Living at Rothera means that you are constantly busy...especially as a new arrival.
From 8 am my day is filled, from breakfast to weather briefings and then conducting job or site specific training which is then interrupted my smoko (which I will tell you more about later on in the season), lunch, second smoko and then dinner!
On Monday we trained in crevasse rescue where Kate and I were attached, she then jumped off the side of the snowy hill .. I then had to use myself as an anchor, whilst making a new anchor to convert the energy to.
IN order to do this we used a metal pole and hammered it into the ice, then attaching a carabineer and prusik transferred the energy using a jumar, that meant that I could move and walk over to the side of the hill to check she was alright - as this was a training exercise she German style walked back up the hill by kicking her crampons into the side of the hill and using her ice axe if needed. The ice axe is also useful if you do fall then there are certain techniques for you to dig it into the ice, keeping it close to your body and your legs in the air!
After this we then took a snowcat up to a caboose on Vals near Reptile ridge, it was rather gusty meaning that snow was constantly flying at us!
The Antarctic tents are incredible, the poles are stuck into the ground, then are certain ways to put it up in order to not loose your tent during the night!
As soon as we got back from our camping trip early on Tuesday we went straight to our first day at work! I was rushed onto a boat to do some sampling, as the wind was blowing brash and sea ice onto the warf where we launch the boats but the wind had died down enough to give us a big gap!
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| Sam (also Ex-plym uni) is the current Marine Assistant who is training me up to take over his job when he leaves me in March! |
Sam and I went and conducted a CTD (Conductivity, Temperature, Depth) equipment!
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| Icebergs are extremely dangerous! Type into YouTube 'rolling icebergs' ....that's why we stay 3X the height in distance away from the icebergs! But they're so beautiful. |
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| Pushing our way through brash ice to get to CTD site 2 |
We also collected some water samples which over two days we tested ammonia levels, fractionated the chlorophyll and also saved samples for virus, bacterial and other sorts of analysis to be shipped to Cambridge!
Wednesday was also busy with more lab inductions, boat theory and our first Antarctic boat handling course! It was epic.
Now for the next few days hopefully I will be having a dip in the water! I may even work on my Nordic skiing!
Chao for now :D
P.s.
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| Yes..I am trained as a liquid nitrogen generator user....we use this to freeze our samples! This job is so bizarre haha |