Scientists and support staff who leave McMurdo Station, Antarctica for the field undergo outdoor safety training. The two-day Happy Camper course covered basic skills in outdoor survival, group dynamics, and field skills. While some aspects of the course took place in a classroom, the field component was the most stimulating. On the wide, featureless landscape of the Ross Ice Shelf, we imagined ourselves dropped off for a field camp or unexpectedly stranded by a vehicle problem. Though we had great weather during the training, this environment experiences very low temperatures, extreme winds, and total whiteouts. We sought to make a camp that would offer safety and protection in worst-case conditions. We built a stomach-high wall out of snow blocks, and set up tents in its lee. Behind a windscreen, we fired up some Whisperlite stoves and boiled water. Some group members excavated and slept in snow trenches or caves--the ultimate in high-wind protection. We learned to anchor our tents by burying deadman stakes, and shoveled a foot of snow onto the perimeter flap of our expedition-style Scott tents.
We fired up VHF and HF radios, used mountaintop repeaters to communicate with the radio operators in McMurdo, and with a message relayed through McMurdo, got a request through to the South Pole for last night's low temperature. I heard a nice, clear '-26 degrees' come through from the South Pole even through I was standing 25 feet away, holding up my end of an antenna strand with a bamboo pole.
In one scenario based from a classroom container on the ice sheet, we imagined a group member had failed to return from the outhouse after 30 minutes. In the scenario, an intense whiteout had set in, and we worked as a group to establish a search and rescue plan. To simulate the low-visibility of a whiteout, we wore plastic buckets on our heads and the hut windows were blocked with cardboard panels. One at a time, we sent rescuers out, rope around waist and bucket on head, to grope blindly for the bamboo path markers leading to where we expected to find the victim. It was wildly disorienting to stumble around under a bucket.
I put together a time lapse of camp activities and cloud banks sweeping over Castle Rock. Look for the assembly of the snow block wall!
