April 25 - Cove of Eden; Right in our Backyard

April 25 - We woke up today to find that the winds had subsided and the sun was peeking our of the clouds. I came to the lab around 10 AM and convinced everybody that we should abandon work for the day and head out to explore Bonaparte Point.

Just to give you and idea of what the hike is like, take a look at the picture below. From the station you have to trek over rock (about 400m) to the foot of the glacier then climb about 600ft up and turn right and then come down. Takes about 45 min if you just go as fast as you can.

Route to Bonaparte Point.

 While the sun was out, it was quite cold and windy. Below you see us on our way up.

Up the glacier.

Jeannette is a yoga enthusiast and here she is doing a headstand on the glacier. I was telling her that yogis of ancient India used to climb up mountains to practice (and develop) yoga so this was quite appropriate. 

Unlike the previous time we went up the glacier, the wind had stripped off all the snow from the glacier leave the ice exposed. All you see in this picture is glacier ice with lots of cracks etc.

In order to climb on the glacier, you need to put on micro-spikes. These provide traction on the icy surface otherwise it would be nearly impossible to traverse the glacier. 

Jeannette, Deepak and me on the way up the glacier Hero's inlet and Bonaparted point in the background

So we finally got to the other side and started making our way to the tip of Bonaparte Point but then we came across this little cove and what a sight we saw.. a bunch of juvenile elephant seals just playing and fussing and having fun in the water. It was amazing and just sat down there and watched them for over an hour. Felt privileged to be able to witness such an incredibly unadulterated disaplce of Nature's beauty!  Check it out.

This was the cove. You can see about 3 seals there but there were about 12 of them in total.

Looks at this cutey! Was curious about us so kind of drifted towards us in this adorable pose.

These two are probably juvenile males. They were continuously mock fighting with each other

Same guys..

Probably a juve female. She was trying her best to keep away from her rambunctious cousins.

While the cove and the juve elephant seals was the best part of our hike, we also saw some other great sights.

A lonely Gentoo Penguin. She was having a classic approach-avoidance conflict with us. Wanted to check us out (I think because she was lonely) but then did not want to get too close to us!

Came across a couple of Giant Petrel nests with these chicks.

Also saw a small pod of male adult elephant seals.

 

He's got his eyes on me!

When we left the station on the hike we thought we would be back in about 2 hours. Not a chance! We were pretty much gone for about 4 hours! Enjoyed every minute of it. Hope to go there again if/when the weather clears up.