South Georgia has thrown us a baiting lifeline. The weather over the last week has been better than when we arrived during the southern summer time of February.
In the last 6 day the mad ratters have achieved more than in the previous 2 months.
At sea level our base camp is enjoying a perfect summer-like day. Blue skies, light airs, sunshine everywhere. The Island is flaunting its wild spirit and basking in its own glory.
I am not required for the baiting work. This spare pilot has no machine to fly; I have simply become a spare person, a human in need of adventure.
I head up into the peaks that crowd up in a semicircle just a mile behind the camp.
Just a 600 metre climb turns the warm day into a sunny winter wonderland, an ice realm of baby glaciers and cool ice-pools decorated with flat slabs of glittering ice blocks. Waterfalls pierce dark tunnels through thick sheets of snow and surreal cold needle peaks jut up to rake the clear azure sky.
This amazing Island of South Georgia slaps reason with an impossible overlay of sensations. They make a mad sense all of their own when put together. Just like the peaceful madness of Spike Milligan's insane and zany humour.
It's time to climb back down from the high and airy ridge back to our base camp, basking in the sunshine at the waters edge.
"I must go down to the sea again,
To the lonely sea and the sky.
I left my shoes and socks there,
I wonder if they are dry?"
On a totally different note I'd like to remember an evening meal we all enjoyed recently at "The Restaurant At the End Of the World", shortly before the main party moved out to 'Purgatory Bay':
Freshly baked breadsticks
Hummus and fresh garlic mayonnaise dips
Sweetcorn risotto with Parmesan crisp
Mutton Putanesca
Polenta
Bread and Butter pudding
Fresh Trifle.
All served with one of the wildest views you can imagine.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
Monday 15 April 2013
Friday 12 April 2013
Happiness is Helicopter shaped
After weeks of horrid weather, including 2 days of an Antarctic freezer blast, the weather on South Georgia has changed. It's now almost like an sunny autumn day in England.
The research vessel 'Ernest Shackleton' was just off South Georgia during that Antarctic blast, 6 weeks ago. The Captain later told me that in thirty-five years at sea, that particular 'force 12' night rated high up in his top 10 of 'perfect storms'.
So we go from one extreme to another. Blizzard to balmy. Or should that be barmy, as in mad? Mad ratters on a mad-weather island?
So finally the wind-sprites have given us a break. Sun, blue sky and nil wind. The northern coastal zones of South Georgia we had been waiting so long to finish, have been flown and baited. The southern baiting zones, so fickle to get to due the massive interior ice fields, are begun. It's time to move the camp in order to save transit time.
The 3 aircraft, the 3 Kiwi expert baiting pilots and the loading teams decamp to the south side of the Island. To Peggotty Bluff or as the pilots have named it, due to the turbulence and cold they have experienced there, 'Purgatory Bay'.
Not everyone leaves; there is redundancy built into the plan. One doctor remains behind. A chef. Spare manpower for general duties and bait loading and me; a spare pilot.
The helicopters flew off and suddenly what I knew would occur, when the camp moved, had actually happened; I'm now a pilot without portfolio. Man without machine.
The 3 Kiwi baiting pilots, Peter, Tony and Dave, quite rightly, have flown the 3 helicopters across the Island. I am now the reserve pilot in the reserve camp. I'm so far from the action; I don't even have air traffic type flight following to keep me busy. The camp seems empty to me; my pilot colleagues, new aviator friends from distant lands, have departed.
The core of personnel left with me has a wealth of skills that have been honed in some of the most extreme environments in the world. Construction, software development, engineering, hard core Antarctic living. What can I learn that could be useful to me back in the UK? Glacier crevasse extraction? Building a camp on floating ice 500 foot thick?
Perhaps not.
Learning to quad bike? Yes. Essential to our base camp and we have a quad kindly loaded by the South Georgia Government. Essential for collecting our fresh water. Time to get to grips with it. Massively long grey graveled beaches, old glacial moraine, perfect for the quad bike ab-initio student!
What next? Software lessons…..hmmm. Basic engineering………….I don't think so.
But who else is here? A chef (actually a professional landscape photographer) who has worked in 2 star Michelin restaurants back in the UK. Now we are talking useful UK skills!!!
I eat eggs a lot now since I trimmed 50 pounds of excess body fat in 2008. OK, eggs are in short supply in South Georgia and rationed for special days. A few weeks ago Oli the photograper chef served a few of us still at the camp one lunchtime, absolutely perfect poached eggs.
The kitchen our Michelin trained landscaper photographer chef works from is a 4 metre by 4 metre red and white plastic tent. From the door one can see, just 20 metres away, an inlet of calm water full of cavorting seals and just a mile from jagged mountain ridges that soar from the waters edge to sapphire skies.
Time to learn. Vinegar in the water? Nah. Swirl the water in the pan? Nope.
I now know the trick. And like the answer to a magicians trick, I am sworn to secrecy. An 8000-mile journey to the perfect poached egg. Mad ratter's tea party indeed.
The weather is like a glorious summers day. Mirror-glass, azure blue water. Sunbathing seals. Shimmering mountains in the background. Blue, blue sky. But no flying at the base camp. At the moment I'm like a spare bridegroom at a wedding. No escape for me. No helicopter flight to help me put out my hand and touch the face of God.
We get news from the baiting frontline. A fantastic day! More done than on any other day so far. A triumph. The capricious island had held us ransom for so many days, but the team is on a roll.
Tomorrow the forecast sounds better than today. The prayer is that the sea fog will not roll in on the south coast and the baiting will continue at breakneck pace. But what will we do at base camp?
We have a mountain guide, and a doctor to boot. An expedition leader with worldwide mountain experience.
Those peaks just behind our base camp are calling.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
The research vessel 'Ernest Shackleton' was just off South Georgia during that Antarctic blast, 6 weeks ago. The Captain later told me that in thirty-five years at sea, that particular 'force 12' night rated high up in his top 10 of 'perfect storms'.
So we go from one extreme to another. Blizzard to balmy. Or should that be barmy, as in mad? Mad ratters on a mad-weather island?
So finally the wind-sprites have given us a break. Sun, blue sky and nil wind. The northern coastal zones of South Georgia we had been waiting so long to finish, have been flown and baited. The southern baiting zones, so fickle to get to due the massive interior ice fields, are begun. It's time to move the camp in order to save transit time.
The 3 aircraft, the 3 Kiwi expert baiting pilots and the loading teams decamp to the south side of the Island. To Peggotty Bluff or as the pilots have named it, due to the turbulence and cold they have experienced there, 'Purgatory Bay'.
Not everyone leaves; there is redundancy built into the plan. One doctor remains behind. A chef. Spare manpower for general duties and bait loading and me; a spare pilot.
The helicopters flew off and suddenly what I knew would occur, when the camp moved, had actually happened; I'm now a pilot without portfolio. Man without machine.
The 3 Kiwi baiting pilots, Peter, Tony and Dave, quite rightly, have flown the 3 helicopters across the Island. I am now the reserve pilot in the reserve camp. I'm so far from the action; I don't even have air traffic type flight following to keep me busy. The camp seems empty to me; my pilot colleagues, new aviator friends from distant lands, have departed.
The core of personnel left with me has a wealth of skills that have been honed in some of the most extreme environments in the world. Construction, software development, engineering, hard core Antarctic living. What can I learn that could be useful to me back in the UK? Glacier crevasse extraction? Building a camp on floating ice 500 foot thick?
Perhaps not.
Learning to quad bike? Yes. Essential to our base camp and we have a quad kindly loaded by the South Georgia Government. Essential for collecting our fresh water. Time to get to grips with it. Massively long grey graveled beaches, old glacial moraine, perfect for the quad bike ab-initio student!
What next? Software lessons…..hmmm. Basic engineering………….I don't think so.
But who else is here? A chef (actually a professional landscape photographer) who has worked in 2 star Michelin restaurants back in the UK. Now we are talking useful UK skills!!!
I eat eggs a lot now since I trimmed 50 pounds of excess body fat in 2008. OK, eggs are in short supply in South Georgia and rationed for special days. A few weeks ago Oli the photograper chef served a few of us still at the camp one lunchtime, absolutely perfect poached eggs.
The kitchen our Michelin trained landscaper photographer chef works from is a 4 metre by 4 metre red and white plastic tent. From the door one can see, just 20 metres away, an inlet of calm water full of cavorting seals and just a mile from jagged mountain ridges that soar from the waters edge to sapphire skies.
Time to learn. Vinegar in the water? Nah. Swirl the water in the pan? Nope.
I now know the trick. And like the answer to a magicians trick, I am sworn to secrecy. An 8000-mile journey to the perfect poached egg. Mad ratter's tea party indeed.
The weather is like a glorious summers day. Mirror-glass, azure blue water. Sunbathing seals. Shimmering mountains in the background. Blue, blue sky. But no flying at the base camp. At the moment I'm like a spare bridegroom at a wedding. No escape for me. No helicopter flight to help me put out my hand and touch the face of God.
We get news from the baiting frontline. A fantastic day! More done than on any other day so far. A triumph. The capricious island had held us ransom for so many days, but the team is on a roll.
Tomorrow the forecast sounds better than today. The prayer is that the sea fog will not roll in on the south coast and the baiting will continue at breakneck pace. But what will we do at base camp?
We have a mountain guide, and a doctor to boot. An expedition leader with worldwide mountain experience.
Those peaks just behind our base camp are calling.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
Friday 5 April 2013
Sienna Miller Request
We continue to dig in and grit our teeth. Each day we awaken to beautiful dawn skies but bastard wind.
The polar vortex and the core of the jet stream have, this season, chosen to lie right over the sub Antarctic island of South Georgia.
We are teased by the elements on a daily basis with random turbulence and downdraughts too intense to risk helicopter-baiting operations.
We are attempting to help return this remote iconic landscape to pre-European conditions. Removing the hardy mainland-evolved rats before they rid South Georgia of the delicate fauna they maraud, is akin to trying to get an invading Attila-the-Hun and his Hordes off an unarmed innocent Polynesian idyll before they kill all the local inhabitants.
Only it's not Polynesian sun here but an icy blast that the elemental sprites use to hold us, in the grip of a windy vice.
A request for urgent resupply comes into the main base via satellite phone text. One of our forward weather observation posts at Peggotty, (or 'Purgatory', as we all call it), a couple of hardy lads, Roger and Dickie, with single man tents, brave the primitive elements to report back the local wind conditions.
Peggotty requirements:
1. Another water jerry can.
2. Butter
3. Sienna Miller
We will be able to supply 2 out of the 3 of those when a helicopter manages to get up there.
If she had braved conditions at Peggotty 2 nights ago, Sienna would have had to survive the 80+mph winds that whistled through that exposed bluff.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is amazing just how rugged our 3 Bolkow helicopters are. It has proved impossible to anchor them to the ground here but so far they have survived everything the vortex has thrown at them.
These aren't youngsters either; the 3 helicopters have over 51,000 hours on the clock between them. They are all 40 years old. Born in the '70's they have been "Rockin' All Over The World" since then.
However I think I can guarantee that in their long flying life none of these 3 helicopters have previously been landed on a tiny sloping slipway (avoiding the tame seals underneath) and been winched up the gradient into a small, well-equipped and warm boat shed, for routine maintenance.
Extreme conservation sometimes calls for extreme measures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If by any unlikely chance you read this blog, Sienna and can help, the address of Roger and Dickie is:
No 1 and 2 The Tents,
Peggotty Bluff,
King Haakon Bay,
South Georgia.
Many thanks in advance.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
The polar vortex and the core of the jet stream have, this season, chosen to lie right over the sub Antarctic island of South Georgia.
We are teased by the elements on a daily basis with random turbulence and downdraughts too intense to risk helicopter-baiting operations.
We are attempting to help return this remote iconic landscape to pre-European conditions. Removing the hardy mainland-evolved rats before they rid South Georgia of the delicate fauna they maraud, is akin to trying to get an invading Attila-the-Hun and his Hordes off an unarmed innocent Polynesian idyll before they kill all the local inhabitants.
Only it's not Polynesian sun here but an icy blast that the elemental sprites use to hold us, in the grip of a windy vice.
A request for urgent resupply comes into the main base via satellite phone text. One of our forward weather observation posts at Peggotty, (or 'Purgatory', as we all call it), a couple of hardy lads, Roger and Dickie, with single man tents, brave the primitive elements to report back the local wind conditions.
Peggotty requirements:
1. Another water jerry can.
2. Butter
3. Sienna Miller
We will be able to supply 2 out of the 3 of those when a helicopter manages to get up there.
If she had braved conditions at Peggotty 2 nights ago, Sienna would have had to survive the 80+mph winds that whistled through that exposed bluff.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It is amazing just how rugged our 3 Bolkow helicopters are. It has proved impossible to anchor them to the ground here but so far they have survived everything the vortex has thrown at them.
These aren't youngsters either; the 3 helicopters have over 51,000 hours on the clock between them. They are all 40 years old. Born in the '70's they have been "Rockin' All Over The World" since then.
However I think I can guarantee that in their long flying life none of these 3 helicopters have previously been landed on a tiny sloping slipway (avoiding the tame seals underneath) and been winched up the gradient into a small, well-equipped and warm boat shed, for routine maintenance.
Extreme conservation sometimes calls for extreme measures.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If by any unlikely chance you read this blog, Sienna and can help, the address of Roger and Dickie is:
No 1 and 2 The Tents,
Peggotty Bluff,
King Haakon Bay,
South Georgia.
Many thanks in advance.
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
Tuesday 2 April 2013
The Brighter Side of Life
Easter Sunday was supposed to be a normal working day for the mad ratters temporarily established on the permanently uninhabited island of South Georgia.
Instead the weather gods decided we would have yet another day free of aircraft operations. Almost teasingly the day developed a brilliant blue sky with hardly a cloud in sight. The wind however was very strong.
After a breakfast made disappointing by the dawning of yet another unworkable baiting day, a few of us settled down round a laptop screen to watch the only film we had that made any reference to Easter.
Monty Pythons 'Life of Brian'
Lunch helped us celebrate in a more traditional way. We each had one fresh egg, fried, to go with the tinned produce; baked beans, tomatoes and mushrooms.
The afternoon bought no abatement to the biting icy wind but with a glorious and inviting blue sky, most people headed out in various directions to walk in the hills around our camp.
I set off solo up the Karrakatta valley, just to the west of our base. This valley climbs up about 1000ft, to a pass westwards into Fortuna Bay. Near the top is a magnificent waterfall. It is a short steep walk with a little scrambling over loose scree in some places. I climbed past the waterfall and crossed to the west side of the valley to descend on a different route, out of the wind and bathed in sunshine.
On the way down I found the beautiful views began to stimulate many thoughts as I looked out and down across Stromness Bay to the rippling, saw-tooth Jason Ridge, across the azure blue, ice cold waters.
I had to stop every few steps simply in order to enjoy and take in the stunning vista. Massive blocks of soft colour reminded me of those giant Rothko paintings and the guidance presented in those compositions to help focus the minds eye, in order to perceive the route to infinity.
All contained in just one panoramic gaze were huge monochrome sections of mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, mossy moorland, cliffs and sea, each a particular colour.
A simple two-hour walk had turned into a spiritual reconnection to the natural world, an enjoyable and uplifting outdoor experience.
This Island is no God forsaken place and I found there was no need to escape and fly to some higher plane this Easter Sunday in order to touch the face of the Almighty.
Back down to earth I walk in to the camp at 4pm, just in time for tea, to discover the chef had just baked 'Hot Cross Buns', as he forgot to make them on 'Good Friday".
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
Instead the weather gods decided we would have yet another day free of aircraft operations. Almost teasingly the day developed a brilliant blue sky with hardly a cloud in sight. The wind however was very strong.
After a breakfast made disappointing by the dawning of yet another unworkable baiting day, a few of us settled down round a laptop screen to watch the only film we had that made any reference to Easter.
Monty Pythons 'Life of Brian'
Lunch helped us celebrate in a more traditional way. We each had one fresh egg, fried, to go with the tinned produce; baked beans, tomatoes and mushrooms.
The afternoon bought no abatement to the biting icy wind but with a glorious and inviting blue sky, most people headed out in various directions to walk in the hills around our camp.
I set off solo up the Karrakatta valley, just to the west of our base. This valley climbs up about 1000ft, to a pass westwards into Fortuna Bay. Near the top is a magnificent waterfall. It is a short steep walk with a little scrambling over loose scree in some places. I climbed past the waterfall and crossed to the west side of the valley to descend on a different route, out of the wind and bathed in sunshine.
On the way down I found the beautiful views began to stimulate many thoughts as I looked out and down across Stromness Bay to the rippling, saw-tooth Jason Ridge, across the azure blue, ice cold waters.
I had to stop every few steps simply in order to enjoy and take in the stunning vista. Massive blocks of soft colour reminded me of those giant Rothko paintings and the guidance presented in those compositions to help focus the minds eye, in order to perceive the route to infinity.
All contained in just one panoramic gaze were huge monochrome sections of mountains, lakes, rivers, waterfalls, mossy moorland, cliffs and sea, each a particular colour.
A simple two-hour walk had turned into a spiritual reconnection to the natural world, an enjoyable and uplifting outdoor experience.
This Island is no God forsaken place and I found there was no need to escape and fly to some higher plane this Easter Sunday in order to touch the face of the Almighty.
Back down to earth I walk in to the camp at 4pm, just in time for tea, to discover the chef had just baked 'Hot Cross Buns', as he forgot to make them on 'Good Friday".
----
This e-mail was delivered via satellite phone using GMN's XGate software.
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