Additional photos included throughout & at end: 23/01/2021
The ironic thing about looking forward to Christmas in Antarctica and having a ‘White Christmas’ is that Christmas day still falls around the most summery weather we have had. At about 3 degrees outside, clear skies and barely any wind it shaped up to be a beautiful day. Shortly after breakfast around 9 am I wondered back into the mess and was greeted with a Raspberry Daiquiri – a few of us settled into the Christmas spirit of getting red faced and jolly to start the day. We then had brunch put on by Rocket with a great spread of eggs benedict and other assorted fried goodies. Following that we all headed upstairs and gathered around the Christmas tree and waited for Santa to appear and dish out our secret Santa presents. Our elected Santa was Darron who put on a great show as Santa and one by one invited each of us up to receive our presents. The vast majority of us made our presents so it was very interesting to see how creative and resourceful everyone is – the talents some people keep quiet is quite astonishing. From picture frames to paintings to model cars and even a guitar in the shape of Antarctica with a stand to hold it in the shape of an Emperor penguin – there are definitely some gifted people down here. From there people took the afternoon to go off and call their families or go have a nap if they had had too many Daiquiris.We all gathered again to have dinner at about 5pm and Rocket had bought out cray fish, prawns and oysters as well as traditional roasts. Again, please keep me in your thoughts as I try and tough it out through this gruelling experience. Lucky for us as we still get public holidays down here, for a short period we were only working three-day weeks as we got through the holidays and it seemed we had barely got over Christmas before new year’s arrived. We knocked off at lunch time and had a BBQ lunch outside and some people even jumped into the old portable spa we have hidden on station for special occasions. From there we casually kicked on and spent pretty much the whole day enjoying being outside and it was a very strange experience to bring in the new year and celebrate the countdown while the sun was still up.
Since then we have completed two more climbs. Fang peak which is in the David range and the peak it at 1032m above sea level, though the actual rock-climbing part was about 60m. Four of us went up and it took two pitches to get to the summit and then two abseils down. There was a bit of localised drifting snow and cloud around the mountain as we climbed up and down but it added a bit of a more alpine atmosphere. Also, we have climbed Rumdoodle mountain which was only 875m above sea level but actually involved more technical roping than any of the other climbs we have done so far. With a bit more than 80m or rock climbing it was three pitches up and two abseils down. But the best part was that up at the summit there was barely a breath of wind, it was a clear day and we could see so far out to sea and that even though the ice has started to rot and break up a bit around the station, the ice is still pretty frozen almost as far as the eye can see with just a faint sliver of the open water at the polynya on the horizon.
Apart from all this, we are steadily starting to turn our minds to the end of our season and getting ready for resupply. We are now in the middle of our power house shut down and performing maintenance and repair works while giving out emergency power house and chance to supply power for a while. It has been a strange feeling to be in the main power house without the roaring noise of the engines. We have a few more trips coming up over the next month or so but it is apparent the season is coming to an end.
Guy's Antarctica Adventure 2020 