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!