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Last night, we completed cold weather fire system testing and said good bye to the Vanderford Glacier. On our way out, we opted to follow the course of the immense canyon that we have been mapping for the last 36 hours in our spare time. This canyon, which was previously unknown, originates from the Vanderford glacier and is more than 2200 metres deep at the seaward face. Over the previous 24 hours, using the vessels multibeam systems, we were able to peer inwards, underneath the glacier for a distance of 3.5 kilometres from the glacier front and then extend this survey for some 30 kilometres out to sea.
The deep part of this channel comes up as blue on the multibeam screen and last night, we opted to follow the "blue road" on our way out. It finally ran out more than 60 kilometres from the current glacier front leaving us marvelling at the power of the ancient Vanderford glacier to carve such an immense channel through the underlying rock.
So far, throughout this journey, we have been avoiding getting unnecessarily tangled up with too much ice because we had grown up responsibilities such as delivering helicopters to Davis and fuel to Casey. But now, free of these burdens, we feel like it's crunch time. And so we have come to the Petersen Bank fast ice to see what the ship can do. Watched by a group of local Emperor Penguins, we gently moved the vessel forward into 1 metre thick fast ice and yes, this ship does break ice. Relatively easily too. We took pictures of ourselves doing it because nothing is true in the Antarctic unless you take a picture.
Lloyd & Justin
Map
A map showing Australia and Antarctica. The map shows the journey of one voyage that has occured in the season, with each route highlighted in a distinct colour.