Trainings and Briefings

Much of the first few week, and especially the first few days after arriving at McMurdo Station, is filled with a series of trainings and briefings. One example is the "Arrival In-brief", which occurs immediately after we are dropped off following the transport from the airfield. There are also individual briefings with groups supporting us during the field season, such as with MacOps - the communications control center. The trainings include: fire, medical, waste, light vehicle (these four are referred to as "core training"), outdoor safety for hiking, and mattrack training to drive the tracked trucks. A new training this year was "Harassment Awareness Training" in response to much of what has occurred during the past year. Afterwards, I had a discussion with one of the senior officials and he said that he'd like to see the harassment training to be more specific to what might happen in the field and among research teams. Overall, I counted 18 different trainings and briefings. We did all but one of them during our first four full days in McMurdo. Our last briefing is with helicopter ops tomorrow to discuss our helicopter support needs. The longest of all of these trainings was the Field Support and Training (FS&T) Antarctic Field Safety course. This course is required for anybody that is leaving McMurdo Station for any length of time and the course is encouraged for everybody. This course is entirely indoors and lasts about four hours.

The current form of the Antarctic Field Safety course is similar to what used to be a refresher course for people working in the field after they had taken "Survival School", also referred to as "Happy Camper School". For years (~15-20 years) the survival school was required for any first year person in the US Antarctic Program who was going into the field. On my first trip, it was required only if you were staying overnight in the field. I did not have to take the course that year as we only did day trips into the field. I was required to take the course when I returned to Antarctica in January 2005. The happy camper school would take about 8-12 people into a nearby location on the ice shelf. The class would consist of building emergency shelters, such as a snow mound or an ice cave, setting up tents, creating a cooking area that is protected from the wind, making dinner, radio comms, and spending the night in a tent, snow mound, or ice cave. I've included some photos from my 2005 training below. It was so much fun! We also had great weather for our happy camper school, which always helps.

The complete project, a snow mound. Looks like a great option for a night of sleep in 2005.

Having dinner in our cutout "kitchen" during the happy camper school in 2005.

Ready for a night of sleep in the snow mound. Keep in mind that there are 24 hour days in Antarctica during the summer field season. This photo was taken at about midnight and bright enough to need sunglasses.

The old rules were that after you completed going through happy camper school, each subsequent year in Antarctica, you had to take a refresher course. About four years ago, the requirement for the happy camper school was eliminated and the refresher course was turned into roughly the field safety course's current form. The training is completed in approximately 3-1/2 hours. It is a mixture of classroom discussion and activities. The classroom lecture and discussion include topics such as risk and safety, cold weather health and injuries - including photos of frostbite, and a video covering helicopter safety. The practical activities are more focused on getting you through a situation where you would be fine if you have to use a "survival bag". The survival bag is gear and food for two people to exist for three days. Survival bags are put on all forms of transportation whenever you leave the maintained snow roads. For example, on today's Twin Otter flight there were two flight crew members and five passengers. Therefore, there had to be four survival bags on the plane. One part of the practical exercises is to go through all of the gear and food that are included in a survival bag. Next we go through how to light the gas stove that is included in the survival bag. Having a stove is one of the keys to survival because melting snow for water to drink is critical. We also learn how to setup the tent provided in the survival bag, and then take a few minutes in groups of 4-5 to set up one of the tents. We even cover some basic knots that would be useful in setting up the emergency shelters. Learning all of this in a nice warm building and out of the wind is far from reality, especially for the situations where you might have to open up a survival bag. However, it is still useful to review mentally and physically some of the tricks to make a difficult situation safe.

The Antarctic safety instructor laying out all of the gear and food in a survival bag.

Groups practicing lighting the Whisperlite stoves that are included in the survival bag.

Practicing setting up tents as a part of the Antarctic safety training. These tents were chosen specifically because of their design with having interior poles. This makes the tents easier to set up from the inside in high winds.

I have never had to use a survival bag. There was one helicopter flight, in strong winds and blowing snow, where before the helicopter left us, we were reminded to not hesitate to use the survival bag. There was another helicopter flight on a beautiful day in the field. However, after a few hours, snowed moved into the region obscuring the visibility. After we were picked up, the helicopter pilot commented that the conditions had nearly deteoriated to the point where he couldn't make out the horizon, necessary for him to land. Overall, it is very rare for a survival bag to be used but the training is done each year so that anybody in the position to do so, will be fine.