Day Three: Saturday 3 December

20 to midnight and still just as sunny outside.

We were very lucky with our AFT overnight. Other new people who arrived earlier in the season had to do their in temperatures of minus 20 or 30 degrees.

This morning we awoke to another fine day, got dressed, packed up our stuff, made cups of tea and packed up the tents.  This was when I spent about 20 frustrating minutes hunting for one glove (of the many pairs) that I couldn’t find – even though it was just me in the tent!  If I couldn’t find it, I’d have to report it because you can’t leave anything out in the environment, but finally – after searching several times through bags, sleep kit and all my cold weather gear - I found it tucked away inside one of my (many) hats.

We stamped down the snow trench and camp kitchen, so the Hagglunds wouldn’t fall into a hole, and just before we left for Scott Base, Mark took us over to the Square Frame. This is a container hut that base staff can book if they want some privacy, time out or a fun night out with a group of friends. It has a bunk room and was incredibly warm (so it can be used as an emergency shelter if needed for AFT).
We were back at base by about 9.30am, but of course that wasn’t all – sleep kits had to be draped over racks in the drying room, any uneaten packets of food put back in the food cupboards, dirty dishes washed and kitchen equipment put back in the kitchen room, rubbish disposed of, tents out away and the Hagglunds refuelled. We had to de-boot and get back into indoor clothes in time for a quick session debrief with Mark before morning tea. It was only 10am and once again it felt like the day had been packed full already.

The rest of the day: more meals. Lunch, afternoon tea, dinner (all delicious). Paul the tech guy connected me up to the internet, Trudie organised for Guy and  me to meet with the two science teams who are flying out tomorrow (weather permitting) to talk about what they’ve been doing. At 3.15pm everyone was in the canteen not just for afternoon tea but also for the weekly base meeting, followed by base tasks for volunteers. I volunteered to help tidy up the carrels room, where the dress ups are stored. (For dress up parties of course!) 

Inside after dinner, people were hanging out in the bar or catching up on emails in the computer rooms. Outside, people were kite surfing on the ice or going for walks on the marked tracks in their brightly coloured jackets. And now it’s midnight, and the sun is still shining…

 

 

Still Day Two: Friday 2 December

Antarctic Field Training - overnight!
or
Glamping in Antarctica

We packed every single item of clothing we'd been issued with, ready for anything, but it was the most amazing weather. Such a gorgeous night - sunny, hardly any wind at all, and the ice crystals were glittering in the snow.

Mark, our field trainer, drove us in the Hagglund about half an hour out of Scott Base. We unloaded the gear and started practising our outdoor and survival skills (which some of us have more of than others). This meant, first of all, putting up the survival tent and three Scott Polar tents, and laying out our sleep kit - four layers of sleeping bags - so it was ready to climb into.

Scott Polar tents in the gear storeroom

The Polar tents are modelled on the style that Scott and his teams would have used, which is pretty incredible to think about. In fact you can't help wondering, even just such a short distance from Scott Base, what it must have been like for them ploughing and manhauling their way to the Pole, in far worse weather and less adequate clothing than we were experiencing last night.

Setting up tents

Want to know how to build a snow kitchen? I can tell you! It involves digging out cubes of ice with a snow saw and spades (I didn't even know there was such a thing as a snow saw.) The ice cubes get built into a wall to give you shelter from the wind. (There wasn't much wind - but you have to be prepared for a change in the weather.)

Still no wind!

There were six of us plus Mark in our group: me and Guy, Jeremy from NIWA and Gerry, Chris and Andrew from LINZ. When we were working  out who would go in which tent, Jeremy said he'd like to sleep in a snow trench, so that's what he was making while we were constructing our kitchen. I hope he wasn't just being nice to me, because he really did seem to want to sleep out in his trench (which did look pretty cool), but as you can see from the list of names, I was the only female in our group. I'd been happy to share - but actually it was pretty nice to have a tent to myself. (And I ended up with so much stuff spread all over it that I don't know how the others managed with two to a tent.)

My home for the (sunny) night

And me!

The sun slowly circled around the horizon, and away in the distance, but looking so close, Mt Erebus was wreathed in a shawl of clouds, with a faint puff of smoke sometimes coming from the summit.

By about 8.30pm we were all set up and sitting in our camp kitchen, eating cheese and crackers and drinking cups of tea. It was still sunny and warm and we stayed there for nearly two hours, talking and having dinner (dehydrated meals from the Scott Base store) and more cups of soup, tea or milo. 

I discovered that eating is quite hard when you are wearing snow goggles and can't see what you are doing, and when you want to be very careful not to spill anything, because it will have to be scooped up in its bed of snow and put into the food contamination bag. The aim is always to keep the Antarctic environment as pristine as possible, so there are  lots of processes for waste management that have to be carefully followed.   

The sun was high in the sky and still bright as day when we started getting ready for bed at about 11pm.Then everything went very quiet, for hours - apart from a plane that came in sometime around midnight, and a few gusts of wind that set canvas flaps fluttering. But it was light all night, which was so weird. 

PS The toilet arrangements could have been a lot worse. There were a series of buckets (enough said). But at least it was inside a tent!

 

Day Two: Friday 2 December

Antarctic Field Training (AFT)
 

One of the first things you have to do at Scott Base is Field Training. And everyone does this - VIPs, visiting MPs and all. So less than 24 hours after we arrived, we were putting up tents out on the ice and preparing to build an outdoor kitchen and table out of blocks of snow.

Field training is to help you understand more about Antarctica’s unique cold-weather environment, and how to cope with its challenges and recognise potential hazards, including the signs of hypothermia, frostbite and snow blindness. The field trainers teach you basic survival skills and safety routines and show you how you could cope in a crisis situation. Everything from the most basic (how do you know what the weather is doing, what do you wear to go outside, what colour flags do you follow?) to how do you pitch a tent in snow and ice? How do you anchor a tent peg? How do you build an emergency shelter?

OK to tell the truth, I wasn't totally looking forward to this. But it has been amazing.

The 6 of us who came down on the plane together were matched up with Mark, one of the field trainers. We spent Friday morning going over theory stuff, and after lunch Mark took us outside for an intro walk over the pressure ridges (where the sea ice meets the land). First thing  this morning, it was snowing! The snow had stopped by then, but there was still a sharp wind blowing which made us realise that we really might need all that outdoor gear.

 

Mark's favourite three words are "let's boost" and "wicked". So we did a lot of boosting - in fact we never seemed to stop all day - and everything was pretty wicked. (That's not quite true, Mark did allow us 15 mins for afternoon tea, which came with three different choices: muesli slice, caramel slice or lolly cake, all delicious. Morning and afternoon tea are taken very seriously at Scott Base.)

Later Mark let us have a go at sorting out which clothes to wear, preparing the food boxes, practising lighting the portable stove and getting our sleep kit together. Then we got into our outdoor clothes, packed all our gear plus some Polar tents into a Hagglund, signed out and set off about 6pm.

"Got into our outdoor clothes" sounds easy, but it takes us newbies a ridiculous amount of time. Even lacing up boots takes forever, and by the time we've struggled into all our layers and jackets in the locker room, we're hot and thirsty and already worn out! 

More on AFT soon!