Happy Camper

First, let me preface this post by saying that the past four days have been the most adventure filled, awesome days I have ever had. So in order for you to fully grasp the enormity of the events that have taken place, I will post only one of these events today, and save the others for the next posts. So read fast! You don't want to miss a thing.

On Friday, Mahesh and I had to attend a two day course commonly (and lovingly) referred to as "Happy Camper". This course teaches you how to be prepared in the event of being stranded out on the ice, or at some other remote location in Antarctica. As part of this course, the campers have to construct, maintain, and sleep one night in a winter camp.

We started the day at 0900 where we got the basics on what is included in survival bags that everyone must have with them when traveling away from station. Then we traveled out to the Happy Camper site. After learning how to use the stoves and getting a little bit of last minute information, we headed out to our campsite... a vast field of white.

Unfortunately, pictures of this expedition are rather sparse as the temperatures were freezing my camera batteries faster than I could snap pictures, but I did manage to get this great shot of Mount Erebus. We had a beautiful day.
The set-up of our camp included building a wind wall out of "quarried" snow bricks (we sawed them out of the snow below our feet), setting up Scott Tents, setting up mountain tents and building a quinzee. We also learned how, if all else failed, a snow trench can save your life. Here are a few shots of our finished camp.
That is the quinzee in the middle with the shovel sticking out of it. This is basically a hollowed out pile of snow. The way we built it was by piling up all of our gear, and shovelling snow on top of the gear until it was covered in a 12 inch thick layer of snow. There were 20 campers, so this did not take much time. After allowing the snow to harden and form to its new shape, a hole is cut on one side and the gear can be pulled out, leaving a hollow center. Where the shovel is in this picture is the entrance. It is dug down below the floor of the quinzee to allow for the cold air to pool up, and not enter the quinzee.
This is the entrance. In the background of these two pictures you can see the mountain tents and the Scott Tents (the tall yellow ones). This tent uses the same design as Scott's expeditions, nearly 100 years ago. Can you guess where I spent the night?
Behind the tents was our "kitchen" area and the wind wall.
It was a very long day of excruciatingly difficult work, followed by a long, very cold night. I think reports were that the low reached -15 F. That's cold. But, we were all well prepared, and we didn't suffer a single casualty. Whoo hoo! A few of us said that it was the "stupidest fun thing" we had ever done. Lesson learned: Now that I know how to do it all, I am sure I could do it again if I had to. But I'd never want to do it again.

By the way. I slept in the quinzee. Wee!