Well, I'm about midway through my first season in Antarctica, so I've decided to take a little time to review some of the highlights of my season thus far:
Sea Ice Training: For sea ice training we went out in a hagglund, a tracked amphibious vehicle, although the one we were in probably hasn't been able to keep water out for about ten years. The purpose of the training was to teach us how to profile cracks in the ice so that we could tell if they were safe to cross with a vehilce. Using kovack drills, we measured the thickness of the ice, and how wide the crack was. Most of the ice where we were was about six feet deep. At the end of the day we had the treat of being able to go inside an ice cave inside the Eurubus glacier toungh. The ice formations inside were incredibly beutifull.
Happy Camper: Another training. For this one we learned how to construct snow shelters and some basic Antarctic survival skills, then spent the night in tents or snow shelters. I chose to spend the night in a tent, and for the most part had a pretty warm night. Around one a.m. the wind picked up and started shaking the walls of my tent, which we covered in ice from the frozen condensation of my breath, so I got woken up with a nice shower of ice. When I got up in the morning, there was about a -40 degree windchill outside of my tent. We then did radio and whiteout training as I tried to retain feeling in my hands. I had the pleasure of completing my happy camper with two members of the BBC team down here filming a new series, Frozen Planet. The two that I met were Jeff Wilson and Mark Smith. If you watch the special fetures on the "Mountains" episode of Planet Earth, you'll see that they were the ones that filmed the famous snow leppord scene. Overall, it was a great experience.
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