Tuesday 11 October 2005
Antarctic Camping 2: Setting up camp
Once everything is packed and you arrive at your intended camp site there is still a couple of hours work to do before you can relax. After unlashing the sledges the first priority is to put up the pyramid tent. To do that you dig four holes in a square to hold the aluminium poles then dig out the area between them to around 20-30cm deep. The tents have a valence of tough material sewn into the base of the tent which provides most of the resistance to wind. Once the tent is up you pile snow back on top of the valence to stop the wind getting under it and tension the guy lines around the outside. Orientation of the tent is important - you want the door slightly downwind otherwise it will fill with snow if you need to go outside in bad weather.
Once the tent is up one person gets in and the other stays outside. The pots box, inside tent box and inside food box are passed in as well as a couple of wooden sleeping boards and our P-bags (a combined sleeping bag and floor mat system). The inside tent person arranges the boxes, unrolls the P-bags, fills the Primus Stove and Tilly lamp with fuel, starts to warm up the tent and gets some tea brewing.
The inside tent arrangement is always the same - the boxes run down the middle of the tent with the cooking board fixed between two of them holding the Primus stove. The sleeping bags are positioned on the left and right and the Tilly lamp can be hung from a cord in the middle.
Vanessa inside our tent. Not a great picture but it gives you an idea of the setup. The lens was steaming up from all the heat off the stove!
To keep us insulated from the snow surface we have many layers below us. First a wooden sleeping board to remove some of the lumps, then a foam Karrimat, next an inflatable Thermarest and finally a big, furry sheepskin rug. On top of that goes your down sleeping bag and if that's still not enough you have a fleece bag liner and sleeping bag cover. The sleeping bags are proven down to -50C and come complete with a down-filled cowl which surrounds your head and can be closed down to just a small hole for breathing.
High up in the centre of the tent there are drying lines for outdoor clothing - the top of the tent tends to get very warm as heat rises from the stove so things dry out much quicker up there. Around the outside of the tent there are a load of pouches sewn into the inner liner which are used to store other commonly used items.
Clothes hanging in the top of the tent to dry.
Meanwhile the outside tent person puts any extra kit on the valence to weight it down, refuels and tarps the skidoos, sets up the radio, sorts out the empty sledge and cuts snow into blocks which will fit in the pot to melt for water. For convenience a pile of snow blocks is usually kept in the 'porch' of the tent (between the inner and outer material), so you can grab them without having to go outside.
The camp site at Second Chasm camp.
Once all that's done you can get in your sleeping bag and relax for the night!
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