Envenenado ...

Our expedition to King George Island and our work on the glacier at Potter cove came to a rather quick end since the Argentine military announced our flight back on Sunday afternoon for the following day at noon. We did a night's packing but also taking farewell from our friends at the Argentine base who are going to stay for the winter. We will meet again as soon as the next summer season starts, and hopefully will be able to play some more darts and have some beer in this excellent and enchanting place.

We left our colleagues at Rio Gallegos in Argentina to find our way back to Punta Arenas, Southern Chile, for the flight back to Germany. And since travelling through one of the most beautiful landscapes could not go without doing some hikes, we stopped in Puerto Natales to go to Torres del Paine Park. The Park is just beautiful, with mountains and rivers without end, and very impressing glaciers. It is definitely worth another visit, maybe then with proper gear to get a bit closer look at the ice :-)

 

 

envenenado ...

 

 

 

Potter Cove Talk

Besides the work we get to  see a lot of wild life. This also means to watch out for Skua attacks from above, that remind of Alfred Hitchcocks "The Birds". During our GPS measurements of the glacier border, we encountered a lot of Gentoo penguins and sea elephants but also crab eaters. Since the glacier is now in a somewhat sloshy state at the borders, we could not take the skidoos, but needed to do a long hike. This was somewhat easier in November, and caused some muscle pain.

just a few more impressions

here some pictures from some of the many icebergs that we encountered at the South Orkneys. The table mountain iceberg  was about 1.2km wide according to the radar measurements on the bridge.

Machine rooms tend to have their own impressing charm which I think is mostly due to the very special light green color that reminds of oldtimers out of the fifties...

Working Hard...

As soon the weather allowed we went straight onto the glacier to check out our weather stations. It was a big mess, since our arrival coincided with a heavy storm that had overthrown our stations. Also due to heavy rains and melting of the past three weeks, the anchoring of the stations had lessened. This meant two days of hard work setting up everything and fixing the stations on 3m poles drilled into the ice. Winds nowadays get up to 72 kmh in 10min means accompanied by rain and low clouds, that depict our very uncomfortable working conditions. But it's fun anyway! Now nearly everything at the station is prepared for the long winter and we continued with measurements of ablation and glacier velocities, but also with the setup of Hilkes diploma measurements of the glacier calving front. Now everything is setup for her work on Saturday and we hope for a good day with a bit of sun and less wind.