Night night

The joys of nightshift. Should you ever find yourself in a situation where you have to mind an Antarctic station alone, and have pretty much zero contact with any other human being for over a week at a time, may I offer a few lessons learnt? Firstly, although Kubrick is the master of all cinema do not watch the film ‘A Clockwork Orange’. Dark, empty bases in the deep of winter during nights are enough in themselves to disturb the psyche, do not add the psychological trauma of Kubrick’s violent classic on top. Also watching ‘Blue Velvet’ is a no-no. The last thing you need while running the rounds with a torch beam sharply cutting into the darkness is the mental image of Anthony Hopper with the methanol mask scene in your mind.

Now, here is a scenario for you. Imagine walking down a rickety old wooden corridor between various outbuildings, and you notice a very small piece of pipe work in the side of wall. Do you:

A. Pretty much ignore it and carry on walking, or
B. Get down on your hands and knees and start sniffing it.

The answer is A. It’s A because you are not deranged...

Now imagine the same situation, only this time you see this message each time you pass the aforementioned pipe. Have you ever seen a more ridiculous sign?

I had to walk through this passageway three times a night as part of the rounds, and now the ONLY thought that goes through my head as I pass is to sniff the thing.

On the plus side, any room is game for a surrogate office, and lets face it, no plush corner office in any skyscraper can beat a British base bond booze room!

Plus there’s always the constant excitement in the risk of getting caught chatting to Argentinean taxi drivers on short wave!

But the results from those conversations really warrant an entire new subject in mind sciences, let alone a separate blog entry.

The anomalous properties of water

The whole concept of walking on water, or as it's locally called, 'Sea ice' seems to have two effects on people, one is to scare the heebie jeebies out of them, and the other is to fill them with child like excitement to go sprinting onto the ice at warp factor 10. Some time after most Mid winters Rothera point becomes completely encased in ice, and probably the single most important decision I have to make in my job is the ‘Sea Ice Go-No-Go decision’. That is to say, whether people are allowed on the ice or not.

Sea ice is treated with a huge amount of cautious respect. It is by far the biggest 'serious incident' cause for Antartcic folk; if you happen to be on a lump of ice that breaks up and starts to float away… there really is unfortunately only one outcome!!! Massive amounts of criteria need to be met before travel or diving is allowed. So this season has been poor for the formation, we have commenced diving through the fast ice near the coast.

One of the interesting tools at my disposal to assist is Satellite imaging. There is much debate regarding just how big Antarctia is, do you include sea ice or just land? What time of year do you choose? Depending on which criteria you use results in approximately a 50% difference in area. Significant stuff. When looking at the imagery on a daily bases the build up is not so noticeable, but today I glanced back at the monthly pictures that I keep, and the effect of how much this continent grows during the winter suddenly slaps you one.

It’s simply huge!!! Huge I tell you. Cool pics though eh!??!?