Hut with Mount Searle

I lived here for a fantastic nine weeks in Jan-March 1994 :)

Nice mountain... Are you interested in the history?

Yes, absolutely!

My father (Derek Searle) helped build the hut and lived here for a couple of years in 1954 - 1956 (base commander in the 2nd year) and the mountain was named after him as one of the people who did the first assent. Before that, it was called Gendarme Peak, I believe.

That's so cool!

The light there is so unique. Lovely. and thank you Mr Searle.

When I was there very little had changed since 1956. There was even a paper plot on the wall of the met office where someone had been plotting the 1956 sea-ice thicknesses with a pencil. It was as if they had just popped out for a moment :)

We ate some of the original food. The custard was very nice (there was tons of dried cabbage, which we didn't touch). The coal-fired range in the kitchen was wonderful and we made lots of bread with it. If you click on the "Horseshoe Island" tag, it should lead you to some extra pictures.

I must post some more.

I've been talking to my mum about this. Aparrently, they didn't arrive until the end of the southern summer in 1955, and were trying to re-start Stonnington, but the ice was too bad. So instead, they started a new base on Horseshoe Island. The Norsel had about 3 days to unload them because of the fear that the ice would close in.

Presumably you were based at Rothera and used Horseshoe Island as a temporary base? What is your name? Do you know Ivor Morgan and wife Rachel?

That's very interesting, because Horseshoe Island was quite an important base during IGY. I hadn't realised that it had been intended for somewhere else. I'm a geologist and I used Base Y as a temporary base for studying Horseshoe Island in 1994. I've been through Rothera quite a few times. I know Tudor and Rachel well; Rachel was my GA for a time in 1998. Try sending me a message via the "contact user" button, otherwise I'll use your e-mail address above.