Because it seemed like a good idea at the time....: Happy Camper aka Digging an Ice Grave

After finishing my night shift, I strolled into my boss's office to sign my time sheet and she asked me if I wanted to attend Happy Camper. Before she could get half way through her sentence I was already saying yes, and maybe mildly jumping up and down with excitement! I had been waiting for this since the first week I arrived at McMurdo. Camping in ANTARCTICA! Jess then informed me that it started in 10 minutes and I had to pack and be over to the Science Support Center. I tore apart my room, gathered my Extreme Cold Weather gear, and hoped for the best knowing full well that I would have to go without sleep for 26 hours!

The Snowcraft One Course is nicknamed Happy Camper and is a requirement for all scientists and staff going to field camps. It teaches you the basics of how to set up tents, operate stoves, build snow walls, create emergency snow trench shelters, and use the radios/Survival Bags if an emergency were to happen. Often they will have cancellations and that's when spots are given to other staff around base, including the Stewards.

I met the two instructors, Alisdair and Ben, who are both mountaineering guides and had just finished a season on Denali in Alaska. I was glad that Kellie, another steward and also a graduate of James Madison University (small world!) was there. They began the course with introductions, cold weather medical emergencies (think gross pictures of frostbitten toes), and then we loaded into the giant Delta vehicles and headed out to the Ice.

There was a small single wide trailer called the I-Hut where we finished our lessons before setting up camp. You should have seen the look on my face when they pulled out the Whisper Light stoves and started teaching us how to use them. I had just spent all summer teaching my youth crew with the Montana Conservation Corps how to use these same stoves...that I hated! I guess maybe they have now earned some trail cred if they use them down here in Antarctica.

We all grabbed our bags and walked a quarter mile to our new campsite on the McMurdo Ice Shelf. Ben and Alisdair began by telling us we always had to create a flag line out to our first tent, the traditional Scott tent, in case a Condition One white out came upon us. We learned to set up the Scott tent and how to stake it out in the snow. I was always curious how to do this after failing many times in the snowy Sierra Nevada on my PCT thru hike. We made a T-shaped trench and used a trucker's hitch (another knot that I taught this summer but had never used practically before) to ensure that the tent was grounded in case of high winds. Then came the SNOW WALL! In some cultures there are over 30 different words to describe snow and I completely understand why. Not all snow is created equal. Here in Antarctica, the snow is so dry that it naturally forms into striated layers. With a saw you can create blocks and then you can use a shovel to pry it out of it's position. It works surprisingly well! We all worked together in the "quarry" to create blocks and then sled them over to the wall under construction. The idea behind the wall is to create a wind breaker for the smaller and less resilient mountain tents that were put between the 2 larger Scott tents. The wall is oriented to the South because the worst storms come from the South pole. In the quarry we created a kitchen area and started up the stoves to melt snow in the long process of boiling water for 17 people for the evening.

With the tents up, snow wall created, and stoves lit we were now allowed to start digging our ice trenches. Because sleeping in a tent isn't extreme enough in Antarctica, you can also choose to dig an emergency shelter... in the snow... and then sleep in it. It was like digging your own grave. Once the instructors saw that we were well on our way, they left us for the night and many of us spent hours constructing our dream ice trenches. So. Much. Fun. Kellie and I built ours next to one another and joked that it was a duplex with an adjoining front porch:) We took breaks in between to eat our dehydrated dinner and have some hot cider before going back to work. The most frustrating part was after creating the massive blocks for my roof, they would sometimes break and I would have to start all over again...oh the woes of Antarctic explorers!

By 9:30 pm I was done and the first to bed after successfully staying awake for 26 hours. I slept soundly, until I awoke to mild panic with images of frostbitten black toes as I felt my own feet growing increasingly colder. Since my ice trench was on the shallow side, so shallow I had to wiggle in feet first and wiggle out in the same direction; I couldn't sit up so I had to reach down and put hand warmers in between my sock layers. Then I soundly fell back to sleep. I'm happy to say I arrived back to McMurdo with all my toes intact. During the two day course the temperature hovered right around 9 degrees F, it seems kind of wimpy for what people imagine for Antarctica, but I was happy for the beautiful weather!

The next day we ate oatmeal and began the process of breaking down camp. We then went back to the I-Hut for some survival scenarios where we had to pretend it was white out conditions and a person from our group was missing. To mimic the white out, they put white buckets on our head! The second scenario involved using the survival bags that everyone must have in their vehicle or helicopter whenever they leave base. We also learned how to use VHF (very high frequency) radios to check out with MacOps and the HF(high frequency) old WWII radios! I got to call the South Pole on the HF radios for practice and asked them what the temperature was there the previous night... negative 47 degrees F! Overall, I had a stellar time at Happy Camper and slowly reaching my goal of camping on all seven continents:)