LIDAR Photo

I was playing around with one of my cameras last night trying to finally work out how to use some of the functions and settings. With help from Yogi I was able to take some good shots. The picture below (on a 30 second exposure) is of the LIDAR building. The green beam is the Lidar itself, shooting off some 80km into the night sky to record what is occurring in the upper atmosphere.

Casey here I come

For those of you who don't know already, I have been offered a contract extension to stay on for the summer. After careful consideration - about 2 minutes worth - I agreed to stay. But I am not staying here at Davis. I will be flying over to Casey sometime in November, or earlier or later. There are no guarantees here on the timing of anything to do with transport schedules. The only solid facts are that I'm catching a plane to Casey and will be back home sometime in late March. So please direct all of my Christmas and birthday presents to Casey :-)

Time for a shave!

The time had finally arrived for me to have a shave. It was really starting to bug me, and I had been contemplating it for some time. So Wednesday night (being shower day) I decided enough was enough. I thought I would post a before and after shot to record this momentous occasion for prosperity, as it may be some time before it's this long again...

Before

After

Now, isn't that much better!

Sorsdal Glacier

Last Sunday was a glorious day (-16, light winds and no cloud) so Cookie, Glenn R and I decided to head out for an afternoon quad ride down to the Sorsdal Glacier. The last time I was at the glacier I went by helicopter to gather ice for our drinks, but didn't have much time to have a good look. This time we spent the whole afternoon cruising down the side it.

Travel is prohibited in front of the glacier due to the dangers of calving bergs, and also because of increased likelihood of tide cracks. To view the whole front of the glacier from the sea ice is impossible because of the sheer size of it. We discovered that our stopping point was quite clearly defined, as the photo below of a tide crack shows. You just wouldn't get a quad over a crack this size. Right in the middle of the crack the ice was only millimeters thick - I could push my axe straight through. That said, 24 hours later you wouldn't even know that there was a crack in the ice.

This next picture shows the crack running back towards the glacier. This is the front of the glacier, and as you can see it extends way off to the right of the picture.

Watts Hut Maintenance

On Tuesday Trevor, Annette and I headed out to Watts Hut for a bit of maintenance work, and of course some sightseeing. We loaded up the bikes and the sled and headed out not long after smoko. The plan was to replace one of the heaters, change over at least one gas bottle, change out the jerry cans of fuel that are at the hut, install a new kick board in the cold porch and check all the turnbuckles on the hut.

Trevor and Annette packing the sled

The heater was the first job, and the sooner I got it done, the sooner we could boil some water for a cuppa and get the place warmed up. While I was doing that, Trev and Annette got to work on the new kick board. Some of the studs were a little difficult to locate to fix the board to the wall, leaving Trev to claim that all the extra holes were due to termites.

Trev on the saw, Annette acting as the wood vice

When we had finished all the work to be done on the hut, we made the decision to head up Mount Tarbuck. Trev wanted to head up to check out some of the rigging on the radio repeater antenna. It wasn't a great day for photos, but as it was not windy at all we went for it. This was to be my second time on top of Tarbuck, the first was in the summer when we landed on top in a helicopter. This was to be my first time climbing it. We made it up no worries, and Trev was happy with all the comms gear so it was a successful day all round. We got back to the hut pretty tired after a big day, but that didn't stop me winning two games of chess against Annette! (And drawing one and losing one, but don't worry about those games.)

Mount Tarbuck - the peak in the middle of the photo

Me on top of Mount Tarbuck

Annette and Trevor on top of Mount Tarbuck

The plan for day two was to head out for a spot of sightseeing. We headed up Lake Druzhby for a bit of a look, with the aim to head over to Crooked Lake to get to some of the gorges over there. Both Druzhby and Crooked Lakes freeze clear, allowing you to see straight through the ice which is an absolutely amazing experience. They also have the tendency to freeze completely flat which makes it hard to get traction on the quads at times. Usually this is a bit of fun, but when you have a strong head wind it can make it difficult to get where you want to.

The crossing point between the two lakes is known as Tierney River, and during the summer it flows from Crooked to Druzhby (I walked across this river when it was running during my field training trip). Of course at this time of year it has frozen, so you can ride up the river for part of the crossing.

Tierney River crossing

Just as we crossed onto Crooked, I looked back and saw that the sun was finally starting to peek out from behind the clouds. The following photo is just a gratuitous sunrise shot that I quite liked.

The three main targets of ours on Crooked Lake were the three gorges: Talg, Hidden and Grimmia. We did them in that order, and it turned out quite well, as each one was more impressive than the last.

Annette heading back down Hidden Gorge

The highlight was definitely waiting for us at the end of Grimmia Gorge - it contains a frozen waterfall. It is truly an amazing sight to see. It's very hard to imagine the fact that a running body of water can finally be suspended like that. Even in the photo it almost looks like the water is still running. It was a brilliant way to end a fantastic trip away.

Waterfall in Grimmia Gorge

Looking back down Grimmia from above the waterfall

Water Testing

It seems that I am having trouble keeping my feet on the ground at the moment. Yesterday I was on top of one of our 600,oooL water storage tanks. Currently we are sampling and testing our drinking water for pH levels, and this involved taking samples from various places around station including the 600,000 tanks. Other samples were taken from our 68,500 tanks and at selected outlets in the SMQ and LQ. What I am holding in the picture is a highly technical piece of testing equipment - we call it "syringe on a stick". Like I said, highly technical stuff.

I'm looking forward to the next two days because I'm slushy for Friday and Saturday. Not only do I enjoy working in the kitchen, it also breaks up the usual work week which is a good thing. Saturday dinner this week will be a little different than the usual sit down meal as we are having a BBQ up in the dieso's workshop, so it should be quite a laid back evening.

I'm going to bed now, I'm tired after another night of smacking my head against a wall (roughly translated as: losing another night at chess). I'm currently 1-17-4, with the four being stalemates. Conversely, Annette's record is 17-1-4. I'm sure one of these days I'll have another win.

Or not.