The Mary Arctica Blocked by Ice: a Major Setback
With the arrival of the new IPF team, we learned that the Mary Arctica is trapped in ice more than 400km from its offloading site at Crown Bay. It is…
News from Antarctica
Interested in what's happening down at Princess Elisabeth? News from the field are posted here regularily to keep you updated about what's going on.
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Some Leave, Others Arrive
On December 23rd, at 7.30 am, the nice weather finally returned. This allowed us to resume the twin-engine DC3/Basler rotations between Novolazarevskaya and our station.
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Weather Permitting
All Antarctic activities are subjected to the law of the elements. This is even truer this season than during the previous ones. Besides the poor weather conditions we had upon…
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Sea Water Measurements at the Coast
Last week, a small team led by Alain Hubert guided BELISSIMA scientist Katherine Leonard to the coast. The trip went well, and upon reaching the coast, the team quickly set…
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A Successful Trip to the Coast
At 10 o'clock on Thurday morning, a team led by Alain Hubert left Utsteinen to set up the first base camp of the BELISSIMA project at the coast, some 200km north…
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Straight Through the White-Out
Our first Mission this year was to drive the Japanese to their first base camp, 76km away from the station. What should have been a simple task turned into quite…
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Arrival of the Japanese Scientists
Today, a team of geologists from the National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) in Tokyo arrived with two tons of material. On top of carrying on with digging out the…
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A Whole Lot of Snow
Flying into Antarctica from Cape Town (South Africa), the first members of the 2011-2012 BELARE Expedition (Belgian Antarctic Research) set foot in Utsteinen on November 16th after a stop at…
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Loading Operations at Wervik
Extreme expeditions require exceptional logistics, and this is especially true for Antarctica. Preparing the 2011-2012 season, a special operations team packed and loaded the freight cargo to be shipped to…
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We Are StarDust (part 2)
The Antarctic Plateau is unlike anything that you have ever seen, and even the most talented writers or photographers have systematically failed to capture its many-faceted no-holds barred un-sentimentality. The…