Happy Camper:
Happy Camper is required for anyone in Antarctica who will be leaving established bases or routes - that's me - and is a popular optional course for any other folks working in the Antarctic. My course was specifically for those on the American bases, but the other bases offer similar courses. (We could actually see the Kiwi campsite from ours, though it wasn't in use at the time.)
You start out with ~5 hrs of classroom training. In the base itself, we learned about the symptoms, consequences, and treatment of hypothermia and frostbite. We also saw some terribly disgusting pictures of severe frostbite that previous campers had gotten from dressing improperly and not recognizing the symptoms early on. If they were wanting to frighten us into compliance, it worked! We had a very long lecture on risk management, that isn't worth detailing. (Yawn! I've sat through sooo many of those during my Chevron days, and they're all the same! Of course, they'll try to tell you that they are giving you something new, when in reality, it's just common sense.)
Then we all piled into a big trailer lined with benches along the side. There were 19 students, and we really didn't fit, especially with our bags and bulky ECW (Extreme Cold Weather) gear. But the 30 minute ride was beautiful. We passed the pressure ridges (huge ridges in the ice shelf caused by differential movement and shifting). I could *almost* see them through the fogged-up windows. We eventually made it to the camp classroom on the permanent part of the ice shelf. (Cool fact: the ice there is ~80m thick, and depresses the land beneath to below sea level.)
Here, we learned and practiced lighting a "whisper light" stove, which is in the emergency packs and which we used that night to boil our water. We got a demonstration of how to get into a sleep kit, which consists of two foam pads, a sleeping bag, and a fleece liner, and what things to put in the bag with you and how to best arrange them. This was actually far more useful than it sounds as it turns out to be very difficult to undress in a tiny tent in the cold and maneuver all of your stuff to where it needs to be. It's definitely a workout to get ready to sleep in one of those things!
There was a sad casualty here: my beloved snow boots that served me so well in Pennsylvania. :( We were standing outside for one of the demonstrations, when I noticed that one spot on my foot was a bit cold, and decided that I'd have to change into my issued snow boots that don't really fit. After a while, that one spot on my foot was REALLY cold, and I decided this change needed to be immediate. When I went in, I saw that the rubber of the boots had split open to my socks along an ~6" crack, but several smaller others. As I pulled them off, they cracked and ripped in several other places. It wasn't really all that cold out (~25F), so I think this is more to do with being in storage for two years than with the actually cold. In any case, I mourn them each time I wear my huge blue boots.
We then carried our bags out to our actually campsite, which was about half a mile away. Patrick had advised me to bring all of my cold weather gear, so that I could test it out. He said we wouldn't walk far at all. He said. :( So, I lugged my heavy two bags + backpack in my too-big boots through the snow for half a mile, while everyone else basically skipped along with a backpack and perhaps one other small bag. grrrr….
At camp, we set up tents, which was pretty standard, except that we anchored them to poles that we buried in the snow. We cut blocks from the snow that were used to build a wall to block the wind and a small wind shelter for our "kitchen." We also learned to dig snow trenches to sleep in. More than half the people elected this method, but not me. I saw no point in digging a trench when there were perfectly good tents available. Plus my boots were giving me blisters. After a dinner of dehydrated meals, candy, and hot chocolate, I went to bed. (Fun fact: Scott's expedition starved to death, even though they were eating and estimated 5000 calories/day. Never in my life have I had food pushed on my like they were pushing it at this camp. Hunger was not a problem for us!)
That night, I was fairly warm in my sleeping bag, although my rear was cold until I decided to lay on some instant heat packs. Unfortunately, those also heated my zipper and I got a tiny burn from it. But, it was definitely worth it! I also learned the value of leveling the snow before putting up your tent.
In the morning, we packed everything up and headed back to the camp classroom. We learned about the contents of an emergency bag, how to make VHF radio calls and HF radio calls. We called the south pole on HF radio, with some success, and when we got to the pole yesterday, I got to speak to the radio operator in person, who remembered our call. :) We also played out a couple senarios of having to find a lost person in a white-out and needing to set-up emergency shelter in 20 minutes while caring for a person with hypothermia (she seemed more like she was having a seizure!).
Finally, we headed back to McMurdo for a quick lesson on riding in helicopters, and the course was over. I was tired and wanted a shower, but on the whole I learned a lot and had a pretty good time.
That's all for this post. I'll post again later today about the arrival at South Pole.
Mt. Erebus from our campsite:
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