Weather summary:
The wind had eased to around 35 knots in the morning but still had some stronger gusts. It started to ease further in the early afternoon, and was back to 5 knots for a while, treading to 20 knots but late evening. Clear skies, no snow.
Today's activities:
With a few boxes left in the Granholm Hut inventory, Jon, Brett and I headed over to hut valley. Fresh from a good night's sleep we blitzed through the remaining items, and with the wind slackening slightly we transported the sky light covers over to Mawson's Hut in preparation for is final lock down. While we were there it was impossible to resist taking another few hundred photographs in and around the hut!
Meanwhile back at Sorensen personal gear was being compressed a bit more, for the slight possibility that the French might spring a Tuesday night departure on us. Anne and Michelle joined us over at Mawson's before long, and we laid ply down on some of the old bunk beds before they positioned all the black plastic to catch any snow ingress over the next year.
Upon returning the Sorensen for lunch the phone rang, it was the French voyage leader with this message, "We will be there is six hours!" Things click up a few gears immediately, everyone was notified over the radio, there were still plenty of final jobs to be done. We replaced the sky lights on the hut, one final sled load of stuff was hauled up to the helipad before the sled and motor bike were strapped down for another winter. The French GPS buoy also had to be pulled in. After all our gear was out of Sorensen we were able give it one last sweep out, and with two hours to spare we were ready.
The helicopter did not arrive until 23:45, three French passengers disembarked to pack up the GPS gear and assist with cargo operations. Michelle, Steve and Tony flew back out on the same trip, upon return we started sling loading. Nine cage pallets lay in wait at the site, with the beginnings of a katabatic wind present our sling loading window was closing with ever shorter. But the operation was swift, it was two nations working in harmony, the ship was close and in just over an hour all cage pallets were on board! The final five of us flew out in one flight, watching as Cape Denison smaller in the twilight glow of early morning. So now we are all back on L'Astrolabe, we thanked all of our French colleagues over a few beers at the ships bar, before every faded fast to bed, we will sleep like nothing else tonight.
The Cape Denison leg of our journey is over, after exactly five weeks, there was an amazing sense of achievement throughout the team, and getting all of our rubbish and spare cage pallets home was the icing on the cake. Great job team we did it!
Tomorrow there will be sleeping, eating, showering, sleeping, showering, you get the picture anyway! We are due at Dumont D'Urville 19th or 20th.
Warm wishes from the MHF team
Peter McCabe Field Leader
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