SAR (Search And Rescue) training!
Most winterers belong to various functional teams such as ERT (Emergency Response Team which does fire fighting) and SAR (which responds to field emergencies). Members of the SAR team need to be trained in various essential ice, snow and cliff rescue skills (snow and ice anchors, belay systems etc) and we were out all day today for our first session. This took place at the Trajer Ridge which is right next to the plateau itself about 25 km away from the station. It was an excellent day despite of the 30 knot winds and overcast weather - it was great get those rusty cramponing muscles going again not to mention the rope skills! We will have another session next week for a cliff rescue scenario plus some further rope work at the station in the Greenstore, which apart from housing most of our precious food supplies also has a small climbing wall. We prepared it a couple of weeks ago and have been conducting ongoing inductions in basic belaying and climbing.
Apart from training I have been trying to get into a routine with my project work and have started reprocessing lidar data from 2001 onwards. I have also been going through literature on polar stratospheric clouds - as usual there is a whole lot of work on the Arctic (more people there) and I was pleased to discover a couple of very nice papers written on data from Sodankyla which is where I spent quite a lot of time when I was a kid. When I was doing my first year physics at the Helsinki University I remember going up to the EISCAT observatory in Sodankyla to listen in on a workshop on ionospheric research.
The weather has not been very favourable to the sun photometer observations and I certainly got my sea ice prediction wrong as well - the ice is still hanging onto the shore for about 2km out. This is one of those transition periods when you can't drive or walk on it but you can't use a boat either.
