All about a stove

For better or for worse, a certain stove - the one that heats the tent we are working in - became the center of attention today. It is an old-fashioned gasoline driven stove which does a remarkable job of heating our 12x6 m steel reinforced tent. For the past two days we have had non-stop wind, which means our poor stove has had a harder time keeping us warm, and we have been migrating closer and closer to it.

Today we had quite an adventure. The chimney of our stove has a wind-stopper that is supposed to pivot when the wind turns. Ours got stuck today, right in the direction of the prevailing wind. Sure enough the wind made it down the chimney and into the stove, creating an enormous cloud of smoke that drove us straight out of the tent (after closing off the fuel first).

One of the maintenance guys at Concordia (his name is Angelo and you can see him in the photograph re-lighting the stove) then climbed onto the roof of our tent to unblock the stopper. Since then, the stove has been working fine, and despite my reservations I have been slowly migrating closer to it again.

There is something so irresistibly attractive about a hot stove in cold weather...