camp craft - Teaching On Ice

Today, along with Ruth and guide Carolyn, I skied to a patch of blue ice about 3.5km away to conduct some science experiments for Ruth’s project. The ski there was great as it was downhill on hard packed snow, except that as we neared our destination we noticed the tell-tale signs of crevasses. We stopped and investigated one patch in great detail with an ice axe, the snow fell away easily to reveal a hole that extended out of sight, at least 30ft … we went round that patch, took our skis off and hopped over another few, smaller, dodgy patches until we reached hard blue ice. 

After a few hours of hunting around for Cryoconite (Ice Dust) we headed for home, a much harder task than getting there as it was uphill and we had to carry our skis on our rucksacks. The walk only took about 1.5 hours, but on arrival back at camp I was shattered. I think, though, that being tired is for a number of reasons:

• keeping warm takes lots of energy
• doing anything takes a lot of effort, for example, getting undressed involves climbing into your tent, getting all the layers off, knocking the ice off them, hanging them up somewhere to dry and then climbing (with great rapidity) into your sleeping bag
• moving around through the snow is hard work
• getting a good nights sleep is hard due to the 24 hours of daylight and the noise of the wind and your tent mate snoring.

Still loving the place, although there are some things that do weigh on the negative side:

•  toilet arrangements (pee bottles and ig-loos)
•  the fact that everything is frozen (toothpaste and suncream in particular)
• the slightest wind makes keeping warm very hard. Today temperatures are -16 deg C, but this evening a slight breeze has started up (9mph), that slight breeze has brought the experienced temperature down to nearly -30 deg C!
• the unchanging diet. There are three cereal options (ready brek, Jordans superfood bran flakes and alpen), lunch is always the same (cereal and chocolate bars) and there are four choices of dinner (chicken korma – good, chicken tikka – good, tuna pasta – good, spag bol – really good and chilli con carne – horrific).

Tomorrow we'll be ski-ing to another patch of blue ice to look for some more ice, lets hope for fewer crevasses!

C: Camping

In preparation for his time in Antarctica, Phil camped on a Norwegian glacier.

Camping can be hard when you're used to the luxuries of home. Here's an assembly for secondary schools, which explores the theme of 'things we take for granted'.

If your students are interested in advanced camp craft or 'bushcraft' you'll find lots of information at www.raymears.com The crafts are based on woodland resources, providing a sharp contrast to the glacial environment.

Get your pupils to talk or write about their experiences of, or thoughts about camping. Get them to make a list of the skills that they think would be useful, and the equipment they would like to take. They could even choose one luxury to pack and explain why they chose it. Remind them that they would have to carry everything themselves!

We’re down off the glacier now and camping on lovely comfortable grass on route back to Bergen. The glacier was incredible, beautiful and like walking through a text book … terminal moraine, recessional moraine, crevasses etc.

Our glacier campsite was on hard ice with crampons needed for even the most basic things.

During the night we lay listening to the creaking of the ice and fairly frequent rockfalls fairly nearby. The second night on the ice was a restless one: the hardness of the ice, without the tiredness of the walk-in led to waking up every hour or so with numb body parts.

Furthermore, the walk-out was tough. I pushed on with one of the leaders so that we could drop our kit off at the bus and head back up the hill to help relieve others of some of their weight on the final stretch. Blistered feet and aching shoulders are now recovering.
 
Our time on the glacier was a success.

We camped in poor weather on hard ice, the team got on brilliantly, our team leaders inspired trust, the science went well and we were able to practise getting people out of crevasses (with complete success!).

The only issue was with the comms. Due to camping in a steep-sided valley we couldn’t get the connection to the satellites for long enough to send out messages. So, having sent emails and posted bits on websites telling people we would be in regular communication, we then disappeared for a few days … possibly the odd worried person out there!
 
We're now heading for the ferry from Bergen – which leaves on Thursday morning – with increased confidence and skills.