Sorsdal to Slushie and Still Cloudy

On Tuesday Adam, Matt A and me headed out to Kazak Island, which is about 10km South of Davis, on the quad-bikes, as part of Adam's work programme to download data from an automatic weather station there and to change the flash card in an automated SLR that takes photos of the ice in front of the Sorsdal Glacier when there is enough light. I've put a map here of the route we took. This photo was taken in summer, so all the dark blue water has been replaced with white ice, and would appear similar in colour to the Sorsdal Glacier at the bottom of the picture. The ice to the West of Kazak seems to break out all the time and at the start of our Summer season here I saw a cool timelapse video from this camera of it breaking and reforming again and again. This is for the same glaciology project for which I gather ice-thickness data every Thursday from the front of station. The area around Kazak is littered with islands and the ice in those parts usually takes a little longer to form due to tidal pressures around them, so as we went we had to drill every so often to make sure we weren't liable to fall through to a cold watery plight. We pulled up to the island, almost got bogged, backed off, and parked the quads about 100m from the shore. We left the engines ticking over to keep the quads warm and proceeded by foot to the island. As with every piece of land around here, Kazak is characterised by brown rocks with blown-snow making 'blizz tails' on the lee-side of them. During the summer, Kazak island is home to a large Adelie penguin rookery and, as is the case with such islands, is also completely covered in guano. Mmm, that old smell from the Summer, though somewhat muted, was there to grace our nostrils as we traversed. The thick guano is sprinkled with the corpses of dead penguins that gradually fade into it over the course of the seasons.

The AWS and the camera are on a small peak on the island, and when arrived the top we could see the huge whiteness of the frozen sea extending to the horizon to the North broken by the many islands surrounding.

Adam and Matty taking in the view while the data downloads.

To the South was the Sorsdal Glacier which was just visible behind another Kazak peak as a beautiful blue crumbly mess of broken, pressure-rended ice. It's interesting that the ice of icebergs and glaciers seem so much more blue under the light of clouds. After leaving the island we got some photos of us in front of the glacier and here I am standing in front of it.

Getting back from such a trip it's absolutely imperative to get yourself into the living quarters, sit in the 'wallow' and grab a cup of coffee. I know that the engine of the quad did most of the work, but trips out from station in the Winter really take it out of you.
On Thursday I was up until 2am or 3am the next morning sitting with station leader Ali, deputy station leader Mark and cross-dressing met observer Linc chatting and having a bit more of a get-to-know you session. That was a bad move because on Friday my alarm tore me from my comfy bed to crawl down to the kitchen and get started on my Slushy duties at 6:30. Every 3 weeks or so each person on station has to work a day in the kitchen, helping the chef wash dishes and keep the kitchen running. This time, though, I was reponsible for feeding all the pundits because 12 of the 25 of us, including chef Kim, had gone up to the Antarctic plateau to rehearse for the up-coming traverse to the Russian and Chinese stations. The idea was to find the most miserable, barren place possible and set up polar pyramid tents to simulate the conditions over their journey. Sounds like they had a rough time and we couldn't help but wonder about them that night as the winds at station, typically more calm than the plateau, were gusting about 40 knots (70kph).

Looking like some sort of ghastly pirate with my red eyes and striped shirt, I got to work making about 8kg of bread dough. The fruits of this were 6 fluffy loaves of bread, 12 cheese-contaminated bread-rolls, 24 pepperoni and cheese scrolls and 12 vegemite and cheese scrolls. Check out my baked-goods in the photos below. It all went down a treat. That night, for dinner I made, with the help of Ole Geoff Brealey and young Chris Wilko (two of the dieso's on station), bangers and mash for all of us, including the exhausted field party who had returned 2 hours beforehand. It all went really well except for the 'orange delicious' pudding I decided to make 90mins before dinnertime that ended up being a mess of coagulated egg and watery stuff. I got Kim to do an autopsy and the verdict: not enough flour! Bugger...

Me with my unbaked scrolls, wondering if they're too scrawny...

Some delicious loaves fresh from the oven.

The scrolls turned out to be pretty good

Saturday night was good with the usual delicious food. I wore more stripes, striped shirt, striped tie. Nichol told me that the stripes clashed with each other. I said I liked to 'buck the trends'. He replied with stunned silence. The crowd at the candlelit dinner table soon thinned and I was left among a small group of people for some good candid conversation about some of the events of the past Summer. It was interesting to get other people's views on some of those. At one point in the conversation, our resident coffee connoisseur, Nick "the rodent" Roden, walked in with a long black that he was sipping on. He is one of the pundits tackling the long traverse in a couple of weeks, and has been talking at length about how he's going to miss his beloved espresso coffee. Excusing himself to go to the bathroom, a few at the table became inspired and quickly got to work replicating his espresso coffee with a cup of instant. The amount of coffee in the glass was matched perfectly, and water from the cooler was added in appropriate proportions to the boiling mix in order to make the temperature just right. When Nick came back, Wellsy, Plant Inspector for the Winter, was interested to hear more about the coffee. As Nick sipped his 'espresso' Wellsy asked him "So, is it really that much better than instant coffee?"
It was totally suss, the whole table had gone dead silent and everyone was staring at Roden.
Nick: Oh yeah there's no comparison.
Grins widen. Roden sips.
Wellsy: Really? THAT coffee is really a lot better than instant.
Roden: Absolutely!
A short beat, then contained laughter erupted around the table.
Wellsy: You're drinking instant coffee!
Hahaha, but to Roden's credit he took it incredibly well and an explanation was offered: "You guys shouldn't take advantage of a drunk man!" haha it was too good. He really did take it with style though. I compared the two coffees and the espresso was a lot better. I guess unfortunate Roden didn't expect us to stoop so low.

Later on we were talking about the overnight jaunt that half the station had arrived home from the previous day. It seems that Frank the Tank* and Hellboy, while bailed up in their tent with a blizzard outside, had failed to fully seal the outer shell of the tent from the elements. They both woke up in the morning almost buried by snow-weighted tent-walls and they were certainly trapped in there. They thought about radioing for help, and Frank had a battery but no more of the required hardware. If only they'd buried the flaps of the outer shell of the tent in the snow, none of that would have happened. While laughing about this at the dinner table I said, completely innocently, "looks like Frank and Hellboy needed some more weight on their flaps.". Linc, wearing his usual Saturday dress, jumped up from his chair, went to the bar and wrote that straight in the Davis quote book.

You really have to watch what you say around here....

Until next week my friends, don't forget to keep an eye on your coffee and keep your flaps under wraps. Adios!

*Frank is our resident German painter. Every day at smoko break Andy, our senior comms officer, brings out short summaries of the Australian and world news. Earlier this week an article appeared in the world section entitled "Uproar! Germany Out!". Apparently, half the German team had been caught using a banned anabolic steroid and wouldn't be playing in the up-coming world cup. We all know this isn't true do to the complete flogging they gave the Socceroos last night, but it was all Frank could do to keep a weak smile on his reddened face. He was seen taking his smoko snack straight to his room to jump on the internet in order to verify this 'uproar'. Andy had cleverly doctored the article according to a scheme that the four of us had come up with while we were bailed up in Platcha Hut a few weekends ago. Tonight, Frank got his own back by presenting Andy with a box of tissues painted Aussie green and gold, with 'socceroos' carefully printed on the side, so that Andy would have something with which to wipe his loser Australian tears up with. We're still waiting for Roden's revenge.