Beaver Lake, Wednesday, 9th January 2002
Antarctica turned on some magnificent blue skies all around today, apart from the strong katabatic. We all roused fairly early, I was a bit bemused by the sudden sense of activity all around, choppers parked up and full apple huts and cheery fresh faces. There was definite anticipation to get to Dalton Corner and I went up with Dave Pullinger in the squirrel to gather some tools and gear from the GPS site, but also to do an aerial recce from high up. Pagodroma Gorge, Radok lake and the Battye Glacier and tongue were simply spectacular from our vantage. What wasn't so spectacular was the spectre of altocumulus obscuring behind Clemence Massif to the south. It wouldn't be worth risking a once off flight if there was a possibility of turning back half away. We only had enough fuel for one run. Reluctantly we made the decision to wait until the weather improved a bit more to the south. Leigh, Tom and I flew out on to the lower Lamber Glacier to retrieve TS2, one of Richard Coleman's tidal monitoring stations. Our GPS coordinates were 30 m different from predicted, suggesting a slowing down of the velocity there. Several hundred metres below the snow and ice was still sea water ! The site had almost a metre of snow accumulation and we all got stuck in digging out the deadmen anchors, the antenna cable (which was quite a tricky job as much of it was set in ice) and disassembling the instrument box and solar panel. We were quite chuffed to get a site in at last ! The day became calm and warm at Beaver lake, and melt was happening everywhere. The German corers were deployed to a spectacular location on Radok lake and Rob and Margie were taken up to Lake Terra Savoje again to prepare for their next move. Anya's seismic station was now fully operational, which was great news. I returned with Bill Baxter by chopper back to our GPS site and spent a few more hours debugging the PCON -> DSCC connection, without success. For some reason the PCON was refusing to power up the DSCC at the scheduled alarm time. At midnight we returned back traversing a route right down the re-entrant onto Pagodroma back to the camp. The light and conditions impressed Bill very much and he enjoyed the walk. Retired to bed after a Cointreau and Baileys. I called up Paul in France to discuss what to do next with the problem.

Beaver Lake (BVLK) Technical Inspection

Beaver Lake, Base Camp S 70°48'11" E 68°10'46"

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