Rothera Point Sea Ice

A Chocolate Cake Tool Kit!

Wednesday was our generator mechanic's 40th birthday. Having seen photos on Facebook of the wonderful cakes his wife at home makes, we felt we ought to try to make his 40th cake something special. A team effort, admittedly mostly lead by the chef, resulted in a spanner, hammer, nut, grub screw and a bottle of WD40, all made from chocolate cake and iced with molten chocolate. We couldn't find 40 candles, and even if we had, we would probably have set the fire alarm off, so we settled for 11 baby pink ones instead! I 'helped' clean up the icing bags and excess icing a few hours earlier, and couldn't face actually eating any cake, but it disappeared suitably quickly!

Testing The Thickness Of The Sea Ice

This afternoon the clouds cleared and the wind dropped, so a few of us set out the test the thickness of the sea ice around base. We set out to go around Rothera Point, but were prepared to get back onto land and come back to base that way if necessary. To test sea ice, one drills a hole all the way through, and then inserts a very technical stick which has a lever on the end. You pull the stick back up until you feel the lever catch on the underside of the ice, and then read the depth off the stick. The ice has to be a minimum of 20cm thick for people to ski on it, 25cm for walking, and so on upwards to 157cm to land a Hercules! We had 30-40cm thickness all the way, so successfully made our way around the point. It was very strange seeing the land from the ice, and to be able to look up at the wharf. The ice feels so substantial, but six months ago I was bobbing about here in a boat doing my crew training.

This evening one of the GAs did a slide show (yes, slides, with a whirring motor, genuine clicky noises and everything!) of a climbing trip he did in his younger days around the USA which was a nice change to the usual knitting, DVD watching or pool playing. On the knitting front, the dinosaur is progressing nicely. I have changed the pattern so that I am knitting in the round with the legs and plates knitted on, as I didn't fancy sewing ten stegosaurus plates down its back!

Biscoe Wharf From The Sea Ice