Mount Boulder

Earlier this week Annette, Yogi and I headed up to Watts Hut for the night. The big plan was to climb Mount Boulder, the largest in all of the Vestfolds. After dropping off some of our gear at the hut we continued on up Lake Druzhby and over the Tierney river crossing to Crooked Lake. Boulder is located at the far end of Crooked Lake.

Mount Boulder in all it's glory

After a harrowing climb in brilliant sunshine and almost no wind, we finally made it to the top. But Boulder wasn't about to give up it's summit that easily. At the last ridge we had to scramble over the top to safety.

It's lucky someone left a camera up here to capture this

And of course, once on top of the world it is obligatory to have your "hero shot" taken.

We returned to Watts after having a bit of a longer look around Crooked Lake. Behind the hut is a bridge that crossed where Lake Druzhby flows into Ellis Fjord. In previous summers this has flow very strongly but when I crossed the bridge during field training it was frozen. And as you can see below, it is pretty well frozen in at the moment too.

Yogi on the bridge behind Watts Hut

The plan for the next day was to head back to station in no real rush, cruising around the islands at the end of the fjord looking for some wildlife. We didn't have to look very hard as the adelie penguins are back now in their thousands, and the Weddell seals are everywhere too.

One of the many seals around the place

One of the reasons that we are getting so many seals so close to station is that the ice is starting to break out. Large tide cracks are starting to appear as the Sorsdal Glacier forces it's way into the sea ice. The ice breaks and moves, and then starts to re-freeze. The seals use these cracks to get onto "solid" ground to rest, and in some cases give birth. The picture below shows a recent tide crack, and you can see a hole where a seal had just come out of the water. When we were there another seal was using this as a breathing hole, helping to keep it open. The ice that I am sitting on is about a meter thick, but in the crack itself the ice is thickest where my feet are and is strong enough to stand on, but tapering down to nothing in the middle.

Sitting on a tide crack

Pretending I'm a seal

Further back towards station we came across another seal, but this one was with a new pup. This one was thought to be no older than 2 weeks.

Mum and pup

Seal pup nuzzling into the snow