flask was filled with some whisky from Robert made at a distellery near to where Rob is from in Scotland.

Trying to understand and therefore fix the electronics on the boats led to me making a block diagram of how it all goes together. Can’t problem solve without understanding how it works in the first place!

Yesterday we had boat school which was taught by Matt the topic being Search and Rescue planning. Seeing as he was a Coastguard Search and Rescue planner before coming south it was extremely informative and well written. He has been working on a project called Findafid since we got here – as I was not impressed by the search pattern information we had and asked him to use his vast experience to come up with something better which he has done.

The track was quite bare in someplaces when it came to the lunch time skinning session yesterday but with last nights and this morning snow that should be fixed by lunch today! This morning I am on earlies and it is not too nice out there. Low visibility with wind and snow. However, tonight as we will get freshies in today we are going to have a feast of salad which is very exciting.

We have La Manche the reefer coming in today a long with some krill boats. As the toothfish fisheries closes 31st August we will only be dealing with krill boats after next week and Katie will be back on base after almost 2 months away observing on San Aspiring. This weekend will be busy with boating and as it is a bank holiday monday it will be raining I am sure 🙂