Friday 13 December 2013

Friday 13th December 2013

Today was a beautiful sunny day, warm and with no wind.
After the usual morning activities Richard and I headed back out to Bechervaise Island to do some further testing on the phones out there to try and find out why they are not working. We discovered the phones could receive a call, but they could not dial out, so this shouldn't be too difficult to sort out. We took the long way home driving slowly around all the Islands and taking in the beautiful view.

When I got back to the station I decided to grab my camera and to go for a long walk around the station to enjoy the weather and to take a close look at how things have changed now that the melt is going on. I took a lot of photos and it was interesting to see things I have never seen before that was covered by snow when I first arrived. Some of the melting ice and snow formations were fantastic and I spent a lot of time looking at the smaller things going on. It's amazing the fascinating shapes and many forms of ice and snow and the many types of delicate ice crystals.

The old and the new
The dog sheds
Old station and the new station
Melt pools everywhere
Amazing ice crystals
Interesting melting ice formations

All the moss gardens up towards cos-ray have come to life and look green and healthy and there are little melt streams everywhere dripping, bubbling and gurgling. Large crystal clear pools have formed everywhere and small rivers are running down to the sea ice cutting tracks and disappearing into melted caverns.

Moss gardens
Old seal bones from the dogs among the moss gardens
Colourful lichens
Melt stream disappearing into the sea ice

Many of the glacial erratic's had melted out and you could see them balancing precariously on small rocks. You can now see all the spoil that was removed from the cos-ray vault when they dug it out and I also found a very old metal porcelain light shade partially buried in the rocks. Eventually I made my way towards west arm where I came across this awesome snow hill that I have been wanting to either ski or toboggan since I have been here. Well, stuff it, today is the day. I went back and got the orange Hag and threw in a polk and a surfboard. I asked Richard and Keldyn if they wanted to go surfing and Richard wasn't interested and Keldyn was busy, so off I went on my own.

Glacier erratic
Glacier erratic
Scrape mark from a glacier erratic
Does anyone know where this light shade came from?
Old eye bolts in the rock are everywhere
Someone had a good sense of humor to cement these boots in

I hoped into the polk and pushed off and down I went laughing and screaming as I reached a very high speed getting airborne on bumps eventually coming to rest three hundred meters down hill and only about twenty or so meters from the sea ice. It was up there with the best fun I have had down here. I stripped off to only a pair of shorts and a pair of boots to enjoy the warm sun and to get a bit of vitamin D and went down the hill about twenty times. A few times I crashed in spectacular fashion taking a bit of bark off here and there. Hitting the snow / ice at high speed is just like coming off your bike in the gravel.

After about an hour and a half Keldyn came up and joined me. He had a few very fast and long runs and a few spectacular crashes also. Eventually is was getting close to dinner time so we packed up and went back to the red shed.

Surfs up dude
Oh shit, is this really such a good idea?
Bring it on dude
OMG, how steep is this?
A ski lift would be a good idea !!

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