A little taste of things to come.

Mon 11th March

Yesterday, I sat on a rocky outcrop 400ft above a tranquil inlet called Jason Harbour. I over looked the beautiful Cumberland Bay, on the northern side of South Georgia.


I had flown over from our base at Husvik, the old whaling station, to clear up empty fuel drums from a depot site where we had deposited bait pods in the environmental plan to rid South Georgia of its alien rat parasites. 'Wiz' our environmental officer came along to supervise.

At Husvik there had been a few flurries of snow off the mountain top, 2 miles to the south of us, the enigmatically named 'Foxtail Peak' (There are no foxes in South Georgia. There are no indigenous land mammals at all)

In Jason Harbour, a little over 5 miles away eastwards and a mountain pass away from Husvik, the sun shone. There was little wind and the two of us soon had the area cleared. We stood for a while enjoying the solitude, majestic mountain ranges, warm sunshine and the deep blue sea of the Bay.

We flew back to Husvik, a five-minute trip, passing by Diamond Peak; I could almost imagine the sunshine glinting of the scattered jewels of this Treasure Island.

Today I woke to a different scene. A bleak, white realm of suffering.

During the night the fickle spirits of South Georgia changed the tune they had been playing yesterday on that glorious afternoon. No longer a classic "Lazy Sunday Afternoon" it was now a seriously modified "Ride of the Valkyries"

The weather in just a few hours had swung from peaceful pop to full blown pomp. Horizontal, 60mph snow right down to sea level. Serious weather.

From a heavenly life on Sunday to a living hell on Monday.

We hunker down and wait for a break.

The new seal pups, on the beach a few metres from our camp, love the snow. They make slides, like children experiencing snow for the first time and slip and slide into the sea. The skuas open their wings and simply jump upwards to fly backwards across the icy white beach, gliding in reverse through the horizontal blizzard.

Our helicopters stay on the ground however, securely tied down. The snow builds up on our tents and the old whaling station out buildings and outlines slowly blur as the drifts of thick snow build up covering tents, helicopters and sides of buildings.








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