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Part 3: Survival School
November 13, 2005, early afternoon, 16F, overcast, winds NE 8kts,
a fine filtering of snow
The view from my office window looks like a work of abstract expressionism:
Soft white grading down into pale gray, then a sharp change to hard white;
the upper is the sky (clouds), the sharp change is not the horizon but
the change from atmosphere to ice. For a moment, this landscape was punctuated
by the passing flight of two skuas, which are very aggressive sea birds.
They’ll attack humans for food, which is a rare commodity here. Antarctica
is all but devoid of food. In fact, there is a) nothing to eat here and
b) nothing to drink unless you a) bring it with you from someplace where
food grows or fish it out of the surrounding ocean and b) bring fuel with
which to turn ice or snow into its liquid form.
So human visitors have to bring everything they need to survive unless
one is into hunting skuas (which would be tricky, considering that there
are no weapons here, and potting one of them would get you a fast ticket
home at your own expense because they are protected under the Antarctic
Environmental Protection Act) or penguins (an easier grab, but likewise
protected). Beyond avifauna, the next best bet for land-borne critters
is one of the 8,000-year-old mummified seal carcasses that went the wrong
direction once and wound up about 30 miles inland (but they’re are also
protected). There is nothing flammable here with which to cook what you
bag—not a tree, not a blade of grass, not a drop of oil to be had (there
are fossil fuel resources elsewhere on the continent, but they are not
exploited under Antarctic treaty). This lack of life-supporting resources
is of cardinal importance here.
It affects everything. It is part of what makes McMurdo Station a pleasant
place to be even though it is architecturally butt ugly. Food, fluids,
and—don’t forget this other necessity—warmth can be found here in great
abundance though sometimes it seems that all I do here is eat, drink,
pee, walk between heat sources, then repeat.
The calories, fluids and warmth are of course important, not just for
overall life support, but also specifically because it is downright COLD
here and also DRY. Everyone knows about the cold part, but the dry bit
is really a kicker: this is the driest continent on Earth, partly because
it’s so damned cold. I recall my mother putting pans of water out on top
of the radiators in our house in New York state when I was a kid, just
trying to raise the humidity a bit because one begins to itch in the dryness.
By January, I had usually developed eczema. I arrived here somewhat dehydrated
from the plane trip, and inside of 48 hours in McMurdo, I had skipped
over the eczema and went straight to dandruff of the face. I lose water
through respiration. I’ve been up only six and a half hours today, but
I’ve already swilled 2.5 quarts of water and I’m thirsty even though I’ve
lost count of how many times I’ve peed in that time. Most people here
put down four to six quarts per day so they don’t start to look like those
wrong-way 8,000-year-old seals.
Happy Camp
Another reason I am a human mummy today is that yesterday and the day
before I attended Snowcraft I School, a.k.a. Happy Camp. This is the basic
survival training encampment required of all who want to step beyond the
small perimeter of McMurdo Station, and most who don’t as well. It was
quite an adventure in itself, and great research for the book. Sit back
and I’ll tell you the yarn.
Friday morning it was sunny and calm and the +18F to which I’ve grown
accustomed around here. At 9 AM, we met for some butt time in a classroom,
in which intrepid instructors Erik and Trevor elucidated the basics on
such hot topics as hypothermia. “Eat, eat, eat, drink, drink, drink,”
they chanted. “A cup of hot cocoa feels warm going down and warms you
for an instant, but it’s the calories that will keep you warm and if you’re
dehydrated, you’re going to get cold.” They explained the tender philosophies
of dressing in layers so that one can be warm, but not hot, because hot
leads to wet which leads to cold. And then we loaded up in a huge, balloon-tired
vehicle called a Delta and off we went past Scott Base to “Silver City,”
where many weeks’-worth of Happy Campers have built their camps. They
took us first to the Instructors’ Hut (where we ate, ate, ate and drank,
drank, drank while Erik instructed us on stove use), then to the camp
itself, about a quarter mile distant. We walked. The weather was now a
high overcast and the wind was blowing about six knots.
I’ll have to summarize some of what followed because I learned a lot
in the next 24 hours, some of which Erik and Trevor might have wished
to teach in a rather less embarrassing manner. They had us first select
a site (go for the firm snow), then set up a flag route to the latrine.
Okay, let’s get into it with the potty: We’re talking about a little
plywood enclosure around a pit toilet, folks. I had been most curious
to know what this was going to, er…feel like, but it wasn’t all that bad.
It was out of the wind (a great relief on many levels). The seat is made
of dense Styrofoam shaped to greet the posterior in a friendly manner.
Prior to this, the most cold-resistant privy seat I’d ever encountered
was one up in North Park, Colorado, that was lined with rabbit fur, but
this, being unconfusing as regards the tactile input, was better. In fact,
I gave it an A-.
Now back to the flag route. What’s a flag route, you may ask. It’s a
line of eight-foot bamboo poles with little colored flags on it stuck
into the snow at intervals to mark a route over snow. Here it was red
flags placed about 20 feet apart. With the overcast, it was darned hard
to spot drifts and divits in the snow, so even when it was clear this
was a good thing, as I didn’t want to wrench an ankle out there, but when
the wind really kicks up and the white stuff starts moving through the
air, we’re talking, "Where in hell is that route." The snow
road we drove in on (compacted snow forms the road base, and you don’t
want to drive a “fat-tire” vehicle or land a plane anywhere, but there
or on nice hard ice) is marked by blue flags spaced about a hundred feet
apart. That way people don’t drive off the road and into soft snow, which
would result in a stuck vehicle, as that snow is, for instance at the
camp, fifty feet thick. I specify these particulars because they become
important to a later portion of this story.
A flag route, abstract expressionistic landscape, and happy camper
for scale
The instructors broke us into teams and set up two Scott tents (the
tall, triangular yellow jobs, which will stand up in a hurricane, but
weigh 85 pounds) and four mountain domes (which fall apart much faster,
but are more easily portable). Then we piled all the sleep kits (big
duffels, each containing two full-length ensolite pads, a very thick
sleeping bag, and a fleece liner) into a mound, covered it with the
Scott tent floor tarps, and shoveled snow on them, tamping it down until
it was at least two feet thick on top and spilling out wide at the sides.
Then one gang dug a tunnel from outside down, under and up into the
inside while another banged a hole in the opposite side and pulled the
bags and tarps out. I climbed inside with a little shovel and carved
the inside larger, taking care not to cut the walls too thin anywhere.
A lot of light came in through seams between the blocks of compacted
snow, but there were no actual holes, so Erik broke an air hole. Then
we “spackled” the bag pullout hole, punched through into the entrance
tunnel, smoothed things out, pushed out all the debris, and voila, snow
hut. It was quiet inside, no wind. I could however hear the squeaky
noise of people walking around outside it (that’s how cold it is here:
the snow squeaks, but it’s not so cold that my nose hairs freeze).
Building the snow hut (it looks like everyone's just standing around,
but they are only taking a much needed break)
Then we began to build our snow city. The instructors showed us how
to quarry snow blocks and set them up three courses high to form a windbreak
around the tents and connecting to the walls of the snow hut. This was
surprisingly important in generating a sense of creature comfort. Then
the instructors said, “See you at 9 AM tomorrow, have a nice night,”
and headed back to the Instructor Hut.
Someone got some stoves running to melt snow while we all chose sleeping
places. I decided on the snow hut along with two others, which made
things kinda tight, but bodies is warmth, I say. I was shrewd and chose
the middle so I wouldn’t wake up kissing the walls during the night.
We ate a quick dinner of re-hydrated gunk (I won’t go into this…it’s
backpacking food, ickko) and cocoa and I turned in because the wind
was picking up, it was snowing harder, and I was getting cold. I conked
out pretty fast after all that exercise. I think it was about 8:30.
I woke at 1 AM truly needing to pee (sorry about all the pee stories,
but as you can tell, it becomes a key limiting factor here in the Antarctic).
With some trepidation, I got out of my bag and completely rigged up
in my ECWs and made the trek. This was the first time I had been up
in the middle of the “night” here in Antarctica, and it was about as
light out as about 3 PM the same time back home. It was about 100 yards
to the latrine, and I made the trip with no mishap. I got back to sleep
okay and slept until about 7 AM, a marathon sleep for me.
At 7 AM, one of my hut mates, Vicki, decided that her bladder had
reached its elastic limit and groaned her way into her ECW’s. She dropped
down into the crawl tunnel, but a moment later popped back up again
like some kind of cold prairie dog.
“Hey guys, I can only see two flags!” she announced.
That meant that visibility was down to less than 60 feet. The other
hut mate and I got up and packed up the kit and emerged into a thick
white world.
Condition 1!
The whole camp was scrambling in a strong southerly wind (it was around
+15F and gusting to 40 knots, I later learned, which gives a wind chill
to -31F), struggling to take down the mountain tents. Someone with greater
experience than most told us to leave the Scott tents up in case the
instructors couldn’t get to us in the storm, in which case we’d need
more than a snow wall to protect us from the elements. I looked around
me. There was no horizon, no up, no down, just white stuff blasting
away at us, the fabled Condition 1. I’ve since heard that it can get
worse, all the way to can’t see the hand in front of the face. I dove
into the Scott tent that had stoves running and gulped down a cup of
cocoa and another of thin instant gruel, then went back outside to help.
When briefly I could see four flags, I made the trek to the latrine
and was never gladder to sit down on such a thing. When I came back
out, the wind slammed the door the wrong way and the latch plate disappeared
towards somewhere north. Someone came along and helped me jam the door
shut with a bamboo pole.
A happy camper
Back at camp, Vicki was on the radio trying to raise the instructors.
They said they were coming, bringing the Delta. Time passed. She called
again. "Oh yes, we’re coming, stay put." When at last conditions
moderated briefly and we could see perhaps a quarter mile, we spotted
the Delta standing 90 degrees to the road, and hey by golly, here come
our intrepid instructors with egg on their faces. They had misjudged
the conditions, gotten disoriented, and driven off the road into that
soft, soft snow, auguring several tons of machine in just as surely
as if it were in quicksand.
So when conditions permitted, we loaded our gear on sleds and man-hauled
them up to the Instructors’ Hut. This is as good a place as any to describe
what it’s like to hike in ECWs. It is not easy. All those layers of
fleece and down and wool and such hamper movement, and the big blue
snow boots do not flex. I trudged along having to concentrate on keeping
up with the others, ruing middle age. I can hike for miles, but at my
own pace, which I now realize isn’t as fast as it used to be. We were
paired off by the buddy system, but I kept having to hustle to catch
up, and my buddy would have to turn around to check on me every hundred
feet or so. I found myself thinking, “I feel like I’ve gained about
40 pounds,” and then realized that I had. And I was, in fact, dehydrated.
This last I’m going to have to work on, salting my food or whatever
it takes, but when there ain’t enough H2O in the critter, guess what.
Long story short, we tried to dig it out, but no joy there, so Trevor
had to make the infinitely embarrassing call back to McMurdo and ask
for rescue.
“We have food for two days, no worry, so only come if you can do so
comfortably—over,” he called, but the good boys and girls of McMurdo
Search and Rescue hopped right on it and in about 45 minutes we greeted
a caravan consisting of two Mattracks, a Pisten Bully, and a Haglund,
all of them tracked vehicles. Out hopped a string of grinning SARs,
who helped us load our gear and off we went back to the food, fluids
and warmth of McMurdo.
The horse I rode back in.
In light of the day’s events, it felt especially rich to sit that
evening over a glass of wine in one of McMurdo’s “clubs”, enjoying fine
conversation with people who had recently bathed. And that’s the other
commodity that I need to mention: Antarctica’s camaraderie. Everybody
has a smile for me here, and a cheery hello, just because I am a fellow
human. We are 1,100 people huddled together for the warmth of cooperative
living, and that in itself is something worth traveling the distance
to experience.
The clouds are lifting now. I can see White and Black Islands across
the ice. Time to do some laundry so I can go out there tomorrow and
learn how to stay safe on sea ice. The day after that I’m scheduled
to head out into the field, where there is no email or phone, only radios
and passing helicopters to connect us to the rest of civilization. I’ll
be helping a crew from the University of Maine pull an ice core from
which they will learn important things about climate change. I’ll fill
you in on all of that when I return.
With warmest best regards,
Sarah
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