nutrition - Teaching On Ice

10th December
Normality seems very strange. We were treated last night to dinner with the camp staff: lamb chops, pork, creamy potatoes, broccoli, brussells sprouts, noodles and flan … all eaten off plates, whilst sitting on seats in a nice warmish tent. Today though it’s back to rations, science on the ice (although travelling by skidoo, not on skis) and living in my tent.

We are due to fly out today, spend some time in Punta sorting the kit and then get back to the UK so that we can repeat the physiology experiments at the University of Portsmouth. But …

...currently the weather here is like being inside a ping pong ball – low cloud, low visibility, no contrast, light winds and snow, which means that they can’t land the plane and so we won’t go anywhere. Hopefully over the next few days we’ll get out, hopefully by Christmas, hopefully by New Year, hopefully!

However, our extra time here will give us time to hunt out lichens, look for ice dust and, importantly to me, expose the team to low, low temperatures for longer, making changes to our body more likely (temperatures today are high at -12 deg C because of the cloud cover, but the wind chill is taking experienced temperatures down to about -25 deg C).

I’m starting to look back at the expedition although we still haven’t left Antarctica. The project has a long way to go as we’ve created no teaching materials yet – so keep watching this blog as there is lots to come!

Here are just a few points:

• The hauling has been really useful as it has given me an insight into the books about epic walks to the Poles, and beyond (read Mike Stroud’s ‘Shadows on the Wasteland’). There is nothing better than experience … so long live field trips! Students, get out there and see things, make your own story!
• The weight loss (just under three quarters of a stone) and my attitude to the cold (feeling it less) suggests that our bodies have changed and therefore my project should yield some good results.
• Having life bared down to the necessities and made as simple as it can be (tent living, food to live not to enjoy, hauling everything yourself), for a month, has been an incredible experience as it makes you appreciate everything we take for granted. Look around you and think about what you don’t need.
• Every single moment has been incredible, but it hasn’t all been fun.

5th December
The daddy of all hills was finally conquered yesterday evening! It took three days and an awful lot of effort, but at about 5pm yesterday we got the last sledge to the top of the pass. The GPS shows that we climbed 500m and that the average slope angle was 30 degrees!! And you have to remember that we’re not travelling light. We're hauling:

• rock samples
• spare tents
• spare fuel
• spare food
• ropes
• crevasse rescue kits
• a generator
• a laptop
• two satellite phones
• and all our personal kit!

Despite the physical strain of the last few days there has been no let up today. We’ve spent six hours hauling the pulks down the other side of the pass and then 10km down the Horseshoe Glacier.

Considering this is a scientific expedition you may ask why we’re doing all this hauling. It is simply because we have no other way of getting back to Patriot Hills where we fly out from. No transport back to the base has been budgeted for. It wasn’t all hard work today though.

At a few points the slope was briefly steep enough to allow us to hop on board our sledges and toboggan along. This was great fun until I found myself heading, at speed, towards one of the guides who had fallen off. My solution was to apply the emergency brake – that brake was me. I flung myself to the ground and, as I was still attached to my sledge by my harness, eventually the trace went tight and I became the brake … I stopped the pulk with only metres to spare!

One of my concerns is the amount of calories we’ve been burning over the last few days. To try and get my strength back I’ve upped my food intake. For example I reckon that tonight's dinner of a cup-a-soup, two tortillas (tuna and salami), rehydrated spag bol with pemmicam, chocolate and haribo was about 2000 calories! And I’ve probably eaten another 2000 calories over the rest of the day. Yet despite my intake being double the RDA for an adult in the UK I’m probably still deficient. This is due to the tremendous effort everything takes here: walking through the snow is tiring, keeping warm takes lots of energy, etc.

It’s not only physical fatigue that comes from everything taking thought and effort, it’s also mental fatigue: boiling my water for drinking during the day takes an hour, going to the loo requires thought about clothing, even brushing your teeth requires you to remember to defrost the toothpaste!

19th November
Temperatures are too low today to head out to do Science. It isn't necessarily the temperature that's the problem (-15.2 deg C) it's the wind, which is averaging 14.5 mph and gusting to about 25 mph. The wind is bringing experienced temperatures down to -30 deg C and below, this makes standing around doing Science pretty harsh work.

Later tonight when the sun gets on to the slopes we want to investigate. We may well head out if the wind has dropped, but for now it's tea-drinking and eating in our mess tent. 

While I have the time I thought I would send back some results so that you can compare what we’re experiencing to what you're experiencing back home.

Weather:

16/11/07: -19 deg C, wind spd av 0.3 mph, wind spd max 0.9 mph, cloud cover 0 octares, pressure 892 mbar, visibility to horizon (about 40 km).

17/11/07:  -13 deg C, 0.1 mph, 0.7 mph, 0 octares, 891 mbar, vis to horizon

18/11/07: -16 deg C, 9.2 mph , 10.8 mph, 4 octares, 890 mbar, vis to horizon

19/11/07: -16 deg C, 14.5 mph, 23.8 mph, 0 octares, 887 mbar, vis to horizon

Diet: 3240 Kcal

Breakfast: 755 Kcal

• Half a packet of alpen: 600 Kcal
• Coffee with sugar: 25 Kcal
• Alpen cereal bar: 130 Kcal

Lunch: 1360 Kcal

• 2xDairy Milk: 510 Kcal
• Mars Bar: 284 Kcal
• Nuts: 295 Kcal
• Jordans superfood bar: 171 Kcal
• Packet Haribo: 100 Kcal

Dinner: 1125 Kcal

• Spag Bol boil in bag: 700 Kcal
• Quarter pack of Pemmicam: 125 Kcal
• Haribo: 150 Kcal
• Hot Chocolate: 100 Kcal
• Cup-a-soup: 50 Kcal

Reaction times:

Method: friend holds ruler so that the 0cm line is lined up with my fingers. When the friend drops it I catch it and record at what cm mark it's at. In the UK my average was 15cm. I tried the test three times with gloves off and then three times with gloves on, look not only at the results, but also the trend:

• Gloves off: 1: 9cm, 2: 11cm, 3: 17 cm
• Gloves on: 1: 15cm, 2: 14cm, 3: 9cm

Friction:

Method: record how far an empty water bottle slides across a surface with the thrust being over the distance between your feet when feet are shoulder width apart. Test was done with a following wind averaging 14.5 mph.

• Hard smooth snow: 25.2 m, and it would have carried on if it hadn't hit sastrugi. Without the wind it would have gone about 12 m.
• Hard sastrugi: 1.2 m

Nearest living person (other than people in our team):

60 km away (at Patriot Hills base, which we flew into).