Monday 3 January 2005
10 Things
It's now been over a year since I left the UK and now a whole new set of people have arrived here for the first time. The summer experience is already turning out to be quite different this time around, now I know a lot more about the place and how things work here. I knew a fair bit about Halley before I got here, but there were still plenty of things that caught me by surprise when I finally arrived. With that in mind I've dredged my memory banks to recall 10 things I didn't know about Halley a year ago:
1. Hills
The two words usually used to describe Halley are flat and white. But one of the things that struck me about Halley when I first saw it is that it's not actually completely flat. Anything left on the surface down here disturbs the air flow and the resulting turbulence dumps powdery snow on the trailing side. That snow hardens to ice and the bigger the object the bigger the windtail. All the main platforms are jacked higher each year so have sizeable hills around them now - the one behind the main platform probably runs for about a kilometre to the west as most of the strong winds here come from the east. The whole base has gently rolling slopes that you don't really see in the pictures.
2. The rest of the site
Another thing about the site that surprised me was quite how much stuff we leave outside. Most pictures you see of the place feature the Laws, Piggott and Simpson platforms but there's much more to the base than that. There's a line of about 30 shipping containers running north away from the base, plus a few other smaller buildings, radio masts, fuel depots and vehicles all of which have to be moved or jacked regularly to prevent them getting buried in the snow. Plus there's a network of tunnels (now over 30 metres beneath the surface) which houses our water and fuel tanks and carry power and communication cables to the other platforms. From one end to the other the site is over 3 kilometres (2 miles) long, much bigger than I was expecting.
3. 50.1Hz electricity
The generators that give us power down here run on a slightly different frequency than the electricity back in the UK (50.1Hz rather than 50Hz). Most electrical appliances are unaffected, but some mains-powered clocks use the frequency of the electricity as a timing source, so they run slightly faster than they should. My alarm clock is one of those affected, and has been consistently gaining 2.9 minutes a day since I arrived. There's nothing wrong with the clock itself so I can't fix it - I'm forever getting up early and having to reset it again!
4. Snow
Of course I knew there'd be plenty of snow and ice down here but I never realised how interesting it would be! I never really believed that old saying about eskimos having about a hundred words for snow until I came here, but now it makes perfect sense! You get big piles of deep fluffy stuff, rock hard icy patches that have been scoured clean by the wind, ridges of sastrugi that overhang like the crest of a wave, big sheets that make a deep crack when you step on them, you even get inverted footprints that stick up above the surface. When you walk you compact the soft stuff, then the surrounding snow is blown away during the strong winds leaving clear feet-shaped towers. It's also amazing how it finds it's way into every little gap. One time one of the containers wasn't quite closed properly and when the door was next opened there was just an 8 foot wall of snow with a perfect imprint of the container door marked into it!
5. How easy it would be
Probably the biggest myth about life at Halley is how hard it's supposed to be. Everyone talks about the place like we'll be eking out an existence, barely surviving in this frozen wasteland. Just before we arrived on the ship we were given a speech about how to approach the existing winterers with caution - we were told, and I'm not joking here, they'd be "wide-eyed and hairy and smelling of aviation fuel". Even a recent BAS press release described it as "One of the harshest environments in the world". In the dark months we're supposed to not sleep well, once spring arrives we have massive rows with each other then once it's all over we struggle to "re-integrate into society". The reality for me (at least so far) couldn't have been more different. In most ways life is much more straightforward down here than at home. Far from being depressing the dark months were actually my favourite time. It's still too early to say what the next year will bring but I'm optimistic that it will be just as good as the last one.
6. What aurora are really like
I'd seen plenty of pictures of aurora before I came down here, but none of them really look much like the real thing. Typically they don't look as vivid as you get in photos as most pictures use long exposures to try to bring out the colours. What they lack in intensity though is more than made up for by the speed they can change. Sometimes they drift and change shape slowly like long arcs of clouds being blown across the sky. Other days huge patches flicker on and off like a failing neon light, changing faster than should be possible for something that's stretching from one horizon to the other. It's very cool, but not in the way I was expecting it to be.
7. How to...
...put on a plaster cast, perform intravenous injections, sharpen a chisel, make a picture frame, turn brass on a lathe, bend copper pipes, fix leaky taps, fillet a fish, make profiteroles, bake bread, lash a sledge, put up a pyramid tent, develop photos, change an engine, ride a snowboard - the list goes on and on. It feels like I've learnt more stuff this year than I have in the rest of my life. Between us we have (by necessity) a huge range of skills and equipment down here so I've had a fairly unique opportunity to try my hand at a load of stuff I wouldn't otherwise get to do.
8. Summer flights
I'm not sure how I missed this one, but I never realised that I'd get the chance to go on any flights while I was down here. Actually in the summer part of my job involves collecting data and servicing a number of automated science stations which collect data between here and the pole. Even if I wasn't doing a science job I would have got the chance to fly - each of the winterers is given the opportunity to 'co-pilot' at least one flight each year and the summer staff are taken up for a quick flight around the ice shelf to see some of the sights. Last summer I got the chance to camp at 80 degrees south while servicing a couple of wind generators - hopefully I'll get to go out again this season too.
9. Fingernails
Fingernails seem to grow at an alarming rate down here. Some claim it's because we're wearing gloves all the time so they don't get worn down as quickly as at home - I like the idea but I'm not sure I believe it. Probably a more likely cause is Nido, the high-calcium powdered milk we use as a substitute for fresh milk down here.
10. Flying birds around the base
In the summer you get a few birds other than penguins around the Antarctic coast, so it's not unknown to have the occasional bird pass by to investigate the base. So far this year we've had a few Wilson storm petrols and some snow petrols. It is strange enough to see something alive around base that people tend to stop what they're doing to have a look, and not something I expected to see down here.
Posted by simon at 10:18 PM