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Friday, 23 September 2016 17:32

Base Escudero and the Russian church

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When the weather is bad we are confined to the station and can't go out to the field.  This happened on Wednesday and Thursday. This is a good opportunity to do indoor experiments, identify moss samples and enter data.  Plus do the washing, have showers, maybe catch up on sleep and update the blog. On Thursday after two days inside the weather cleared in the afternoon so we walked to the church.

We really needed to get outside and have some exercise and the weather cleared producing a good sunset. So we walked to Trinity Church, the only permanent Russian Orthodox Church in Antarctica, which was built on the hill above the Russian Bellingshausen Station.

 

 

There were two skuas, one of which was very persistent trying to get us to give it food. In the end it gave up and sat in the snow for a while before flying off to feed in the surf zone. 

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At the summit next to the church we found some mosses and then we walked back along the beach and looked at the penguins coming into the beach. These two penguins were having a fight over the best place to sleep that night.

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Next day the sky was blue, but the wind was fierce. Melinda, Andrew and I went to Ardley Island to install a logger to record moss and air temperatures. Todd, Sarah, Hannah and Gustavo's group went to Collins glacier to do the same.  Andreas and Angelica went to the Argentinian base Carlini.

 

 

Ardley Island was covered in snow when we arrived at 10 am and we could hardly see any moss, but by 11.30 we found places to install the loggers.  When we arrived the snow was piled up around the newly installed open top chambers as well. You can tell from this picture that it was pretty cold.

 

Read 1998 times Last modified on Friday, 23 September 2016 17:32
Andrew Netherwood

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