One of the tasks undertaken by the Winter Dieso's is to travel to Woop Woop, (the Summer air strip) as soon as travel over the sea ice is achievable, to retrieve certain pieces of equipment bring it back to station and service them ready for next summer. Adam (Sparkie) and I were fortunate enough to be asked along to assist and check on some other things while we were there.
Woop Woop is located up on the Plateau about a 4 hour trip by Hagglund towing a skid craig, Corey, Adam and I set off on Monday morning at 8.00am, weather was good, minimal cloud low winds. Of course now we are in Winter and daylight is getting shorter daily so with only about 3.5hrs a day at the moment most of the driving was going to be in the dark, which in my opinion is better for visibility.
We had minimal problems on the drive apart from some large sastrugi which we en counted one of which was to blame for a track displacement, lucky it was an easy fix and minimal down time. Upon arriving at Woop Woop, first thing is to secure a safe shelter to get away from the cold, again luck was on our side and the Generator started with no grief, this allowed us to plug the "Sprunky van" in and start the heaters.
We spent the rest of the afternoon filling machines with fuel and getting ready to start packing them up, the bobcat was an essential piece of equipment as we needed it to move snow and lift the Herman Nelson out of the workshop container, those unfamiliar with a Herman Nelson, it is a heater which is ran by a petrol motor, using a diesel fired heat source. It is used to warm up motors, equipment and sometimes us, they are an essential piece of equipment down here and are used regularly.
After finding the bobcat had no fuel and the isolator left on the battery was dead, so with the jump pack we finally got it started and began preparing the area. by now it was starting to get dark again and the decision was made to call it a day, start the rest of the gear in the morning.
The next day saw again, clear skies minimal wind, sounds good but, cold the night had seen the tempretures drop below -40, we only had a thermometer with read down to -40 and it refused to work so we knew it was cold. Clear skies means cold so in temps below -40 we started to attempt the recovery process, now you would think this would be relatively straight forward, unfortunately not to be. The bobcat now refuses to go, try the power pack, flattens the power pack, try the Hag still no luck. While Craig and Adam attended to the bobcat Corey and I decided to start on the Prinoth groomer, this entails digging the cab out so we can tip it forward clear the belts, exhaust and fans sounds easy enough until you realise that your hands don't want to co-operate and all of a sudden you have 2 left hands with no fingers!
To begin we decided to plug a generator into the block warmer and the hydraulic oil heaters, so one of the most reliable motors we have are Honda 20kva but not even they wanted to start, plan B plug the heat gun into the UFO (main generator) heat the small generator, bit of aero start and away it went, plug the heat gun into that generator warm up the other generator get it started so we can plug them into the Prinoth to get it started. Luck would have it our way and after about an hour of digging 2 warm up stops and a fair amount of bad language, we had success belts, fans were clear motor was warmed up time to turn the key.
The whole time we were on the Prinoth the boy's were still trying to get the bobcat started with no success, next step pull the battery out of the hag replace the battery in the bobcat, we found a spare battery in the on site workshop which was holding 12.5 volts, put that in the Hag (it has 2 x batteries) use the good one in the bobcat. Ever tried undoing bolts and screws in about -35-40, all tasks take 3 to 4 times longer than normal, but eventually success it fired up. So now we had 2 pieces of equipment running 3 if you count the Blue Hag, 2 to go Yellow Hag and Skidoo.
We could now get the Herman out of the container and put it to good use, straight onto the Yellow Hag and deblizzing under way. 30 mins later and a jump form the Blue Hag yellow hag comes to life and drives up out of it's home for the past 5 months and ready for action.
Skidoo, this should be easy we have a new battery, new machine all good, not the case, over the end of Summer the front runners which were black have melted the ice and were now sitting 3 inches below the surface, cro bar and shovels. That job completed it was now dark and Craig was having trouble with co-ordination and fingers getting the new battery in, he's gone to warm up. Drag the Herman up and start trying to warm it up, i noticed that after a lot of profanities Craig finally got the bolts in on the battery, however he had left one of the active's off so we had to take the bolt out again and start all over, but battery in place a bit of warmth and she started.
All of this took about 9-10 hours 6 of which were in the dark, but we had everything running and ready to load. The next morning discussions were held around what time we would leave, as we wanted to be over the worst of the trip which was just off the plateau by dark, which meant leaving no later than 1.00pm from Woop Woop. The decision was made let's go for it, bobcat started, Prinoth, flat batteries, skidoo no go, initial indications, another nightmare of a day coming up, but not the case Prinoth started with a little heat and a jump, and we dragged the skidoo onto the skid work on it back at the Station.
Packed and ready to go 1.30pm, we headed off across the plateau 2 hag's with skids behind and the Prinoth. After a gruelling 3 hours over the Plateau we were finally onto the sea ice and a smooth run back to the Station saw us arriving back at 7.30pm Wednesday night.
From left Adam, Craig and Corey in the Hag about to head off from the Station.
Just before we entered the Plateau
Craig taking a picture of the sunrise from the plateau
Woop Woop International Airport
This is the "Sprunky Van" our home for 3 days
Yellow Hag, blizzed in.
Inside the Hag, (picture Corey)
Bobcat fires up
Craig discovering that his boots don't grip so good on the ice.
The following three pictures are compliments of Corey, this is the Aurora we witnessed on early Tuesday morning
Craig in front of an amazing sight.
Corey's little touch.
One of the benefits of camping out (not my cup of tea, anchovies, smoked oysters, blue cheese)
Yellow and Blue Hag packed and ready for the trip back.
Ice which had formed on the inside of the cabin window
Blue Hag with Bobcat in tow.
Just entering the Sea Ice (that's the moon).
