teeks

Each person at Halley will, on average, spend about 50 hours a day digging. From the melt tank, to digging up microbarographs to uncovering skidoos to digging holes in the snow for the fun of it because we spend so much time digging, it feels odd to be doing something other than digging. We even have Olympic Class diggers like Ant, who spends more time digging than breathing.

We dig because we have to. Every drop of water used on base, from showers, to toilets to cooking comes from snow. Seeing as snow isnt very good at washing clothes or cleaning plates, we have to ‘melt’ it in a big ‘melt tank’ which is a big ‘tank’ that lives 30metres under the snow surface. This melt tank is filled everyday by throwing snow (along with shovels, radios, rabbit hats) into a chute which leads to a large heated tank deep under ground, which keeps the water nice and liquidy for us to use. The melt tank roster is drawn up by Pete, our Base Commander, and everyone has a week’s worth of melt tank duty every 5 weeks or so. Unless you’re Ant of course, who hits the melt tank three times a day.

This week, we have Mat (just a Mech), Rich (just a doc) and yours truly (just a coms man… bah doesnt work) on melt tank duty, and seeing as the other two are of the type that like getting up early, they hit the snow at about 7am. 7am to me is not a very good time, so I do my little bit after lunch time on my own (Ant style) and usually carve out a couch or some other interesting furniture thing into the mound of snow surrounding the chute before getting bored. We dig until a bright red light turns on, which is a weird because it coincides with the tank being full – it’s like its connected to some kind of system that knows when the tank doesnt need feeding any more. I like digging this time of year when its dark outside, and walking away from the melt tank with the red light behind casting long, strange shadows ahead sets the scene quite nicely.

Genuine Antarctic Hero.

It doesnt stop with the melt tank. I’ve helped the Metbabes dig up a few microbarographs, which were buried after 12 months of snowfall. Digging a hole 2m deep by 2m wide doesnt produce that much snow, which I found odd. When it came to filling the hole back up, we were short on snow, so I had to dig other holes just to fill in the main hole. Here we have Tamsin and Kirsty working the lens…

Here’s the first microbarograph we dug up. I say we, but I only helped with the remaining three and never actually touched this one. This was by far the deepest, which turned out to be an excellent venue for an ice bar …

Mat needed a hand moving 8 skidoos from the garage to the sledge line, so he got Rich and Jim to dig them out and he sent me in the dozer to pick up a sledge. I returned with a sledge, and after some more digging and levering, we carefully drove each skidoo on board, which will live on the sledge-line until they’re needed again.

The varying types of skidoos outside the garage. We were moving the newer Skandics (yellow with lights on), and the older types will be moved sometime soon

As you can see, they get burried after a blow. We had 40+ knots of wind for a few days, which saw even the most diligent of skidoo get totally buried.

I get on my knees and dig out the exhausts so we can start the engines and warm em up.

Urgh. That’s gonna take a while.

The dozer is one of my favourite pieces of kit. It’s slow, noisy and hurts if you fall off it.

That is’ I have to go now, something (dont know what) needs digging. Thanks to Rich and Dave for the photos.

Filed by admin at 12:59 pm under antarctica
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Something new happened on Wednesday. The sun went down as normal, and the night started as any other night, but this one special night wont end for another 105 days. The sun bid its farewell and ducked under the horizon, and it wont return for nearly 4 months.

Dave, Tamsin and I stood outside, quietly staring at the oranges, the purples and the pinks surrounding the mid-afternoon sky, and as the sun slowly dripped below the horizon, we dropped to our knees and worshipped the last remaining moments of the Sun. We waited for Sol to disappear and then turned 180 degrees and welcomed the next biggest thing in the sky, Mr Moon, and as it hovered there triumphant in its victory against the Sun, I knew that an important chapter of my time here had ended, and another was about to begin.

We ushered in the darkness in typical Halley fashion – by having a BBQ. Ant, our venerable chef and ever-cheerful workaholic knocked out another superb BBQ, with fancy chicken, lamb, steak and a myriad of other BBQ-type stuff all consumed in the pleasant -20 temperature. We then retired to the Laws Lounge to celebrate a new period at Halley.

Filed by admin at 3:57 pm under antarctica
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