Monday 21 April 2014

Winter Trip Round 1

Camping for a week in cold
Antarctica.
Looking like a pro,
right before I fell off.
Don't really get past 3 steps.
So, it is finally time for winter trips again! All kitted out and trained (I needed a remainder after all those months of how to get someone out of a crevasse if the shit hits the fan) we were ready to go. I had the pleasure to go out with Dave who is currently doing his 9th (I think) winter down here - he started coming down here when no women were allowed and they still had dogs - so many stories to listen to in a tent :)

However, our great plans were all brought to a stop when the weather would not improve. We had a week of wind and rain (yes, rain!) and snow. We were not even able to get off base for a daytrip - Dave said in all his years, this had never happened to him. Great, guess that is the payback for the 6 days of awesome weather I had last year on my second winter trip.

Music in the Green Room.
Painting.
Instead I had a week off work with lots of sleep and fun. So, what can one do around here when the weather is bad? First of all, Save pitched a tent for me, so I was able to sleep in a tent all week (inside a room but who cares!). We did onion cutting - we had so much fun that we played "I spy" for far too long - we had a lot of fresh onions which were all going off, so we cut and froze them which is much nicer than have dehydrated onions. We also did some slack-lining, played with the Poi's, made some music in the green room and carried on painting the new pool table cover. The badminton is all put up now in the Hangar as the planes are gone, so we had a go at that. And who needs good weather for the 9000 piece jigsaw?!
Jigsaw Fun!
Badminton
Onions!

Saturday 19 April 2014

Easter

The collection of Easter Bonnets.
The clues got us into the comms tower.
Where are we going to next?
So does the Easter Bunny make it to Antarctica? Yes it does :)
One of our fellow winterer’s who was on nightshift the week before handcrafted some amazing chocolate eggs filled with Maltesers and Ministrels and set up an Easter egg hunt with many clues. Some of us were a little confused and nearly sabotaged the game by taking more than one clue form each location but everyone found the eggs in the end! 
The evening before, I was introduced to a British tradition I had not heard of before: the Easter Bonnet competition. We were able to enter the traditional or non-traditional category. Everyone had put lots of effort in and we ended up with quite a special set of hats.