Today we had was what has seemed like a rare phenomenon over winter - a good weather day co-inciding with a day off. For the latter part of winter it has felt like we've only had good weather on school days. Rog very kindly offered me the chance to get out to play on the mountains. We did a route called 'Anatomy of a dog' which is a snow / ice climb up a gulley on Stork Ridge (the snow-filled gulley can be seen just to the left of centre in the photo above) . The snow was in a lovely condition and we were able to climb up without pitching it (i.e. we were roped together but didn't have to put in any protection and belay eachother up as it was pretty easy going). 
Once on top of the ridge we were treated to spectaular views of Orca (another mountain) and the Sheldon Glacier. We continued to walk along the whole length of Stork Ridge descending into Stork Bowl.
Looking East along Stork Ridge
Looking West along Stork Ridge
Shadows - still a novelty after 2 months without them
Reptile Ridge and one of the Borek planes on the Ski-Way
Orca & crevasses on the Sheldon Glacier
With it being such a lovely day we decided to stop by Badger (not sure how these mountains get thir names) and do a quick route on this too.
On top of Badger
Jim had the brilliant idea of serving gin and tonics in the caboose at Vals before dinner so we asked him to bring our snowboards up too. The end of the day was rounded off with a few runs at Vals and G&Ts in the sun followed by another amazing dinner from Cyril including loads of freshies kindly brought in by the Borek team - all in all a pretty prefect day in the Antarctic.
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