Happy Camper

For the full photo album of "Happy Camper," go to
 http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2012034&id=143700020&l=af0a31820f.  

This weekend was my "Happy Camper" course, which is a two-day, one night training out on the Ross Ice Shelf (aka middle of nowhere).  Though we could see the kiwi base, Scott Base, in the distance, there was nothing of civilization but a blue Jamesway called the I-hut, where our instructors slept, a shed that held our tools and sleeping bags, and an outhouse.  Red and green flags circled the Happy Camper area, letting us know that there were no crevasses nearby and it was safe to walk. 

The purpose of Happy Camper is to simulate a survival situation in Antarctic weather conditions, and teach campers how to use survival bags (filled with a tent, shovel, sleeping bag, dehydrated food, stove etc.) and how to build snow shelters to survive for a few hours or a few days.

We rode a Delta (ENORMOUS vehicle to be carrying people in, you have to climb a six foot ladder to get in) out to the Happy Camper site, where they dropped us off to die to practice survival skills.  I promptly fell asleep in the Delta, as I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before and was crowded shoulder-to-shoulder with people I didn't know in a rollicking vehicle.  I snuggled down into my coat and got a bit of shut-eye, and was a little disappointed to find that the camp was only 15 minutes away from station, which ended my nap quickly.

After getting to camp, we erected a Scott tent (right) and Megan, one of the instructors, showed us how to anchor it down using Dead Man anchors, which involve burying a short bamboo pole in a notched pit the snow and wrapping string around it, so the string comes back out of the snow and you can hitch it back to itself using a trucker's hitch (which I didn't know how to do before, but is amazingly efficient and awesome.) 

Next we built a Quinzhee, which is a snow shelter/cave shaped like a beaver dam made out of snow.  You stack all your bags in a big pile (for us was 20 huge duffels), cover the bags in snow, then dig out the mound and pull the bags out.  The snow keeps its shape, and you dig from underneath to keep the wind from blowing in.  It's really cool.

Some people also slept in snow trenches, which they dug out of the ground and covered the openings with slabs of snow. I might add here that the Antarctic snow, at least on the ice shelf, is extremely hard-packed and dry, lending itself perfectly to awesome construction projects.

We also set up 4-season mountaineering tents and build snowblock windbreak walls around them, and dug a kitchen trench and cooking area where we set up our stoves to boil water (to make food out of dehydrated backpacking dinners).  Will, Chris and I (the first 3 GA's to arrive on the Ice out of our 9-person crew) ended up manning the stoves, as many other people were busy building trenches for the night or walking around trying to keep warm.  I chose to sleep in a Scott tent (the tall, pyramid-shaped ones), and our four bodies warmed it to between -10 and 0 degrees F throughout the night (toasty!).  The next morning, I dragged myself out of my tent to go pee, which was good because I don't know if I would have gotten out of my sleeping bag for any other reason.  

After making oatmeal for breakfast, we all met back in the Instructor Hut, a semi-permanent blue Jamesway , that would serve as our classroom.  The instructors talked about minimizing risk when outdoors in Antarctica, and we learned about VHF and HF radios.  VHF is like a normal CB radio that truckers have, or like a handheld walkie talkie radio.  HF radios are for long-term, long-distance camps or like ones you see in war movies where it's a big box and you talk on a telephone handset.  They're both pretty sweet.

Next was the Buckethead drill, where our group put 5 gallon buckets over our heads to simulate a whiteout condition (no visibility and inability to hear much.)  One of the instructors went out in the direction of the outhouse and we had to organize a search party tied to a rope to go rescue him.  We ended up finding him by using a sweeping technique with two people at the end of our rope, but Dylan the instructor said that we got lucky and many groups don't find their lost man in the drill.

Arriving back at McMurdo and climbing into my bed in the heated dorm room felt soooo nice.  The dorm is heated to probably 70 degrees and feels way too hot most of the time, but right then it was very welcome.  Happy Camper was a great experience, and I think the important thing I learned wasn't necessarily how to survive in the cold, but that I should try my best to NOT get stuck out there during a storm!