Happy Campers

I am back in MCM after two days of snow school, aka "Happy Camper". The weather was beautiful as you can see from the pictures but of course a clear, blue sky day leads to a cool night (~ -20 oC). Of course this is nothing compared to the temperature at the South Pole that evening (-47 oC).

Mt. Erebus is an active volcano on Antarctica. Elevation of the summit is 3794 m. This picture is taken from the ice shelf which is close to sea level elevation.

Snow schoolers build a quanzee. Campers slept in a variety of different configurations; Scott tents (large teepee style tent used in Antarctica), 4 season mountain tents, quanzee (shown above), or a snow coffin. A poll of the campers in the morning revealed that the quanzee and the coffins were the most desirable sleeping quarters.

Shawn Doyle (L.S.U.) begins the excavation of our snow coffin.

A view of the completed snow coffin Shawn and I dug and spent the night in.

Campers perform a search and rescue under zero visibility. During this simulation teams of campers were sent out with white buckets on their head to simulate white out conditions (no visibility and little to no possibility of verbal communication between members of the team). Although it seems impossible to find the trapped victim one group was able to locate their victim and return them to the hut.


The last few blogs have highlighted life here on the ice. Its getting close to our departure to the field and therefore much of the information that I will post in the upcoming weeks will focus more on the science that we are here to conduct.