View across to the Royal Society Range (taken from Ob Hill)To keep things in chronological order I'll start off with snow school, a.k.a. Happy Camper. The whole experience was ace! Even the sitting around in a classroom "learning" about issues of common sense, plus some pretty gruesome images of frostbite, wasn't so bad.
In my trench
After the dull class bit was over everyone was shipped out in a Delta to the ice shelf, only a couple of km from McMurdo and even close to Scott Base, but a great site for a camp. We were lucky with pretty perfect weather and got stuck in to setting up tents, then building first a quinzy (a cross between and igloo and ice cave), a wind-breaking snow wall, and finally optional trenches to sleep in. Or, in one guys case, an ill fated igloo which turned into mini Stonehenge at literally the 11th hour.
Stonehenge
During all this my record for personal disaster kept up good form. First I lost my little red windbreaker jacket issued to me, panicked searches were carried out even as I had to be leaving for snow school. I hadn't even worn the damn thing and they're bloody expensive! Then, on the way out to the ice I managed to misplace a mitt liner. Not a big loss until your fingers are too cold for gloves and you have to spend another 10 hours outside worrying about frostbite (chemical hand-warmers are my savior). Finally, as I was quarrying blocks of ice for the snow wall I realised I'd lost a side sun-protector from my new glasses. Fuck! Although I had two days of niggling worries about where all this stuff was, I can tell you now that I left the jacket in Christchurch, the sunglasses side protector may or may not be replaceable, but isn't totally necessary and would make me look like a tool in any non-icy situation. The mitt liner is still unaccounted for, but I'm pretty sure I'll get it back from a lost and found. Who cares anyway, I'm just chuffed I found the jacket!
So after working out how to keep my hands warm without mitts, my eyes protected sans side protectors and my body warm without the windbreaker (easy really, Big Red was far more useful anyway, and I had a North Face jacket of my own), I went to bed. And got cold. I was fine for most of the night, with Big Red and two roll mats under my warm sleeping bag. Only I fell asleep before I could be bothered to locate a little string that tightens the sleeping bag over the shoulders (in addition to the usual head one). Result of this? I wake up at 4 in the morning with freezing shoulders and give myself a sharp kick for being such an idiot. Other than that, the night in the trench was awesome, if a little big of a struggle to get dressed in the next morning.
Hmm, it appears I'm still having issues with photo uploads, but anyway....
ANITA goes in the EMI tent
After a couple of relatively quiet days following the snow school (there seriously isn't much to do here), I decided to go to a prom night that had been organised at the Berg Field Centre (the gear issue centre for field camps). Can't remember much of the night now, but I did manage to make it into work on Sunday. This was a bad idea. I got nothing done, not even sleep.
Ob Hill looking innocent
Then today, Monday, I decided to climb Ob Hill, which overlooks both McMurdo and Scott Base. The views up there are incredible but the structural stability of the paths are not. Having walked up the lower section of the path, I reach the icier, steeper section in good spirits. The climb is only a km or so, but is pretty steep so takes a while. For me it takes ages, I end up on my hands and knees for much of it, and even though I know the ice is not compacted much, making it halfway between ice and snow and perfectly easy to walk on for much of the route, my mind cannot get over the fact it was ice. So I scramble up the non-icy sections, which are covered in small gravel, very loosely packed and totally shit for walking on.
Finally getting to the top, with many muttered fucks and shits and what the hell am I doing, why don't I just bloody stand ups, I meet a guy who is calm as you like. "I saw you earlier on" he says cheerfully, "you took a bit longer than I expected". Yes. I fucking did. I was being a fucking pussy.
Vertigo anyone? McMurdo from Ob Hill
Any hopes that I might be able to head back down with him, providing both confidence and safety, quickly fade as he says his goodbyes after only a few seconds and tells me to enjoy the view. Looking down about 5 minutes later I see he's already got a third of the way down, even though the hill must have at least a 20 degree incline and is slippery as hell. So getting out my camera I decide to try and calm down.
Getting back down is now a bit of a blur. Many more profanities were muttered, it is definitely harder hiking down that up. But halfway towards the bottom I realised that I was being a twat and that walking would be much easier than my preferred mode of crab position scrambling. After a few false starts, I finally made the last 20 metres of the hard section of the hike walking bipedal, like a human, only with stiff legs from all the prior panicking.
Now, pleased that I made it, but with a cloud of shame for being such a tit about it all, I'm still calming down.
I'm going to climb the bastard again though.
1 comment:
Well its nice to know you are learning lots and that the great outdoors is a humbling experience - but don't beat yourself up too much. As to losing stuff well that runs in the family. What is an EMI tent that ANITA was being stuffed into? Brilliant pics. Oh and you can get pissed at the South Pole too - well that's something new.
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