Snowcraft1: Happy Camper Camp
Created | Updated Feb 10, 2005
In the United States Antarctic Program it is often necessary to train people from all walks of life to cope with the special difficulties of life in the Antarctic. Anyone who is assigned to a field camp, or whose duties take them out of the boundaries of McMurdo Station, must be trained in Antarctic Survival by taking the snowcraft I course also known as Happy Camper Camp.
This is where the heroes of FSTOP1 come in. The people who work at FSTOP are very well trained in outdoor survival and wilderness rescue and are the sort of persons who look upon a twenty mile hike over broken terrain with a hundred pound pack as good clean fun. On the other hand there are people like myself who feel this continent is really missing out by not having a whole bunch of ski lifts and warm chalets. The following relates my experiences in the Snowcraft I course as excerpted from a letter home.
We left Mac Town at about ten am after a one hour briefing. I was wearing my ECW gear (extreme cold weather) which was issued to us in Christchurch NZ. All I brought with me, besides what I was wearing, was a change or two of gloves and socks. I show up at the Field Training and Search and Rescue building and everyone else brought all their ECW gear, so I start off feeling underequipped. Then we pack everything into the Nodwell for the 7 or 8 mile drive to Happy Camper Camp. this takes about an hour (Nodwells are not fast). Happy camper camp is about 2 miles out on the Ross Ice Shelf. We file into the instructors 'Jamesway' (a kind of semi portable structure of Korean war US Army pedigree; it looks a little like a miniature quonset hut) for lunch and our briefing on cold-related injuries2. After that we learn how to use a portable camp stove. Now it is 3 or 4 in the afternoon and it looks like the beginning of a 'Herbie'. Herbie is one nickname for a Hurricane Blizzard. Visibility is about fifty feet. We now load up the Nodwell with 4 regular (and disturbingly lightweight) dome tents, 3 Scott tents (90lbs each) and fifteen duffels each with a sleeping bag, sleeping bag liner, and two mattress pads. We drive a further mile out to snow shelter city and begin setting up tents. To set up a Scott tent you need five ice axes (gently drive two feet deep in the snow) as tent stakes and another eight or ten regular stakes. The pole arrangement is such that, to erect the tent, you need four people; one for each corner and a fifth person who has a rope by which he is belaying the peak of the tent so it does not blow away. Then others take the innumerable other ropes and stake them down. Finally snow is heaped on the skirt to preclude drafts. Repeat twice more.
Now we dig a pit and start cutting snow blocks. We quarry an area 12' x 20' by three feet deep and build a three foot snow wall on the southern edge of the quarry. In the now-sheltered depression we set up four of the flimsy dome tents. It is about 10pm when this is all done, and everyone is fed and equipped with a bottle of hot water. The bottle goes in the sleeping bag as a sort of pre heater. It works well. I was not cold until 3 in the morning when I had to get out of the tent to take a leak. I had to wait until after the storm cleared. After that I wasn't as warm!
It didn't take long to break down the camp, but I was one of the three people who loaded everything into the Nodwell. That was a lot of work. We ate breakfast at the instructors hut and learned how to use both the VHF hand radios and the HF mini radio stations. Then we set up the HF mini radio stations outside with two people to hold the sixty foot antenna off the snow. We contacted the Italian base at Terra Nova Bay. We tried to get Siple Dome where a LC-130 ski equipped Hercules had to land on the return from the South Pole, but everyone there was busy.
The Siple Dome camp was not set up yet this season so things were pretty deserted out there when they landed. I haven't heard, but I assume they have managed to fuel it and bring it home to McMurdo3. We finally pack up the radio stations and do the next drill.
The fabled whiteout simulator.
You can try this at home! The object was to find a lost member of the party under simulated whiteout conditions. How do simulate the noise muffling, eye blinding effects of a whiteout you ask? We used a low tech virtual reality set up, we put buckets on our heads. After much bumbling and fumbling we find our "victim" and rescue him. we used a rope and did a search pattern like I learned in scuba. The guy with the loudest yelling voice became the leader.
We packed up and rode the Nodwell back to town and that was pretty much that. Due to the storm, I wasn't allowed to go skiing. Oh well! No frostbite, no more than mild hypothermia, it was a victory. I'm beat and heading to bed.
Tim Smith-Antarctic Correspondant Extraordinaire
