June 2013

What is sastrugi? The word “sastrugi” is used to describe an eroded snow surface and it is caused by the wind. They can be as much as 1 metre high and the rough surface can make travel extremely difficult.

Congratulations to Sarah Crist on getting married to Jonathan Wiltshire today! Sarah was the project manager with Finning CAT, ensuring that we got all the resources we needed to prepare and modify the D6Ns. In this picture she is braving temperatures of around -50C with Ian Prickett inside the cold chamber at Millbrook Proving Ground. We miss you Sarah!

If you include its ice shelves and islands, Antarctica is around 58 times the size of the UK, or 1.4 times the size of the USA.

There are 17 species of penguin in the world and five of these breed in the Antarctic; the Emperor penguin is the only one to breed during the Antarctic winter. These two guys were spotted in Crown Bay when the SA Agulhas was being unloaded back in January.

Inside the workshop. Picture by Spencer Smirl with Richmond Dykes just about visible. Can you spot him?

98% of Antarctica is covered by ice that averages more than a mile thick. If you exclude the ice shelves and islands, this percentages gets close to 99.7%.

To many people, Antarctica is one of the most fascinating places on Earth. Whether it be its remoteness, its extreme weather, its extraordinary landscapes and features, or just by virtue of the fact that there is still so much unknown about this isolated land, the continent captures the imagination like no other. Starting today we are going to be posting interesting facts, figures and phrases…

With the Met observations and GPS trials continuing daily in spite of the blizzard, today was the first time in more than two weeks that the winds have dropped enough to allow the team outside to work in earnest. The team took the opportunity to begin a new snow sampling regime, as well as some digging out of Cat’s. Brian Newham also managed to get this picture of camp. The intentions for…

In this video Ian Prickett reports from camp, where the Ice Team have been more or less confined to the indoors for more than two weeks as they wait for a monster blizzard to blow out. &nbs…

Mid-winter dream of winds easing didn’t happen! 14 days and counting… (picture by Ian Prickett)…