Penguin Pie and Other Antarctic Delicacies: Somewhere Deep in Partly Charted Territory

There's another weather station out in deep field, some 130km away from station. This AWS is in a beautiful location near the coast and simply being able to see a different part of the landscape is a truly wonderful experience. My workers for this trip were Scotty the Chef and Deputy Station Leader, Matty one of the mechanics and Doug the Senior Comms Tech. We're still trying to convince Doug to dance like this.

This trip was almost a month in the planning as we waited for various pieces of plant and accomodation to be available from other jobs that were on. We also had to delay for a week while there were a few blizzards in the area and even then the weather window was only just over a day. On Sunday, at about 6.30am, we left station for a drive of about 15 hrs (yes, with driver swaps) and we were lucky not to run into the weather station on arrival as there was no visibility and we were driving by GPS.

The work took just over a day to complete and in the end wasn't overly difficult, simply time consuming. The first job was to check the data and make sure all was within calibration, then the mast had to be raised and guy wires anchored into the snow. All went pretty smoothly until we lost light for the day.

Scott's birthday was on the Monday, so there were some eye fillets for those that wanted them and a phenomenal display from the sky: No clouds, not a breath of wind, stars everywhere and we even turned off the generator to soak in the atmosphere. Truly breathtaking.

Then next morning we quickly finished off the guy wires, went for a quick drive, then back to station as of lunchtime. A real Antarctic experience for all involved.