Tuesday 12 July 2005
Roughing it
Last Saturday Matt, Petra and I decided to spend a night outside beneath the stars. Now at first thought (and perhaps second and third thought too) that might not sound like a particularly sensible idea, but actually it proved to be an thoroughly enjoyable and surprisingly comfortable night.
This is not the first time I've forsaken a perfectly good bed to enjoy the delights of Antarctic camping. The second coldest night I've had down here was when I slept in the igloo that we built last year. From what I remember it was just as I was coming off night shift so completely failed to get any sleep at all. I also rolled off my sleeping mat in the night so ended up lying on the ice which sucks heat away from your body very quickly. I think it was about 7 o'clock when Craig first stirred and I immediately insisted in no uncertain terms that we head back to the warmth of the Laws platform!
Don't try this at home, kids.
My coldest night in Antarctica (and indeed anywhere else) was one evening last year when Steph and I went and stayed in the caboose on the perimeter. Normally these little huts on skis can be dragged off base but this one is starting to get a bit worse for wear and is not up to being towed on long journeys. Instead we keep it on the perimeter and use it as a venue for weekends 'away from the crowds'. Because of its poor condition we call it 'wonky' caboose and it certainly lives up to it's name - it's got big gaps around the door which make it difficult to keep it warm. On the night in question we struggled all night to heat the place up without really succeeding. When we finally went to bed we had to turn off the stove because of the risk of carbon monoxide poisoning. It turned out that the temperature dropped to -45C that night (-49F). We knew it was cold because in the morning the bottle of gin had the consistency of wallpaper paste!
So anyway, having already survived some camping trips I wasn't too put off by the outside temperature (a balmy -35C/-31F this time) although to be fair I was slightly concerned about the complete lack of shelter. Having learnt my lesson from the igloo incident (or completely failed to learn it, depending on your point of view) I decided that getting off the snow surface would be wise so I opted to sleep in my hammock.
Weight testing the hammock before settling in for the night.
We headed down to the container line at about 11pm and strung the hammock up between two containers with Matt and Petra sleeping on the floor behind one of them to keep out of the breeze. It took about an hour to get sorted and tucked up inside our sleeping bags. I was wearing a set of thermals beneath my normal clothes. I had a fleece sleeping bag liner inside my goose-down sleeping bag. That was inside a protective cover and finally a bivvy bag to keep the off any wind. To sleep on I had standard karrimat, a therma-rest and a big fluffy sheepskin rug on top of the hammock - how cosy!
Against all odds that was enough to keep me warm all night. For the first few hours I was actually baking hot but wisely decided that too hot was better than too cold so decided against widening the small opening in my sleeping bag. Over the course of the night I slowly cooled as my body heat escaped but even in the morning I was perfectly comfortable. RAB goose-down sleeping bags really are the business (I guess they should be, they cost £460 each).
Matt and Petra in their bivvy bags.
It turned out that we couldn't have picked a better night. The slight breeze died off and it was completely clear giving us great views of the night sky. There was aurora just starting as we walked over and it carried on all night flickering away above our heads. Since we'd headed away from the lights on the main platforms it was even darker than a normal night down here so you could see every detail in the sky. The Milky Way stretched from horizon to horizon and you could even see a couple of nearby galaxies. Every so often I would wake up for a bit and watch the aurora, shooting stars and satellites passing overhead from the comfort of my sleeping bag. It was really great to be able to enjoy the aurora for so long without worrying about the cold - they tend to peak for quite short periods of time so you need a lot of patience to see the best displays. At one point huge sections of the sky were flickering on and off several times a second.
One slight annoyance to deal with was that the moisture in your breath condenses straight away and forms ice around your breathing hole. Every time you roll over this tends to fall back into the bag which is a bit irritating when it lands in your eye. I also nearly fell out of the hammock at one point which certainly would have woken me up!
The hard part came in the morning when I had to get out of my sleeping bag and put on all my cold outer clothes. I finally plucked up the courage at about 9 o'clock and plunged my feet into my boots and gloves which had been sitting outside all night. After a bit of jumping around to get the blood flowing again we packed up and headed home for brekkie. All in all it was a good night, but if the wind had picked up instead of dying off it could easily have been a different story. I'm glad I did it once, but I think I'll use a pyramid tent next time!
Posted by simon at 9:37 AM | Feedback (13)