"What they call luck, I prefer to call planning."
- Roald Amundsen, First person to reach the geographic South Pole

Throughout the course of Antarctic habitation and expeditions, one thing has remained a constant - without proper planning and pragmatism, you will not succeed in what you set out to accomplish. Proper planning is both the reason why Amundsen was so successful and also the reason Scott failed so miserably. For example: Amundsen used teams of strong, experienced sled dogs to pull his sledges to the pole. Scott used ponies to pull his sledges. Yep, ponies. Amundsen beat Scott to the pole by a month and returned safely. Scott died.

Enter: Field Safety Training (also known around town as 'Happy Camper School'). Happy Camper is a class specifically designed to teach how to survive in Antarctica when outside the comforts of one of the stations. This past Friday and Saturday, myself and 10 others were carted off to the McMurdo Ice Shelf about four miles from town where we spent two days and a night outside camping. Our instructor, Brennan Brunner, is head of the Field Camp training, has been coming to Antarctica for six seasons, and is also a lead member of the McMurdo search and rescue team, so we were in good hands, to say the least. Nothing about this class is an exercise in rocket science or difficult to wrap one's mental faculties around. Pragmatism is the key to survival in Antarctica. If you are cold, put on a layer. If you are hungry, eat. If it is windy, build a shelter. If the Bills are in the Super Bowl, bet against them. It was amazing to hear how many stories Brennan had about people forgetting essential supplies, overlooking marked hazards, or ignoring obvious symptoms that resulted in fatal conclusions.

We met at the Science Support building for a brief classroom lecture. After some quick introductions (there were eleven of us total, ranging from scientists to RPSC employees to one guy from the New Zealand army) Brennan spent about 2 hours discussing the contents of survival bags, signs of hypothermia and frost nip/bite, and how to prevent getting cold. The survival bags, which are giant water proof rubber bags, are found throughout the stations, field camps, airplanes, etc. These are bags that, if caught in an emergency situation, could support 2 people for several days by providing 2 sleeping bags and pads, stove, pots, cooking gas, matches, a tent, food, and even a book to read (because in situations that would require use of a survival bag, you'll be thankful for something to read to kill time and take your mind off eating the person you are stuck with).

As we all know, hypothermia is the drop of the body's core temperature. If there is something positive to say about this condition, it is that hypothermia is one of the slower deaths out there and provides a bunch of warning signs. It is a pretty easy fix: the sooner you take action against the cold, the easier it is to keep your core temperature up.
The following are the major warning signs:
1.) That "Hey, I'm cold" thought crosses your mind. Resolution: Put another layer on right away and eat something. Wow, that's brilliant! Food is truly the magic cure to being cold. Your body burns a tremendous amount of calories trying to keep warm and thus needs all the energy you can provide. Simply eating a snack once every hour when experiencing cold conditions can be the difference between staying warm and losing some digits.
2.) Shivering and loss of feeling in extremities. Again, put more clothes on, eat, and move around/exercise. Another little fact – one of the biggest reasons people get cold is because of their pride. Many people believe that admission to cold is a sign of weakness and in doing so they will slow down the group by having to put on another layer. This is a huge mistake because you know what really slows down a group? Hauling a frozen, dead carcass to the destination. The toughest, cagiest mountaineers in the world don't have some magic extra warmth chromosome, they just have a more developed system of putting on layers quickly - a well placed extra pair of gloves in their pocket, an easily accessible hat at the top of their pack, etc.
3.) Uncontrollable shivering. Shivering is the body's way of doing calisthenics in order to get warm. Moving around gets the blood flowing and warms the body up, however, moving too much will cause a sweat. Sweating will make your clothes become wet and water is about 40% better than air at insulating cold.
4.) Change in personality. People at this point tend to be irritable, withdrawn from the group, and unable to understand simple tasks – also known as Mark every morning till around 10am. This is one of the more serious symptoms. It basically means parts of the brain are shutting down in order to keep the essential areas of the brain warm.
5.) Unconscious. The brain has decided to shut everything down except what's keeping the vital organs running. The heart rate drops to a dangerous level. Some people can still be revived, but the odds are not good.

So, on to happier topics - Frostbite. All frostbite usually starts with frost nip. Frost nip looks like a white pasty patch on the exposed skin. Yummy. It is easily treatable by covering it immediately and keeping it covered. Frost nip, when not treated, will eventually become frost bite, which turns the skin to a nice shade of black and eventually falls off. I was talking to someone who just returned from the South Pole a couple weeks ago where the average temperature is around -60 degrees. He had a small red/black patch on his arm that was frostbite he received while working outside - he had accidentally touched his skin to the metal on his camera tripod...for less than 45 seconds. Instant frostbite. Good stuff.

After the classroom, we drove out to the McMurdo Ice Shelf and after a quick lunch and some stove maintenance instruction (it was good to see they have everyone use the same stove I use back home - MSR's Whisper Light) in a Jamesway, we headed out to where we would be camping. The weather was beautiful with no wind, 30 degrees, and blue skies. I've heard horror stories from past happy campers that suffered through 50 knot winds and -40 temp, so we all felt pretty fortunate.

First order of business was to erect the Scott Tent, which is a large pyramidal tent that has been in use since the days of the early explorers due to its superior design and speed of erecting. The tent sleeps 4-6. The key to the tent is placing what's called 'Dead Man' anchors for support against the high winds that can rise unexpectedly down here. A 2 foot hole is dug perpendicular to the anchor rope coming off the tent (hole depth depends on quality of snow). A rope attached to the tent is wrapped once around a stake or any long object and placed in the hole, buried, and packed down. The part of the rope coming out of the hole is then tightened and tied to the half of the rope going into the hole with a trucker's hitch knot. An anchor was made for all the anchor ropes coming off of the tent, about 10 in all.

Next we built a Quonset hut, which resembles an igloo, but instead of blocks of ice, it is a hollowed out mound of snow... and doesn't have as many Eskimos. We threw our 11 sleep kits (large bag containing 2 sleeping pads, a sleeping bag, and a fleece liner) into a pile about 5 feet high and proceeded to bury them with snow. Half way through, we would pack down the pile which made the snow create new bonds with itself and get stronger. For maximum strength, the mound needed to have walls of snow roughly 2 feet thick. Brennan mentioned they have driven trucks over these Quonset huts without it collapsing. After about a half hour, a couple people then dug into the pile removing all the bags and voila - a hollowed out Quonset hut that could sleep 2-3 people. Yet another lesson in pragmatism.

We then needed to erect a couple regular 2 person camping tents, which we placed side by side so they could share the same anchors. A few more dead man anchors were placed on the side the tents weren't sharing. The tents were placed near a hard patch of snow and with the use of saws and shovels, we cut out large blocks of snow from this hard patch and built a 3 foot high wall that would protect the tents from wind. The key to this lesson: erect the tents and build the wall near the hard patch of snow - makes moving 40 pound blocks of snow to their destination much easier. An additional wall was built in front of that wall and the space in between was used as a small kitchen area where we had two large pots boiling on the camp stoves. Dinner was a selection of delicious freeze dried meals. I dined on the beef stroganoff and washed it down with a few Oreos. After shoveling, digging, and carrying blocks of snow all day, it was a well earned feast.

Brennan left us a radio and headed back to the main jamesway (about a 1/4 mile away) around 5:30pm for the evening. He would return in the morning to pick us up. Bill and I had wanted to stay in a Quonset hut, however a couple others had taken the one the group had built, so we opted to stay in a Quonset hut from a prior happy camper class earlier in the week. Even though we had a home for the evening, I still wanted to try my hand at building a snow trench. The thick snow and ice made it slow going, but I eventually dug about a 2' deep hole, which was more like 3' once I surrounded the hole with snow blocks. I was unable to find strong enough snow to cut out long snow blocks for my roof but the trench was to a point I could have slept in, albeit slightly colder and less protected than the Quonset hut.

The night went by pretty quickly and I had a pretty good sleep. The next day we had another short lecture in the jamesway around radios and trip preparation. The most common radio down here is a hand held, walkie-talkie type. These radios either need to be in direct line of sight of who you are contacting or direct line of sight of a repeater. A repeater is a radio antennae tower that simply serves as a relay between you and the destination of the transmission. There are several of these repeaters placed on high hills around McMurdo Sound. This radio is typically used for close distances. The High Frequency (HF) radio is a larger, military radio designed for the jungle, which bounces radio waves off the atmosphere (the ionosphere to be specific). A long antenna is stretched out perpendicular to the direction you are calling. We radioed the South Pole Station to test how the radio worked. So, because we were calling south, we faced that way and stretched the antenna East to West. Bill manned the receiver and yelled the following, "South Pole, South Pole, South Pole. This is McMurdo Field Training on 1145. How's my copy? Over." After a short pause a clear response came back over the radio, "McMurdo this is South Pole. Your copy is loud and clear. Over." Sure radios have been around forever, but two of the most desolate places on earth, chatting with each other using a pretty basic transmitter/receiver no larger than a shoebox that is bouncing radio waves off the atmosphere is a pretty fascinating thing, in my geeky opinion.

We wrapped up the day back at the station classroom with some basic helicopter safety. For example, don't walk towards the rear of a helicopter for risk of losing your noggin by the second rotor. Good advice.

The whole experience was pretty amazing and it was nice to get out of McMurdo for a couple days of camping. The odds are slim, but hopefully I'll get out of town again for a couple days now that I have all this new survival knowledge.