The preparations continue here at McMurdo Station! On Monday, we had Antarctic Field Skills training, followed by our Deep Field Shakedown (aka Happy Camper training) on Tuesday to Wednesday. All of these trainings are designed to give us the skills we need to survive while camping at our field site. Plus, it’s a great opportunity to test out our field gear and make sure we have everything we need before we fly out.
Antarctic Field Skills training was conducted indoors, and included:
Risk Assessment
What’s in our Survival Bags, which we will take with us whenever we leave camp (they include tents, bivy sacks, a Whisperlite stove and fuel, a cooking pot, dehydrated food, and a shovel, among other things)
How to light the stove
Frostbite and hypothermia - risks, symptoms, and how to prevent
How to tie a Trucker’s Hitch - a very important knot for tying down your tents
How to put up a mountain tent
and Helicopter Safety (not that our field site is served by helicopters, alas)
Lighting the stove
The survival bag! (Turns out it takes a lot of stuff to survive outdoors in Antarctica)
The next day, we headed out for our Deep Field Shakedown. This is an overnight training conducted a couple miles out from McMurdo Station in an open area with a nice view of Mount Erebus. A group of us (our crew of ten, plus five others heading to a different field site, and our two instructors) were shuttled out and dropped off at a place where there is a small building (the I-Hut, or Instructor’s Hut) and two outhouses a few hundred meters apart. As a team, you set up a flagging trail between the two outhouses, and then you set up all your tents all in a row between them. You learn not only how to set up the tents, which are standard mountain camping tents, but the special considerations involved in winter camping, such as making sure the opening of your tent is not facing the wind and how to stake the tent in the snow.
The tent that I put up all by myself! (Ok, ok, I had some help with a couple of the anchors.) With a lovely view of Mount Erebus. Snowmobile for scale.
That took a couple of hours, after which we met back in the I-Hut for a primer on how to set up your kitchen, followed by dinner (which was your choice of dehydrated meals - fortunately, we will be eating much better than that in the field!). We also learned the process for daily check-ins with Central Comms using a satellite phone and important hygiene practices for going to the bathroom.
Speaking of bathrooms (because I know you’re curious): all human waste in Antarctica is contained and kept out of the environment. Everyone is issued at least 2 Nalgene Bottles labeled prominently with a “P”, and that pee gets funneled into 55 gallon drums in the field. Poop is bagged up or sealed into a bucket and put in a large cargo container, and eventually shipped out. Field camps are supplied with 5 gallon buckets that you seal when they are full. The poop buckets are ultimately incinerated in California. At the Deep Field Shakedown training site, we had the luxury of little outhouses to make our bucket deposits; at our field site, the facilities will be set up in a tent.
The outhouse at I-Hut, training site for the Deep Field Shakedown near McMurdo. People who stand to pee can use the urinal just inside the door to the left, which funnels into the big drum outside. People who sit to pee can sit on the left-hand toilet seat, which funnels into a can underneath (it’s a black-eyed peas can. Get it? Pee goes in the pea can? hahahaha), and then you empty the can into the urinal. The right-hand toilet seat has the poop bucket underneath. This is much fancier than what we will have in the field.
Finally, it was time to go to bed. I crawled into my tent and set up my sleep kit, which included two foam mats, a Therm-a-rest pad, and a VERY thick and warm sleeping bag rated for -60 degrees Fahrenheit. (For comparison, our field site will probably be in the -20 to -30 degree range at its coldest). We were also issued a fleece sleeping bag liner, but I didn’t end up needing it that night - I was plenty warm in the sleeping bag!
The other challenge is how freaking bright it is outside and in your tent, 24 hours a day. I brought a really nice sleep mask which was fantastic (this one). Some people prefer the mummy type of sleeping bags and can cover their eyes that way, others use a Buff or another piece of clothing.
Getting myself out of the warm sleeping bag in the morning was a real struggle, at least mentally. I pulled my clothes into the bag with me to warm them up a bit before putting them on. Anything liquid in your tent (like toiletries or your water bottle or… your pee bottle) that you don’t keep inside the sleeping bag with you freezes overnight. The condensation from your breath collects on the walls of the tent and freezes, and when you sit up and brush your head or arm against the side of the tent, it sort of snows on you. I did eventually pull myself together and get out of the tent, and then it was time to take it all down and pack it up.
Afterward, I was very tired but I felt much more prepared for life in the field. My gear does indeed keep me warm - sometimes too warm! - and I have gotten pretty good at tying trucker’s hitches. (Still gotta practice some more with that P bottle, though…)
Selfie with Mount Erebus!