December 6, 2001

Hi Class, We finished "snow school". You would probably have liked it. Before people are permitted to leave the area surrounding the U.S. base at McMurdo, they must take a two day course that trains them to deal with the cold and harsh environment of Antarctica.

The first part of the training was done in a classroom much as yours. Our class had 20 people, including the 8 from our project. We learned that Antarctica is the highest, coldest, windiest, driest, and sunniest continent on the earth. Coldest shouldn't surprise you, but did you know that it was also the highest, windiest, driest, and sunniest? The reason it has the greatest average height is because of the huge ice sheet that covers all but about 2% of the continent. The average height of the ice sheet is about 1.5 kilometers (almost a mile or about 4,900 feet). Much of the wind is generated by the cold air that forms on the top of the ice sheet rapidly sinking around the edges of the ice sheet. This cold, dry air actually warms somewhat as it sinks and can easily reach hurricane speed. It is the driest because a large part of Antarctica is a desert. We usually think of a desert as a hot, dry place like the Sahara Desert in Northern Africa, but only the annual rainfall total determines whether an area is a desert, not the temperature. Because cold air does not hold much moisture it does not snow much over much of Antarctica. Sunniest continent? That may surprise you since we usually think of some place in the Caribbean Sea as being sunniest. But given that the cold air contains little moisture, there are fewer clouds here.

So there you have it, Antarctica can be a very harsh environment. But the weather here at McMurdo has been very good since our arrival on December 1. The temperatures have been around 30 degrees F (Fahrenheit) near 1 PM and around 20 degrees F near 1 AM and it has not been very windy. We have been walking around the base with light jackets and gloves. But all that can change quickly and strong wind can arise accompanied by a drop in the air temperature. People traveling away from the base can get caught unexpectedly in a storm and their very lives may depend on being prepared. Also, many of the people from McMurdo travel to other bases and camps that have conditions that are much colder and windier than are found at McMurdo this time of year. For instance at Amundson-Scott Base at the South Pole, the temperature has been varying between -30 F and 0 F and these are summer conditions.

In our class instructor we learned about dangers such as frostbite and hypothermia, what signs to look for, how to treat ourselves at the onset, and how to treat others when the condition becomes more severe. Because the air is so dry, we learned that we had to consume plenty of water and learned the signs for dehydration. We also learned that we have to cover our faces with a sun block to avoid sunburn. It may sound strange that you could get sunburned in such a cold place with the sun low in the sky. The problem is that the sun is in the sky 24 hours per day and that the sun bounces off of the snow surface which reflects about 90% of the sunlight that strikes it giving a person almost double the exposure to sunlight. After the class we rode to the ice school on a large vehicle called a Delta along a highway built on the ice. The location of the highway is marked by green flags Graders and bull dozers are used to maintain the ice highway. When the lane gets too many ruts, the flags are moved and the traffic drives on the new lane. The "ice school" is located on a section of the Ross Ice Shelf which is a 150 to 300 foot thick sheet of ice that floats over a large area of the ocean near McMurdo.

Whenever traveling off of the area of the base at McMurdo groups are provided with emergency kits which have tents, ice picks, ice saws, waterproof sleeping bags, dehydrated food, camp stoves, and radios. Travelers also carry a supply of water. In the "ice school" we would learn how to use the emergency kits to survive if we ever needed to do it. First, we learned how to put up tents of the two types that are commonly found in the emergency kits. We found that putting up a tent on the packed snow or ice can be quite a bit more challenging than doing so on land where tent pins can easily be driven into the ground. We learned how to bury the tent pins laid on their sides so that they could not be pulled out during strong winds. A tent pin buried in this way is called a "dead man".

We next learned how to build an ice wall to surround the tents to protect them from strong wind. We did this using a ice saw . The snow was not like the fresh snow that you often see falling in Maryland during the winter. Instead, this snow was hard and compressed forming ice. When the Delta drove on the packed snow, the tire hardly sank into the top. We learned how to use the saw to cut blocks of the packed snow. Then we took these blocks and began to build walls around the tent areas. It was very much like stacking large legos. We continued this process until the ice block walls were about 4 feet high.

We then learned how to build an igloo type of shelter. First we stacked all of our rolled up sleeping bags which were packed inside canvass bags onto a large pile with a tent ground cloth on top . We then covered the stack of canvass bags with snow by shoveling it. At times we packed the snow by pounding it with the back of or shovels . We continued the shoveling and packing process until the pile was about 10 feet high . We then dug into two sides of the mound of snow and pulled out the canvass bags leaving a hollowed area inside . We further enlarged the hollowed area inside with shovels and hauled the excess snow outside of the igloo .

We then used our snow saws to erect a wall for our dining area. The area from which the snow blocks were selectively cut provided ice benches and tables. We then put together our gasoline stove burners, lit them with matches, and heated pots of water for hot drinks and to mix with our dehydrated food . There were various choices, like rice and beans, chili, chicken and noodles. I ate a pack of the chili mix. If it were served to me in the cafeteria, I probably wouldn't have liked it, but given the situation where we were out in the cold air after having worked hard all afternoon, it tasted pretty good. Most of the others seemed to feel that way. A local bird called a skua visited us. It is lie a large seagull and is a scavenger just like seagulls. We didn't feed the skua because U.S. regulations ban any kind of activities which interfere with any animal's natural habits.

For our evening entertainment, some of us took a walk to an emergency shelter located about one-half mile away from our snow camp. There are emergency shelters at various places along roads here so that people trapped during storms can find shelter until the storm subsides. The shelter had 4 cots with sleeping bags, a stove, cooking pots, some water, and food. We returned to camp and some people flew kites in the wind . A few others entertained themselves by carving a penguin from an ice block and building a Christmas tree . People chose different places to spend the night. Three people slept in the igloo we had built, some others walked to igloos that had been built by earlier classes (they teach at least on per week since new people are arriving each week). I chose one of the tents . I took most of my cold weather gear off ,put on dry socks and crawled into my sleeping bag which was laid on some thin foam rubber pads. The snow and ice under my bag was lumpy so it took some getting used to, but I fell asleep shortly because I was so tired. Most reported that they got a good night of sleep but a couple of the people I spoke with said that they had gotten little sleep.

The next morning we heated more water and ate oatmeal. We then broke camp and packed up all of the equipment. Our instructors returned. We then simulated a couple of emergencies. First we pretended we were stuck in a storm in a vehicle with an emergency kit. We had to erect a tent quickly along with an ice wall to protect it from the wind and put together and lit a camp stove. My half of the group accomplished this in 18 minutes. I am told that the other half did it in 10 minutes. We then simulate an incident where a member of the camp had wandered outside during a whiteout when blowing snow reduced visibility to a few feet and hurt himself so that he could not return. Our job was to find him and bring him back to the camp. To do this we each put white waste baskets over our heads to simulate the whiteout. We then got a long rope and tied it to the hut where we where and then we each held on to the line about an arms length apart and began a sweep. The instructor played the missing person. We eventually found him and carried him back to the hut.

We then returned to McMurdo Base on the Delta.

Send any questions that you have to us and we will try to answer them.

Robert Swift