Wednesday, November 5, 2008

Snow School

Tom and David attended snow school, a two day, overnight campout course to learn and practice camping, survival, and other skills necessary to live and work in conditions of Antarctica. The class begins with a couple hours of classroom learning before catching a shuttle vehicle out to a spot on the ice shelf, where the real fun begins. The day is spent setting up different types of tents, building various snow shelters, and constructing a camp suitable for spending the night. It's all hard work in cold temperatures, so the campers must remember to keep eating and drinking throughout the day in order to maintain warmth and energy. Water is obtained by melting snow over a camp stove.
After spending the night in either a tent or a snow shelter, the campers spend the second day learning how to operate the radios used for communication in Antarctica. With the high frequency (HF) radio, they were able to contact the South Pole station!Over the next couple days we will continue to get our equipment and food ready to fly out to our field camp.

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