Awaken Your Shackleton

Expeditions of Antartica began in the early 20^th century, and if you decide to look into its history you will no doubt run into the names Shackelton, Admundsen, and Scott. Shackelton was the first to get within 100 miles of the pole, and he later led the first expeditions up Mt. Erebus (the most active volcano on the continent) and discovered the approximate location of the magnetic South Pole. Roald Amundsen, a Norwegian explorer was the first to reach the South Pole. His party beat the British exploration party, led by Robert Falcon Scott, by one month. As if that wasn’t bad enough for Scott and his party, all of the men perished on the way back. A quote from the book, “Worst Journey in the World”, caught my eye, and probably best describes these heroic explorers. While describing different situations under which the speaker would like to serve under the three men, he says, “Scott for scientific method, Amundsen for speed and efficiency but when disaster strikes and all hope is gone, get down on your knees and pray for Shackleton.”

At campsite, with gear in cargo line

While my experiences the past few days pale in comparison, I will admit I have totally gotten swept up into the adventure of this trip. To begin, on Friday and Saturday we had to go through a well know training known here as “Happy Camper”. Anyone who travels off base, especially those who go to field camps, are required to take the training and its purpose is to teach you skills to set up a snow camp and in case you find yourself stuck in the vast white.

Since you only need to take the training every two years, only four people from my team went. To begin the training, we were taken out on the ice shelf and dropped off about five miles outside of town. We then had to walk somewhere between 1.5-2 miles carrying all of our ECW gear to our campsite. There were about 18 people in the class, and we were tasked with setting up a “typical” camp.

View of the kitchen with tents in the background

We set up two Scott tents (which look a lot like teepees), six mountain tents (regular camping tents), and dug a kitchen and trenches. Digging the trenches (or snow fort as I like to call them) was the part I’ve been look forward to every since I was asked to go on this trip. Although I am somewhat biased, I’d say my Snow Chateau was by far the best. Most people just dug a hole in the ground, while my included a cold sink with an elevated bed.

I will admit, about half way through I realized how ambitious my concept for a snow fort was. At that point I figured I was either digging my grave or my shelter for the night. I knew digging out the shelter was going to be the easy part and finding a way to put a roof on was going to be the hard part. Our instructor recommended using one of our sleds to cover the shelter, which I used, but it wasn’t big enough. I assessed my assets (which wasn’t much) and decided on using some extra flag poles and the bag my sleeping supplies came in to cover the rest of my roof. After all that digging, I was wiped, so I set up my sleeping bag and got a really good night’s sleep.

Beginning of trench building

Getting deeper....

Inside look at the bedroom of Snow Chateau

Welcome to the Snow Chateau

The downside of digging a shelter is that you have to fill what you dig. Luckily some of my fellow campers helped me fill, but I also had to help fill the hole our massive kitchen made, as well as break down the tents.

On the second day of Happy Camper we did a couple more exercises that included simulating a plane crash in the great white and setting up an emergency camp while dealing with injuries. We also simulated trying to find one of our “lost” camp buddies in a Condition 1 situation. Weather in Antarctica is classified in 3 conditions based and wind speed, temperature, and visibility. Condition 1 is the worst and can include gusts up to 100 mph with visibility so bad you can’t see your hand in front of your face. To simulate the visibility we had to put 5 gallon buckets on our heads and go outside our hut to find the lost camper. I’m sorry to say our camp buddy died, as we weren’t even close to finding her.

It’s an understatement to say that Happy Camper is an experience I won’t soon forget.

The other day I had to take snow mobile training. I’ve never driven a snow mobile before, so the thought that they were going to just hand one over to me was intimidating and exciting at the same time. After an hour long lecture, our instructor drove us out into the great white where he had set up an obstacle course. I was having so much fun driving through the course I couldn’t stop laughing and hollering. It’s good the snow mobiles were so loud otherwise the other riders would have thought I’d gone mad.

I’ve never been a huge fan of snow or cold, but between the camping and the snow mobiling I think my attitude has changed.

My team members hiking up Ob Hill with McMurdo in the background

Since we are trying to avoid airspace conflict between our aircraft and the constant incoming air traffic, we have to work the night shift. The last couple of days we have been trying to make the transition to the new schedule so the night after snow mobile training we deciding to hike up Observation Hill just outside of McMurdo so we wouldn’t go to bed early. It was a steep hike to the top, but visibility was clear so we could see everything around us. On the top of Ob Hill is a cross in memory of Robert Scott that was built in 1912. After about 25 minutes of taking in the view and taking pictures we got cold so we headed back to town for the night.

On top of Ob Hill

Since we are here on a mission……

We’ve now fully transitioned to the night schedule, and yesterday we had our first flights of our smaller Remote Controlled (RC) aircraft, the Yak. After the slow week of training, we broke out the gates with two flights. The first was roughly 15 minutes long and was a pseudo-over the horizon flight. Over the horizon flights are a big deal since we have only done one before, and we just whipped one out on our first flight. I call it “pseudo” because it wasn’t truly over the horizon, but it was so far away I couldn’t see it, so I’ll count it. The second flight was much less eventful as we just practiced takeoffs, landings, and transitioning between autopilot and manual mode. The purpose of this flight wasn't to practice that list of items, but to get comfortable with our communications. I’m new to the team, and my position is the liaison between the pilot and the ground station crew.

Today we hope to get ground and taxi testing completed with the Meridian. If everything goes well, we’re looking at flights by the end of the week. I’m very optimistic, and I’m excited to see the Meridian fly with my own eyes for the first time!

I would tell you to stay warm until next time, but it sounds like the Kansas weather is taking care of that for you.