Thursday 2 September 2004
Penguin Trips
The light has now returned enough that we were able to get our first trips down the coast to see the nearby emperor penguin colony. We travelled by sno-cat down to the coast when we have a small hut where you can stay for weekend breaks. From there we had to abseil off the side of the cliffs onto the sea ice. You could see the colony about a kilometre away in the distance from the top of the cliffs but by the time we had all abseiled off a stream of penguins had walked over to greet us. Then as we started heading towards the main bunch they followed us!
We reckon there were between 2000-5000 birds in the colony, most of which are males who have been incubating a single egg all winter. A few of them had young chicks so they are just starting to hatch now. There were quite a few eggs abandoned on the ice but only one dead penguin that we saw so it looks like it's been a pretty successful year so far. The females should start to return soon (they have to walk hundreds of miles from the edge of the sea ice) to take over looking after the chicks. That gives the males the chance to get their first meal in many months. Having experienced the weather they have to deal with we are struggling to decide if they are very brave or very stupid!
The great thing about getting to see them this early is that they are all still huddled together for warmth in one big group, plus they are very friendly because they don't have chicks yet. If you sat down on the ice a big group would wander over to check you out and sit just a metre or so away! Every so often they'll move around a bit and loads of steam rises from the huddled group as the trapped heat escapes. It's one of those things that you can only see by doing a winter down here so we all feel really privileged to have had the chance.
We hung around for a couple of hours walked back to the base of the cliff. From there we had to climb back up using a combination of crampons, ice-axes and jumars attached to the ropes. There was a fair bit of hanging around waiting for your turn so we were all pretty cold by the time we left - the problem is it's very hard to use the equipment with big mitts on and holding metal gear sucks the heat away from your hands. When we finally made it we all piled into the nice warm snow-cat for the journey home. It was just starting to get dark and we could see the lights of Halley long before we made it back.
I've added some photos from the day to the Gallery.
Posted by simon at 10:23 PM