Post the Twentieth

We have finally done it!  Four weeks in, and most likely half way through Swim-Swim's and my stint at Davis, but we have made it to the big, white, hard bit of Antarctica - the ice!



So, how did we manage this amazing feat, given that we live on a tongue of desolate rock far, far away from the Antarctic Plateau?

I'm going to tell you.  So make yourself a nice cuppa, grab a Tim Tam (or a Mint Slice.  Actually, I think Mint Slices are nicer than Tim Tams.  Not as good as Pavlova, though.  Pavlova tops everything in my opinion.  But I digress), make yourself comfortable, and be regaled with the tale of Jeff and Swim-Swim's Day on Ice.

Like Disney on Ice, but far less graceful.  And with fewer trademarked characters.

It began a couple of weeks earlier, when I was in discussions with the three AGSOs (Aircraft Ground Support Officers) about their work at the Davis Skiway.  The Davis Skiway (affectionately known as Whoop Whoop (or Woop Woop, but I eschew such lazy spelling)) is quite some distance away up on the Antarctic Plateau.  There is nowhere near Davis that fixed-wing aircraft can land, so they have to land at Whoop Whoop, and passengers and light cargo are then transferred by helicopter to the station.  And vice versa.

Fixed wing aircraft could land closer to the station if they wanted, I suppose, but it would turn out to be a once-off affair, and they would become part of the landscape.  Not ideal.

Again, I digress.

So Matt Ryan, who is the AGSO team leader, suggested that on a day off I might like to come a spend a day at Whoop Whoop and work with them just to see the place and get an idea of what it was like.  I thought that was a darned fine idea.

Unfortunately for my eager little self, weather and operational issues kept intervening, and the plans I had for heading up there kept evaporating in the harsh reality of Antarctic existence.   A fortnight passed, but the stars did eventually align, and Matt advised me on the Saturday morning that I was going, and I had 10 minutes to get myself to the helipad.

Nothing like advance warning, I'm sure you'd agree.

So it was, shortly after 9am on a Saturday, that I found myself sitting beside whirlybird driver extraordinaire Dave Pullinger, preparing to head out to Whoop Whoop.  Whoopee!  (Can't help myself with the lame stuff.  Sorry).

Take us to Whoop Whoop, Smithers, and don't spare the horses.

Sitting behind Dave is AGSO Rachel, and beside Rachel is Michael Goldstein (Goldie).

Goldie

Goldie is an old friend, having summered at Casey in 2009/10, the season that I was there.  He has been south every summer since then. 

Rachel and Goldie were heading to Whoop Whoop to hop on a Twin Otter which, believe it or not, is the name of an aircraft, and not one half of a very closely related pair of aquatic mammals.  They (Rachel and Goldie, not the aquatic mammals) then would be flying to a couple of remote locations to deposit some fuel drums for future expeditions.

So up we go!

During the trip I took a series of photos of the dirty cockpit glass (curse you, autofocus!) but a couple of shots managed to show things outside the aircraft as well.

Here is a section of the Vestfold hills.  Remember them?  Yep, that's right - they're made of rocks!  You can clearly (ahem) see that they're laced with dykes.  Just peer through the dirty cockpit glass and you can, anyway.

Lacy

And here is the part where the Vestfolds are being subsumed by the edge of the enormous Antarctic Plateau - the dominant feature of the continent, and the thing that contains upward of 70% of the planet's fresh water.  This thing is big.  Really, really big.  Massively big.  Immensely big.

(I hope that gives you an idea of the size of the thing.  After all, it is very big).

Bye bye Vestfolds

Here's a moderately un-horrible photograph of the skiway and the layout that I took as we approached it.

The structures and machinery are laid out in a line horizontal to the direction of the prevailing winds - particularly blizzards.  (And they do have genuine blizzards here).  This largely to do with the way snow builds up during a blizz, and this way it's easiest to get rid of build-up.

After our landing at Whoop Whoop (of which I have no photos due to the camera's obstinate insistence on focusing on windscreen imperfections) we hopped out of the chopper and Dave headed back to Davis to begin sling-loading some fuel drums out to us.

The Twin Otter was already waiting with engines warming up, essentially waiting for Rachel and Goldie to get on board.

Twin Otter.  Paradoxically, there is only one.

So they did that.  And it flew away.  I love it when a plan comes together.


Not long after its departure Dave returned with the first of 3 slung loads of fuel drums, which Matt disconnected.  I stayed well away from that procedure, being possibly one of the 3 worst qualified people on the planet to get involved.

Well slung

If you'd like to see that with movement and sound, have a go at this...

Makes all the difference, doesn't it?

After the second load arrived, and we were waiting for the third, Matt asked me to go into the accommodation van and boil the kettle in preparation for a nice hot cuppa.  And it was warranted, trust me.  It is cold up there on the plateau.  Who'd have thought that it would be so cold on top of a leviathan slab of ice?  (Have I mentioned how big it is?)

So, I did that.

Here is the inside of the accommodation van.  (This is the first 'building' on the left in the aerial photo of Whoop Whoop above).

Palatial.

You'll note that it is rather cosy.  The AGSOs will overnight at Davis as far as possible, but sometimes it is not worth their while to come back to station, and sometimes the weather traps them here.  So here they have all the comforts of home, but in miniature.

After taking that shot I stood beside that bed and turned around to get this one:

Swim-Swim pops out for a look

What more can three people want?

Bathing facilites, perhaps?  Toileting?  Pish-posh!  Such fripperies are merely the extravagances of the decadent modern age.

(You may well ask about toileting.  The next van in the line is the workshop container.  Within that are two plastic bins: one marked 'solids' and one 'liquids'.  And those, ladies and gentlemen, are your toilets.  They are removed to station for emptying periodically.  The 'solids' one significantly more often.  Because, well... ewwww).

After the slinging had been completed, and Matt and I had set about sorting out the fuel drums onto different sleds and lines and so forth, we actually had that cuppa.  And let me tell you, boys and girls, a hot cuppa goes very well indeed after you've been shifting heavy stuff around on the Plateau.  Very well indeed.

The next job was to relocate the (very noisy) generator from next to accommodation van to the other side of the workshop (and potty) van so as do reduce the noise inside the accommodation van.

Moving the generator itself is a pretty straightforward job - it was just shackled to the back of a tracked quad...

Tracked quad.  With penguin

 ...and towed into position.

The tricky part is running a line from the generator to the accommodation van in such a way that it is resistant to both blizzard damage and (more importantly) snow groomer damage.

Fortunately, Matt Ryan is a clever and resourceful man, and I...  am not.  But I am willing to assist clever and resourceful men.  How could we possibly lose?

And so it was done.  Here is Matt standing proudly beside the accommodation:

Standing with pride.  And gas.

Do you see that line running aerially from the van?  That's it.  Matt did that (with my frightfully invaluable assistance).

It ran from there, over the top of the workshop (and rest room) van:

More pride.  No gas.

And then down to the generator via a pole drilled into the ice.

A man of action.  With a big drill bit.

As an aside, you may have noticed the solar panels and other instruments atop the workshop (and dunny) van.  That is an AWS (known colloquially as an Automatic Weather Station), which transmits its data to the Meterological Building at Davis.  Where doubtless the meteorologists on station do something useful with it.  Well I would hope so, anyway.


So, that was our morning.  Very productive, and very Antarctic.  We then stopped for a spot of lunch, and here is where I will stop this blog post.  There is a bit more yet, I'm afraid, and if I try to include it all in one post it will be a bit of a behemoth.

So, join me next time on Jeff of the South for more adventures at Whoop Whoop!   I can hardly wait.