Katie Joy, Recon Team, 17th January 2013, Szabo Bluff

‘Tent day 11, in the Big-ANSMET house…’. If someone could please vote us out of the field that would be great – just dial ‘SEND-LC130’ and press 1 for Joe, 2 for John, 3 for Tomoko, and 4 for Katie. Your call would be appreciated – especially if you could mash the dial pad and hit 1-2-3-4 all at once.

Hello. We are still here in the field at Szabo Bluff, not far from Graves Nunatak. Our flights were cancelled today as the weather still generally rubbish, although winds abated and the clouds actually lifted for a few hours this afternoon (sorry I appreciate that these recon team blog updates are turning into local weather reports). The break in the weather (see the photo for a glimpse of blue skies!) meant we could get out to dig up some of the things that had been buried in snow around camp and it was nice to see the surrounding mountains for a few hours. We had a tasty dinner all together in John and Joe’s tent this evening, to celebrate the fact that we hope to move in the morning. Everyone is generally in good spirits in spite of being tentbound, although I have noticed that the subject of Frosty Boy (the ice cream machine) back in McMurdo seems be coming up in conversation a lot now… somehow when you are surrounded by snow all you can think about is ice cream. Hum… Not a lot else to report. 101 years ago to the day Robert Falcon Scott and his team of four other men reached the South Pole, only to have been met with the discovery of the Norwegians having arrived there first. In his diary (see photo of John reading to us), Scott described the realisation of this dreadful event, and of the Pole in general, as ‘Great God – what an awful place’ (although it could have been the fact that they were running low on tea that had spoiled his mood and his appreciation of the locality). Thank goodness we haven’t been man hauling or been on a diet of pemmican as Sazbo Bluff is still, in spite of the weather, a very beautiful place to be.

PS – from Katie – Happy Birthday Dad! Hope that you have a good day and get to enjoy a little fish and chip supper.

PSS – from Tomoko – Happy Birthday to Yu-chan (Yusuke-kun) in Hong Kong for his 5th birthday!

PSSS – Shaun – got your text. Thanks for the message 🙂 Hope that the sunshine is treating you well.