Hello, everyone!

The Polar Night is growing darker, subjectively speaking we have about two and a half hours of twilight at midday, although our instruments claim we have partial light for nearly four hours. So there’s a slight disconnect between what we see and the hard data … When there’s no cloud cover, the sky is full of beautiful colours; when it’s cloudy, it’s brighter, but of course we lose the colours. Right now I’m sitting at the computer in my warm office, trying to think of what to write. I’ve already changed the title twice, and I’m still waiting for a muse to appear and give me the inspiration for a great text. But my muse never appears; in all this darkness, she’s probably napping. Well, I guess I’ll just start writing to overcome my writer’s block …

In the last week of May, it was time once again for safety courses, on top of our everyday duties. So we practiced again with the climbing rope, tying knots, crevasse rescue procedures and, as the icing on the cake, rappelling from the cellar into the vehicle bay at 10 degrees below zero. Working with the rope and carabiners out in the cold, with gloves on, turned out to be harder than we thought …

Rappelling (Klaus Guba)

Hanging bat (Foto: Klaus Guba)

There was also a suturing course, so that, in the event there was no doctor, lacerations could be treated in a pinch. There were five participants, who I split into smaller groups and spent three afternoons teaching them the basics of dressing wounds. Everyone joined right in, and it was great to see how quickly they learned.

Suturing course with Anna and Wanderson (Klaus Guba)

The weather was mixed, and there were a few days where we had storms to contend with.  On one of our “house music” nights, when we were trying to play “Imagine”, there were sporadic gusts of wind that shook the station so badly, in my mind’s eye I could see John Lennon pounding on the hull with his fists, just to put a stop to our horrible “independent” sound. And it worked: we called it a night earlier than usual … but there were even stronger gales in the night, reaching speeds of 85 knots (ca. 157 km/h), even though we’d stopped. And the antennas on the roof managed to weather both the storm and our musical efforts …

Roof antenna after the storm (Klaus Guba)

And then there was this Sunday, which is also worth mentioning. We all try to do a bit less work on Sundays. As for me, I always set my alarm for 9 am on Sundays. Sleeping in is a real treat, especially when it’s pitch black outside most of the day. But on this particular Sunday, it wasn’t meant to be …

At 5:30 am the fire alarm started blaring and the red alarm light was flashing in the sleeping quarters, giving us all a rush of adrenaline. In the blink of an eye all nine overwinterers, though still a bit groggy, were assembled in their fire-fighting gear at the meeting point in front of the changing room on Deck 1. There was warm water coming out of the air vents in the ceiling, and a pool of water on the floor, roughly 10 m wide and 5 cm deep. Still half-asleep, my first thought was that the sprinkler system must have already put out the fire … then I remembered that there was no sprinkler system in the changing room. The smoke detector was full of water, which must have set off its alarm. After shutting the main water valve, Mario, our engineer, and Andreas, our electrical engineer, soon got to the bottom of the problem … the hot-water pipe under the shower on Deck 2 had burst, and the water spread between Decks 1 and 2 before it started making its way through the electrical conduits and any other cracks and crevices it could find, flowing down toward the cellar. But it was still better than a fire … a thousand times better.

Water dripping from the ceiling (Wanderson Almeida)

Mario and Andreas quickly found and patched the leak, though this involved crawling in the space between Decks 1 and 2 (ca. 55 cm high) and replacing the burst pipe while lying on their backs. Definitely not a job for anyone with claustrophobia. In the meantime, the rest of us had vacuumed and mopped up the pool of water as best we could, and placed dozens of buckets under the dripping ceilings on nearly every deck. We all spent several hours doing damage control that Sunday, but we were all thankful that it wasn’t a fire … and that the burst pipe was from the shower and not the toilet …

The incident also showed us all the value of the monthly fire drills. We’re on our own out here, and have to be ready to protect our station and home from any and all emergencies. And using the fire-fighting equipment, just like using the climbing rope, is something that takes regular practice, even if it takes time and is sometimes a headache …

Fire drill (Wanderson Almeida)

Apart from that, it was the normal monthly routine in the first two weeks of June, with medical studies, maintenance work, testing our drinking water, etc., interspersed with writing emails and answering requests for interviews … plus various tasks outdoors. I’m always glad to get away from my desk; being outside is wonderful, and from 11 am to 2 pm, when the skies are clear, you can enjoy the kaleidoscope of colours on the horizon while you work, at 35 degrees below zero … these are the moments that feel truly unique … and make the Polar Night so beautiful …

Sunrise at 11 am (Klaus Guba)

Roof work at 1:30 pm (Klaus Guba)

Roof work (Klaus Guba)

In the last two weeks, we ran recons to the two sea-ice ramps. After touching base with Bremerhaven, the satellite images showed that the sea ice was stable, which meant we could use Skidoos and sledges for the sea-ice measuring work, as long as the ramps leading from the edge of the ice shelf to the sea ice were covered with enough snow. Secured with a safety line, and armed with an avalanche probe and ice axe, I took the first few steps over the ramp and toward the sea ice. In some spots, I could stick the probe ca. 1.5 metres down in the snow, but below that, it was solid ice. And then I was standing on the sea ice. About 30 m away, three emperor penguins watched with amusement as I carefully made my way … for a minute, I thought about whether I should plop down like the penguins do, and slide down the ramp on my belly. But I opted against it; with me in my red snowsuit, it probably wouldn’t look as elegant as when they do it. Besides, I didn’t want the three penguins to make fun of me, the clumsy man in red. Instead, I put new flags on the ramps, and that night, after a talk with Bremerhaven, gave a green light for the planned measuring work on the surface of the ice …

And the measuring work is exciting stuff, but I’ll tell you more about it next time: a little outlook of what’s to come and a “cliff-hanger” to close with …

Hope to talk soon, and best wishes to the rest of the world, especially our loyal readers and our loved ones back home …

Sunrise panorama (Klaus Guba)