DAY 20 continued : Feb 1 - (An aside about Spin Drift).

The computer’s still shaking as is the whole camp from the ferocious storm going on outside. It feels a bit as if we’re sheltering inside a discarded pilchards can from a full on hurricane ‘cept with shit loads of blinding snow thrown in for good measure. The door outside my room which leads to an anti chamber before opening on to the outside world is very draughty as are the windows even though the generator is pumping out serious heat. The anti chamber has almost entirely filled with snow already. The spindrift (or snow) here is so fine, light and moisture free, (remember this place is a desert) that the snow blows into everything. Door cracks are easy, spin drift gets through sealed cool boxes – a guy told me a story about putting a mini cool box inside a large cool box and leaving it in the back of his pick up – both boxes were packed full of snow within 24hours! This shit gets everywhere. Apparently the wind can blow for 4 days solid here, moving the snow from one place to another en mass, creating 10 ft snow drifts and, sometimes burying entire camps, before the wind stops and there’s a day of calm, and then it picks up again, blowing in the opposite direction for another 4 days and blows the snow right back where it started from!!!!!!! I tell you this place is nuts. Other times a little chink in a camps’ seals can lead to an entire room being filled with snow from floor to ceiling almost over night !!! Nothing you can do ‘cept dig it out.

One things that’s cool is when you stand infront of a light you can see the twinkle of millions of icy particles flashing between you and the light. Take a picture with flash and it looks amazing.

Well, its official we've got a Phase 3 shut down. No one's allowed out of the camp for non essential work. The whole camp is rattling with the wind now, and its sounds like someones got a sledge hammer and is battering away outside my wall (the shutters are a bit loose.) Snow is piling up at the windows and doors so much so that, we can barely see or get out. (this makes it a little bit claustrophobic - could we actually just blow away?) but also exhilarating. Its best not to think about how all our lives are relying on a couple of tiniy generators - and god knows how much fuel they have !!!! cos nothing's coming in or out until this blizzard (80 mph + winds) stops.