I love to camp. Since moving to Colorado almost five years ago we’ve tried to camp whenever possible. Never in my life did I imagine that one day I’d spend a night sleeping in a snow trench on the Ross Ice Shelf in Antarctica.
Tuesday morning at 9am we arrived at the FSTP classroom in full ECW gear to begin our Snowcraft I course, or “Happy Camper School.” This course is required for everyone who goes out into the field. Since there’s a possibility that we may be able to accompany a science group on a day trip we were told we needed to take this course.
The first part of the morning was spent in the classroom going over some basic survival information along with the risks and possible injuries one might encounter in a survival situation. We discussed the three different stages of hypothermia: mild, moderate, and severe. I diagnosed myself as having mild hypothermia during the marathon I ran on September 14th. I had every symptom, most of which are the “umbles” – mumbling, fumbling, stumbling, etc. Another common symptom is your body seizing up on you. On that day I ran in shorts and a t-shirt when it was 37 degrees outside and by the time I was done it took me several minutes to put the headphone jack into my mp3 player, I couldn’t make out a complete sentence, my legs were one giant cramp, etc. Bottom line for prevention of hypothermia: wear proper clothing, whether you’re running a marathon or in a survival situation in Antarctica.
We then learned what was included in a survival bag, which can be found on just about any vehicle going out onto the ice. A two-person bag weighs about 60 pounds and is designed to support two people for up to three days. The idea is that most Antarctic storms last no more than three days, so if we were to find ourselves trapped somewhere we’d be able to survive with our newfound knowledge and one of these bags. The bags contain a camp stove, two sleeping bags, snow saw, shovel, tent, tent stakes, pots, matches, etc. – everything we’d need to build a makeshift field camp in whiteout conditions. In Antarctica.
Once we were finished with the classroom portion of the morning we loaded up a bunch of gear onto a Delta and headed out to camp. The Happy Camper School is located at Snow Mound City, which is a few miles past Scott Base on the other side of the peninsula, to the southeast of McMurdo, on the frozen glacial waters of the Ross Ice Shelf. This is a glacier that has about 6-9 meters of compacted snow on top of 200-300 feet of ice, floating on 1800 feet of water.
The day had started out fairly overcast and windy, and by the time we arrived at camp the visibility was pretty poor. I was hoping it wouldn’t get much worse, as I was all about the Antarctic experience, but maybe just a tad worried about the potential situation. It was condition 2 all around station, but still fair enough to hold class. After all, the goal of the class is to learn how to survive in a condition 1 storm with nothing more than a shovel, and a survival bag if you’re lucky, so the worse the weather the better as far as the instructors are concerned.
The delta drove us about a mile out onto the ice, where there is a weatherhaven set up. This is basically a portable jamesway, which looks like a tin can cut down the middle lengthwise and then set on the snow to make a half cylinder shape, flat side down. We walked inside the weatherhaven and I was surprised to see how nicely the building was set up. It was heated, which was very nice, and we all grabbed a seat to begin our series of classes.
Our group consisted of 18 people and two instructors. The instructors, Allen and Susan, are full-time mountaineers who do this sort of thing year-round. When they’re not in Antarctica they can usually be found leading expeditions up Denali or the Grand Tetons. The other people in our class consisted of grantees, NASA employees, heavy equipment operators, and fire fighters. We were quite a diverse group of individuals.
The first thing we did in the weatherhaven was to learn how to operate the camp stoves. These are the same sort of stoves found at REI, just a one-burner job that runs on white gas. These stoves will run on any of the fuels found on station, so if you were to go down in a helicopter you could actually use helo fuel if needed, it just wouldn’t run quite as efficiently. After learning about all the parts we broke into several groups and practiced lighting the stoves.
After packing the stoves back into their wooden boxes we walked about 100 yards down to a storage shack to build a sleep kit for each person. We had an assembly line going with some people in the shack stuffing the items into a duffel bag, handing them out to people outside, who would zip them and pass them down to someone loading them into the Delta. Each sleep kit contains two therma pads (a piece of foam about 5 feet by 2 feet by ½ inch), a sleeping bag, and a kozi. The kozi is a fleece jacket for the sleeping bag that zips up and around the bag for added warmth.
Once the sleep kits were built and loaded, the Delta drove about half a mile down to where we’d be making our camp, and we all followed by walking the distance. Walking in bunny boots, in snow and wind, with about 20 pounds of ECW on, is much harder than it sounds. By the time we got to camp we had all warmed up pretty well. We discovered this would be a common theme of the course. The more manual labor, the warmer we’d stay. The whole body heat regulation thing is a major factor when it comes to Antarctic survival. We had also learned a lot of great tips in our morning class, such as if your fingers are getting really cold you can swing your arm around really fast to get blood flow to the fingers, which, in turn, warms them up. This was just one of the great tips we learned throughout the course.
The Delta had stopped at another shack next to where we’d be making camp. Inside the shack were 5 big sleds, shovels, snow saws, two Scott tents, and stakes. We loaded each sled with the gear, including our personal bags and sleep kits, and made several trips out to where we’d actually be setting up camp, about 100 yards away. Another example of manual labor.
Once all the gear was moved we split the class into two groups, one with each mountaineer, to learn how to set up the Scott tents. These are teepee-shaped tents designed by Robert Falcon Scott and used on his Antarctic expeditions. Their unique design characteristics make them great for blocking wind and have worked very well in Antarctic conditions. Once the tent was up our instructor showed us how to stake a tent in the snow. We had brought along two types of stakes, each about 18 inches long, some made out of metal and the others out of bamboo. We first staked each of the four corners with a metal stake just as you would normally stake a tent into the ground. Next we learned how to “deadman” a stake, which is the best way to stake a tent into snow. First you dig down about 18 inches, undercutting the hole you’re digging so that rather than just being straight down it goes down and then under, towards the tent. Once that’s done you cut a little slit perpendicular to the hole. You then wrap one of the tent’s attached ropes around the bamboo stake and drop the stake into the hole, horizontally, with the rope laying in the perpendicular slit. So rather than driving a stake into the ground, it’s laying flat in the hole you just dug. You cover the hole with snow, and then tie the rope to itself using a series of two special knots, making sure the rope is nice and tight. Once the stake is covered back up with snow it’s next to impossible to pull it out, they must be dug out with a shovel. The Scott tents also have a skirt around them that lays flat on the ground. By covering this with snow, and deadmanning each stake, the tent has some major wind resistance. I should also mention that the snow here is very wind-blown, compacted, and dry. It doesn’t pack together well like traditional snowball snow, but if you put two blocks on top of each other they’ll bond together in a matter of hours. It’s a very dense snow with very little powder on top. Even the big metal stakes in the corners stuck very well, and took quite an effort to pull out after they had sat for a while.
While we were finishing up the stakes one of our instructors had taken each sleep kit and stacked them in a pile about 6 feet high, then covered them with a tarp. Each kit was roughly three to four feet long, with the duffel bag about 12” in diameter, so throwing 18 of them into the pile made it fairly large. Our group had finished putting up the Scott tent first, so Allen told us to go ahead and start throwing snow on the pile of bags.
Not knowing why we were supposed to do this, but realizing by now that manual labor would rule the 2-day course, I just started chucking snow. We continued to do this until there was 18” of snow covering the entire mound on all sides and the top. Periodically we’d pound it with our shovels to tamp the snow before continuing to add more. We let that set and then moved on to our next lesson.
Allen had taken one of the sleds, and using a saw that looks much like a regular wood saw, had cut into the snow all around the sled. Once that cut was made he sliced it cross-wise several times, then dug those out in solid blocks. The point of this exercise was to show us that with just a shovel and a saw you could build a snow trench the size of your body that could get you down out of the wind should you get caught in a blizzard. It looked like a coffin to me, but I was intrigued by the idea of cutting out a trench the size of your body and spending the night lying in the Antarctic snow. The blocks he had cut out could be used to build a wall around the trench, or laid over top of the trench in an A-frame fashion to give you a little more wind resistance.
The other point of this exercise was to learn how to cut and build snow blocks. It’s much easier than I realized, you simply slice the snow with a saw and pop the block out with a shovel. (By “easier,” I mean it’s technically not difficult to do. However, after cutting enough blocks for a wall or igloo you’re dead to the world. Those things get heavy) You lay them just like bricks, using the saw to level off each row of blocks once they’ve been set. We learned how to gauge which direction a storm might come from, and how to decide which direction would best be suited for a snow wall that would protect our tent. We started building a long snow wall facing south, since most storms come from the South Pole. The wall was about 30 feet long and slightly curved to provide added resistance from the swirling winds of the Ross Ice Shelf. Once the wall was beginning to be established we set up three mountain tents behind the wall. This was the easiest part of the day, as the tents are very similar to the one I have back home, just a little more weatherproof. Our camp now consisted of two Scott tents, a snow wall, three mountain tents, and a giant mound of snow.
By now, the giant mound of snow had compacted a bit and re-bonded to itself, so we were able to start digging it out. Allen instructed the group to pick a job, either digging out the igloo, or quinzee as it’s technically called, continue building the snow wall, or, if we preferred, build our own trench, and then he and Susan left us for the night. Though I was fascinated by the quinzee, I decided to start on a personal trench, as that seemed the most hard-core Antarctic camping option.
The guys who worked on the quinzee dug out a door, then started pulling the sleep kit bags out. Once those had been removed they lowered the floor a bit, then the door, so that any cold air would sink down into the door and out the quinzee, rather than circle around them. The quinzee ended up being rather large, and slept four members of our team comfortably.
I grabbed a sled and used it as the outline for my snow trench. I convinced Josh & Scott to go for a trench as well, and we all three started digging our trenches pretty close to each other. I cut the blocks out, sat them aside, and then started digging a little deeper. My philosophy was that the deeper the trench the less wind I would get. The trench itself was about three feet deep before someone announced that hot water was ready. With the amount of labor we had done we decided to take a break and have a hot meal of dehydrated beef stroganoff. The wind was rather vicious by now so Josh, Scott, and I elected to eat in one of the Scott tents. As mentioned before, these are great at blocking wind, and over the course of the meal Josh & Scott decided that spending the night in a Scott tent might be a more comfortable option. I was bound and determined to sleep in my trench, though, so after dinner I went back out for more construction.
I originally had planned on building a snow block igloo top to give myself some headroom for sitting up but mostly for the architectural flair of the whole thing. However, the third row of blocks started to collapse upon construction, so I elected to use a sled overturned for the roof instead. It rested on three rows of snow blocks, and I then packed up more snow around the blocks for additional support. Meanwhile, my entrance had a nice step halfway down, and another wall of blocks to act as a wind barrier, with the entrance just about 18” wide cut into the blocks. When all was said and done my trench was about 3 ½ feet below the surface and about 18” above the surface for a total height of about 5 feet. It was about 7 feet long, and I had cut it nice and wide so that I could roll around no problem.
Once I had it built to my satisfaction we took a tour of the camp to see how the others were doing, hit the yellow pee flag, and then had a cup of cocoa in Josh & Scott’s new home, the Scott tent that we had first set up.
After chatting for a bit I headed to my new home away from home, the snow trench I had dubbed “Chateaux d’ Sara.” I laid down my mats and sleeping bag, and then crawled in for the long cold night ahead of me. I slept in everything I had worn that day except for my bunny boots and parka. I took my parka, zipped it up, and slid it over the foot of my bag to give my toes a little added warmth. My leather gloves had gotten completely soaked during the construction of the Chateaux, and by now had frozen solid. I took them off, popped a couple hand warmers into my big bearclaw mittens, and slept with my hands in those.
Once I was finally situated I laid in my trench, unable to believe what I was actually doing. I noticed that I had a clear view of a green flag right out my front door. It was blowing pretty good, but my trench was virtually windless. It was now 11pm at night, but still perfectly light out, so I snapped a few pictures and then closed my eyes for my most extreme camping adventure ever.
The manual labor had knocked me out and over the course of the night I only woke up a few times. I was actually not too terribly cold, with the heavy-duty sleeping bag, fleece cover, and about 20 pounds of ECW clothing on, but it was definitely a bit chilly. Weather overnight at McMurdo reached a –27 degree wind chill, and out on the ice on the other side of the hills, I’d guess it was a least 10 degrees cooler. I had a bottle of water with me in bed, but it was frozen solid when I woke up. By morning I was getting pretty cold, but the thought of getting out of my cozy little snow shelter was too much and I laid there, three feet underground on an ice shelf in Antarctica, in the snow, for another 30 minutes before finally getting up the courage to crawl out of the sleeping bag.
We tore down camp and around 9:00 the instructors met us again to make sure we had all survived. Josh reported that the Scott Tent was cold, but Scott said he had slept pretty well. The general consensus among the group was that everyone had woken up a few times but slept fairly well given the circumstances. I’m convinced it was all the manual labor. After a quick breakfast of expired hot cocoa and instant oatmeal we started the day two activities. I should mention that the instructors left us with two large boxes of food, such as granola bars, oatmeal packets, dehydrated food, etc., but we couldn’t find a single item that wasn’t at least a year past expiration. There was beef jerky in there that had expired in 2000.
The morning weather had cleared up quite a bit from the prior day, and we were greeted with a nice view of Mt. Erebus rising up into the clouds. Across the bay we could make out White Island and Black Island, and Deception Peak among others.
We walked the half mile back to the shack that housed the sleep kits and reversed our assembly line process, this time unpacking them. We continued back to the weatherhaven, where there was warm water awaiting us for hot cocoa and tea. We debriefed the night, each taking a turn to share how they had slept and what they’d do different next time, and then moved into another classroom session on risk identification.
After that, Susan gave us a tutorial on the two types of radios we use – VHF and HF. VHF radios are fairly standard, just like walkie talkies, but I had never seen an HF radio before. These are Viet Nam-era radios, and after a quick tutorial we broke into two groups to take them outside and give them a shot. Scott took the lead in our group and quickly we had communication with the South Pole. The member of our team that actually made the call to the Pole was Robin, who is one of the four TEAs on continent, or Teachers Experiencing Antarctica. The USAP has a special program to get regular teachers to the Ice to share the experience with their classes back home. Robin will be helping a science group in the Dry Valleys for the next fifteen days, and she was obviously pretty excited to have made radio contact with the South Pole.
After that we thought, and hoped, that we were done, about to go back home, but we broke into two groups again for “scenario” drills. First we were given a survival bag and told that we had just set up a nice field camp that had burned down, and all we were left with was this survival bag. We had 30 minutes to set up the tent, build a protective snow wall, make radio communications with someone, and melt some snow for water. In the process, Allen had secretly instructed one of the team members to act hypothermic, and I fortunately remembered the “umbles,” and diagnosed him in time to throw him in the tent, get him some warm water, and wrap him in our parkas for additional warmth. We passed this scenario with flying colors.
We didn’t do quite as well with our second scenario. We had to pretend that we were in the weatherhaven in the middle of a condition 1 storm, and one of our team members had gone out to use the pee flag and hadn’t returned in 15 minutes. All we had was a rope connected to the building, and we needed to go out into the storm and find her. To simulate this, we had to wear white buckets over our heads and figure out a plan of attack. Our plan was to sweep from right to left, with one person anchoring the rope at the doorway. We never did find her, though we were told we had the best communication of any group this season. That was a much harder drill than I had imagined, as the buckets do a pretty good job of simulating whiteout conditions and decreased hearing at the same time.
Finally it was time to head back to McMurdo. However, we weren’t done, as we had to watch a 15-minute video on helicopter safety and learn about the unique environmental restrictions in the McMurdo Dry Valleys. The Dry Valleys are an area of the Trans-Antarctic Mountains that are so windy that snow and ice can’t accumulate – it all blows away. They say this area hasn’t had any ecological change for 8 million years. In fact, tractor tracks in the dirt are still visible from a Kiwi expedition in the 1950’s. Due to this, you’re not allowed to urinate anywhere other than a portable “pee bottle,” you can’t step in any water, you must only walk on trails, and vehicles aren’t allowed. It’s probably the most protected ecosystem on earth.
After showing that we could use the seatbelts found on A-star helicopters, we passed the class and could head back home. I immediately called Sara, as I hadn’t talked to her in a few days and had dreamed about her while sleeping in my Antarctic snow trench. It was great to chat with her, and afterwards I took a shower that felt fantastic.
I doubt I’ll ever forget the past two days. Sleeping in a snow trench in Antarctica is something I’ll be able to tell my grandkids about. Every day I think about what an amazing journey this has all been, and I’m thankful every day for the experience.
Some photos of this adventure are now up in the photo album
