From the Ice

Mary Mouse has been keeping a low profile these recent months on the ice, but now the sun is up she’s out and about making herself busy around camp. Watch this video by Ian Prickett of Mary’s best friend Richmond Dykes showing us what the little mouse has been up to (and find out what a manmade underground Antarctic snow cave really looks like!).

by Brian Newham. Today, for the first time in many months, we felt some warmth from the sun. Standing in the caboose doorway, sheltered from the relentless wind, there was a very definite warmth on the face. An extremely pleasant feeling. It’s amazing to think that less than a month ago the sun rose for the first time and yet now we already have 8hrs 41mins of sun-up. The transition is rapid and…

by Brian Newham. Regular followers may remember the blog many months ago about our food. We started our journey with enough food for a year. It is organised in bags and each bag contains what we need for a day. There are a few exceptions to that as there are some items which cannot freeze and they are stored in the caboose whilst the bags are stored outside in aluminium Zarges boxes. Each box…

Here are a few pics of the aurora taken by Ian Prickett on Tuesday. We hope you enjoy them.

It’s been a lovely day with clear blue skies but the temperature has remained stubbornly in the low minus 40s and the wind above 30 knots. Several of us have been out for local walks but you need to keep your jumper on. This picture shows the sun dipping behind a haze of drifting snow. By Brian…

We are now waiting for a period of stable weather before we can make plans to move north. Having been out of action for three months, the two Caterpillar D6Ns are going to need a lot of thawing out and preparation before they are ready to start, which is likely to take two days or more. Then there is the challenge of digging out all of the fuel scoots which have become quite submerged over t…

by Brian Newham. It’s now seven months since the ship left us at the coast, and as we started our journey and worked our way up onto the polar plateau in the advancing winter it was very obvious how isolated we were. Our nearest neighbours are 470km away at the Russian base of Novolazarevskaya with the Indian base of Maitri very close to them, but the reality is that it would be extremely…

Q: How did you all feel when Ran had to pull out? (by Simon Davies) A: It was a big surprise and something that none of us had considered. Despite that, the decision to continue with the attempt was straightforward and unanimous. Within the remaining team we had all the skills that we needed although we had to drop the original skiing element because we were a man short. Importantly, we also had…

Q: Did you consider removing some of the spikes on the CAT treads to increase the pressure per spike thus driving them further into the hard ice and reduce the slipping that you encountered on the “blue ice”? When you stop and winch, is there some extra anchor you deploy to keep from sliding? (by Peter) A: We have considered reducing the overall quantity of spikes on the D6N Tracks. It is a…

Q: What is the Ice Teams’ unanimously favourite guilty pleasure when you get downtime? (by Gina Callini) A: In the modern world communications are often taken for granted but given where we are and the fact that we are totally isolated in a polar winter we are incredibly lucky to have an Iridium Pilot satellite system with both voice and internet access. This is our window to the world and it…