Happy Camper

Every once in a while, we get a "Morale Trip", in NSF-speak. We call 'em boondoggles. A trip on a helo to Camp Royds, dive tending a sea ice hole, sea ice training, or more comonl Happy Camper School, aka Snowcraft and Survival School. Well, on monday my name came out of the hat and tuesday morning I was in class learning about cold injuries and prevention before heading out to Snow Mound City on the Ice Shelf. We spent two days learning how to set up the Scott tents, build ice walls and snow caves and survival trenches, set up stoves and melt snow, use the VHF and HF radios (we actually called South Pole Station on HAM radio to get a weather forecast just for practise. It was -42 C with 30 knot winds), and search for a missing companion in condition 1 (simulated by puting a bucket over our heads and not being alllowed to speak as we tried to move as a team out of the fish hut and across the ice to the out house).

That night I slept in a Qunizy, a snow cave made by piling our gear and then heaping snow on top of the pile about a meter thick, and then hollowing it out. Our was styling, so big on the inside you could have a dance party and with an arch over the entry way built from carved snow blocks. Anyway, it was alot of fun and some good training. It is required for parties going into the deep field or just leaving station more than a few miles, but for those of us whose jobs won't take us to scu exotic locals, we get the training when space in the class comes up at the last minute, as part of the whole morale treatment. And it worked, I can feel my morale increasing as I write this.



Eating dehydrate beef stoganoff in the snow kitchen



Our Scott tents set up, with hauling sleds in the fore ground and bamboo poles to the side. We had to set these flags between shelters and the kitchen and the latrine, in case of a white out.