I woke up feeling pretty tired this morning, I got the stove going and melted the water for the day. I began to make my usual breakfast, 300grams of oats with four dates, but alas, I had run out of dates! I was desperately digging around the bottom of my food bag when I found four frozen banana. Breakfast was 300g of oats with a banana, yum!
We set off at 9am with DYE II in our sights. The day seemed to whizz by, my mid was busy with thoughts of what might be inside the war radar station...what secrets were hiding there? We were all buzzing to have something else to focus on.
There were huge black walls with three large half domes poking out the sides, the roof was the fourth but this was a full dome. I couldn't wait to get inside.
We set up camp and heated some water to make dinner, it was lamb stew tonight and it was pretty tasty. With a belly full of hot food it was time to enter the radar station. At first glance it looks about 50 meters high, as I got closer I realised it was actually built on huge steel beams that dropped way down. We slid our way down to the bottom of the structure and ducked under the door that was missing its bottom half. We were enveloped in darkness, It was pitch black. This was a strange feeling as we have light nearly 24 hours a day on the ice. I flicked on my head torch, everything was white, coated in a thick thick ice. We signed the guest book saying who we were and where we were from, then we ventured into the complex. We came across a bar, a huge games room, 5 generators, living quarters, a library and a work shop. There were about 25 rooms on the floor we were on, each one was full of magazines, drawings and personal items that had been left behind. Next floor up the rooms were bigger with ensuits, must have been for the boss men!
There was a communications room filled with phones, radios and paper and a drawer labelled 'secret', filled with burnt papers (darn it). There was a creepy hospital with a steel bed and trays of medical instruments and a half empty drug cabinet. We went to the top dome then headed back down. We stopped in at the kitchen on the way down where there was a pork roast frozen on the table! I was tempted until I thought about how old it was...
It was awesome being able to explore DYE II but it was sad to see it had been trashed by people coming through and taking things and leaving their rubbish all over the place. With the station ticked off the next goal is the summit. We are walking for 9 hours starting tomorrow to make up for the day off from the hurricane. I'm looking forward to that and i'm feeling great after a day filled with different things to stimulate my brain.