Notes from South 2012

Jonathan Shanklin's visit to Halley in 2012

 For this trip my destination was Halley, on the Brunt Ice Shelf.  Here I inspected, calibrated and then moved the ozone and climate monitoring equipment from Halley 5 to the new Halley 6 station.  

I left Cambridge for Heathrow on December 9, where we caught a BA flight for Cape Town.  This left  a couple of hours late due to a fault with the smoke alarms, but was otherwise uneventful.  In Cape Town we joined the RRS Ernest Shackleton for our voyage south.  On the Saturday afternoon I wandered round the Waterfront, then on Sunday a group of us took the blue bus for a guided tour, stopping at the Botanic Garden at Kirstenboch, where we had lunch.  Rejoining the bus we stopped for a wine tasting session, then continued back to the Waterfront.  I stayed on the bus to the city centre, where I joined the Cathedral ringers to ring the front six for evensong.  I got a lift back to the ship, and found she was now leaving on Tuesday.  So, after collecting our kit bags on Monday morning, a group of us caught the red bus for another guided tour, this time stopping off at the cable car for a walk up to the top of Table Mountain.  After a rather energetic climb of a couple of hours we crested the summit, spent some time in the cafe and took the cable car down.  After a shower the group then headed for a waterfront restaurant for a nice Italian meal.  Tuesday was an early start, with a stow-away muster at 7am, breakfast and then boat drill at 8:15.  We sailed, but not far, just to another berth to refuel, and finally left about 4pm.

The ship's motion can be quite uncomfortable, with many on board suffering sea-sickness.  I was sick once, despite having sailed on the ship many times before, and having taken sea-sickness tablets, though it might have had something to do with sitting in front of the computer in my cabin.  I was in the Chief Scientists cabin which is on an upper deck and about as far from the ship's centre line as it is possible to get.  We still made good progress, and passed close to Bouvetoya on December 19, getting views of this desolate island enshrouded in cloud and covered with ice.  We entered our first pack on December 20, but were soon into a polynya with some quite short swell.  The ship made excellent progress, finding little thick ice, and that which we did encounter was easy enough with both engines running on full power.  On Christmas Day we were close enough to Halley for the Captain to put the bows onto the fast ice and let people off for a morning walk under sunny skies and calm winds.  This allowed us to see the ice cliffs of the Stancomb Wills ice-tongue up close.  The Christmas photo was taken under the ship's bows, with people dressing in various styles for the occasion.  Christmas Dinner was taken in the ship's mess with all the usual trimmings.

We had a little more ice to break through before we arrived at "Creek 3", where the ship berthed along multi-year fast ice adjacent to the ramp up to the ice-shelf.  A sno-cat then took us to Halley 5, some 15km away, though getting on for an hour's journey.  In many ways the station had changed little since I was last there, with the Laws building providing the accommodation, and the Simpson platform hosting the science.  There is a lot more topography, with hills and dips everywhere, it is now a simple step onto the Laws and many of the Simpson rooms are no longer used for science.  Most of the relief period had cloudy skies with some snow (bringing our annual accumulation to just over a metre), but all the cargo was brought to the two sites more rapidly than expected.  I've been mostly training our new meteorological observers, and checking the calibration of the ozone measuring "Dobson spectrophotometer".  The ship left in early January, and it took the clouds with it leaving some brilliant sunshine and calm conditions, so that despite temperatures of -10 to -5 shirt-sleeves have been comfortable for the 300m walk between the Laws and Simpson.

The station is essentially in the middle of a white flat desert, and because there is no liquid water there is little wildlife in the area.  I've seen a few Storm Petrels, and one day a Skua did several circuits around me as I walked back to the Laws building.  So far I've only visited the new station once, and it probably won't be until the end of January that we begin to move our meteorological and ozone monitoring equipment to the new site.

Days for relaxation were few and far between, but on a couple of evenings I went out skijouring, with Sanna the field assistant driving the skidoo (skooter), and Cas the Doctor keeping watch before swapping with me to be towed behind.  The first time was tiring on the muscles, but I slowly remembered my skiing lessons and only fell once.  For exercise I often filled the melt tank (which supplies us with water) in the afternoon, though everyone takes turns for the duty in the morning and evening.  Lots of other things require digging and in mid January I dug out the tripod of our automatic weather station, which required holes about 1.5m deep and around 3m long round each leg.

Towards the end of the month, more things began to be set up at the new station.  The balloon shed, in which we fill the sounding balloons was moved on January 25, and we continued using a small mobile launcher.  The first launch had a large audience, but was successful.  Most times everything went fine, but on a particularly windy day the sonde was left behind, however with practice it became possible to launch in near gale force winds..  Launches from the main balloon shed are much easier as it provides shelter for filling and launching the balloon.

January 28 was Burns Night and in the afternoon we had "Highland Games", which included throwing the RBLT, tossing the caber, holding weights, pitching the shackle and tug-of-war.  In the evening the traditional cuisine was was served including haggis.  The decision was made that we would winter at the new station.  The following Saturday was a disco night, with everyone dressing in 60s or fancy dress.  I took a turn as DJ for an hour or so.

On occasion there was strong miraging, with distant objects magnified and stretched, and sometimes inverted.  One day the new station appeared upside down.  Halo displays were generally disappointing, and although there was diamond dust on a couple of occasions it was never strong enough to produce the spectacular displays that I've seen on previous visits.  The sun was supposed to set for the first time on February 13.  Initially it become squashed, with occasional blue-green flares from the boiling limb.  It steadily become more squashed, remaining as a roiling line on the horizon, sparkling with paler "fire-flies", long after the geometrical sunset.  I made regular observations of sunspots with the small telescope that I often travel with.  Although sunspots are supposed to be building to a maximum, activity remained subdued, with only a few spots visible.  I often observed from indoors, not because of the cold, but because the wind shook the telescope too much to give a steady image.

Dobson ozone observations finally commenced at the new station on February 4, when I set up Dobson 31, which was at Halley 3 when I first visited the station in 1982.  The new setting works very well, with an observation hatch that opens with a winding handle, a rotating turntable and a rather weighty periscope to make solar observations.  A further innovation is an electronic shaft encoder, which enables a reading to be transferred directly to the computer.  This contrast with the observing arrangements at the older stations where the instrument was mounted on a rather cramped rotating cradle and readings were entered by hand.  I made the final observations with the old instrument on February 13, which was a lovely sunny day which allowed a special series of observations until sunset.

I began making more frequent visit to the new station, mostly by skidoo, with the trip taking about 30 minutes.  More and more equipment was sent to the new station.  The final balloon launch at Halley 5 was on February 12 and the final weather observations on February 14.  After some puzzling over equipment and computers at Halley 6, most things were set running without too much trouble, though minor adjustment was needed for many.  A penguin came across to the station to moult, and a couple of occasions took up sentry duty on the bottom of the steps.  One evening a flock of storm petrels flitted around the base, possibly using it as a meeting point prior to migrating north, or maybe just looking for water.

I spent my first night in the new station on February 18, but returned to Halley 5 the next day.  Life at Halley 5 became quite relaxed with only 9 people left towards the end.  I packed final pieces of equipment, and then started to dismantle things like hand-lines, before progressing on to notice-boards, carpet-tiles, skirting boards, drawers and shelving.  I was asked to lower the flag for the final time, a tradition reserved for the oldest person on base.  We left the station for the final time on February 21, with me taking the fast route by driving a Tundra skidoo, laden with bread rolls!

I was also asked to raise the flag at the new station, with the youngest person, Ollie, assisting.  This turned into a bit of a farce, as whilst the new flag-pole had been put up, no-one had prepared the lanyard for the flag.  At the first attempt the rather frayed old flag didn't unfurl, and at the second it was too slack, but the third time was pretty much OK, and it continued flying through blizzard conditions in the following days.

Temperatures began to drop, and we had -22 overnight on February 23rd.  The following day started cloudy, but cleared in the afternoon, allowing me to make a final "Umkehr" observation to determine the profile of the ozone layer.  I was due to leave for the Ernest Shackleton on the 25th, but the weather had other ideas.  The first passengers departed at 8am, so I had time to launch a final balloon, with the wind at 25 knots and rising.  Before long travel was banned as there was blowing snow in the near gale force winds. The next day dawned bright and sunny, though cold with -23 overnight.  After final farewells we boarded the snowcat for the 90 minute drive of about 25km.  The ship was at the bottom of a snow-ramp, with the ice beginning to break, so we put on life jackets for the walk down.  Once on board, we had lunch, safety brief, and then a fire & boat drill.  The ship sailed at 4pm, initially travelling along the coast, encountering smooth sheets of young ice.

Note illustrations are thumbnails, and when I return the full size images may be downloaded by clicking on them.  See also reports on my trips in 2006 , 2008 and 2010.