One thing I wish to remember about this weirdly wonderful place is how much you can struggle in one day.
We are having a spell of fairly good weather the last few days. The skies are clear, the sun is already up from 8am to 8pm and the wind is rarely above 20 knots. In other words dressing very warmly makes the outside accessible for most of the day.
We also have a long awaited camping trip in the pipeline so we excitedly started with the preparations for this trip. The plan (with preliminary approval) is to load 2 challengers with all the equipment needed for 3 days, travelling to a mountainous spot 5 hours drive away, spending two nights and returning to base. Seeing that the base needs to be manned the travelling party will only consist of 4.
So yesterday around lunch we decided to take the dozer, collect a sledge and a 3000 L diesel tank and try and fill it up before supper, a simple and achievable goal.
Luckily the dozer was running as that would normally take 30 minutes to warm up, clear ice and start. So 3 of us jumped in the dozer heading for the winter depot. The winter depot is simply a designated spot on the ice where we can store sledges and containers. This spot should not be too close to the base, to avoid sastrugi build up where it will inconvenience us. So we needed to drive about 20-25 minutes to get there. We hooked an empty sledge and pulled it towards the sledge with 2 x 3000 L tanks. Then we needed to administer some elbow grease, as the old military saying goes. We each grabbed a shovel and started digging our selected tank out from the winter build up of snow. This took maybe 25 minutes. We deployed the crane on the dozer, 10 minutes. Tried to lift the tanker, still too much snow on it. Since this tanker is on a smaller sled on the sledge we decided to unhook the empty sledge and tow the tank off the bigger sledge. This works and 15 minutes later we have the tanker and small sled off the bigger sledge. We attach the rigging and lift the tanker with small sled onto the empty sledge. Strap it down and we are good to go. 25 Minutes later and we are in front of the diesel bunker with the empty tanker. We decide to attach the 15 cm diameter pipes as the filling of tankers can take extremely long. This turns out to be more difficult than anticipated, the ice has been polished to a shine over the last stormy month. This leads to a lot of slipping and sliding and the pipes are so cold that they do not want to bend into the right position. We decide to switch to the smaller pipe used for refuelling of vehicles. Now the wind starts picking up and the fun factor dwindles into nothingness. After maybe one and a half hours the tank is only 1/3 full. We decide to seek refuge in the small pump room, the shivering is a lot less now. Fortunately the pump is remotely switched on from the base and with a few valve adjustments we learn we can use the pressure to hasten the filling that is normally done by gravity. Things happen nice and quickly now and we are hoping to be back in the base for supper. Then after we reached the 2/3 mark….disaster. Vince notices diesel dripping under the tank. After some frantic clearing of snow we see the tank has sprung a leak, probably due to rusting. Now the diesel we filled for the past few hours could contaminate the snow. After some impromptu disaster management we manage to strap and ratchet and old leather glove over the leak. Contamination avoided. We now need to pump the diesel back into the bladders since this tank is longer usable. We go back to base to collect the mobile diesel pump. First a battery needs to be fitted as this pump has not been used during winter. Maybe 45 minutes later we manage to get the pump running and we can start to empty the tank once again. This happens rather quickly but we realise the last bit of diesel will need to be emptied from the drain plug, we collected 2 empty drums and a pipe and after we stopped the pumping we started draining the rest. At around 10 pm we decided we are too cold now and since we have at least one frost nipped finger between us we decided to leave the rest for the next day.
So after a long, hard afternoon and early evening of working and being exposed to the elements we have not only not reached a simple goal but we added more work to that simple goal. It is quite disheartening to be thoroughly exhausted by achieving the opposite of getting things done. Also remember we are dressed with 3-5 layers over our heads, legs and upper bodies. We also wear gloves; also boots about twice the size of anything you have seen. So all our movement is strained and uncomfortable. We also walk over the terrain that is never even and sometimes as slippery as 'ice'.
The previous year team also warned us that you never say I am quickly going to do this or that…. nothing is that simple in Antarctica.
