Walk to Anchorage island

Last night Adam agreed to run the lidar in preparation for a monster clear patch and correspondingly long lidar observation. It ended with some cloud coming over this morning after I had taken over, which meant that I had the shut the thing down by midday. So I was granted half a day out of nowhere. What would I do with this half day? Well, I decided to take a solo walk out to Anchorage Island.

Here's a photo of Anchorage Island from the sea-ice I trekked across to get there.

I don't know if you can make them out, but there are three crosses on the top of the island to commemorate the three people who have passed away at Davis Station over the years.

It was great to get out by myself. I had a nice sense of freedom as I walked across the open plain of ice. When I stopped I heard, above my tinnitus and the low hum of the powerhouse from station, the deep cracking sound of the ice being constantly pushed around by tidal forces. When I walked, the crisp sound of my shoes crunching in the hard-packed snow layer.

I soon arrived and trekked up the relatively sheer front of the island.


When I got to the top, I could see over the other side. There are some beautiful icebergs out the front of the station and it was awesome to see them from an elevated perspective for the first time since Summer. Here's a photo of one iceberg view.

Here's one of the crosses on the top of the island with the lens extremely close to one of the guy-ropes to give a perspective effect that I like.

and here's me looking deep in thought with a lucky shot of the cross in the background. I was actually thinking about cereal.


I then looked back to the base and could make out almost every building from the top of the island. This is a great shot for anyone back home. If you want to know what each building does, I can tell you. I think little things like that are surprisingly interesting.


After that I walked around the island a little bit and spotted Nick Roden commuting out towards the icebergs. You can't really tell from this, but the man is only wearing lycra!


It was -28 degrees and on my bottom half I wore jeans and thermals and by this time I was worrying whether I was getting frostbite on my bum. I did a bit of my patented 'ice-sprinting' to get the blood flowing to my rump again but my whole lower half was pretty cold by the time I got back. It was a small price to pay for an adventure off station.