Field Safety Training

I haven't posted for the last 48 hours because I was off at Field Safety training, also known locally as "Happy Camper School" because it gives many people their first taste of winter camping.  This is a full two day experience, complete with an overnight campout.  It's required of all first timers, and also for anyone who hasn't deployed to the antarctic in more than 5 years.  That's me; I had this course in 1995!

In addition to learning risk mitigation and assessment, we learned about hazards we might encounter in the field, and it turns out that while you might find things like "weather" or "whiteout" on the list, the more important ones are not that obvious- "inexperience", "complacency", and other so-called "subjective" hazards.

Well, I won't go through a blow-by blow account, but I wanted to post a few pictures- here's the camp we set up, with tent space for, all, and a nice windbreak wall, and a small kitchen.

I chose to sleep in a snow-trench. Here's what my trench looked like form the outside. I covered the top with an ensolite pad weighted down with snow blocks.

 

Here's what it looked like inside. I hung my bags and things from short lengths of bamboo that I drove into the wall.

The weather was just gorgeous for most of the time- we even saw a nice glimpse of Mt Erebus- one of the more impressive mountains on the Antarctic!

Ok, all for now. I hear our cargo has arrived so we'll check it out tomorrow. Ok, end of today's post- I'm pretty tired and about to fall sleep!