Arrival

 This is a Sheath bill, they are scavengers and are not afraid of landing on the ship for a bit.

Palmer Station is located on the south side of Anvers Island on the west side of the Antarctic Peninsula. To arrive at the station we traveled through the Neumayer Strait which is lined with huge glaciers and steep walls of mountains.  Most of the passage was clouded in, but the little that I was able to see was amazing. Hopefully I'll get luck with some sunny weather on the way out, although it may have been more dramatic this way.

 It's hard to keep a sense of scale with the ice and mountains around here. Those black things in the water are seals. 

 This ice berg was massive.

There are two birds flying in this picture, for scale. They are in the first and second "valleys" of the iceberg.

 This is a juvenile leopard seal, known for being very large and aggressive. He floated by on a piece of sea ice looking very confused by our passing. 

 Wow wow wow I have no idea how big that is, but it's majestic!!

 Then it started to snow, which was a bit eerie.

 And then the open water ended and we entered some unbroken sea ice.

 Plowing through at about 5 knots, engines at 100% power.

 Crab eater seals "running away". 

Still chugging along in the ice.

Another crab eater a bit confused.

Palmer is on a point in the top left, we are coming down from the top right. 

 Clouds.

Penguins on the island to the right.

First glace at Palmer!

My new home! 

My office has a deck out front and this is the view from that deck. 

Office window view. 

 The glacier across the harbor.

 The Gould in the an amazing sunset. 

After a week for every one to learn their jobs the winter crew got on to the ship and left the station to us summer people. 

 One of my duties is to be a line handler, so I help with 5 other people remove the lines from the bow when the Gould's captain tells us to do so.

 There it goes!! Very slowly through all that ice.

 I went for a walk up the glacier in the back yard of the station for the sunset with the summer Doctor, a super cool lady from Alaska. 

 The glacier has a flagged safe walking area. 

 Right now the glacier is covered in snow and pretty easy to walk up and over.

 More beautiful mountains come into view from the other side of the glacier. 

 The Doc.

 All of station is on that peninsula to the left. 

The ice is starting to break up.  

Palmer is a pretty majestic place. I'm very impressed with the station facilities and the scenery is more amazing then I had imagined. More pictures of station and my work place to come later, but for now we are all caught up!