Had a great time doing Happy Camper this week. It was a two day course on cold weather survival. In about two weeks I'll be headed down to one of the deep field camps, Byrd Camp with an IT team to setup Communications and their internet, so we have to this this class as a requirement before we hop on the Helo or Herc.
Loomey, one of our instructors teaching us how to troubleshoot a whisperlite stove.
The contents of our survival bag. This bag goes with us on the aircraft and has fuel, tent, sleeping bags, pads, shovels, saw, food rations, extra extreme cold weather gear and some other random stuff.
Kevin, our other instructor. He's probably about to show us how to use a pee bottle without getting out of your bag. No one wants a frostbitten willy.
A lot of saws and shovels. We put all these to use building an ice wall and snow caves.
How many grantees and contractors does it take to raise a mountain tent?
Loomey constructing the "kitchen".
A sample ice cave. Many people chose to dig themselves an ice cave. It can be sufficiently warm, but takes at least 3 hours to dig. More if the snow is hard.
Setting up shop.
The kitchen running on full capacity melting snow. It takes an extrememly long time to get hot water. We were lucky too that it was sunny windless day. We put the hot water in our water bottles and slept with them in our bags, its a nice little luxury.
Jenna and Micheal waiting for warm water. Micheal works with LDB and Jenna is a microbiologist heading off to the dry valley on Monday. Lucky!
A helicopter came by.
What you looking at?
What's that you making?
Nice! An ottman too.
Setting up out HF antenna. We were able to contact mac ops line of sight and the other group got through to South Pole by terrestial bounce.
Its a REcliner!
Huge ass delta that drove us to the middle of the ice sheet.
Looks really cold there! What an adventure!
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