ORCA!

 

No not the marine mammal kind....the epic peak that I've been wanting to climb up since I got here! Orca is outside of the recreational travel area, so Malcy our station leader and I headed up to Orca on skidoos outside the flag line. It has been snowing heavily the past week so the snow is very powdery and thick so we dumped the skidoos and skied to the windscoop of Orca. As you can see below we were skiing with a line attached to us as there are a few crevasses around.

 

 

After dumping our skis we climbed down the windscoop with our ice axes, then we trundled up to the start of the climb to one of the ridges through knee high deep snow - good resistance training!

In the photo above we started what turned into a 7 pitch climb. This type of climbing is called mixed climbing, where we where crampons on our boots and use ice axes (where possible) to climb up the routes with snow, ice and rock.

 
This was a fun part of the climb as the slabs were quite large which meant you really needed to trust your crampons by using sometimes only 2 spikes to balance your body weight onto, coupled with small holds for the axes made it very interesting strategizing  where to climb next.

The view was incredible, the clouds lingered around trident and N2.

Once we got to the peak the view of the Sheldon glacier was amazing and we could see all of our base companions skiing at Vals. We then belayed from the top down to about half way, then we walked back to our skis - we got back in time for Sunday roast!!!

Malcy our Wintering Station Leader - both with frozen hair/beards!

Such fun - I think I've found a new sport to love!

Winter Trip fun!

I have just come back from my little camping retreat away from base. Everyone from base has two weeks off during the winter in Antarctica to get away from the base and have a little holiday away. Each person gets assigned their own field guide for that week.

Our aims of the week (decided as soon as we heard we were going together) 1. Good food, 2. Photography, 3. Climbing and Boarding.

This is the Pyramid tent that we slept in for the week, this photo was taken at the end of the week. You can see the snow built up around the tent. The skidoos and sledges were parked into wind and with a large gap between them to prevent drifting.

Ali Rose and I set off early on Sunday to capture the good weather window of the day because the start of the week was looking high in winds and precipitation. We pitched the pyramid tent and arranged the rest of camp.

 Once we pitched camp at Trident East, we headed to Trident, the big peak that was behind our camp. We did a snowy/ice climb using crampons and ice axes to get to the top of Trident. We did the route in 4 pitches, on the first pitch my inner boot managed to come off and turn at a 90 degree angle to my shoe; that was an interesting start to the climb with Ali having to help me put my boot back on....tragic.

On the right is the anchor that I am attached to and then belayed Ali as he climbed.

This is Ali and I almost at the top of what was an awesome climb. You can see our skidoos in the background, also our half unit sledge which has enough supplies including a tent, fuel and food to keep us safe for 3 weeks if we did get caught out by the weather.



The view was incredible!

A halo seen from our camp (you can see our poo tent on the left of the photo), This basically told us that there was a storm on it's way as these form when there are ice crystals in the atmosphere. That's exactly what we had on our second night in the tent....a massive storm that had Ali and both reaching for our biffy bags and SAT phone. 

 It is very warm in the tent with the tilly lamp and stove, this photo was taken after we had just got back from climbing so I was still warming up from the skidoo ride. A hot chocolate rum always helps matters.

The view from our tent was pretty spectacular too. 

With the stove in the middle it separates the tent so you actually feel like you have your own space.

Food in the pyramid tents is pretty good. You can probably spot the nutella, marmite and happy cow cheese oh and biscuit browns - this was basically how we started each evening meal. We had man food a few nights (army boil food in a bag style), we also had some vacuum packed food from our chef Lewis. 

PANCAKES! Yummy. 

After two days of lie up, Ali and I decided to go big or go home. So we headed to the peak that is called M26. AS soon as we got there the wind picked up to over 15 knots; this did not stop us. We put our snowboards on our back and walked up to a bowl, as we turned around and put our boards on (well Ali had to put mine on as I couldn't quite clip it myself around the mountain boots..) we had not realised how steep it was,

 So after toe edging it down on side I then managed to do a turn and link up to where Ali had stopped at the bottom. So much fun. It was so cold and windy on the way up that Ali's beard got a tad frozen. 

 We then decided we wanted to get out of the wind, so headed into a crevasse; as you do. We descended past one bridge, abseiling down about 40 m. The ice crystals projected so many different shades of blue. We then jumared back up from an impressive cavern; a very good work out. 

 

We then had a bit more energy so went for a short walk around the wind scoop of M26.

So many layers!

After such an exciting day we did some yoga in the tent to stretch out! haha

 On our last day we went to N2 a peak to the East of our camp. WE walked around it's massive windscoop and then Ali decided to make a new route up to one of the peaks. It was my first time mixed climbing, it was so fun! Pulling your self up on your ice axe when it's only in a little hold it pretty exciting, also trying to get your crampons into good holds to support your weight was a fun mission on trying to find a good route up. Definitely going to have to head to Scotland when I get back home and carry on this mixed climbing malarkey. 

 Thank you Ali Rose for an epic winter trip :)

21 people.

Here is a little reflection of the past few weeks of summer at Rothera and how we entered Winter in style. There have been lots of animals around the base keeping us entertained. Most people do not like fur seals as they move pretty fast, they are like a bear/dog that sounds like something out of another planet.

 Adelie penguins are still dotted all around base, they are usually found in a large group near the waters edge.

 I think this is the only place on earth where the shores are not littered with plastic or other waste...or is there microplastics hiding beneath the massive chunks of ice...I will let you know....!

With the days getting shorter the lighting from the sunsets and sunrise have been incredible. I actually left my dinner one night to take this photo as this lenticular cloud lit up spectacularly above Reptile ridge.

The moon reflecting around some bergs.

March was so so busy. We waved off the Shackleton that had all of the summers on it; so it is now officially winter. Luckily I was on mooring team for the Shack, so I had to undo the shackles which held the mooring lines; this kept me from getting too emotional!There are 21 of us left at Rothera to run the base until the dash-7 flies back into Rothera in October.

We lit flares that needed to be used to wave off the shack.

 After we waved them off we headed to the Bonner for some bacon sandwiches and champagne; that definitely set the tone for how this winter is going to go.

Here is the awesome winter team 2016 consisting of of 21 people!!

So far the first week of winter has been awesome, we've had a massive scrub out to clean the base, we went out sampling finally after 10 days of relief and high winds preventing us from getting out on the boats, we've had a Spanish and wine evening, rugby and beers and lots of snowboarding in the evenings and walks around the point! Now I am off on my winter trip for a week, where I will either be lying in a tent chilling due to bad weather or we will be out ice climbing and snowboarding - and maybe even some crevassing!