For me, one of the most important symbols of Antarctica is the "Polar Pyramid" tent. The design has hardly changed in 100 years - a double skin for warmth, a strong pyramid shape with a pole at each corner, and a circular tube door that can be tied shut. They are proven as strong, safe and reasonably comfortable in the worst conditions, and are used by almost every country conducting research expeditions in Antarctica.
I just added up all the days I've spent in these tents over the years, and it comes to 36 weeks in total! So I feel right at home when I crawl inside and get into my sleeping bag.
The reason it's such a powerful symbol to me, is that the tent allows people to enter this enormous wilderness and survive. Smaller than a station or a hut, it provides only the minimum necessary shelter and comfort, and has no impact on the landscape.
Inside a tent, you still feel the cold, and hear the sounds of Antarctica. Its small size highlights the contrast between the vast inhospitable environment and the tiny human presence.
Imagine a flight from Davis Station to our most recent campsite, in the Grove Mountains: after taking off from the ice runway, you fly south towards a flat white horizon, leaving behind the coast, liquid water, and the life in the sea and the heated buildings.
For two hours you pass over nothing but ice and snow, blown into drifts that show the prevailing wind direction, but otherwise featureless and untracked.
Finally the mountains appear over the horizon, specks of black between the white disc below and the blue dome of the sky.
When you reach the mountains, it's a fairytale landscape: smooth rock faces hundreds of metres high, ice-carved spires forcing the glaciers to divert around them. And even though the Sun is shining, it's -15°C and the continuous wind that blows across the ice is funnelling between the mountains and blowing clouds of drifting snow 20 m into the air. You see nothing living.
But there, on a sheltered patch of snow beside one of the smaller mountains, there is a tent: a small angular speck, cheerful red and yellow in this world of white ice, blue sky and dark rock. And inside is a spark of life: two people in sleeping bags, warmth, food and friendship. The contrast is awe-inspiring - we can live and work here, but we are aliens here just as much as we are on the Moon.
A quick word about our trip to the Grove Mountains: after a delay at Davis due to bad weather, the planned trip was reduced to two people, Alex and me, leaving behind Nick and two other who were hoping to join us to help with the work and enjoy the spectacular mountains. A pity they couldn't all come, but we always have to adapt to the weather...
We had a couple of days hard work; Alex maintaining a GPS site, and I removing a seismic installation, both of which were last visited two years ago.
It's a spectacular place to work, surrounded by a magical landscape of steep mountains and ice, but it was also the coldest and windiest place we've been this summer, and I used my warm down jacket and thicker 'winter' sleeping bag for the first time.
After working late nights to get the jobs finished, the weather got worse and we had to wait another day before the CASA could fly from Davis to bring us home. We used it catch up on our sleep - Alex went out once to check his GPS site, but I actually stayed in my sleeping bag for 36 hours!
Alex is also writing a blog about his time in Antarctica, which includes some nice pictures of the Grove Mountains.
Goodnight from back at Davis,
