Snowcamp

Sunday we spent working in a shared labspace our equipment is occupying, so nothing particularly interesting. The Crary lab is a set of interconnected buildings and contains labs of all sorts: biological, metrological, etc. It's up about 3 feet above the ground to prevent flooding and perhaps freezing. It feels like I am working in Moonbase Alpha, and it is so cool. The community is like the TV show Eureka with everyone doing something interesting and activity going on in all directions at once. It's also a bit like Northern Exposure in that it's a small community in a winter wilderness, though here there are no trees (in fact no apparent life besides us at present).

Monday Joulien and I went to Happy Camper training. They drive you over the hill a few miles away and give you gear and some instruction before leaving you for the night. More instruction the next day. We had a group of 20, some had never camped, and a couple had camped in the snow. I have camped one night in the Blue mountains of WA in the snow, and had many years of skiing experience to rely on. Still, Antarctic camping is the penultimate challenge. They have 3 weather conditions here: #3 all ok, #2 dangerous, #1 so dangerous you are not to leave the building you are presently in. For our training the weather goddesses were kind and provided condition #4: so nice and warm with very little wind.


So for those of you who recal I've been trying to build a snowman for many years...I was successful at building an even better structure: a snow wall. The 100' by 5' by 1' structure resulted from all 20 persons' efforts.

We also had some fun taking pictures, and I got my Antarctic Sirsasana (head-posture) picture in with the volcano (Mt. Erebus) in the background.