Waiting for the wave on the ramp in my boatsuit as I had come straight from SAR.

Evacuated to the traverse waiting…
At 6am on Saturday morning the fire alarm went off so we dragged ourselves out of bed (only half hour early in my case) to the tagging board all thinking bad thoughts about the person who had burnt the toast. Well it wasn’t toast… The Base Commander had been called by BAS as due to the Chilean earthquake the USCG had put out a tsunami watch for the Antarctic Peninsula including where Rothera is! We were told originally that it was meant to hit at 7am and we were given the option to make our own choice as to what we wanted to do. However, the watch was changed to a warning that we could see this wave hit Rothera at 10am so John made the decision to require a full evacuation of station.

All the airplanes were to take to the skies and head towards the Falklands. Everyone involved in the air unit went to work to get all the planes in the air by 9:30am and that meant that I had to provide SAR cover with the boat until they were in the air before retreating with the rest of the base up the ramp to the high ground of the traverse. The heavy machinery was taken to as high ground as possible. Survival and SAR equipment was taken up to the caboose including tents set up and extra food. So it was all go on base. In the end there was a 20cm rise in sea level for a short period of time. So lots of excitement at Rothera.

When I was at Fossil Bluff the Rothera half marathon was going on with people running around the crushed rock runway for charity. I had promised to do it but because I was in the field I took some skis instead.

The runway at Fossil Bluff is slightly uphill so it took some effort as the slight downhill was upwind so that didn’t give me any relief. At 1.45km it was many many times around. I ended up carrying some pebbles and leaving them at the end so that I knew how many times I had gone around!

The shadows got longer as I got to the end of the 21.9km half marathon on skis.

Tired at the end at 9pm at night after 4 1/2 hours on the skis.

The day winter decided to come to Rothera with large amounts of snowfall.Terri and I managed to beat the season record with a dive time of 30 seconds shy of an hour. We had air left to complete the hour but had collected the Latties we needed to so headed to the surface.

This is a picture of us getting in the water which was covered in a mix of Shuga ice and Brash Ice as well as Icebergs. We were in collecting Laternula elliptica which are molluscs that have to be dug out of the sediment very carefully so as not to break their delicate shell. Patience is needed.

Last week when I was on my way back from Fossil Bluff Tris (comms guy) came up on the HF to ask me about my sailing experience as Skip Novak was sailing by base on Pelagic. Due to swine flu we are not allowing any private vessels or cruise ships stop at base this year. After landing I took a dive out to Rose Garden and also we stopped by a boat that was anchored between Donnelley and Anchorage. It turned out to be Isabelle Autissier on her boat Ada II. Isabelle is a legendary french singlehanded Open 60 sailor. We ended up having tea and biscuits on the boat and provided weather information for them for two days while they stayed at anchor and weathered the 35 knot northerly before heading south for some climbing.

Justin the chef does not like making puddings. Last week he asked me to come in an make them if I had the time. So as well as making the smoko treats I did the puddings – this week I did crunchy chocolate cornflake balls, cheese straws, chocolate cupcakes, chocolate chip muffins and some savoury scones.

On Monday I was on Gash so I made profiteroles which means piping 320 balls of chough pastry and then filling each one with cream after cooking them. I made a chocolate sauce of chocolate, milk, butter, honey and a dash of coffee. On tuesday I didn’t have time as there was so much going on at the boatshed but on wednesday I was back in with a steamed lemon sponge cake and custard. Thursday was a sticky chocolate marbled cake with a chocolate sauce. I had friday off as I was busy with Clive doing a second night in the crevasse. So many people wanted to go on the crevasse trip on thursday we had to do two nights in a row.

For Saturday night dinner which I ended up missing as I was up the hill staying in the caboose I made chocolate mousse in individual ramekins with rasberries and a bit of icing sugar on top. So a week of cooking in the kitchen I think I will have the week off this coming one!

Winter is coming here on base with two days of snowfall making the skiing at Vals beautiful and making the base look less like a quarry! The nights are drawing in and it is getting dark at 10pm now and not light until around 5:00am so gone are the days of 24 hour sunlight.

On Saturday we had Folk Night which is when people can get up an do an act everything from showing a slide show to reciting a poem and of course singing, dancing and playing an instrument. People put a lot of effort into their acts and many of them were very funny. The field assistants who had just returned from a project on the Rutford Ice Stream did a brilliant rap act all about their time on the ice dressed in field clothing with chains of carribeaners and compasses around their necks. I guess you had to have been there! Matt Doc did a video for the winters going back into society about how to act in the real world. The BBC Frozen Planet team did a great 10 minute video with footage of the Wilkens Ice Stream and the dive team at Rothera.

A few weekends ago the air unit had a party over on Lagoon which required 7 boatloads to get them there and 3 to get them back. A few stayed on the island for the night. Unfortunately it was a beautiful morning but progressively the weather got worse until it was snowing. The hut is a tight squeeze for 13 men! On the way over with the first load we came across a pod of Orca’s which were playing around. Mark one of the pilots got this beautiful picture of one spy hopping.

Most days there is something so beautiful happening around here you need to run and grab your camera. This was taken last month at midnight and the mountains on the peninsula were just beautifully lit up. We are in autumn now so it is actually getting dark between 11 and about 4am which is a nice change from the 24 hour sunlight which made you feel like you needed to be out and about enjoying.

Some people have asked me how we get up the hill to go skiing. We either put skins on touring skis and skin the 4km to the little ski hill at Vals or we jump on one of the three base skidoos. We have tow lines we attach to the back of the skidoos and can tow two people on skis or snowboards up to the top of the hill as well.

These are the helicopters which are on the Palmer which is a US research vessel that has visited us twice this year supporting the Larissa project. We were taken aboard the ship for a tour. The labs and oceanographic toys are pretty amazing. In fact they have a lot more lab space than we do at Rothera.