happy camper

On Tuesday and Wednesday I took Snowcraft I, aka, "Happy Camper" or "Snow School." This is a course designed to educate us on the contents of survival bags that are supposed to be in every vehicle (except in our vans). The ciriculum requires us to spend a night out in the great wild Antarctic landscape. Lucky for me, since I'm a driver, I knew were were sandwiched between Scott Base (2 miles west) and Willie Field (3 miles southeast). And, we had fantastic weather! It was somewhere around freezing the entire 21 hours we survived there.
The concept of survival in this course is non-existent when the weather is good. We "car-camped," meaning we brought every amenity we felt we might want!

I learned a lot of tips about my stove. Since I've never read the instructions, I have a great new appreciation for that handy little mechanism (and I can troubleshoot and fix it, too)! We also had to put up and take down numerous tents - and I'll admit, I had a pretty bad attitude about that since it's never my favorite task; made worse when no one sleeps in the tent!

The coolest part of the entire trip was the quinzy huts that we were told how to make. Other groups had attempted these, and my friends, Jay and Michael made one in the shape of a turtle the week prior which I slept in with Melinda. The temperature stayed at 30 degrees inside the entire night. I brought lots of extra blankets and heated up water for both my bottles to sleep with. All -in-all, I had a great night of sleep and even woke up at one point wondering where I was!

I was glad to return to town the next day and extremely happy that I managed to stay on the un-burned side. The sun's strength is at 3-4 times what it is other places. There are a few contributing factors including the glare off the snow at 97% strength of the sun, the lack of ozone, and the dry thin air.

I kept thinking I needed to have a flashlight to find the bathroom at night, or locate items in our quinzy. Then I realized that it wouldn't get dark while I was out there. If I had to pee in the middle of the night, I wouldn't have a hard time finding the potty shack.

My apologies in advance for the crudeness of this topic, but I used the most peculiar pit toilet out there. We call them "A-Frames" and they really don't smell much. This is because there is a hole drilled about 40 feet into the sea ice with a styrofoam seat on top. I'm assuming the seat is styrofoam because other surfaces would be far too cold to sit on! This is the first time I've seen a pee-cicle. I wish I had the toilet seat covers I got as a gift before leaving Chicago, though! I was thankful for the pit toilet, though. It sure beats the pee-bottle!

We had time for a little fun, too. I had a short project to occupy my pre-bed time!