“Another Saturday night and I ain’t got nobody”. Well that’s not true and you know it but I am out of contact with Deni as she is at Callaway Gardens this weekend playing golf with friends. There are some down sides to being here.

Saturday night was fun though as a huge group of us got together to watch seven entries in this years Banff Film Festival. Deni went to Banff once on a team building week. It’s in Alberta, Canada in the Canadian Rockies. She brought back a few pictures and the scenery was spectacular so I was looking forward to the films.

The first film involved skiing from mountain tops. I know there’s a name for it but the only means of transportation is via helicopter. The scenery is breathtaking and the almost vertical descents by the skiers were even more so. One of the skiers made a record breaking 245 foot leap over a cliff to the powder below. He was buried beneath the snow for a minute before the rescue team was able to dig him out. He had a bloody nose but got up and skied away. I sat there with my mouth open for the entire ten minute film punctuated by numerous oohs and aahs.

There was also a movie about “no borders”. These are snow boarders who have removed the bindings and use the snow board like a surf board. These guys were doing the same thing from helicopters on virgin snow. The bobbing and weaving they did to avoid trees and rock out croppings was nothing short of miraculous.

Another movie documented a couple who rode over 8000 kilometers through Mongolia, China, Tibet and India. St. Patrick’s kids can you convert that to miles?

One of the films was put together by a 12 year old boy. It was cartoon like and he used legos for people and things. We had a terrific time watching “Jo” the lego man as he went on various adventures including skiing and fishing.

The last movie I’ll tell you about involved people “base jumping”. They jumped from everything and anything including city sky scrapers and sheer cliffs. The cliffs were the most amazing not only because of the scenery but also because of the way they cheated death time and again by missing rock ledges and trees on their free fall. At times the camera work made them look like they actually leveled off at the bottom of the jump, before they pulled the rip cord, and actually flew parallel to the ground. You can bet there were some serious OOHS and AAHS going on here also.

What an fun night at the movies.

The happy camper pictures are in the gallery now. Click on the gallery to the right then click on each thumb nail picture if you want to enlarge it.
Top Row from left to right:
Happy Camper classmates starting class
Hiking from Counselors Hut to snow village site
Snow block quarry
Scott Tents
Second Row l-r
On Delta vehicle headed for Happy Camper Site
Me in center still smiling little did I know
Happy camper instructors Danny 2nd from left and Gayln right
Standing on and building quinsy
Third row l-r
Bucket heads
Course information
Program is called "F Stop" for Field Safety Training Program

I got out of the cave at 6:30 and began packing up my bedding and bags. Then it was time to start taking the snow village apart. The Scott tents came down first, then the mountain tents finally the caves and graves were filled in. All the equipment had to be carried back to the storage shed. We heated up some water for coffee and hot chocolate. At 7:30 I checked in on the radio and told the instructors we were ready for pick-up at 8:00 as scheduled. (I’m guessing no one is ever late for this pick-up)

Right on schedule the instructors arrived with the snow mobiles and sleds. We loaded everything up and then walked back to the instructors hut. I thought things were almost over but, tired as we were, we still had a full day ahead of us.

First and foremost we were in a warm building. There was warm water to drink and sandwiches to eat. While we were warming up we went around the room and shared how we felt and what we learned from our experience. I was glad to hear I wasn’t the only one who was cold and didn’t sleep. I was surprised to hear that some of the folks slept warmly and fitfully through the night.

We then had a class on risk assessment. You can only imagine how difficult it was to stay awake during that presentation.

Two classes on the use of radios and setting up HF antennas followed risk assessment. Then we put on our cloths and headed outside to set up an antenna and establish contact with Mac Ops, the people who keep track of everyone at field camps on the continent.

A class is dealing with finding someone lost in extreme bad weather in which we put 5 gallon buckets on our heads with faces painted on them to simulate not being able to see in a raging storm. We had to put our heads together to come up with and execute a plan to locate our instructor who had gone to the outhouse and failed to return. Using a long rope and bamboo poles we devised a method to sweep the entire area between the instructors hut and the outhouse. We successfully located him and retrieved him.

The last outdoor adventure was a simulated event in which we were told our vehicle caught on fire and we were only able to retrieve an emergency bag some bamboo poles and our radio kit. We were also told that a “Herbie” would be upon us in less than an hour so we had to set up our tent, boil water, set up the radio antenna and establish contact with Mac Ops and build an ice wall win a maximum time of 40 minutes. Imbedded in the incident was one of our team members who simulated hypothermia. We had to detect and treat him. I’m happy to say we accomplished everything in 25 minutes.

We headed back into the counselors hut and were given a cleaning list and put to work getting the hut ready for the next class. Then it was back outside for the mile walk back to the pick-up point for transport back to McMurdo.

After a 30 minute ride we arrived back at our starting point and viewed two videos one on operations in environmentally protected areas and one on helicopter safety. This was about 2:30 in the afternoon and I think half the class slept through the movies. We then lugged all our bags back to the dorm. I went to dinner hit the bed at 8:30 and slept as good as I’ve slept in a long time until the next morning.

Happy Camper was an experience I will never forget and hopefully never repeat. It was mentally and physically taxing but as with most experiences like this I felt a tremendous sense of accomplishment.

At about 9:30 I decided I’d had enough excitement for the day and headed off to my cave and sleeping bag. My feet were still cold (it felt like the verge of frostbite) so I hoped I could warm them up in the sleeping bag. I kept my bunny boots on because I thought that would help warm them. That turned out to be counter productive. I brought a book with me so I tried to read for a while in hopes it would put me to sleep. The cave had a very shallow ceiling so when I lay on my back the book would touch the roof of the cave. It was a little claustrophobic actually. Of course it was too cold to take off my mittens so it was a struggle to turn pages. I had several of the little chemical hand warmers that I shoved into my mittens and boots. I’m not sure these weren’t against the rules but at this point I DIDN’T CARE! People continued to come by the cave to check in and out but by 11:00 that all ended.

My sleeping kit included two six foot by two foot neoprene mats a “mummy” sleeping bag and a polyester sleeping bag liner. In addition I brought an old navy grey blanket, another jacket, a hoody sweatshirt, extra sweatpants and a pillow all of which I tried to bundle around me for warmth. The cold feet just wouldn’t let my body warm so I lay there reading my book feeling very cold in my snow cave.

After what seemed like an eternity midnight arrived. I was counting the minutes and seconds until the morning. But now I had to pee so I made my human gumby moves extricated myself from the sleeping bag, pushed the toboggan from the cave roof and slithered out into the cold night air. Of course nothing is close so I walked the block to the “pee pole”. It is a six foot bamboo pole with a yellow triangle flag at the top and is the designated place for men to pee. Right next to the pee pole was an outhouse which created some interesting comings and goings.

When I left the pee pole I decided to go for a walk to try to warm up. I walked for about an hour and, with the exception of my feet, felt almost warm. I reversed the gumby moves and snuggled (ha ha) back into bed. More reading, no sleeping, but now I began to shiver. I was concerned because I knew this was an early sign of hypothermia. I resolved then and there to take aggressive action to warm my feet. I sat up, as best I could, removed my bunny boots and massaged my feet until I could feel them again and actually detected some signs of warming. I then wrapped the poly bag liner around the bottom of my sleeping bag and shoved my feet in. Amazingly in less than five minutes my feet were toasty warm which in turn warmed my body. I was now completely warm for the first time in almost twelve hours and was ready to try to sleep again when an overpowering urge to pee came over me. I had a “pee bottle” with me and after several comical tries to join my body to the pee bottle I gave up gumbied out of the cave and headed for the pee pole, again. (stop the laughing this is not funny)

I still wasn’t tired so off I headed on another six mile hike through the tundra. The good news is the shivering had stopped and my feet remained warm. I almost felt as though I could have slept while I was walking.

I did have some spectacular views while I was walking as the sun was very low in the sky and periodically it would disappear behind some distant mountains. The oranges and pinks in the sky were awe inspiring.

To make a short story long, this process of gumbying, peeing and walking continued all night. I think I amassed a total of about one hour of uncomfortable sleep. Oddly though I didn’t feel sleepy tired when I emerged from the cave for the last time at 6:30 the next morning.

Tomorrow, the conclusion to the saga and hopefully a few pictures.

Once we lugged all the equipment to the snow village location it was time to get to work. The first task was to put up a Scott tent. It looks much like an Indian teepee of the old west. The color, euchre, is even similar. Thankfully there was no wind or this could have been a real adventure. Even though there wasn’t a wind we were trained to hold everything down to keep it from blowing away in the high wind conditions that exists here.

Let me digress for just a moment. Before we could set about erecting the snow village we had to determine the best layout for the village. We talked about the prevailing wind today and the normal wind conditions and direction when a big storm (Herbie) blows in. The placement of tents was critical. They were staggered so if one tent was blown away it wouldn’t start a domino effect and take all the other tents with it. We would eventually assemble two Scott tents, six mountain tents, a quinsy (described latter) a snow cave, a snow grave, and a sixty foot long by four foot tall snow wall.
The instructors told us early on they would demonstrate the various techniques for constructing various structures and tents and then leave it to us to organize ourselves and complete the work.

The next project was to lay out and build a 60 foot long snow wall to protect the village from the prevailing wind. We first had to identify a good location for a snow brick quarry. Having done that we split into teams. One team cut and mined the snow blocks (roughly 2 feet by 2 feet by 1 foot). After the blocks were cut they were loaded onto a toboggan and transported to the construction site where they were laid into place by the brick layers. The real trick in this process was to get the miners to cut uniform size blocks. The snow consistency here is very hard and difficult to cut or dig into so the blocks, once cut, held together very well. We used two different kinds of saws. One was a tree limbing saw and the other was a regular hand held carpenter’s saw. We completed a 20 foot section of the wall to demonstrate our proficiency to the instructors then moved on to the next project. (We would come back to finish the wall later)

The next project was to build a quinsy. If you look in your dictionary a quinsy is an abscess in the tissue around the tonsil (usually painful). Our abscess was constructed by placing 20 duffle bags full of sleeping gear in a pile and then shoveling snow on top of the bags until everything is covered by roughly 2 feet of packed snow.(an equally painful proposition) The good news is all this exertion created a lot of body heat so we stayed fairly warm during this experience. I was wearing “bunny boots” on my feet. They are large rubber boots that are difficult to walk in and look like clown shoes. They are normally very warm but somehow I got a chill in my feet and from this point on I never felt warm throughout the rest of the ordeal. We left the quinsy at this point to move on to the next task. (We would return later to finish the quinsy)

You might want to take a potty break here this could be a long story!

The next demonstration was setting up a mountain tent. Most would recognize it as a two man pup tent. Because the wind can blow at hurricane force levels here tying a tent down properly is extremely important. We learned how to make a dead man “T” tie down using a truckers knot to hold the tent in place. It was very effective and very time consuming. The truckers knot is easy to tie (unless you’re me, I’m knot challenged) and easy to untie in the morning. Of course everything is done in big mittens so even the easiest tasks become difficult. Are we having fun yet?

The next project was digging a snow cave. It was easy to understand but difficult to do because the snow is packed and difficult to dig in. Also the opening has to remain small so you can seal it at night with a toboggan. The shovels are long and you spend a lot of time on your knees in a very claustrophobic hole in the snow. Ultimately it is where my co-worker and I would spend the night trying to sleep.

The next project involved digging in the snow also. The snow grave is essentially that a six foot by two foot hole in the ground about four feet deep. It’s fast shelter from a storm if you need immediate relief. You can imagine the feeling of trying to sleep in one of these.

Finally the instructors stepped back and told us to organize ourselves and finish work on the village. One of the things we were taught to do is continually monitor each other looking for signs of hypothermia. Becoming a team and relying on each other is critical to survival in this hostile environment. At this point we divided up the work and began to finish all of the projects we had started. My first task was working as a brick layer finishing up the snow wall. Once that was finished I transitioned to a cave digger. My co-worker and I took turns at the arduous task of digging out a two man snow cave.

We began the construction at about 1:00PM. At 7:30 the instructors left for the “warm counselors hut”. We took a brief break to heat water for hot drinks. The hot water was also used to rehydrate food that looked like (forgive the indelicacy) vomit. I couldn’t bring myself to eat it but I was assured by team mates that it tasted much like it looked! I opted to make two cups of soup, one split pea the other black bean. All in all it was not too bad. I did bring a full water bottle but by this point it was frozen in the bottle.

Before the instructors left they needed someone to volunteer to be the radio operator and safety monitor. I volunteered for the job. It just entailed calling in at predesignated times to assure the counselors that no one had perished in the cold. I just hoped my back-up wouldn’t need to report my untimely demise. Due to crevasses in the area anyone who wanted to leave the village had to check out and in with me before they ventured out so there was a steady stream of hikers stopping by my cave on their way out hoping the exercise would keep them warm.

Tune in tomorrow for “Trying to Sleep”