At 10 a.m. our flight to Zhong Shan got cancelled again due to snow. At 11 a.m. Joe invited me along on an overnight walk to Brookes' Hut - I said I'd think it over. At 2 p.m. I saw people walking into the bar with cases of beer and heard the band warming up in the lounge. At 3 p.m. I realised staying on base was going to be much like any other New Year down the pub, and decided to go on the walk. I unpacked my Zhong Shan stuff, repacked with hiking stuff, slid a bottle of champagne into the water-bottle pocket on the side of my pack, checked the forecast to make sure I wouldn't have an early flight the next day, and Richie, Joe and I turned over our fire-tags and set off.
The first hour was hell. The wind was blasting in our faces. The scenery was infinitely changeless. My calves burned. The gusts kept catching my pack and pushing me around. My pack felt like lead. I hated the Vestfolds. I hated Davis. I hated the mud. I hated the fact that it was New Year's Eve and I would have hated myself if I had just stayed in bed, and hence was trudging painfully through a violent, screaming wind.
It's one of the magical aspects of hiking (and perhaps most exercise) that somehow it makes you feel good. One moment I felt like I was going to punch someone, and the next memory I have is of standing in a sheltered valley, looking at a beautiful lake, thinking how good it is to be alive, and gleefully wondering if we could use the frisbee Joe took with him to pan along one of the meltwater streams for gold.
After stopping at Weddell Lake for a cup of tea and a sticky bun we walked to the coast, cut across a penninsula and walked to Brookes' Hut along the icy shoreline. The bay was still frozen and we spent a while trudging happily through snow-drifts. I was doing most of the navigating and it was good. I found a part of an old Meteorology weather-sonde on the ground and we stored its coordinates in the GPS and put it in my bag - over the last few decades the met guys have launched two weather balloons a day which carry sondes high into the atmosphere and which then, inevitably, come down to dot the continent or ocean as garbage. It's very dodgey, especially considering that each sonde contains batteries and polystyrene packaging. Polystyrene is totally banned in Antarctica because of Petrels' habits of eating it, mistaking it for pumice and other light rocks which help their digestive system. I understand that they're shortly going to phase in different units, but apparently they've been saying this for the last few years too. In any case, they're interested in tracking the locations of any old sondes which turn up. Just a few weeks ago Peter found one in the Vestfolds which they worked out was launched in the 70s.
We arrived at the hut at 10 p.m. to find Doc Michael, Lloyd, Andrew K and Anya already there - they were spending the night at the hut too, before heading on to Platcha the next day. They were dinnered and mellowed and there were chocolate wrappers and a bottle of port sitting on the table. Richie cooked us up some pasta from the stocks in the hut. We found a tin of lychees in syrup on the shelf and had those for dessert. I shared around the block of dark Lindt chocolate that Mum sent me for Christmas (thanks mum!!) and the Doc opened my bottle of Champagne ready for midnight.
We fished a hand-held GPS out of someone's bag to give us the accurate time -- and then -- midnight! Happy 2005! And then, thirteen seconds later (because of the correction needed to be made to GPS time, which doesn't recognise leap-seconds) Happy New Year Again! Then we had to stay up until 1 a.m. - Happy Mawson New Year! (They're on a different time zone.) Then at 1:50 - Happy Astronomical New Year! (That's when the sun is actually at its technical 'midnight' position.) Then at 2 a.m. - Happy Zhong Shan New Year! By this time Richie's red wine and Anya's port bottle were also empty and low respectively, and we were quite merry (especially after hearing more of Lloyd's stories about previous Antarctic escapades - including his old band called "The Inflatable Rubber Buttocks"!?). Anya and I were determined to bivvy outside - Anya's reason was that she bivvied out 10 years ago in West Antarctica and thought it would be a nice symmetry to do it this year in East Antarctica - so we left the warm hut for the guys and said goodnight.
I set up my bivvy bag and sleeping bag behind the bestest bivvy rock ever. When I was all comfy inside I read a few chapters of "If On A Winter's Night A Traveler" and listened to Augie March on my iPod and then slid right down in the bag and fell asleep.
I woke up at 10 a.m. and stuck my head out of the bag to see an enormous skua sitting on a rock watching me. As I packed up my stuff he casually flew closer and closer until he was sitting about three metres away, looking on with a casual but fixed gaze. He looked like a giant seagull but, being a scavenger, his mind works more like a vulture. I got the feeling he was waiting patiently in case I died, in which case he would take delight in tearing a hole in my flesh and pulling all my gizzards out through it, strip by strip. I waggled a finger at him and took a photo.
I was sure that the Platcha group would have already left by the time I returned to the hut, but they had slept in too and things were just cranking into action. Joe was cooking fresh pancakes using soy milk and flour and the others were making obscure comments about some strange and controversial pillow incident that happened during the night. (Lloyd's later comment in the Hut Guestbook: "Joseph spent the night with TWO pillows. No-one is bitter.") We cleaned up the empty bottles, lazed around for a bit, then emptied the grey water bucket, emptied the pee tin into the drum down the hill, tied up the garbage bag to take out with us, and radioed back to base to find out if I had to hurry back in order to fly to Zhong Shan that avo.
It turned out that the weather had unexpectedly come good and they were considering flying out in the chopper to pick me up from Brookes' and take me straight to ZS. I thus had a serious case of what some people call 'jolly collision' but I maintain that obtaining a personal helicopter pick-up from one jolly to another is an excellent example of good collision-management. Oh - did I say jolly? LIES! IT'S ALL IN THE NOBLE PURSUIT OF SCIENCE AND HENCE WE WOULD NEVER CONSIDER ENJOYING OURSELVES.
We farewelled the Platcha group and sat down for a game of Scrabble to wait for the heli updates. We drank Christmas-Present Miso Soup (thanks again mum!!) and ate Baci chocolates. Joe insisted that "oy" was a word. Richie and I ganged up and disagreed. We read out the Baci love-messages in outrageous italian accents. Finally it was 12:30 and I radioed VLZ Davis for an update - Al told me that the heli ops to Law Base were off and told me to enjoy my walk. We washed up, packed up and set off home via Tassie Lake.
The lakes were beautiful. We managed to walk back via a route I hadn't taken before - we stayed a bit further north of Deep Lake and Lake Stinear than normal. We looked down onto Deep Lake from a high ridge and saw Joel and Chris as little red specks, out on the lake in a boat taking sediment samples. A helicopter sling-load net was stretched out beside them on the beach. This was the first time I've been in the Vestfolds and come across another person by chance.
On the north shore of Lake Stinear we saw a penguin. It's 6 or so kilometres away from the coast there. We wondered if the little guy was lost or whether there's some purpose to him shuffling all the way there and tripping over every second rock. There are certainly other penguin tracks around the Vestfolds; but there are also many old penguin carcasses. Do they all get lost in there and die? I don't know.
At 7 p.m. it was time for the regular radio sched so we turned on the VHF radio and listened in while all the local field parties schedded in. The Doc, half-way to Platcha, called in to make sure there were no medical emergencies on base he'd be needed for; Kat called in with an update; we let them know of our ETR at Davis. Al gave us a weather report. We watched the helicopters sling-load the Deep Lake stuff back to base. We trudged on.
Marvellous hiking tip discovered on the way back: the upturned edge of your beanie is an excellent and convenient place to store half-finished chocolate bars for later. Especially when your pack straps close off access to most of your jacket pockets.
We arrived back at Davis at 10 p.m. All reports were that the band was very good and very loud and everyone had had fun. The latest edition of the Australian, received via email and printed at base, was on the table and was full of suffering and unbelievable tragedy. I felt guilty at having such a good time.
All our sympathies go out to you guys at home and to all the people involved in the terrible tsunami disaster.