12/14/2010 Field Camp Training at McMurdo (1st Day)

This is my fourth visit to Antarctica but it is going to be my first time to be in a field camp where we will stay in a tent, cook in a tent, and use a toilet in a tent. Being a couple of hundreds of miles away from the South Pole, we will experience absolute remoteness in the field camp where there will be nothing but four of us (three Virginia Tech members and one mountaineer to help us) and 360 degrees of a flat snowy plateau. In preparation for such event, our deployment team is required to take the 2-day field camp training course offered at McMurdo Station. We learned many useful snow camping skills - from setting up tent to survival skill for emergency situation.

The field camp course trainees carrying their own ECW gears and walking to our camp site. 

Kshitija standing in front of one of the most frequently used passenger transportation vehicles in McMurdo Station - "Delta".

 

"Single file!" One of the most important rules in snow camping (or work on the snow) is that everything that we have must be either in your pocket or secured and clearly marked with poles since things can be blown away or covered by snow very easily and quickly. 

The first thing to learn is to set up a tent. This pyramid shape tent is called "Scott Tent", which is very commonly used in this type of condition and very reliable. 

Next step is to build a wall placed perpendicular to the most likely wind direction to protect our camp site. Saw is a helpful tool to make blocks so wall-making is as easy as Lego!

 

Our kitchen where we basically melt the snow around you to make water. 

Dehydrated food in case of emergency, which we had for dinner at the camp. Pouring two cups of boiling water into this package is all we need.

Thanks to our camp member's wonderful teamwork, we had a very luxurious table for our dinner.

 

Instead of sleeping in the tent, I decided to join some of our campers who were making their own trenches, which are to be made in an emergency case. 

 

Making a trench - kind of a one-person version of igloo - was not as difficult as I thought it would be. I dug a hole big enough for me to lie down comfortably and made a roof from snow blocks. The blocks serve as a roof quite impressively.

The big block is my door which I shut after I crawled in the trench. 

 

The interior view of the trench. Staying in a tent would be much nicer but this wasn't too bad...

  

Mt. Erebus seen from our camp site, which is the southernmost active volcano on Earth. The elevation is ~3800 m (12000 ft). 

 Our tents and the snow wall.

Our camp from a distance, taken when most of campers were sleeping - it was about 11pm. Still too sunny!!