Field Safety Training Program 1

This is a self shot of me at snow school. In this instance the lens had partially frozen over.

This past Tuesday and Wednesday I completed FTSP 1 aka "snow school" or "happy camper." It's a course that all those going in the field must complete. Raytheon employees are also allowed to take the course, and it is the high point of many of their seasons here, whereas many of the scientists are not as fond of happy camper.

Snow school is a course that is designed to familiarize people with basic cold weather snow survival. We also cover basic radio usage as well as search and rescue techniques. The majority of the class is spent constructing and sleeping in a snow camp in "snow mound village."


Here is our camp, I haven't yet stitched the photos together, but feel free to imagine it as a single panoramic photo.






























Our class of 20 built a camp of two Scott tents, four mountain tents, one quinzhee, and four trenches. I slept in the quinzhee with one other person. The tents are easy to set up, the trenches take some work, and the quinzhee takes a long time. We first made a mound of bags, covered them in a tarp, and then shoveled almost two feet of snow over the whole thing. After letting it refreeze for a few hours, we dug a tunnel coming up just on the inside wall of the quinzhee. It took two of us a good 2 hours just to build the tunnel. I stayed in the quinzhee for the night. It was a cold night as my mummy sleeping bag was too small and only made it to my shoulders. It is nicer than the tents in that it is the darkest (the sun is always up), and it generally is warmer than the trenches.

It also has a pretty neat interior.


















Here is a view from our camp out towards the balloon base. The two hangars are barely visible as two dark bumps on the left on the horizon ( I really mean barely visible, they are about a quarter of the width of the photo from the edge).










Here's a magnified view of Scott Base from Happy Camp. You can see the pressure ridges between my position and Scott Base. The pressure ridges form where sea ice hits the ice sheet. The sea ice is much thinner and is influenced by the tides and waves to a greater extent. The ice sheet is also moving out to see so that also contributes. Seal and sea lions like to hang out near the pressure ridges, as their predators don't usually venture so far under the ice. In this photo, I am standing on the Ross Ice Shelf, and the sea ice barely wraps around Ross Island to Scott Base. Most years the ice never clears in front of Scott Base, but on occasion they have true beach front property.

Here is half of the group attempting to find someone under white out conditions. It definitely is extremely difficult and makes you realize you shouldn't expect search and rescue to find you if you get lost. It is not unheard of for visibility to get so poor you can't see your hand in front of you, and the excercize made me realize just how vulnerable a person is out here. There have been cases of people walking around the perimeter of the building, and they lose contact with the building and become completely disoriented during hurbies(hurricane blizzards). My lens cover wouldn't open all the way because it was too cold.