On wednesday Richie the outgoing electrician (he has been here for 25 months) took up the Hodges Challenge. The course is from the back door of the museum at Grytviken to the summit 607m and back to the museum. The record was set in 1998 by a soldier based at KEP who summited in 31 minutes and did the return trip in 50 minutes. Richie was a minute slower on the way up however, he took 5 minutes less to descend. Doing the return trip in a stunning 46 minutes. This is an amazing feat to be able to run down the scree slop at that pace without being hurt badly on a fall. Next challenge for Richie when he leaves here – on monday morning – is the london marathon.

Picture by Alastair Wilson

Every three month at high water we pull Pipit and Prion (the jet boats) out of the water and into the shed one at a time over night. This allows us to do the 3 monthly jet unit services, power wash the bottom, change anodes etc. It is a bit of a process and the boats look massive when they are out – filling the whole boatshed. We use the telehandler and a large steel cable to pull them clear of the water on their custom made trailers.

This is a 10 minute movie Matt put together. Showing off our little fleet of RIBs and jetboats with some cuddly nature footage as well.

In 1775 when James Cook landed on the Island he noted the endemic South Georgia Pintail pictured above. I took this along the track to Grytviken – there are over 2000 living on the island. They are found on the northern coast and the western third of the south coast the rest of the south coast doesn’t have a topography that encourages them. They are found in the many freshwater pools and streams fringed by tussock grassland in seal wallows and poorly drained land next to wetlands and melting snow, as well as on the coast.

They are omnivores feeding on vegetation (marine and freshwater algae), foraging in the intertidal zone for invertebrates (freshwater shrimp, clams, nematodes, snails) and sometimes they even scavenge at seal carcasses like skuas or giant petrels.

They breed in solitary pairs (mate for life) with nests hidden in the tussock grass during a long breeding season from late October to early March. Cleverly when returning to the nest they land away from it getting to it by creeping through the undergrowth so as not to encourage predatory birds. The eggs are small pale cinnamon pink eggs and they lay between 3 to 5. The introduced rats do eat their eggs along with the skuas.

Saturday night is special for dinner on base we tend to have 3 course meals. Last night Tommy and Matt H decided to do a British Pub theme. We had a choice of meals with a starter of soup or shrimp cocktail, maincourse of fish and chips, beef and ale pie or mixed grill and a dessert of jam rolly polly or bread and butter pudding.

Everyone put effort (except me 🙂 into wearing fancy dress for the occassion and afterwards there was a pub quiz which our team came last in!

Hope you all have a great weekend.

Yesterday was an absolutely stunning day on base. This was taken from the track looking back towards base. Last weekend the fur seal pup in the picture here with it’s mum was born. As their territory is right next to the track they are quite use to people coming and going and don’t get to upset.

I walked over to Myviken hut and read a book next to the lake until Rob, Kate, Jon and George joined me. We went down to the beach and were just in time to see the afterbirth of a fur seal. Since last weekend the beach is now heaving with pups, mums and large males all making a cacophony of noises.

Many of the seals were worshiping the sun with their noses pointed in the air.

There was a bit of brash ice on the beach from the glaciers at the end of Cumberland Bay west which was nice as the light glinted on the bergy bits in the sun.

After helping to putting a GPS transciever on a female fur seal we checked in at the penguin colony. Since last weekend the chicks have grown tremendously. Afterwards we went up into the ‘lake district’ with more stunning views.

This is Alastair he is the predator scientist on base studying the furl seals primarily – he will have his 30th birthday on base. He is from Wales and has worked for the RSPB and also in the Shetlands. Up until now he has specialised in seabirds. His great great uncle isEdward Wilson who died with Scott on the way back from the South Pole in 1912. This is what brought Alastair south and he will be here on the 100th anniversary of Edwards death.

Photo by Sam Crimmin

The team of Norwegian kayakers who arrived over two and half weeks ago on Pelagic from the Falklands successfully completed an unsupported circumnavigation of South Georgia. Yesterday morning after 20 days of paddling, (which has only been done on two other occasions) they came out of the low cloud and mist finishing at the beach next to the boatshed.

We greeted them by setting off flares and Jon had the sauna all warm and ready for them. The team, consisted of Simen Havig-Gjelseth, Sigrid Henjum, Tormod Austring, and Dag Marius Ammerud. After the sauna they got right to work washing and drying out all their equipment so the boatshed looked like a chinese laundry! In the evening they joined us in the bar for celebrations that went pretty late into the night.

Check out their website here.

We have all be taught not to eat yellow snow so why is Tommy?

The answer is simple! I was introducing him to the delights of ‘lemon sorbet’ while we were out walking the other weekend. We went over to Harpon to get there you climb up and over the ridge of mountains that divides the thatcher peninsula going through Echo pass to the other side.

There was quite a bit of snow on the pass which Tommy was determined he wanted to snow board on however, it melted away quickly in the recent warm temperatures we have been having.

Anyways back to the lemon sorbet. What it really is is lemonade powder I brought from the US mixed with snow and it really is pretty tasty.

The week has only just started but it has been very busy. Yesterday we took the government officer Kieron an his wife to board a new cruise ship at Stromness bay. It was meant to show up at 6pm but didn’t hove into site until 7:30pm. This meant that Pipit (Matt Holmes) had to do a transfer while it was still moving through the pilot door on the side. Getting Prion’s anchor up in the bay was interesting with 50m of warp/chain out.

Alastair and I pulled with all our might and found that we were hoisting about 200kg of kelp up with the anchor which we then cut free. We then put the pedal to the metal to get back to base before sunset at 8:30pm. For after dark operations we have to have three crew as one person is in charge of sweeping the area in front of the jet boat with the search light looking for ice. We had some small bergy bits at the enterance to the bay and it was a little windy with a light chop. The launches are built to deal with the conditions – so with the heaters on we were toasty and warm but it was still great to get back to base and quickly change for a BBQ aboard the cruise ship Polar Star.

The BBQ was tasty with some steak, pork and big prawns.

Afterwards Rob, Ali and Jon played their instruments with the onboard guitar player and everyone enjoyed a late night of dancing.

This morning we sorted out the jet boats after the late evening trip including refuelling and I was about to take off to the gym after a very late lunch when I got the call to go to the wharf and help bring a patient up to the surgery. Unfortunately a lady fell while walking on the tussock grass turning her ankle over. The Dr. asked if we could do some xrays. So Sam the base Dr and I did the xrays while I used my very bad GCSE French to try and talk to the patient as neither her nor her husband spoke English. After the xrays showed a broken bone we made up a back board out of plaster of paris to support her ankle while the swelling went down. This all took a while as we had to do 3 xrays and develop them one at a time which takes around 10 minutes for each one in the dark room. Then we put her back in the wheel chair and took her back to the ship on the zodiacs they provided. I did offer to take her out on the jet boat but they said they could take her on the zodiac without a problem.

The captain was very appreciative to Sam so he invited us along to see the ship and have cocktails. It was a fancy ship and we hadn’t changed out of our work cloths which were also covered in plaster of paris – oh well 🙂 So that has been my busy monday and tuesday so far. We shall see what the rest of the week has in store for us on base.

Oh finally the weather broke bringing lots of rain this afternoon and very low cloud cover.