The Emperors at Auster... (part 3 of 4)
Sunday 21st Nov 99

... continued

Dotted through the sea ice are massive Icebergs - commonly referred to as "grounded bergs" because they are stuck and have become grounded on the sea floor, rather than floating free like most icebergs. Most of the grounded bergs have blizz tails on the down wind side. A blizz tail is just loose powdery snow which gets very deep - so much that often vehicles can become bogged. A Hagg is a master in loose snow with it's caterpillar tracks, but a Quad gets bogged very easily. As we travelled from Macey Island towards Auster the Quads often became bogged. Pulling a Quad out of snow is quite difficult, since the quad is heavy and the snow is very fine, powdery and you sink down into the snow over your knees. The best analogy is to imagine driving through flour - 1 metre deep - or perhaps very dry sand.

A Quad on the left, and the Hagg on the right. (We were waiting for the quads to catch up after they become bogged) The white bar across the top of the Hagg is the Radar, which is used for navigating in Blizzard conditions.

As we approached Auster, we entered what could be called an 'iceberg' alley. I likened it so a canyon of grounded berg's. We were dwarfed beneath bergs that were often 30 metres high. They were of all different shapes, and fissured in an
infinity of different patterns. The light would shine on them highlighting the deep sky blue of the old ice from which they came. Scattered out in front of us were hundreds of Emperor penguin "toboggan tracks" formed by Emperor penguins
lying on their fronts and pushing along with their feet. Occasionally we went over what seemed to be a penguin highway - because all the snow had been pushed aside and the sea ice exposed - which hundreds of penguin flipper marks along the sides of the tracks.

After awhile we turned the corner of a very large and long 'berg to see the sight we had been waiting for - Auster. Right beside where we parked (about 500m away from the main colony of penguins) was what I first thought was fluffy toy. It was however, a dead penguin chick. It had made it part way through the season, but had either wandered away or had been abandoned by it's parents. It's down coat was extremely soft. It was frozen hard - but had not been savaged by Skua's (Antarctic birds - which scavenge on dead penguins and other meat). I placed it on the tank of a Quad to get some perspective it's size.

Email continues in part 4