Had an early morning trip out to Welch Island - about 8km from Mawson and a mere 150 metre high, to try to get a nice early morning photo of the station. We left at 4.30 (having got to sleep at 2) and drove out over the nearly-melted sea-ice to get there. That was a bit hairy - getting on & off the ice edge from the land means negotiating the weakest parts of the ice, which is also rafted up against the rock, with cracks & so on, but fortunately the surface melt had refrozen overnight. We tore out there into the teeth of the katabatic wind - powerful gravity-fed winds which come up every morning here at Mawson and I had forgotten about . It was only about 40 knots when we left but increased as we climbed up the hill. By about 50 metres altitude the wind seemed to be well over 50 knots and we called it quits 2/3 of the way up, when we were afraid of being blown away. In any case, we could barely hold a camera to take a picture. It wasn't that cold - about 1 degree, but the wind was ridiculous.
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