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TIGER moving along / Snowschool refresher course
First of all, I feel negligent for
continually referring to places in McMurdo Station without showing
pictures of them, so here. I
decided to do a quick tour, wandering around in the cold photographing
what seemed important. I'll try to get some pictures soon - fun
things that one wouldn't expect down here such as the bowling alley and
the gym.
Well our day was rather short out at Williams
Field. We were out there in the morning, just long enough to make
plans for tomorrow to do a full telemetry check with Drew. We had
a change of pace in the afternoon: our snowschool refresher
course. Now snowschool
is widely regarded around town to be one of the most fun parts of one's
stay in McMurdo. People who work outside of the general McMurdo
Station area (which includes Williams Field) must go to snowschool (or
Happy Camper School) their first time down on the Ice. It lasts
for two days and one night, which you spend out on the Ross Ice Shelf,
either in a tent or in a snowhut. It is super fun, even though I
found it almost impossible to sleep out in the cold. The night
that I did it two years ago, it was so cold that my water bottle, which
I had under my arm, froze solid during the night. Even worse, the
food that I ate for dinner (a bag of dehydrated food that you are
supposed to "hydrate" with boiling water), didn't exactly leave a
pleasant feeling in my stomach, which in the end, was worse for my
tentmate, John Epstein (our mechanical engineer), than it was for
me! The whole idea is that you learn valuable survival skills in
the event that you are stranded somewhere without shelter.
When you return to the Ice, you are required to take
a refresher course, which is much less fun. Some people actually
choose to do snowschool all over again, which would be fun. It's
not really that feasible for us though, since we would be losing
valuable work days. Oh well.
The course was from about 1:00 to 4:00 PM and it
covered what to do in the case of cold-weather injuries, how to avoid
and how to take care of people with frostbite or hypothermia. We
were reminded how to use the camping stoves that are provided for
cooking in the field, how to pitch the high-wind certified tents, build
snow walls and how to radio for help.
And after dinner, I just had to be a part of the
karaoke scene at Gallagher's. I was pretty impressed - not a bad
a selection of songs.
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