Packing Down the Runway

There's a (not so) little runway about 70km to the South East of Casey called Wilkins. At the end of the flying season each year it has to be packed down and made ready for the winter, then set up again around the beginning of November. A couple of weeks ago I travelled up there with Jukka the communications (radio) technician and we assisted each other with sorting out our various bits of equipment.

I'm not sure how interested all of you out there are in knowing about the job, but all I had to do was remove two rather expensive pieces of equipment: a ceilometer, which is used to measure how high the cloud is; and a vismeter, which tells us how far we should be able to see (in a horizontal line)... This particular instrument is generally used at remote sites where there's no personnel, but also at airports (which are manned) although I can't remember the reasoning behind doing so.

That evening Ben M, Tim, Andy and Matt, who were up at the runway packing down the buildings and dragging them to the burn, put on a fantastic roast for us and for the movie we had to implement the "rom com rule". If people don't like the movie within the first 10 minutes, the movie is canned and a we watch a rom com. I can't remember what we had started watching, but instead of a rom com we ended up with This Must Be The Place, starring Sean Penn as an old rocker who still got around in his make up. Brilliant movie for those looking for something a little different.

A Hagglund and weather station with the camp in the background

One of the difficulties of getting around here, especially when travelling long distances, is that everything is white. And on those days where the ground is white, the cloud is white and the angle of the sun and height of the cloud match up to create this diffuse effect that takes away all surface definition (no shadows) and horizon definition (no sky), all of a sudden we get what's known as a "white out". The best way I can think of describing this for those out there is in the scene in The Matrix where they're in that white room. Only it's a helluva lot colder here and generally we have snow too.

All the buildings being lined up for winter. By being put in lines like this and facing the prevailing wind, any snow accumulation after a blizzard (known as a blizz tail) will drop down the back of the burn making life much easier when setting up at the beginning of the season.

Buildings almost floating - there's just enough of a horizon to see where the sky is.

The camera picks up the shadows better than the eye can.

I'm sure you can imagine that it'd be difficult enough to work in these conditions, but driving in them - especially when the snow comes in - is, well, odd. It's impossible to see the bumps and dips in the non-existent road and the canes marking the path suddenly appear out of nowhere.

Where's that cane?

Alex Day

February 14th has a different name for most people, but for those that know me I'm a bit of a humbug about the other one... well, the commercial side of it anyway. That being said, the men of Casey were given a very special treat by a few of the women around here with a personalised poem being left on our doors.

Over the summer my nickname was Anchovie, but I'll explain that one in another post

 Oh and if you're wondering where Alex Day comes from, it's the birthday of one my oldest mates and that's the name we gave the other one in around year 8 or 9.

Fun for kids

One of the jobs down here is to liaise with various schools who are studying about Antarctica. The doctor and one of the Met observers has this particular honour this year and during the week the doctor was fielding some weather based questions, so he asked us three on the Meteorology team to provide some answers.

Here are my attempts:

Q. We have found out that it does not rain in Antarctica it only snows. Is that true? (Joshua). 
A. No, sometimes it rains cats and dogs (but hailing taxis hurts more).

Q. We also learnt that there are only two seasons. (Genesis)
A. That's right, there's only two seasons: salt and pepper.

Q. Is it true it is always light in summer? 
A. Generally speaking, yes, but it depends on where you are on the continent.

Q. Is it true that it is a desert? (Bethany) It is the coldest, windiest and driest place on earth? 
A. Yep, definitely a dessert, that's why it's white. We live on an ice-cream continent and there's chocolate underneath.

Q. What kind of force does the wind use? (Joshua again)  
A. Considering what we've been eating, I'd say the force of some pretty strong bowels.

Q. We love to learn about Antartctica. (Heta). We learnt that it has 90% of the world's ice. How did the snow get there? 
A. The elves brought it in using trucks pulled by giant snow dogs.

Q. Is it true it is the 5th largest continent? (Temayana) 
A. Yes

Q. How do you survive the wind? 
A. Put Mark B in his room.

Q. How cold is it in Antarctica? 
A. Cold enough to freeze a person stiff within 5min. I think the coldest recorded temp was -89.9ºC at Vostok station.

Q. How cold does it get at Casey Station? 
A. Around -35ºC in the depths of winter, which is why we cut a hole in the sea ice and go swimming.

Q. Is it true the hottest day was minus 10? 
A. Probably somewhere, but our hottest temp so far this season was about +5ºC. Although the radiant heat at ground level was about +19ºC (according to moss researcher Jess on one of her 24hr monitoring days).

Q. Has a penguin ever tried to attack you? 
A. Yes, but I was on Macquarie Island at the time. A king penguin saw me trying to steal one of its royal followers and it ran up to me squawking and beating me with its wing. Finally it pecked me on the nose and I let go. I felt very ashamed by being beaten up by a penguin and don't like to talk about it. Thanks for bringing that up - jerks.

Here's the game for those at home, which answers are true and which ones aren't?

Everything Else

So the main things going over the past couple of weeks has been the Search and Rescue (SAR) training week where a group of us were given extra training on how to get people out of trouble if they happen to go off track and end up in a rather poor position when out in the field or how to go about finding someone who has gone missing around station (maybe lost or hurt or simply don't want to be found). With the events from the previous post occuring the same week as the training, it really hit home just how remote we are and that if anything does go wrong in the deep field, the operation becomes more of a retrieval than a rescue.

 

There has been much music over the weeks as well. We had a great band and played a number of cover songs ranging from Creedence Clearwater Revival to Paul Kelly, The Beatles, Gerswhin, Simon and Garfunkel and a bit of 3 Doors Down too. The band was made up of 3 singers: Vicki, Marie and Beck; pianist and occasional singer Bec; Andy the drummer; on guitar was Zbynek (who has an incredible ability to play along with any song by ear) and mad Matt, who also sings; and me on clarinet, bass guitar and sometimes harmonica (plus singing out of tune when I felt like joining in). Sadly, a number of our members have already left, however we'll have Andy, Matt and me for the winter and a few others wanting to learn and play along.

I went for an over night ski with some of the summerers, hmm, about a week and a half ago, to the nearest hut to station, the Wilkes Hilton. This hut is located at the site of the old station in the area that was abandoned in the 1960's. The ski over was a helluva lot of fun, although it was only the fourth time I'd ever been cross country skiing... The first three were around the ski loop at station. We had pizza in the wood fired oven and went for an evening walk around the old buildings all to the backdrop of a rather beautiful sunset.

Last weekend there was a group of the winterers who were taken out for the final bit of field training before the last of the summerers leave us. We went to the hut furthest from station at Browning Peninsula. The drive over there was fairly good going until we were heading down hill and having to cross multiple melt streams. We were constanly stopping to find the best places to cross and learning to trust all that the Hagglunds could do. They're a wonderfully chunky piece of machinery these Haggs, they can go pretty much anywhere and are supposedly able to float too, but we haven't tested that particular theory. We went for an evening walk after setting up camp and were greeted by a spectacular up close and personal view of the Vanderford glacier. An awe inspiring sight. We then played with a few elephant seals - well, we wandered around and took photos while they lay there in their wallow. The walk the next day didn't go down too well with some of the others, they didn't seem to think that walking in high winds with a pack on the back is something that is all that enjoyable.

*This post added as bit of a fill

That's pretty much everything for the past few weeks, enjoy the photos and I'll be back on here sometime in the near or distant future.

Moved Back... for now

So it seems that there's a way of getting blogspot to work as I want it to - and my thanks to Dean for the tip. I'll continue posting here until things stop working again, basically I like the way blogspot handles photos better than wordpress. In the mean time, here a photo:

Pretty self explanatory -  Awesome beanie Bec!

Moved

THIS BLOG HAS BEEN MOVED. The proxy server that I am behind isn't allowing photos to be uploaded. The new blog is at: http://ppoad.wordpress.com/

Farewell, Flying Friends

On Wednesday 23/1/13, a Twin Otter with the callsign KBC of Kenn Borek Air (Canada) disappeared from radio contact when travelling from the South Pole to Terra Nova. The news was given to us the next day, sending a shockwave through the community as some here on station knew the three crew members very, very well. Over the next few days we continued receiving news of deteriorating weather conditions that hampered Search and Rescue (SAR) attempts until the afternoon on Saturday 26/1/13 when we were informed of a positive sighting of the aircraft near the top of Mount Elizabeth in the Queen Alexandra range.

As I'm sure you'll understand, the mood on station went quiet pretty quickly, but slowly people returned to the fold over the evening, which became a night of rememberance and celebration of lives lived fully. The station used a Canadian flag, signed our names (adding a couple of quotes the crew liked to live by) and sent it back to the families of the crew.

Fare thee well.