Beaver Lake, Saturday, 12th January 2002
Amazingly, heavy snow fell all morning, with a bit of rain earlier on just to wet everything up. The morning was very still bar the sound of snow flakes hitting the apple huts and the ground. There wasn't much we could do except prepare for departure and take the opportunity to clean ourselves up. By late afternoon the sky cleared dramatically from the NE and Dave took myself and Bill up to the GPS for one last hour to get the PCON to fire up the system. The winds at the site were exceptionally strong and blowing fresh drift snow all over the equipment. In the distance, violent storms of snow drift were raging around the higher peaks of the PCMs. It was an amazing sight in the strong sunlight. It was not good for electronics work though. It was very risky, but with Bill's assistance I managed to extract the PCON board out of the cardframe, replace the PCON memory chip and replace it. The alarm time was changed for 20 seconds in the future and it fired up the DSCC for the first time and did everything it was supposed to do AT LAST !!! Now we had achieved all project 1112 was set-out to do. I checked the system.log file and reset the receiver to 30 seconds and we sealed the system up. Not a moment too soon as the chopper arrived just as Bill was tightening up the lashings on the radome. Back at Beaver Lake we said our farewells and immediately headed over the Amery back towards Sansom Island and Davis. We waited at Sansom for a while as Leigh and Dave took some vital fuel out to the AMISOR camp. It gave us a chance to explore around the site. Sansom is only 4km from Landing Bluff and our former home was clearly visible behind the bluff. To the west were enormous crevasses where the ice shelf was spewing over some submerged island into Sandefjord Bay. There were many Weddell seals about lounging near the numerous tide cracks about the place. The island itself was quite small and mostly taken over by hundreds of fuel drums, empty or full and a small "melon" hut, basically an extended apple which was in very good nick and a good place to wait out of the bracing winds. The choppers arrived back and we reloaded our gear and headed towards Davis. It was now 11.30 pm and the sun was very low casting enormous shadows from the numerous bergs, nunataks and ice shelves that we past. Hundreds of snow petrels could be seen swarming around the open leads near their nesting sites. Seals lounging in the sun and large areas of inky black open water. A thick band of stratocumulus lay directly ahead of us, and Leigh was altering course slightly to find small breaks in the clouds, successfully thankfully as we descended down over the spectacular Rauer Group, the Sorsdal Glacier and Davis station arriving long after midnight. We were cheerfully greeted by Jeremy Smith the Davis SL and Kev the sigs specialist. Kev and Kath prepared an evening meal for us which was thoroughly enjoyed by all of us and a few stragglers from "The good, the bad and the ugly" theme night. We retired very late at 4 am or so feeling very relieved to get back having completed our work.

Beaver Lake (BVLK) Technical Inspection

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

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