Snow School, aka Happy Camper

If you are going out to the field in Antarctica from McMurdo Station, no matter for how long, you have to be trained in how to camp on the ice. Since lots and lots of people come through McMurdo on their way to a field camp, a whole culture has sprung up around the Snowcraft Class, aka Happy Camper.

Happy Camper involves learning how to set up a Scott tent (a floorless four-pole tent ideal for arctic conditions), cook on the camp stoves, using the snow to build shelters, helicopter and radio etiquette (including shortwave), and emergency procedures. We also discuss proper clothing. The basic guideline: no cotton touching the skin. If you are active, you sweat, and you need to wick away that moisture or you will get cold the next time you are inactive. The gear issue provides everything you need, including long underwear, to survive in these temperatures.

Twelve people were in this particular offering of the class, including a few people working support staff at McMurdo. This is a special opportunity for them because they don’t get out much compared to the scientists. They actually treat this as recreation. Frankly, I think Happy Camper should be renamed “Digging School.” I have not done this much digging and hauling for a looong time.

An arctic camp is only partly tents. Since the winds down here can be pretty brutal, and shelter is non-existent out on the ice, we have to make our own. We built a few snow walls from snow blocks quarried from the snow pack on top of the permanent ice shelf, and dug a kitchen area inside the protected area, so that we could cook our water. All we ate was freeze dried food and granola bars. Freeze dried food is very unsatisfying, and not recommended for an extended period of time if you want to keep your digestion intact. We are always told that people in the filed lose weight because of the body combating the cold, but I think it is because no one can stomach the freeze dried beef stroganoff. At least we had an awesome kitchen to eat it in (see photo).

We also built a quinzee hut. To build this, first choose a spot on the edge of the sheltered area you have created with the snow walls and Scott tents. Pile up all your gear (sleeping bags and pads, extra clothing bags, etc) in a mound, then shovel tons of snow onto it. Pat down the snow several times as you pile. Let set for a few hours. Dig a small hole at ground level and start pulling out the gear, leaving a hollow inside. From the side facing the compound of tents, start an entry hole by digging down, then up into the open space left by the gear. This will keep the warm air, which rises, from escaping out a ground level hole. After completing the entry hole, block off the gear removal hole with a few quarried snow blocks, lay out your pads and sleeping bags and enjoy! While I did not sleep in there, I hear that it was comfortably warm, room enough for two, but you had to be careful when sitting up not to bump the walls and knock down snow. Here is a picture of us building the quinzee hut. The Scott tents are the yellow-orange things.

I am trying to get a time lapse video of building one of the snow walls on Youtube but am having trouble getting the upload to work on the Cincinnati side. There is not enough bandwidth down here to upload via Youtube’s html loader, so I had to get the video Stateside in a roundabout way. Without going into details, just stay tuned….

We took particular care to do a good job on all this because we then spent the night in our creations. The Scott tent, where I stayed, was quite comfortable. I was, in fact, overly warm on my two pads and in my two sleeping bags. One of the best investments you can make for the night is a pee bottle. We’ll just leave that at that….

I had a pretty good time out there. The weather was grey and snowy, with blustery winds. For a short time the following day visibility was down to a couple hundred yards due to blowing snow. These were perfect conditions for some of the scenarios we ran, such as how to find a missing person during white out conditions – not easy! There is another picture of trying to pull out the person who went into the hut to try to yank the buried gear out and got kind of stuck!

Our finished camp looked like this picture. Look for the three snow walls around the Scott tents - left, right, and center; the quinzee hut to the left, and the mountain tents behind all our sleeping gear.

I also took a class about how to recognize, avoid, and deal with altitude sickness. The ice is so thick that the altitude of much of the continent is over 8000 feet. I may end up in an area that high for recovery. Too soon to tell at this point, though.