September Summary

Some issues here over the past one or two weeks have prevented me posting this earlier, but the net outcome is that we don’t (and wont) have our summer crew here for at least another few weeks! A medical incident at Davis Station diverted the ship half a day after it had come to within fly-off range of Casey (awaiting some good weather to fly people in), meaning that for now it is still just the 19 of us... with no fresh fruit, no mail, no new faces, and no Hobart-Casey flights… the first flight was actually scheduled for November 9th! But now we have no idea when it will be.

The whole thing has taken it’s toll on me… In the last month or two I decided time was running out to try to grow the token Antarctic facial hair, before society (or more importantly, Ebony) would put a stop to that sort of behaviour. Try as I might I decided to give up a few days before the ship was expected to be here, so that we didn’t all look like we’d gone to seed… I just thought you might like to see my attempt, since you probably wont get a chance to once I’m back in the real world.

Anyway that’s now. Looking back to September we had the return of some very pleasant weather for us. Although our blizzard count was still as much as five, they were somehow not so severe as those of June, July and August, and were separated by welcome interludes of fair weather. For the first time in many months we had a number of days with around 10 hours sunshine recorded, and the low ‘Casey cloud’ that dominated much of our winter was gone for long period.

For several reasons I didn’t manage to get out for an overnighter at all during September, but made good use of sunny days by going for some long hikes whenever possible. The first half of the month was focussed mainly on the annual Law Dome traverse, which the meteorology crew carry out as part of maintaining the Bureau’s Automatic Weather Station there. Law Dome is basically a large cap of ice on a 250km (or so) wide peninsula in our part of Antarctica. Casey sits on the western side of this peninsula and our blizzards generally come from the katabatic winds that slide off The Dome. Law Dome summit, where the AWS is, is around 140km from Casey, and peaks at something like 1300m altitude. If you use the general rule that for every 100m of altitude you lose 0.6 degrees C, the summit would be an average of 8 degrees C colder than Casey.

The traverse took about 4 days as a round trip: a full day was spent getting there; two days were used to relocate the structure away from where it had accumulated several metres of snow over the past 12 months, and to repair all the sensors; and another day to return to station.

As Tod and Tom, my two Met colleges, were both in the traverse party (5 people went altogether) I had to stay behind to keep things going at work. Bit of a bugger, but considering the trouble I’ve been having with my hands in the extreme cold I may not have been much use there. I’ve found that throughout the year I’ve have no problem keeping my head, face, body, legs and arms warm, but my hands usually suffer badly from the combination of very cold temperatures and a little wind. My feet have also been very cold at times, but that is easy to bear, however when my hands get cold I lose the ability to do simple things like zip up a jacket or get some food out of my pack. It has never been dangerous as I could always stop and put them under my armpits or something, but it has been quite painful at times. But before the Law Dome traverse, Comfy Chair managed to put together a second performance in the Red Shed for anyone who had the patience and kindness to sit through it. We added 5 or 6 songs to our extensive repertoire, giving us a grand total of about 11… and after dinner we bashed the night away. Later in the month, on a great sunny day, Tod, Bob, Curly and I decided to take advantage of the fine weather and explore some islands off the coast of the Mitchell Peninsula that no one had been to all winter. The Mitchell Peninsula is a fairly easy stroll across O’Brien Bay from the Bailey Peninsula (Casey), and the islands just a km or two further, but although the sea-ice was quite solid there had recently been a good dump of snow, which must’ve been a foot think in places. I set out on skis, knowing how much snow we had had, but half way across the bay one of my skis broke and I had to walk the rest of the way in cross country ski-boots. While nowhere near as bad as downhill ski-boots they aren’t the most comfortable of hiking footwear, but it’s always worth it on a nice day.

When we started out there was little to no wind, with the temperature around -20C. But later on, even just a little wind (10 to 15 knots) gave me bad chill blanes in my hands (only when we had stopped for a bit), which took almost 30 mins to come good again.
On another occasion I took a walk within the station ‘recreation area’ with Tod, Bob, Brownie and Curly. We visited Budnick Is, Kilby Is, McMullin Is, Shirley Is, Reeve Hill and even though it was blowing maybe 20 or 30 knots with light blowing snow at the time, the temperature was much higher this time (around 10 degrees C) and my hands were fine.

Its great having Tod around! Apart from the fact that hes a great photographer, and spends most of his free time touching up his photos in Photoshop, his camera is more or less attached to his eye! Most times that I just cant be bothered lugging mine around, Tod is there snapping away like mad. These last 5 photos are all thanks to Tod. As you can see they are infinitely better than mine, but as I said he pays for it by carrying the thing around with him everywhere, and with time spent at the computer. Either way, I'm very grateful to him for it!

On that same walk in the Rec. area we spotted a flock of 20 or so snow petrels against a dark and stormy sky. We had seen the odd bird here and there before this, but a hadn’t seen a flock for months, and as it was the weekend of the vernal equinox we took it as an exciting sign that spring had come and summer was not far off.