Running scared 

The annual Rothera 10 k run 

White Christmas

I hope everyone had a great Christmas/winter solstice/holiday, whatever you were doing and wherever you are. Down in the Antarctic I'm still recovering from the Rothera Christmas carnage...

Festivities here kicked off with the notorious Rothera 10 km run, which was carefully arranged to take place during the windiest part of Christmas Eve. I survived the 27 knot headwind by slipstreaming someone dressed as a penguin when running into it. Despite the race being only my fourth run in the whole of 2005, I managed to finish 2nd fastest girl (out of a grand total of 5) with a time of 51.29 minutes. Naturally I celebrated this with a few ciders.

On Christmas Day we headed up the hill for a spot of merry festive skiing then returned to a traditional turkey dinner (huge thanks to our cook Izzy), complete with party poppers and crackers, and another party in the bar. All in all it was a lovely, stress free day and I was very happy to be celebrating it with new friends here in this fantastic place.

The sea ice finally blew out on Boxing day, so this week we have actually been able to start sampling properly. The voltammeter (my vile analytical instrument) even managed to work for a day before throwing a hissy fit, but that's a problem I'm leaving till next week now, because it's nearly time for the New Years party....

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO YOU ALL!!!

I hope you are all well, and wish you all the best for 2006, have a fantastic year!

lots of love

R x

Watching the JCR come in 

Light relief

Well, just after my last post, the RRS James Clark Ross appeared on the horizon bravely pushing her way through the sea ice. She arrived on Saturday afternoon, watched eagererly by pretty much everyone on base, and since then things have been a turmoil of new arrivals, cargo unloading and long nights in a new bar trying a novel drink called lager beer.

For some reason I'm not allowed to drive a JCB, and so was spared the 6am starts that the wharf team have had for the past few days, but I have done a fair amount of lumping around seemingly inexhaustable food supplies for the relief effort. Down in the lab it's been like Christmas as we unwrap crates of the kind of useful little bits and pieces (like magnetic flea removers) that scientists get excited about: hopefully my kit will turn up soon and I will be able to actually start work!

Today the ship departed again, seranaded by the base plumber spanna on the saxophone as she pulled away from the wharf. It was fun being back on the JCR, and having some new faces to talk to, but I must admit to looking forward to a few quiet days of base life before facing Christmas at Rothera.

As ever, hope you are all well and would love to hear from you,

R x

DASH flying over sea ice - I was in it at the time 

The view from my office window 

The RRS James Clark Ross viewed from the DASH-7 

Danger low flying aircraft!

In a situation all too familiar from the cruise I did last year, the research ship the James Clark Ross is struggling through sea ice just tens of km away from base. I was lucky enough to get a place on a sea ice reconaissance flight/gratutious antarctic tourist outing on Thursday, and so found myself flying 15 m (yes really) above the ice at 210 mph. The seals basking on the ice looked closer than they did from the deck of the ship last year, though they didn't seem very suprised by the enormous red DASH-7 bird flying over them. On the way back we flew between the sharp snowy peaks of the island so close that you could see into the crevasses. It was great. ETAs for the ship, and its vital cargo of science kit and beer, have been varying widely and the subject of a sweepstake down at the Bonner lab (the prize is 11 cans of cider).

Aside from that excitment, I'm progressing well with my attempt to become the worlds slowest skier, and have started my training (well done one run, which makes two so far in 2005) for the Rothera 10 km race (5 laps round the runway of overexaggerated doom on Christmas eve). And on Thursday night, to mark a few peoples departure from base, we actually managed to drink the bar dry of cider...

Thats all for now folks, hope you're all well,

R x

In case you were wondering what the inside of a crevasse looked like...Thanks to Tim Burton for the lovely photo. 

Reptile Ridge, the lower black dot is me... 

jumaring out of crevasse 

home sweet home: Rothera base from Reptile Ridge 

Crampon my style

The wheels of science grind very slowly as we wait for the sea ice to go and the ship to arrive with our analytical equipment and something other than cider to drink. In the meantime, I've managed several evenings of skiing and another mountaineering trip and can now boast reasonably competent snowplough turns and an ability to tie myself onto the end of a rope with knots that won't come undone...Being towed back down the glacier on skis hanging off the back of a skidoo remains beyond my ability or nerve though, as i found out painfully last Monday - it's the point when you start overtaking the skidoo that gets really scary! On Friday I went for a climb up reptile ridge and learnt how useful crampons are for walking up steep snow cliffs and how annoying they are for scrambling across rock, plus how not to fall in the Bergschrund. Yesterday (Sunday) a small party of hardcore hangover survivors from the mess that was Saturday night made it out skiing; it was a beautiful day and very warm so I am now sporting a sunburnt forehead because I didn't wear my hat. Today though, there is a blizzard, and the wrong type of snow means the telephone/internet link has been down. Snow in Antarctica! Would you believe it..?

Hope you are all well, and thank you to all those who replied to my last email - if you haven't heard from me yet you will do soon.

R x

Rosie in Antarctica 

Rosie does Rothera

Hello!!

I finally made it to Rothera on 25th November, after a four day journey via the iron quarry that is Ascension Island airport, and the windswept collection of scout huts that is Stanley (Falkland Islands). The flight from the Falklands to base took 5 hours and the views of sea ice and snow covered mountain islands were fantastic.

Rothera is the British Antarctic Survey's largest base, located on Adelaide Island on the Antarctic Peninsula, and home to up to 120 people during the busy summer season. The base is a collection of prefabricated buildings, a dock and a runway, sat on a little spit of land that emerges into the sea from under a glacier. At the moment sea ice still grips the base, holding steady a now familiar landscape of icebergs, decorated with the occasional penguin or seal. Rising up behind the base is the glacier, scarred by a line of skiddoo tracks leading to our very own ski slope, and behind that the jagged rocks of Reptile Ridge and the mountains beyond. The view in all directions is majestic. We are surrounded by imposing black mountains covered in glaciers rising out of the sea; the air is so clear you can see for miles (which makes estimating distance very hard as things appear much closer than they are).

Since getting here I've been doing lots of mountaineering training, camped out for the night BAS style, abseiled into a crevasse and started learning to ski. Isn't a job in science great? Basically I'm having a great time! Going in the crevasse has been the best thing so far, it was massive and full of huge icicles twisted around on themselves. As I swung around on the end of my rope, breaking off spikes of ice nearly a metre long and sending them crashing down, I felt like I was a clumsy intruder in a fairy story.

The only downside is that all the booze has run out apart from Cider, of which there is loads but I'm doing my best to get through it...

More soon. Hope you are all well.